ZGram - 11/14/2001 - "...but is it good for the Jews?" - Part IV

[Ingrid Rimland]

Copyright (c) 2001 - Ingrid A. Rimland

ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny

November 14, 2001

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

I continue herewith with the Stephen Steinlight essay, "The Jewish Stake in
America's Changing Demography:  Reconsidering a Misguided Immigration
Policy".

Two points need to be made about this segment:

1.  There is, of course, nothing wrong with an appeal to patriotism per se,
even though a wicked proverb has it that patriotism is always the last
refuge of the rascal.

However, if the first part of the socially useful suggestions below were
offered by someone, say, like Jared Taylor of the American Renaissance or -
Heaven forbid - a populist like Z=FCndel, suggesting to cut down on bilingua=
l
education, beefing up public schools' civics classes, even recommending
Hitler-style "Volunteer Community Labor Services" by the young such as were
practiced with great vigor and success in the Third Reich, immediately all
sorts of Jewish shrieks would emanate protesting that such options "reek of
xenophobia" - but if a Jewish community leader, who sees his tribal
brethren's place at the trough threatened, comes up with these same
goodies, well, then I guess it's okay!

2.   The second part of this segment is hate-speech, raw and crass, against
a group that has not yet been charged, much less been found guilty of the
rampant, shrill but unsubstantiaed accusations now emanating from the
Jewish camp against the Muslims.

Why should a largely Christian America fear Islam more than Judaism?

That having said, here goes:

[START]

Promoting Patriotic Assimilation and Reviving Civic Virtue

   In addition to greater Jewish self-consciousness of our standing, as
well as stake, within the unfolding drama, there are specific   programs
and policies we should advance to promote patriotic assimilation, to see
that in the scales that balance group loyalty   with national allegiance,
patriotism to America weighs more heavily. As part of our advocacy
regarding the reform of public   education, we should make a strong case
for the revival of civic education as part of the core curriculum for all
students, not   only recent arrivals. Levels of political awareness among
young people, just like levels of participation by adults in the electoral
process, have become a scandal in the United States. For most Americans,
truth to tell, were the Bill of Rights rescinded   tomorrow, it would make
no material difference in their lives. Freedom of choice and individual
rights in America remain   sacrosanct principles, but they appear to
operate almost exclusively in the context of consumer choice; rather than
political   loyalties we have brand loyalty. All of America would benefit
by a renewed education in civic values and participation, not   simply the
newcomers. We ought to know something about what we profess to believe in.

   Also in the interest of advancing the concept of E Pluribus Unum, Jewish
organizations should cease their well-intentioned   but groundless support
for bilingual education, switch sides in the debate, and come roaring in as
strong opponents. Our   opposition to bilingual education ought to rest
primarily on symbolic grounds rather than on educational ones, though
common   sense, as manifested in the huge majorities of Spanish-speaking
parents polled on this question who wish their children to be
mainstreamed into classes taught in English, should not be ignored. Data on
the efficacy of bilingual education is inconclusive;   clearly much of it
is dreadful, though some programs in some locales appear to yield good
results when they function as brief   way stations on the road to
integrating students into classes taught in English.

   But there is an overriding importance in sending the message that we
have a lingua franca in the United States, and it is   English. It is also
the language of our great founding documents. It is particularly important
to stress this point given the   undeclared war of Reconquista that is
being waged by Latino nationalists. Of course the usual separatist ethnic
political   leadership cadre that pretends to speak for their communities
of origin supports bilingual education, largely for political   reasons.
The alleged embarrassment of recent immigrants and the emotional
difficulties of school-age kids mask another   agenda. That agenda is a
mission to displace English as the cornerstone of a larger educational
orientation towards   Western/European civilization. They see that
traditional orientation in paranoid fashion promoting an evil Anglo-Saxon,
Euro-centric cultural hegemony at the expense of the cultures of people of
color and indigenous people (also always of color).   I find such claptrap
beneath contempt, but it must be recognized that this is the essence of
that debate from the standpoint of   ethnic leadership.

   In addition to opposing bilingual education (I would stop, however, at
making English an "official language" because most of   those that promote
it reek of xenophobia) there are other concrete steps to consider in an
effort to build one nation at a time of   unprecedented, culturally
discordant immigration. It may be time to reconsider the institution of
mandatory national   non-military service, both to foster the social and
cultural integration of all American young people who effectively live in a
society of informal residential apartheid, and to rekindle a sense of
service to the nation. The notion that Generation X young   people are
mostly selfish and acquisitive, and have shallow values and little sense of
obligation to anything beyond their own   pleasure and material advancement
is so widespread as to constitute a body of credible received wisdom. It is
also widely held   - especially by the more politically active and selfless
among the Generation X'ers - that most of their contemporaries have
little or no sense of communal responsibility and little or no interest in
current public issues. The ethical lapses of public   figures widely
reported in the press provide (they have always provided) the standard
excuse for young people not to become   involved. Frighteningly uninformed
(few read newspapers, listen to news on television, or follow larger social
trends), they   express a cynicism born of nothing other than laziness and
selfishness. And unlike the generation of the 1960s, they have no   public
issue that forcibly enters their lives and dictates some form of political
response.

   At the same time, we live in an era when upwards of 17 percent of
American children live in poverty and, for all the talk of   educational
reform, schools in many places, especially America's inner cities, are in
disastrous shape. The elderly uninsured,   numbering in the millions, lead
lives of quiet desperation, and cutbacks in government social services have
dumped hundreds of   thousands of the mentally ill onto the nation's
streets or into miserable single-room occupancy apartments where they live
lives   of excruciating loneliness and hopelessness. Across the nation,
impoverished single mothers need help with child care, and   school
children, especially from single parent homes, need adult mentors and role
models, especially males. And environmental   degradation is a problem
across the country. We could continue to enumerate the opportunities for
service almost ad infinitum.   These realities provide more than enough
opportunity, not to mention a moral imperative, for young persons to devote
one to   two years of their lives helping their fellow Americans. From
involvement in such programs, especially in the company of   young new
immigrants, native-born Americans would develop a greater sense of public
spiritedness as they mature morally.   And they would also have the
opportunity to get to know new Americans and learn from the drive and
persistence so many   recent immigrants exhibit in the face of great odds.

   Promoting the Concept of Western    Civil Society Within Immigrant Enclav=
es

   Another initiative to consider is one aimed at developing concepts of
Western civil society within the new immigrant   communities.  A major
problem to address is the fact that the great majority of today's
immigrants come from countries with   no historical experience of
democratic pluralism; instead, their homelands had authoritarian
governments, strong traditions of   ethnic and religious conformity, and
little respect for the rights of ethnic, religious, and political
minorities.  And many come   from societies with no tradition of
church/state separation.  While some immigrants are refugees from minority
communities,   most are members of the dominant culture. The new immigrants
come to America not as freethinking individualists with open   perspectives
but as thoroughly socialized citizens who often unquestioningly reflect the
norms and values of their native lands;   they know no others.  Many
immigrants are past school age so that public education, including a
proposed renewed emphasis   on civic education, at present a reality for no
one, would still bypass them.  Certainly no one could make a credible
argument   that the absurdly random bits and pieces of knowledge (for the
most part historical trivia) that immigrants must learn to pass a
citizenship test constitute anything approaching a meaningful learning
experience.

   The new immigrants did not learn American political and social values at
home, and, for the most part, they remain within a   cultural frame of mind
that does not even recognize their importance.  They do not feel its lack.
They came to the Unites States   primarily to escape economic privation,
not to flee tyranny or religious persecution.  Immigrants from politically
corrupt and   authoritarian Mexico, brutal, dictatorial China, and the
police states and fascist theocracies that comprise virtually every society
within the Muslim world all fall into this category.  It is incumbent on
government at the state and local levels, ideally with the   generous
support of the corporate and foundation sectors, to develop large-scale and
long-lasting initiatives to build   understanding of and respect for
Western ideals of civil society in the new immigrant communities.  Without
such ambitious   initiatives, it may take more than one generation to break
the stranglehold of the Old World.

   The Special Problem of Muslim Immigration and the Rise of Islamism

   Apart from the loss of political power that will inevitably result over
time from the sweeping demographic reconfiguration of   the American social
landscape, undoubtedly the greatest immediate threat to the well being of
the American Jewish community   and its interests stems from large-scale
immigration from the Muslim world. The events of September 11 that have
forever   altered the nature of ordinary life in America, and have
shattered the happy illusion of American invulnerability, make the
current immigration policy supported by many Jewish organizations appear
not merely as the height of irresponsibility, but as   irrationally, almost
criminally self-destructive.

   The special problem of large-scale Muslim immigration to the United
States derives primarily from the worldwide ascent of   Islamism (often
referred to as "fundamentalism" and increasingly "Jihadism"), a
totalitarian political ideology with strong   theocratic and fascistic
elements that is proving enormously compelling to millions of Muslims
across the globe. It is without a   doubt the most powerful ideological
force in the Islamic world, including among Muslims in the United States.
Islamism is   profoundly hostile to pluralism, religious tolerance,
democracy, secular civil society, Jews, Zionism, Israel, and to the United
States, "the Great Satan." It is a movement that festers and spreads in the
impoverished conditions within corrupt regimes, often   in response to the
venality, inhumanity, and tyranny of local "secular" regimes. It expresses
itself through violent populist   agitation, intolerant religiosity,
irrational atavistic values, misogyny, large-scale terrorism, resentment
toward and hatred of   everything perceived as "foreign," and
pie-in-the-sky theology.

   Certainly contemporary Islamism is, in part, a religious response to
what many Muslims regard as the "catastrophe" of the   founding of Israel.
Going back further in time and viewing the movement more broadly, it is a
deep-seated cultural reaction to   Islam's sociopolitical, technological,
and military defeat at the hands of the West. That defeat has been
manifested in a variety   of ways, but chiefly in the Islamic world's past
conquest by Western and Russian colonialism and its loss of the race to
modernity and prosperity. It has been left behind historically,
underdeveloped and relatively powerless, while the West has   developed
mass democratic industrial, technocratic consumer societies. In short,
Islamism is perhaps the most important and   urgent example in the
contemporary world of the politics of cultural despair.

   But while it has particular roots in the Arab Middle East (Egypt's
Muslim Brotherhood being one of the first incarnations), the   Islamist
movement has spread to the far ends of the vast Islamic patrimony. Thus the
movement expresses itself not only in the   suicide bombers of the
Palestinian Islamic Jihad and Hamas, or the Lebanese Hezbollah that targets
Israelis, but also in the   ideology of the Muslim insurgents in Southern
Thailand, Indonesia, and the Philippines. The movement holds absolute power
in Afghanistan, the Sudan, and in Iran (if with decreasing enthusiasm among
the young), and is gaining steadily in Pakistan   (whose intervention in
Afghanistan is turning on itself, transforming Pakistan into an extension
of Afghanistan). As a result of   the strings attached to Saudi economic
aid to impoverished Bangladesh, that nation born in blood with the
aspiration to form a   secular society, is becoming increasingly Islamist
in orientation. The movement also poses a direct danger to the newly
independent Central Asian republics of the former Soviet Union, has
profited from the war in Chechnya, and has growing   influence in Malaysia.
It has represented a chronic historic threat to the Egyptian regime, and is
in an almost inconceivably   brutal contest for power in Algeria. While the
Islamist movement is carefully monitored within "conservative" Saudi
Arabia,   which brooks no political opposition to the regime or potentially
subversive religiosity, the Saudis, with untold oil wealth, are   the major
financial backers of this movement worldwide. It is not merely Osama bin
Laden who uses his inheritance of $350   million to promote global
fundamentalism, including the terrorism associated with it: it is the Saudi
regime itself. And all the   while Saudi Arabia presents itself as a
"moderate" regime and historic friend of the United States.

   The great danger Islamism poses to the United States in particular, its
savage hatred of America and American values, are   impossible to
overstate. Islamism is a monster capable of the most despicable and
atrocious acts of violence against its   perceived enemies. This reality
has now been experienced and witnessed directly by the American people in
the horrific events   of September 11: the destruction of the World Trade
Center, the attack on the Pentagon, and a failed attempt to blow up the
White House, with a death toll topping 6,000. These crimes of mass murder,
most probably the work of Islamist terrorists   operating with state
support in Islamist Afghanistan, is the worst single act of terrorism on
American soil in the history of the   United States. It is also one of the
greatest single assaults on innocent human life in modern world history
carried out in the   name of religion. The tragic enormity beggars the
imagination. Recently, the anti-Islamist Pakistani =E9migr=E9 newspaper
Pakistan Today featured on its cover a group of Islamists, their faces
covered, aiming rocket-propelled grenades and   carrying a sign that read
"America, we are coming." They have come; they are here among us. And there
is no reason to believe   these enormities are the last we will witness,
even in the near future.

[END]

Tomorrow:  Conclusion

=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D

Thought for the Day:

"It might be helpful to consider the following analogy:  Anti-Americanism
is the anti-Semitism of the 21st Century."

(Ron Grossman in the Chicago Tribune, Sep 30, 2001)