'Something there is that doesn't love a wall'

Certainly the open borders liberals don't, and neither does Reuters writer Bernd Debusmann:

Around globe, walls spring up to divide neighbors

TIJUANA, Mexico, April 30 (Reuters) - What do Tijuana, Baghdad and Jerusalem have in common?
They all have walls that divide neighbors, cause controversy and form part of an array of physical barriers around the world that dwarf the late, unlamented Iron Curtain.

There are walls, fences, trenches and berms. Some are reinforced by motion detectors, heat-sensing cameras, X-ray systems, night-vision equipment, helicopters, drones and blimps. Some are still under construction, some in the planning stage.

When completed, the barriers will run thousands of miles (kilometres), in places as far apart as Mexico and India, Afghanistan and Spain, Morocco and Thailand, Malaysia and Saudi Arabia, and Iraq.


They are meant to keep job-hungry immigrants, terrorists and smugglers out, thwart invaders, and keep antagonists apart.''

Their proponents cite the proverb "Good fences make good neighbors" but critics say they are a paradoxical result of globalization in so far as goods and capital can move freely but migrants cannot.'

"Good fences make good neighbors" is also a line from the same Robert Frost poem, 'The Mending Wall' which I quoted at the beginning. Actually in it, Frost seems to be arguing against the necessity of walls, likening his wall-building neighbor to a 'stone-savage.'

If I could put a notion in his head;
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall...

So, Bernd Debusmann, Reuters reporter, might consider who we are "walling in or walling out." Actually, Bernd, we are not walling out too many people, it seems, given that about 3 million illegals skulk across our erstwhile 'borders' every year. The figure may be even higher; it's just a rough guesstimate based on the numbers apprehended. And according to this article, one in two Mexicans polled has family members on our side of the 'border.' So our much-criticized wall, what there is of it, does pitifully little towards keeping intruders out. Bernd: what, exactly, is the problem? That the entire population of Mexico hasn't yet made it north to where the goodies are yet?

So what we are walling out is not much; they are coming in by the thousands day and night, 365 days a year. If you are going to weep crocodile tears over a wall, or write scathing words about how cruel the wall is, at least pick a wall that actually accomplishes the purpose. Our wall is mostly nonexistent, except for Tijuana and that little stretch along the California border.

Bernd Debusmann, Reuters reporter, like his innumerable liberal media comrades-in-arms, is either so obtuse or so disingenuous as to be unable to tell the difference between a wall to keep people in a police-state regime like East Germany once was, and a wall to keep invaders out, as the Wall of Hadrian used to be, or the Great Wall of China.

Likening the small stretch of wall on our southern 'border' to the Iron Curtain is just laughable. Is Debusmann too young to remember the days of the Iron Curtain? Or does he think that Mexico is trying to keep her citizens in, as the East Germans were? If anything, the Mexican government is pushing certain of their citizens, possibly their unwanted citizens, to cross our border and send back as much as they can loot on our side.

Are these liberal hacks, who write cookie-cutter articles on immigration every day, really that dense? I suppose it's possible; in order to embrace liberalism/leftism, intelligence is an actual hindrance. So these 'reporters' who report stories to order, and write them according to a template, probably are true believers. There is scarcely an honest word written or spoken about the immigration and borders issue in the mainstream media.

I wonder if Bernd Debusmann has a lock on his front door? Or does he helpfully leave it open in case there is a burglar, possibly a destitute illegal alien, who wants to let himself in? I wonder if the open-borders bleeding-hearts are consistent enough to remove the fences from their property and the locks from their doors and windows? After all, there are homeless people out there who might want to stake a claim to their homes, and people 'looking for a better life' who might want all those possessions they have so selfishly acquired.

As to 'what we are walling in or walling out', I know what I would like to wall out: the chaos, corruption, crime, and failure that characterize the nations to the South of us. I would like to wall out those who do not respect borders; those who believe, ignorantly, that they have a claim to this nation and its bounties; that their ancestors, whoever they might have been, were the rightful owners of America. I want to wall out those who want to change my homeland into something to their liking, without the least regard to the existing citizens of this country. I want to wall out those who would be a burden financially to an already overburdened country. I want to wall out diseases which have been so carefully and successfully eradicated from this country. I want to wall out ruthless savage gangs like MS-13.
I want to wall out those who would overpopulate my country until there is little open space or usable farmland, and those who treat the environment like a dumping ground, as we have seen the invading Mexicans do.

But so far, since a sizeable percentage of Mexico's population is in my country, and many of them brazenly walking the streets of my little town, thousands of miles from their homeland, Bernd Debusmann need not lose sleep; few Mexicans are being cruelly kept out of their rightful hunting grounds in America.

If we don't have the right to wall out, or simply close the door to anybody of our choosing, then this country is no longer our country. In fact, it's been often said that a country without borders (including walls, if need be) is not a country.

And just as I have the right, in my home, to open my door to only those I choose to welcome, and to eject anybody who arrives uninvited, sneaks in, or who refuses to leave at my request, we as the rightful people of this country have the same right. People enter or stay only at our pleasure; they have no inherent right to enter or to stay, against our will.

There are some who are now bluntly asserting that human beings should have free entry to any country they choose at any time; this is as radical and revolutionary an idea as can be. What next? Yet a lot of people seem unruffled by this idea that everyone has a 'universal human right to emigration.' This is an extreme leftist idea, and to the undiscerning, it may sound humane and compassionate, but the world would be turned upside down if that idea were to be put into practice. We are already seeing a slow-motion Camp of the Saints scenario, but we would be overwhelmed if this foolishness were declared law, or even if the odious amnesty proposals become law.

The trouble is, I am certain that this 'human right to emigrate anywhere' would really only be granted to the 'have-nots' of the world, and people who wanted to migrate away from the multicultural chaos would be denied any such right. It is meant only for the world's poor and 'diverse' populations, the people who depend on the fruits of others for their survival.

Maybe Robert Frost did not believe that 'good fences make good neighbors', and it's certain that Bernd Debusmann does not believe it, but nonetheless it is true. Perhaps we don't need fences to keep the law-abiding, decent neighbors on their side of the divide, but in a fallen world, with desperate or unscrupulous neighbors, a fence or a wall is an absolute necessity.

'America, to me'

What is America to me?
A name, a map, or a flag I see;
A certain word, democracy.
What is America to me?

The above lines are the introduction to the song "The House I Live In" which many people know as a song sung by Frank Sinatra in a short subject made during the War years.

At Dispatches from the Hogtown Front, the blogger Hyphenated Canadian asks what Canada means.

That provoked some thought on my part about America, and about what it means to be an American.

So I've been pondering Americanness.
This blog came into being because of my sense that America, and the American way of life, was vanishing. Further, it was not vanishing as a result of some inevitable natural force, but by the loss of our old ways of being and thinking.

But in light of all that has been happening in our world in recent years, with millions of people from every corner of the world arriving in America, and claiming a right to her, I wonder what Americanness means? Is there such a thing, in an absolute sense, if anybody and everybody who shows up here can be an American simply by acquiring a piece of paper?

So what is America?

To me, it's a one-of-a-kind country which can never be recreated anywhere else on earth, should it fall to those who are doing their best to topple it now. America is an irreplaceable country. Now if it were a 'proposition', an abstraction, a set of words on a parchment, even those great words written by my long-ago kinsman, Thomas Jefferson, then it would be reproducible anywhere and everywhere.

If America is just the Constitution and the admittedly great ideas embodied therein, why has not some group of people in another corner of the world not taken that document and used it to create their own America for themselves? The founding documents of our country, with all their great and lofty ideals and principles, have been freely available to all who want to glean the wisdom therein. Why has nobody acted on that blueprint and created America on their own soil? If it is an 'idea' then it is sort of a franchise; we could set up Americas everywhere, like we open McDonald's restaurants everywhere, purveying Big Macs and fries. I hear that even in China, you can find a McDonald's burger. If we can franchise American fast food, why not American democracy?

Apparently that is the idea behind our being in Iraq: we are trying to establish a franchise for Jeffersonian democracy there. But still, even though the great ideas that supposedly constitute America are freely available for the taking and applying, nobody has made another America.

Do you think it might be that America, and the ideas which were so instrumental in her founding, were something peculiarly Western European, specifically British? Something which grew not out of nowhere, but from a long tradition which began hundreds of years earlier in England? And that England, and the people who made that country, made her the kind of country she was because of their unique character as a people?

Is it any accident that Britain has shared many of our longstanding traditions and ideals?
And is it accidental that our form of government has not taken root in much of the world?
Even many of the advanced countries that we think of as 'free' or 'democratic' are not exactly like America in their understanding of freedom; nobody has reproduced what we have here.

I think it's obvious that America is not merely an idea, or a set of ideas; America is a specific place, but it is merely a manifestation of the mind and the spirit of the people who first settled and shaped this place. And it may be that only Americans can truly understand and apply our system. I have seen no convincing evidence otherwise.

The liberals among us try to deny that fact, because they fret that it isn't 'inclusive' enough, and that it will offend or exclude other groups of people or nations. So we continue in this fantasy that we can export our way of life like a commodity. And yes, you can certainly export material goods; people the world over can wear jeans, (once a uniquely American garment), or eat a Big Mac, drink a Coke, and watch Hollywood movies. They might acquire the material trappings of America, but they can't re-create America. And conversely, we can import half the world's population here to these shores -- and it looks like that's just what our government intends to do -- but you cannot make these people Americans just by dropping them down in Minneapolis or Lewiston, Maine. There is no magic quality in the air or soil that transforms foreign people into Americans just by their physical presence here.

People are not blank slates.
And the simpletons who insist that 'every other generation of immigrants became American, so what is the problem?' are blind to the fact that first, America has never, ever allowed in so many millions of immigrants in such a short time. Second, previous generations of immigrants were mostly of European Christian origin. The commonalities far outweighed the differences. Later, when many more exotic groups immigrated, they assimilated only with difficulty, and many have in fact not assimilated to this day, not completely. Many descendants of the later waves of immigrants are, unfortunately, among the most ardent advocates of mass Third World immigration and open borders now. So even though they may speak perfect American English, and be outwardly American, obviously their sympathies are with immigrants, and they seem to harbor a resentment towards old-stock Americans, whom they see as adversaries if not enemies. They may not acknowledge this (although some express it quite openly) but it is implicit in their words and actions.

These later immigrant descendants are often among the revisionist historians and academics who push the idea that America is 'a nation of immigrants', and more perversely, they teach that 'immigrants built America.' Or that 'immigrants made America great.' Another variation on this same theme is that 'slaves built America.'
The implication is that old-stock Americans, who settled this country and fought for independence and who built the already-great country to which later immigrants came, really did nothing; the Anglo-Americans were some kind of effete aristocrats who sat around while immigrants and slaves accomplished the task of building America.

But the fact is: Americans made America. The very ideas and ideals which contributed to the making of America may not have been developed and brought to fruition by any other people on earth; they came out of a specific Western European, Anglo-Protestant matrix. And all of this came into being before the waves of immigrants of the 19th and 20th and now the 21st century.

America has welcomed in people of various national origins, and some have been a better fit than others; the best fit has been with people who were close ethnic kin to the original settlers of this country. Other later immigrants from more disparate cultures assimilated slowly, and incompletely. But all who are able and willing to embrace this country with its existing, distinctive culture can be grafted into the American people. Not all, however, are able or willing.

There are certainly immigrants who have become thoroughly American. Such immigrants truly love America, identify with her and her way of life. And it is more than merely assenting to some abstract ideas; the Americanized immigrant embraces the American people, past and present, and identifies with America, her culture, her customs, her way of life. One noted example of an immigrant who truly understood America and embraced her fully was the late,lamented Balint Vaszonyi. Coming from Communist Hungary as he did, he truly appreciated the freedom he found here, and he had a mature understanding of the history and the character of America.

My late fellow-blogger 'Aussiegirl' was another who loved this country and valued it deeply.

Everybody who knows the history of America and who truly loves America understands the fragility of what we have here; it is something that is a rarity in the history of mankind, and to tamper with the very nature and character of this country in the name of some vast social engineering experiment is like doing experimental brain surgery on an unconsenting patient, moreover, on a patient who does not need surgery. The patient may well be killed for the sake of an unjustified experiment.

America has her problems, and what problems she has among her citizens are due to disparate groups of people, conflicting values and allegiances. So what is the plan by our elites? Bring in more and more disparate, incompatible people with conflicting values and allegiances, and open hostilities. Mix well, and wait for the explosion.

So what is an American today?
I am loath to say that we Americans are 300 million people without a country and an identity, but that seems to be the direction in which we are heading, into uncharted waters.

I know that there are still many of us, descendants of those 21,000 Englishmen in New England, and the 40-some thousand colonists in Virginia, who are still here. Our culture, which has come down to us from our fathers, is still holding on, though in critical condition. But what makes us American?

Americans, even those of us of the old stock, are hard to pin down, but if I had to sum up the old American character, I would say independent, skeptical, practical, and not easily ruled; tough, persevering, hardy. We are sometimes excessive; the Puritan and the hedonist struggle within us.

At the same time, we are generally hospitable, altruistic, and neighborly, and it is these qualities which are now maliciously being used against us. There is something especially reprehensible and low and base in taking advantage of people's kindness, generosity, and niceness, and that is what is being done now. Uncle Sam, sometimes known as Uncle Sugar, is now being played for Uncle Sucker.

But in general, I agree with the assessment of writer Mary Ellen Chase, from 53 years ago in an essay:

We Americans have since our beginnings been known for our self-reliance, for our gumption and common sense. We are, or at least we were, adventurers, and our history is the story of a game played against tremendous odds and gloriously won. Why not recall the tough moral fiber which made the winning possible?

We will need to find that tough moral fiber, that distinctively American gumption, because in the new game in which America finds herself, the odds against us are even more tremendous than they were back in 1776. But as Chase said, our history is one of winning, despite the odds.

Courting tomorrow's majority

Bush asks graduates' help on immigration

Why, I wonder, didn't he just give the speech in Spanish?

Bush gave the commencement address at Miami Dade College, where more than half the students were raised speaking a language other than English. He gave the graduates an assignment: Tell their elected representatives in Washington to get going on immigration overhaul.

"You see every day the values of hard work and family and faith that immigrants bring," the president said. "This experience gives you a special responsibility to make your voices heard." '

In this nauseating display of indifference to the will of the American people, the President appeals to the graduating students at a college in Miami.

My first thought was : why Miami? Is that the only place where he can find a sympathetic, majority Hispanic audience for this speech?

James Fulford at the VDare blog says that the student body at Miami Dade College, all campuses included, is 65 percent Hispanic. And the demographics of Miami-Dade are majority Hispanic and actually a majority is foreign-born, according to the statistics Fulford gives.

The Fulford blog entry is very informative; worth reading in full if you haven't already.

Over at one of those big Republican forums, where the real diehard party loyalists hang out, some of them are insistent that Hispanics in Florida are not at all like Mexicans or other Hispanic immigrants; they are all pro-American and good Republicans and just as anti-amnesty as the most conservative of us.

Yeah, right. Explain Florida Senator Mel Martinez, then.
According to Americans for Better Immigration, Martinez has a 'D' grade on his voting on immigration issues.
And he is Cuban-born, if I recall correctly. Now aren't they all staunch conservatives, or is the Hispanic bond something that trumps all else?

Then, among other Cuban-Americans in Congress, we have Lincoln Diaz-Balart, who receives an F minus on his voting record, and Mario Diaz-Balart, who is much better, (!) with only an F. And then there's Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, who despite her non-Spanish-sounding surnames, is Cuban, and who is often paraded as a conservative voice on the cable news networks. She too receives an F minus.

So where is the proof of this Cuban conservatism and their opposition to illegal immigration and amnesty?
All I can go by is the stance of the Congressmen (and women) they elect, and their records are abysmal on immigration. They may be 'conservative' on social or fiscal issues, but since the subject here is amnesty, and since immigration is THE most important issue, that's all I am looking at here.

This source provides a lot of information and statistics on people of Cuban origin in our country, and although it does seem true that they are economically better off than Mexicans or other Hispanics, and that they may be more conservative in some senses, (probably it is more a matter of being anti-Castro) they do seem to be more sympathetic to Mexican immigration and amnesty, if we are to look at their elected officials as any indication.

Again, all this hogwash about Hispanic immigrants and their 'values of hard work and family and faith' is insulting to the rest of us; the clear implication is that nobody in America is capable of hard work, and that we don't have 'values' of family and faith. That is another slap in the face of traditional America. Even if it were true that Hispanics have those values, (and evidence of crime and social pathology statistics belies that cliche) it is dishonest and defamatory to insinuate that Americans lack those qualities.

Even if all the immigrants who wanted to come here were proven to be the hardest working, most family oriented, religious people on earth, how does it follow that they have a right to live here, and to make demands on us?
There are likely many millions of people in this world who work hard and who have 'family values' but that does not mean they have a right to live here, or more importantly, that they would be a good fit in our country.

And it also does not take into account the will of the American people, whose country this rightfully is.

The President's plea to these mostly-Hispanic students to support his subversion-through-demographics of America is I think a manifestation of his divisive approach. (And he campaigned as a 'uniter, not a divider.') I take it as an in-your-face to majority Americans: a way of saying 'you can help me in my quest to change America in defiance of the American majority.' To pit groups against each other in this fashion, to appeal to Hispanic ethnic/linguistic solidarity as a tool to use against the majority is not in the tradition of America as it was intended. This is just plain wrong.

Yet, despite its blatant wrongness, despite its obvious dismissal of the majority of us, there are still the blind loyalists over at those web forums who will take the President's side, and accept this slap in the face from him, on the grounds that 'the Democrats are worse.' And that same kind of lesser-of-evils rationalization will very possibly result in our being presented with a liberal GOP candidate. It looks as though, just as long as the Republicans run somebody who is just a hair to the right of the far-left Democrat candidate, whoever that may end up being, the 'conservatives' will fall in line behind any Republican. I am sure the elites are pleased with this situation; they keep pushing the political debate farther to the left, and the 'conservatives' obediently move left on cue. So no matter who gets elected, the elites get what they want. We edge ever closer to this 'North American Union' or to the globalized, borderless world.
And in the process, our country is being made less livable, and our lives less peaceful.

Immigration: good news and bad news

First, a hopeful sign or two: what a pleasant surprise to read about a judge who favors enforcing our laws -- equally, with no preference given to protected groups. What a radical notion in this age of liberal madness:

A state Superior Court judge called for a grassroots effort to change federal laws which he said currently allow legal immigrants and U.S. citizens to be prosecuted for unlawful activity, but prohibits prosecution of illegal aliens.

It's happening in communities like Gettysburg and Shenandoah and Tamaqua, Judge Correale "Corry" F. Stevens told members of the Adams County Republican Committee Thursday evening at the county ag center, and it could happen in Black Horse Tavern and Aspers and Zora. For example, he said state police stopped a van for speeding on an interstate and detained the four illegals they found inside.

They called ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) and they were told, "Let them go," Stevens said. The policemen had no choice.

He offered several additional examples showing that in situations that would result in arrest for legal immigrants and U.S. citizens, illegal aliens would be set free.
[...]"The federal policy is non-enforcement," he said.
[...]He said voters should ask their federal senators and representatives to amend the federal law to give:

• police the power to arrest;
• county district attorneys the power to prosecute; and
• county judges the powers to deport;
• all without needing the permission of the federal government.

"They're committing crimes and the federal government is not doing anything," Stevens said.'

So maybe common sense is not dead in our judicial branch, at least not in Judge Stevens' jurisdiction.
This is what is needed: to take action at the local level, since the feds seem determined to let anarchy reign where immigration and borders are concerned.


And here is a particularly ugly story of a crime by two of those hard-working, undocumented folks just looking for a better life in what was once a pleasant, safe town. The two perpetrators should have been dealt with by the judicial system long ago, but at least this judge, Judge Falcone, shows a no-nonsense attitude toward the demanding defendant.


Morristown rape suspect wants 5th lawyer

The trial of a man charged with dragging a woman off a Morristown sidewalk and raping her was put on hold Wednesday after he demanded a new attorney, his fifth in 21 months.

Superior Court Judge Joseph A. Falcone, sitting in Morristown, agreed to relieve the latest lawyer for suspect Joel A. Romero, 27, because Romero refuses to speak to counsel Douglas Del Tufo and claims he does not have "his best interests at heart."

Since he was caught in the act of assaulting a 20-year-old woman on July 10, 2005, Romero has gone through three public defenders and one private lawyer, Del Tufo.
[...]The Morris County Prosecutor’s Office has extended a 30-year plea deal. Falcone said he had been willing to consider a 24-year sentence but upped the offer back to 30 years Wednesday after Romero started making demands, through a Spanish-to-English court interpreter.

"I want one who speaks Spanish," said Romero, who is in the United States illegally from Honduras.

"Too bad!" blurted out deputy Public Defender Dolores Mann, who was watching the hearing in court.

"And I want to win the lottery!" the judge snapped at Romero. "You don’t run the system. Let me say this again: You don’t run the system."

I like Judge Falcone's gutsy attitude; too often I've read accounts of weakling liberal judges who coddle such defendants because of their 'special' status.

Now we will just have to see if somebody accuses the above-mentioned judges of 'racism' or 'xenophobia' for taking a non-coddling stance towards illegals.

Unfortunately this kind of decision by a judge is, depressingly, more typical.

And apparently our federal courts are being swamped by immigration felony cases. This is no surprise to any of us who have been following this situation. It's just one more cost of our 'cheap labor.'


And speaking of our judicial system and illegal aliens, the issue of 'sanctuary cities' has been in the news, with San Francisco possibly joining a growing list of cities which in effect have nullified our immigration laws, declaring that they will flout the existing statutes and protect the lawbreakers. Note that New York City is one of those scofflaw cities, which harbors illegal aliens. And with Rudy Giuliani being touted as the likely Republican presidential nominee in 2008, please keep in mind that he was a determined advocate of the sanctuary policy in NYC, to the extent of defying the courts, all the way up to the Supreme Court.

Heather MacDonald in the City Journal wrote this extensive piece in 2004, detailing Giuliani's defiant position:

Immigration politics have similarly harmed New York. Former mayor Rudolph Giuliani sued all the way up to the Supreme Court to defend the city’s sanctuary policy against a 1996 federal law decreeing that cities could not prohibit their employees from cooperating with the INS. Oh yeah? said Giuliani; just watch me. The INS, he claimed, with what turned out to be grotesque irony, only aims to “terrorize people.” Though he lost in court, he remained defiant to the end. On September 5, 2001, his handpicked charter-revision committee ruled that New York could still require that its employees keep immigration information confidential to preserve trust between immigrants and government. Six days later, several visa-overstayers participated in the most devastating attack on the city and the country in history.

New York conveniently forgot the 1996 federal ban on sanctuary laws until a gang of five Mexicans—four of them illegal—abducted and brutally raped a 42-year-old mother of two near some railroad tracks in Queens. The NYPD had already arrested three of the illegal aliens numerous times for such crimes as assault, attempted robbery, criminal trespass, illegal gun possession, and drug offenses. The department had never notified the INS.

Citizen outrage forced Mayor Michael Bloomberg to revisit the city’s sanctuary decree yet again. In May 2003, Bloomberg tweaked the policy minimally to allow city staffers to inquire into immigration status only if it is relevant to the awarding of a government benefit. Though Bloomberg’s new rule said nothing about reporting immigration violations to federal officials, advocates immediately claimed that it did allow such reporting, and the ethnic lobbies went ballistic. ''

So if Giuliani has supposedly gotten religion on this issue, we should remember his sanctuary policies, and his past pro-illegal statements:

As other anti-immigration movements spread across the country in 1990s, Mr. Giuliani consistently pushed back. “The anti-immigration issue that’s now sweeping the country in my view is no different than the movements that swept the country in the past,” he said in 1996. “You look back at the Chinese Exclusionary Act, or the Know-Nothing movement — these were movements that encouraged Americans to fear foreigners, to fear something that is different, and to stop immigration.”

Giuliani misrepresents the Know-Nothing movement, or the American Party, as do most people who refer to it as a favorite whipping boy, a symbol of 'hateful' nativism and xenophobia.

And Giuliani invokes the 'proposition nation', the idea that being an American is only a matter of uttering some magic incantation about freedom or liberty, and adhering to an 'idea':

But as he talks about immigration on the campaign trail, Mr. Giuliani suggests that his core beliefs have not changed much since his days as mayor, often quoting a speech Abraham Lincoln gave in the 1850s.

“He made a beautiful speech in which he said the best American is not the American who has been here the longest or the one who just arrived,” Mr. Giuliani said recently. “It is the one who understands the principles of America the best because we are a country held together by ideas.”

This is just one more example of the 'my grandfather was an immigrant' syndrome; Giuliani, like so very many of the open borders, America-as-an-idea liberals, takes his position based on sentimentalism or defensiveness about his recent immigrant roots.

Will 'conservatives' fall for Giuliani's tough-guy persona? On the immigration issue, he is not on the side of the American people. Yet it seems that so many 'conservatives' are falling in line behind Giuliani. If he is nominated and elected, we will see mass immigration continuing if not accelerating.

More on our unsafe imported foods

The tainted pet food story seems to grow and grow, although it is currently being soft-pedaled in the media. But here is a recent Washington Post piece which warns us that


It's Not Just Pet Food


"...It's not just pet owners who should be worried. The uncontrolled distribution of low-quality imported food ingredients, mainly from China, poses a grave threat to public health worldwide.

Essential ingredients, such as vitamins used in many packaged foods, arrive at U.S. ports from China and, as recent news reports have underscored, are shipped without inspection to food and beverage distributors and manufacturers. Although they are used in relatively small quantities, these ingredients carry enormous risks for American consumers. One pound of tainted wheat gluten could, if undetected, contaminate as much as a thousand pounds of food.
[...]We know, however, that alarms have been raised about hygiene and labor standards at many Chinese manufacturing facilities. In China, municipal water used in the manufacturing process is often contaminated with heavy metals, pesticides and other chemicals. Food ingredient production is particularly susceptible to environmental contamination.

Equally worrisome, U.S. officials often lack the capability to trace foreign-produced food ingredients to their source of manufacture. In theory, the Bioterrorism Prevention Act of 2001 provides some measure of traceability. In practice, the act is ineffective and was not designed for this challenge. Its enforcement is also shrouded in secrecy by the Department of Homeland Security.

Even if Food and Drug Administration regulators wanted to crack down on products emanating from the riskiest foreign facilities, they couldn't, because they have no way of knowing which ingredients come from which plant.
[...]...80 percent of the world's vitamin C is now manufactured in China -- much of it unregulated and some of it of questionable quality.
[...]The United States is sitting on powder keg with uncontrolled importation and the distribution of low-quality food ingredients. Before it explodes -- putting more animals and people at risk -- corrective steps must be taken.''

And this blogger elaborates further on the vitamin issue in her informative blog entry.
Did any of you realize the fact that China monopolizes so much of the vitamin market? I was not aware of that situation. Some sources I read say that China produces almost all the vitamins we buy in this country, although according to the Washington Post article, they make 'only' 80 percent of the world supply.

Think how many vitamin supplements are ingested in our currently health-obsessed country. It's ironic that an item which is sold as a health-enhancing, life-giving product might turn out to be toxic or tainted.

And here:


Food Inspectors Target Bay Area Ethnic Markets

(CBS 5) ANTIOCH The cost of testing and inspection are making it a burden for county health officials in the Bay Area to examine the safety of imported foods sold at ethnic markets among other places.

Potentially unsafe imported food slips past inspection every day in California.

At one Thai and Laotian market in San Pablo, health inspectors found teas and puddings from China without ingredient labels, and food from Russia packed in cans made with lead.
[...]
"As safe as our food supply is, there is risk," he said. "I don't want people to be overly afraid of the food supply, but I think they need to be very careful."

Last month alone, the FDA detained almost 900 shipments of fish, vegetables, nuts, spices and oils. Imported foods were tainted by unsafe food-coloring, salmonella, or pesticides. Some shipments were just plain filthy.

China and Mexico are the biggest offenders.''

No surprise that those two countries would be the big offenders, and they are two countries which are seemingly being coddled and catered to by our government.

And speaking of our government, which supposedly acts in our interest,


Effort to guard U.S. food supply still sits on shelf

WASHINGTON - After the Sept. 11 attacks, the Food and Drug Administration developed a comprehensive plan to guard the U.S. food supply against tainted imports, which were seen as a serious security threat. But nearly six years later, the plan has languished because of a lack of official will and tight federal budgets, according to former senior officials involved in formulating the strategy.
[...]``It was a bitter pill to swallow,'' said Benjamin England, a former FDA regulatory lawyer who worked on the plan for the agency. ``I'm disappointed that they are basically sitting on the solution.''
In the aftermath of the 2001 terrorist attacks, the government and an army of experts developed protections against a wide array of threats. But as time passed and no new attacks occurred, the sense of urgency faded. In the case of foodstuffs, the FDA's Import Strategic Plan fell victim to budget constraints, competing priorities and government inertia.

``The bottom line is that the United States is being overwhelmed with food imports, and they are not being screened by the FDA,'' said William Hubbard, a former FDA associate commissioner for policy and planning.
``A lot of time and effort went into it, and the best minds of the agency were brought in,'' he said of the import protection plan. ``It wasn't approved or disapproved. It was basically, `We can't do this because we have no money.''

There is, however, a new urgency to deal with the threat: The chemicals implicated in the pet deaths, identified as melamine and cyanuric acid, were found in protein ingredients used in human foods, ranging from bread to veggie burgers.
[...]
This week, the FDA announced that it is expanding testing for contamination of human foods. China, a country with a reputation for lax safety standards, is a major supplier of ingredients used in both pet and human food products marketed by U.S. companies.

And here, at the China Confidential blog, we read that

To make matters worse, China's retail sales arm--the brutal, Main Street-busting behemoth known as Wal-Mart--plans to grow so-called organic food in China. Organic food ... from a country plagued by toxic industrial pollution that taints the water and soil in which the crops are grown. Wonderful.
Dr. David Acheson, chief medical officer of the FDA's food-safety center, said the agency was alerting food producers and importers about possible risks involving six protein-concentrate products. It also is testing imports from China.

The blogger Fallenmonk thinks the tainted pet food incidents are

Just the Tip of the Iceberg

The companies that distribute foods nationally can get their meat from anywhere in the world and sell it at your local grocery and you will never know where that meat came from unless there is a problem identified after the fact.

This is ugly and will get uglier trust me on that. We are at high risk and there is no one doing anything about it.''

I have to agree with him on that point; I don't see the issue being covered by the Big Media for the most part, except minimally. Of the bloggers who are sounding the alarm, most are dealing only with the pet food aspect of this story, which is merely one part of it. Maybe the media are hoping to play this story down, minimize it into a pet food only issue. And I certainly don't see any sense of urgency on the part of our government and our emasculated FDA to do much about this worrying problem, considering the vast scale of the situation.

Certainly some activism is called for here; this issue, as I said, should transcend politics; it's our safety, and we should all be concerned, regardless of where we are on the political spectrum. And simply becoming more aware of where our food comes from, reading labels, researching things, is a first step. I think many people, myself included, were only marginally aware of our utter dependence on imports for so many of our necessities, including food.

For a big, rich country like the United States to be dependent on foreign countries, especially untrustworthy countries, for so much of our food supply is dangerous and just plain foolish; this is a situation that needs rectifying.

'...too few immigrants'

In this Pittsburgh Tribune-Review piece, Dimitri Vassilaros asks
Are we anti-immigrant racists?

The Diocese of Pittsburgh is all but calling its hometown racist.
This is the essence of its stunningly offensive ad airing on local radio stations.

"There is an unjustified discomfort today with immigrants, particularly from Latin America. That sentiment has even taken root in Southwestern Pennsylvania, though clearly the problem here is too few immigrants rather than too many.

"It is ironic that Pittsburgh, built by European immigrants, has displayed an anti-immigration mentality. But worse than that, it's dangerous. Without immigrants, Southwestern Pennsylvania is doomed."

Whoa. Southwestern Pennsylvania is doomed? Isn't that rather hysterical rhetoric?
The open borders zealots say this kind of thing all the time, and the media, with their pro-immigration axe-grinding, repeat it endlessly. But how about some evidence or some proof of this 'doom'? There is no proof. This is just propaganda, plain and simple.

And what about the earlier statement that the area had "too few immigrants"? Too few by what standard? What makes these clerics or religious spokesmen the arbiters and the authorities on how many immigrants are 'too few'? I would ask how many they would consider 'too many', but that question would be meaningless to them; I would bet that they think the sky is the limit; one can't have 'too many immigrants', especially if these immigrants are warm bodies to fill their pews or their collection plates.

Lest anyone accuse me of anti-Catholic sentiments, I am not anti-Catholic, but I resent the open-borders, America-abolishing agenda of the Church hierarchy. I am aware that not all Catholics agree with the Church's enthusiasm for mass Latino immigration, but still there seems to be little vocal opposition to it.

To be fair, I know that all the mainline Protestant denominations have similar politics, and are agitating for open borders and the usual leftist program. And it is not just the mainline denominations who have been in the leftist camp for at least half a century, but now it is the more 'conservative' and traditional churches who are jumping on the bandwagon. Many traditional churches have some kind of Hispanic ministry and 'outreach' involving special programs and social service help to Hispanics, mostly illegals, and in some cases, set up a kind of dual church, with the Hispanics having their own services in Spanish, with a Hispanic pastor.

So there is a wave of universalistic, open borders fervor involving many churches.

Paging the ACLU: where are the 'separation of church and state' fanatics? Where is Reverend Barry Lynn, carping about the church intruding into the public sphere? Where are all the liberals and lefties uttering dark warnings about 'theocracy'? Suddenly the cat has got all their tongues, when it comes to churches' activism on behalf of illegal invaders.

Double standards, anyone?
And why are these Christians being so judgmental of their fellow Americans:

'

Why is the diocese saying such hateful things about its good neighbors?

"I almost have to say it has a strong racial element to it," says Robert Lockwood, the diocese's director of communications.

Does the alleged hostility surprise him?

"Personally, yes," Mr. Lockwood says. "This is such a town with a (historically) diverse immigrant population, particularly from the Catholic perspective. The idea of welcoming immigrants and knowing in the long run what they mean, who would know better than that other than Pittsburghers?"

What about those who are concerned about lawbreakers, since there are 12 million-plus aliens in this republic illegally?

"Well, they say it's because of illegality," Lockwood says. "A certain element says, 'By God, let's make sure we keep them illegal because we don't want them coming here.' "

Those opposed to immigration are motivated by a fear of the poverty and crime the poor may bring with them from south of the border, he says.''

Well, yes, Mr. Lockwood, that is true. Many of us are motivated by a concern that poverty and crime are increasing along with the perpetually rising number of illegals -- and legal immigrants too, for that matter. And how is a concern about real problems 'racist'? Are we allowed to be concerned and upset about crime and poverty only when it involves native-born Americans? Are illegals and other immigrants above criticism simply because they are mostly non-white? Is that not discrimination, making some races accountable and exempting others, based on their race?

Mr. Lockwood, I could show you statistics from now till doomsday about immigrant poverty and crime, and I could show you statistics about the social pathologies, and the exotic diseases introduced by mass immigration. Do you have no concern for the American people who will suffer as a result of these things? Do you have no heart for the many people who are killed by illegals driving drunk? Or those killed in acts of willful violence by illegals?

And what about all the Americans who are in need who are pushed to the back of the line because of the overwhelming numbers of illegal AND legal immigrants who are given special consideration? Subsidized housing, for example: there are long waiting lists in many cities; years long, actually, for the elderly, the disabled, and low income people generally. Granted, most conservatives would like to abolish such programs, but there are those born in our country who need help at times because of age and ill health. Yet these people are elbowed aside by the pandering to illegals. The waiting lists are growing longer and longer; state budgets for social services are strained, and cuts are often threatened because of the sheer number of immigrants arriving and asking for help. Is this fair to Americans? Illegals and legal immigrants often draw some kind of assistance, such as SSI and other forms of welfare, sometimes under multiple IDs. They receive medical assistance, EBT cards, and many such benefits. Yet there are finite funds for these social programs. How can we knowingly import more dependent people and opportunistic milkers of the system? That is what we are doing in opening the borders. Does Mr. Lockwood think that American taxpayers have limitless money from which to extort assistance for his beloved illegals? Does he open up his own home to the illegals? If not, why not? Does he propose to care for them solely out of church funds? Why not practice charity without forcing taxpayers to foot the bill, without their consent?

I suspect many of the illegals and legal immigrants also draw some kind of handouts from church funds: housing vouchers, clothing and shelter assistance, food bank use. And when the funds run out, how many Americans are being deprived of help?

And how many Americans have lost their jobs to illegals and legal immigrants who undercut them? How many Americans are underemployed, their wages and benefits driven down by the presence of so many immigrants?

Mr. Lockwood, why are you and your kind so fixated on the immigrants? Why your love affair with them? Do you think they are better human beings than your own kin and your fellow Pennsylvanians? This seems
to be the pattern with liberals. They care about everybody before their own:

"Some say that ravens foster forlorn children, The whilst their own birds famish in their nests." - William Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus, Act 2, Scene 3, lines 142-3

Liberals are fond of 'fostering forlorn children' in preference to their own countrymen. To me, this seems a perversion of the natural order of things. Our responsibility starts with our own, with those closest to us, and works outward: family, extended kin, neighbors, countrymen. All of these 'forlorn children', these changelings that have been deposited in our nest, have a homeland, and a country into which they were born; why do they have the right to demand this country and all the benefits of citizens as well? The rest of us have no claim to another country; this is the only country we have and we are loath to give it away to people who despise us, covet what we have, and who will, in very short order, outnumber us greatly. And if and when they do so, it will be due to the turncoats, the people "without natural affections", the people like Mr. Lockwood and all the other open borders fifth columnists.

And those Catholic clergy who agitate for open borders and amnesty for invaders would do well to read this passage from St. Thomas Aquinas:

Our parents and our country are the sources of our being and education. It is they that have given us birth and nurtured us in our infant years. Consequently, after his duties toward God, man owes most to his parents and his country. One’s duties towards one’s parents include one’s obligations towards relatives, because these latter have sprung from [or are connected by ties of blood with] one’s parents…and the services due to one’s country have for their object all one’s fellow-countrymen and all the friends of one’s fatherland."
[Emphasis mine]

But apparently the gospel of Karl Marx is the only one in which the liberal church activists believe.

Dimitri Vassilaros is usually fairly sound in his writings about immigration, but it looks very much to me as if he is toeing the PC line here:

Being an advocate for U.S. sovereignty, such as calling for an airtight defense of the borders, does not make one a racist. And neither does demanding the laws of this land be enforced.

Do opponents of illegal aliens claim the laws apply only to Hispanics?
Any discomfort most yinzers might have about aliens is based on legality, not nationality.

The diocese's misguided moralizing, which borders on holier-than-thou name-calling, adds nothing to the immigration debate other than hate talk. ''

Please note how he falls back on that favorite rationalization of the PC 'right': the protestation that it's only the illegality that we object to; now recite it along with me, class. We all know it by heart:

''I'm in favor of all immigration just as long as it's legal. What part of illegal don't you understand? "

I have repeatedly revisited this issue time and again, probably to the point of tiring my readers: we who love our country and want to preserve it, and not see it overwhelmed and transformed into something else, need not apologize to anyone for that; it is a natural impulse. Only we in the Western countries, because our forefathers produced the best civilization and the highest standard of living, are being asked to stand aside while invaders usurp our homelands, and while our heritage and culture are obliterated in the name of making these invaders comfortable in our land. Is this not a bizarre and unnatural state of affairs? Has it ever been seen before in history? Yet these liberals act as though it is a given that we are simply supposed to make way for the invaders, lay out the red carpet, all without a whimper.

We should never, ever allow the invaders and their turncoat accomplices to make us feel guilty about wanting to keep our country and our way of life. We should not allow them to continue to put us on the defensive. The onus is not on Americans to 'prove' we are not 'racist'.

There is no need for us to recite this silly formula about how we only object to illegal immigration, but we love all legal immigration. Please, folks, think about that: if 30 or 40 million illegals suddenly became legal tomorrow, would anything change? Would our country be less endangered by 30 or 40 million legal immigrants with the same qualities? Will the crime and the public expenditures disappear when they are legal? Will our displacement be more acceptable and less painful if we are pushed aside in favor of people who are here legally? Will our children be any less outnumbered and marginalized if their replacements are all 'legal'?

And suppose we let in 5 million legal immigrants each year. We now allow 1.3 million legal immigrants yearly, and our electeds want to increase that. Can we say we are happy with that, as long as it's legal?

Legal or illegal, it's mass immigration, on an unprecedented scale, that is the problem, the cause of the crisis here. Vassilaros is either toeing the PC line when he says the illegality is the only issue, or maybe he is just one of those libertarians who does not see any value in preserving a nation and its culture. I believe Vassilaros has indicated he is a libertarian, and sometimes their viewpoint focuses on the economic aspect, at the expense of ties of kinship and culture. It's only the conservatives, the true conservatives, who care about these things, and who reject the nonsense of the 'proposition nation', so beloved of the liberals of both right and left.

And if we prefer our own countrymen, those who share our culture and our ways and our history, is that now a crime? If so, we need to rectify that. There should be no public censure just for preferring our own fellow Americans above strangers. This was always the natural order of things, everywhere, before the world became unhinged by leftist ideas. Anyone who sees an affinity for one's own, and for the familiar, as a crime or an evil is a stone leftist, or is simply a freak of nature, 'without natural affections'.

One "need not believe that one’s own ethnic group, or any ethnic group, is superior to others…in order to wish one’s country to continue to be made up of the same ethnic strains in the same proportions as before. And, conversely, the wish not to see one’s country overrun by groups one regards as alien need not be based on feelings of superiority or ‘racism’…the wish to preserve one’s identity and the identity of one’s nation requires no justification…any more than the wish to have one’s own children, and to continue one’s family through them need be justified or rationalized by a belief that they are superior to the children of others." Ernest van den Haag, 1965

Chinese roulette

Today's Lou Dobbs segment on unsafe products, particularly foods, from China, was disturbing, even for those who have no illusions about the standards for food and other products in Third World countries.

The United States is increasingly relying on other nations for its food supply, including communist China. China's food and agricultural injury has an absolutely appalling track record for safety and quality. But that hasn't inspired any American oversight or concern.

In fact, as Kitty Pilgrim reports, that track record could have a devastating impact on Americans.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) KITTY PILGRIM, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The United States is importing tons of food and food additives from China. Imports of Chinese food and agricultural products have soared 400 percent in the last 15 years. Nobody knows how much of it is safe.

MICHAEL DOYLE, CENTER FOR FOOD SAFETY: In China, a lot of small farmers that use lots of antibiotics and pesticides that in some instances are not approved for use in the United States. So there's lots of possibilities where things can go wrong.

PILGRIM: The Chinese themselves suffer from contaminated food and water. The U.N. estimates 300 million Chinese every year suffer food poisoning.

Sometimes, it's substandard sanitation, such as the 100 restaurant goers hospitalized after eating bad snails. Sometimes deliberate fraud. A Chinese company was caught making lard from sewage. Farmers were caught adding cancer-causing dye to duck feed to enhance the eggs.

Pollution from industrial production or toxic accidents find their way into the water and subsequently into the food chain in China. Some of that food may be shipped to the United States. Almost all of it, untested and uninspected.

MICHAEL TAYLOR, FORMER FDA OFFICIAL: No amount of inspection is going to be sufficient if we don't have confidence in the conditions under which food is proud, wherever it's produced in the world.

PILGRIM: A look at the FDA violation code lists sanitary citations on imports from China. One entry reads, "A cosmetic product may have been prepared or packed under unsanitary conditions whereby it may have been contaminated with filth."

A food import reads, "The article consists, in whole or in part, of a filthy, putrid or decomposed substance, unfit for food."

Or another, "The article appears to contain hepatitis A virus."

PILGRIM: A congressional hearing this week on the pet food poisoning revealed U.S. importers often don't test the products they import from China. And 99 percent of them go unscreened by the U.S. government and authorities until a consumer gets sick. No one is aware of the problem, Lou.

DOBBS: I just have to stay astonishing. The idea that the federal government continues to -- as our food imports now are rising to just about a little over 20 percent of our total food supply.

The FDA doing almost nothing -- I think 1 percent would be almost nothing -- to inspect the safety of what people are consuming in this country. And there's a great -- you know, hullabaloo about pet food as there should be. But the idea no one is examining this issue. PILGRIM: You know, to read down the list of what they caught is almost scarier, because 99 percent of it wasn't inspected. So you wonder what they didn't catch.

DOBBS: Exactly. And I'm certainly glad -- it's very reassuring after you point that out, Kitty. Thanks very much. Kitty Pilgrim.

Somebody in Washington, wake up, please!

I was really taken aback by this part of Kitty Pilgrim's report:

A look at the FDA violation code lists sanitary citations on imports from China. One entry reads, "A cosmetic product may have been prepared or packed under unsanitary conditions whereby it may have been contaminated with filth."

A food import reads, "The article consists, in whole or in part, of a filthy, putrid or decomposed substance, unfit for food."

Or another, "The article appears to contain hepatitis A virus."

And lard made from sewage? That surpassed anything I might have imagined about the low trustworthiness of products made in China. Beyond disgusting. And to think most of the stuff we import from them goes uninspected.

One hardly knows where to begin: Lou Dobbs concluded his remarks on this segment by pleading for 'somebody in Washington' to 'wake up!' But are they asleep in Washington? Are they so massively clueless and inept and useless that they really are not aware of these things? If so, then they have no business governing anyone or 'representing' us. If, however, they are aware of how things are done in China, and of the general prevalence of squalid Third World standards and lack of oversight, and yet they still avidly push importing more and more from China, then they are more than derelict; the obvious conclusion would be that they do not care about American citizens, about our health and our safety.

I suppose that is not exactly a novel conclusion; the same situation prevails with our insane open borders policy, with its allowing of tens of millions of unknown people entering our country freely, with essentially the full blessing and encouragement of 'our' government. Our government occasionally stages a token raid or two here and there; it seems to be simply a way to deflect criticism or to fool the easily satisfied into believing that they are 'cracking down' on the invasion. But it's a transparent effort; as long as our president keeps praising the invaders and pushing his amnesty in the face of the American people's opposition to it, it seems evident that our government is representing somebody other than the American majority. And given the demonstrable danger of letting unknown millions from hostile Third World countries enter freely, it seems that our lives and safety are counted cheap; a good and honest government would protect its citizens from invasion, per the Constitution. But it seems that our government is so determined to push the borderless world, the flat earth, and to remove all barriers to free trade and movement of peoples, and those ideological goals trump all else, even the lives of citizens. Our lives and safety are apparently something they are willing to risk in pursuit of their goals.

So what is there for us to do, apart from joining Lou Dobbs in his plaintive call for someone in Washington to 'wake up'? I am rapidly losing faith in letter-writing or calls to my representatives in Congress; more often than not, one gets a snarky aide, and it's not certain that these people actually pass the messages on. Knowing the leftist leanings of my elected 'representatives' and the kinds of condescending canned e-mails I usually get back does not inspire confidence.

What then can we do? It seems vain to try to get people to stop buying the cheapo Chinese merchandise; many people, especially Republicans, worship at the Wal-Mart altar; their fierce defense of Wally World is bizarre. I haven't quite figured out why so many Republicans react to criticism of Wal-Mart as they would react to an attack on the character of their mother. The nearest I can come to an explanation is that: cheap consumer products are the highest good in life to some people, and maybe more importantly, the 'liberals' hate Wal-Mart, so by gosh, Republicans are determined to love Wal-Mart and defend it with their last breath.

(And by the way: what do we make of this strange Wal-Mart story?)

But no doubt the Wal-Martians are one of the reasons why we have this huge trade deficit with China.
I admit to having bought at Wal-Mart in the past, but often the things I bought were of shoddy, inferior quality, and the few bucks I saved did not balance out having to replace the items when they failed or fell apart, a few months later. Buying at Wal-Mart is being penny-wise and pound-foolish. And it also enriches our Chinese foes and weakens us in relation to them, as the trade deficit grows and grows.

Still to each his own; buy cheap junk if you must, and if you don't care about the larger issues at stake. But on the question of food safety, and of other products like cosmetics which are applied to the human body, there should be no disagreement about the need for assurance that these products are safe and sanitary. We need to know that the food products are not laden with some kind of toxin like the melamine in the wheat gluten, or that they are not otherwise unfit for human consumption. But how can we expect such a reassurance? China recently thwarted the entrance of our FDA inspectors into their country to inspect the sources of the contamination. Our government is engaged in some kind of bizarre pretense that China is a friendly nation, and that they are our coequals. Ridiculous; just because they are a populous nation with a large military does not mean that they are trustworthy, or that the standards of hygiene are anywhere near what we have achieved here in the U.S. All this open trade and immigration from Third World countries is done at our risk. We are opening the doors to Third World standards, which will inevitably mean the spread of disease and contamination. Openness to other such nations, whether via trade or immigration, can only benefit them and not us; it can only drag us downward, but probably not raise them upward. Openness to such nations is a risk to us, not a benefit. It may be a benefit to the corporate globalists who profit from all this, but it is no bargain for common citizens.

Now there are questions that the melamine which caused many pet deaths may have entered the human food chain
via being fed to farm animals destined for the table. It was inevitable, really; that was my first thought when the discovery of the toxins in pet food was reported. But I am not seeing much coverage of this issue, and little discussion of it. Why? Are people not aware, or are we too practiced at hiding our heads in the sand? So many people prefer to plug their ears and close their eyes rather than deal with unpleasant realities, especially if those realities call for some kind of action, or even for taking a difficult stand.

I am not sure what we can do about this, except to be very vigilant about the products we buy, especially foods and cosmetics. Reading labels is a first step, but one has to be able to trust that the labels are correct and truthful; I honestly don't trust corrupt Third World countries to provide full disclosure on the labels, and it appears that they are not even required to do so, as American companies are. And again, even if the information on the packaging lists the ingredients, for example, 'wheat gluten,' this does not tell us where the wheat gluten originated. The pet foods recalled were made in Canada. Most of us would make an assumption that products from a First World nation like Canada would adhere to standards comparable to our own, but it appears we cannot even be sure that Canadian products are not made using ingredients from an unsafe country. So how can we be really sure? We can pick locally-produced food as much as possible, and some of us can grow our own produce in gardens. We can use fewer canned and processed foods, which is no doubt a good idea in general. But at some point, we have to take a blind leap of faith about the source of what we eat; we might be able to reduce our risks somewhat, but not eliminate them.

Now it's true that life is risk; there is no way we can live one day in this world without taking risks of some sort. To assume that we can make life risk-free is childish, and it's what liberals believe, with their penchant for nannystate-ism, with laws against trans-fats and so on. But still, our foolhardy government is seemingly tempting fate with many of these reckless policies like untrammeled trade with suspect countries, and with our borders unguarded, and our actively soliciting immigrants from disease-ridden areas of the world.

We can't eliminate all risks, but resigning ourselves to unnecessary risks is playing Russian roulette, with the bullet provided courtesy of our government and its foolish policies.

'Tragedy' and grief on parade

In the aftermath of the Virginia Tech shootings, there has been an ongoing discussion at Lawrence Auster's VFR about the misuse of the word "tragedy" to describe the event. At Chronicles magazine, Thomas Fleming also touches on that point briefly in his commentary on the shootings and the strange reactions which ensued. (I was also struck by that strangeness, and commented on it at the time.)

Tragedies make sense of the human world, while these pointless murders seem to reveal a world that makes no sense. In calling them tragedies, we are essentially saying that human existence is pointless.

This is not just a “semantic point.” It is all too true that most Americans are like most people everywhere in all periods of history: They speak without thinking. But unreflective peasants relied on proverbs and clichés that were deeply rooted in historical experience. Our clichés and mental tics are almost always bits of propaganda invented by liberals ignorant of human nature and human history. In our mythology, children are smarter than adults, racial minorities smarter than whites, women stronger and braver than men. We believe that we really do care about people killing each other in Nigeria, even though we do nothing about the murders taking place on the other side of town, and we insist on calling every pointless misfortune a tragedy. We can only talk this way because we have tossed away our moral compasses.
[...]
It was within hours of the shooting that the professional counselors began arriving, as predictably as ambulance-chasing lawyers at an accident scene. As a people we are grown so dependent on “professionals” we cannot even mourn the death of a friend with grief counselors or, as I heard on NPR, “grievance counselors.” (Someone should start a blog to record the constant gaffes in usage, syntax, and pronunciation on NPR. I would do it here, but the errors of Renee Montaigne alone would probably exhaust our band width.)
[...]
it seems from the accounts of journalists, VT students and Blacksburg residents showed solidarity by taking part in mass rallies where they wore the school colors and chanted the school’s football cheers. There is nothing wrong per se with any of this, but it strikes me as odd to see mass murders commemorated by pep rallies. What a strange people we have become. I am happy to learn I am not the only crank. Scott Richert sent me a link to Relapsed Catholic Blog on which one “Kathy” declares:

“Please don’t indulge in godless modern paganism and set up homely, self-indulgent makeshift memorials with cheap flowers and teddy bears. Don’t hold hands and sing bad pop songs.

Go to church. That’s what it’s for. For centuries, people smarter than you and with more finely honed aesthetics worked on rituals that actually do what they’re supposed to do.

Those people who hung around outside the Palace after Princess Diana’s death looked like fools and you will too if you cave to the lure of cheap grace and post-modern superficiality. Those British mourners displayed as much cringe-inducing, pan- generational learned helplessness as Katrina survivors, but their laziness and ignorance was spiritual.

Worse, you will still feel as empty as you did before, maybe more so, and wonder why.

Don’t make America look stupid and shallow to the whole world by Disneyfying your grief.”

And I have to second the quote above from 'Kathy' at the Relapsed Catholic blog: I too have been dismayed at the growth of that strange ritual, which does seem rather heathenish, of constructing makeshift shrines to commemorate some 'tragedy'. The first time I saw it on such a large scale was during the apparent British breakdown after Diana's death in 1997. The public display of keening and garment-rending was unsettling, especially given the prevailing notion of the British as the most self-composed and stoic people; the old "stiff upper lip" which is no doubt a thing of the past. Liberalism seems to undermine the national culture and even the character of a people, destroying traditional virtues and national ideals and replacing them with a cheap counterfeit "compassion" which is all outward sentimental show. Hence the candlelight vigils, the maudlin rituals, the 'shrines' with piles of moldering stuffed toys out in the rain, and the wilting flowers. And above all, the passivity which insists that these events which occasion so much wailing and weeping are acts of an irresistible fate; there is no way to avoid them or prevent them except by lamenting 'violence' and the 'gun culture.'

And Dr. Fleming goes on to discuss the gun question here:

In principle I believe, as I have always believed, that an armed citizenry is the only solid basis for political liberty. However, the more I see of my fellow citizens in action, the more I am beginning to see the point of gun control. Few of them seem to have any part of the old American character, and still fewer have any understanding of republican government. Most of us, left and right alike, are consumers and subjects, but not citizens. ''
[...]
More important than protection from drive-by shooting or classroom killers is protection from the lethal sentimentality that has infected public discourse. Shun the counselors and avoid the neopagan ceremonials that are occasions for wallowing in unhappiness. And, whether you believe or not, seek solace in the Church, which has been treating the effects of sin and misery for 2000 years.''

Fleming makes many good points, and on reflection, I think I agree with his reservations about arming our fellow citizens. As he says, "Few of them seem to have any part of the old American character", but on the other hand, I would rather take my chances on my fellow citizens, however befuddled their notions are, than to give up the right to bear arms.

And to return to the new 'custom' of the piling up of toys and flowers as a 'memorial', why not do something useful to express one's respect for the dead, such as donating, not dead flowers and cheap toys, but the equivalent amount of money to a charitable fund, or a fund for the families of the deceased? The mountains of flowers and toys surely aren't much use to anyone after they sit out in the elements for several days. I remember in the days after Diana's death, seeing the huge mound of flowers, the icon-like pictures of Diana, and the jumble of stuffed toys. It reminded me, on first consideration, of those shrines to various Hindu gods in India, with piles of garlands and with garish images. Later, I simply thought it would only represent a costly clean-up job and ultimately a lot of money wasted, which could have been put to some useful purpose. It seemed to be a narcissistic thing, a way for the celebrity-struck to claim a connection to their idol. So much of the mourning by strangers in cases like that is a conspicuous kind of public grief, just as much of liberal behavior is a public acting-out of 'compassion' and morality; a way of sanctimonious preening -- which of course is encouraged in the presence of the ghoulish media.

I have noticed that whenever there is an occasion for grief involving young people, such as a fatal accident or a killing, the local news crews are Johnny-on-the-spot, filming the students' group hugs and tears. It seems like exploitation and sensationalism; in my own experience of grief, the last thing the mourners would want would be television cameras and voyeurs feeding on the raw emotion present. But in our media-driven age, nothing is sacred. Everything is ripe for exploitation, even the deep human emotions like grief and sorrow.

Dr. Fleming recommends seeking solace in the Church, but even many of the churches are now part of this heathenish culture of conspicuous public emotion; the TV crews are usually ensconced in the church at the funerals of victims of some ugly accident or crime, and the man (or woman) in the pulpit seems sometimes to be playing to the TV audience. Even the churches need to return to traditional standards of decorum and restraint in these situations.

PC, 'white lies', and Christianity

I like this piece; it expresses many of the same thoughts I have had about "political correctness" which is merely one of the more smarmy and obnoxious manifestations of liberalism.

The thing I like best about being a conservative is that I don't have to lie. I don't have to pretend that men and women are the same. I don't have to declare that failed or oppressive cultures are as good as mine.

Nor do I have to say that everyone's special or that the rich cause poverty or that all religions are a path to God. I don't have to claim that a bad writer like Alice Walker is a good one or that a good writer like Toni Morrison is a great one. I don't have to pretend that Islam means peace.

Of course, like everything, this candor has its price. A politics that depends on honesty will be, by nature, often impolite. Good manners and hypocrisy are intimately intertwined, and so conservatives, with their gimlet-eyed view of the world, are always susceptible to charges of incivility. It's not really nice, you know, to describe things as they are.

This is leftism's great strength: It's all white lies.''

It is true that conservatism, real conservatism, is grounded in a realistic attitude toward life, and in an honest appraisal of flawed human nature. In that sense, many of today's 'conservatives' and Republicans have abandoned that realism and have, perhaps unwittingly, bought into the liberal view of the world and of people. The liberal view is generally a utopian, wishful-thinking ideology. It tends to divide people up simplistically according to how closely they conform to liberal morality: those who engage in the pretense and flattery that we call "political correctness" are of superior character, while those who do not are classed as "mean-spirited" and hateful. Many Republicans and self-styled conservatives share the liberal predilection for quashing any frank speech which steps on the wrong toes; if we speak harshly but truthfully about illegal immigrants, we might be called "hateful" by a Republican almost as often as a Democrat. We have seen how skillful many Republican politicians are at pandering to various protected groups, and how they are just as practiced at uttering 'white lies' as are the Democrat politicians.

So the culture of white lies, craven flattery, and rose-colored glasses is not confined to one political party.

As a Christian, I am aware of how the Bible warns us against "flattering lips" and a lying tongue:


They speak vanity every one with his neighbour: [with] flattering lips [and] with a double heart do they speak.
- Psalms 12:2

The Bible also tells us repeatedly that we are not to be respecters of persons, and that includes giving preference to the poor or to the rich; we are not told that respecting the persons of 'victim groups' is permissible, any more than respecting the person of the rich or the famous.

Of course if someone is truly a victim, they are entitled to justice and sympathy where appropriate, but thanks to liberalism and its warped "compassion", everybody, including the most heinous criminals, is portrayed as a victim. Terrorists and mass killers have their vocal champions among the Politically Correct because of this twisted notion of 'victimhood.'

So our society, in its obsession with exalting 'victims', has become enmeshed in lying, distorting, and dissimulating.
But because it is all done in a "good cause", to spare someone's feelings, or to rectify some claimed injustice, however distant in time, it is seen as moral and noble. Thus the evils of lying and hypocrisy are called good.

These issues came to mind whenever our President or some other official spoke fawningly and flatteringly about Islam as a "Religion of Peace." Secretary of State Rice spoke of the "benevolence that is at the heart of Islam." When I discussed this with fellow Christians, who personally did not buy the 'religion of peace' cant, they justified the flattery and guile as being simply "diplomatic." But if lying and dissimulating is wrong, do we call it right because the need for "diplomacy" outweighed the commandment to be truthful?

Usually when I asked this question, somebody would respond, "well, do you expect the President to say Islam is a false, evil religion? He can't say that." No, he can't say it publicly, but are those the only choices? Being honest does not necessitate that we insult or confront or provoke everyone with blunt candor, but it certainly requires that we not truckle or flatter, especially when the object of our flattery is not the least deserving of praise or compliments.

We are living in an age when mealy-mouthed 'niceness', a bland, limp-wristed desire to placate and mollify, is considered the highest virtue. But I am left to wonder: is the motivation fear? Are we afraid of those we flatter and fawn over? Do we think that our niceness will disarm them and lead them to spare us, or do we simply want to ingratiate ourselves and buy goodwill and benevolence? Or is it a pharasaical desire to appear morally superior, like the Pharisee in the Gospels who loudly thanked God that he was not like other men, a sinner?

Do even the liberals believe their flattery and "white lies" or is it just a pose? Or are they speaking the lies as "affirmations", believing that saying it enough will make it so?

I have heard it said countless times by many people of all political opinions that Christianity is the cause of almost every social ill of our times; leftists, of the atheist or anti-Christian variety, think Christianity leads to xenophobia and persecution, and they gleefully cite the Inquisition, the Crusades, and of course the 'witch trials', slavery, and every other crime of history. Then, I have ultra-liberal Christian acquaintances, who see Christian doctrines as the basis for their pacifist, multiculturalist, all-'tolerant', 'progressive' ideology. According to them, the Bible supports open borders, mass immigration, socialism/globalism, the whole gamut of leftist ideas.

Here,Fjordman's latest essay seems to indict Christianity:

A Christian Background for Political Correctness?

As a non-Christian, I have been complimenting Christianity for contributing immensely to many of the positive aspects of our culture. But precisely because Christianity has so profoundly shaped our culture, isn’t it plausible that it may also, at least indirectly, have contributed to some of the flaws that currently ail us as well?

According to the blogger Conservative Swede, whom I have debated this issue with at some length, Christian ethics is more unfettered in modern liberalism than it is in Christianity itself. The West, and Europe in particular, is sometimes labeled as “post-Christian,” but this is only partly true. We have scrapped the Christian religion, but we have still retained some of the moral restraints associated with it, which have been so mired into our cultural DNA that we probably don’t even think about them as Christian anymore. Yet our humanitarian ideas are secular versions of Christian compassion, and it is Christian or post-Christian compassion that compels us to keep feeding and funding the unsustainable birth rates in other cultures, even actively hostile ones. Likewise, there are elements of Christian thought, such as universalism, that could be seen as the inspiration behind our one-world Multiculturalists.
[...]
One major component of Western self-loathing is the idea that we should we be punished for crimes, perceived or real, committed by our ancestors before we were even born. It could be argued that this idea has its roots in Christian thinking, in the concept of original sin, committed by Adam and Eve, but where all their descendants are subject to its effects. Christian ethics have proved more durable than Christian beliefs. Even when we have supposedly left the religion behind, we still believe we have to make atonement for the sins of our forefathers, but since we no longer believe that Christ has made that sacrifice for us and washed away our sins, we end up sacrificing ourselves instead.

This proves that unbalanced Christian ethics without Christian beliefs can be unhealthy, especially if combined with a high degree of cultural feminization and a focus on the feminine aspects of the divine, the self-sacrificing.''

There are quite a few conservatives, of the secular sort, who blame Christianity for the West's decline and possible demise; some of these people are very bitterly anti-Christian, and suggest that the West can only survive if we renounce the 'weak' religion of Christianity. Fjordman is not as extreme as those critics, but I think he somewhat caricatures Christianity, and takes the modern, liberal version of Christianity as the norm, or the standard.

Some of the extreme critics of Christianity as the supposed destroyer of the West assert that we should find a new religion which will serve us better; some even suggest that we go back to the pre-Christian religions of Europe. Now supposing that it were even possible to reconstruct the old religions of Europe, which I doubt, this idea seems wrong-headed. The underlying idea is that a religion is simply a man-made institution or belief system which is meant to serve us: if it does not serve some purpose of our own, we simply shop around for a religion that suits us better, or tinker together a religion of our own. This presupposes that there is no God, a God who is and who exists, with a nature of his own. In effect, this is essentially an atheistic attitude: the idea that God exists only insofar as we construct him or conceive of him, and thus we can make a religion that is useful to us.

Fjordman cites the Christian doctrine of original sin, and blames it for our present 'guilt complex' in the West. To be fair, the doctrine of original sin does not mean that I am guilty for the personal sins of my ancestors. And Christians believe everyone, of every race and nation, is equally a sinner, but the leftist idea of Western guilt convicts Westerners only; according to the popular PC belief, only Western white people carry ancestral guilt. Western white nations are endlessly castigated for slavery, while the liberals never condemn the present-day slavery in the Third World, or the past guilt of the Arab nations in the slave trade. Liberals, influenced by Rousseau and his 'noble savage' idea, seem to see Third World peoples as innocent and childlike, capable only of being victimized, of being sinned against but not sinning. 'Victim' groups are seemingly exempted from accountability, much as we exempt minor children.

The modern idea of a uniquely Western guilt and the need for 'atonement' via self-abasement is not intrinsic to Christian belief.

I would say, and have said, that Christianity in past centuries did not emasculate the West; far from it. Were it not for the efforts of Charles Martel, El Cid, John Sobieski, and the efforts of the Crusaders, Islam would long ago have swallowed up Europe. Our Christian forebears had firm defenses against invaders; they did not understand Christianity as requiring that they welcome mass invasion by 'strangers', as today's Open Borders fanatics believe. They did not generally believe that Christianity demanded pacifism and passivity; certainly there were some who championed such ideas, but they were not the dominant group in Christendom.

Our Christian ancestors, who practiced a "muscular Christianity" that has all but vanished, were not guilt-ridden doormats to the world as we in the West are; did they misunderstand their Christian faith for all those centuries? Are we moderns and post-moderns the first to "understand" the supposed message of self-destruction inherent in Christianity? I would say, in our secular and confused age that we are the ones who have a corrupted form of Christianity. Christianity does not call on us to lay down before our enemies and offer our necks for the chopping block.

Those who say that Christianity is to blame for the West's enfeebled condition are missing the obvious fact that, were it not for the efforts of their Crusader ancestors, Europe as we have known it would never have come to be.
Christianity in our modern times has been, like our society as a whole, in a state of imbalance. As Fjordman mentions,

..unbalanced Christian ethics without Christian beliefs can be unhealthy, especially if combined with a high degree of cultural feminization and a focus on the feminine aspects of the divine, the self-sacrificing.''

But the overemphasis on the feminine aspects is not representative of historic Christianity.
It's no accident that liberal Christians tend to exclude the Old Testament; David, in the Old Testament, calls God a "man of war." The book of Ecclesiastes tells us that there is a time for war as well as a time for peace.

I am not a theologian or even much of a Bible scholar; I claim no authority on the subject, but simply as a daily reader of my Bible I know that there is wholeness and balance in the Biblical message; there is a place for strength and for the more masculine virtues, as well as the gentler and softer ones.

If the West falls, thanks to our dissolving borders and to the Islamic onslaught, Christianity is not the culprit; it is too easy to scapegoat Christianity. Our forefathers for 1300 years withstood Islam and they defended their territories and their way of life successfully. And they did so as Christians. The modern-day distortions of Biblical teachings, and the secularized perversions thereof, called 'leftism' are to blame for our present loss of nerve and will.

I continue to think that if the West fails to rediscover its historic faith and purpose, there will not be much of a future for the West.

'Choice grain into the wilderness': our British origins

As we watch from afar the apparent decline of the British people, it often occurs to me that most Americans are very cavalier about it; it's very popular among the 'mainstream' Republicans and self-described 'conservatives' who congregate on certain of the big web forums to sneer at the British, and to perversely cheer their setbacks. It's all very much of a piece with their Francophobia, and their general disdain for people across 'the pond'. After all, our ancestors were smart enough to get out of there, and to set up a 'democratic' government here, so why should we care what happens to the Euros? It's survival of the fittest, and if they're too weak, let them be conquered and overrun. Such is the attitude of some.

All this while, of course, we Americans are being conquered by stealth by Latinos and Moslems and whoever else can cross the finish line into our wide-open country.

But I often wonder why most Americans, even those of older generations who were taught actual history in school, are so blase about the fate of Europe, specifically Britain, which after all, is our mother country.

This yahooish attitude is something I do not remember in my younger days, and my memory reaches back to the 1950s. I honestly do not remember, in my wide travels around this country, so much hostility and sneering pretensions to superiority on the part of many Americans. Educated and cultured Americans once valued our European heritage; almost everyone aspired to visit Europe and to experience the cultural and historical sites there; almost everyone had a consciousness of having European origins. Now suddenly it's the thing to look down one's nose at Europe, especially the British and the French. Where did this attitude originate? My best guess is that it, like much of the 'conservative' attitude these days in America, is simply a knee-jerk reaction against what they perceive as the liberals' Europhilia. So many Republicans and 'conservatives' think that only liberals admire or like Europe. And because Europe's ruling ideology is socialist, that is enough reason for them to hate the people. Needless to say, this is an ignorant attitude; our government does not reflect the attitudes of the American people, nor does our media; yet Americans are prone to judge all Europeans by their liberal governments and their leftist media.

But aside from our political differences with our British and French cousins, why are many Americans indifferent to their own European origins, and our kinship with Europe? Some of it, I think, is a result of a pro-patriotic, anti-British bias which was understandable in our early history, when our forefathers fought two wars against their British brothers.

Still, much of the Anglophobia seemed to have been forgotten by the time of the two World Wars, in which we fought alongside our British cousins, and viewed them as our staunchest allies. Now, the attitude seems to have changed to one of bitterness as many resent the fact that 'we bailed the British out; we saved them from the Germans'.

But all that notwithstanding, the fact is, Britain is our mother country; our culture, our language, our folkways, our religion, our view of the world, derives more from Britain than any other country. And they are of the same blood as our Founding Fathers. Blood IS thicker than water, and no amount of neocon/liberal "proposition nation" hogwash can change that fact.

Another factor in modern American callousness towards the British is that many Americans lack knowledge of their ancestry and roots; so many Americans that I have encountered have only the vaguest notion of their origins; many seem not to care. I suppose it is commendable in a sense that many people consider themselves 'just American'; I certainly consider myself an American, first and foremost, as I say in my profile. I do have an assortment of European ancestors, from Holland, France, and a few from Germany, but by far, the majority of my colonist ancestors came from Great Britain. It's been my good fortune that my family is aware of our roots, but many people are unaware, and uninterested in knowing.

I suspect that many Americans who are unaware of it have English/British ancestry; many of them simply think they are 'just Americans' when in fact they have a lot of British blood. If only more Americans knew their genealogy; but I've found that some people are interested in family history and some are profoundly indifferent, or even hostile to finding out. I find that latter attitude strange, but there we are. However, to any who care about the American heritage, history, and culture, which is vanishing quickly, I recommend studying your family tree; it's very gratifying to know who you are in the larger scheme of things. It's fascinating to learn of your ancestors' place in history: where they were born, what they did for a living, where they fit in. It brings history alive to know where your forefathers were and what they were doing when the events in the history books were unfolding.

I think there is a conscious effort to sever people from their roots; this new 'multicultural' regime is served by having us disconnected from our ancestors and our blood ties; in the brave new 'global village' we are not to belong to nations, especially nations which are extended families, based on genetics and blood. So we are all encouraged to be deracinated, atomized 'world citizens' with an allegiance to some watered-down, vague ideal like 'freedom' and 'equality', and not to a place or above all, a kin group.

For some reason, we are informed via Census information that most white Americans claim German ancestry.
How did this come to be, I wonder, that the great majority of white Americans claim to be of German origin? I realize there was a wave of German immigration in the mid-19th century. My few German ancestors came in the 1700s to join the Germanna colony in Virginia, but they quickly assimilated into the British stock of that area. Many of the later German immigrants remained clustered with other Germans, and continued to speak their own language. This pattern was true in Texas; many German colonists came in the 19th and 20th century, founding towns like Fredericksburg and Shiner and Boerne; my father tells of how some Texas towns were still largely German-speaking during his childhood in the Depression era. So perhaps the descendants of the later German settlers clung to their identity, with the result that many Americans today claim German as their primary ancestry.

Similarly with Irish ancestry; I've rarely met an American who does not claim Irish ancestry (and Cherokee Indian ancestry,too). Did the Irish and the Germans truly outnumber the descendants of the old English stock? Or did they merely intermarry with them, leaving a greater cultural imprint because of their more recent arrival?

If the majority of American whites have German ancestry, or Irish, for that matter, how do we account for the fact that English/Welsh/Scottish names are much, much more common in America? What names do we consider quintessentially old-fashioned American surnames? Smith? English. Jones? Welsh. Johnson? English, or Scottish, or possibly Scandinavian. Wilson? Scottish or English. Davis? Welsh. Evans? Welsh. Jackson? Scottish or English.
It does seem to call into question the idea that German or Irish descent is more common, based on the evidence of surnames alone.

This link indicates that

at the beginning of the Constitutional Government approximately 800 surnames—practically all of which were of English or British origin—contributed about one-third of the entire population of the United States...'

A look at the chart on this page is very informative.

Compare the most common names in 1790, and note that almost all, if not all, were British: English, Scottish, or Welsh. Then note the appearance in the 1990 lists of names like Garcia, Martinez, Rodriguez, Hernandez, Lopez.
These names were absent from the lists of 200 years ago, yet it appears that before too long they will be the most common names, challenged by various other third-world names.

Here is an excerpt from an old Harper's Magazine article, no author's name given, from the turn of the last century:

Thus...the people of New England were homogeneous in character to an unparalleled degree, and they were drawn from the very sturdiest part of the English stock. In all history there has been no other instance of a colony so exclusively peopled by picked and chosen men. The colonists knew this and were proud of it, as well they might be. It was the simple truth that was spoken by William Stoughton when he said, in his election sermon in 1688, "God sifted a nation that he might send choice grain into the wilderness."

The population of New England was as homogeneous in blood as it was in social condition. The Puritan migration we are here considering was purely and exclusively English; there was nothing in it at first that was either Irish, Scotch, or Welsh, nothing that came from the continent of Europe.

It began in 1620 with the founding of Plymouth. It reached its maximum between 1630 and 1640, when the first settlements were made in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire. After the meeting of the Long Parliament in 1640, the Puritans found so much work cut out for them at home that the emigration to New England virtually ceased. By this time, 21,000 Englishmen had settled in New England, and this population "thenceforward multiplied on its own soil in remarkable seclusion from other communities for nearly a century and a half."
[quote from Palfrey, New England, introduction]
During the whole of this period, New England received but few immigrants, and "it was not till the last quarter of the eighteenth century that those swarms began to depart [from New England] which have since occupied so large a portion of the territory of the United States."

[...]In view of these facts, it may be said that there is not a county in England of which the population is more thoroughly English than was the population of New England a the end of the eighteenth century. From long and careful research, Mr. Savage, the highest authority on this subject, concludes that more than ninety-eight in one hundred of the New England people at that time could trace their origin to England in the strictest sense, excluding even Wales. Every English county, from Northumberland to Cornwall, from Cumberland to Kent, contributed to the emigration; but the great majority came from Linconshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex in the east, and from Devonshire and Dorset in the southwest.
[...]These 21,000 English Puritans...have now increased to nearly 13,000,000. According to most careful estimates, at least one-fourth of the whole population of the United States at the present moment [circa 1900] is descended from these men. " [Emphases mine]

Despite what the census statistics show, I think there are still many of us who are descended from those 21,000 Englishmen; many of us simply are not aware of it. That 'choice grain' sent into the American wilderness is still growing, although there are now tares among the wheat.

This piece by Steve Sailer
It's Official: British (a.k.a. America's Founders) Not Diverse At All
debunks the now-established PC propaganda that Britain was always 'a nation of immigrants' or a 'mongrel nation' as some malicious multiculturalists would have it. And the homogeneity of Britain carried over to the early settlement of the colonies in New England, as indicated by the above excerpts.

It is often claimed by Southern partisans, with whom I am in sympathy, by the way, that most of the South was settled by 'Celtic' peoples, Scots-Irish and to a lesser extent, Welsh.

However, Steve Sailer mentions, in the above-linked article, that Brian Sykes' book on the genetics of the British Isles indicates there was scant difference between the Anglo-Saxons and Celts:

Sykes writes: "Overall, the genetic structure of the Isles is stubbornly Celtic." (Interestingly, this means that the Irish and the English are largely the same—and Sykes is unable to discern any difference at all between the Ulster Catholics and Protestants, or “Scotch-Irish”, as they are known to American immigration history).

Sykes points, out, however, that the term "Celtic" is something of a misnomer...'

Still the 'Celtic' identity of the South is an idea that has caught on. I remain skeptical of that idea, however, because of my familiarity with the genealogy of many Southern families. And it would seem that just looking at the surnames most common throughout the Southern states, at least before they were extensively invaded, we would find a predominance of English/Welsh names with a lesser number of Scottish names. A perusal of the names of the early Jamestown colonists, and of records of most Southern states in the next century or two, would likely show mostly English/Welsh names. So I am skeptical of the 'Celtic' culture of the South; I think it is a fanciful, romanticized idea that caught on, in part because the English in particular have been stereotyped as a cold, aloof people, while the 'Celts' have been portrayed as fiery-natured and warm, though given to belligerence and rebellion. I think this is an oversimplified portrayal of both the English and the Scots. I know that Grady McWhiney in particular, along with Forrest McDonald, did much to popularize the "Celtic Thesis" of the South's origins. I respect the work McWhiney did as a historian, but I am not convinced of his 'Celtic origins' idea.

As someone who has both Southern Cavaliers and New England Puritans in my family tree, I am familiar at firsthand with the differences in the culture of North and South; I simply think McWhiney and many others overemphasize the idea of different genetic origins. If Bryan Sykes is correct, the Celtic-Anglo Saxon divide is not so wide as thought.

Too often the Norman strain is discounted when analyzing the British people and their character and culture; I've noticed how very few want to own any Norman ancestry. Many people speak and write of the Normans as if they invaded idyllic England in 1066, and after ravaging the countryside, and setting up a tyrannical government, just receded into the mist. Surely people must realize that the Normans left many descendants in the British Isles and here in the United States and in Australia as well; the Normans did not disappear into the sunset. They are our ancestors too, and in the case of my family, they were the majority. And the Normans, though imperfect, were a capable, adventurous people who are often stereotyped as a sort of medieval European Klingon race; just watch a movie like 'Ivanhoe' and you will see the Normans as black-clad, sinister thugs. It's not surprising few people want to claim their Norman ancestry, based on the image of them in fiction and popular imagination. Most people want to be 'Celtic' or Anglo-Saxon, but the poor Normans are the red-headed step-cousins in the British family tree.

My point is: many Southerners think that their better qualities, their fighting spirit and independence, derive only from Scottish ancestry; can we not give our Norman forebears some credit? The Normans were the big guys on the block for centuries; we can take pride in them. Enough apologizing for the successes of our forefathers; we have glamorized the loser and the underdog for too long.

I often think that maybe our present-day Anglo-Americans and Anglo-Australians and even the 'indigenous British' as the PC brigade calls them, will be viewed by future generations much as those Norman baddies are viewed now: the Normans are depicted as oppressors and baddies, while the people they conquered (and in many cases, civilized) were the poor downtrodden underdogs, much as American Indians and Mexicans are now seen as the victims of the dominant white settlers. I wonder if the future owners of America, who may be partially descended from old-stock Americans, will disavow their 'Anglo' blood? I rather think they will. We will be the bad guys in the history books, if there are any, and if there are any literate people to read the books. We will be the ancestors nobody wants to claim; we will be the ones whose names draw hisses and boos.

I find the possibility of Europe's conquest by Islam and by various exotic immigrants in general to be a sad prospect, even if I had no blood ties to the countries in question; all of us are culturally descended from Europe, and most especially from Britain. If we in the West had a natural sense of kinship and solidarity, as we had for centuries, we would not be such easy prey for the invaders. Divide and conquer is the age-old formula; our enemies have successfully divided us, and continue to do so, as Western people turn on each other and side with the invaders, or simply refuse to take a side. Many in America prefer to pretend that we are a special, isolated people in the world, who just sprang up from nowhere. But we owe much of our vaunted ideas on freedom to our British forebears and heritage; we can't pretend that we "just growed", like Topsy.

If only we in the West had sense of our history and our roots, I think we could once again be the strong people we were. We cannot or dare not write off Europe, and pretend that we do not need them, nor they us. I don't care to contemplate a world in which Islam has swallowed up Europe, and taken control of their nuclear weapons; who will stand with us then? What friends or allies or kin will we have then? Our duplicitous Saudi friends? Backstabbing Mexico?

As Europe goes, so go we; we cannot ignore or turn our backs on Europe, especially on our British cousins.

If our Western civilization is swallowed up, I expect a 'Mad Max' kind of future for the West; I sincerely hope to be proven wrong by future events.