Omertà—American-style

My September 2000 article at WorldNetDaily, “My Bush Epiphany,” in which I pinpointed George W. Bush’s agenda to Hispanizize our country and merge it with the Third-World nation to our south, still has legs, at least among bloggers. To my knowledge, only two other writers at the time of the 2000 campaign picked up on my article and mentioned the Bush speech: Paul Gottfried, writing at LewRockwell.com, and Carol Iannone, in a book review in National Review and in a piece in the quarterly journal Academic Questions.

It is a historical fact to be underscored: the Republican presidential nominee in a major address, televised on C-SPAN, openly abjured the American ideal of assimilation and celebrated the spread of the Spanish language and Latin American culture in this country, and, with the exception of two or three fairly obscure articles, no one in the mainstream conservative (not to mention liberal) media said anything about it. Even worse, not a single Republican uttered even a murmur of protest against Bush’s declaratory remark that “By nominating me, my party has made a choice to welcome the new [bilingual and bicultural] America,” a decision that had certainly never been discussed or contemplated by the Republicans when they chose Bush.

Of course, ignoring and covering up essential facts is the essence of modern liberal political society, as indicated in Robert Samuelson’s recent column about the mainstream media’s total silence on the huge increases of legal immigration that would occur under the Senate’s insane immigration bill. The reason is simple: the things that liberals want to do would not be acceptable if exposed to the light of day. This is aggravated when conservatives and Republicans, in their eagerness to get their man in the White House, conceal his liberal positions instead of airing and debating them, as has happened throughout the Bush II era.

Meanwhile, other conservatives may simply not have grasped the difference between celebrating America’s ethnic diversity, and celebrating its cultural and linguistic diversity. And that indeed is the whole problem. Conspicuous ethnic and racial diversity leads inevitably to cultural diversity, both in reality and in people’s conceptions of what is normal and right. So when conservatives heard Bush talk about how if you close your eyes in an American city and listen, you would think you were in South America, and this is great, and anyone who doesn’t think it is great is motivatated by resentment, the conservatives didn’t notice, or didn’t care, that Bush was rejecting their own previously touted principles of assimilation and a single American nation. Right-liberal universalism insensibly slid into left-liberal multiculturalism, without any discussion or opposition.

In any case, whatever the media’s reasons, if the “conservative” candidate for president announces on television that he wants to Hispanicize America, and no one talks about it, it is as if it didn’t happen.

- end of initial entry -

A reader writes:

Most “conservatives” seem to think that Mr. Bush and the neo-cons are authentic conservatives forced to operate within the reality of our liberal, PC-society and, thus, constrained in their words and actions. Thus they are defended as being closet-conservatives who masquerade as moderates out of necessity. People really are oblivious. Prof. Gottfried wrote about the neo-cons “echoing the PC hysteria of their leftist comrades” with regard to MLK. Wouldn’t an “in-the-closet” conservative just remain silent if King is “untouchable” in a PC society rather than vigorously advocating for a leftist hero of the Socialist Party ?? Which brings me to your Bush epiphany. Bush gleefully celebrated the Hispanicization of the U.S. rather than just remaining silent because of PC. He and the neo-cons aren’t constrained by PC leftism—they embrace it—they are true believers. How can these guys be seen as anything but unrepentant liberals by anyone with an above room temperature IQ ???

LA replies:

Exactly. This excuse, which I’ve heard constantly during the Bush years, drives me crazy. If a supposed conservative such as Bush simply had to “go along” to protect himself in a liberal environment, he would have been quiet or relatively restrained when it came to liberal shibboleths. Instead, he sang the liberal song with all his heart. And still people didn’t get it. They even thought his first inaugural address was a conservative speech.

* * *

Ben writes:

What’s funny is, the real everyday conservatives ( just everyday working Americans) on the right didn’t recognize George Bush’s liberalism either until….

1. The Minute Men (and Bush called them vigilantes)

2. The reality of a real bill and not just words was on the table.

3. Mexicans were in the street with Mexican flags and Bush still supported this bill.

4. Their leaders like Rush Limbaugh stopped cheerleading for 3 seconds because of the above reasons and it became unbearable to continue to cheerlead. (Even though it caused them pain inside to say anything, you can almost see the pain in Sean Hannity’s face having to say anything bad about “Their guy”)

Like what your reader wrote. To a lot of conservatives, speaking liberalism is great in order to be accepted in today’s society and be invited to all the shows, they accept that, you just can’t actually apply it to real law.

Once Bush defied this hidden principle radically in the conservative movement, they all turned against him. That’s why his poll numbers went to the toilet. It takes a lot for conservatives to get angry. They accept liberalism in small steps but this is a radical step and it has shaken their confidence in a man who they are shaking their heads trying to figure out when he already told them who he was, they just refused to see it.

I believe if Bush had first come out and said he was going to secure the border first (for security reasons, not to stop Mexicans) and then pass his amnesty, I believe most conservatives would have gone along with it. All Bush had to do was mention “Security” and you could hear the conservatives masses going YAY!!!! It was because he got too confident and arrogant in his liberalism and took a radical step to defy conservatism all together that angered them.

The question though is if he is so liberal why does the left despise him so much? This gets into another illusion created for conservatives to continue to support this man and others like him. It’s just the game of continuing to move far left, meaning no matter how left “conservatives” get, the left cries its not even close, hence our society goes even farther left to advanced liberalism to appease them or create “consensus.”

As I said above, this is another reason conservatives will still support their guys even if they show complete liberalism and that is because they think they are stopping liberalism by defeating the Democrats and the “media” which are a bigger enemy. These two arch-enemies of the conservative movement are still the excuse they give to support George Bush even unto this day. To them the mainstream media and Democrats like Ted Kennedy are the real threat and the “true liberals”.

I have heard this over and over again on talk shows where conservatives think Bush really is a genius for “faking” out the left by feigning liberalism or has some wonderful plot created to destroy the left forever. When I use to listen to Limbaugh I remember one time him saying “George Bush is moving left in order to destroy the left completely”. This was the approving defense of the prescription Medicare program as a great plot created by the wonderful Karl Rove to once and for all destroy the left and take the “senior issue” away from the left. Sounds more like a Dick Morris strategy then anything else. Become liberal in order to stop liberalism. It’s amazing to watch as conservatives continue to march towards their destruction believing they are stopping it.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 02, 2006 10:03 AM | Send