The open-borders conservatives

Earlier this month 33 so-called conservatives published a statement in the Wall Street Journal promoting the so-called comprehensive immigration bill passed by the Senate, and declaring in leftist style that “history” requires the American people to disregard their own judgment and desires on the matter and support this plan for accelerated national suicide. John Fonte subjects the statement to an analysis at NRO.

I have pointed out before how President Bush’s extreme immigration proposals seem to have touched the “open-borders soul” of certain parties, releasing in them the expression of radical sentiments and ideas—“openly open-borders,” we might describe them—that have scarcely been heard before in mainstream politics. Thus, in an editorial supporting the statement of the 33 so-called conservatives that is discussed by Fonte, the Wall Street Journal said of illegal aliens that “These migrants are freely contracting for their labor, which is a basic human right.” This clearly means (echoing the open-borders pope, John Paul II) that for us to exercise any meaningful control over who enters our country is to violate a basic human right. In the name of individual rights, one of the nation’s top “conservative” newspapers has defined America out of existence as a self-governing nation, plainly revealing what I have always said is the true end and purpose of liberalism.

We should be thankful that the extremist liberals who call themselves conservatives have cast aside all indirection and are now telling us what they really believe and what they really want.

Here are the 33 signers of the open-borders statement. Some of them are a real disappointment, such as George Schultz, who was so splendid as Secretary of State under President Reagan, Martin Anderson, another Reagan stalwart whom I used to respect, and John McWhorter, a “conservative” black. Disturbing is the number of people from the Hudson Institute who are signers, since Herb London, the head of Hudson, is pro immigration restriction. Also note that Clint Bolick, a career critic of race preferences and a recent winner of the Bradley Prize ($250,000, I believe), supports the open-borders scheme that will vastly increase the number of people in this country receiving racial preferences. Bolick exemplifies the point that right-liberals (believers in individual rights as the defining feature of society) tend over time to become left-liberals (tacit supporters of group rights and multiculturalism).

Jack Kemp (former congressman from New York);
George P. Shultz (distinguished fellow, Hoover Institution);
Jeanne Kirkpatrick (former ambassador to the U.N.);
Tamar Jacoby (senior fellow, Manhattan Institute);
Cesar V. Conda (senior fellow, FreedomWorks);
Ken Weinstein (CEO, Hudson Institute);
Grover Norquist (president, Americans for Tax Reform);
Jeff Bell (board of directors, American Conservative Union);
Larry Cirignano (president, Catholic Alliance);
Bill Kristol (editor, The Weekly Standard);
Arthur B. Laffer (chairman, Laffer Investments);
Linda Chavez (chairman, Center for Equal Opportunity);
Elaine Dezenski (former acting assistant secretary for policy development, Department of Homeland Security);
Lawrence Kudlow (economics editor, National Review Online);
John Podhoretz (columnist, the New York Post);
John McWhorter (senior fellow, Manhattan Institute);
Joseph Bottum (editor, First Things);
Max Boot (senior fellow, Council on Foreign Relations);
Vin Weber (former congressman from Minnesota);
Richard Gilder (partner, Gilder Gagnon Howe & Co., LLC);
Ed Goeas (Republican strategist);
Martin Anderson (senior fellow, Hoover Institution);
J.C. Watts (former congressman from Oklahoma);
Ed Gillespie (former chairman, Republican National Committee);
C. Stewart Verdery, Jr. (former assistant secretary for border and transportation security policy, Department of Homeland Security);
Diana Furchtgott-Roth (senior fellow, Hudson Institute);
Robert de Posada (president, the Latino Coalition);
Clint Bolick (winner of 2006 Bradley Prize);
Steven Wagner (former director, human trafficking program, Department of Health and Human Services);
Steve Forbes (CEO, Forbes Inc.);
Gary Rosen (managing editor, Commentary);
Michael Petrucelli (former acting director, U.S. citizenship and immigration services, Department of Homeland Security);
And John C. Weicher (senior fellow, Hudson Institute).

- end of initial entry -

Trying to explain the phenomenon of open-borders “conservatives,” a reader wrote:

There is also the propositionalist “nation of immigrants” virus, which afflicts all of these people. How many have roots here that go back to the Revolution or before? Precious few, I suspect.

LA replied:

Here are the 41 people who signed the pro-“enforcement-first” statement at NRO. Does this pro-border-control list look any more Revolution-era-descended than the pro-open-borders list? I don’t think so. For one thing, about ten of the 41 signers are Jewish. Also, while there may be a few more WASPs on the border-control list than on the open-borders list, we don’t know that they are descended from colonial America.

This of course doesn’t change the demonstrated fact that immigration, particularly the immigration of people who are culturally diverse from the country’s majority population, tends to replace that majority population with a new population of immigration enthusiasts, including many people who regard support for unending mass immigration as a sacred moral obligation to their immigrant ancestors.

An NRO Primary Document on Immigration on National Review Online

William B. Allen, Professor of Political Science at Michigan State University
William J. Bennett, former Secretary of Education under President Reagan, former Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy under former President George H.W. Bush
Thomas L. Bock, National Commander of the American Legion
Robert H. Bork, Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute
William F. Buckley, Jr., founder and Editor-at-Large of National Review
Peter Collier, founding Publisher of Encounter Books, cofounder of Center for the Study of Popular Culture
Ward Connerly, former Regent at the University of California, founder and Chairman of the American Civil Rights Institute (ACRI)
T. Kenneth Cribb, former domestic policy advisor for President Ronald Reagan
Glynn Custred, Professor of Anthropology at California State University, Hayward, and coauthor of the California Civil Rights Initiative, Proposition 209
John C. Eastman, Professor of Law at Chapman University School of Law
John Fonte, Senior Fellow and Director of the Center of American Common Culture at the Hudson Institute
David Frum, Resident Fellow at American Enterprise Institute
Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., founder and President of the Center for Security Policy
Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Senior Fellow at American Enterprise Institute
Jonah Goldberg, Editor-at-Large of the National Review Online
Victor Davis Hanson, Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution
David Horowitz, cofounder of the Center for the Study of Popular Culture, Editor of FrontPageMag.com
Fred C. Iklé, former Undersecretary of Defense under Reagan, former Director of U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency
David Keene, Chairman of the American Conservative Union
Brian Kennedy, President of the Claremont Institute
Roger Kimball, Managing Editor of The New Criterion
Alan Charles Kors, Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania
Mark Krikorian, Executive Director of the Center for Immigration Studies
Michael A. Ledeen, Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute
Seth Leibsohn, Fellow at the Claremont Institute
John Leo, columnist and Contributing Editor to U.S. News and World Report
Herbert London, President of the Hudson Institute
Kathryn Jean Lopez, Editor of National Review Online
Rich Lowry, Editor of National Review
Heather Mac Donald, John M. Olin Fellow at the Manhattan Institute
John O’Sullivan, Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute
Juliana Pilon, Research Professor at the Institute for World Politics
Daniel Pipes, founder and Director of the Middle East Forum
Andrew “Andy” Ramirez, Chairman of the Friends of Border Patrol
Phyllis Schlafly, founder and President of Eagle Forum
Thomas Sowell, Senior Fellow on Public Policy at the Hoover Institution
Shelby Steele, Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution
Stephen Steinlight, Fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, former National Affairs Director of the American Jewish Committee
Thomas G. West, Director and Senior Fellow of the Claremont Institute, Professor of Politics at the University of Dallas

Posted by Lawrence Auster at July 27, 2006 07:34 AM | Send