For the first time in the American mainstream, immigration is being connected with culture

(Note: Apparenlty O’Reilly’s position has more nuance than is indicated below. See Charles T.’s comment here.)

Maureen C. writes:

Your unflagging clear statements describing the immigration problem and its solution have contributed to an emerging national turnaround in attitude:

For the first time last night I heard Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly criticize the Kennedy immigration bill—with its legalization of millions of Hispanics and then more millions as their families join them—in YOUR words. He said that this kind of wholesale Hispanic immigration is destroying the culture of America.

This is the first time that I have heard a national tv newscaster (well, perhaps Lou Dobbs has already made this point)—with the large audience commanded by Bill O’Reilly—has linked restraining immigration with national survival.

Paul Henri writes:

You won’t believe it, but last night O’Reilly said the motivation for the immigration bill is the defeat of the white, Christian, male power structure. Your views are finally catching on. I will send O’Reilly an e-mail congratulating him.

I agree with you that as the mortal danger becomes more apparent, more people will begin standing up for their own race. Also, the racist label will fall by the wayside and will be replaced by a neutral word. We are winning!

LA replies:

I doubt very much that Bill O’Reilly has ever read me. But a very surprising thing has happened in this debate. From the start of my concern about immigration in the early 1980s, my main focus was on the cultural/ethnic/racial dimension of it. And of course the connection between immigration and culture/race has been a completely forbidden area in American mainstream conservatism for all these years. But in this current fight over the Bush-Kennedy bill, I personally have not been generally thinking about the cultural side of the problem (except when talking about the ultimate anti-white motivations of the supporters of the bill as the explanation for their amazing, wall-to-wall use of the racism card). Rather, I’ve been focused on the sheer horror of the bill itself, its lies, its lawlessness, its irresponsibility. I thought last year’s S.2611 was the worst law proposed in U.S. history, but this years S.1348 is far worse.

Yet at the same time, even as I have barely been thinking about the cultural side of the issue, other people, who have never talked about the cultural aspect of immigration in their lives, are suddenly talking about it in relation to this bill. After the bills’s opponents were attacked by one of the bill’s supporters for “secretly” being concerned about culture, people at National Review Online shot back that, yes indeed they ARE concerned about culture, and there’s nothing secret about it!

So something is happening. Something is breaking open that has never been open before. To paraphrase Churchill: This is not the end. And it is not the beginning of the end. And it is not even the end of the beginning. But it is, perhaps, the beginning.

- end of initial entry -

Spencer Warren writes:

Your correspondents are writing that O’Reilly last evening spoke in your terms on the cultural/ethnic issues posed by the immigration problem. I think they should have been more precise and have explained that O’Reilly made this point by saying the New York Times and the leftists he calls the “Secular Progressives” are the ones who are hostile to white America and are using the immigration issue to try to destroy that America. That is how I recall what O’Reilly said.

LA replies:

But O’Reilly’s point is my point. That’s what I’ve been saying lately, that the immigration bill is motivated by a desire to bring white America to an end. Further, if this motivation drives the “Secular Progressives” who support the bill, then the same is true a fortiori of the “conservatives” who not only support the bill but who are making unprecedentedly sweeping use of the racism charge against even their fellow mainstream conservatives who oppose the bill.

Mr. Warren replies:

Yes. I was just trying to be more precise. It is a very good development. But O’Reilly did not attribute this motivation to the conservatives. I agree with you. I’m just trying to be precise about O’Reilly.

RG writes:

Out of the shadows and into the sunlight of common sense.

I must say I’m surprised (very happily!) by the growing number of mainstream conservative pundits, commentators and talk show hosts, who are “coming out of the shadows” and into the sunlight, speaking up for the basic socio-political and cultural future of our nation with respect to mass immigration. They are realizing that what’s going on is not normal immigration but mass, population transference (from primarily Mexico) and the desire for cheap, illegal labor.

Things just may be turned around…….

Posted by Lawrence Auster at May 30, 2007 10:48 PM | Send