Chavez strikes again

Linda Chavez wrote two insane columns in which she denounced all conservatives opposed to the immigration bill as anti-Hispanic bigots. National Review senior editor Ramesh Ponnuru said he would never trust her judgment again, which seemed like a fair statement to me. But now, instead of following through on Ponnuru’s comment and ignoring and shunning Loony Linda, National Review Online has just published a 5,000 word screed by her in which, after some initial insincere apologies for her earlier too sweeping indictment of conservatives, she expands on that indictment. Among other targets, she accuses the respected journalist Heather Mac Donald of anti-Hispanic bias, for pointing out that we are importing illiterates from Mexico. If Mac Donald, who has never talked about race in her articles on immigration, is bigoted, then any critical discussion of immigration is impossible, period. Also, like the lunatic she has become, Chavez keeps returning obsessively to the Pioneer Fund and to FAIR’s origins in the population control movement, as though this makes anything to do with the immigration control movement evil.

It is just amazing what you can get away with, if you’re a member of the “conservative” establishment. I was called a racist and closed out of FrontPage Magazine for unspecified statements on race. Chavez brutally smeared the entire staff of National Review as racists, and in response they let her publish a 5,000 word article attacking them further!

The irony is, Chavez’s own background is half British; her Mexican ancestors have lived in this country for centuries; she has been married for 40 years to an American Jew, and there is nothing remotely “Hispanic” about her persona. Her personality is pure Beltway. But some weird atavism has driven her at this stage of her unworthy career to identify totally with “Hispanics,” with all Hispanics, with the Hispanic wretched of the earth, against America.

Add Linda Chavez to the list of fraudulent Hispanic “conservatives” whose main function in the conservative movement is to make it impossible for conservatives to debate immigration.

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Anthony Damato writes:

This is some darn good writing. You once again cut through the fog to expose the substance of an issue… You raise a very important point I’ve thought about myself, but could not articulate, and that Chavez’s allegiance is not with her British or American side, but with her long vestigial Mexican ancestry.

It is strange that some people are unable to get past allegiance to some idea of their ethnic identity at the cost of rejecting their American identity which is real and alive in the present moment. One exception seems to be Michelle Malkin .

LA writes:

More than for the praise, thank you for seeing what you saw.

Anthony replies:

Thank you.

I don’t think I explained well why I thought Michelle Malkin (nee Maglalang) is an example of the anti-Chavez. She was born in Philadelphia to Filipino parents in the US on a work visa. She very well could have become another child of immigrants who mindlessly rejects any and all discussions about the reality of the immigrant crisis by default, owing to her own parents’ immigration to America and her Filipino ethnicity. Yet she speaks sensibly about the topic and argues that there is a crisis of full blown proportions that must be addressed in a logical and realistic manner without regard to her minority status or family history.

I think Herman Badillo is also someone able to analyze Hispanic student performance and culture in less than glowing terms despite himself being Puerto Rican. Do you remember how Condoleezza Rice also when push came to shove, allied herself in one instance by implying the race card if not outright playing it.

For some, blood is thicker than water. For others, a bond and affection to their country and fellow citizens supersedes all other romantic notions they may harbor of their ancestral homelands.

LA replies:

It’s true that Malkin does not put forward anything about her ethnicity. At the same time, Malkin exclusively addresses illegal immigration and has never said anything against current legal immigration, which, given her huge output on illegal immigration, is very strange. I think only modern journalists and intelligentsia could bifurcate an issue to this degree. In fact the distinction between the illegal and the legal while important is not fundamental. For decades they have been two parallel parts of the same phenomenon which is transforming America into a non-Western country which will have no less and less connection with its historic identity and culture and where whites will be an ever shrinking minority.

Here is the most important truth about modern politics:

The liberals want to take us over the cliff at 80 miles an hour.

The “conservatives” want to stay within the speed limit, but they’re still take us over the cliff.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 11, 2007 02:18 PM | Send