The inside history of intra-conservative immigration battles: In the cover story of the July 30 American Conservative, John O'Sullivan offers an extremely lucid recounting of conservative battles over immigration going back to his decision (with Bill Buckley's concurrence) to print Peter Brimelow's massive 1992 article on immigration:
Getting Immigration Right
By John O’Sullivan
It took 15 years, but conservative intellectuals finally deserted the Beltway establishment’s open-borders consensus.
WSJistas have long jibed about O'Sullivan and Brimelow being English immigrants, so John concludes his article:
Until the battle recommences, however, if any indignant xenophobe is thinking of writing an exposé of this conspiracy of English immigrants to impose an “un-American” system of immigration law on the American people, Steve Sailer has already come up with the perfect title: “The Protocols of the Elders of Albion.”
I don't remember writing that, but John, my old editor at UPI, says that was my summary of the 2000 thriller "The Skulls," a flop of a film about a Skull & Bones-style exclusive club at a college much like Yale. I must say I've become far less dismisive of conspiracy theories about the Skull & Bones society since the 2004 election, which matched two Bonesmen in Bush and Kerry. Skull & Bones only taps 15 promising young bucks per year, yet, five of the last ten major party Presidential candidates were Bonesmen. What are the odds of that?
Also, it appears likely that the rumor is true that during WWI, the President's grandfather, past Bonesman and future Senator Prescott Bush, dug up the skull of Geronimo and loyally gave it to the Skull & Bones society, and that it remains in the windowless, fortress-like Skull & Bones headquarters on the Yale campus, despite efforts by Apache tribesmen to get their famous leader's noggin back. I think that might explain a lot about the last seven years, although I'm not precisely sure what.
My published articles are archived at iSteve.com -- Steve Sailer
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25 comments:
It took 15 years, but conservative intellectuals finally deserted the Beltway establishment’s open-borders consensus.
Many of the Beltway types sound less like intellectuals and more like low-confidence learners. It appears that some of them, such as Fred Barnes, Mort Kondracke, Michael Barone, Lawrence Kudlow, and Michael Medved are actually no-confidence learners.
the damage is already done though. the US is still on scedule to decline this century. in 2050 the average 18 year old might be a mestizo high school dropout.
not sure how the US plans to win an economic war with china under those conditions.
Glad to see that someone else is as unimpressed by Michael Medved as I am.
Just because someone is religiously observant and has traditional views on issues like gay marriage does not make them a conservative. Medved is still, underneath it all, a guy who has very little problem with the instrusive, coercive power of government being used to influence peoples' behaviors.
Where Medved is at his most spectacularly ignorant is on immigration and border security. He is constantly bellowing "you can't deport 12 million people" when the subject of immigration comes up on his radio program, even when the caller or guest has suggested no such thing. He opined earlier this week that if a bomb is smuggled into this country, it would be over the Canadian border, not the Mexican. Yup, Mike, all those corrupt Canadian officials will be looking the other way while a suitcase bomb comes in with a load of mape syrup.
What a dumbass.
Jody wrote: "in 2050 the average 18 year old might be a mestizo high school dropout."
Now there's a depressing thought.
I'm a little skeptical about Skull and Bones conspiracy theories. Yale is the second-biggest name among American universities (in the public mind, whether or not it deserves the honor in reality), and most Bonesmen already come from influential families and/or have genuine records of achievement during their collegiate careers. It's not as if Skull and Bones is a society of nobodies plucked at random from the population and made into superstars. If rich Yalies didn't frequently go on to public prominence, that would be more surprising than the fact they do.
Now if we could only get the beltway to dismiss global waring, democracy crusades, free trade worship, and corporate charity we'd have our country back.
I suspect much of the bonesman mystique is a throw over from previous generations where legacies and gentleman “C”s were the norm. Just look at the Bush Clan decedents to Jenna & her 1st cousins:
James Smith Bush(1825-1889) (Yale)
-James Freeman(1860-?)
-Harriet Montfort(1871-?)
-Eleanor Howard(1873-?)
-Samuel Prescott Bush(1863-1948) (Stevens Inst of Tech, Dennison College)
--Robert Bush (died in childhood)
--Mary House
--Margaret Clement
--James
--Prescott Sheldon Bush (1895-1972), CT Senator (Yales(SkullsnBones))
---Prescott Bush Jr. (1922-) (Phillips,Andover,Yale)
---Johnathan James Bush (1931-?)(Hotchkiss, Yale(SkullsnBones))
-- Nancy Bush (1926-?)
---William H.T. Bush (1938-?) (Yale(SkullsnBones?))
---George H. W. Bush, 41st President (Phillips Academy, Yale(SkullsnBones))
----Pauline Robinson Bush (1949-1953)
----John “Jeb” Bush (1953-) (Phillips Academy, UT Austin)
-----George Prescott Bush (1976-)(Rice, UT Austin JD)
-----Noelle Lucila Bush (1977-) (Tallahassee Community College)
-----Jeb Bush Jr. (1983-) (UT Austin)
----Neil Bush (1955-) (ST Albans, Tulane B.A. & MBA)
-----Lauren (1984-) (Princeton)
-----Pierce (1986-) (Transferred from Georgetown to UT Austin)
-----Ashley ?
----Marvin Bush (1956-) (U Va)
-----Marshall ?
-----Walker ?
-----Dorothy Bush Koch (Miss Porters & Boston College)
----George W. Bush, 43rd President(Phillips Academy, Yale(SkullsnBones), Harvard MBA)
-----Jenna Bush (UT Austin)
-----Barbara Bush (Yale(SkullsnBones))
Of the 10 cousins I could identify in Jenna’s generation, only Barbara Bush went to Yale (and was Skulls and Bones) (10%). George W Bush was the oldest and the only one of his siblings to go to Yale (and was Skull and Bones) (25%). His father, George HW Bush and all 3 of his brother went to Yale, most Skull and Bones members (100%). His father, Prescott Bush went to Yale and was Skull and Bones but his brother did not (50%). His father Samuel Bush didn’t go to Yale, but his grandfather did.
GW Bush, Kerry and the like seem to have been the last generation to get in the Ivies when they were still largely elite white gentleman’s clubs. With the greater competitiveness in admissions (e.g. high % of merit-based Asian) and somewhat more democratization of education (Yale went co-ed in 1968, the year GW graduated + affirmative action), the conspiracies may now be formulated in Aspen or exclusive family compounds rather than Ivy League secret societies.
- JAN
Skull & Bones only taps 15 promising young bucks per year, yet, five of the last ten major party Presidential candidates were Bonesmen. What are the odds of that?
Not too high, but to me it says something else -- namely that the people in that club owe a deep debt to certain others (I have no idea who). Politicians with strong obligations to their benefactors are most favored by powerful men. Perhaps Skull and Bones members are photographed during their weird rituals and threatened with exposure if they ever cross the line. Those who feel beholden only to their constituents are generally considered by the powerful to be the most dangerous and unsuitable candidates of all.
I may be wrong, but I think George Bush actually resents this quite a bit. He moved to Texas, rejected his yankee heritage and religion, and played the part of a populist Texan cowboy politician. I don't think it was all affectation, but as usual ambition trumps ideals.
As for Skull and Bones, it is currently a multicultural, coed society. Its glory days are over. Powerful societies are usually all-male, genophilic organizations. I have made some study of the Chinese patrilineal organizations founded during the Qing (Manchu) dynasty. Some of these still exist today in Chinatowns in America.
Interestingly, the man responsible for the homosexual conspiracy blueprint After the Ball: How America Will Conquer Its Fear and Hatred of Gays in the 90's, Marshall Kirk, was a New England Historic Genealogical Society librarian. Isn't that queer? A gay genealogist... Perhaps this was how he chose to bequeath his patrimony.
Medved isn't stupid, just incredibly shallow and dishonest intellectually, more so even than the rest of the respectable media conservatives who kowtow to certain liberal orthodoxies. He's also the epitome of Sailer's "Ellis Island syndrome," and has explicitly admitted as much, saying that his view on hispanic immigration now is informed by his ancestors' experiences fleeing Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
And while I generally feel fairly contemptuous towards him because of his shameless hack-work on immigration, to be fair, he isn't a big government conservative or someone happy to use coercive government power as long as it's in service of his agenda. He really does want a very small federal branch, and is consistent about that.
You use 'massive' like a lot of people use 'significant'.
Oh dear...
Although conspiracies are hard to swallow, massive concentrations of wealth in a few hands that are looking out for themselves and their peer/social networks leads to an illegitamate state of affairs that seem to be tipped in favor of the elite against the ordinary.
The Harvard/Yale/Eastern Establishment/New York corporate media/Beltway insider(ish) thingamabob is definitely not in control of the average family of four out there in fly-over America. Wall Street is sticking it to Main Street. I don't believe its sinister, its just profoundly selfish.
Steve --
I don't think a conspiracy is needed. Often, looking for conspiracies can be the sign of intellectual flabbiness.
The political class of both parties comes from the same, monied, elite, East Coast background. The NYT, WSJ, CBS-NBC-ABC, CNN, PBS etc. would have the same background. Same for the Professoriate, the NGO-istan, etc.
This conflict is old, dating back to the Shay's rebellion. Westerners being less monied and not benefiting from an aristocracy and stability of exclusion of the middle class (as potential threats) want things that the aristos don't: cheap land, expensive labor. Whereas Aristos want cheap labor and expensive land.
You've covered this more than anyone. Skull and Bones has it's Harvard equivalent.
The elites have their way through inter-connected social networks, but every so often a Westerner like Jackson comes along and upsets the apple cart for a while.
Anon -- China will destroy themselves economically. They can't stop selling substandard junk at higher prices. Already consumers seek to avoid Chinese content because it's poisonous, or junk, or unsafe. Cheap labor takes you only so far and their internal stresses are to put it mildly, quite severe. Most major Chinese cities have massive amounts of "illegal" rural migrants living rough and terribly exploited. Forty percent of their young men will never marry. In Africa that ratio led to General Butt Naked (Yes there really is a guy named that) and Charles Taylor.
"Where Medved is at his most spectacularly ignorant is on immigration and border security."
Medved is not remotely ignorant on immigration and border security. He is shaping opinion on immigration exactly like Drudge and literally hundreds of other Jewish media personalites across the country. Open borders is their "holiest of holies" as described by Steinlight and other Jews. Through the magic of open borders, all other social engineering becomes possible.
"What a dumbass."
Medved is not remotely a dumbass. He is a Neoconservative i.e. a radical subversive who is herding his flock away from something (border control) he considers to be not good for the Jews.
"...looking for conspiracies can be the sign of intellectual flabbiness."
I disagree. Strongly. It used to be that what those like Steve are doing nowadays -- pointing out, in all its facets and myriad bifurcations, that whom you are related to matters -- were treated as "conspiracies" are still treated: as intellectual flabbiness: "How can you be so evil and superficial to think that your skin color can determine what music you listen to or whom you marry?" etc.
Here's the trouble with anti-conspiratorialism: if there are no conspiracies, then there also was no Holocaust. After all, how can we claim that a bunch of men got together and decided to "cleans" Europe off of Jews?
Absurd, isn't it?
Conspiracy is one of the code words for "inter-personal arrangements/alliances created to further/bolster the interests of those persons." It is absurd to think that in the social plane, whatever is happening is happening due to entirely "random" causes. Naturally, this takes us to the epistemological discussion of the meaning of random (a discussion thanks to which Intelligent Design advocates, for one, can claim that "a human being cannot have evolved through entirely random chemical reactions").
Now by random, we don't mean, for example, that when a Norwegian and a Japanese decides to procreate, they have a chance of having an Eskimo baby. Similarly, in a stock market, despite appearances, everybody buys and sells due to reasons entirely known to them (even if it is as stupid as "by agent advised me to"), but a mere statistical measure like the mean traded volume in a day cannot possible contain all that information. That doesn't mean all those people are sleep-walkers who act like atoms colliding in an accelerator.
We know that the universe works according to "regular patterns" (if it didn't, it would impossible to make any sense of it at all.) We also know that if we were to create a bell-curve distribution of say the reactions of a Jewish person towards say a white nationalist, if we had a sample of 1,000 people, those who may affirm or approve off a white's right to want to associate with only his kind and keep "aliens" out of his homeland would probably be at the right-most, 99.99th percentile (that's 1 in 10,000). Anybody who says "there's no conspiracy there since those 1,000 people didn't all meet in a room to decide this" would be childishly transparent. A meeting room and the full attendance of all persons involved in a decision meeting is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for a "conspiracy."
Given this, it is terminally naive to claim that there is no "pro-Semitic" conspiracy (by which I mean a related set of conscious decisions to create effects that serve this orientation). Being Jewish or Yankee is not something like catching a cold or winning the town lottery. It is a "systematic" facet of one's very existence. It would be a miracle if people behaved in a way that (to use that idiotic Marxist utopian thought) one could be a Jew in breakfast, slip into the clothes of an Eskimo transvestite at lunch, try sharing a discussion with boa snakes in the afternoon, and end the day with trying NASCAR racing as a South African black.
Conspiracy is just a politically motivated smear word for "acts in the objective and/or perceived interests of his social affiliation/identity in the context of a certain process along with all others who share a similar profile." This is practically the definition of all human action.
Humans may not be able to foresee all the consequences of their choices, they may not be 100% "rational" (whatever is meant by that concept), but to use criteria like meeting in a room, intending all the unintended consequences, being omniscient, etc., as the basis for refutation of the fundamental human tendency to conspire to achieve ends is probably one of the most dishonest tactics to have ever been invented.
The very widespread tendency to protest conspiracies too much must give us a hint that conspiracies of all kinds (from classroom politics among teenagers on who hangs out with whom to the management of trillion-dollar hedge-funds) are everywhere.
JD
OK, I think I can see the point some of you made who took issue with my characterizing Medved as "ignorant." Perhaps a more accurate description of the man would be something along the lines of "pompous, self-important blowhard."
JD is right, but the problem with the word "conspiracy" is that it usually refers to a criminal act, while what JD is describing is in- and out-group interaction.
Medved is not remotely a dumbass. He is a Neoconservative[...]
-Anon
The two are not mutually exclusive, eg Doug Feith.
Conspiracies are everywhere, just as JD said. When a couple of guys get together to rob a house, with one as lookout, it is a conspiracy. 9/11 was a conspiracy, no matter who you think was behind it. The Iraq invasion was a conspiracy.
The strange thing is that many people keep denying the existence of conspiracies, even when they aren't actually secrets or they have been exposed.
Iran Contra, for example, was a conspiracy hatched by a bunch of neocons. It has been pretty well exposed, yet people still let the perps follow through with another, worse conspiracy: the Iraq War.
For an example of a very well-executed and effective secret conspiracy, look at how we set up the Japanese before Pearl harbor. It was brilliant. The Iraq War conspiracy was inept bumbling in comparison, but that might simply be due to arrogant contempt for an essentially subdued people, ie Americans.
Open borders is their "holiest of holies" as described by Steinlight
Below is a link to a film writer/producer from Harvard with a fixation on Muslim Spain. His film just debuted on PBS. It's called...
Cities of Light: The Rise and Fall of Islamic Spain
Here is one of the author's promo pieces:
Islamic Spain: History's refrain
Of course, a key part of the attraction for the author is that the period was a "golden age for Jews". It's amazing how few members of the intelligentsia are concerned about a golden age for Jews without ever wondering about a golden age for Christians, or anyone else for that matter.
Quote from article:
"When the first Muslims crossed the straits of Gibraltar into Spain, the large Jewish population there was enduring a period of oppression by the Roman Catholic Visigoths. The Jewish minorities rallied to aid the Arab Muslims as liberators, and the divided Visigoths fell."
Hmm...is it possible that the "period of oppression" was similar to what we have now...where Jews are a very powerful group in society? As was the case in Rome?
Maybe we should ask famous Islam white-washer and GW Bush consul Bernard Lewis. We can trust his expertise.
Of course conspiracies exist; the question is whether there is evidence of a particular conspiracy. Undoubtedly, as some of our anonymous contributors have pointed out, members of the Easten Establishment do favors for each other and each other's families, but I see scanty evidence that this is centered around Skull and Bones or any other secret society. Being the son of prominent politician, and eventually the son of a president, surely opened more doors for George W. than membership in Skull and Bones ever did. After all, people certainly did lots of favors for his even bigger loser brother Neil, even though Neil was not a Bonesman or even a Yale graduate. And for someone like Kerry who came from a prominent, but not quite so prominent, family, having an Ivy League degree in general was probably more helpful than whatever organization he may have belonged to while there. Non-Bonesmen Yale graduates like Howard Dean and Joe Lieberman seem to have done pretty well for themselves. Contrary to claims made in the movie The Good Shepherd, James Jesus Angleton was not a Bonesman, but he was a Yale graduate. Porter Goss and John Negroponte, recent intelligence big shots, were also non-Skull and Bones Yale graduates, although Goss did belong to the lesser-known secret society Book and Snake.
P.S. The Bonesmen's rituals have always been secret, but the membership was not always so. Skull and Bones openly published lists of its members until 1971; each year's new group was even published in the New York Times! This is how the non-Bonesman status of Angleton, Dean, Goss, Lieberman, and Negroponte can be determined; after 1971 one can never be 100% positive.
I don't believe its sinister, its just profoundly selfish.
Why should we expect them to be selfless? WHy should we expect them to look after any interest but their own.
That they look after their own interest is understood. The problem is that we're not looking after ours, and that a whole lot of the shallow, silly, superstitious, ignorant people who should be on our side are buying the shit they're selling.
Anon --
A conspiracy is a secret plot by two or more people.
The Holocaust was hardly a secret plot. It was out in the open (Wansee Conference) and generally approved of by most Germans and Occupied peoples. Which explains the extraordinary cooperation and assistance by the French, Italians, even the Greeks (as they otherwise fought the Germans).
My point is: there is no need to look for a secret conspiracy when the open alliance of interests by interconnected family/marriages/friends/class shows it's workings. There is no "Jewish Conspiracy" not the least of which is the lack of any unified opinion among Jews on immigration. Though unquestionably Pat Buchanon's anti-Immigration stance coupled with his anti-Semitism has a large effect on Jewish opinion.
Poor Westerners want cheap land and expensive labor (since they don't have land and sell their labor). Wealthy Easterners want cheap labor (since they buy it) and expensive land (since they own-sell it). Simple as that and goes back to the Shays Rebellion.
This conflict has ALWAYS been with us. You can find it even in Colonial times. No conspiracy needed.
Iran-Contra was not a "neo-con" conspiracy. That was Ronald Reagan, Cappy Weinberger, George Schulz, and Casey. Paleocon "realists" all.
As for GWB being a "Texan," that was in reaction to the obvious shift Westward in political power to the Sun belt away from the old Eastern power centers. His uber-Texan garb only intensified as he analyzed his father's loss to Bubba Clinton. A condescending Eastern aristo garb did not play well against Clinton's faux-populism.
Of course, a key part of the attraction for the author is that the period was a "golden age for Jews". It's amazing how few members of the intelligentsia are concerned about a golden age for Jews without ever wondering about a golden age for Christians, or anyone else for that matter.
I suspect you will find that PBS relied heavily upon Yale's notorious Al-Andalus romanticizer María Rosa Menocal in the making of this documentary.
Hugh Fitzgerald wrote a piece describing how this multicultural myth was born.
Anon. 8/23/2007 2:09 PM said:
The Holocaust[...]was out in the open[...]and generally approved of by most Germans and Occupied peoples. Which explains the extraordinary cooperation and assistance by the French, Italians, even the Greeks (as they otherwise fought the Germans).
Wow. This is the biggest slice of bullsh*t I've encountered in a long time.
If this fellow teaches children, then down the road we can expect to see Americans paying reparations to "third-generation Holocaust survivors" to atone for such things as FDR's declaring that Feb. 1 is "Kill a Jew Day." Thank goodness "the UN" defeated Godzilla, at least.
The inside history of intra-conservative immigration battles
I found O'Sullivan's article sad. He doesn't really acknowledge that an aggressive WAR was waged by the Neoconservatives against Conservatism. O'Sullivan is not a wartime consigliere.
On the other hand check out the Vdare.com front page and the article by Paul Gottfried. Gottfried is a warrior. He names names: those who attacked and those who sold out.
Great article by Gottfried and he apparently has a new book out. Hopefully this will help put an end to ignorant memory-hole forum postings on how and why we got where we are today.
Bridge too far Steve? ;)
At least reconsider your competitive moral posturing on the matter, given your compulsion to carry others' water.
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