The Quote Below—More Misinformation from the Media
“For decades, the GOP has been frozen in a rigid xenophobia that rejects all efforts to ease the pathway to citizenship for any immigrant who crossed the border illegally, even in childhood. That’s because the overwhelmingly white and aging GOP base is resentful of a browning America. . . .
“While demographers have been forecasting a browner America for many years, most white Americans weren’t paying attention to the trends until the 2008 election of Barack Obama as the nation’s first Black president, powered into office by a ‘rainbow coalition’ of voters of every race and ethnicity. While he won two terms, his tenure nevertheless provoked a backlash from a substantial minority of white citizens.
“Among those was Pat Buchanan, the paleoconservative who ran for the GOP nomination for the presidency three times. In his 2011 nativist polemic, “Suicide of a Superpower,” he forecasts a swift decline for a nation that has allowed itself, in his view, to be overrun by people of color.
“He writes, ‘White racial consciousness is rising and has begun to manifest itself in politics because, for tens of millions of Americans, this is no longer the country they grew up in.’ Buchanan succinctly sums up the view that the current ideological struggles are a war for the soul — and skin color — of the nation.
“It’s no wonder, then, that those disaffected whites found their savior in Donald Trump, who pandered to racist views more explicitly than any presidential candidate since George Wallace. Even if Trump is no longer the Republicans’ great white hope, the party remains a festering sinkhole of extremism, racism, fascism — all on display during Biden’s recent speech.
“That doesn’t bode well. The nation is on an inevitable path toward a browner, more pluralistic future. That’s baked in. By the year 2040 or so, whites will no longer constitute a clear majority of the population. Already, Christianity is declining as a major cultural force as fewer Americans identify as religious and more Muslims migrate to these shores.
“If we cannot adjust to this new reality and live out the promise of a pluralistic democracy, we’ll be on the path to giving Buchanan the gift of a prescience he doesn’t deserve: We’ll be committing suicide, indeed.” – Increasing Diversity Causes GOP to Act Out, Cynthia Tucker, 2/15/23 [Link]
Fact Check of Above Quote: Tucker can’t seem to understand why people would object to the massive ethnic and cultural transformation of their country. In saner times than these, however, the folly of such an idea was apparent to just about everyone. Even proponents of mass immigration agreed—or at least pretended that they did. When Sen. Edward Kennedy (R-MA) was promoting the 1965 immigration act, he vowed that under its provisions “the ethnic mix of our country [would] not be upset.”
We know today that this is exactly what the 1965 act set in motion. Maybe Kennedy believed what he said, or maybe he didn’t. In any case, he knew he had to say it, to get the bill passed back then. Upsetting the historic mix of any country—especially short period of time—risks destabilization and an identity crisis. The America now unfolding is proof of that point.
This reality becomes clouded by the injection of present racial politics in the U.S., particularly of the “woke” variety. As immigration pushes the white majority to minority status, it is supposedly “racist” to question this outcome. Once again, the dangers of removing a historic majority in a country, regardless of its race, are real and unavoidable.
Furthermore, a lot of white Americans cannot be faulted as “racists” and “extremists” when they sense the hostile intent of wokeness, particularly displayed by people like Tucker who seem to relish their marginalization through immigration. Supposedly it’s a deranged “conspiracy theory” to say that this transformation is happening by design. Nevertheless, consider the following statement of Joe Biden when he was vice president:
“It’s not going to stop. Nor should we want it to stop. . . . An unrelenting stream of immigration. Nonstop, nonstop. Folks like me who are Caucasian, of European descent . . . we’ll be an absolute minority in the United States of America. Absolute minority. Fewer than 50 percent of the people in America . . . will be white European stock. That’s not a bad thing. That’s a source of our strength.”
Can anyone imagine the outrage if a national leader said of any other group in America that reducing their relative size would benefit the country? Since Biden has been president, he has not veered from his vision of “nonstop” immigration.
Contrary to Tucker’s claim, there is nothing “inevitable” about the current trajectory of immigration. It is not a force beyond human control like continental drift. It’s a trajectory we can change if we so choose. We truly risk national suicide if we don’t.