Re: WHERE'S THE MUSCLE?

> http://www.steynonline.com/content/view/3727/26

> At the New York Conservative Party conference in Albany the other week, 
> I was asked about the party's role in state politics. I replied that in 
> a multiparty system it's very important to have some sort of force to 
> the right of the right-of-center party - to arrest the tendency of the 
> "mainstream" right to drift across the spectrum and wind up taking the 
> rest of us to the same destination as the lefties want to go but at a 
> slightly slower speed.
>
> A useful illustration of that role can be seen in Europe's current 
> debate. . . .

> "Multiculturalism" was invented as a cover for the failure of the 
> economic rationale: okay, mass immigration won't make us richer, but it 
> does make us better.

Wow, it's almost like Steyn has been reading this four-day-old article by 
Steve Sailer:

    http://vdare.com/sailer/110213_byron_roth.htm

    [ snip ]

    Besides the multiculturalist and the assimilationist, there's a third 
position that isn't often invited to the immigration debate: the skeptical 
realist. On the rare occasions when they are mentioned in polite society, 
immigration skeptics are dismissed as "extremists".

    Rationally, assimilationists should notice that their demonization of 
realists doesn't make their own position more of political winner. When 
the debate is artificially restricted to multiculturalists v. 
assimilationists, the latter are demonized as the right-wingers. But, 
somehow, they don't get the message.

    In contrast, when German immigration skeptic Thilo Sarrazin elbowed his 
way into the public arena in Europe last year by publishing his 
million-selling book Germany Abolishes Itself, he was quickly fired and 
was castigated by everybody who is anybody. But, by establishing a new 
right wing in the immigration debate, Sarrazin moved assimilationism into 
the new centrism.

    Following Sarrazin's well-researched bombshell, first Angela Merkel of 
Germany, then David Cameron of Britain, and now Nicolas Sarkozy of France, 
have all denounced multiculturalism as a failure. They've come down in the 
new middle on the side of assimilation.

    [ snip ]

    As the empirical case for mass immigration has become less plausible, 
its advocates have increasingly switched to emphasizing their moral 
superiority: they don't look out for the general welfare of their fellow 
citizens, so that makes them *better* than their fellow citizens.

    [ snip ]

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