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Who's the Bigot, Mr. Brown?

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Post by TexasBlue Tue May 04, 2010 8:08 pm

Who's the Bigot, Mr. Brown?

Pat Buchanan
Tuesday, May 04, 2010


Gordon Brown may have torpedoed his last chance to be prime minister in his own right when, in the privacy of his limo, he called 66-year-old Gillian Duffy that "bigoted woman."

What had widow Duffy done to deserve the slur?

After taking the Labor Party leader to task for several minutes, Mrs. Duffy raised the immigration issue -- "These Eastern Europeans, where are they all flocking from?"

Brown responded that a million East Europeans had entered Britain, but a million Britons had emigrated to the continent.

The exchange over, Duffy was pleased with having been televised with the prime minister and said she would vote for Brown. Until, that is, she was told that Brown, overheard on a microphone he was wearing but forgot about, called her that "bigoted woman."

The shock on Mrs. Duffy's face showed genuine pain.

That the episode was disastrous for Brown even he agrees. But it raises a larger question. Who is the real bigot here?

Assume Duffy is upset that millions of East Europeans strangers and Third World peoples have moved into her country and neighborhood, and she wishes she had back the Britain she grew up in.

Is that bigotry? And, if so, why?

In his last year as prime minister, Winston Churchill, concerned that an influx from the Caribbean would turn Britain into what he called a "magpie society," identified immigration as "the most important subject facing this country" and, according to Harold Macmillan, wanted the Tories to adopt a policy and slogan of "Keep Britain White!"

If this makes Churchill and Mrs. Duffy bigots, are the Japanese all bigots because they refuse to allow immigration? Countries all over the world restrict or forbid the kind of mass immigration we and Europe have embraced.

Does the desire of a people to preserve its unique and separate ethnic identity and cultural character, de facto, constitute bigotry?

Are the Israelis bigots because Bibi Netanyahu demands that in any peace agreement with Palestinians it be stipulated that Israel shall forever remain a Jewish nation? Are the Muslim Uighurs and Tibetans bigots because they want to end the migration of Han Chinese into their homelands, secede from China and set up ethnonational states of their own: East Turkestan and Tibet?

If "Africa for the Africans" was a wonderful slogan in the 1950s, why is "Britain for the Britons" a bigoted idea today?

During the 1976 campaign, Jimmy Carter said in Philadelphia he respected the "ethnic purity" of the neighborhoods and would not use federal power to alter their character.

Carter was saying that organic communities created by people of a separate ethnic heritage and cultural character -- the Little Italys, Polish neighborhoods, Chinatowns -- should be respected and left alone.

At the beginning of Black History Month 2009, Attorney General Eric Holder, in his "Nation of Cowards" address, said: "(O)utside the workplace, the situation is even more bleak in that there is almost no significant interaction between (black and white). On Saturdays and Sundays, America ... does not, in some ways, differ significantly from the country that existed some 50 years ago."

America, Holder went on, "is more prosperous, more positively race conscious and yet is voluntarily socially segregated."

Did not Holder have a point?

Washington, D.C., where John McCain got 6.5 percent of the vote, is the most liberal precinct in the Electoral College. No Republican presidential candidate has ever gotten 20 percent of the vote.

Yet D.C. remains largely self-segregated. Hardly any white children can be found in D.C. public schools. As one conservative wrote sardonically, when it comes to the spouses they choose, the schools their kids attend, the neighborhoods they live in and the churches they go to, the white liberal elite pretty much replicates the social patterns of the Ku Klux Klan.

Of Brown's insult of Mrs. Duffy, Alex Salmond, leader of the Scottish National Party, said we got a "window into the character of the prime minister."

More precisely, we got a window into the mindset of Brown. Just as we got a window into the mindset of Barack Obama when he said, in that closed meeting in San Francisco, about working-class whites in Pennsylvania, whom the world has supposedly passed by:

"So it's not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

Brown's statement, and Obama's, reflect a prejudice, a prejudgment against those who resist and reject the multiethnic, multicultural world they embrace as progressive and seek to bring about.

Of Mrs. Duffy it may be said: You may not like what she thinks, but she says what she thinks.

As for those who think her a bigot, most lack the courage of their convictions. Brown revealed that by running away from and apologizing for saying what he thinks.
TexasBlue
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Post by The_Amber_Spyglass Wed May 05, 2010 4:30 am

She was absolutely right to be concerned about immigration, especially at a time of economic downturn when people who have born here cannot get jobs. That is not racist.

I've said before and I'll say it again: Gordon Brown demonstrated his contempt even for lifelong Labour voters by saying that. You can't argue with 2.5m unemployed including executives and a sobering level of graduates.
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Post by TexasBlue Wed May 05, 2010 11:01 am

You should see what Ed Koch, a Democrat and former mayor of New York City, had to say about it. Wait! I'll post it below this reply. Make sure you look at the numbers he puts out, too.
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Post by TexasBlue Wed May 05, 2010 11:05 am

Call Them What They Are: Illegal Aliens

Ed Koch
Real Clear Politics
May 5, 2010


The push is on for providing amnesty to the estimated 12 to 20 million illegal aliens in this country. The supporters of this effort include President Barack Obama, former president George W. Bush, Senator John McCain, Majority Leader Harry Reid and New York Senator Chuck Schumer. Senator Schumer is now chairman of the immigration subcommittee previously chaired by the late Senator Ted Kennedy, a major amnesty proponent.

Amnesty supporters see themselves as taking the high road and claim that amnesty opponents are opposed to immigration, when nothing could be further from the truth. Many amnesty opponents actually support expanding legal immigration. Currently, the U.S. has the highest legal immigration in the world. Every year, we allow 750,000 immigrants to enter the country legally and make them eligible for citizenship within five years. Two hundred and fifty thousand aslyees are also permitted to enter annually. Those legal immigrants have the right to work and earn a living; the asylees are eligible to work six months after applying to work. If we need more immigrants, as many think we do to expand the workforce of our graying population, then we can easily increase the number of legal immigrants.

If we give the current illegals amnesty, you can be sure that 20 or so years from now, there will be a clamor for another amnesty bill as the illegals will continue to pour in. For example, the Simpson-Mazzoli bill, adopted by Congress in 1986, was hailed as the last amnesty bill we would need because the borders of the U.S., then a sieve, would be better protected. However, our borders continued to be porous, and the number of illegals burgeoned, and here we are again with the illegals and their supporters seeking amnesty once more for ever larger numbers.

No country in the world has open borders that foreigners can enter at will, certainly not Mexico. Arizona has an estimated 500,000 illegal aliens living in the state and in 2009, the border patrol agents arrested 241,000 illegal aliens, which is why that state enacted controversial legislation out of frustration. Arizona's citizens are outraged by the presence of many criminals among the people crossing their border - remember there is an ongoing drug war in Mexico with thousands of Mexicans being killed and wounded south of the border by other Mexicans. Arizona does not want that war to spill over into Arizona. Arizona citizens are also distressed with the demands made by illegals upon medical and educational services.

Regrettably, the Arizona legislation went too far, allowing local police to ask individuals "reasonably suspected" to be illegal immigrants for identifying papers. This conjures up images of Nazis engaging in Jew catching in Germany. On the other hand, it would be sound and defensible policy to have the local police examine at the workplace the identity papers of all employees to ascertain whether they are legally allowed to work and, most important, ascertain if employers had intentionally violated current U.S. laws requiring employers to check the immigration status of hired workers. Those employers who intentionally violate the law should be pursued criminally and, if convicted, go to prison. Regrettably, this is not what is happening. If that policy were strictly enforced, illegal aliens would go home, since they are here primarily to get a job and send money home to their families. Recently, I saw an estimate that a million illegals had returned home because of our recession and unemployment in the U.S. which is now at 9.7 percent.

Amnesty supporters refuse to use the term illegal aliens, preferring instead undocumented aliens. They should call them what they are: illegal. Amnesty proponents also should acknowledge that an open border policy is indefensible and irrational and has not been adopted by any other country.

If open borders were such a good idea, why don't we try on a limited scale simply expanding the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) among Mexico, Canada and the U.S. and allow anyone living in those three countries access to jobs in any of them? Would Canada consent to that? Would Mexico? I doubt it.

A week ago, Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Great Britain had to apologize to a woman voter for referring to her as "bigoted" when she voiced her objections to millions of Europeans in the European Union lawfully flooding into Great Britain and taking jobs. I don't know whether she is bigoted in her attitude toward other Europeans, but she doesn't have to be a bigot to object to the English having to compete for jobs and services such as healthcare and education with immigrants from other countries.

Mark McKinnon, who was a senior adviser to John McCain and President George W. Bush, was quoted in The New York Times of April 28th, as stating, "Immigration is the most explosive issue I've seen in my political career." According to The Times, Mr. McKinnon "...also supported giving illegal immigrants a path to citizenship." But, in his view, "an election year is the worst time to move good public policy on this issue."

During the Bush presidency, amnesty proponents were twice defeated when they tried to shove their self-defined "good policy" down the throats of the voters. Amnesty advocates believed, as they do now, that they know what is best for us, but the American public stood up and said "no." In an election year, the voters can throw the bums out, and that is why Congress fears to bring the issue up before the November elections.

I predict the Schumer legislation supported by President Obama and a whole host of prominent public officials and the media will fail. I also believe it is outrageous to threaten understandably frustrated, but misguided, Arizona with boycotts because we disagree with the protective procedures it has adopted. Let's leave the legality of those procedures to the courts. We are one country and should not be boycotting one another. Persuasion should be our tool of choice, not punishment.

Ed Koch is the former Mayor of New York City
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