August 29, 2019

MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey

American Muslims and the Assault on Western Culture

[NOTE: Nearly two years ago I published an essay in The Remnant on American Muslims and what I termed the “assault on Western Culture.” While the essential outlines of that piece remain, I believe, valid, given the prominence these days of Representatives Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, I have gone back and reworked and added to that essay. And I offer it today. BDC]

I find it fascinating to watch the praxis of our progressivist multiculturalist establishment when it comes to Islam. You would think that those politically-correct elites would be, at the very least, offended by the tenets of the Muslim religion, if not wary of how orthodox Muslims and Muslim authorities have conducted themselves across the globe in recent years. But their insistent response to Islamism and Islamic violence has been, almost uniformly, to declare that “Islam is a religion of peace,” and that such manifestations as ISIS and Al-Qaeda in Syria and North Africa, or the Taliban in Afghanistan are aberrations which don’t represent the true doctrines of that faith.

Undoubtedly, there are some Muslims who do fall into that category of peace-loving, but they are certainly less obedient to the strict tenets of their faith than many of their co-religionists. After all, like Christianity, Islam is divided and subdivided into sects and branches. But orthodox Islam, if its tenets in the Qu’ran are to be taken seriously, is a religion that must advance, must spread its message, and must convert the “infidels,” or, barring that, suppress them, or at least suppress various modes of behavior inconsistent with Muslim dominance in any society that it controls (e.g., the Palestinian Authority recently banned LGBT activities in the West Bank at the same time that progressivist Representative Rashida Tlaib was seeking entry to that territory).

Since the days of Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt and Ahmed Sekou Toure’ in Guinea, there has been a Marxist interest, even fascination, with anti-colonial, Afro-Asian and largely Islamic “liberation” movements—and the possibility of utilizing or co-opting them. Indeed, since the Bandung Conference (1955) and throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Moscow made attempts to associate its Communist doctrines with anti-Western liberation. In particular, socialist-inspired economic “dirgisme,” or state control of the economy, was pressed throughout the “Third World.”

But, while the interests of Moscow were directed mainly at securing allies and continuing the cold war struggle against the West and at establishing authoritarian states and controlled economies allied with the Soviet brand of Communism, a second generation of post-Communist Marxists—the cultural Marxists—understood and emphasized much more the essentially racial and cultural importance of the struggle. While not neglecting economic questions, cultural Marxists possessed a near religious and universalist zeal which targeted specifically white European-American Christian civilization and history. Race became an underlying and central factor used by cultural Marxism.

As earlier Marxist revolutionaries such as West Indian-African Frantz Fanon (in his benchmark work of anti-colonialist ideology, The Wretched of the Earth, 1961) preached sixty years ago, the latest phase of Marxist warfare against the “West”—the extension of Marxist theory—is a cultural war of revolution largely by non-white populations against the “oppression by the historic colonial powers.”  And these “powers” are composed of white European and American Christians who have a long history of persecuting minorities, enslaving them, and depriving them of equality and their “rights.” Fanon’s theorization and the widespread cultural and educational legacy of other significant Marxist thinkers, including the influential Frankfort School, Michel Foucault and Saul Alinsky, have had an incredibly profound influence not only in American academia, but also in the media and in Hollywood, and in shaping and limiting the parameters of the political dynamic and outlines of political conversation in both America and in Western Europe.

No matter their origin or their views, as American Muslims are a non-white, non-European minority in a majority white, majority Christian country of majority European-descended citizens, they are immediately associated with other “oppressed” ethnic and religious peoples, specifically American blacks and, especially, illegal Hispanic immigrants. Thus, they are positioned and encouraged to assault the “camp of the saints,” to use novelist Jean Raspail’s famous dystopian terminology— thus, they become part of the new “Elect,” whose role it is to assist in overthrowing the dominant Christian Europeans, and displacing them. In effect, despite the blatant terror and violence that the more consistent and faithful of their number commit, they can do no wrong, they are exempt from most of the withering criticism directed at the so-called “white nationalists,” or “white supremacists,” those “racists” and “bigots” who would seek to preserve the historic society in which they live, the historic Western Christian civilization they have inherited.

Since the election of Donald Trump in 2016, the Mainstream Media have reported on various instances of “violence and hatred” directed at peaceful American Muslims. Each occasion is relayed excitedly by television and the Internet as just one more example of white/European/Christian/far-right/fascist/Neo-Nazi/and so on, bigotry and prejudice which must be extirpated and cleansed from the nation. Then, as light follows night, come the voluble expressions and desires for “peace and love and brotherhood and dialogue”—of course, on bases and on a template pre-determined by the advocates of ideological multiculturalism and cultural Marxism.

Although spread about recklessly by such ideological manufacturers of “hate” as the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), many of these accusations turn out to be fabricated or exaggerated. Nevertheless, they serve a purpose: once uttered and broadcast in tones of horror and disgust by the Mainstream Media, they are seldom corrected or modified when proven wrong. But they continue and bolster the narrative of a massive campaign by hateful “white nationalists” and “far rightists” who ignorantly and maliciously are “coming after” those poor, downtrodden examples of peace and believers in equality and brotherhood. A 2017 TV ad in the Virginia gubernatorial campaign sponsored by a group named Latino Victory exemplified this view: a white bearded man, driving a pick-up truck, flying a Confederate Battle Flag and sporting a “Don’t Tread On Me!” bumper sticker, is seen chasing down poor Hispanic children, who shout with terror in their voices: “Run for your lives!” Just another example of the longstanding narrative expressed by Frantz Fanon and a hallmark of the cultural Marxist assault on the historic West.

Down in North Carolina back in the Fall of 2017 there was a widely-reported incident of “hatred” directed at Muslim Americans, or, rather, at a Muslim American running for an at-large seat on the Raleigh City council. The election was Tuesday, October 10, 2017 and Pakistani-born Muslim woman Zainab Baloch was the candidate. As reported by both print and broadcast media, on Friday, October 6—four days prior to the election—she claimed that vandals spray-painted one of her election signs with the words: “Sand Nigger,” followed by a swastika, and then “Trump.” Since then for the four days leading up to the election, on every news cast and continually via the web and print media, Baloch and her supporters were interviewed, a local artist painted a new sign for her, and the candidate was granted ample time on-air to explain in lugubrious terms how this event had been “hurtful and traumatizing.” Her campaign quickly released a widely-publicized statement declaring: “Nobody should feel persecuted for their race, religion, beliefs, or gender identity. We must open a dialogue and discuss how we can do better as a city in protecting our marginalized communities.”

Can anyone envisage the same thing happening if this had—supposedly--occurred to a conservative Baptist or traditional Catholic candidate for city office?

This whole episode was extremely suspicious. The timing just four days prior to an election to which most people were paying no attention, the specific wording used to express the “hate” message, and resultant coverage, didn’t ring true. At the very least it should have triggered suspicions and doubts among local media; but it didn’t, and, in fact, it was met with deeply furrowed brows and anguished words of concern, plus the accustomed condemnation of “hate speech” and bigotry expressed against Muslims and other non-whites.

There may be a handful of rightist nut cases around who are capable of such actions—juxtaposing “Trump” and the swastika—but those numbers would be thankfully minuscule. Nevertheless, to link Donald Trump with the Nazis and Hitler has become increasingly a standard ideological narrative among many Trump and Deplorables haters. Did we not just see a major NBC commentator, national defense expert Frank Figliuzzi, using bizarre numerology, attempt to tie the president into Nazi symbolism, a claim that that should have been scornfully rejected by any rational person as absurd, certainly as broadcast by a major television network,  but was absorbed with rapt seriousness by far too many viewers.?

The question should be asked: How many Deplorables, or for that matter, how many convinced “Nazis” would even remotely think about conjoining such words and with a swastika? On the other hand, if I were a Leftist multiculturalist wanting to paint a picture of my supposed opponents—all those millions of perceived white supremacists and enemies over on the far right—how better to do so than by such an example that links Nazis and Donald Trump?

Did a real far rightist actually scrawl that message on Baloch’s political sign? Or, was this just an election stunt engineered to gain free publicity and potential sympathy just before an election where a candidate’s name—amongst seven running for an at-large seat—had hitherto gained almost no notice?

The incident didn’t pass the smell test. And, now, almost two years after the purported “hate crime,” no one has ever been arrested or charged for the alleged act.

In the end, whether real or just a stunt, the voters in Raleigh back in 2017 rejected Baloch, and she came in near the bottom of the candidates running for the at large seat.  But, in 2019 she is running again, and this time for mayor of North Carolina’s capital city. Social justice warriors just don’t fad away: their fanaticism is unending and unrelenting.

But beyond the Baloch case or the current controversies surrounding Muslim American Congressmen Omar and Tlaib, there lies another question, and a question that such luminaries who publicly and proudly proclaim their Islamic faith must, if they are honest, eventually address: in their belief systems which is the stronger—their faith in Islam or their commitment to cultural Marxism?

As noted Syrian-born Jesuit scholar, Fr. Henri Boulad—whose scholarly examination of Islam should be digested by all American political leaders—has stated: “Islam is an open-ended declaration of war against non-Muslims.” Our cultural Marxists may think they are using it to destroy the West (which they are), but they should remember what happened to the 100,000 Soviet troops once stationed in Afghanistan, or, even more, the massacres of hundreds of thousands of Indonesian Communists decades ago by Muslim insurgents…Muhammed will never cede his place to Marx or Trotsky

August 27, 2019

MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey

Israel and the United States: Will We Go to War for Bibi?

Friends,

Most Americans believe that Iran under the mullahs is not our friend; indeed, our two countries have had a hostile relationship since the fall of the Shah back in 1979. We have been at varying degrees of political loggerheads with the leaders of that nation since then. For our foreign policy establishment, dominated for decades by military-oriented Neoconservative Hawks, Iran has become not just a threat to what are perceived to be American interests in the Middle East, but a kind of bete noire, that one special enemy we can, it seems, blame for everything that goes on wrong in that part of the world.

No one denies the enmity between Iran and the United States; it exists on many levels, it is ingrained in forty years of often rancorous history, it stretches into Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, and the Persian Gulf. Yet, since the fall of the Soviet Union (as a major political “chess player”) and the fact now that the United States is actually self-sufficient in oil production, indeed, an exporter of oil, the strategic interests of this country in that part of the world have considerably narrowed.

It is stated with some assurance that “Iran is the world’s largest purveyor and source of Islamic terrorism”; but that statement deserves careful examination. Is that really accurate? The terrorists of 9/11 came almost to a man from Saudi Arabia. And much of ISIS-style terrorism is non-Iranian in origin.

Of course, Iran is deeply involved in the Middle East, and certainly there in direct competition with and opposition to its chief rival Saudi Arabia. Both nations have critical and conflicting interests in the Arabian Peninsula and in Syria.

Of course, there is Israel, and Israel considers Iran its major opponent in the region—Iranian-supported Hezbollah forces in Lebanon and support for extreme factions among the Palestinians present a threat to the Israeli state. So, the government of Bibi Netanyahu legitimately strikes back at what it considers any threat emitting from Iran or its agents and subalterns in areas that surround the Jewish state.

But the question then is one that many American political leaders either studiously avoid or do not wish to ask: do the interests of the Israeli state, that is, of the government of Prime Minister Netanyahu always necessarily coincide with the best interests of the United States. The answers that always occur in response are: “Israel is America’s oldest and closest ally in the Middle East,” and “Israel is a representative democracy which shares the same values as America,” or, lastly, for many Evangelicals and some Christians, “Israel is a country of the People of the Book—the Old Testament, the elder brothers of us Christians. We thus are bound to them.”

Certainly, there is a grain of truth in each of these responses; but the essential question remains: must the actions and decisions of the State of Israel always be seen as those that America should support, including militarily? Do the decisions of an Israeli prime minister and his government necessarily implicate and demand assent from the American government? Is the United States bound to accede to and go along with each and every foreign policy gambit initiated by Israel?

Throughout history a often-fatal danger in foreign affairs has been the “blank check” promise: Thus, whether the German Kaiser implying that the Austrian High Command had German backing in dealing with Serbia, or the Brits assuring the Polish government that should it engage in conflict, England would be right there in war, as well, the “blank check” concept frequently brings unforeseen and disastrous consequences to those powers that tie themselves, subinfeudate their interests and decisions to the decisions of other powers.

Obviously, between the United States and Israel there are strong bonds of amity and familial commonality that unite us, just as there are bonds with Great Britain, the Mother Country of our country. But just as in our nuclear families, the actions of one member do not or should not always demand the acquiescence or support of the other members. And certainly when we are dealing with foreign policy decisions and actions by an ephemeral government composed of politicians….

As usual Patrick J. Buchanan sums up in a short column and few words this issue and question of immense complexity, and does it such that folks can understand….

Will Bibi's War Become America's War?

https://buchanan.org/blog/will-bibis-war-become-americas-war-137442

By Patrick J. Buchanan  Tuesday - August 27, 2019

Why is Netanyahu now admitting to Israel's role in the strikes in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq? Why has he begun threatening Iran itself and even the Houthi rebels in Yemen?

President Donald Trump, who canceled a missile strike on Iran, after the shoot-down of a U.S. Predator drone, to avoid killing Iranians, may not want a U.S. war with Iran. But the same cannot be said of Bibi Netanyahu.

Saturday, Israel launched a night attack on a village south of Damascus to abort what Israel claims was a plot by Iran's Revolutionary Guards' Quds Force to fly "killer drones" into Israel, an act of war. Sunday, two Israeli drones crashed outside the media offices of Hezbollah in Beirut. Israel then attacked a base camp of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command in north Lebanon.

Monday, Israel admitted to a strike on Iranian-backed militias of the Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq. And Israel does not deny responsibility for last month's attacks on munitions dumps and bases of pro-Iran militias in Iraq.

Israel has also confirmed that, during Syria's civil war, it conducted hundreds of strikes against pro-Iranian militias and ammunition depots to prevent the transfer of missiles to Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Understandably, Israel's weekend actions have brought threats of retaliation. Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah has warned of vengeance for the death of his people in the Syria strike. Quds Force General Qassem Soleimani reportedly tweeted from Tehran, "These insane operations will be the last struggles of the Zionist regime." Lebanese President Michel Aoun called the alleged Israeli drone attack on Beirut a "declaration of war."

Last Friday, in the 71st week of the "Great March of Return" protests on Gaza's border, 50 Palestinians were wounded by Israeli live fire. In 16 months, 200 have died from gunshots, with thousands wounded.

America's reaction to Israel's weekend attacks? Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called Netanyahu to assure him of U.S. support of Israel's actions. Some Iraqi leaders are now calling for the expulsion of Americans.

Why is Netanyahu now admitting to Israel's role in the strikes in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq? Why has he begun threatening Iran itself and even the Houthi rebels in Yemen? Because this longest-serving prime minister in Israeli history, having surpassed David Ben-Gurion, is in the battle of his life, with elections just three weeks off. And if Netanyahu falls short — or fails to put together a coalition after winning, as he failed earlier this year — his career would be over, and he could be facing prosecution for corruption.

Netanyahu has a compelling motive for widening the war against Israel's main enemy, its allies and its proxies and taking credit for military strikes.

But America has a stake in what Israel is doing as well. We are not simply observers. For if Hezbollah retaliates against Israel or Iranian-backed militias in Syria retaliate against Israel — or against us for enabling Israel — a new war could erupt, and there would be a clamor for deeper American intervention.

Yet, Americans have no desire for a new war, which could cost Trump the presidency, as the war in Iraq cost the Republican Party the Congress in 2006 and the White House in 2008.

The United States has taken pains to avoid a military clash with Iran for compelling reasons. With only 5,000 troops left in Iraq, U.S. forces are massively outmanned by an estimated 150,000 fighters of the pro-Iran Popular Mobilization Forces, which played a critical role in preventing ISIS from reaching Baghdad during the days of the caliphate.

And, for good reason, the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln, with its crew of 5,600, which Trump sent to deter Iran, has yet to enter the Strait of Hormuz or the Persian Gulf but remains in the Arabian Sea off the coast of Oman, and, at times, some 600 nautical miles away from Iran.

Why is this mighty warship keeping its distance?  We don't want a confrontation in the Gulf, and, as ex-Admiral James Stavridis, former NATO Supreme Allied Commander, says:

"Anytime a carrier moves close to shore, and especially into confined waters, the danger to the ship goes up significantly. ... It becomes vulnerable to diesel submarines, shore-launched cruise missiles and swarming attacks by small boats armed with missiles."

Which is a pretty good description of the coastal defenses and naval forces of Iran.

Netanyahu's widening of Israel's war with Iran and its proxies into Lebanon and Iraq — and perhaps beyond — and his acknowledgement of that wider war raise questions for both of us.

Israel today has on and near her borders hostile populations in Gaza, Syria, Lebanon, Iran and Iraq. Tens of millions of Muslims see her as an enemy to be expelled from the region. While there is a cold peace with Egypt and Jordan, the Saudis and Gulf Arabs are temporary allies as long as the foe is Iran.

Is this pervasive enmity sustainable?

As for America, have we ceded to Netanyahu something no nation should ever cede to another, even an ally: the right to take our country into a war of their choosing but not of ours?

August 25, 2019

MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey

Walter Williams on Racial Discrimination – Cutting through the Maze of Disinformation

Friends,

I pass on today, with little comment, a recently published piece by Dr. Walter Williams, Professor of Economics at George Mason University. Professor Williams is black. In few words he punctures some of the “sacred cows” and standard narrative which dominate thinking on “racial discrimination.” The information and statistical data Professor Williams offers fly in the face of the race hustlers and, yes, much of the Establishment “conservative movement” who buy into the idea that the problems of black America are the result of “the legacy of slavery.”

Perhaps only a black scholar or a woman academic like Dr. Heather MacDonald, uttering these truths, could escape being driven from the University in our day and time? Certainly a white male saying or writing them would be shouted down, shamed, doxxed and hounded by the raving pseudo-intellectuals and post-Marxist mob who dominate the Academy and the media these days.

Obviously, Professor Williams’ short analysis is not an exhaustive examination; there is far more that needs to be explored and written if realistic approaches to these questions be addressed. Unfortunately, far too Americans—especially our educators and political class—are thoroughly invested with a stubborn resistance to such investigation and the very uncomfortable results that might be produced….

How Important Is Today's Racial Discrimination?

https://www.cnsnews.com/commentary/walter-e-williams/walter-williams-how-important-todays-racial-discrimination

By Walter E. Williams | August 14, 2019 | 8:58 AM EDT

There is discrimination of all sorts, and that includes racial discrimination. Thus, it's somewhat foolhardy to debate the existence of racial discrimination yesteryear or today. From a policy point of view, a far more useful question to ask is: How much of the plight of many blacks can be explained by current racial discrimination? Let's examine some of today's most devastating problems of many black people with an eye toward addressing discrimination of the past and present.

At the root of most of the problems black people face is the breakdown of the family structure. Slightly over 70 percent of black children are raised in female-headed households. According to statistics about fatherless homes, 90 percent of homeless and runaway children are from fatherless homes; 71 percent of pregnant teenagers lack a father figure; 63percent of youth suicides are from fatherless homes; 71 percent of high school dropouts come from fatherless homes; and 70 percent of juveniles in state-operated institutions have no father. Furthermore, fatherless boys and girls are twice as likely to drop out of high school and twice as likely to end up in jail.

One might say, "Williams, one cannot ignore the legacy of slavery and the gross racism and denial of civil rights in yesteryear!" Let's look at whether black fatherless homes are a result of a "legacy of slavery" and racial discrimination. In the late 1800s, depending on the city, 70percent to 80 percent of black households were two-parent. Dr. Thomas Sowell has argued, "The black family, which had survived centuries of slavery and discrimination, began rapidly disintegrating in the liberal welfare state that subsidized unwed pregnancy and changed welfare from an emergency rescue to a way of life."

As late as 1950, only 18 percent of black households were single parent. From 1890 to 1940, a slightly higher percentage of black adults had married than white adults. In 1938, black illegitimacy was about 11 percent instead of today's 75 percent. In 1925, 85 percent of black households in New York City were two-parent. Today, the black family is a mere shadow of its past.

Let's ask a couple of questions about crime and education and racial discrimination. It turns out that each year more than 7,000 blacks are victims of homicide. That's slightly over 50 percent of U.S. homicide victims. Ninety-four percent of the time, the perpetrator is another black person. Along with being most of the nation's homicide victims, blacks are most of the victims of violent personal crimes such as assault and robbery. At many predominantly black schools, chaos is the order of the day. There is a high rate of assaults on students and teachers. Youngsters who are hostile to the educational process are permitted to make education impossible for those who are prepared to learn. As a result, overall black educational achievement is a disaster.

Here are my questions to those who blame racial discrimination for the problems of black people: Is it necessary for us to await some kind of moral rejuvenation among white people before measures can be taken to end or at least reduce the kind of behavior that spells socioeconomic disaster in so many black communities? Is it a requirement that we await moral rejuvenation among white people before we stop permitting some black youngsters from making education impossible for other black youngsters? Blacks were not the only people discriminated against in America. While Jews and Asians were not enslaved, they encountered gross discrimination. Nonetheless, neither Jews nor Asians felt that they had to await the end of discrimination before they took measures to gain upward mobility.

Intellectuals and political hustlers who blame the plight of so many blacks on poverty, racial discrimination and the "legacy of slavery" are complicit in the socioeconomic and moral decay. Black people must ignore the liberal agenda that suggests that we must await government money before measures can be taken to improve the tragic living conditions in so many of our urban communities. Black and white intellectuals and politicians suggesting that black people await government solutions wouldn't begin to live in the same high-crime, dangerous communities and send their children to the dangerous schools that so many black children attend.

Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University.

August 23, 2019

MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey

BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP and the Future of America

Friends,

Kamala Harris is very angry with Donald Trump.

With her usual condescension and scorn, she tweeted out on Thursday, August 22, that Donald Trump should go read the 14^th Amendment—the implication being that when the president brought up, once again, the possibility that he might issue an Executive Order regulating birthright citizenship, he was woefully misreading the application of that Reconstruction amendment.

Of course, for a supercilious Leftist elitist like Harris, Trump will forever be that ignorant, brash, illiterate, racist New Yorker who is just way out of his league. It doesn’t really make any difference that he graduated with a B.S. in Economics from the prestigious Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. You see, he doesn’t have all the fineries and veneer of the self-proclaimed East Coast-West Coast Brahmin Elites who have controlled this country, its economy, its foreign policy, and its government for more than a century. Despite the fact that he has—in my view—given in far too often to those same Elites, nevertheless, they will only accept 100% obedience and compliance. Upsetting the apple cart, thwarting the advance of globalism in the slightest will get you—the Russia Hoax, the White Nationalist/Racist Hoax, the Gun Control Hoax, endless investigations and multiple mini-impeachment efforts, plus the extreme and active (even violent) hostility of almost all the media, academia, Hollywood, and the political class.

You can’t get off the Deep State reservation, even a hare, and expect any mercy.

So, when once again the president declared that his administration was looking into ending “birthright citizenship” through a presidential Executive Order—something he had suggested back in October of 2018—all hell broke loose, and the officious and ideologically crazed Harris jumped like a famished black snake on a defenseless toad. Once again it was the Trump template of “full blown racism,” “appeals to white supremacy,” “undermining and attacking our democracy,” and, of course, since Trump is an illegitimate president, an interloper—then almost any type of resistance is permissible.

What such an Executive Order would do is clarify the application of the 14^th Amendment and, essentially, end birthright citizenship for children of illegal aliens who come across the US border and then produce offspring who, then, as if by magic become American citizens.

Recall that the amendment was enacted after the War Between the States to guarantee the rights of citizenship to manumitted slaves and their offspring. And, indeed, there is a serious legal question about whether the amendment itself was ever legally and legitimately ratified. But be that as it may, it has applied ever since 1868.

Here is how Section 1 of the 14^th Amendment reads:

Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Harris and other open border zealots always quote the first section: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States…are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” But the leave out, either by mistake or by direction: “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof.”

It’s a key phrase, critical to understanding what the authors of the amendment intended and what for nearly 100 years was settled law up until the 1960s when leftist lawmakers got into the act simply by de facto practical applications. In other words, between the very clear and forthright intention of its authors that the 14^th Amendment only applied to slaves and their offspring born in the United States who are necessarily “subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” and the imposed practice we now have which enables a foreign woman to illegally slip across the Rio Grande and have a child who then, by that simple act, becomes a citizen and an “anchor baby,” permitting its illegal relations to all come across—between these two interpretations and applications there is an absolute irreconcilable difference.

The key figures in drafting the amendment at the time were clear: Senator Lyman Trumbull, pivotal in the drafting the 14th Amendment, declared “subject to the jurisdiction” meant subject to “complete” jurisdiction of the United States, and “[n]ot owing allegiance to anybody else.” Senator Jacob Howard of Michigan, responsible for the critical language of the jurisdiction clause, stated that it meant “a full and complete jurisdiction,” that is, “the same jurisdiction in extent and quality as applies to every citizen of the United States now.” In other words, a non-citizen simply by giving birth on this side geographically of the Rio Grande does not produce a new citizen of the United States.

Presented with this history, those defending the current practice, including Judge Andrew Napolitano on Fox, appeal, like Harris, to constitutional practice and to the courts.

But, actually, the Supreme Court has spoken on this question, at least indirectly.

In 1884, sixteen years after the 14th Amendment was ratified, John Elk, an American Indian, went to court to argue that he was an American citizen due to his birth in the United States. In Elk v. Wilkins, 112 U.S. 94, the Supreme Court ruled that the 14th Amendment did not grant Indians citizenship. As Ann Coulter cites that decision:

[The] “main object of the opening sentence of the Fourteenth Amendment was to settle the question, upon which there had been a difference of opinion throughout the country and in this court, as to the citizenship of free negroes and to put it beyond doubt that all persons, white or black … should be citizens of the United States and of the state in which they reside.”

And she adds: “American Indians were not made citizens until 1924. Lo those 56 years after the ratification of the 14th Amendment, Indians were not American citizens, despite the considered opinion of Judge Napolitano.”

Ending birthright citizenship, based on a false and specious reading of the 14^th Amendment, is an idea whose time has come, in fact, is far overdue. At the very least, an Executive Order would force the courts, including the Supreme Court, to take a serious look at the historic abuse of our immigration system and the definition of American citizenship. 

Let us hope that this time—nearly a year since he raised it—President Trump will follow through on his consideration: birthright citizenship has been and is an Achilles’ Heel in American immigration policy. Ending it would be a major step in securing our border and preserving the integrity of our culture.

**************

I believe I passed on to you last year the following legal essay by Professor of Law, John Eastman. It is a succinct but thorough restatement of the points made in my commentary:

Revoking birthright citizenship would enforce the Constitution

https://nypost.com/2018/10/30/revoking-birthright-citizenship-would-enforce-the-constitution/

By John Eastman

October 30, 2018 | 6:55pm | Updated

President Trump’s comments are not even set to air until this weekend, but already they have created a firestorm of commentary, most of it ill-informed.

It is not “within the president’s power to change birthright citizenship,” claimed Lynden Melmed, former chief counsel to the US Citizenship and Immigration Services, echoing the views of many in the legal academy. Birthright citizenship is mandated by the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, and therefore can only be “changed” by constitutional amendment, not by mere executive order or act of Congress, or so the argument goes.

That view depends on reading the 14th Amendment as actually mandating automatic citizenship for anyone and everyone born on US soil, no matter the circumstances. Temporary visitors, such as tourists, students and guest workers, can unilaterally confer citizenship on their children merely by giving birth while here, is the claim.

That view has given rise to the cottage industry known as “birth tourism.” Worse, under this view, citizenship is automatic even if the parents overstay their visas and become illegally present in the United States. Worse still, such citizenship is automatic for children born of parents who were never lawfully present in the United States in the first place.

In a nation such as the United States, which is rooted in the idea that governments are formed based on the consent of the governed, the notion that foreign nationals can unilaterally confer citizenship on their children as the result of illegal entry to the United States (and therefore entirely without our consent) is a bit bizarre.

It rewards lawlessness, undermining the rule of law. It deprives Congress of its constitutional authority to determine naturalization power.

And it essentially destroys the notion of sovereignty itself, since a “people” are not able to define what constitutes them as a “people” entitled, as the Declaration of Independence asserts, to “the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them.”

That the 14th Amendment settled the question without ever explicitly addressing it is even more bizarre.

The actual language of the 14th Amendment actually contains two requirements for automatic citizenship, not just one. “All persons born or naturalized in the United States” — that’s the birth-on-US- soil part — “and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” It is that second requirement, “subject to the jurisdiction,” that is the source of much confusion today, because to our modern ear, that just means subject to our laws.

That is one meaning, of course, but not the only one, and not the one that the drafters of the 14th Amendment had in mind. For them, being merely subject to our laws meant that one was subject to our “partial” or “territorial” jurisdiction. It was a jurisdiction applicable to “temporary sojourners” — what we today call temporary visitors. It was not the kind of jurisdiction that was codified in the 14th Amendment. For that, a more complete, allegiance-owing jurisdiction was required.

We don’t need to speculate about this, as the authors of the 14th Amendment were asked directly what they meant (albeit not in the context of illegal immigration, since there were no restrictions on immigration at the time). When asked whether Native Americans would automatically be citizens under the clause, Sen. Lyman Trumbull, a key figure in the drafting and adoption of the 14th Amendment, responded that “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States meant subject to its “complete” jurisdiction, “[n]ot owing allegiance to anybody else.”

And Sen. Jacob Howard, who introduced the language of the jurisdiction clause on the floor of the Senate, contended that it should be construed to mean “a full and complete jurisdiction,” “the same jurisdiction in extent and quality as applies to every citizen of the United States now.” And the “now” that he was referencing was the 1866 Civil Rights Act, which provided that “All persons born in the United States, and not subject to any foreign power, excluding Indians not taxed, are hereby declared to be citizens of the United States.”

So President Trump is not proposing to “amend” the Constitution by executive order. He is proposing to faithfully enforce the Constitution as written, not how it has erroneously come to be interpreted in the last half century. It’s long overdue.

John Eastman is a constitutional law professor at Chapman University

August 22, 2019

MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey

Is Political Separation in Our Future?

Friends,

Back on August 5 in the MY CORNER series I authored a piece on nationalism, immigration and secession.  Subsequently, I rewrote that essay and it has appeared on The Abbeville Institute Web page, and is titled, “Is Political Separation in Our Future?”(August 19); it is a different essay from my Abbeville piece published on August 2 [“Is It Time for America to Break Apart?”]. So, today, I pass on below what is an essentially new essay as an installment in this ongoing series.

Also, my edited essay, “The Shootings, the Stats, and the Violent War against the Deplorables,” which was published by The Unz Review on August 13 (and passed on here August 16) now also appears at LewRockwell.com (August 19). Here is the link for the LewRockwell edition of that essay: https://www.lewrockwell.com/2019/08/no_author/the-shootings-the-stats-and-the-violent-war-against-the-deplorables/

The Abbeville Institute essay delves into some provocative topics that I believe should be discussed, rationally and intelligently. Here it is:

ABBEVILLE INSTITUTE

Is Political Separation in Our Future?

https://www.abbevilleinstitute.org/blog/is-political-separation-in-our-future/

By Boyd Cathey on Aug 19, 2019

In a recent column, “Nationalism vs. Secession: Should America Break Up? (July 27), I included references to an essay I had published at THE UNZ REVIEW (July 26), and then which was picked up nationally by a number of other Web magazines, including LewRockwell (July 29) and The Abbeville Institute (August 2).

For that essay “Nationalism vs. Secession,” I added a new introduction in which I briefly discussed a recent “National Conservatism Conference” held in Washington DC on July 14-15, and I mentioned that evidence exists that its organizers (e.g., Yoram Hazony, David Brog, etc.) had as their purpose to attempt to “corral” and in some way assert control over the increasingly restless American nationalist and populist elements (and they are not necessarily the same). In a sense those “dissident” elements had been awakened and given new life by the election of Donald Trump who was not by definition an Establishment Conservative, that is, not a card carrying member of what some writers call “Conservatism Inc.”

I quoted some fascinating pieces on this effort at control, in particular essays by Dr. Paul Gottfried and journalist Christopher DeGroot (editor of The Agonist). In Christopher DeGroot’s essay he mentions that even though conference organizer David Brog announced at the outset that the conference would NOT consider anything concerning ethnicity—this topic was off limits to the “conservatives” gathered there—at least one intrepid conference speaker in her remarks, Dr. Amy Wax, Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania, transgressed the taboo. And the reason is quite obvious: how can anyone discuss what is going on in America today…how can there be any talk of nationalism or so-called “national identity”…how can we hope to comprehend the rise of populism…how is it possible to understand the ideological narrative of the lunatic progressivist social justice warriors who completely dominate one political party and scare the hell out of the other…without examining the huge pink elephant in the room, the very difficult topic of  how mass immigration and disparate ethnicity fit into these discussions?

Professor Wax’s presentation was met by the academic and media establishment with horror and charges that she was—of course—a racist. But the facts speak for themselves. In her presentation she focused exclusively and significantly on ethnicity from a strictly cultural perspective, that is, what the unlimited infusion of essentially “unmixable” Third World immigrants is doing to what is left of traditional American culture, and the effects it is having on our historic institutions.

Certainly, the effects of ethnicity must be considered because the simple fact is how ethnic diversity and homogeneity are viewed and treated determines in many ways how our society responds and, critically, how it exists as a culture and a polity. Historical examples abound, and historical efforts to meet multi-ethnic situations can provide a valuable roadmap.

Here we can cite several notable historical examples. There is, of course, the Roman Empire and its diverse system of subinfeudated kingdoms and satrapies. Then, of course, there is the British Empire and how it existed and, for a couple of centuries, thrived; or the multi-lingual and multi-national Austro-Hungarian Empire: just several examples.

And in these cases, there were certain “keys,” certain essentials that basically kept those imperial states more or less in unity or confederation.

In the more recent British and Habsburg cases there were revered monarchs whose influence and nearly sacral positions went well beyond ethnicity and local nationality. Those monarchs symbolized the authority which united in very special ways all the different peoples of the divergent states under their rule. A Hungarian might differ ethnically from a Bosnian and speak a completely different language, for instance, but both could revere the emperor in Vienna and the dynasty which reached back to the early Middle Ages as a symbol of continuity, history, and a quasi-religious and civilizational mission.

Then, both the Brits and Habsburg understood—in some cases, had to learn the hard way—that regionalism, local control, and autarky were essential if the empire was to stay together. Thus, the functioning British Raj in India and the series of “sub-monarchies” and states under the British crown. Thus, the Habsburg understanding in 1867 that Hungary must have its own local and national authority, but, of course, under the old Kaiser (as King/Konig, of Hungary), Franz Josef.  And Franz Josef’s heir, the Archduke Franz Ferdinand wanted to extend that regional autonomy and self-government under the Kaiser to Slavic regions of the empire as well. Indeed, that was one of the precise reasons he was assassinated in June 1914 by a Serb ultra-nationalist—to keep him from following through on that program (which might well have prevented the break-up of the Austro-Hungarian Empire).

Interestingly, as a kind of an illustration of this: the famous Czech composer Bedrich Smetana (1824-1884), whose popular “Ma Vlast” (“My Country”) symphonic poems and opera The Bartered Bride are world famous, was a fervent supporter of what could be called “Czech nationalism.” In a real sense he was the founder of modern Czech classical music. Yet, in 1853 he composed his “Triumphal Symphony” which combines the Habsburg national anthem, “Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser” in a moving final musical apotheosis—celebrating the young Habsburg monarch in Vienna, with a hope expressed in music that the empire would recognize the regionalist and popular aspirations of the Czech peoples under the German Habsburg dynasty…perhaps like what later occurred with the Hungarians.

All of this is to say, in summary, that countries with divergent populations, with differing ethnicities and historical backgrounds and traditions may only successfully exist with a modicum of liberty if those differences are fully taken into account and acknowledged publicly and in law constitutionally…and if those differences do not reach a breaking point where conversation, respect, commonality, and adherence to certain central principles cease to exist.

What the Establishment Conservative movement fails to understand is that the creaky old American “nation,” certainly since the defeat of the forces of Constitutionalism and States’ Rights on the battlefield in 1865, has become what the authors, the Kennedy brothers (Donald and Ronald), call the “Yankee Empire,” an administrative super-state where a concentrated and largely-untouchable and unelected managerial bureaucracy and political and academic class, essentially suppresses us as virtual retainers and enslaved subjects.

The Achilles’ Heel and undoing of this Yankee—American—Empire is what Dr. Wax notices with alarm: its open door welcome to continuing waves of non-assimilable immigrants, enthusiastically supported by open borders groups (progressivists in league with corporate business types). And with this uncontrolled influx of immigrants there has come a concomitant unhinged ideological multiculturalism, enforced by a frenzied and rigid political correctness in both law and practice…and not just for the new immigrants, but for native citizens, as well.

For the open borders template is only part of a vision of America as a kind of “global nation” in which there is no nationality save “citizenship in the world” and in which regional character and historical traditions, ethnicity, religious belief and heritage, and shared common experience are all rigidly subsumed and, in effect, abolished in the name of an amorphous concept of “humanity,” to be guided by progressivist ideologies of race and gender, and zealous opposition to heritage and historic identity.

Our constitutional, states’ rights traditions and our regionalist heritage have been a bulwark historically against the power of such administrative aggrandizement. Those advancing the globalist program understand that for their template to triumph, that constitutionalism, our traditions, and our regionalism must be suppressed, and “population replacement” through mass immigration is a major constituent of this long-range strategy.

This globalism, let it be said, is not so much the opposite of American nationalism (which it attempts to harness and divert through such efforts as the “National Conservatism Conference”), as it is the inverse of genuine and rooted American populism and historic regionalism which have never been completely extirpated, despite the best efforts of the administrative state.

Especially since the election of Donald Trump in 2016, the globalist program has run into serious roadblocks. Not only have unregulated immigration and millions of essentially indigestible immigrants become a major issue and concern to millions of American citizens, but severe ideological and cultural differences among native citizens have come sharply into focus, reminiscent of the radical differences just prior to the outbreak of the War Between the States in 1861. And with this there is also a nascent rebirth of regionalism and separatism (as witness the growth of such movements as Calexit in California).

Despite the continuing frenetic attempts from the top, from the central state, to control and suppress such tendencies, what actually appears to be happening is, practically speaking, a de facto centrifugal “break up” of the American Empire into divided belief structures and uncommunicating divisions which are very probably not reparable. And often these extreme divisions are not just regional, but intra-state and city-versus-rural. In effect the genie is out of the lamp, and Humpty-Dumpty has fallen and shattered into a thousand pieces, and most likely very little can be done to put those pieces back into an American whole.

The Progressivists recognize this, and, in a way, it explains their relentless and frenetic efforts to suppress any and all opposition to their plans and ideological template, including de-legitimating any discordant voices, enacting new “civil rights” and gun laws, and now Internet censorship. In other words, the suppression and subjugation of one part of America by another part, with no limitations on methods, all to control a nation that in fact appears to be breaking up.

This is something that lurks as an underlying cautionary note in Professor Wax’s address. No: she does not advocate secession or separation, at least not yet. But her well-thought-out observations and commentary offer a dire warning: our present policies of immigration and domestic favoritism of radically and culturally discordant Third World populations are pointedly against our native population which is largely white, but also includes native blacks who have been here since colonial times.

As a part of the swirling maelstrom and rapidly devolving, unbridgeable divisions already present in our society, this may well lead to a situation where at least one of the three potential scenarios I have written about earlier may occur:

Either a continuation of the present course, with one group—most likely the post-Marxist Progressivists—basically subjugating any opposition, and the disappearance of America as we have known it into some globalist state where our remaining liberties will have disappeared.

Or, there will be some climatic event, perhaps a mammoth depression or war, and a collapse followed most probably by a fierce dictatorship: political order abhors a vacuum.

Or, finally, and despite our hesitation to imagine it: a kind of separation or secession (such as now in California and elsewhere), including such actions as state interposition or nullification. Indeed, steps in this direction are already occurring with states and cities basically ignoring the Federal government on sanctuary city status. Of course, in such an eventuality most likely large population exchanges would occur.

Dr. Wax in her remarks is attempting to raise (as Thomas Jefferson once wrote about the Missouri Compromise) “a fire bell in the night.” Our national policies that favor Third World immigration and an open door are destructive of what is left of the country’s unity. And, given the already stark divergences among our citizenry, she adds, it may already be too late….And, then, what is left? Chaos, dictatorship, or separation?

Looking at America in 2019 that is the question that should be raised. The American Empire has not had the good sense of the Habsburgs or the Brits; rather after 1865 it commenced upon a journey of active empire-building, continuing to destroy the already gravely-wounded and impaired rights of the states and the citizens of those states. Our government elites erected what my late mentor (and founder of the Old Conservative movement) Dr. Russell Kirk called the “Pax Americana.”

And now, with many decades of academic post-Marxist revolutionary indoctrination in our schools and our colleges, and the perversion of our cultural environment, and the sovietization of our media, those future “factions” that James Madison warned about in The Federalist have emerged with a terrible ire and desire for vengeance, and an irreducible nature that forces us to consider what will happen and how we should prepare for it.

Are secession and separation in this country’s future?

About Boyd Cathey

Boyd D. Cathey holds a doctorate in European history from the Catholic University of Navarra, Pamplona, Spain, where he was a Richard Weaver Fellow, and an MA in intellectual history from the University of Virginia (as a Jefferson Fellow). He was assistant to conservative author and philosopher the late Russell Kirk. In more recent years he served as State Registrar of the North Carolina Division of Archives and History. He has published in French, Spanish, and English, on historical subjects as well as classical music and opera. He is active in the Sons of Confederate Veterans and various historical, archival, and genealogical organizations.