ZGram - 11/12/2001 - "...but is it good for the Jews" - Part II

[Ingrid Rimland]

Copyright (c) 2001 - Ingrid A. Rimland

ZGram - Where Truth is Destiny

November 13, 2001

Good Morning from the Zundelsite:

I continue with Stephen Steinlight's essay, Part II< wherein he is pulling
back from rampant immigration policies - almost entirely instigated and
promulgated in the first place and to America's detriment by his
yarmulke-wearing tribal brethren.

In this part of his essay, he begs us to - guess what?!

[START]

   Abandoning the Field to Nativism and Xenophobia

   Not far down the list of awful consequences, our unspoken acquiescence
leaves the anti-determinist camp, with some notable   exceptions (such as
the thoughtful and moderate Center for Immigration Studies), largely in the
hands of classic   anti-immigrant, xenophobic, and racist nativist forces.
The white "Christian" supremacists who have historically opposed either
all immigration or all non-European immigration (Europeans being defined as
Nordic or Anglo-Saxon), a position re-asserted   by Peter Brimelow, must
not be permitted to play a prominent role in the debate over the way
America responds to   unprecedented demographic change. Nor should the
anti-immigrant demagoguery of some black leadership be permitted to go
unchallenged. To allow this opens the door to inter-ethnic conflict and a
potential white ethnic (and black) backlash of   unimaginable proportions,
including a potentially large, violent component, especially if the economy
continues to sour,   joblessness rises sharply, and anti-immigrant
attitudes harden.

   In good conscience and out of self-interest we must not abandon
immigration reform to those who would have kept our   forebears out of
America, including those sent away to be annihilated in the Holocaust. But
our failure to adjust policy to   radically changed and changing realities,
our continued failure to distinguish refugee policy from immigration
policy, and our   continued support (at least on paper) of anachronistic
and irrelevant positions cedes them center stage and a wide opportunity
to do great mischief. We must be willing to revise our positions and
re-enter and reinvigorate the debate.

   We need to rescue it from the influence of those who understand America
not in terms of its abstract constitutional principles,   not as embodied
in the Bill of Rights, but rather in some Buchananite version of blut un
boden. It was recently reported in   the Tennessean that Buchanan's Reform
Party has, unsurprisingly enough, made all-out anti-immigration a central
plank of   its platform, calling for a 10-year moratorium on all
immigration. It must be admitted that this attitude clearly resonates with
a   majority of Americans. Every time representative samples of Americans
are presented this option on opinion surveys of all   sorts they support
it, though usually it is couched in the context of a five-year moratorium.
We are not advocating surrender to   the thoughtless mob, but we are
advocating the design of policy closer to where the American people
actually are with regard to   the issue, at the same time that we morally
educate them to extend the parameters of their sense of community. Here is
a good   role for the church.

   Equally, and more politically awkward for many Jews, we must save the
pro-immigration argument from its own most extreme   and uncritical
proponents. Especially from those who see unchecked illegal immigration
from Mexico (in the 1990s the source   of one-third of all immigration to
the United States and fully 50 percent of illegal immigration) as a
brilliant strategy in an   undeclared, low-intensity, and thus far
remarkably successful war of Reconquista. With over 8 percent of Mexico's
population already here, and who knows what additional percentage on the
way, the notion of a de facto Reconquista,   especially in the Southwest
where the Mexican share of immigration is astronomical, sounds less and
less like nativist   hyperbole.

   It should be added that immigration from the rest of Central and South
America and the Caribbean accounts for an additional   23 percent, for a
total Hispanic/Caribbean share of 1990s immigration of about 55 percent.

   Posing the Sphinx Questions

   What are some of those large vexing questions we would prefer not to
speak aloud? Let's throw out a few and see how many   sleepers we can
awaken. The big one for starters: is the emerging new multicultural
American nation good for the Jews? Will a   country in which enormous
demographic and cultural change, fueled by unceasing large-scale
non-European immigration,   remain one in which Jewish life will continue
to flourish as nowhere else in the history of the Diaspora? In an America
in   which people of color form the plurality, as has already happened in
California, most with little or no historical experience with   or
knowledge of Jews, will Jewish sensitivities continue to enjoy
extraordinarily high levels of deference and will Jewish   interests
continue to receive special protection? Does it matter that the majority
non-European immigrants have no historical   experience of the Holocaust or
knowledge of the persecution of Jews over the ages and see Jews only as the
most privileged   and powerful of white Americans? Is it important that
Latinos, who know us almost entirely as employers for the menial   low-wage
cash services they perform for us (such a blowing the leaves from our lawns
in Beverly Hills or doing our laundry in   Short Hills), will soon form one
quarter of the nation's population? Does it matter that most Latino
immigrants have   encountered Jews in their formative years principally or
only as Christ killers in the context of a religious education in which
the changed teachings of Vatican II penetrated barely or not at all? Does
it matter that the politics of ethnic succession -   colorblind, I
recognize - has already resulted in the loss of key Jewish legislators (the
brilliant Stephen Solarz of Brooklyn   was one of the first of these) and
that once Jewish "safe seats" in Congress now are held by Latino
representatives?

   Far more potentially perilous, does it matter to Jews - and for American
support for Israel when the Jewish State arguably   faces existential peril
- that Islam is the fastest growing religion in the United States? That
undoubtedly at some point in the   next 20 years Muslims will outnumber
Jews, and that Muslims with an "Islamic agenda" are growing active
politically through   a widespread network of national organizations? That
this is occurring at a time when the religion of Islam is being supplanted
in many of the Islamic immigrant sending countries by the totalitarian
ideology of Islamism of which vehement anti-Semitism   and anti-Zionism
form central tenets? Will our status suffer when the Judeo-Christian
cultural construct yields, first, to a   Judeo-Christian-Muslim one, and
then to an even more expansive sense of national religious identity?

   It must be added that reliable data on the precise number of Muslims
currently living in the United States is extremely difficult   to come by.
For reasons that appear simultaneously self-evident and self-serving,
spokespersons from the organized Muslim   community regularly cite the
figure of six million Muslims. The number is chosen because it constitutes
both a form of   demographic riposte to the hated figure of the six million
Jewish victims of Nazism that Muslims believe confers vast moral   and
political advantages on Jews and, secondly, it allows Muslims to claim they
have already achieved numerical parity with   American Jews. But many
demographers and public opinion survey specialists find this figure
specious, and place the number   far lower. Lower estimates range from
three and a half million to as few as two and a half million, with the bulk
of the Muslim   population being African-American converts to Islam, not
immigrant Muslims. We will not chose among these radically   differing
figures, but only point out that even the lower estimates suggest that
given high Muslim immigration Combined with   low Jewish fertility and high
levels of intermarriage, the rising Muslim population already represents a
serious threat to the   interests of the American Jewish community, and the
danger will only increase with time.

   Does it matter that in a period of unprecedented immigration combined
with modern technology (e-mails, phones, and fax) and   cheap airfare
reinforcing the link between immigrant communities and their homelands in
ways inconceivable to previous   generations of immigrants, little or
nothing is being done in a conscious way to respond? That little or nothing
is being actively   undertaken to foster loyalty to the United States or a
thoughtful adhesion to American values?

   Perhaps most important of all, will American constitutional principles
and the culture of democratic pluralism - correctly   understood by the
organized Jewish community as the chief historic bulwarks protecting
America's Jews - weather the ethnic   and racial reshuffling and continue
to guide the nation and maintain its social cohesion?

   The current answers to these earthshaking questions are a profound and
resounding "maybe," and an equally penetrating and   reassuring "Who
knows?" We can no longer persist in constructing our policy on sheer
ignorance, groundless optimism,   upbeat mantras, and sentimental and
largely mythological accounts of the acculturation of previous generations
of Americans.

   These questions would be of enormous consequence at any given historical
moment, but how much more than at present when   the American Jewish
community is arguably enjoying the high noon of its political power and
influence, a high noon inevitably   followed by a slow western decline.
While other ethnic/religious groups grow by leaps and bounds, Jewish
fertility is flat, its   growth rate zero, and we continue to decrease both
in absolute numbers and as a percentage of the general population. We have
a rapidly aging population; rates of intermarriage that run to nearly 50
percent; no effective strategies to harvest intermarried; a   religious
tradition that eschews the seeking of converts; and triumphant large-scale,
full-throttle assimilation into the American   cultural landscape is
vitiating whatever remains of our separate sense of identity.

   Surveys also indicate that younger secular Jews are less and less
enamored of or identify with Israel, and that Jewish affiliation   with
Jewish institutions, including synagogues and religious schools, continues
to decline steadily. For many, even   gastronomic Judaism is only a memory
(sushi, burritos, and curry overwhelm deli). The Jewish content in the
lives of most   U.S. Jews consists of cheaply exploitative cinematic
treatments of the Holocaust, gaudy, lavish and meaningless bar and bat
mitzvahs that resemble sweet-16 parties, and television sitcoms in which
ostensibly "Jewish" characters are universalized as if   they were in
witness protection programs.

   There is undeniably something of a renaissance among the growing Modern
Orthodox community, especially young adults   (and, yes, Jewish history has
often worked through the "remnant of Israel"), but it is statistically
insignificant in terms of the   American Jewish future broadly considered.
An intensification of Jewish religious identity and observance among an
active but   small subset does not offset the overall trend, especially
within a community that according to every public opinion survey is   the
least "religious" in the United States. There is also no telling whether
this spiritual renewal - which also affects other   branches of Judaism and
is part of a general religious revival across the spectrum in America -
will prove to be enduring or   ephemeral. Religious revivals in America
frequently turn into short-lived fads. In his brilliant novel American
Pastoral,   Philip Roth plots the trajectory of Jewish acculturation
through the transformation of Jewish male names over the generations:   Sid
fathered Stephen who fathered Sean. Roth forgot the next stage, however; a
fair number named Sean have sons named   Shlomo, but it is not so clear
what Shlomo, son of Sean, will name his kaddish.

   Facing Up to the Gradual Demise of Jewish Political Power

Not that it is the case that our disproportionate political power (pound
for pound the greatest of any ethnic/cultural group   in America) will
erode all at once, or even quickly.  We will be able to hang on to it for
perhaps a decade or two longer.   Unless and until the triumph of campaign
finance reform is complete, an extremely unlikely scenario, the great
material   wealth of the Jewish community will continue to give it
significant advantages. We will continue to court and be courted by   key
figures in Congress.  That power is exerted within the political system
from the local to national levels through soft   money, and especially the
provision of out-of-state funds to candidates sympathetic to Israel, a high
wall of church/state   separation, and social liberalism combined with
selective conservatism on criminal justice and welfare issues.

   Jewish voter participation also remains legendary; it is among the
highest in the nation. Incredible as it sounds, in the recent
presidential election more Jews voted in Los Angeles than Latinos. But
should the naturalization of resident aliens begin to   move more quickly
in the next few years, a virtual certainty - and it should - then it is
only a matter of time before the   electoral power of Latinos, as well as
that of others, overwhelms us.

   All of this notwithstanding, in the short term, a number of factors will
continue to play into our hands, even amid the   unprecedented wave of
continuous immigration. The very scale of the current immigration and its
great diversity paradoxically   constitutes at least a temporary political
asset. While we remain comparatively coherent as a voting bloc, the new
mostly   non-European immigrants are fractured into a great many distinct,
often competing groups, many with no love for each other.   This is also
true of the many new immigrants from rival sides in the ongoing Balkan
wars, as it is for the growing south Asian   population from India,
Pakistan, and Bangladesh. They have miles and miles to go before they
overcome historical hatreds, put   aside current enmities and forgive
recent enormities, especially Pakistani brutality in the nascent
Bangladesh. Queens is no   melting pot!

   Currently struggling to find a foothold in America, to learn English and
to master an advanced technological and pluralistic   culture that is
largely alien to them, they are predictably preoccupied with issues of
simple economic survival at the low end of   the spectrum. In terms of
public affairs, they are, at most, presently competing for neighborhood
political dominance,   government subsidies, and local municipal services.

   Moreover, the widespread poverty of a high percentage of recent
immigrants, an especially strong characteristic of by far the   largest
group, Mexican Americans, also makes bread and butter issues a far greater
priority than a multifaceted public affairs   agenda into the foreseeable
future. No small consideration, it also arguably makes them a greater drain
on the economy than a   benefit, a subject of unending dispute between
advocates of large-scale immigration and reduced immigration.

   While the Mexicans in particular have huge numbers on their side - we
sometimes forget that the U.S.-Mexican border is the   longest in the world
between a first-world and a third-world country - they have little in the
way of the economic resources to   give them commensurate political clout.
And communal wealth formation will be a long time in coming, considering
that most   Mexican immigrants are peasant class. Also, compared to
previous generations of European immigrants, they have been slow   to
naturalize, largely because so many have illegal status, thus effectively
barring themselves from becoming a force in electoral   politics. But the
sleeping giant will surely awaken, and the sort of amnesty contemplated by
the Bush administration will make   that happen all the sooner. And it is a
giant. Advance Census data indicate that upwards of 8 percent of Mexico's
population   already resides in the United States, and the growth of that
community shows no sign of abating; the opposite is true. It is   simply
astounding to contemplate the recent historical rise in Mexican
immigration. In 1970, there were fewer than 800,000   Mexican immigrants;
30 years later the number is approaching 9 million, a 10-fold increase in
one generation.

   For perhaps another generation, an optimistic forecast, the Jewish
community is thus in a position where it will be able to divide   and
conquer and enter into selective coalitions that support our agendas. But
the day will surely come when an effective   Asian-American alliance will
actually bring Chinese Americans, Japanese Americans, Koreans, Vietnamese,
and the rest closer   together. And the enormously complex and as yet
significantly divided Latinos will also eventually achieve a more effective
political federation. The fact is that the term "Asian American" has only
recently come into common parlance among younger   Asians (it is still
rejected by older folks), while "Latinos" or "Hispanics" often do not think
of themselves as part of a   multinational ethnic bloc but primarily as
Mexicans, Cubans, or Puerto Ricans.

   Even with these caveats, an era of astoundingly disproportionate Jewish
legislative representation may already have peaked. It   is unlikely we
will ever see many more U.S. Senates with 10 Jewish members. And although
had Al Gore been allowed by the   Supreme Court to assume office, a Jew
would have been one heartbeat away from the presidency, it may be we'll
never get that   close again. With the changes in view, how long do we
actually believe that nearly 80 percent of the entire foreign aid budget of
the United States will go to Israel?

   It is also true that Jewish economic influence and power are
disproportionately concentrated in Hollywood, television, and in   the news
industry, theoretically a boon in terms of the formation of favorable
public images of Jews and sensitizing the   American people to issues of
concern to Jews. But ethnic dominance in an industry does not by itself
mean that these centers   of opinion and attitude formation in the national
culture are sources of Jewish political power. They are not noticeably
"Jewish"   in the sense of advancing a Jewish agenda, Jewish communal
interests, or the cause of Israel. And television, the Jewish   industry
par excellence, with its shallow values, grotesque materialism, celebration
of violence, utter superficiality,   anti-intellectualism, and
sexploitation certainly does not advance anything that might be confused
with Jewish values. It is   probably true, however, that the situation
would be worse in terms of the treatment of Jewish themes and issues in the
media   without this presence.

[END]

Tomorrow:  "Supporting Immigration by Reducing Its Scale"

=====

Thought for the Day:

"The hidden joker in the deck is the huge recession in the economy.
Jingoism only takes you so far."

(Letter to the Zundelsite)