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Sensing disaster after last night’s debacle, Jon Podhoretz suddenly starts talking sweet and cuddly:

The immigration debate is a very heated and passionate one, and the heat and passion on the part of those on the restrictionist side have been useful tools for pushing the conversation in your direction. But there’s a difference between heated disagreement and the insistence on lock-step uniformity. Suddenly, immigration restriction has become one of those issues about which one is not permitted to disagree, because to disagree is to join with the forces of Evil….

We are moving into very dangerous territory here — territory in which it has been declared that there is to be no debate, no discussion, and no heterodoxy any longer. This is how political-intellectual movements become diseased and sclerotic. This is how they die.

I’d argue that they die when they become hollowed-out shells of what they used to be, when they substitute pragmatism for principle, say black when they mean white and become indistinguishable from their nominal opposition. What Podhoretz is describing is a symptom, not a cause.

HB actually bothers to read before writing:

I think you may have mischaracterised some of the complaints that have been made about you. The real problem is, that if you advocate using Nazi methods, then people will make certain assumptions about you, namely that you are a Nazi. I’ve taken the trouble to actually read what you have written, and it is evidently not the case that you are an authoritarian, but even I was pretty surprised to see you suggest such, well, authoritarian measures. How accurate were the Nazis in their deportations?

Actually, I find that this is almost never the case. What assumption is made about one who advocates equal rights for all citizens, a generous provision for old age, the confiscation without compensation of land for communal purposes and the education of specially gifted children of poor parents, whatever their class or occupation, at the expense of the State?

I openly oppose all four policies. All four policies are explicitly National Socialist positions held by many Americans. Conclusion: many Americans are Nazi bastards!

I don’t support mass deportations because I believe they are unnecessary, given other measures that will provide sufficient incentive for illegals to deport themselves. Granting additional funding to state and local agencies on a per-illegal-identified basis for each illegal deported would likely suffice by itself. If each school teacher, nurse, social services or police officer received $500 per illegal reported and deported, we’d probably run out before Christmas*. And we probably wouldn’t spend $500 million, since 10 illegals leave for every one deported.

I am opposed to mass deportation, a border fence or a national ID card. However, I recognize that all three are completely possible and would work to end illegal immigration, unlike our president with the forked tongue. I simply believe that they would come at too high a price.

*Of course, human nature being what it is, it’s also likely that as soon as illegals are hard to come by, police officers would start turning in homeless Americans bribed to swear that they just arrived from Peru.

Mitchel Ahern, on the hand, didn’t so much bother:

Congratulations on being yet another Christian Nazi asshole. Fuck you and all your bullethead friends.

I do so enjoy watching men demonstrate their purity by the fervor of the condemnations. Shades of the Two-Minute Hate, ironically enough. America is still at war with Nazi Germany. America has always been at war with Nazi Germany.

Derb sums up Dear Jorge’s speech:

Total blather, and insincere and dishonest to boot. Tried to give impression the govt. has been struggling with the issue for years. In fact they have done next to nothing. Elaborate schemes for new kinds of immigration categories (there are a dozen or more already!) and employee-verification schemes, when we all know the federal govt. couldn’t find its rear end with both hands. Complete gas. Nothing will come of this.

Well, nothing except Democratic victories in 2006 and 2008. Not exactly massive votes of confidence from many former Three Monkey Republicans here at National Review. As David Frum pointed out, this may be one of the few presidential speeches that result in lower poll ratings.

According to the Good Fraters, even Hugh Hewitt’s Three Monkey heart is breaking.

It’s a shame that so soon after facing down the wrath of Canada, Captain Ed elects to align himself with the illiterate Left:

Unfortunately, while Bush underwhelmed the conservative movement on immigration tonight, certain conservatives busied themselves by embarrassing us much more than Bush could ever have. Vox Day, whose provocative writing I normally enjoy, has lost all sense of perspective in his latest effort at World Net Daily. He suggests that we learn a lesson from the Nazis in dealing with illegal immigrants in our midst:

So, there are no lessons to be learned from the National Socialists? Better disown our nuclear weapons program and NASA! Some of those combined arms military tactics look pretty suspicious too…. Considering how today’s Republicans have joined forces with the Democrats in enacting significant portions of the National Socialist domestic program, including a National ID card (tamper-proof!), the good Captain’s outrage is quite amusing.

George Bush could have asked for no better example why massive deportations are a political dead letter.

“I was especially disappointed that the president again pushed the canard that some want to round up all illegal aliens. There is not a single elected official in Washington proposing that.” – Congressman JD Hayworth on National Review Online

One has to marvel at the Captain’s statement here since it’s quite clearly President Bush that is the political dead letter. Mass deportations – which the literate grasped I neither favor nor believe necessary – poll better than Dear Jorge or his many amnesties.

Vox likes to take controversial positions, but this is just reprehensible. The Germans “rid” themselves of six million Jews by annihilating them through industrialized mass murder. In fact, a great many of them weren’t German at all and never spoke German or were assimilated into German society. A great deal of them were Poles, Russians, French, and so on, an inconvenient fact that renders his point moot. And how exactly did the Germans accomplish this feat that Vox finds so exemplary? They transformed Europe into a racist police state from the Pyrenees to the Caucasus.

How, precisely, is it reprehensible? Perhaps the Captain would care to instruct us on the proper use and misuse of historical German references.

Anyhow, Ed misses the forest for the sake of criticizing a tree – inaccurately. First, the fact that most of the Jews killed in the Holocaust weren’t German is precisely the reason that I said “many” Jews. Many |= Most. Second, does he wish to argue that Polish, Russian, French, Hungarian, Dutch and Italian Jews weren’t integrated into those societies and didn’t speak the language of their country of residence? Part of the shock and horror of the Shoah was the way in which people turned on their neighbors and acquaintances. Yes, there were also Jewish ghettos, to be sure, but perhaps my fellow Minnesotan is familiar with the term “barrio”….

Third, the National Socialists did not have to transform Europe into a racist police state to accomplish their murderous means, in fact, Vichy sent 12,884 Jews to the camps without being occupied, and in the case of more than four thousand children, without even being asked. The police state apparatus was often not required for the racial round-up, Europeans being Europeans, it was usually enough to post a letter telling everyone where to show up at the appointed time. With a few famous exceptions, such as in the case of the Warsaw Ghetto, there was little violence.

“Vichy eagerly participated in the Holocaust, for example with the July 16, 1942 rafle du Vel’d’Hiv, in which 12 884 Jews were arrested, inclduing 4 051 children which the German authorities had not asked for. They were anyway all sent to Drancy transit camp.”

And lest the Captain forget, he’s presumably the one who supports the War on Terror the Patriot Act, as well as the War on Drugs and its concomitant no-knock raids, property seizures, masked police, accidental killings and so forth, not me. Modern America doesn’t exactly boast an absence of police state trappings these days and I’m not among those who favor them.

Can we presume that Vox wants to offer that advice? Should Congress take up the Nuremberg Laws this session? This column is so ill-advised that it is difficult to imagine that a responsible news organization would not have attempted to keep the writer from discrediting himself before publishing it. Vox owes us an apology, and so does World Net Daily.

The Captain disingenously pretends that I have not given my advice already. Don’t build a fence. No National ID, tamper-proof or otherwise. Announce instant deportation of every illegal when arrested or otherwise found interacting with state or local authorities. Fine employers who employ illegals and offer bounties to workers who report violations to their local sheriff. Ban all social services to illegals. Encourage the Minutemen to patrol private property and support them instead of reporting their whereabouts to the Mexican authorities.

This will work, because 10 illegals will run south for every one caught and deported. This multiplier effect has already been documented in the deportation of Arab illegals after 9/11.

The ludicrous accusations of my desire to round up and deport illegals, much less massacre them, serve very well to demonstrate how many bloggers leap at the chance to indulge in hysterics and moral preening. They demand an apology? They’ll receive nothing but well-deserved contempt.

Post an Apology might soon find himself in an Austrian jail:

Who SHOULD BE Sorry Now?

This idiot, Vox Day, a Christian liberaterian (whatever that is). And all of us should be verrrry careful as the immigration rhetoric gets really scary. Are you proud to be in a country that has columnists citing the ability of the Germans to “get rid of” 6 million Jews as evidence that mass deportation works? OMG.

So, is he saying that mass deportation doesn’t work? Or is he saying that the Holocaust never happened?(!) Doggone it, where did I put that Anti-Defamation League hotline number, I know I have it around here someplace….

Meanwhile, RP means well, but isn’t exactly likely to get what he’s looking for.

I did understand your point that a removal of illegals is possible, but the use of the Holocaust as an example for how it could be done distracts extremely from the point that you were trying to make. Perhaps a better example would have been the annual removal of four million innocent children from their homes to the government schools.

I realize that you probably meant well and am very sure that you are not endorsing another Shoah. Please, for the sake of your own reputation and that of WorldNetDaily, issue an apology that admits that you were foolish to bring up the Holocaust in this case for the simple reason that, well, when you bring up the Holocaust, you have just brought up the Holocaust–and that whatever the grammar of your sentence would lead a robot reader to conclude, you have just connected illegal immigrants with Auschwitz, and for that you apologize.

For the Nth time, I could not care less what illiterates and cretins such as the sort popping up today think about me or anything else. I suspect WND is similarly indifferent. The idea that anyone should apologize for the mere mention of the Holocaust is absurd. I mean, even those Jews who were previously so quick to get their panties in a bunch over my postulating that perhaps medieval anti-semitism was not merely the result of chance took no umbrage over today’s column, presumably because they are capable of reading at a functional level.

The point is simple. President Bush states that something is not possible. There is a very well-known historical example which proves otherwise. Whether one is sexually stimulated by that historical example or enjoys moral preening by condemning it more often and more loudly than his neighbor, it does not change the fact that Dear Jorge is completely wrong.

And, since it seems to have flown right over many moronic heads, I shall belabor the point of today’s column. The reason I am against a border fence is because I oppose strong central governments and the obvious temptation such a fence would present to a strong central government of the sort that is now gestating in America.

I’ve never been terribly optimistic about the Left’s ability to read, as most of their political positions tend to indicate that they haven’t done very much, at least not with regards to history and economics.

But apparently today’s column gave numerous double-digit IQs the vapors, as they were unable to ascertain that the IDENTIFICATION, FORCED TRANSPORTATION and MURDER of six million Jews in four years by the National Socialists proves that President Bush was absolutely incorrect – and presumably lying – when he stated that IDENTIFYING and FORCIBLY TRANSPORTING twelve million illegal aliens was not possible.

Quite clearly, it is. As for those who find all mention of the National Socialists or the Holocaust inherently beyond the pale, I am certainly open to hearing any suggestions that similarly prove the case. Has anyone else besides the National Socialists been identifying and transporting millions of people lately? Does anyone else put the lie to Dear Jorge? And if not, do we simply pretend that it never happened and that there are no lessons to be learned from it? Wasn’t the whole point of the Shoah documentaries and the survivor recordings and the Holocaust museums to make sure that no one ever forgot?

Mike writes from AMERIblog:

Too bad you weren’t born in an earlier era, Vox. You’d have done so well in Hitler’s Gestapo.

Yes, I don’t even want the government to build a fence because they’ll surely use it for evil purposes. Quite clearly I’m a big fan of strong central authority.

Jairo writes from Colombia:

Only an ignorant Christian fanatic would cite the Nazi final solution when discussing immigration. Good job redneck.

I don’t think you should be wasting your time commenting on matters beyond your ken when you could be better occupied harvesting coca, Jairo.

JK doesn’t seem to have thought things through:

Did you seriously just compare deporting illegal immigrants from the US to what the Nazis did to the Jews in the 1930’s and 40’s?!?! That was NOT deporting; it was more akin to, say… killing. The Nazis KILLED 6 million Jews, they didn’t deport them. You, sir, are an idiot with no knowledge of history and an extremely limited undertstanding of the role immigrants currently play in this country.

Actually, I compared it to what the National Socialists did between December 1941 and June 1945. Perhaps you’ve never heard of concentration camps – really death camps – such as Dachau and Auschwitz. Before they killed the Jews, the National Socialists had to identify them and transport them. The point, as seems to have escaped you and many other morons, is that it is quite clearly possible to enact deportations on the scale required.

There’s not exactly a shortage of quasi-illiterates at Fark, unsurprisingly. Here’s a pair of examples:

Look at the picture and read the article 10 – 1 this guy was wearing his hitler youth boots while he wrote it… wow… just wow

All this article’s missing is praise for Mussolini’s ability to make the trains run on time.

My favorite, however, is this gem:

Your statements in this article are morally reprehensible. I cannot believe you made this claim:

“If it took the Germans less than four years to rid themselves of 6 million Jews, many of whom spoke German and were fully integrated into German society, it couldn’t possibly take more than eight years to deport 12 million illegal aliens, many of whom don’t speak English and are not integrated into American society.”

What kind of sicko proposes torture, gassing and genocide of illegal aliens? Surely there must be more humane and Christian solutions than this. I did not realize that members of World Net Daily were also Aryans who share the same beliefs as Hitler. Not to mention the fact that it is a completely baseless analogy….The Germans did not put the Jews into concentration camps and mass murder them because they entered the country illegally and tried to gain rights, they did it because of Hitler’s Master Plan to ethnically cleanse the region and leave only the Blonde-haired Blue-eyed Whites which he claimed was the superior race. I was not aware that it was part of Jesus’ teachings to believe in White Power and ethnic cleansing…but maybe your church was different.

You are a bad Christian, a horrendous individual, and an irresponsible journalist. I don’t believe in censorship because of the freedoms we allow in this country, but I do believe in personal responsibility, and putting this kind of trash out there where impressionable Christians may read it is disgusting.

I don’t even remember what I wrote on this week. Ah well.

Whoa-oh-oh. And we hear again from JB:

Yeah, I agree it was a poor e-mail that I originally wrote. I should’ve just summarized my objection in one sentence: if it’s better for women to stay home because it reduces supply, why not keep most of the men home, too, putting salaries through the roof?

JB – who is actually a decent guy – isn’t referring to the previous email posted here, but one sent to me several weeks ago that I ignored. (You may wish to note that the longer and more meandering an email, the greater the chance that I will not respond to it. Either present a complete case or ask straightforward questions.)

While I won’t say that he now presents a good question, it is at least a straightforward one. But to address the question directly, an economy with dearth of men will not thrive in the short and intermediate terms, because economic growth depends on technological advancement. As has been demonstrated quite conclusively over thirty years of equalitarianism, technological advancement is a man’s game, and indeed, largely a young man’s game* at that.

In the long term, the economy requires more women to stay home and raise families than currently do because working women are less likely to marry, less likely to have children and more likely to have fewer children. Men simply can’t do that and the alternative, as I have repeatedly pointed out, is to import Muslims and Mexicans. Subsituting gastarbeiter for children has not worked well for the Bundesrepublik and it is unlikely to work any better in America.

*I was once invited to an elite gathering of 20 CEOs. Andy Grove of Intel was the host, and the head of Viacom was there along with several other Fortune 500 organizations. When one of the big kahunas wondered aloud why there were three young guys with leather jackets and earrings at the table with his respectable ilk, Grove explained that we were there as representatives of the game industry and the only ones pressuring Intel to make faster computers.

Now I’m the one wondering what anyone needs a 3GHz computer for. But I’m not so old that the thought of a physics model accelerator doesn’t give me a momentary thrill.

It’s not hard to understand why he’s kicking back in Mexico, watching events unfold with sardonic amusement:

From the Washington Post: “Nearly half of the nation’s children under 5 are racial or ethnic minorities, and the percentage is increasing mainly because the Hispanic population is growing so rapidly, according to a census
report released today.”

Now in newspaper parlance, “minorities” means “permanently underperforming and inassimilable minorities,” which is to say blacks, Latinos and, when anybody remembers, American Indians. It very seldom means successful minorities, such as Chinese, Greeks, white men, Jews, or Anglo-Saxons.

As we look forward to a massive slewing away from the dominance of European whites in America, what may we expect? What will these huge minority populations do? It is instructive to look at what they have done so far….

Law enforcement in America relies on having a white population that is mostly law-abiding. It has no good way of responding to large numbers of violent criminals, especially when they are backed by politically potent voting blocs. The crucial question, or a crucial question, is what proportion of the new minorities will fall into the permanent underclass? How much permanent underclass can the nation stand?

Another crucial question is this: If half the children today are of minorities, then in no more than eighteen years half the kids of college age will be. Unless they show a sudden scholarly afflatus which has not heretofore been in evidence, this means that soon the US will have to compete with China with the brains of only half the nation. This is not to mention secondary effects, such as enstupidating all schools to hide the failures of the minorities.

Here’s my prediction. Within 20 years, the vast majority of White Americans who are today so proudly pro-diversity and anti-racist will be more openly and virulently racist than was ever seen in South during the Civil Rights struggle. Those who have read Thomas Sowell or have travelled widely will know USA that daily exposure to significant ethnic and cultural differences increases tensions and the potential for violence, it does not reduce it.

Most Americans would be shocked at the way Italians discuss Germans, the way Germans talk about the French and the way the English talk about everyone, especially the “pakkis” in their midst.

Multiculturalism is a slow-acting social disease.

Dan badly needs a new tool:

Vox Day is still claiming that women in the workforce are bad for the economy. I still stand by my assertations that: (A) women in the workforce give employers more choice in selecting employees and allow for better overall employee value (in the absence of government interference in selection of employees or amounts paid to them), and (B) any drops in wage rates are compensated by drops in prices and better selection due to the increased productivity of having a larger worker pool in a free market. However, just in case there was something I overlooked, I checked the empirical evidence.

I pulled up Google Gapminder (previously blogged on here) and checked some data. First I pulled up a graph of Income per Capita vs. Percent of women in the workforce. I set the date at its earliest time and “played” the graph (this let the graph move through time). There was no correlation. I did the same for economic growth vs percent of women in the workforce (hint, put the economic growth axis on a log scale). While playing it through was entertaining, it did NOT show any correlation either. Finally, I did the same for fertility rates vs women in the workforce. Here, actually I was expecting to see some correlation, but I STILL didn’t find any. In fact, after playing through a number of other factors, the only correlations I could find were by inference. Women in the workforce correlate fairly well with time (the little bubbles tended to go up in general) and they correlate very well with Geographic Region (the balls clumped fairly closely together according to color).

Now, Correlation does not equal causation. However, causation DOES lead to correlation – unless the cause is so weak that it can be masked by background noise. In any case, percent of women in the workforce is NOT a significant factor an empirical look at income per capita, economic growth or even fertility rates – contrary to what Vox would have you believe.

I began to put together a comprehensive rebuttal, until it became quite clear that one was unneccessary. Dan’s tools simply aren’t up to the task and his entire argument is structured on their faulty foundation. This is what comes from relying on pretty Internet graphs instead of looking up the actual data yourself.

To give the most blatant example, Dan states that the percent of women in the American workforce is not a significant factor in fertility rates. However, the statistics clearly show otherwise.

Percentage women in the workforce 1960: 37.7 percent
Percentage women in the workforce 2000: 60.2 percent
Delta: 61.8 percent increase

Births per 1000 women 1960: 118.0
Births per 1000 women 2000: 66.3
Delta: 56.2 percent decrease

Far from being background noise, that’s a tremendous correlation and further investigation will reveal the obvious causation, as no one will be surprised to learn that working women are less likely to marry, less likely to have children if they do marry and have fewer children if they do have children.

As for the theoretical meanderings which these errant facts are supposed to support, the less said the better. Spurious and shallow are two of the first adjectives that spring to mind. And again, my original statement was that women working are bad for wage rates, which creates a host of other social ills. It is bad for the economy in many ways, beneficial in others and I have not worked out the net.

Back to the blackboard, Dan. You’re certainly welcome to try again, but I suggest doing your research next time.