The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion… Constitution of the United States, Article IV, Section 4.

What kind of government does my state, Alabama, have? This is a question that has darted into my head unbidden at odd moments when I was momentarily crisis-free and had nothing urgently demanding my attention. In particular I have wondered if I and my fellow Alabamians truly live in a "Republic"—as guaranteed by the Constitution. The answer never came, but unbeknownst to me help was on the way.

The weekend of February 6-8 Michael Hart convened in Baltimore a conference to address the astonishingly germane question of "Preserving Western Civilization." Some dozen speakers were there to address the problem of Western decline from the perspective of their specialties.

The ubiquitous Peter Brimelow was on hand to explain the large contribution immigration is making to the problem. Anyone reading this page will know of Peter's herculean patriotic efforts in the field of immigration, especially his landmark book Alien Nation, as well as his invention and continued production of this website. (Which Pat Buchanan has rightly called "the indispensable website" on immigration matters.) Remarkably all this work is done while Peter continues to function as a financial journalist. Peter especially emphasized the danger posed by the possibility that Mr. Obama will attempt to implement a "hate speech" law.

It is always exciting to hear what Philippe Rushton has to say. Rushton, together with Arthur Jensen of Berkeley, are the premier workers in the field of IQ and its measurement. In June of 2005 they scored a major coup when they broke through the barrier of political correctness and published the essence of their work in the American Psychological Association's quarterly journal Psychology, Public Policy, and Law. Their paper was titled Thirty Years of Research on Race Differences in Cognitive Ability. [PDF]Remarkably, at this writing neither has been lynched. (One can only hope that this is more than just a delay while their academic nemeses hunt for a suitable rope.)

Rushton and Jensen used ten independent approaches to scientifically examine the evidence of heritability of IQ in individuals, and concluded that it was probably 80 percent heritable, with the other 20 percent due to environment. Finally, they adopted Jensen's "default hypothesis" that the black-white gap is explainable in the same ratio.

At the Baltimore conference, Rushton explained the heritability of world IQ differences, with emphasis on the evolving use of modern medical imaging techniques to determine brain size, and how brain size, whether measured with a tape measure, by the size of a hat worn, or by an MRI scan, correlates remarkably (and some might say surprisingly) well with IQ.

Lino Graglia is the A. Dalton Cross Professor of Law at the prestigious University of Texas Law School. He talked about the great problem of granting citizenship to anyone born in this country. Such newborns are popularly called "anchor babies" and under present rules even an illegal alien mother, just this side of the Rio Grande for the past 24 hours, can give birth to an infant who is a brand-new American citizen. This rule is a great contributor to the explosion of the Hispanic population in the country.

Graglia argued that the present rule is based on an erroneous interpretation of the 14th Amendment which declares that "All persons born or naturalized within the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States…." I have added the emphasis, because these are the words that he argues are critical to the interpretation of the amendment. He set out in detail why anchor babies are not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, and hence are not automatically citizens at birth.

During the Q and A, I queued up behind the microphone. When I reached the front of the line I had a question that was a little off the subject, but the professor was as a captive standing on the podium, and I had possession of the microphone, so I asked my question anyway:

"Does Alabama have a republican form of government as guaranteed by the Constitution?"

Prof. Graglia responded with a brief Shakespearean soliloquy.

"Well, let's see. You elect your legislature. And then there was George Wallace, who called up the Alabama National Guard and stood in the schoolhouse door. Of course Judge Johnson had some things to say about what happened, and Kennedy nationalized the Guard and took it away from him…."

I had walked back to my seat, but when he finished I said: "Well ok, but what's the answer, yes or no?" A pause, but then came—

"No!"

The whole room laughed in merriment. I joined them, but of course this is a serious matter, and I think that Graglia is certainly right. Here in Alabama, for example, if we want to adjust slightly a school zone line we have to get permission from the U.S. "Justice Department". In other words some faceless, nameless, unelected bureaucrat in Washington has to grant us permission.

This doesn't sound much like a sovereign republic to me. And the question is equally applicable to the other states.

The last speaker was Lawrence Auster, noted blogger and author of The Path to National Suicide [PDF] and Huddled Clichés. He discussed the threat of Islam to the West   He believes   that our absolute commitment to non-discrimination is a great liability, and he proposes a sharp turn away from it. In a clever and compelling stroke, he assumed the role of the American president making an incredibly shocking speech to the nation. In this speech, he proposed enacting constitutional amendments and statutes needed to allow discrimination against Muslims, on the ground that their belief in the Koran, which commands them to kill infidels, i.e., us, is incompatible with our culture. Having made the necessary changes to our legal structure, he would then remove most Muslims from the country.

Auster admitted that for such a proposal to be accepted, we would have to be on a planet different from the one we inhabit today.

Michael Hart put the period to the conference and summed up the threat to the West, giving words of encouragement. Earlier he had given the argument for preserving our civilization, and pointed to the obvious when he said that essentially all the elements of civilization have come from Westerners.

He might well have added that there is no reason to expect that civilization can be maintained without the predominant influence of the West.

 

 

Hugh McInnish [email him] is a consulting engineer and publisher of supressednews.com.