The recent death and well-attended memorial service of San Francisco Congressman Tom Lantos was a sad reminder that even people who ought to know better sometimes don't get it: a man who escaped from a Nazi concentration camp should understand that your tribe's enemies will kill you if they can.
The young Tom Lantos was darn lucky to get out of WWII Europe alive. But did he learn the obvious immigration lesson, namely to at least keep out the bad guys?
No. His lifetime immigration voting grade was F in a Congressional career that began in 1981.
Why don't Jewish liberals understand a basic principle of survival?—welcoming murderous enemies into your country is dangerous business. Sons of Allah do not shed their deeply held anti-Semitism and other hatreds upon entering America to become gentle vegetarians who attend inter-faith services.
Yet one of the best known advocate organizations for Jews, the Anti-Defamation League, has long been up to its eyeballs in support for unfriendly immigrants whose entrance violates the basics of national security.
Not to mention America's values of free speech, individual rights and a society based in law.
Jaws dropped all across America when a CNN news anchor voiced out loud the widely understood but rarely spoken truth about the ADL: that the group is a bogus civil rights defender. "The Anti-Defamation League..." Lou Dobbs interjected, "they are a joke."
The occasion was a heated discussion February 4 on the subject of "hate speech" with La Raza mouthpiece Janice Murguia on the CNN news program Lou Dobbs Tonight.
MURGUIA: You know, the ADL documents code words for hate.
DOBBS: The ADL—oh, yes, sure.
MURGUIA: And you've used a few of those code words for hate.
DOBBS: Name one code word.
MURGUIA: Well, they talk about dehumanizing. They're demonizing immigrants…
DOBBS: That's their word. That's not my word.
MURGUIA: Well, I'm telling you, they've had a…
DOBBS: What's my word?
MURGUIA: ... clear record of documented hate speech.
DOBBS: They have.
MURGUIA: Yes, they have. They are a very well respected voice.
DOBBS: Not by me.
MURGUIA: The Anti-Defamation League…
DOBBS: They are a joke.
MURGUIA: They are not a joke. They are an outstanding organization. Lou Dobbs Tonight Transcript, Feb 4, 2008
You don't see many such Elephant-in-the-room moments on buttoned-down network news shows these days. (The outburst got Dobbs the highly prized "Worst Person in the World" award (Feb 7 edition) from shrieking America-hater Keith Olbermann. Some people have all the luck!)
Americans don't have a problem with an organization that supports the rights and safety of Jews here. (Or other ethno-orgs, for that matter, as long as they limit their activities to reasonable advocacy for their tribe with no annoying treason—although I cannot think of such a group at the moment.)
However, the ADL does quite the opposite of protecting its tribe: the League's support for open borders endangers Jews by welcoming historic enemies. If this group is the numero uno friend of Jews, then their dance card is full up of trouble.
The ADL is so stuck on loony liberalism that it ignores even its own research. According to a 2002 ADL report, foreign-born Hispanics are far more anti-Semitic than those who have lived their lives in America.
For details, see the PDF file of ADL's 2002 Survey of Anti-Semitism in America; a pertinent snip from the press release is below:
The findings in brief:
Strongly anti-Semitic:
Even so, this self-defined defender of Jews wants to import millions more anti-sems, a policy which is self-defeating if not suicidal. The ADL's attitude is another example where liberals allow ideology to trump facts. They would rather attain the imaginary PC virtue of perfect multicultural diversity than be safe.
Or perhaps the ADL fears declining anti-Semitism among homegrown Americans and hopes to keep its organizational mission alive and fundable by welcoming immigrants who have unkind views toward Jews—Muslims and Mexicans to name a couple standouts. The ADL sure-fire way to job security!
But arguably worse than ignoring its stated goals, the ADL demeans the American friends of sovereignty. In spite of daily Islamic murders of Jews, other westerners and Muslims not pals with the local headchop contingent, the ADL focuses its umbrage on the courageous voices for civilization. People who are trying to save the country, like Tom Tancredo, get some of the worst vitriol.
Interestingly, black border defenders like Terry Anderson and Ted Hayes got bashed in the same online blurb in which VDARE.com was called a "racist website." The ADL pulls these shenanigans while attempting to maintain its credibility. Apparently, tough questions are not being asked about how immigration restrictionists can be both racist and welcoming to black citizens.
The Immigration page of the ADL website is seriously hung up on "hate"—as if that were the worst thing on earth. Worse than losing your country, for example.
If this were 1940, the ADL would be complaining of French hatred of invading Germans. Think of all the economic stimulus they brought to Paris, it would argue. Sales of burgundy soared as a result of increased German diversity and trade. Etc.
Sorry to break this to the League, but what it calls "hate speech" is plain old free speech—and pretty accurate at that. What ADL finds objectionable is citizens speaking truthfully about a sacrosanct liberal icon—that "immigration," defined broadly, is now almost entirely negative to the national body politic. And like many other leftist dinosaurs, the ADL finds details about legality too troublesome to mention.
The baseless "reports" it flacks are an attempt to impose the spineless, dishonest PC speech codes that are now common on college campuses onto mainstream political discourse. The open-borders people cannot win an honest debate about immigration where the real problems of worsening anarchy are on the table.
When even a few of the ADL's objections about mean-spirited language are analyzed, it's obvious that the citizens' complaints are well founded.
Take a few lines from An ADL "study" called Immigrants Targeted (October, 2007) which are supposed to shock readers:
The accusation that restrictionists "dehumanize" illegals is nonsense. In fact, quite the opposite is true. Rather than treating Mexicans and other illegal immigrants as incapable of responsibility (a version of the "soft bigotry of lowered expectations"), most Americans see them as moral adults, capable of obeying the law—specifically, immigration law. Liberals choose to treat them like little children—all the better to create a dependent class.
And what is so terrible about wanting Mexicans to live in Mexico, a country they love tremendously, judging by how often they wave its flag?
Most foreigners come from Third-World countries that by definition have sub-standard public health infrastructures, so they do indeed bring ailments once thought wiped out or never seen before in the United States.
"Propagating conspiracy theories about an alleged secret 'reconquista' plot by Mexican immigrants to create a 'greater Mexico' by seizing seven states in the American Southwest that once belonged to Mexico."
Reconquista is hardly a secret plot since it is taught on every college campus with a Chicano Studies department. The reputable Zogby polling firm found in 2002 that 58 percent of Mexicans believe that the U.S. Southwest belongs to them. Does that finding make Zogby guilty of "hate speech"?
Consider the ADL's reissue of John F. Kennedy's
little book, A Nation of Immigrants,
Another is the new foreword to the book, a self-serving dish of tripe written by ADL National Director Abraham Foxman (send him your regards at afoxman@adl.org):
"When the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) reached out to the junior senator from Massachusetts in 1957 to highlight the contribution of immigrants, the country was locked in a debate about the direction its policy should take.
"Then, as now, nativism, bigotry and fear of competition from foreign labor were dulling the collective American memory of its own immigrant history and its ideals.
"Then, as now, hate groups were beating the drums of anti-foreigner slogans and tried to sway the public and elected officials toward a restrictive immigration policy."
A "restrictive" policy toward the border is exactly what citizens want after 40 years of unhealthy immigration bingeing—America has gorged on too many empty calories for decades and is overdue for a serious diet, with assimilation supplements.
And didn't Foxman read the report of Israeli scholar Prof Raphael Israeli, that "life can become untenable" for westerners when the Muslim population reaches 10 percent? The scholar warned Australians last year, "When the Muslim population gets to a critical mass you have problems." That's exactly what's gone so wrong in Europe, from terrorism to social breakdown and rioting over Danish cartoons.
How does Abraham Foxman get away with demanding open borders when there is so much immigration trouble everywhere?
The ADL is playing a dangerous game by siding with leftists and foreigners against America. The majority of citizens of all political stripes want immigration anarchy to end, and they don't consider themselves racist or mean for doing so.
The ADL depends upon having some semblance of an honorable reputation, at least among the left. It thinks it can attack "right-wing" friends of borders and sovereignty with impunity.
However, if it continues to urge America to commit national suicide, it may find that it has created anti-Semitism rather than prevented it.
Mr. Foxman and friends would be wise to take Lou Dobbs' denunciation to heart and consider the reasons for it.
Brenda Walker (email her) lives in Northern California and publishes two websites, LimitsToGrowth.org and ImmigrationsHumanCost.org. She is a Presbyterian-American who thinks there is no good reason for Muslim immigration at all. Or any other kind.
