H/T Federale, for alerting me to another critique of the ludicrous Jennifer Rubin Commentary essay on California which I discussed in Who killed California? The Neocons: (2) This is Immigration In the Golden State: Three Questions for Jennifer Rubin Peter Robinson Richochet.com Oct 1 2010 Peter Robinson was the Reagan speechwriter credited with the

"Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall"

line which distinguished the late Reagan Presidency. Being abrasive to the Soviet Union is apparently not as dangerous as being candid to a neoconservative princess. Robinson fawns over Rubin's

"powerful and only too compelling article... an astute overview"

and summarizes her assorted wonkery for several paragraphs before coming to the point:

The one factor that Jennifer leaves out? Immigration.

This is absurd. Writing a discussion of the decline of California over the last 40 years and not saying one word about immigration is like writing an account of the European theater in WW2 and not considering the Eastern Front. Commentary's Editor should be fired. Was he asleep? What Rubin tried to get away with was either profoundly incompetent or deeply dishonest. At least Robinson judging by the questions he timidly raises actually understands the issue. From Rubin's response Immigration and the Golden State Commentary - contentions10.01.2010 it would appear she is still in Grade school on the matter.

I am unabashedly pro-immigration... the spiritual and economic life of America and its reputation as a beacon of freedom and opportunity depend on an influx of new immigrants to revitalize and replenish ourselves.

(Rubin stands with Mayor Bloomberg.) She then deploys two slabs of obsolete happy-talk from long-discredited open-borders flacks Tamar Jacoby and Daniel Griswold, and concludes with two counter arguments to Robinson's concern (expressed hiding behind Samuel Huntington) that

the Southwestern United States, including, of course, southern California, runs the danger of becoming culturally and linguistically more Mexican than American.

I will deal with these in inverse order. Ultimately, Rubin purports to put her faith in more effective assimilation:

...we need to get real about assimilation...I'd rather improve our assimilation efforts than exclude and/or remove immigrants. That means ...rejecting the argument that efforts to maintain our common language are "racist."

The problem of course with this, of course (as anyone who knows the subject is aware) is that previous assimilation successes were crucially assisted by very long pauses in the influx. In Chapter 11 of Alien Nation Peter Brimelow referred to them as the "Great Lulls". The last of these (1924-65) was not fortuitous. But ultimately, the key to Rubin's attitude, and the reason she omitted consideration of immigration in her essay, lies in an earlier paragraph disclosing

a pet peeve of mine...Many anti-immigration activists assume American culture is fixed and that new immigrants will make us into something we aren't. But that has never been what America is about. America wasn't "fixed" in 1776, nor after the surge of immigration in the mid-1800s. It wasn't set in stone after the huge influx of immigrants from Europe at the turn of the century. We evolve, we absorb, and we grow richer with each wave of immigrants.

Americans, in the Rubin/Neoconservative view have no right to manage the character of their nation. In fact, they don't really exist. What you thought was your country is effectively a sand beach, to be remade by every chance of the tide.

While "we" grow richer.