----- Original Message -----
From: "Filip Gadiuta" <fgadiuta@...>
To: <protest-ro@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, May 28, 2002 12:53 AM
Subject: [protest-ro] Quiet Time


> Quiet Time
> by Peter Beinart
> http://www.thenewrepublic.com/doc.mhtml?i=20020513&s=trb051302
> Post date: 05.06.02
> Issue date: 05.13.02
> In the short story "Silver Blaze," Sherlock Holmes draws Inspector
Gregory's
> attention to "the curious incident of the dog in the night-time." "The dog
> did nothing in the night-time," insists the confused Inspector. "That,"
> Holmes responds, "was the curious incident."
>
> Last month in France, a dog barked at the top of its lungs: Jean-Marie Le
> Pen placed second in the first round of vot- ing for the French
presidency.
> But while Le Pen's second-place showing was a surprise, his growing
> popularity wasn't. After all, far-right parties have been gaining steam in
> Europe for several years now. In 1999 the Vlaams Bloc--whose leader
> describes himself and Le Pen as "brothers in arms"--won 10 percent of the
> vote in Belgium. In 2000 Joerg Haider's Freedom Party won 27 percent in
> Austria. Last September the Progress Party--which wants to cut immigration
> to 1,000 people per year--won 15 percent in Norway. That same month
> Germany's Law and Order Offensive--which would deport all asylum
> seekers--won 19 percent in Hamburg. Two months later the Danish People's
> Party--whose leader has called for a "holy war" against Islam--won 12
> percent in Denmark. And in March the Livable Netherlands Party--which
wants
> to ban all Muslim immigration--became the largest party in Rotterdam. In
> giving Le Pen 17 percent of the vote, France was simply catching up.
>
> The "curious incident"--the dog that hasn't barked--is the United States.
> Americans sometimes say that as a country of immigrants we are
congenitally
> immune to the xenophobia that periodically erupts in nations that define
> themselves in ethnic terms. But that's a historical fallacy-- and I'm not
> talking about the 1920s. Less than a decade ago the United States would
have
> fit perfectly into the grim litany described above. In 1994, 59 percent of
> Californians voted to deny health and education services to illegal
> immigrants. Two years later Pat Buchanan--America's Le Pen--won the
> Republican presidential primary in New Hampshire. That summer the GOP
> adopted a positively Buchananesque platform declaring that children born
in
> the United States to foreign parents should no longer automatically become
> citizens. And in August Bill Clinton signed a welfare bill that denied
food
> stamps to legal immigrants. In the mid-1990s the United States was as
> nativist as France is now--perhaps more so.
>
> So what happened? The answer is a happy and bipartisan story of political
> leadership by two men: Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.
>
> Clinton did not fight xenophobia on principle; after all, he signed the
> virulently anti-immigrant welfare bill. But he cut off the political
oxygen
> on which nativism relies. Nativism is fueled--in part--by irresponsible
> left-liberalism. Inthe European Union, excessive regulation and high
> taxation have contributed to an unemployment rate that today exceeds 8
> percent. Such widespread joblessness has not only made native-born
Europeans
> fearful that immigrants will take their jobs; it has also contributed to
> epidemic levels of unemployment among immigrants themselves (unemployment
> estimates reach as high as 20 percent among Turkish immigrants in Germany
> and 35 percent to 40 percent among Turkish immigrants in the Netherlands).
> And that has fueled racist stereotypes of newcomers as lazy and parasitic.
>
> The same dynamic was starting to play out in the United States. In the
four
> years preceding Proposition 187, California lost 600,000 jobs--many in
> industries devastated by the cold war's end. California's unemployment
rate
> topped 8 percent, and among Hispanics it topped 11 percent. Had Clinton
not
> broken with left-liberal orthodoxy and cut government spending to reduce
the
> deficit, the United States might never have experienced the '90s boom that
> banished those economic anxieties--and the resulting racial
resentments--in
> California and across the country.
>
> But Clinton didn't only undermine xenophobia by ensuring that would-be
> nativists had secure jobs; he undermined it by signing welfare reform,
which
> destroyed the racist belief that immigrants were receiving handouts for
> doing nothing. Europe's growing anti-immigrant backlash is stoked by the
> perception that left-liberal political elites are allowing immigrants to
> play hard-working native Europeans for suckers. But the welfare
> bill--whatever its moral flaws-- demolished that perception in the United
> States.
>
> And Clinton undermined anti-immigrant racism in another way as well: He
> cracked down on crime. The European Union's crime rate grew 6 percent
> between 1989 and 1999. And just as growing lawlessness--and the perception
> that the police were too politically correct or too incompetent to stop
> it--sparked racially tinged anger in American cities in the 1970s, it is
> doing the same in cities like Paris and Hamburg today. America's 18
percent
> decline in crime during the '90s, by contrast, has reduced racial
> tension--not only between whites and blacks but, especially in the West,
> between whites and immigrant Hispanics. And while Clinton is not directly
> responsible for that drop in crime, it could not have happened had he not
> sharply increased the number of police, and the number of prison cells,
> despite howls from the civil libertarian left.
>
> But if Clinton fought nativism by changing liberalism, George W. Bush has
> changed conservatism--thus ensuring that nativism's lingering appeal goes
> unexploited. In the mid-'90s, with Pete Wilson and Pat Buchanan riding
high,
> many commentators assumed that the GOP would use immigration the way it
had
> used affirmative action--to cement the allegiance of the middle- and
> working-class whites who formed the party's base. To some degree, it is
big
> business--with its thirst for immigrant labor--that has kept that from
> happening. But it is also the historical accident that in 2000 the party
> chose as its standard-bearer one of its most committed supporters of
> immigration. Running for governor in 1994--a year when Proposition 187 was
> so popular that even California Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein didn't
> speak out against it until three weeks before Election Day--Bush said he
> would fight any such effort in Texas. When Buchanan spoke in Dallas in
> August 1995, Bush went after him personally, declaring, "It is easy for
some
> to pick on our friends from the South ... and I don't like it." He even
> opposed the repeal of bilingual education.
>
> Today many pundits consider Bush's support for immigration a matter of
> political survival--he's courting a Hispanic vote Republicans desperately
> need. But that calculus is still by no means received wisdom in the
> Republican Party. Before September 11, when Bush flirted with an amnesty
for
> Mexican immigrants, many in the congressional GOP expressed concern. And
> last month, when Bush tried to restore food stamps to some legal
immigrants
> who lost them in the 1996welfare bill, most House Republicans opposed him.
>
> In truth, there remains a reservoir of anti-immigrant sentiment among the
> GOP base--and in the country at large. But with a popular, pro-immigration
> Republican in the White House, and without high unemployment or high crime
> as a spark, nativism has been silenced as a political force. The dog has
not
> barked. And the sound is glorious.
>
>
>
> Peter Beinart is the editor of TNR.