In America Right Or Wrong: An Anatomy Of American Nationalism, Anatol Lieven quotes temperance activist Alphonse Ava Hopkins in 1909:
"Our boast has been that we are a Christian people, with Morality at the center of our civilization... Besodden Europe, worse bescourged than by war, famine and pestilence, sends here her drink-makers, her drunkard makers, and her drunkards, or her more temperate and habitual drinkers, with all their un-American and anti-American ideas of morality and government; they are absorbed into our national life but not assimilated; with no liberty whence they came, they demand unrestricted liberty among us, even to license what we loathe; and through the ballot box, flung wide open to them by foolish statesmanship ... they dominate our Sabbath, they have set up for us their own moral standards, which are grossly immoral; they govern our great cities, until ... foreign control or conquest could gain little more through ... armies and fleets...
Let’s compare that with what some are saying today about the “invasion” of illegal immigrants from Mexico. Dave Neiwert has a nice collection of quotes where people cry about the sky falling and the end of white American culture:
Dobbs: The issue, as you said, that the nation would cease to exist, what do you mean by that?
[Diana] West: Well, the kind of provisions that are in the Senate... and it will be mainly Hispanic. It will be mainly Mexican. -- And so, what the question becomes is, do we want to become a northern section of Latin America? Do we cease to become literally an English- speaking people, become bilingual, and / or Spanish- speaking? And with these questions, you really begin to get at the heart of the matter, a demographic, a newer demographic.
From Diana West's column that was being discussed:
Why does the American political establishment -- with few genuinely patriotic exceptions -- want to destabilize the American nation? If this were a Democratic era -- a Kerry presidency, a Reid Senate, a Pelosi House -- I would understand. I wouldn't like it any better, but the eradication of U.S. borders and, ultimately, the nation's core European identity is the sort of policy that follows from the West-corroding multiculturalism once uniquely associated with the left.
So we've gone from worrying about European immigrants to worrying about non-European immigrants. It's not a coincidence that the anti-immigrant rhetoric is spurring growth for White Nationalist and neo-Nazi groups: anti-immigration and anti-Mexican rhetoric have long been a staple for them. Now, however, "mainstream" conservatives are latching on and using the same rhetoric. Even Bill O'Reilly is promoting white power — and quite explicitly, too.
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