October 14, 2024 • 25 mins
In the final part of this three-part series on "The Fourscore Project," Roger Clark wraps up his compelling discussion with Jeremy Carl, a fellow at the Claremont Institute, focusing on the immigration crisis in the United States. The episode dives into the concept of the "celebration parallax," a term coined to describe the polarized perceptions of immigration and demographic change depending on who discusses them. Carl highlights the impact of uncontrolled immigration on social cohesion, the potential risks to American institutions, and the broader cultural implications of shifting demographics. The conversation also touches on the controversial topics of white privilege and patriarchy, with Carl questioning their relevance in modern America. The episode concludes with a reflection on the potential outcomes of continued open-border policies and the choices Americans face in the upcoming elections.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:21):
Welcome to this episode of the Fourscore
and Seven Project, a productionof the New Majority Foundation.
My name is Roger Clark, your host.
And today, our subject iswhat is possibly the most contentious
and controversial topic in America,the immigration crisis.
This is part three,
and we will continue with our effortsin this section of the discussion
(00:41):
to peel back the bewildering onion layersof this complex and politicized issue
to better understand the causesimplications of just what might be
the most profoundtransition of a single civilization
because of uncontrolled immigrationin almost 2000 years.
We are pleased once again to haveas our guest the eminent scholar Jeremy
Carl, currently a fellow at the ClaremontInstitute in Southern California,
(01:05):
a past research fellow at StanfordUniversity's Hoover Institution
and a former deputy assistant secretarywith the Department of the Interior.
Jeremy is a graduate of Yale Universityand the Kennedy School of Government
at Harvard University, and he isthe author of the bestselling book
The Unprotected Class.Welcome back, Jeremy.
Thanks so much for having meon. It's a pleasure to be with you.
(01:26):
When we ended part two of this discussion,we left
with the question ofwhat is the celebration Parallax.
And I want to start partthree of this discussion
with your concept of the celebrationparallax.
Can you tell us about it? Yeah.
So the celebration parallaxis a wonderful term that was invented
by my one of my Claremont colleagues,Michael Anton.
(01:48):
And what it meansis that effectively a concept
can either be sort of very praiseworthyand true or absolutely
false and scandalousthat you would even suggest it
depending on who is making the assertion.
And so where we see thiswith respect to immigration is that if I,
(02:08):
as a white person and as a conservativecome out and say,
hey, America is kind of currentethnic majority is being replaced,
and I don't like that and it's terribleand I want to put a stop to it.
Booth I was told that it's maybe falseand then beyond that, that
although it's racist and terriblefor you to even mention it.
(02:31):
Whereas I point to in my bookany number of times
in which members of minority groupshave essentially said that exact
same thing, a slightly different spinon it, say white majority is dead
and we're going to take over an Xand Y and Z and similar.
And this is oftenseen as a wonderful, praiseworthy wording
(02:52):
that is celebrated in the same mediathat would tell me
that if I say it, it's smooth,racist and false.
Well, fascinating.
So on that pretty much defines the limits
and the definition of the debatethat's going on in this country right now.
We have two sides that seemto have no hope of bridging the gap.
Yeah, I mean, it's it's a challenge.
(03:12):
And I guess I just again,I bring obviously my own biases
to this discussion,but this is an unequal polarization.
In other words,I don't think that the right has moved
like dramatically to the righton immigration issues over the years.
If anything, quite the opposite.
I think that the mainstream rightis kind of made its peace positively
(03:33):
or negatively with a lot of openimmigration that we've had.
And interestingly,I don't think that the left wing voters
are anywhere near as radicalas the left wing political leaders.
But the left wing
political leaders have just becomeincredibly radical on this issue.
And we've seen this go to its extremein the Biden administration,
(03:54):
where we have literally millionsof illegals showing up at our border
and being admittedand being flown in at taxpayer expense
and being housed and fed at taxpayerexpense to the detriment of Americans,
and that everybody is supposedto somehow celebrate this.
And if I say, as I do believe,that every single one of these people here
illegally, and that includes the peoplewith obviously false asylum claims
(04:16):
should be deported, that's the new JimCrow in operation or something like that.
So we touched on this brieflyin the last episode, but what did Trump do
the Trump administrationdo to get this under control?
Because in the last year,I think of his administration,
the amount of illegal immigrationswere down to 800,000, maybe 1200 a day.
(04:40):
And it's, of course,maybe 14, 15 times that now.
What did Trump
do to get that under controlthat Biden unwound that led us to this?
Well, we touched on the previous episodeon the Remain in Mexico policy
that will see the importance of the ideathat when you were pursuing
these dubious asylum claims,you couldn't do it from the United States.
So that dramatically reduced incentives.
(05:01):
Everything they didwas just to simply make it more costly
in every respectto immigrate here illegally.
So they tried to enforce the laws.
And it's actually interesting,if we didn't have a left wing judiciary
that was illegally, in my view,flouting the Trump administration's
entirely lawful orders on immigration,that pretty much every step
(05:23):
as low as Trumpgot the illegal immigration,
he could have gotten it quite a bit lowerand got I knew a lot of people
who were working in the Trumpadministration on these policies.
They were very knowledgeable.
They understood what needed to be done.
They had sort of been hamstrungby a lot of the left wing judiciary
(05:45):
and the deep state bureaucracyessentially attempting to thwart them.
But we could easily,I think, if we had a real concerted effort
and if we did,we passed things like E-Verify,
which would basically meanthat you could only be employed
if we could really verify that you werehere legally, if we did all these things.
(06:05):
And we got much, much more seriousabout quick deportations of people
who we knew to be here illegally with lessprocedural hurdles, we could have gotten
illegal immigration down even dramaticallyfurther than it went under Trump.
But at least under Trump,
people who wanted to immigrate hereillegally understood
that it wasn't going to be easy,it wasn't going to be straightforward.
(06:25):
There was never going to bea get out of jail free card.
Whereas it's been the exact oppositeunder Biden, people understand
if they come here,they're not going to be deported.
They're going to be providedwith all sorts of services.
So people respond to incentives. Right.
And again, I'm not even mad at the peoplewho are here illegally that much.
I mean, as an American, I don't love it,
but I'm not blaming themfor trying to better their own situation.
(06:48):
What I think is the scandal and the scandal that should actually be prosecute did
is that our politicalleaders have allowed this to happen.
That's that's the problem.
You mentioned in your booksome of the topics that are become
some of the most taboo thingsto mention or discuss in this country.
And these are the subjectsof white privilege and the patriarchy
(07:10):
and if someone disputes the factthat there's such a thing
as a white privilegeor there's such a thing as a patriarchy,
they're accused of being a bigot andthey're consigned to the cultural gulag.
I believe.
We also talked last timeabout the motivations for the current
Biden administrationfor having an open border policy,
whether it's to make surethat we have a growing population,
(07:34):
because without immigration,we're a shrinking population,
whether it's to driftthe general electorate to the left
or whether it's to replace the culture,which is the so-called replacement
theory, again, which people on the leftaccuse of being racist and bigoted,
even replace that there's such a thingas replacement theory.
But on this sensitive topic,I think you have gotten
(07:56):
a lot of endorsements for your book
and people have saidand well known people who are very
public, prominent in the public eye,have said that what you've raised
and pointed out is courageousbecause most people shy away from that.
Your thoughts on propositionsthat you presented
in your book, meaning that you attackingsome of these issues,
(08:16):
pushing back against the least,the stereotypes
that the left of right cultureis pushing on the American society?
Well, you know, I'll leave the levelof courage up for other people to decide.
I'll just have certainly heard
a lot and a lot kind of donethe round, done interviews.
I mean, to me, it wasat the end of the day, a simple calculus.
I've got five kids.
I'm thinking about their future.
(08:38):
I've had certain opportunities in Americathat are great opportunities
because America ishas been such a great country.
I don't want to lose that.
I don't want to losethat opportunity for my kids.
And so the cost of mespeaking out in terms
of whatever social group is going to saysomething nasty about me is trivial
in comparison to my concernfor my kids and their future.
(08:59):
But I should add, it'snot just for my kids.
It's for everybody's kids.
And this includes kids of of other races,because the kind of way we're going down
the path we're going downis one that in other societies
has led to all sorts of conflict,particularly in democracies, right?
Like ultimately
when you have dictators, ships,you can kind of
(09:21):
keep a lid on some of these thingssometimes.
I mean, not that there's not other problemwith dictatorships,
but just to kind of pick onetrivial example, you know, Marshal Tito
kept a lid on all the ethnictensions in Yugoslavia.
And then once he left the sceneand communism left the scene, you had
huge amounts of ethnic warfare
that just blew up everywhereand kind of devastated that entire region.
(09:44):
So we're a democracy
and I don't want us to get anywhere nearthat type of situation.
I'm concerned that we are.
And so while I had some initial reluctancethat I think anybody could understand
a kind of take on this topic, eventuallyI just was sort of in the position
where I was.
I said, you know, hey,this is a really important topic.
Somebody needs to talk about it.I'm qualified to talk about it.
(10:06):
I've researched and thought about thisfor many years and I guess
I'm just going to have to step forwardand be that person who's going to do that.
And so that's what I did. Well,let me ask you directly.
You know, the concept of whiteprivilege is is has been adopted
wholeheartedlyin some areas of the country,
is completely rejected in othersor among different groups.
The same issue with the patriarchy.
It's become doctrine in some places.
(10:27):
Others it's rejected.
Do you believe that there is such a thingas white privilege or patriarchy
in this country?
White privilege, definitely no.
And there was in the past.I talk about this in the book.
I mean, when you actuallyhad white privilege in this country,
you had a number of things from authorslike seems Walden Johnson,
who wrote with every voice and sayinga song that many people are familiar with.
(10:51):
He wrote a book in 1912 calledThe Autobiography of an Ex Colored Man.
And it's essentially about a black person,very light skinned.
He's trying to pass for white,because at that time there really was
white privilege in the society.
And we can point to all sortsof situations and literary
works and reality where that was the case.
(11:13):
Today you have quite the opposite.
So if you're talking about how horriblethe Chinese dictatorship is,
is a pretty good chancethat you actually don't live under it.
Right.
Or if you were in the old Soviet Unionand you were complaining a lot,
or if you were talking about how terrible
the old Soviet Union was,you probably weren't living in.
I mean, of course, there weresome dissidents who just went to jail.
(11:35):
But it's it's precisely becausethose things are no longer operative,
that it's exactly the opposite,that it's in fact, very fashionable to
attack whites, to attack white privilegethat doesn't really exist anymore.
It's because of that that,you know, that white privilege, in fact,
is no longeran operative feature of society.
Just the opposite.
(11:55):
The patriarchy.That's a more complicated question.
It doesn't get into my book.
But, you know, I would say that
I'll just leave it at the factthat if you look at
sex relations right nowand the failure of folks to get married
and have familiesand the declining birthrate,
perhaps there were some thingsabout the old system,
(12:15):
while not perfect in many,many respects, that we should not have
just thrown out the babywith the bathwater
and the kind of relentless quest
to erase all distinctionsbetween sexes and genders
will perhaps not work out so wellfor society going forward.
Interesting.
Well, I know a couple of themesin your book Intertwined.
(12:38):
One theme, of course,which we've talked about,
the uncontrolled immigrationand the other theme
that seems to wrap itself aroundthe uncontrolled
immigration is this
doctrine in the UK, in the United States,of course,
according to your book,the hostility to the white culture,
you know, in particular,
(12:59):
and therefore there's this growing sense
of the white culture of whitebeing strangers in a strange land.
Per quote, Robert Heinlein'stitle of his book from from the 1960s.
And your book expresses some concern thatwhat happens when a culture
that is responsiblefor founding the country and developing
(13:21):
its institutions is now a disfavored groupwithin a country.
When that group becomesthe minority in the country
and you express some concernabout that eventuality.
Would you elaborate on that?
Yeah, Well, I mean, I think you kind ofall got it very nicely.
I just think it's a really joyoussituation when you have a bunch of people
(13:44):
coming in and look, you can saywhatever you want about America.
And Africa is not free. It's not for free.
It never has been.
I reject a sort of Whig historythat suggests that everything
was always just great and getting better.
But, you know,
there are a lot of really great thingsabout America,
and there's a reason that peoplefrom all over
the world are trying to come hereand have tried to come here
(14:06):
of all different races,ethnicities, backgrounds, religions.
So when we create a sort of systemwhere the group of people
whose ancestors sort ofcame up with that system
become marginalized, when that historybecomes marginalized and attacked,
and we say, hey, we're going to replace itwith something else.
And often that something else is deriveddirectly or indirectly
(14:29):
from countries and culturesthat have not have been as successful.
And that's precisely the reason whythose people are immigrating here.
I think that's somethingthat should cause everyone to
be very concerned.
Well, it's interesting you should mentionthat, because you hear that echoed in
a lot of the internal domestic migrationthat's going on in the United States,
(14:50):
where people are moving from blue statesto red states and people in red states
are saying, don'tbring your politics with you.
That's the reason you're movingto a red state to begin with.
Absolutely.
And there's a bunch of misconceptionsabout that also.
I mean, one of the interesting things,
I think actually in Idaho,they've sort of figured this out, but
but to California, to come up toIdaho are on average much more.
(15:11):
They're not like liberal Californians.
They're in Montana and places like that.
They're much more conservativethan the native Idahoans and Montanans
on average, even though these groupsalready were conservative populations.
And so the kind of great Californiaimmigration immigration
has turned these statesinto being even more conservative.
(15:32):
And so sometimes I think the the don'tbring your politics with you
can be misplaced.
On the other hand, in some other areaslike Colorado,
I think more liberal Californianshave tended to migrate there
and have brought more liberal frameof politics than the more conservative
politics that used to bein California, in Colorado.
So it really does it'sdependent on the state by state basis.
(15:54):
What do you see in termsof governmental policies on immigration?
We have what are the formal policies
which say one thing,
but then we have the informal policieswhich seem to disregard the law,
at least as currently implementedby the current Biden administration.
What whatdo you see going into the future?
(16:16):
If you could write the legislationand enforce it as the ideal
immigration policyto be put in place in the United States?
I think firstwe have to create facts on the ground.
And I hope that if we get a second gettingup administration, he will do that.
In other words,like you just deport people and you know,
you dare the Senateto kind of challenge that.
(16:36):
And I think there's a real
because the left has such a tightcontrol of the bureaucracy
and some of the judiciary, there'sthey have a great ability to like
spin you around on an axleif you engage in those sorts of terms.
Whereas if you just create facts,if you just say that's great, here's
our legal opinion aboutwhy we're just going to deport people
and we'll see you in court,
(16:57):
like when you create those facts,that makes a difference.
So I think if in adjudicatingthe difference
that you have outlinedbetween the technical law
and what's actually goingon, I think that's really important.
But secondly, I think we just needto totally overhaul Padilla.
We need to go back to a much, much lowerimmigration numbers.
(17:17):
We need to be deporting everybodyreligiously who is not supposed to be here
because they're unauthorized immigrantsof some type
to not feel likewe need to apologize for that.
And we need to reorientour immigration system, much less around
family unification,a particularly expansive view of family
unification where, you know,
(17:38):
you bring your grandfather inand then you bring your cousin in.
If you're going to have familyunification,
it should be like a parentbringing a child at most.
But you really need to focus in on who'sbringing skills that America really needs.
And I would arguethat as a pretty successful society,
that's actuallya pretty small group of people
who really are so uniquely talented
(18:00):
that they're kind of bringing somethingthat we don't have in America anyway.
Now, that's going to be a really ferociouspolitical fight to do any
and all of that.
But I'm you know, I'm girded up for it.
I believe in it.
I think if we have any possibilityof saving the country going forward, that
that's really we're going to have toto to engage in that struggle.
And we're going to have to do sowithout apology.
(18:21):
So looking at it from the otherstandpoint, let's say, for example,
the Biden administration is reelectedand the current open border policies
continue for at least another four years.
And who knows how far beyond that.
I think your book is talkingabout a new North American civilization.
What would thathypothetical new civilization look like?
(18:42):
I don't know.But I think it will be a breaking point.
I mean, I think the right is ata breaking point where you're going to see
maybe a lot of enclaves.
And that would be the nicest sort of termwhere you get groups
not just kind of states really beginningto diverge very substantially politically,
but people sort of movingmore substantially into their own
ethnic communitiesas a that's a better way of keeping army
(19:03):
than having everybodyat each other's throats all the time.
But beyond that,you're going to wind up with a
like it'll be kind of a mix of a heavily
Hispanic culture with a sort of moretraditional Anglo culture.
But you're going to haveevery other group.
I mean, the big fertility boom right now,the only place where
even though fertility is falling,it's still far above replacement
(19:24):
is sub-Saharan Africa,which is a very different culture,
obviously not just in America,but even then, then African-Americans.
So over time, you'll see that becoming
a much bigger part of the U.S.
public and U.S. culture.
And, look, we're just going to have todeal with all of this as best we can.
I've put forth my view about whatI think would be good for America.
(19:47):
And I'm trying to convince other people.
I think if you lookat the actual public views on immigration
rightnow, they're actually much more aligned
with my viewthan the Biden administration's view.
And so we just needto kind of push on that
until we can hopefully make some progressand turn things around.
Well.
It sounds like what we would be looking atwith unlimited
uncontrolled immigrationinto the indefinite future is clearly loss
(20:11):
of social cohesioneven worse than what we have now.
What risk do you see to the basicstructure of our system of government?
Well, they're huge.
I mean, they're they're existentialand we'll see.
I mean, I just I'm I'm doingeverything I can to avoid those.
But if we don't get
a control of this issue,then I think, yeah, I mean, I think the
the whole US system is up for grabsand that's going to combine with
(20:35):
maybe some debt related crisesthat I think are indirectly
being caused by issues like thisand things could get really ugly.
So it's hope that we don't goin that direction.
Well, I agree with that.
You did say one thing.
As we start drawing to a conclusion on.
But you said that the properimmigration policy
should facilitate the integrationinto the history tradition
(20:56):
and of the preexisting groupsof people in this country.
And that yet but many of the immigrantswho are already here have declared war
on the American European identity.
Can you give me some examples of howsome of the immigrants who have come to
this country recently have declared waron the traditional American identity?
(21:18):
Yeah, I mean, I'm not aware of the exactyou may be paraphrasing,
so I'm not aware of saying anythingquite exactly like that.
But I would certainly say that,like everything
you're seeing with statues coming down,which started with Confederate statues,
which was predictable, and people like mesaid at the time, you know,
they pick on the the the sort of mostcontroversial people first,
but they won't stop there.
(21:39):
And sure enough, we've had in California,among other places, you've had
statues of Jefferson
come down, statues of Columbuscome down, statues of Lincoln come down.
So you really are seeing a war by largelythe left and its constituent
client groups on America'shistory, culture and traditions.
It's not everybody, I hasten to add,in these groups that signed up for that.
(22:01):
And in fact, quite the opposite.
But a politically relevant minorityor majority has.
And so that's moved these issuesin some really unproductive ways.
So how much of that so-called cancelculture that you're touching upon
is attributable, in your opinion,to the uncontrolled immigration?
I think a lot I think if you if you hadn'thad the the sort of card seller bill
(22:24):
and we had kept a democratic Dex,as we'd had in the mid 1966,
these problems would bewould be just dramatically,
dramatically smaller and say,you know what?
We're not putting that genieback in the bottle.
We have to go forward with the societywe have.
I kind of end my book on this note
that even if we wouldn't have started itat the place we are, this is where we are.
We've got to not kind of pinefor some past that's not coming back,
(22:47):
but figure out how we can both,
you know, all go forward togetherin the best possible way.
You mentioned also that you already talkedabout the dramatic slowdown
in the rate of immigration, which alsoreferred to aggressive assimilation.
What do you mean by that?
Just, you know, what I think we've talkedabout a little bit before that
it's just you got to have the cultureand institutions of the country
(23:09):
aggressively supporting that.
We're going to teach you about
the way that we have done things herethat we think is a really successful way.
And we want you to adopt thatand to not apologize
for speaking or thinking in that wayor wonderful.
Well, here we are in 2024.
Everyone realizesthat the status of immigration
(23:30):
is one of the top, if not the top issuein this presidential election year.
And you've done an excellent jobof laying out your position on open border
policies of the Biden administration,whether that's good or bad for the country
compared to a more restrictiveimmigration policy of the Trump
administration in the past.
And if the Trump administrationcomes into power,
(23:51):
presumably will be the policyof the new Trump administration.
So you've laid out the foundation of whatthe voters in 2024 are confronting.
So they will make the choice.
And as you say in your book,it is a choice.
And if you have unlimited immigration,would we be
at risk of becoming a fallen empire?
I think is the word that you use, or wouldwe want to follow some other course
(24:14):
that will allow usto maintain social cohesion
and some type of social consensusand identity, if I said that correctly?
I think that that's accurate.
And again,the book is called The Unprotected Class.
You can buy it on Amazon or Barnes Nobleor hopefully at your local bookstore.
Although sometimes conservative booksdon't get as good a hearing there.
And if you're interested inwhat I've said, I hope your listeners will
(24:37):
will buy the book and read itand and profit from it.
Thanks for being with us.
On this episode of the Fourscoreand Seven Project,
a productionof the New Majority Foundation.
My name is Roger Clark, your host.
Be sureand like and shares with your friends.
I hope you enjoyed and have been informedby this fascinating three part
conversation with Jeremy Kahl, a scholarat the Claremont Institute, where
(24:59):
the subject of our conversation has beenthe immigration crisis in America.
Thank you so much. I appreciate it.
Welcome to this episode of the Fourscore
and Seven Project, a productionof the New Majority Foundation.
My name is Roger Clark, your host.
And today, our subject iswhat is possibly the most contentious
and controversial topic in America,the immigration crisis.
This is part three,
and we will continue with our effortsin this section of the discussion
(00:41):
to peel back the bewildering onion layersof this complex and politicized issue
to better understand the causesimplications of just what might be
the most profoundtransition of a single civilization
because of uncontrolled immigrationin almost 2000 years.
We are pleased once again to haveas our guest the eminent scholar Jeremy
Carl, currently a fellow at the ClaremontInstitute in Southern California,
(01:05):
a past research fellow at StanfordUniversity's Hoover Institution
and a former deputy assistant secretarywith the Department of the Interior.
Jeremy is a graduate of Yale Universityand the Kennedy School of Government
at Harvard University, and he isthe author of the bestselling book
The Unprotected Class.Welcome back, Jeremy.
Thanks so much for having meon. It's a pleasure to be with you.
(01:26):
When we ended part two of this discussion,we left
with the question ofwhat is the celebration Parallax.
And I want to start partthree of this discussion
with your concept of the celebrationparallax.
Can you tell us about it? Yeah.
So the celebration parallaxis a wonderful term that was invented
by my one of my Claremont colleagues,Michael Anton.
(01:48):
And what it meansis that effectively a concept
can either be sort of very praiseworthyand true or absolutely
false and scandalousthat you would even suggest it
depending on who is making the assertion.
And so where we see thiswith respect to immigration is that if I,
(02:08):
as a white person and as a conservativecome out and say,
hey, America is kind of currentethnic majority is being replaced,
and I don't like that and it's terribleand I want to put a stop to it.
Booth I was told that it's maybe falseand then beyond that, that
although it's racist and terriblefor you to even mention it.
(02:31):
Whereas I point to in my bookany number of times
in which members of minority groupshave essentially said that exact
same thing, a slightly different spinon it, say white majority is dead
and we're going to take over an Xand Y and Z and similar.
And this is oftenseen as a wonderful, praiseworthy wording
(02:52):
that is celebrated in the same mediathat would tell me
that if I say it, it's smooth,racist and false.
Well, fascinating.
So on that pretty much defines the limits
and the definition of the debatethat's going on in this country right now.
We have two sides that seemto have no hope of bridging the gap.
Yeah, I mean, it's it's a challenge.
(03:12):
And I guess I just again,I bring obviously my own biases
to this discussion,but this is an unequal polarization.
In other words,I don't think that the right has moved
like dramatically to the righton immigration issues over the years.
If anything, quite the opposite.
I think that the mainstream rightis kind of made its peace positively
(03:33):
or negatively with a lot of openimmigration that we've had.
And interestingly,I don't think that the left wing voters
are anywhere near as radicalas the left wing political leaders.
But the left wing
political leaders have just becomeincredibly radical on this issue.
And we've seen this go to its extremein the Biden administration,
(03:54):
where we have literally millionsof illegals showing up at our border
and being admittedand being flown in at taxpayer expense
and being housed and fed at taxpayerexpense to the detriment of Americans,
and that everybody is supposedto somehow celebrate this.
And if I say, as I do believe,that every single one of these people here
illegally, and that includes the peoplewith obviously false asylum claims
(04:16):
should be deported, that's the new JimCrow in operation or something like that.
So we touched on this brieflyin the last episode, but what did Trump do
the Trump administrationdo to get this under control?
Because in the last year,I think of his administration,
the amount of illegal immigrationswere down to 800,000, maybe 1200 a day.
(04:40):
And it's, of course,maybe 14, 15 times that now.
What did Trump
do to get that under controlthat Biden unwound that led us to this?
Well, we touched on the previous episodeon the Remain in Mexico policy
that will see the importance of the ideathat when you were pursuing
these dubious asylum claims,you couldn't do it from the United States.
So that dramatically reduced incentives.
(05:01):
Everything they didwas just to simply make it more costly
in every respectto immigrate here illegally.
So they tried to enforce the laws.
And it's actually interesting,if we didn't have a left wing judiciary
that was illegally, in my view,flouting the Trump administration's
entirely lawful orders on immigration,that pretty much every step
(05:23):
as low as Trumpgot the illegal immigration,
he could have gotten it quite a bit lowerand got I knew a lot of people
who were working in the Trumpadministration on these policies.
They were very knowledgeable.
They understood what needed to be done.
They had sort of been hamstrungby a lot of the left wing judiciary
(05:45):
and the deep state bureaucracyessentially attempting to thwart them.
But we could easily,I think, if we had a real concerted effort
and if we did,we passed things like E-Verify,
which would basically meanthat you could only be employed
if we could really verify that you werehere legally, if we did all these things.
(06:05):
And we got much, much more seriousabout quick deportations of people
who we knew to be here illegally with lessprocedural hurdles, we could have gotten
illegal immigration down even dramaticallyfurther than it went under Trump.
But at least under Trump,
people who wanted to immigrate hereillegally understood
that it wasn't going to be easy,it wasn't going to be straightforward.
(06:25):
There was never going to bea get out of jail free card.
Whereas it's been the exact oppositeunder Biden, people understand
if they come here,they're not going to be deported.
They're going to be providedwith all sorts of services.
So people respond to incentives. Right.
And again, I'm not even mad at the peoplewho are here illegally that much.
I mean, as an American, I don't love it,
but I'm not blaming themfor trying to better their own situation.
(06:48):
What I think is the scandal and the scandal that should actually be prosecute did
is that our politicalleaders have allowed this to happen.
That's that's the problem.
You mentioned in your booksome of the topics that are become
some of the most taboo thingsto mention or discuss in this country.
And these are the subjectsof white privilege and the patriarchy
(07:10):
and if someone disputes the factthat there's such a thing
as a white privilegeor there's such a thing as a patriarchy,
they're accused of being a bigot andthey're consigned to the cultural gulag.
I believe.
We also talked last timeabout the motivations for the current
Biden administrationfor having an open border policy,
whether it's to make surethat we have a growing population,
(07:34):
because without immigration,we're a shrinking population,
whether it's to driftthe general electorate to the left
or whether it's to replace the culture,which is the so-called replacement
theory, again, which people on the leftaccuse of being racist and bigoted,
even replace that there's such a thingas replacement theory.
But on this sensitive topic,I think you have gotten
(07:56):
a lot of endorsements for your book
and people have saidand well known people who are very
public, prominent in the public eye,have said that what you've raised
and pointed out is courageousbecause most people shy away from that.
Your thoughts on propositionsthat you presented
in your book, meaning that you attackingsome of these issues,
(08:16):
pushing back against the least,the stereotypes
that the left of right cultureis pushing on the American society?
Well, you know, I'll leave the levelof courage up for other people to decide.
I'll just have certainly heard
a lot and a lot kind of donethe round, done interviews.
I mean, to me, it wasat the end of the day, a simple calculus.
I've got five kids.
I'm thinking about their future.
(08:38):
I've had certain opportunities in Americathat are great opportunities
because America ishas been such a great country.
I don't want to lose that.
I don't want to losethat opportunity for my kids.
And so the cost of mespeaking out in terms
of whatever social group is going to saysomething nasty about me is trivial
in comparison to my concernfor my kids and their future.
(08:59):
But I should add, it'snot just for my kids.
It's for everybody's kids.
And this includes kids of of other races,because the kind of way we're going down
the path we're going downis one that in other societies
has led to all sorts of conflict,particularly in democracies, right?
Like ultimately
when you have dictators, ships,you can kind of
(09:21):
keep a lid on some of these thingssometimes.
I mean, not that there's not other problemwith dictatorships,
but just to kind of pick onetrivial example, you know, Marshal Tito
kept a lid on all the ethnictensions in Yugoslavia.
And then once he left the sceneand communism left the scene, you had
huge amounts of ethnic warfare
that just blew up everywhereand kind of devastated that entire region.
(09:44):
So we're a democracy
and I don't want us to get anywhere nearthat type of situation.
I'm concerned that we are.
And so while I had some initial reluctancethat I think anybody could understand
a kind of take on this topic, eventuallyI just was sort of in the position
where I was.
I said, you know, hey,this is a really important topic.
Somebody needs to talk about it.I'm qualified to talk about it.
(10:06):
I've researched and thought about thisfor many years and I guess
I'm just going to have to step forwardand be that person who's going to do that.
And so that's what I did. Well,let me ask you directly.
You know, the concept of whiteprivilege is is has been adopted
wholeheartedlyin some areas of the country,
is completely rejected in othersor among different groups.
The same issue with the patriarchy.
It's become doctrine in some places.
(10:27):
Others it's rejected.
Do you believe that there is such a thingas white privilege or patriarchy
in this country?
White privilege, definitely no.
And there was in the past.I talk about this in the book.
I mean, when you actuallyhad white privilege in this country,
you had a number of things from authorslike seems Walden Johnson,
who wrote with every voice and sayinga song that many people are familiar with.
(10:51):
He wrote a book in 1912 calledThe Autobiography of an Ex Colored Man.
And it's essentially about a black person,very light skinned.
He's trying to pass for white,because at that time there really was
white privilege in the society.
And we can point to all sortsof situations and literary
works and reality where that was the case.
(11:13):
Today you have quite the opposite.
So if you're talking about how horriblethe Chinese dictatorship is,
is a pretty good chancethat you actually don't live under it.
Right.
Or if you were in the old Soviet Unionand you were complaining a lot,
or if you were talking about how terrible
the old Soviet Union was,you probably weren't living in.
I mean, of course, there weresome dissidents who just went to jail.
(11:35):
But it's it's precisely becausethose things are no longer operative,
that it's exactly the opposite,that it's in fact, very fashionable to
attack whites, to attack white privilegethat doesn't really exist anymore.
It's because of that that,you know, that white privilege, in fact,
is no longeran operative feature of society.
Just the opposite.
(11:55):
The patriarchy.That's a more complicated question.
It doesn't get into my book.
But, you know, I would say that
I'll just leave it at the factthat if you look at
sex relations right nowand the failure of folks to get married
and have familiesand the declining birthrate,
perhaps there were some thingsabout the old system,
(12:15):
while not perfect in many,many respects, that we should not have
just thrown out the babywith the bathwater
and the kind of relentless quest
to erase all distinctionsbetween sexes and genders
will perhaps not work out so wellfor society going forward.
Interesting.
Well, I know a couple of themesin your book Intertwined.
(12:38):
One theme, of course,which we've talked about,
the uncontrolled immigrationand the other theme
that seems to wrap itself aroundthe uncontrolled
immigration is this
doctrine in the UK, in the United States,of course,
according to your book,the hostility to the white culture,
you know, in particular,
(12:59):
and therefore there's this growing sense
of the white culture of whitebeing strangers in a strange land.
Per quote, Robert Heinlein'stitle of his book from from the 1960s.
And your book expresses some concern thatwhat happens when a culture
that is responsiblefor founding the country and developing
(13:21):
its institutions is now a disfavored groupwithin a country.
When that group becomesthe minority in the country
and you express some concernabout that eventuality.
Would you elaborate on that?
Yeah, Well, I mean, I think you kind ofall got it very nicely.
I just think it's a really joyoussituation when you have a bunch of people
(13:44):
coming in and look, you can saywhatever you want about America.
And Africa is not free. It's not for free.
It never has been.
I reject a sort of Whig historythat suggests that everything
was always just great and getting better.
But, you know,
there are a lot of really great thingsabout America,
and there's a reason that peoplefrom all over
the world are trying to come hereand have tried to come here
(14:06):
of all different races,ethnicities, backgrounds, religions.
So when we create a sort of systemwhere the group of people
whose ancestors sort ofcame up with that system
become marginalized, when that historybecomes marginalized and attacked,
and we say, hey, we're going to replace itwith something else.
And often that something else is deriveddirectly or indirectly
(14:29):
from countries and culturesthat have not have been as successful.
And that's precisely the reason whythose people are immigrating here.
I think that's somethingthat should cause everyone to
be very concerned.
Well, it's interesting you should mentionthat, because you hear that echoed in
a lot of the internal domestic migrationthat's going on in the United States,
(14:50):
where people are moving from blue statesto red states and people in red states
are saying, don'tbring your politics with you.
That's the reason you're movingto a red state to begin with.
Absolutely.
And there's a bunch of misconceptionsabout that also.
I mean, one of the interesting things,
I think actually in Idaho,they've sort of figured this out, but
but to California, to come up toIdaho are on average much more.
(15:11):
They're not like liberal Californians.
They're in Montana and places like that.
They're much more conservativethan the native Idahoans and Montanans
on average, even though these groupsalready were conservative populations.
And so the kind of great Californiaimmigration immigration
has turned these statesinto being even more conservative.
(15:32):
And so sometimes I think the the don'tbring your politics with you
can be misplaced.
On the other hand, in some other areaslike Colorado,
I think more liberal Californianshave tended to migrate there
and have brought more liberal frameof politics than the more conservative
politics that used to bein California, in Colorado.
So it really does it'sdependent on the state by state basis.
(15:54):
What do you see in termsof governmental policies on immigration?
We have what are the formal policies
which say one thing,
but then we have the informal policieswhich seem to disregard the law,
at least as currently implementedby the current Biden administration.
What whatdo you see going into the future?
(16:16):
If you could write the legislationand enforce it as the ideal
immigration policyto be put in place in the United States?
I think firstwe have to create facts on the ground.
And I hope that if we get a second gettingup administration, he will do that.
In other words,like you just deport people and you know,
you dare the Senateto kind of challenge that.
(16:36):
And I think there's a real
because the left has such a tightcontrol of the bureaucracy
and some of the judiciary, there'sthey have a great ability to like
spin you around on an axleif you engage in those sorts of terms.
Whereas if you just create facts,if you just say that's great, here's
our legal opinion aboutwhy we're just going to deport people
and we'll see you in court,
(16:57):
like when you create those facts,that makes a difference.
So I think if in adjudicatingthe difference
that you have outlinedbetween the technical law
and what's actually goingon, I think that's really important.
But secondly, I think we just needto totally overhaul Padilla.
We need to go back to a much, much lowerimmigration numbers.
(17:17):
We need to be deporting everybodyreligiously who is not supposed to be here
because they're unauthorized immigrantsof some type
to not feel likewe need to apologize for that.
And we need to reorientour immigration system, much less around
family unification,a particularly expansive view of family
unification where, you know,
(17:38):
you bring your grandfather inand then you bring your cousin in.
If you're going to have familyunification,
it should be like a parentbringing a child at most.
But you really need to focus in on who'sbringing skills that America really needs.
And I would arguethat as a pretty successful society,
that's actuallya pretty small group of people
who really are so uniquely talented
(18:00):
that they're kind of bringing somethingthat we don't have in America anyway.
Now, that's going to be a really ferociouspolitical fight to do any
and all of that.
But I'm you know, I'm girded up for it.
I believe in it.
I think if we have any possibilityof saving the country going forward, that
that's really we're going to have toto to engage in that struggle.
And we're going to have to do sowithout apology.
(18:21):
So looking at it from the otherstandpoint, let's say, for example,
the Biden administration is reelectedand the current open border policies
continue for at least another four years.
And who knows how far beyond that.
I think your book is talkingabout a new North American civilization.
What would thathypothetical new civilization look like?
(18:42):
I don't know.But I think it will be a breaking point.
I mean, I think the right is ata breaking point where you're going to see
maybe a lot of enclaves.
And that would be the nicest sort of termwhere you get groups
not just kind of states really beginningto diverge very substantially politically,
but people sort of movingmore substantially into their own
ethnic communitiesas a that's a better way of keeping army
(19:03):
than having everybodyat each other's throats all the time.
But beyond that,you're going to wind up with a
like it'll be kind of a mix of a heavily
Hispanic culture with a sort of moretraditional Anglo culture.
But you're going to haveevery other group.
I mean, the big fertility boom right now,the only place where
even though fertility is falling,it's still far above replacement
(19:24):
is sub-Saharan Africa,which is a very different culture,
obviously not just in America,but even then, then African-Americans.
So over time, you'll see that becoming
a much bigger part of the U.S.
public and U.S. culture.
And, look, we're just going to have todeal with all of this as best we can.
I've put forth my view about whatI think would be good for America.
(19:47):
And I'm trying to convince other people.
I think if you lookat the actual public views on immigration
rightnow, they're actually much more aligned
with my viewthan the Biden administration's view.
And so we just needto kind of push on that
until we can hopefully make some progressand turn things around.
Well.
It sounds like what we would be looking atwith unlimited
uncontrolled immigrationinto the indefinite future is clearly loss
(20:11):
of social cohesioneven worse than what we have now.
What risk do you see to the basicstructure of our system of government?
Well, they're huge.
I mean, they're they're existentialand we'll see.
I mean, I just I'm I'm doingeverything I can to avoid those.
But if we don't get
a control of this issue,then I think, yeah, I mean, I think the
the whole US system is up for grabsand that's going to combine with
(20:35):
maybe some debt related crisesthat I think are indirectly
being caused by issues like thisand things could get really ugly.
So it's hope that we don't goin that direction.
Well, I agree with that.
You did say one thing.
As we start drawing to a conclusion on.
But you said that the properimmigration policy
should facilitate the integrationinto the history tradition
(20:56):
and of the preexisting groupsof people in this country.
And that yet but many of the immigrantswho are already here have declared war
on the American European identity.
Can you give me some examples of howsome of the immigrants who have come to
this country recently have declared waron the traditional American identity?
(21:18):
Yeah, I mean, I'm not aware of the exactyou may be paraphrasing,
so I'm not aware of saying anythingquite exactly like that.
But I would certainly say that,like everything
you're seeing with statues coming down,which started with Confederate statues,
which was predictable, and people like mesaid at the time, you know,
they pick on the the the sort of mostcontroversial people first,
but they won't stop there.
(21:39):
And sure enough, we've had in California,among other places, you've had
statues of Jefferson
come down, statues of Columbuscome down, statues of Lincoln come down.
So you really are seeing a war by largelythe left and its constituent
client groups on America'shistory, culture and traditions.
It's not everybody, I hasten to add,in these groups that signed up for that.
(22:01):
And in fact, quite the opposite.
But a politically relevant minorityor majority has.
And so that's moved these issuesin some really unproductive ways.
So how much of that so-called cancelculture that you're touching upon
is attributable, in your opinion,to the uncontrolled immigration?
I think a lot I think if you if you hadn'thad the the sort of card seller bill
(22:24):
and we had kept a democratic Dex,as we'd had in the mid 1966,
these problems would bewould be just dramatically,
dramatically smaller and say,you know what?
We're not putting that genieback in the bottle.
We have to go forward with the societywe have.
I kind of end my book on this note
that even if we wouldn't have started itat the place we are, this is where we are.
We've got to not kind of pinefor some past that's not coming back,
(22:47):
but figure out how we can both,
you know, all go forward togetherin the best possible way.
You mentioned also that you already talkedabout the dramatic slowdown
in the rate of immigration, which alsoreferred to aggressive assimilation.
What do you mean by that?
Just, you know, what I think we've talkedabout a little bit before that
it's just you got to have the cultureand institutions of the country
(23:09):
aggressively supporting that.
We're going to teach you about
the way that we have done things herethat we think is a really successful way.
And we want you to adopt thatand to not apologize
for speaking or thinking in that wayor wonderful.
Well, here we are in 2024.
Everyone realizesthat the status of immigration
(23:30):
is one of the top, if not the top issuein this presidential election year.
And you've done an excellent jobof laying out your position on open border
policies of the Biden administration,whether that's good or bad for the country
compared to a more restrictiveimmigration policy of the Trump
administration in the past.
And if the Trump administrationcomes into power,
(23:51):
presumably will be the policyof the new Trump administration.
So you've laid out the foundation of whatthe voters in 2024 are confronting.
So they will make the choice.
And as you say in your book,it is a choice.
And if you have unlimited immigration,would we be
at risk of becoming a fallen empire?
I think is the word that you use, or wouldwe want to follow some other course
(24:14):
that will allow usto maintain social cohesion
and some type of social consensusand identity, if I said that correctly?
I think that that's accurate.
And again,the book is called The Unprotected Class.
You can buy it on Amazon or Barnes Nobleor hopefully at your local bookstore.
Although sometimes conservative booksdon't get as good a hearing there.
And if you're interested inwhat I've said, I hope your listeners will
(24:37):
will buy the book and read itand and profit from it.
Thanks for being with us.
On this episode of the Fourscoreand Seven Project,
a productionof the New Majority Foundation.
My name is Roger Clark, your host.
Be sureand like and shares with your friends.
I hope you enjoyed and have been informedby this fascinating three part
conversation with Jeremy Kahl, a scholarat the Claremont Institute, where
(24:59):
the subject of our conversation has beenthe immigration crisis in America.
Thank you so much. I appreciate it.
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