Decision Points on Immigration

George W. Bush's Decision Points sheds light on the McCain-Kennedy amnesty.

Birmingham, AL

I bought of copy of George W. Bush’s new book Decision Points this afternoon. Eventually, I plan to write a review. Bush was such an omnipresent figure for so many years that it is hard to believe he is gone. I was mostly interested in hearing what he had to say about immigration and his presidency.

In particular, this passage stuck out at me:

“I traveled across the country touting the bill, especially its emphasis on border security and assimilation. Passions ran high on both sides of the issue. As immigrants took jobs across the country, they put pressure on local schools and hospitals. Residents worried about their communities changing. Talk radio hosts and TV commentators warned of a “third world invasion and conquest of America.” Meanwhile, a huge crowd of legalization supporters marched through major cities waving Mexican flags, an in-your-face display that offended many Americans.

The mood on the airwaves affected the attitude in Washington. Congressmen pledged, “We will not surrender America,” and suggested that supporters of reform “wear a scarlet letter A for ‘amnesty.'” On the other side, the chairman of the Democratic Party compared the temporary worker program to “indentured servitude.” The head of America’s largest labor union labeled the reform build “anti-family and anti-worker.”

As Bush recounts the story, the McCain-Kennedy amnesty was within 2 votes of passage in the Senate, but Harry Reid scheduled a premature cloture vote that failed. Republican Senators returned home where they faced the wrath of furious constituents who had been stirred up by talk radio. By the time they came back to Washington, “comprehensive immigration reform” was a dead letter.

Remember that big massive amnesty rally in Los Angeles with the sea of Mexican flags? That was the turning point in the immigration debate.

Americans didn’t suddenly rethink and abandon their core fundamental values. On the contrary, the contempt shown by Mexican illegal aliens for the American flag offended the patriotism of White conservatives, who reacted by making opposition to “comprehensive immigration reform” a hot button issue on talk radio.

That was how we turned the tide on immigration: a racially polarizing national spectacle that was beamed into every conservative household by FOX News and was discussed endlessly on talk radio. The overreaction of the opposition played into our hands.

It was probably that California high school where Mexican students ripped down the American flag and raised the Mexican flag as their standard. That incident emotionally resonated with implicit Whites and connected with their existing values. It created a lasting backlash that changed the political spectrum in our favor.

Similarly, the televised spectacle that happened this year with the Obama Justice Department suing Arizona over SB 1070 played a major role in nationalizing the immigration debate and driving up White turnout at the polls.

About Hunter Wallace 12379 Articles
Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Occidental Dissent

44 Comments

  1. Lew:

    True, except they have already stopped amnesty dead in its tracks. That’s a significant accomplishment. Without the Tea Party wave election, Obama’s next move would have been to amnesty 15,000,000 to 30,000,000 illegal Mexicans.

    Meaningless. So why didn’t the Democrats pass it in the last two years? They had overwhelmingly dominance in Congress to make it happen but it didn’t. Obviously, there are lots of people in the Democrat Party that don’t want it either.

  2. They didn’t pass it the last two years because Obama had other priorities besides amnesty. Out of Obama’s three main domestic priorities, Health Care Reform, amnesty, and energy reform, Health Care Reform was always Obama’s highest priority.

    Unfortunately for Obama, it took him 15 months to get HCR through Congress, with the Tea Party movement harassing him the whole time on the national stage. Obama took office in January 2009, but wasn’t able to sign HCR until March 2010, and then the Gulf oil spill came along which kept him occupied until August.

    There was no way Obama/Reid/Pelosi were going to try and tackle amnesty in the post-HCR political climate in this country with oil pouring into the Gulf of Mexico.

    So basically they didn’t pass amnesty not because they didn’t want to but because they couldn’t, due to politics and circumstances outside their control.

    Obama probably didn’t anticipate HCR taking 15 months, and amnesty was definitely next on his list.

    This Tea Party wave election definitely stopped amnesty, at least for the moment. It’s evidence against the common WN belief that it doesn’t matter who gets elected into the system.

  3. Rodger said:

    “Meaningless. So why didn’t the Democrats pass it in the last two years? They had overwhelmingly dominance in Congress to make it happen but it didn’t. Obviously, there are lots of people in the Democrat Party that don’t want it either.”

    Exactly. What isn’t widely discussed is how once they have achieved large enough demographics, the Mestizos have this nasty little habit of running and voting for a Mestizo candidate against ANY non-Mestizo incumbent no matter how much he has pandered to them in the past. They have not discriminated against Democrats OR Republicans or Negro or White where this is concerned. Out they go.

    I have to commend them for this. If these incumbents can stab their own race in the back for them, why should they trust these race traitors? In any case, they dashed Democrat hopes of retaining the levers of power because they thought the Mestizos would behave exactly like the Negros did, simply vote for the guy who brought them the most goodies and not seek power themselves.

    Mestizos will form coalitions with Disingenuous White Liberals, Jews AND Negros … but only as long as they feel they need them. Once they have the demographics, they contemptuously kick them ALL to the curb. I have to admire the little bastards even though they are taking over the damned country.

  4. LEW’s analysis is spot on. By the time the HCR fight was over partisan relations were in shambles and the Rs had 41 in the senate with Ds wanting to focus on their reelection campaigns. If the Rs had not won the House a week ago there’s a very good chance that amnesty would have passed over the next two years.

    In a way, it’s all worked out for the best for if McCain had won in 08 the first thing he would have done is pass amnesty. Somehow we keep averting this disaster by the slimmest of margins.

  5. If Hunter allows someone like Robert Campbell, who does not have the reputation of pathological liar, to his web traffic stats, I will publicize mine.

  6. That should have read:

    If Hunter allows someone like Robert Campbell, who does not have the reputation of a pathological liar, to publicize his web traffic stats, I will publicize mine.

    Is it possible that WordPress is eating some of my words?

  7. Jeff in Phoenix:
    “I guess my point is that with the elections two weeks ago, Arizona (and some other states) have shifted even more to the right even if the Federal Congress and Senate haven’t so much. The states are much stronger now. If Obama tries to pass anything like the amnesty Bush failed at in 2006-2007 he will fail even worse. So look for an executive order from him and the lame duck Congress and be prepared.”

    IMO, a lame-duck Congress passing amnesty is highly unlikely this year. You forget, they would have to go home and face their outraged constituents. Unless the federal government is willing to put a squad of G-Men on every clown who voted for this to protect him/her 24-7 around the clock, I can’t imagine any one of them in their right mind will go there. It’s not like there’s a country set up for crooked politicians to dodge into … unless they’re Jewish. Otherwise there are unpleasant consequences to face and I don’t think this bunch has the balls to ride it out.

    As for Obama, he’s may loathe White people with a purple passion, but he’s a Black Nationalist who is highly unlikely to allow a bunch of Mestizos in who are ethnically cleansing Negros and more of the race conflicts are between these two than between either group and Whites. I think he will run against the Republicans in 2012 dangling amnesty under Mestizo noses as an inducement, but he is unlikely to bring it up until he launches his new campaign.

    It really makes no difference. The economy is in meltdown and I believe the sharper tools in the illegal Mestizo drawer plan to bail out and go back to wherever the hell they came from with whatever loot they’ve acquired once TSHTF. That is going to leave the Negros and Mestizos at each other’s throats for the the scraps that are left. All Whites need to do is kick back to a safe vantage point and watch them kill each other.

  8. Notus Wind says:

    In a way, it’s all worked out for the best for if McCain had won in 08 the first thing he would have done is pass amnesty. Somehow we keep averting this disaster by the slimmest of margins.

    True. But Obamacare is and will be extremely damaging to White interests as well. It will increase costs for every White owned business in the country, and every company that employees Whites. It also creates a new universal entitlement that will be financed by middle class White labor with the benefits accruing to mostly non-Whites, especially in the future. Most of all, Obamacare lets the FEDGOV get its hooks into the health care system which will give them yet another means to create dependency on the Federal Government and control White peoples’ lives.

    I can foresee a scenario down the road, say around 2018, where Whites are finally beginning to wise up in large numbers but at the same time realize the government that is forcing their race replacement is also providing their health care. Nothing would probably blunt the revolutionary instinct faster than knowing you would be revolting against the entity that will approve or disapprove your Mom’s bypass surgery, or whatever.

    This is another reason this notion that WN should completely ignore what happens within the system is questionable (IMO).

    If we accept the premise that the US Federal government is our main adversary, we should be doing all we can to deny additional power to the federal government. Limiting federal power, to the extent possible, means limiting its reach into White folks’ lives.

    People in the states might be more inclined to secede or nullify, for example, if doing so won’t mean losing their health care. This would argue for supporting system politicians that will fight to repeal Obamacare and oppose new entitlements.

  9. You did the right thing, Notus, in mutedly encouraging Johnson and Wallace to take the “high road”. But alas, it was not to be – the brainstem has taken over now. And how else could it be, as despite what it may flatter us to think, we are really nothing more than pale-skinned, relatively hairless apes who walk upright. Yes, even in apparent opposition to their prodigious “learning” it has at this point become a matter of whose cyber dick is the bigger, er, who gets more web traffic. There are only two ways this can end, neither of them pretty: a cage match between our two eminent protagonists or a final showdown at the Motel 6. In the former instance, my money is on Johnson, after all, it would be Wallace he would be taking on; and in the latter, my money is still on Johnson, as it would be Johnson that Wallace would be taking on.

  10. CC,

    “But alas, it was not to be – the brainstem has taken over now.”

    Yeah, I was in the middle of writing a longish comment when I realized that the situation was already too far gone. It’s always frustrating when I feel the need to abandon my own stuff.

  11. Might as well enjoy the spectacle, then, I know I will. But that’s not “respectable”. Oh well, fuck it.

  12. LEW,

    I agree that Obama’s passage of HCR is bad news for the reasons you mention, but it’s by no means a done deal just because it’s now law. On the other hand, there’s no turning back if we pass amnesty.

    I must confess, I’m optimistic about the prospects of HCR being subverted into oblivion. Ultimately, the D’s should have passed HCR a generation ago; they finally managed to do so but it’s something of a Pyrrhic victory as our country is just too damn broke to pay for such sweeping changes. Another problem, the R’s control the House and thus the purse strings, there’s a lot they can do to undermine this thing if they so choose and I don’t see any reason why they wouldn’t. Lastly, there are a set of legal challenges in the works that have a fair chance of succeeding and if even one of them does it will bring the entire legislation down for technical reasons.

    My overall feeling is that our government and political system is so exhausted and inept that it lacks the political will needed to convert HCR from a stack of paper into reality.

  13. If it’s not too late to revisit the subject, the U.S. invading Iran would likely pan out like the Soviets Union’s invasion of Afghanistan: A bloody stalemate. I just can’t see the U.S. tackling that tar baby.

  14. Don’t you think that a comparison of web stats would settle some questions? Such as:

    (1) What happened to OD’s traffic and influence over the course of this year? If HW’s mainstreaming shtick has caused the site’s traffic to decline, that would be interesting.

    (2) If C-C/NANR is doing as well or better than OD, what would that imply?

  15. @Discard

    Iran is big game. 65,000,00 people I think, with a respectable military and the terrain in their favor. Plus, Iran is an old civilization. The Iranians are not fools. I don’t think it would be a stalemate. It would be a blowout in Iran’s favor.

  16. Why don’t some people settle their personal grievances with some hair pulling and blouse ripping out behind the gym? Is there no place where White people can talk about events, issues, and ideas without this squalling?

  17. The Flag is a sacred symbol for conservatives, veterans, and many others. We need to reconnect the Flag to its White nature and show what kinds of flags fly, and how they fly, when we let in foreign races:

    American Whites and Our Flag, from the civilizing of a New World to Whites planting our Flag on the Moon:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=auupP1FDlKA&feature=related

    (more links elided due to spam filter)

  18. also @Discard

    Hey, I’ll gladly talk abou this all day. I just didn’t want to ruin the thread for everybody else by derailing it. Sometimes part of me almost wants there to be a war just to see how the US military does against an opponent that doesn’t just roll over.

    It would be a blowout in Iran’s favor

    Er… politically yes, but not actually on the battlefield. First thing the US would have to do is sink the Iranian navy and wipe out it’s air force and air defenses. While this would be fairly easy for the US navy/airforce it would still take them about a month to complete. During that entire month Iraq and Afghanistan would be racked with revolt, Hizballah would start another war with Israel (remember how the last one turned out?) and Iran would be launching missiles at Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States (they would probably leave Israel to Hamas and Hezballah).

    Iran would dig in their most loyal and committed forces in the mountains and the cities, where US armour and airpower would be greatly neutralized. Israel sent ~50,000 men into Southern Lebanon and was unable to clean out 7000 part time militia members despite the fact that urban warfare/counter guerilla operations are the IDFs specialty. While I see no way that the US army will be defeated like the Israelis were (the US army have performed phenomenally is urban and mountain battles since 2001) they are likely to need atleast 2 months of ground fighting to conquer the whole country and I would anticipate several thousand casualties and as many as 500 deaths.

    If faced with an invasion, Iran would destroy their oil wells so that the invaders could not use the oil money to fund the ensuing occupation. So the US would end up with 500 dead and several thousand wounded after a 3 month conflict facing an endless guerilla war in a third country while oil goes to 300 dollars a barrel. Meanwhile, the moderate arab regimes will be even further discredited amongst their own people and Israel will have just lost another war against Hizballah’s pathetic, untrained militia.

    Unless the current administration has a total death wish, I don’t see them going down this route. At most I could see a targetted air strike against Iran’s nuclear infrastructure but doing that would be pointless because I don’t think that the US really believes Iran is making a nuclear weapon. The US isn’t going to risk a disasterous regional war for the sake of stopping a program that they know doesn’t even exist.

  19. Well, Otis, thanks again for the interesting analysis. I will defer to your judgment and assessment since this area appears to be a specialty for you. Hopefully you are right and it won’t happen and all this remains theoretical.

  20. Otis, I could see the Iranians simply abandoning their armor and air forces, and going straight to a Swiss strategy. Why get well-trained pilots and tank crews killed in an American turkey shoot? Instead of guerrilla war carried out by tribal militias, as in Iraq, they could wage a more effective stealth war by trained, organized troops. We’d not be able to turn one armed gang against another, as in Iraq either. Not even the Kurdish or Armenian minorities would help us, knowing what would happen to their own people. I don’t think that any American general wants to play the Yamamoto role, starting a war that he knows will end in defeat.

  21. I had a blog a while ago but it was about anti-Feminism, not politics. Historically I have spent most of my online time trolling left wing websites but am thinking about switching to articles.

  22. @Otis: I would respectfully have to disagree with you about the ease with which the U.S. could subdue Iran. Although I’ve joked before that “I ran” is a Persian war story, I think they can put up some good resistance. I agree with you on the tactical level, but I think our losses would be bigger and that it would take a lot longer.

    Considering the number of troops we still have in Afghanistan and Iraq, we might be hard put to gather up enough units for a sustainable attack on Iran. Like you say, we would need to gain air and naval supremacy first, but that would of course only be the first step.

    Even with all the Special Operations Forces, UAVs etc that we can use pre-invasion, I believe that between the Revolutionary Guard, the regular Army and the Basjir militia, there would be plenty of troops left to fight us. If well dispersed and stationary during the air phase, they would be fresh as daisies for when we land. Since Iran has it’s own, very well developed, military industry it’s reasonable to assume that they have plenty of reserve equipment, as well.

    I agree with you that any act of war will spill over into Iraq and our forces there. A Shia rebellion in southern Iraq will be made to order. Who knows, maybe the Kurds in Iraq would take the chance and liberate their brethren in Iran?

    Although I was just a lowely E-5 back in the dinosaur age, I would like at least 7-8 divisions – and probably more like 10 – to invade Iran, and I just don’t think we are willing to try.

    I’m thinking it would that many, many months before we’d have even a semblance of control and that the KIA list would run into the thousands just in that initial stage.

    PS: I’m not really disagreeing with you that much. 🙂 Just a little bit and, like you, I like to discuss the subject.

  23. I think we are on the same page and just disagree about potential casualties. The reason my estimate is so low is because I think very highly of the United States Army and am not sold on the Iranians at all. Iran has the world’s most beautiful women and Iranians are tough as nails (as they showed in their war against Iraq) but in terms of talent I find them a fairly unimpressive people. The ease with which the Roman and Byzantine empires handled them even when outnumbered speaks to the fact that, while brave, Persians are crap fighters.

    The US is a decaying empire, but its military remains incredible. Pretty much the only way the US army ever absorbs large casualties is when it is used for occupation duties. When the US army is allowed to actually go out and attack an enemy force instead of standing still waiting to get shot at, it is unstoppable.

    I think what has happened is people saw the way that Israels massive, American armed military got shellacked by a handful of guerillas in tiny areas like Gaza and Lebanon and they have projected that weakness onto the US forces. But the US has shown in places like Kabul and Basra that it is no Israel. When the US army decides to fight, it wins, and it wins big.

    Fortunately for us (and by “us” I mean “the planet”) the age of US imperialism is ending and there isn’t going to be a war with Iran.

  24. I was really surprised by how badly the IDF handled the latest Lebanon war. I watched a PBS show (I know, their politics suck, but they do show a lot that the MSM doesn’t) that followed several IDF reservists and their war stories. Having served myself in one of the most organized conscript armies in the world, I couldn’t help but wonder what the h*ll happened to those guys?

    Reserve units with vacancies so huge that they couldn’t mobilize on time, having to look for key personnel (especially medics) from other units, equipment not available in mob depots, just to mention a few things. Also, coordination of movement and fire (squads within platoons and platoons within company) lacked!

    Those guys are supposed to be the varsity, but I think it was you, Otis, who mentioned that they haven’t been the same since -73. This might also mean that if they ever get into a conventional war again – especially if they actually cede West Bank territory – they might have to go nuclear to make it.

    I’ve actually always hoped that Israel would remain in peace, because if they seem to be losing, nukes or U.S. intervention is right around the corner. If they still loose, you just know where the survivors are going to move and that they’re going to lobby us for a “reconquista”.

    (Man, we’re off topic)

  25. 1.) I checked the Alexa rating. This site gets more traffic on Alexa.

    2.) I checked the Quantcast rating. There is some interruption in the data because of the switch to the “2010 theme,” but Quantcast also shows our traffic unchanged. CC is not on Quantcast.

    3.) 22,000 to 25,000 unique visitors per months since April. The spike to 67,000 unique visitors in June was caused by the influx of traffic from Reddit.

  26. (1) This site is reaching out to a far wider audience. There might be a handful of extremely active vanguardists on the internet who despise America, Christianity, and republican government, but they are dwarfed by the millions of explicit Whites alone who are “pro-White” but don’t consider themselves White Nationalists.

    (2) I made a conscious decision several months ago not to care about popularity. I want to win, not entertain people. If winning means offending people to shock some sense into them, then so much the better.

    (3) OD is now 30 percent of my involvement in pro-White politics. A year ago, I started to do more things in real life. That trajectory has accelerated since returning to Alabama in the middle of the election season. Unlike Johnson, I don’t believe in the efficacy of writing on the internet.

  27. The personal issue with Johnson is not nearly as important as the ideological disagreement. I strongly believe that his message (and strategy) is unsuited to the temperament of White America and will only expand the divide between White Nationalists and their target audience.

  28. Of course Jewish influence on our political system matters. The problem is that White Nationalists have known about this for decades and have been unable to rise to the occasion and do anything about it.

    There is only so many times you can browse Occidental Observer and Amren and hear the horror story of the day before wanting to pull your hair out. The only question that matters is what is going to be done to address the problem.

  29. Greg Johnson wants to talk about my “sullied reputation.”

    Last time I checked, he was the one who was unceremoniously fired from TOQ and expelled from the organization, not to mention the one who is specifically excluded from events, and has spent the last six months crying about it to everyone on his email list, sending out email after pathetic email about how horrible he was mistreated.

    How did that happen? What did he do to cause that? There must be some reason he is kept at arm’s length.

  30. Regarding Otis’ comments that Iran is generally regarded by white nationalists as sort of the current “great white hope” for destroying Israel

    and

    …as they think very highly of Iranians.

    I don’t consider myself an expert on what “white nationalists” think. I only know what I think. Iranians are alright I guess. I tend to have a higher opinion of them than of arabs in general. But I certainly don’t put Iran on a pedestal. Furthermore, I have no wish in “destroying Israel”. I just don’t want to carry their water.

  31. [Iran as] “great white hope” for destroying Israel

    Does anyone really believe the fairy-tale about Iran planning to “[physically] destroy” Israel?

    For those who know more than one language, you know translations can be “tricky” and open to insertion of bias by the translating authority. Fox-CNN-NBC-BBC used the loaded-translation “wipe off the map”, when what was referenced was dissolving the state. Similar to how the political unit of Palestine was dissolved in the late ’40s, then kicked around for 60 years and running. In a sense, Palestine was “wiped off the map”. In 1918, Austria-Hungary was “wiped off the map” without any killings.

    Anyway, there is no evidence at all that Ahmadinejad supports white-racialism. His support for Holocaust-Realism notwithstanding.

  32. Does anyone really believe the fairy-tale about Iran planning to “[physically] destroy” Israel?

    I think that most white nationalists believe that Iran seriously plans on ridding the world of Israel. This is atleast what posters on VNN and Stormfront seem to think.

    I don’t buy it, I never have, but some do.

    Furthermore, I have no wish in “destroying Israel”. I just don’t want to carry their water.

    That is a pretty mainstream position and I think most people on Stormfront would find such a view very offensive and borderline treasonous.

    Anyway, I wasn’t tryint to criticize white nationalists in my article. I was just trying to explain that when people have such different priorities there is no reason to be surprised when they interpret the same event in a completely opposite fashion.

  33. I love how Hunter’s mind works:

    (1) He sullies his reputation through his own acts and writings, which he has documented in his public career of blogging, trolling, stalking, phishing, etc.

    (2) He and a fellow kook cut from the same cloth then launch a defamation campaign against me.

    (3) Voila! Who I am to talk about HIS sullied reputation?

  34. Johnson,

    Leave the kid alone. Reputations, schmeputations, none of us are perfect. Nor should it matter. (This isn’t 1950.)

    Your writings are good. Even though it’s not addressed to me, I rarely disagree with your point of view on racial issues. I liked this cheeky line: “But I must be frank. Although preferring one’s own race does not in itself lead to hating other races, I really do hate other races.” Although, the qualifications you later provide modify that statement somewhat, to the point it should really read:”…I really do hate people just for their race.” (Experience* has taught you what you can reasonably expect from intercourse with members of a certain race so you decide to reject (rather than interact with) members of that race when they come into view, likely accompanied with a strong sense of revulsion toward them. *In rarer cases — all too rare — forethought, regarding the ineluctable outcome (race-replacement) of sharing living space with uncontrolled numbers of them.)

    If a white manages to admit to himself that his race is important to him, that it’s an essential, non-negotiable aspect of his being, then all sorts of points of view become possible. But average man is worlds away from such a state of mind. And your writings, while they are generally excellent, do not do anything much to bring him closer to it because either he’s not listening to you, or if he listens, he is repelled by what he hears. Thus it’s crucial to interact with the mainstream. Ideas obviously do matter, but Hunter is quite correct that racialist ideas have the undesirable effect of alienating people from the world they live in; far from being made more effective by the ideas they have imbibed, they have a tendency to be rendered completely ineffective (sullen and depressed, usually). On the positive side, however, even if one is not motivated to do anything, neither is one any longer motivated to resist those who do (think some aimless leftard convert who’s had the supports of his previous thinking knocked out from under him).

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