LET 'EM EAT UPSIDE DOWN CAKE

“Surely something must be terribly wrong with a man who seems to be far more concerned with Jews building houses in Israel than with Muslims building a nuclear bomb in Iran.”
—Burt Prelutsky

WE ARE TOLD NOT TO CAST ASPERSIONS. We are told not not to stereotype. We are told not to assign blame to all Muslims for the strife, hatred and violence their cousins in the Islamist branch of the family tree produce. Sounds fabulously fair, doesn't it? However we are also asked to collectively categorize ALL Tea party marchers as middle-aged, wealthy, white racists who hate having a black president and want poor black and brown people to suffer.

NYC Mayor Michael's Bloomberg's pathetic remarks immediately after the car bomb was discovered are pathetic enough, but seem mild compared to the snarky scolding he issued this morning after the Islamic identity of the bomber was revealed.

Where is all that anti-Muslim backlash our politicians and CAIR keep warning us against? Have some cake...

We are instructed that it is in our best interest as part of the human race to send our money to poorer nations, to stop living in large homes, to cut down on our "carbon" footprints and to accept the science we are shown. We are told this by people who buy huge homes and make tons of money and resolutely disregard dissent.

And this administration, we are told, has a "boot to the neck" of British Petroleum?

Here, have some more cake...

IT'S THE IMMIGRATION, STUPID!

As the United States announces that it will take in more than 5,000 Iraqi refugees now living in Syria, Brenda Walker of VDARE takes umbrage at the idea of persistent immigration of Muslims into our nations is in the best interests of the West. The article is rich in detail, and peppered with informative links. Here's a taste, sans its original links:

IF THERE IS ANYTHING that should make Americans' blood run cold about immigration, it is the sight of Europe—and Britain, the home of Western civilization—being buried by millions of Muslim colonists. Europe is just hoping against hope that Islam isn't going to explode into massive rioting (or worse), or impose total cultural Islamification.

Major jihadist terror occurred in London (July 7, 2005, killing 52 and injuring 700) and in Madrid (March 11, 2004, killing 191 and injuring 1841). Yet cowardly politicians continue policies of appeasement, which hostile Muslims correctly apprise as the fatal weakness of a culture too pacified to defend itself.

Some Europeans already accept the coming Eurabia. One Dutchman, mourning the future loss of Europe was quoted by Paul Belien as saying, "I am not a warrior, but who is? I have never learned to fight for my freedom. I was only good at enjoying it."

Well, that's honest. But how about less self-pity and more directed anger? Many Americans I know in the patriotic immigration reform movement had a come-to-Jesus moment of awakening from passivity, turning to resolve to save the country.

Did America encourage Europe's socialist pacifism by protecting it too well, starting after the Second World War? Perhaps. Having your freedom handed to you on a plate is no way to appreciate its value.

Other causes of the continent's tragic downfall are rooted in recent history. They include business' desire for cheap labor (so familiar!), a trendy belief in secular multiculturalism as a replacement for Christianity and apparent ignorance of Islam's long-standing enmity toward Europe.

Now the triumphs of Tours and Vienna are being trampled by immigrants, entering mostly legally. It's a wonder the Muslims bother with terrorism at all when demography is working so well for them.

Read it all.

CITIZEN RANT #524

WARREN BUFFETT, THE RICHEST MAN in the world advocates that America must balance it's world trade balance account if we are to survive because he knows in doing so America will gain $760 billion dollars (our trade deficit) in new jobs every year.

We can hear the Texas twang of US Presidential candidate Ross Perot in 1992. If America had a Positive Trade balance, then we should stay NAFTA and the WTO. But that's not the case. Six months after America Pulls out of NAFTA and the WTO. America will be back to gaining new jobs big time. Because $760 billion dollars in new jobs is a lot of new jobs.

Currently, even the "higher paying technical jobs" we were promised are being farmed out overseas.

We're tired of talking to computers when I want to ask the bank about my retirement funds. When I do get someone on the line, the sap is usually in Florida or India while I am sitting in Texas.

We're tired of not having enough checkout people and being urged to use a computer.

We're tired of turning over everything we buy and finding the words "Made in China". Especially when we are told much of what we buy is actually manufactured by "workers" of the Chinese army.

We're tired of being told we're intolerant because we think people who come to the USA should immediately learn to speak English, especially those taking American jobs. The melting pot has vanished along with national pride. Instead, we have a rotten stew of simmering self-interested minorities who maintain loyalty only to the country or religious entity from which they immigrated.

Yes, this is our response to this endless apologizing to the world for acts of tyranny we never committed...

America became great through the good ideas and hard work of her motivated citizens, who met challenges and transformed these ideas into solutions. Our industrial revolution spread and benefitted people throughout the world. However, as technology improved, America made her greatest mistake, allowing a large number of our manufacturing and agricultural businesses to be outsourced. We need to get back to basics, people! We need to re-institute the Puritan work ethic on which this country was founded and made great!

We need to support each other as Americans! It's nice to 'help our neighbors' but let's be truthful, if we can't afford to take care of our elderly, homeless and veterans, and if we can't afford our own healthcare, how can we afford to continue to give foreign aid to the rest of the world? The world is quick to condemn America but falls short on memory—we are always the first ones to offer a helping hand in a disaster, we are the first ones to send food and money and medicine to countries all over the world in their time of need, and all at no cost to the recipients—only to the American citizens!

Perhaps we should ax foreign aid and redirect that wealth to our own people, to our own economy, to our own success—instead of climbing aboard a sinking ship contemplating trade war strategies. In all fairness, we need to put Americans back to work—in manufacturing, industry, agriculture, healthcare, service, and every other area of contempoary need. America needs to withhold funding from Congress to allow them to see where the money they so readily and irresponsibly spend is actually derived.

Congress does not own the treasury. Money is the operative exchange unit for goods and services rendered. Money does not grow on Congressional trees...

BORDER INSANITY REDUX

After a long drama, a departing President George W. Bush finally commuted the sentences of those two border patrol agents, Ramos and Compean, jailed for shooting an illegal drug smuggler (a mere flesh wound) and then trying to cover it up. But the outrage along the US southern border continues.

AN ARIZONA RANCHER who has waged a 10-year campaign to stop a flood of illegal immigrants from crossing his property is being sued by 16 Mexican nationals who accuse him of conspiring to violate their civil rights when he stopped them at gunpoint on his ranch on the US-Mexico border.

Roger Barnett, 64, began rounding up illegal immigrants in 1998 and turning them over to the U.S. Border Patrol, he said, after they destroyed his property, killed his calves and broke into his home.

His Cross Rail Ranch near Douglas, Ariz., is known by federal and county law enforcement authorities as "the avenue of choice" for immigrants seeking to enter the United States illegally.

Trial continues Monday in the federal lawsuit, which seeks $32 million in actual and punitive damages for civil rights violations, the infliction of emotional distress and other crimes. Also named are Mr. Barnett's wife, Barbara, his brother, Donald, and Larry Dever, sheriff in Cochise County, Ariz., where the Barnetts live. The civil trial is expected to continue until Friday.

The lawsuit is based on a March 7, 2004, incident in a dry wash on the 22,000-acre ranch, when he approached a group of illegal immigrants while carrying a gun and accompanied by a large dog.

Attorneys for the immigrants—five women and 11 men who were trying to cross illegally into the United States—have accused Mr. Barnett of holding the group captive at gunpoint, threatening to turn his dog loose on them and saying he would shoot anyone who tried to escape.

The immigrants are represented at trial by the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), which also charged that Sheriff Dever did nothing to prevent Mr. Barnett from holding their clients at "gunpoint, yelling obscenities at them and kicking one of the women."

In the lawsuit, MALDEF said Mr. Barnett approached the group as the immigrants moved through his property, and that he was carrying a pistol and threatening them in English and Spanish. At one point, it said, Mr. Barnett's dog barked at several of the women and he yelled at them in Spanish, "My dog is hungry and he's hungry for buttocks."

The lawsuit said he then called his wife and two Border Patrol agents arrived at the site. It also said Mr. Barnett acknowledged that he had turned over 12,000 illegal immigrants to the Border Patrol since 1998.

In March, US District Judge John Roll rejected a motion by Mr. Barnett to have the charges dropped, ruling there was sufficient evidence to allow the matter to be presented to a jury. Mr. Barnett's attorney, David Hardy, had argued that illegal immigrants did not have the same rights as U.S. citizens.

Mr. Barnett told The Washington Times in a 2002 interview that he began rounding up illegal immigrants after they started to vandalize his property, northeast of Douglas along Arizona Highway 80. He said the immigrants tore up water pumps, killed calves, destroyed fences and gates, stole trucks and broke into his home.

Some of his cattle died from ingesting the plastic bottles left behind by the immigrants, he said, adding that he installed a faucet on an 8,000-gallon water tank so the immigrants would stop damaging the tank to get water.

Mr. Barnett said some of the ranch´s established immigrant trails were littered with trash 10 inches deep, including human waste, used toilet paper, soiled diapers, cigarette packs, clothes, backpacks, empty 1-gallon water bottles, chewing-gum wrappers and aluminum foil—which supposedly is used to pack the drugs the immigrant smugglers give their "clients" to keep them running.

He said he carried a pistol during his searches for the immigrants and had a rifle in his truck "for protection" against immigrant and drug smugglers, who often are armed.

A former Cochise County sheriff's deputy who later was successful in the towing and propane business, Mr. Barnett spent $30,000 on electronic sensors, which he has hidden along established trails on his ranch. He searches the ranch for illegal immigrants in a pickup truck, dressed in a green shirt and camouflage hat, with his handgun and rifle, high-powered binoculars and a walkie-talkie.

His sprawling ranch became an illegal-immigration highway when the Border Patrol diverted its attention to several border towns in an effort to take control of the established ports of entry. That effort moved the illegal immigrants to the remote areas of the border, including the Cross Rail Ranch.

"This is my land. I'm the victim here," Mr. Barnett said. "When someone's home and loved ones are in jeopardy and the government seemingly can't do anything about it, I feel justified in taking matters into my own hands. And I always watch my back."

Illegal immigration is wrong. The United States needs to get a handle on these concerns. Here is a video produced by the Bush 2004 Presidential campaign. The video depicts a bittersweet but honest piece of American history, and I certainly have no problem with the ideas contained within it.

Why Bush and Congress did little to stop the tide of ILLEGAL immigration is not my concern in this article, but I strongly believe that ranchers like Roger Barnett deserve recourse in this dangerously escalating crisis. There is no contradiction here. Neither thoughtless political correctness run amuck or lawless multicultural affirmative action are appropriate responses to our border issues.

Radical centrists like this blogger just say no to unchecked illegal immigration.

THE GREAT WALL OF SILENCE

An important series of questions were posited by a concerned US citizen to her elected representatives. The response to her questions were woefully inadequate. One day very soon we will know who among us—standing along the hallowed halls of liberty and freedom, conscience and the rule of law—were on the payroll to look the other way, and who indeed were the best and the brightest and most dedicated patriots of our time. Only then will the appeasers and the slouchers within our leadership ranks and from among the chattering café crowds know the depths of their shameless ignorance concerning the threat that unambiguously approaches.

If you want peace, prepare for war. “Si vis pacem, para bellum” from Flavius Vegetius Renatus circa 375 AD: “If you want peace, prepare for war.” Said another way, when you want something badly enough, you must fight for it. As colonial patriot Patrick Henry once exclaimed, "Give me liberty or give me death!" Our current enemies believe the same. But their version of liberty is not mine.

Watch what people do and you will see their true level of commitment.

Ayn Rand spoke about this kind of bulletproof resolution. “There are two sides to every issue” she said, “one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil. The man who is wrong still retains some respect for truth, if only by accepting the responsibility of choice. But the man in the middle is the knave who blanks out the truth.”

Fence sitters and cowards exist in a moral fog where they never really commit to anything but their hatred of success. Achievers are prepared to fight to the death. Sidney Sheldon put it best: “The foolish think the Eagle weak, and easy to bring to heel. The Eagle's wings are silken, but its claws are made of steel.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt said, “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face in marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” Winners don’t cut and run. They are in the fight until the end. They stay the course. They know that anything worthwhile will take a bit longer and take some doing. They understand that they will face a few detours, disappointments, and distractions.

"When you push a winner, you find out whom you’re really dealing with." They expect the unexpected. They are warriors who realize that war is war. They don’t make excuses or expect the state or mommy to help them. They don’t find the strongest people to blame for their inadequacies, spinelessness and weakness. They bounce back courageously and fight on. They are the “Steel fist in the silken glove”—when you push them, you find out whom you’re really dealing with.

IT’S THE RELIGIOUS FREEDOMS clause in our Constitution that will do us in. Every letter I have ever written to a politician, some of them lengthy and with references, evoked terse replies admonishing me for my intolerance and reminding me that ALL religions are respected and welcomed in America. In my follow-up responses to these idiotic replies, none of which were acknowledged, I asked these so-called representatives how they could condone the practice of a religion by millions of immigrants( who continue to flood America despite hating it) that brazenly teaches its followers to usurp our government and convert, enslave, or kill all non-Muslim Americans.

I painstakingly outlined the agenda of the Muslim Brotherhood and listed every orgainization connected to it that operates in America. I demanded to know why these insurgents and fifth columnists were permitted to operate in our country with impunity when they are dedicated to its destruction. No answer. I demanded to know why Muslim supremacists could carry signs predicting the overthrow of our government while they burned U.S. flags on our streets. No answer. I demanded to know why public funds were allocated to seditionist Islamic organizations like the Muslim Student Association and CAIR, our avowed enemies that intend to cut our throats, seize our property and assets, usurp our government, and implement Islamic law in America.

I demanded to know how my government intended to protect me and my family from the radical jihadists inculcated in American mosques by Saudi Wahabbi clerics. I demanded to know why these America-haters were allowed to come here and spread their vile, anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-Jew hatred and to explain to me where religious freedom ended and sedition began. I pointed out the explosive, festering situation in Europe with its Muslim supremacists and asked if that was our future. I asked if anyone in Washington had ever studied Islamic history and the doctrine of Islam or if they all relied on the Islamic apologist liars in academia and intelligentsia to provide them with soothing canards so they could ignore the problem of Islam and Muslims.

I listed the terror attacks committed by Muslims in the name of Islam since 9/11 and asked if they really believed that jihad was a marginal problem among a few fanatics. I asked why America stopped limiting immigrants to those who genuinely wanted to become Americans and would contribute to our society and respect our way of life and why we now deliberately and suicidally invite our enemies to invade our country. I concluded by asking them if they were blind and deaf or if maybe they too had been bought by the Saudis.

My representatives are Republicans, except for one. This was a frustrating, infuriating experience that I will never forget and never understand beyond the fact that politicians are shackled by political correctness and fear reprisals from their colleagues and/or the wrath of their constituents if they dare voice valid concerns about Islam. The only thing that will change their attitudes is a flood of complaints and letters of outrage from the people they represent. Someone made the comment in another thread that 9/11 was the best thing that ever happened to Islam and Muslims in America.

Instead of opening the eyes of all Americans to this pernicious scourge, they have been lulled into a false sense of security by lying politicians, politically correct multiculturalists, moral relativists, and well-meaning but ignorant Christian and Jewish clerics. Instead of being isolated and treated with justified suspicion, Muslims have been elevated to victim status and they are the consummate exploiters of genuine good will, a virtue they will never possess or comprehend.

—Susan P.

STRATEGIES OF THE WAR ON TERROR

Max Publius nails a 17-point approach to getting a handle on illegal immigration and, this war against Islamic bombthrowers.

THE NEW CASE AGAINST IMMIGRATION

THERE IS ALWAYS MORE from where this came. While the Left postures to bury America in some international assault on the integrity of nations and national borders, I wonder how long it would take for me to become a nuisance in their own well-tended backyards. Let's get real, and stay real folks. The "march against globalism" folks feign outrage when it comes to international commodities have no problem allowing the unmanaged influx of undocumented or unwanted strangers into our broken system.

With The New Case Against Immigration, National Review's Mark Krikorian has written one of the year's bravest books. In a political atmosphere where proposing to crack down on even illegal immigration can get one labeled a "nativist" or "xenophobe" in polite circles#151;and a racist in others#151;Krikorian dares to question the level of legal immigration, a topic most fear to explore.

For openers. it boggles the mind that an axis of political, media and business elites favors illegal immigration. Nonetheless, stopping illegal immigration is popular among voters. It's so popular, in fact, that presumptive GOP presidential nominee John McCain forsook his mainstream media constituency and its citizen-of-the-world mentality to give lip service to what American citizens want#151;at least while the Republican primaries lasted.

If Krikorian's name were Mark Running Bear, he'd probably get less flack for questioning the practical effects of legal immigration. I'd bet a dollar that the author hears retorts that Krikorian sure sounds like an immigrant name, as he receives cheap shots about the Armenian Mob.

Everyone should have learned in grade school that one of the minimum standards for being considered a real life nation-state is having a definable border and the means to control it (though, no doubt, that's a controversial topic in many public schools today).

Krikorian's premise is that America has a right to decide who comes here#151;legally or not#151;and set a limit on newcomers. Period.

In fact, The New Case Against Immigration spends surprisingly little time on illegal immigration; instead, Krikorian focuses on the effects of mass immigration upon a modern welfare state infected by political correctness.

Unlike many who dare to broach this topic, Krikorian does not contend that today's immigrants refuse to assimilate with American culture or have little interest in it. Rather, he turns the argument on its head.

It's not that immigrants are much different than they were a hundred years ago#151;it's that America is different in several important ways:

The nation no longer is set up for mass assimilation. In recent decades, we have set up a racial spoils system that is supposed to make up for past American sins, but it applies to newcomers as well. The public schools—the main engine of assimilation in past generations#151;don't even try to make proud Americans out of Americans anymore.

Those who come to the United States from many countries often encounter a seismic shift in technology, traditions and mores. A century ago, the main differences an immigrant faced when coming to America were life under liberty and vastly improved opportunities.

America no longer is a frontier country looking to populate vast empty territories with a growing need to entice sturdy laborers to our shores.

Most importantly, the U.S. is now a welfare state—and minimum income, health care and schooling are guaranteed for anyone who crosses our border. This alone makes mass immigration impractical.

Read it all at Front Page...

BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY

Fast jihad is jihad by the bomb, by military means, aggressive and deliberate. Slow jihad is the active business of immigration, insinuation, agitation, and ultimate takeover of foreign lands by demographic means. This is no accident. War is deceit. By any means necessary. Qu'ranic tactics all. And most effective against nations who practice an open arms policy. History, unfortunately, is littered with the bloody extinctions of non-Islamic peoples exterminated by Islam hordes in its quest to fulfill the Qu'ranic dictates of Islamic world domination. And this is not the time to fall prey to the false analogies of cultural relativity. This slow jihad combined with al-Qaeda's fast jihad is a war strategy executed in real time in our time.

Simply put, Islam is the political engine for Arab imperialism cloaked in religious language. Ask the Buddhists and Hindus in south Asia. Ask the Christians and Jews in the Middle East. Ask the Armenians and Albanians in southern Europe. Ask the Christian and tribes in Africa and Indonesia and the Philippines. Ask the British and the French. Ask the Danes and the Dutch. Ask the Swedes. Ask the Germans.

Here is an article from Germany, a nation now only just beginning to wake from its slumber concerning its heavy increasingly problematic immigrant population, formerly embraced in the spirit of multiculturalism, but now feared as Islam begins its ascendency in a Europe betrayed by its own policy miscues. This is not fresh news to those who have been following the rise of Islam in Europe and elsewhere around the globe, and have studied its 1400 year history without the smoke and mirrors of political correctness obstructing this analysis, but it bears repeating.

‘Bezness’- a word derived from the English ‘business’, is used in many Islamic countries to describe the love affairs between naive Western women and Arab men, who made it their business to target Western, infidel women, merely to suck them dry.

The Muslim pretends to be in love until he has fleeced his victim of her money and/or made her pregnant, which helps him to become a permanent resident or citizen in Europe. Then begins the brutality in the marriage, but the women remain silent because of shame. These ‘Bezness-men’ usually lose all interest in wife and kids once they have become citizens and treat their wife and family like garbage.

Germany has a help line and an organization to help women who have been damaged by these very professional ‘bezness-men’. Those who seek help should contact: Homepage der Bezness-geschädigten Evelyne Kern

Women who have been cheated out of their savings and betrayed by Arab-fairytale merchants, ‘bezness-men’, should contact the above organization. The politicians and the media largely ignore these very serious crimes on these women constituents, who are deliberately and with malicious intend cheated out of everything they own and are traumatized, physically and psychologically damaged.

Political correctness is equally damaging and prevents the media from waging a campaign to further awareness. The victims are left to themselves. WDR and ZDF have managed to get the word out thanks to the organization of Evelyne Kern.

In the meantime there is also a data bank available where interested women can check if their lover is already blacklisted for his record of bezness-activities …

TANCREDO COMES ON STRONG IN DEBATE

Tom Tancredo, while not the most fluent man on the '08 campaign trail, turned in a steady stream of talking points in the September 5 New Hampshire debate broadcast on Fox News. In my opinion, Ron Paul was quite keen in making his points. Unfortunately, while on September 12, 2001, I probably would have agreed withthe whole of his isolationist agenda (and still do to some degree), but today is a must scarier world thanks to the mishaps of the Bush administration, and I have suspicions that Paul is too attached to peace at any cost.

I was also impressed with Congressman Duncan Hunter of California.

THE DEATH OF DIVERSITY

By Daniel Henninger

People in ethnically diverse settings don't care about each other.

Diversity was once just another word. Now it's a fighting word. One of the biggest problems with diversity is that it won't let you alone. Corporations everywhere have force-marched middle managers into training sessions led by "diversity trainers." Most people already knew that the basic idea beneath diversity emerged about 2,000 years ago under two rubrics: Love thy neighbor as thyself, and Do unto others as they would do unto you. Then suddenly this got rewritten as "appreciating differentness."

{Uh, I think it went, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Something radically different from the latter part of Henninger's quote, but nevertheless.]

George Bernard Shaw is said to have demurred from the Golden Rule. "Do not do unto others as you would have them do unto you," Shaw advised. "Their tastes may not be the same." No such voluntary opt-out is permissible in our time. The parsons of the press made diversity into a secular commandment; do a word-search of "diversity" in a broad database of newspapers and it might come up 250 million times. In the Supreme Court term just ended, the Seattle schools integration case led most of the justices into arcane discussions of diversity's legal compulsions. More recently it emerged that the University of Michigan, a virtual Mecca of diversity, announced it would install Muslim footbaths in bathrooms, causing a fight.

Now comes word that diversity as an ideology may be dead, or not worth saving. Robert Putnam, the Harvard don who in the controversial bestseller "Bowling Alone" announced the decline of communal-mindedness amid the rise of home-alone couch potatoes, has completed a mammoth study of the effects of ethnic diversity on communities. His researchers did 30,000 interviews in 41 U.S. communities. Short version: People in ethnically diverse settings don't want to have much of anything to do with each other. "Social capital" erodes. Diversity has a downside.

Prof. Putnam isn't exactly hiding these volatile conclusions, though he did introduce them in a journal called Scandinavian Political Studies. A great believer in the efficacy of what social scientists call "reciprocity," he wasn't happy with what he found but didn't mince words describing the results:

"Inhabitants of diverse communities tend to withdraw from collective life, to distrust their neighbors, regardless of the color of their skin, to withdraw even from close friends, to expect the worst from their community and its leaders, to volunteer less, give less to charity and work on community projects less often, to register to vote less, to agitate for social reform more, but have less faith that they can actually make a difference, and to huddle unhappily in front of the television." The diversity nightmare gets worse: They have little confidence in the "local news media." This after all we've done for them.

Colleagues and diversity advocates, disturbed at what was emerging from the study, suggested alternative explanations. Prof. Putnam and his team re-ran the data every which way from Sunday and the result was always the same: Diverse communities may be yeasty and even creative, but trust, altruism and community cooperation fall. He calls it "hunkering down."

Give me a break! you scream. What about New York City or L.A.? From the time of Sherwood Anderson's "Winesburg, Ohio" through "Peyton Place" and beyond, people have fled the flat-lined, gossip-driven homogeneity of small American "communities" for the welcome anonymity of big-city apartment building—so long as your name wasn't Kitty Genovese, the famous New York woman who bled to death crying for help.

It's a wonderfully thought-provoking study, suitable for arguing the length of a long August weekend and available as a lecture on Prof. Putnam's Harvard Web site, the "Saguaro Seminar." Astute readers, however, have already guessed who's thrilled with the results.

Pat Buchanan, reflecting an array of commentaries on the study from the American right, says, "Putnam provides supporting fire from Harvard Yard for those who say America needs a time-out from mass immigration, be it legal or illegal." The "antis" believe the Putnam study hammers the final intellectual nail in the coffin of immigration and diversity.

The diversity ideologues deserve whatever ill tidings they get. They're the ones who weren't willing to persuade the public of diversity's merits, preferring to turn "diversity" into a political and legal hammer to compel compliance. The conversions were forced conversions. As always, with politics comes pushback. And it never stops.

The harvest of bitter fruit from the diversity wars begun three decades ago across campuses, corporations and newsrooms has made the immigration debate significantly worse. Diversity's advocates gave short shrift to assimilation, indeed arguing that assimilation into the American mainstream was oppressive and coercive. So they demoted assimilation and elevated "differences." Then they took the nation to court. Little wonder the immigration debate is riven with distrust.

The diversity ideologues ruined a good word and, properly understood, a decent notion. What's needed now is for a younger black, brown or polka-dot writer to recast the idea in a way that restores the worth and utility of assimilation. Somebody had better do it soon; the first chart offered in the Putnam study depicts inexorably rising rates of immigration in many nations. The idea that the U.S. can wave into effect a 10-year "time out" on immigration flows is as likely as King Canute commanding the tides to recede.

Here, too, Robert Putnam has a possible assimilation model. Hold onto your hat. It's Christian evangelical megachurches. "In many large evangelical congregations," he writes, "the participants constituted the largest thoroughly integrated gatherings we have ever witnessed." This, too, is an inconvenient truth. They do it with low entry barriers to the church and by offering lots of little groups to join inside the larger "shared identity" of the church. A Harvard prof finds good in evangelical megachurches. Send this man a suit of body armor!

My own model for the way forward in a 21st century American society of unavoidable ethnic multitudes is an old one, a phrase found nowhere in the Putnam study or any commentary on it: the middle class. Its assimilating virtues may be boring, but it works, if you work at getting into it.

Of course Hillary Clinton believes this can't happen here because the middle class has been "invisible" to George Bush. As with diversity, progress is always just beyond the horizon.

Mr. Henninger is deputy editor of The Wall Street Journal's editorial page. His column appears Thursdays in the Journal and on OpinionJournal.com.