Alabama Republican congressman Mo Brooks generated outrage among the usual suspects in early August by telling radio talk-show host Laura Ingraham that the Obama administration’s push for amnesty for illegal immigrants is “a part of the war on whites that’s being launched by the Democratic Party.  And the way in which they’re launching this war is by claiming that whites hate everybody else.”  Brooks went on to note that all demographic groups in America favor “enforcing and securing our borders.”  As a result, the Democrats “have to demagogue [sic] on this and try and turn it into a racial issue, which is an emotional issue, rather than a thoughtful issue.”  Brooks also took aim at the Wall Street Journal editorial page and other “pro-business” groups pushing amnesty, telling Ingraham that “They need to be Americans.  They need to be patriots.  And they need to think about America first, and they need to think about American families first, but that seems to be the furthest thought from their mind.”  Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus described Brooks’ comments about a “war on whites” as “pretty idiotic,” New York Times columnist Charles Blow denounced Brooks’ statements as “paranoid delusion” and “stoking racial fears to hide [Republicans’] history of racially regressive policies,” and Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank blasted Brooks for “defend[ing] whiteness” and detected whiffs of Charles Lindbergh (not a Milbank favorite) in Brooks’ admonition to keep America and Americans first.

Despite the outrage, Representative Brooks’ central points are incontestable.  A Reuters-Ipsos poll conducted in July showed that 70 percent of Americans believe that illegal immigration threatens traditional American beliefs and customs, and 63 percent believe that immigration places a burden on the economy.  The Obama administration and its allies in the media have focused on the race of the immigrants crossing our southern border illegally and suggested that racism on the part of whites is the only possible motive for opposing mass illegal immigration.  The New York Times, in its editorial in favor of the administrative amnesty being considered by President Obama, listed as one of its putative benefits the end of “racist sheriffs stag[ing] ‘crime suppression’ patrols that sweep up those with brown skins,” and Rep. Luis Gutiérrez (D-IL), speaking in Spanish at a press conference of the Hispanic Caucus, said that amnesty opponents want to “punish our community” and vowed that “that punishment will be met with an electoral punishment.”  This is par for the course for Gutiérrez, who told Newsweek in 2010 that “I have only one loyalty, and that’s to the immigrant community.”  No America First nonsense for him.

Many on the left exult that the racial transformation being worked by mass immigration, both legal and illegal, will turn whites into a minority in America and bring the left to power permanently.  In his column criticizing Brooks, Milbank noted that the Census Bureau currently predicts that whites will no longer be a majority by 2043, and not a moment too soon, since nonwhite immigration brings “the fresh blood needed to cure what ails us.”  Milbank’s Washington Post colleague Charles Lane also predicted that, if Obama does grant an administrative amnesty, it will “make generations of Latinos into Democrats.”

The correctness of Brooks’ observations is further underscored by the fact that the racial transformation of America that so excites Milbank and his ideological allies is the result of government policy.  As Peter Brimelow noted in his magisterial Alien Nation, with the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, “De jure discrimination in favor of Europe . . . [was] replaced by de facto discrimination against Europe.”  As a result, the overwhelming majority of the tens of millions of legal immigrants who arrived after 1965 have come from the Third World.  The impact of the act has been amplified by the decision of several administrations to do little to stop mass illegal immigration from Mexico and now Central America.

Government discrimination against whites is also enshrined in the form of affirmative action, which most Republicans are now too timid to mention and which the Obama administration is committed to defending against all challenges.  As Attorney General Eric Holder has stated, “Affirmative action has been an issue since segregation practices.  The question is not when it ends, but when does it begin. . . . When do people of color truly get the benefits to which they are entitled?”

Despite the criticism, Brooks has refused to apologize.  After meeting with Priebus, Brooks said, “If there’s a better descriptive phrase, I’m open to using it.  So far, no one has come up with a better descriptive phrase for what the Democrats are doing.”  If Brooks sticks to his guns, maybe more ordinary Americans will begin to notice the truth in what he has said.