portant contributions to an evolvingrnAmerican culture made by the Europeanrnimmigrants of the 19th century.rnUnlike the British immigrants of thernprevious era, he argues, the Irish, German,rnJewish, and Southern and East Europeanrnimmigrants who came to thisrncountry in the 1800’s had little attractionrnto the prevailing Victorian ethicrnthat the Anglo-Saxon stock had imparted.rn”The immigrants, then,” he writes,rn”were bringing to the United States anrnarray of habits, attitudes, and folkwaysrnthat conflicted, at times dramatically,rnwith the prevailing American patternsrnof thought and behavior. They were, inrnsum, resolutely anti-Victorian in almostrnevery respect. They did not believe inrndiscipline, punctuality, sobriety—thernorder and decency of the Victorian ethic.”rnThe result, in Collier’s view, wasrnthat the new immigrants imparted tornAmerica their own cultural habits centeredrnaround “expressiveness” throughrntheir predominance in the new industriesrnof popular culture—sports, movies,rnmusic, theater, journalism, mass entertainment,rnand mass vices as offered byrnorganized crime under the control ofrnnew immigrant godfathers.rnThe conclusions of such scholarshiprnas that of Fischer, Wyatt-Brown,rnMcWhiney, McDonald, and Collier arernperfectly consistent with commonrnsense—that people carry their culturesrnin their heads and their hearts and dornnot leave them behind when they move.rnImmigration, therefore, affects culture,rnimporting new habits and patterns ofrnthought and behavior that often conflictrnwith the old habits of the culturernthat receives immigrants, and the historyrnof the political and social conflictsrnof European and American history canrnbe told in terms of such struggles betweenrnclusters of customs and those whornbear them. Moreover, cultural habitsrnare not randomly distributed; they tendrnto follow ethnic and even racial lines,rnsince most people acquire their culturalrnhabits from their natural parents andrnfamilies, if not from even more fundamentalrnbiological forces.rnThe demographic revolution that thernCensus Bureau predicts can thereforernbe expected to exert profound changesrnon American culture as it has flourishedrnin our national history and as it existsrnnow. The loss of political power byrnwhat the Census Bureau calls “non-rnHispanic Whites” as they dwindle fromrna majority to a minority is only the mostrnapparent such change, and it is hardlyrnunreasonable to expect that what willrnfollow from this transfer of power willrnbe the outright dispossession and politicalrnand legal persecution of the whiternminority by a nonwhite and non-rnWestern majority that has little experiencernin constitutional government, littlernrespect for the rights of minorities andrnoppositional groups, and little love forrnwhites or the West. Indeed, we alreadyrnsee the beginnings of that dispossessionrnin affirmative action programs, haterncrime laws, multieulturalist curricula,rnthe vituperation of whites, and the proliferationrnof racially motivated atrocitiesrnagainst them.rnEarlier this year the Knight-Ridderrnnewspaper chain conducted a computerrnstudy of changes in the American workrnforce based on data drawn from thern1990 Census. It found, as the Economistrn(Jan. 9, 1993) reported, that “whiternmen may soon be a minority of America’srnbosses. They are already a minorityrnof the workforce. As recently as 1960,rnthey held two-thirds of all jobs. Nowrnthey hold 45 percent.” While the percentagesrnof white males in Americanrnmanagerial positions have declined inrnthe last decade, those of women, blacks,rnand Hispanics have risen in the samernperiod. In March, the Wall Street Journalrnreported that American corporations,rnever indifferent to the health andrnsurvival of the culture, country, and peoplernthat enable them to function, arernintent on hiring foreign professionalsrnover their American counterparts. “Foreignrnprofessionals are becoming morernattractive just as demand for some U.S.rnprofessionals, notably scientists and engineers,rnis at its lowest in at least arndecade,” the Journal reported. “Thernnumber of electrical engineers employedrnin the U.S. . . . has fallen by onefifthrnsince its peak three years ago.”rnNearly every white male I know who hasrnsought a professional position in the lastrnfew years has tales of blatant racial orrnsexual discrimination against him; inrnone case, a black employment officialrnsimply laughed at the applicant.rnYet while the demotion and dispossessionrnof the groups that created, ruled,rnand sustained American civilization mayrneffectively decapitate the civilization,rnthe importation of non-Western habitsrnof thought and behavior will very likelyrnsimply kill it outright. Not only the absencernof a “folkway” of constitutionalrngovernment but also the lack of a scientificrnand empirical tradition in non-rnWestern societies, different concepts ofrnwork and time, and different religiousrnand ethical systems may well perpetuaternwithin our borders the political repression,rnviolence, superstitions, and apparentrnlaziness of non-Western cultures.rnFarts of Florida, Texas, and southernrnCalifornia have already ceased to belongrnto the West in any but the administrativernsense that they continue to pay taxesrnto Washington, and the same culturalrnmeiosis is apparent in many majorrncities in other parts of the nation. Indeed,rnthe very term “nation,” derivedrnfrom the Latin word for being born, willrnbecome meaningless when as much asrn21 percent of the population is not bornrnwithin the country’s own borders.rnEven as the Census Bureau publishedrnwhat may be the first lines of the epitaphrnof the American nation and its civilizationrnlast December, President Bushrnwas plotting one last war in Somalia beforernhe slipped into the twilight of history.rnThe United States government,rnas George F. Kennan notes in his recentrnmemoir, “while not loath to putting halfrna million armed troops into the MiddlernEast to expel the armed Iraqis fromrnKuwait, confesses itself unable to defendrnits own southwestern border fromrnillegal immigration by large numbersrnof people armed with nothing morernformidable than a strong desire to getrnacross it.” Mr. Bush’s last war and Mr.rnKennan’s latest reflections point to therncentral irony of the American imperium’srnlast days, that the willingness ofrnthe American megastate to kill somern250,000 Iraqis who had never harmedrnor threatened the United States in anyrnway is regarded as the ultimate confirmationrnof the omnipotence of a superpowerrnthat has ended history and canrnnow do whatever it wants, while thernsame power cannot imagine any goodrnreason to protect its own borders fromrninvasion. The megastate and its mastersrncan play with bombs in Baghdadrnand Bosnia all they want, save as manyrnSomalians as can be rounded up, andrncount as many beans as they can find,rnbut those enterprises will not preserverna civilization or a nation whose foundingrndemographic core is facing a slow extinctionrnand whose leaders have forgottenrnwhat civilization means and haverncome to regard their own nation asrna barrier to be broken down and discarded.rnJUNE 1993/11rnrnrn