Are illegals becoming less brazen, now that there’s a possibility they’ll be be deported? Trendspotters think so:

Iconoculture - Consumer Research Service: Trend Observation

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OBSERVATION
Deportation threat causes withdrawal from community life

WHAT’S HAPPENING

* Undocumented and legal immigrants and their families are withdrawing from public life or leaving their communities to prevent detection and deportation by law enforcement officials.
* Nationwide, many immigrants no longer shop or socialize as governments pass tighter immigration laws.
* They’re also pulling their kids out of school. Cartwright Elementary School District, in Hispanic west Phoenix, reported a loss of 525 students in the 2007-08 school year (NYTimes.com 2.12.08).[More]

OK, that last one is just crazy–if you have 525 fewer illegals in public school, that’s not a loss, that’s a gain.According to the Goldwater Institute, it costs between $8500 and $9000 per year to put a public school student through school in Arizona, so if 525 students have left with their parents, the school board is saving almost five million dollars. (I bet they find something to spend it on.)

One of the best writers on this topic is Prof Lawrence Harrison, the author of several books concerning the relationship of culture to progress. The linked article includes a nine-minute audio interview with Harrison that is worth your attention: The End of Multiculturalism, (Christian-Science Monitor, Feb 26, 2008).

The author puts his ideas into practice at Tufts’ Cultural Change Institute.

Since the 1960s, multiculturalism has become a dominant feature of the political and intellectual landscape of the West. But multiculturalism rests on a frail foundation: cultural relativism, the notion that no culture is better or worse than any other – it is merely different.

When it comes to democratic continuity, social justice, and prosperity, some cultures do far better than others. Research at Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, summarized in my recent book, “The Central Liberal Truth: How Politics Can Change a Culture and Save It From Itself,” makes this clear.

Extensive data suggest that the champions of progress are the Nordic countries – Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden – where, for example, universal literacy was a substantial reality in the 19th century. By contrast, no Arab country today is democratic, and female illiteracy in some Arab countries exceeds 50 percent.

Culture isn’t about genes or race; it’s about values, beliefs, and attitudes. Culture matters because it influences a society’s receptivity to democracy, justice, entrepreneurship, and free-market institutions.

Below is Prof Harrison’s handy chart comparing progress-friendly cultures to progress-averse ones, taken from his Social Contract article, Immigrants and Culture.

All nostalgic Americans should thank Fidel Castro for preserving for us a slice of the Eisenhower Era. From pictures I’ve seen of Havana today, it looks like a set from “West Side Story,” with ladies hanging their wash on lines from their tenement windows and big Detroit cars with giant tailfins somehow kept running. And people still seem to care about Hemingway. (Too bad, of course, about the folks who have had to live there.)

The American Conservative recently sent Fred Reed to Havana:

The country is poor and run down, and itself almost a museum. Sitting in the DiMar is like visiting the Fifties. The American embargo makes it hard to get new cars, so many Cubans still drive cars from 1959, the year of the revolution, and before. Some sport jazzy paint jobs, and others don’t. It was remarkable to watch the rides of my adolescence go by, charting them mentally as one did in 1964—’54 Merc, ’57 Caddy, ’56 Chevy, on and on. Around me the other customers, down-scale Cubans in all shades of nonwhite, laughed and chatted. …

The island could use some investment. While I found neighborhoods with nice-looking modern houses, said by taxi drivers to belong to governmental officials and employees of foreign firms, the rest of the city needs paint, repairs, and new sidewalks. Countless once-elegant houses with pillared porches and tall windows are now discolored and crumbling.

Why communists imagine themselves to be revolutionary is a mystery. Whenever they gain power in a country, it comes to a dead stop and sits there as other countries pass it by. I do not think that communism generates poverty; rather it finds it and preserves it. It has certainly done so here. Cuba seems firmly mired in 1959.

Heather Mac Donald wries in her piece on the “Campus Rape Industry” that

Equally damning was a 2000 campus rape study conducted under the aegis of the Department of Justice. Sixty-five percent of what the feminist researchers called “completed rape” victims and three-quarters of “attempted rape” victims said that they did not think that their experiences were “serious enough to report.” The “victims” in the study, moreover, “generally did not state that their victimization resulted in physical or emotional injuries,” report the researchers.

What she’s talking about is campus feminists who have lowered the bar for rape accusations to the point that rape includes such things as saying “I’ll respect you in the morning,” and then not respecting her in the morning, and “verbal and emotional pressure.” which can include begging. But there are are real rapes on campuses

Just as a reality check, consider an actual student-related rape: in 2006, Labrente Robinson and Jacoby Robinson broke into the Philadelphia home of a Temple University student and a Temple graduate, and anally, vaginally, and orally penetrated the women, including with a gun. The chance that the victims would not consider this event “serious enough to report,” or physically and emotionally injurious, is exactly nil. In short, believing in the campus rape epidemic depends on ignoring women’s own interpretations of their experiences—supposedly the most grievous sin in the feminist political code.

That kind of thing can happen at a university like Temple (Bill Cosby’s alma mater) that has the bad luck to be located near the Philadelphia inner city. Neither Heather Mac Donald nor any of the news stories I could find on Labrente and Jacoby Robinson had any reference to what color they or their victims might be, (the attackers are almost certainly African-American–there are few preppie lacrosse players named Labrente living in Delaware, Maryland) but you’ll be happy to know that they’ve been sent to jail for a long time.

I did report a similar case at he University Of San Diego [San Diego Gang-Rape Case Coverage Colorless–Except When “Racism” Is In Question.] in which three men burst into the home of some college students and raped them. The reason their race (African-American) was mentioned was that the Judge was concerned about probable racist jurors:

Judge John Einhorn addressed the juror pool, saying that race is an issue because the defendants are black and the victims are white. The judge has been asking jurors if that would affect their ability to be fair and impartial in the case — can they concentrate on the evidence, not skin color. [Judge: Race An Issue In Mission Beach Rape Case, NBCSanDiego.com, January 24, 2008]

It seems that feminists, watching out for white male patriarchal jocks who might rape them, are always aiming at the wrong target.

For several weeks, I’ve been noticing that a lot of Obama supporters seem to fantasize about their man being assassinated. The creepy NYT article, “In Painful Past, Hushed Worry About Obama,” only confirms this hunch. To be crass, I think a lot of Obamaniacs are fondling this fantasy, unable to keep themselves from noticing that a slain Obama would provide them with an iconic image of great usefulness.

The best thing that ever happened to the left in the U.S. in the second half of the 20th Century was that John F. Kennedy was assassinated (by a far leftist, of course, but for complicated reasons everybody who was anybody acted like the opposite was true). The 1960 Presidential election had been famously exciting, with JFK capturing the hearts and souls of America (well, of about 50.1% of America), but almost nobody today can identify a consistent pattern of what would have been different from January 20, 1961 through November 21, 1963 if Nixon had won instead of Kennedy. Kennedy governed like Eisenhower, just not as well.

But after November 22, 1963, everything changed.

Like JFK, Obama is cautious and crafty. As a President, Obama would likely prove a disappointment to many of his fervent supporters. As a martyr, though, the sky’s the limit.

P.S. At least we don’t have to worry about Obama being endangered by the same forces of hatred that called for Malcolm X’s assassination. After all, this time, Louis Farrakhan is on the young paladin’s side.