on a 5-4 ideological split.

I hope to post in a few days an excerpt from Paul Gottfried’s new memoir Encounters: My Life with Nixon, Marcuse, and Other Friends and Teachers but here are his mordant comments on his book’s reception — including the very sad news that the Heritage Foundation has declined to hold an event for him.

The numerous readers whose hobby is helpfully pointing out VDARE.COM typos won’t be surprised that I didn’t notice the famous mispelled banner at Pat Buchanan’s American Cause conference — nor that I think the issue is trivial.

But it might be surprising that the left blogosphere is so outraged that I dared argue support for Official English is one obvious part of a nationalist strategy to build a patriotic majority party in the U.S.

For the record, here’s Rasmussen Reports on May 14, 2009:

Eighty-four percent (84%) of Americans say English should be the official language of the United States…

The support for English as the country’s official language remains steady from three years ago.

Eighty-one percent (81%) say a U.S. company should be allowed to require employees to speak English on the job, up four points from November 2007…

Support for making English the nation’s official language is strong across partisan lines. The concept is supported by 96% of Republicans, 74% of Democrats and 85% of adults not affiliated with either major party.

Similarly, while 90% of Republicans believe companies should be permitted to require employees to speak English on the job, that view is also shared by 80% of unaffiliateds and 74% of Democrats.

Rasmussen’s crosstabs, available to premium subscribers, reveal the interesting fact that this is one controversial issue where women are just as hawkish as men.

What this means is that, as Rasmussen reported at the time, John McCain missed a huge opportunity by not attacking Obama for saying “instead of worrying about whether immigrants can learn English,” Americans “need to make sure your child can speak Spanish.” But what else is new?

I see that I and VDARE.COM are being smeared again as being “white nationalist”. (For another example, inspired by a recent Don Collins column, see here). My invitation to speak at the conference has become part of what seems like a systematic campaign to get MSNBC to drop Pat.

As I have patiently explained many times, VDARE.COM is not a “white nationalist” site but a coalition focused on the need for patriotic immigration reform. We do publish some writers whom I would regard as “white nationalist” in the sense that they aim to defend the interests of American whites. They are not white supremacists. They do not advocate violence. They are rational and civil. They brush their teeth. But they unashamedly work for their people—exactly as La Raza works for Latinos and the Anti-Defamation League works for Jews. As immigration policy drives whites into a minority, this type of interest-group “white nationalism” will inexorably increase. Get used to it, leftoids.

But what’s “white nationalist” about advocating Official English anyway? Anyone can learn English. As Rasmussen noted:

Eighty-two percent (82%) also reject the idea that requiring people to speak English is a form of racism or bigotry, up three points from 2007.

The real issue: the left is instinctively opposed to any measure that might strengthen the unity and coherence of the American nation. That’s why they’re part of the Treason Lobby.

The auto industry journalist Eric Peters raises the above interesting question on his website Eric Peters Autos:

Before the 1980s, in most states, you could legally drive without insurance - and many people did. Understandably. Insurance is expensive and if you think about it, you rarely need it. Maybe never. Why pay several hundred dollars a year (thousands, over a period of ten or twenty years) to some insurance company when the odds are very highly favorable, if you’re not irresponsible or inept, that you will never be involved in anything worse than a minor fender bender? A fender bender which you could easily just pay for out of pocket - if you hadn’t forked over all that money to the insurance company.

Today, we are pretty much forced to buy insurance, whether we think it’s a good investment or not - and whether we’re good drivers or terrible ones.

The worst part of this is because we’re all forced to buy insurance, insurance costs a fortune. We are captive “customers” whose only choice is Company A or Company B - no third option to just say “no thanks” to both of them. That virtually eliminates any real pressure to tamp down costs, because, well, what are you gonna do?

Insurance companies today are as much a cartel as Big Oil - only worse, because Big Oil, at least, does give us the option of riding a bicycle or moving close to the train station and walking. You don’t have to buy gas.

But you do have to buy insurance.

Again, why?

Eric Peters’ answer:

the unlicensed, uninsured and often drunk as a loon illegal alien. It is a huge problem in states all over the country that have been flooded with Third World peasants who do not share the American hyper-caution about alcohol consumption and driving or respect for “the law” (remember: they are here illegally) and who often drive $800 rolling wrecks that should have gone on to better things (like recycled beer cans) years ago.

So, Captain Corona, high as a July sun, breezes through a red and plows right into your brand-new $50,000 BMW in his $800 hooptie. And he has no driver’s license, let alone insurance - or more than the $5.73 change he’s got in his wallet after splitting that $20 for the 12-pack he just drank before creaming you.

Of course, Brenda Walker has documented this phenomenon compellingly. But Peters makes a connection that hadn’t really occurred to me:

The government, naturally, won’t do a thing about him. But it’ll make sure you pay through the nose to have top-flight coverage that takes the presence of him into account. Cost of doing business - charged directly to us.

I like this because it’s another example of the phenomenon I wrote about last year: “Immigration Is The Viagra Of The State”–A Libertarian Case Against Immigration.

But you just can’t get the Libertarian Establishment to think about the problem. There is absolutely no mention of immigration in the Cato Institute’s premier educational event, scheduled for late July, “Economic Crisis, War, And The Rise of the State“. It looks very worthy, yawn — but stuck in the 1970s.

Tell Cato (Ed Crane, Lider Maximo) to wake up. (Contact link over in left column of Cato site)

It looks like books about Bill Buckley and National Review are going to be quite a cottage industry. Rick Brookhiser has just published Right Time, Right Place: Coming of Age with William F. Buckley Jr. and the Conservative Movement :

…[NR Editor] John [O'Sullivan's]’s other senior editor, Peter Brimelow, played an important role.  Born in England, Brimelow had worked for an array of magazines and newspapers in Canada and the United States.  When John brought him in, he already had a day job writing for Forbes. Peter was strikingly handsome, with light-brown hair and piercing blue eyes.  He was also one of the most polite journalists I have ever met (the profession pulls for bonhomie, not civility).  He had attractive graces and countenance bright.  His manner was at odds with his temperament (saturnine, hopeless) and his polemical style (unrelenting).

“Saturnine” apparently means

a. Melancholy or sullen.
b. Having or marked by a tendency to be bitter or sardonic

Hey, I don’t get that either, but who cares? Buy this insightful book!

“State GOP’s problem? Too white, too male“, by Martin Wisckol, Orange County Register, May 14, 2009. (Also here if you want to comment).

“Allan Hoffenblum gave a roomful of mostly Republicans a hard look in the mirror at the Balboa Bay Club today. The major cause of the continued deterioration of the GOP in California is that it has done little to attract minorities, women and youth.”

Is this stupidity or what? We just posted Joe Guzzardi’s analysis of the CA GOP, which made it clear that GOP nominee McCain failed to carry California whites:

Thus in the 2008 Presidential election, CNN exit polls show that John McCain actually succeeded in losing the California white vote (a.k.a. what until recently would have been regarded as the American vote) 46%-52%. (McCain couldn’t even carry white men in California: he got 48% vs. 44% for white women).

In contrast, McCain swept the Alabama white vote, which is almost exactly the same proportion of the total as in California, 88%-10%. So he carried the state easily, 61%-39%.

Can nobody in California count?

Who is this Hoffenblum anyway? He googles up as “a Jewish moderate Republican consultant“ (website here). He does this for a living. No wonder the CA GOP is in the toilet.

Amazingly, Hoffenblum was speaking before something described as the “United Agribusiness League, whose members employ thousands of Latinos”. How much more blatant can they get? But reporter Wisckol apparently didn’t think to question it.

Tell Hoffenblum he’s a jackass (or worse).

Tell United Agribusiness League president Bill Goodrich he’s a traitor.

Tell reporter Wisckol he’s a stooge.

Hat tip, RC.

P.S. “Eighty-four percent (84%) of Americans say English should be the official language of the United States. Only nine percent (9%) disagree, according to a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey.” (Rasmussen Reports, May 14 2009). That must include a lot of Hispanics. How come the Hoffenblum wafflebums never suggest this wedge issue to the GOP?

Our friend Carl Horowitz has just published a major report (pdf) on Al Sharpton for the National Legal and Policy Center, just in time for the rally Sharpton has organized (so to speak) to celebrate the 55th anniversary of Brown vs. Board.

The June issue of Chronicles magazine, devoted to “The Cost of Immigration”, is just out. The cover features Arnold Schwarzenegger, Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigrosa and Maria Shriver singing “The Star Spangled Banner”. (She looks great). My contribution, a review of the current state of the debate on the economic impact of immigration, is already online here. Not online for a while: Tom Fleming’s essay on religion and immigration policy, long a subject of interest to us here at VDARE.COM (see here and here), featuring a deconstruction of Leviticus 19:33, the famous “Strangers in the Land“quote that, as Steven Steinlight said recently, has become a substitute for thought in so many quarters.

Chronicles has a special offer:

Readers can purchase individual copies of the June issue by calling Cindy Link at (800) 383-0680. They are available for $7 (includes s/h). Better Deal: First-time subscribers may call Cindy and mention VDare to get 12 issues of Chronicles for only $19.99. (Be sure to mention that you’d like to begin with the June 2009 issue.) That’s $5 off our introductory rate.

I don’t like to mix my political and financial journalism - because the former usually causes diversity-loving liberals to try to get me fired from the latter - but Market Watch today has a column by me today discussing an idea I first proposed in Forbes years ago, which turned out to be my most unpopular article ever: that congressional salaries are very low by historic standards, and that congressmen should be paid the capitalized value of all benefits and staff costs in one lump sum at the beginning of each term.

I think (among other things) that this would attract more normal people, instead of the vain, power-hungry oddities you get in politics today. But most readers just can’t get past the idea of paying politicians more.

I thought Michael Grunwald’s Time Magazine essay Republicans in Distress: Is the Party Over? was mostly just the usual MSM nonsense (i.e. the GOP needs to become more like us Democrats!) until this leapt out at me:

There’s always the chance that some new issue — immigration? Iran? cap and trade? something nobody has thought of yet? — will blow up and bring the GOP back to life.

Emphasis mine.

It’s not clear why Grunwald mentions immigration. Earlier, he cites the GOP’s allegedly impending demographic doom without showing any awareness that the problem is wholly caused by immigration policy. Maybe he’s a sort of political idiot savant, able to come up with disconnected insights, just as Dick Morris suggested the immigration issue could work electorally in 2004 and 1996 although eveything he writes on immigration in principle is useless.

Whatever - it’s a good sign!