.
4/26/13, "The Collapsing of the American Skull," Mark Steyn, NRO, "The parameters in which we allow ourselves to think about vital issues shrink remorselessly."
"One of the most ingenious and effective strategies of the Left on any
number of topics is to frame the debate and co-opt the language so
effectively that it becomes all but impossible even to discuss the
subject honestly. Take the brothers Tsarnaev, the incendiary end of a
Chechen family that in very short time has settled aunts, uncles,
sisters, and more across the map of North America from Massachusetts to
New Jersey to my own home town of Toronto. Maybe your town has a
Tsarnaev, too: There seems to be no shortage of them, except, oddly,
back in Chechnya. The Tsarnaevs’ mom, now relocated from Cambridge to
Makhachkala in delightful Dagestan, told a press conference the other
day that she regrets ever having gotten mixed up with those crazy Yanks:
“I would prefer not to have lived in America,” she said.
Not, I’m sure, as much as the Richard family would have preferred it.
Eight-year-old Martin was killed; his sister lost a leg; and his mother
suffered serious brain injuries. What did the Richards and some 200
other families do to deserve having a great big hole blown in their
lives? Well, according to the New York Times, they and you bear
collective responsibility. Writing on the op-ed page, Marcello
Suarez-Orozco, dean of the UCLA Graduate School of Education and
Information Studies, and Carola Suarez-Orozco, a professor at the same
institution, began their ruminations thus:
“The alleged
involvement of two ethnic Chechen brothers in the deadly attack at the
Boston Marathon last week should prompt Americans to reflect on whether
we do an adequate job assimilating immigrants who arrive in the United States as children or teenagers.”
Maybe.
Alternatively, the above opening sentence should “prompt Americans to
reflect” on whether whoever’s editing America’s newspaper of record
these days “does an adequate job” in choosing which pseudo-credentialed
experts it farms out its principal analysis on terrorist atrocities to.
But, if I follow correctly, these UCLA profs are arguing that, when some
guys go all Allahu Akbar on you and blow up your marathon, that just
shows that you lazy complacent Americans need to work even harder at
“assimilating” “immigrants.” After all, Dzhokhar and Tamerlan were
raised in Cambridge, Mass., a notorious swamp of redneck bigotry where
the two young Chechens no doubt felt “alienated” and “excluded” at being
surrounded by NPR-listening liberals cooing, “Oh, your family’s from
Chechnya? That’s the one next to Slovakia, right? Would you like to come
round for a play date and help Jeremiah finish his diversity quilt?”
Assimilation is hell.
How hard would it be for Americans to be
less inadequate when it comes to assimilating otherwise well-adjusted
immigrant children? Let us turn once again to Mrs. Tsarnaev:
“They are going to kill him. I don’t care,” she told reporters. “My
oldest son is killed, so I don’t care. I don’t care if my youngest son
is going to be killed today. . . . I don’t care if I am going to get
killed, too . . . and I will say Allahu Akbar!”
You can say it all
you want, madam, but everyone knows that “Allahu Akbar” is Arabic for
“Nothing to see here.” So, once you’ve cleared the streets of body
parts, you inadequate Americans need to redouble your efforts.
There
is a stupidity to this, but also a kind of decadence. Until the 1960s,
it was assumed by all sovereign states that they had the right to choose
which non-nationals were admitted within their borders. Now, to suggest
such a thing risks the charge of “nativism” and to propose that, say,
Swedes are easier to assimilate than Chechens is to invite cries of
“Racist!” So, when the morgues and emergency rooms are piled high, the
only discussion acceptable in polite society is to wonder whether those
legless Bostonians should have agitated more forcefully for federally
mandated after-school assimilationist basketball programs.
As Ma Tsarnaev’s effusions suggest, at the sharp end of Islamic
imperialism, there’s a certain glorying in sacrifice. We’re more
fatalistic about it: After Major Hasan gunned down 13 of his comrades
and an unborn baby, General Casey, the Army’s chief of staff, assured us
that it could have been a whole lot worse:
“What happened at Fort
Hood was a tragedy, but I believe it would be an even greater tragedy
if our diversity becomes a casualty here.”
What happened at Boston
was a “tragedy,” but it would be an even greater tragedy if there were
to be any honest discussion of immigration policy, or Islam, or anything
else that matters."...photo above Mrs. Tsarnaev, April 25, 2013, at a news conference. via Free Republic
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