Tim Caspar: Good morning, welcome. Good morning
and welcome. My name is Timothy Caspar, I serve at Hillsdale College as associate vice
president for external affairs. I'm also deputy editor of Imprimis. I have the privilege of
teaching in the college's, politics department. I'm a graduate of the college, which was way
back in 1994. That's starting to seem like a long time ago.
I'll be your emcee for today's program. Welcome again to this national leadership seminar.
The constitution and current politics. As president Arnn stated so eloquently last night,
there is an important public debate going on over the meaning of our constitution.
On the one side of the debate, are those who seek a return to the kind of limited constitutional
of the American founders. I think maybe there are some of those in this room. On the other
side of the debate, we can place the president, I hasten to add add of America not of Hillsdale.
The president and his fellow progressive have seen no limits to the size of government,
and to what it might accomplish. By the way, that will take money lots of it. The conservative
news service noted a few days ago that the federal government has raked in over $1,000,000,000,000.
1,000,000,000,000 of your tax dollars in the current budget year and still manage to go
200,000,000,000 over budget in the same period. These progressives are the sorts of folks
that one of my political heroes Ronald Reagan had in mind, when he joked, that the 10 most
dangerous words in the English language are, "Hi, I'm from the government, and I'm here
to help." Reagan was joking as he so often did, but he was also making a serious point
as he so often did. Americans then and now face the choice between
limited, and unlimited government. As Reagan put it in his first inaugural or choices between
self-rules were ruled by the so-called experts of the administrative state. It's in this
political context that we convene this national leadership seminar.
Our first speaker today is Heather Mac Donald. Mrs. Mac Donald is the Thomas W. Smith fellow
at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal. She earned her J.D.
at Stanford University Law School and describes herself as a non-practicing lawyer, I think
we call that a recovering lawyer. She writes about a range of topics including
Homeland Security, Policing and Racial Profiling, Educational policy and immigration which is
her topic today. Her excellent work has won her numerous awards, including a 2005 Bradley
Prize. She testifies frequently before congress appears quite often on television and writes
from many other publications in addition to City Journals such as the Wall Street Journal,
Washington Post, National Review, The New Criterion and many others.
Her book titles include, Are Cops Racist? How the War Against the Police Harms Black
Americans, and The Immigration Solution. A better plan than today's which is co-authored
with Hillsdale College distinguish fellow Victor Davis Hanson, and Steven Malanga. Her
lecture title today is Practical Thoughts on Immigration. Please welcome Heather Mac
Donald. Heather Mac Donald: Thank you so much this
is an extraordinary honor, and pleasure to be at the national leadership seminar.
To be out of New York where we're experiencing a little global cooling this winter. Especially
living in New York, you often forget that there is people still in America who actually
believe that the founders did a pretty good job in drafting the constitution and creating
the framework for this country. To see so many of you here today is quite
heartening and I'm going to bring this memory back with me when I go back to the bastion
of the New York Times. President Arnn last night spoke very dramatically and powerfully
about the constitutional crisis, as he deemed it, facing conservatives today.
This morning I'm going to speak about one particular crisis. The lesson from the last
20 years of immigration policy is that lawlessness breeds more lawlessness. Once a people or
government decides to normalize one form of law breaking, other forms of lawlessness will
follow until finally the rule of law itself is in jeopardy. Last July when I accepted
Mr. Bell's kind invitation to speak to the Hillsdale National Leadership Seminar, I had long been
tracking various immigration related assaults on the rule of law.
I did not foresee that a constitutional crisis was just on the horizon. President Obama has
decided that because congress has not granted amnesty to millions of illegal aliens living
in the United States. He will do so himself. Let us ponder for a moment, just how shameless
this assertion of power is. Article 2 section 3 of the constitution says
that, "The President shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed." That provision
assumes that there is a law for the president to execute. In this case, the alleged problem
that Obama is reporting to fix, is the absence of a law granting amnesty to millions of illegal
aliens. Obama is not executing a law, he's making
one up all by himself. Arrogating to himself a function that the constitution explicitly
allocates to congress. Should this outrageous and blatantly unconstitutional power grab
stand we will have moved very far in the direction of rule by a dictator-Pace Obama. the absence of a congressional law granting amnesty is not evidence of a political failure
that he must somehow correct by unilateral executive action. It is evidence of the lack
of a popular consensus regarding amnesty. There has been no amnesty statute because
the political will for such an amnesty is lacking. Now fortunately on late Monday.
A federal district judge in Texas acknowledged this obvious fact, and in a bracing opinion
struck down or put on hold for the moment. Obama's executive amnesty acknowledging the
arguments of half of the states in the country that this would impose enormous fiscal burdens
on them, but more profoundly that Obama had violated the constitution.
It's not the end of the story unfortunately. This will undoubtedly be appealed to the Fifth
Circuit of appeals in Texas which has recently been busily contorting itself into knots,
trying to justify under the constitution racial preferences, in admissions at the University
of Texas. This is not a slam dunk that we have a court
here, that we'll be willing to uphold the constitution and the congress's prerogative
over immigration matters. For the moment, at least this amnesty is on hold. Now Democrats
are assiduously pretending that the Obama executive amnesty is merely an innocuous exercise
of prosecutorial discretion. If it is ultimately upheld by either the 5th Circuit or the Supreme
Court, they will rue the day that they exceeded
to this travesty, when a Republican president decides say to privatize social security because
Congress has failed to do so. Now Obama's executive amnesty is the most public and egregious
example of immigration lawlessness to date. Beneath the radar screen has been an equally
telling saga of cascading lawlessness that is arguably as consequential for our country's
future. I am referring to the attack on the secure
communities program, and on deportation more generally. I hope to convince you this morning
that because of this attack, the rallying cry of so many well-meaning conservatives
that we must quote secure the borders is a naïve and meaningless delusion.
The secure communities program is a common- sensical response to illegal alien criminality.
Whenever an illegal alien is booked into a local jail for a crime, an alert is automatically
sent to the federal immigration authorities in the Immigration and Customs of Enforcement
agency or ICE. ICE agents can then ask that the jail or
prison briefly hold the illegal alien after he has served his jail or prison time, rather
than releasing him back into the community, so that ICE can pick him up to begin deportation
proceedings against him. This is known as a detainer. You would think that such a program
would be wholly uncontroversial. An alien who crosses into the country illegally
already has no claim to undisturbed presence here. He is already voluntarily assumed the
risk of deportation. An illegal alien who then goes on to break other laws, has even
less claim to protection from deportation. Yet, secure communities has been the target
of incessant protest from illegal alien advocates since its inception.
They make the astonishing claim that it is unfair to remove an illegal alien who commits
other crimes. Even more astonishing, over 300 jurisdictions including New York state,
New York City, California, Chicago, and Los Angeles agree. They have openly refused to
honor ICE's request for detainers, but instead have released tens of thousands of criminals back to the
streets, where they easily evade ICE detection. Not that ICE would even think of trying to
pick them up. Indeed the irony regarding secure communities is that ICE rarely uses its power
under the program. In 2012, the last year for which we have complete records. The agency
was notified of over 400,000 illegal alien jail detainees but removed only 19% of those.
The removal rate was on track to be even lower in 2013. About 50% of those criminal illegal
aliens whom ICE chooses not to deport reoffend upon release. There are 2 aspects of the campaign
against secure communities, that bare particular notice. First the hypocrisy of the Obama Administration
and the advocates. Second the hypocrisy of big city police chiefs.
In 2012, Arizona became the target of universal contempt among the country's elites for passing
a law that encourage local law enforcement officers to assist ICE with immigration enforcement.
According to illegal alien advocates and the Obama Administration, this law known as SB1070
was an unconstitutional state usurpation of the federal government's plenary under the
constitution over immigration matters that includes both congress and the executive branch.
The Obama Administration sued Arizona for allegedly interfering with federal authority
over immigration and won in injunction, against SB1070. It's subsequently been basically gutted.
Yet now, those same advocates are successfully urging states and localities to defy the federal
government’s request for immigration assistance. Resulting in the creation of local sanctuary
zones where federal immigration authority cannot reach. If ever there were a lawless
usurpation of the federal government's power over immigration. The open revolt against
secure communities is it. Yet the Obama Administration rather than hauling these recalcitrant jurisdictions
to court, has lain supine and is chastely looking the other way.
Late last year, it threw in the towel completely and dismantled the secure communities program
agreeing with the activist that it was unfair to illegal alien criminals to put them under
any worry that they may face the risk of deportation. There is another camp aspect of the campaign
against secure communities that shows how corrosive this tolerance of immigration lawlessness
is. Major police chiefs and immigration jurisdictions
are under enormous political pressure, to protect illegal aliens. That has meant tossing
aside everything that they know about public safety and policing. One of the great insights
of policing over the last 2 decades, was the realization that low level misdemeanor offenses
like graffiti, turnstile, jumping, drunk driving, and drug sales.
Have an outsize impact on a communities perceptions of public safety and on the actual reality
of crime. Criminals are rarely scrupulous about obeying the law, enforcing misdemeanor
offenses is an effective way of incapacitating more serious criminals. Even when an offender
just not go on to commit more violent felonies. Such allegedly minor offenses, a shop lifting,
and illegal street vending create a lawlessness and disorder that breaks down the fabric of
the community. Police chiefs like New York William Bratton,
and Los Angeles Charles know this. Yet they have fiercely opposed cooperating with the
federal government on secure communities on the ground that misdemeanor offenses are really
too trivial to worry about and should not subject in illegal alien to deportation. This
is pure hypocrisy. The result of the enormous pressures of demographic
change on our principles. The ultimate goal of the secure communities program is to de-illegitimate
deportation entirely as a response to illegal immigration. If it is morally unacceptable
to deport even a convicted illegal alien criminal, then it is all the more unacceptable to deport
someone who is merely cross the border illegally. The undermining of deportation is behind those
constant protest demanding in the words of the protesters to end deportations now. It
is behind the claim that it is Americans who are to blame for separating families, rather
than the alien annoyingly came into the country in violation of our immigration laws, and
assume the risk of being sent home. The campaign against deportation does not
name itself as such, but it is been highly successful. Despite the false rhetoric of
the Obama Administration. Deportation has basically disappeared from the interior of
the country. The removal rate in 2014, for illegal aliens who are not explicit ICE priorities
was .05%. What's the consequence of eliminating deportation
as a response to illegal immigration. If someone cannot be removed for illegal entry, then
there is no more immigration law. Deportation is the only remedy for illegal entry that
actually corrects and deters the original law-breaking.
For that reason, Mexico, and every other country on earth practices it. Even if the activist
would accept a fine as a penalty for illegal entry and that's not at all clear. That fine
simply becomes the cost of entering. Lose deportation as we're doing, and the United
States will formally ceded control of its immigration policy to people living outside
the borders. National sovereignty will become meaningless, and formal immigration policy
a nullity. The de-legitimization of deportation is why
the conservative rallying cry to secure the borders is so naïve. An utterly secure border
is impossible, people will always find a way to cross, but if once they cross nothing can
be done to them, then we may as well not have any borders at all.
That's why the advocates have spent all their energy fighting deportation rather than fighting
increase border security because they know that eradicating the former, is far more important.
Now the erosion of the rule is bad enough, but the social consequence of these mass illegal
immigration is equally troubling. We were importing poverty and educational
failure. If you want to see America's future, look no further than my home state of California
which is a generation ahead of the rest of the country and experiencing the effects of
unchecked immigration from the South. Nearly 50% of all California births are now Hispanic.
The state Hispanic population is now almost equal to the white population and it's school
population is vastly majority Hispanic. The consequences of this demographic shift have
been profound. In the 1950s and 1960s California led in educational achievement. Today with
majority Hispanic K-12 population. The largest concentration of English language
learners in the country. California is at the bottom of the educational HEAP. Barely
distinguishable in its national test scores from such economic backwaters as Mississippi,
Alabama and Louisiana. Over a third of California 8th graders lack even the most rudimentary
Math skills. 28% are equally deficient in reading. The
mathematics performance gap between Hispanic and white 8th graders is not budge since 1990.
The reading gap has improved only slightly since 1998. California is at the epicenter
of a disturbing phenomenon known as long term English Language Learners.
You would think that an English Learner would be somebody who grew up in a foreign country,
speaking a foreign language who came to the US only later in life. In fact the vast majority
of designated English learners are born here. Their cognitive and language skills are so
low that they're deemed non-native English speakers. Nationally 30% of all English Language
Learners are 3rd generation Americans. There's a problem of a simulation going on.
In 2013, California governor Jerry Brown push through a controversial law to try to close
the achievement gap in California. Between California's growing Hispanic population and
it's Anglo and Asian populations. That law redistributes tax dollars from successful
schools to those with high proportions of English learners and low income students.
It remains to be seen whether these latest effort to raise the education outcomes of
these children of low skilled immigrants will prove more effective than its predecessors
working against that possibility is Hispanic's high dropout rate, the highest of any group
in the nation, and they're equally unmatched teen pregnancy rate.
To be sure many illegal Hispanics who come here possess admirable work ethic, one that
American should emulate. Some have turned around very troubled in our city communities
like South Central LA or at least have started them on an upward trajectory. Thanks to their
lack of social capital. Many of their children and grandchildren are
getting sacked up into underclass culture. The Hispanic out of wedlock birth rate in
California and the US is 53%. Twice what it was when the black population in 1965. When
Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote his present warning about the catastrophe of black family
breakdown. In 65 it was 23% for blacks, and as Larry
Kudlow said last night, Moynihan was travestied as a racist but he was utterly farseeing in
his observation that a 23% illegitimacy rate was probab- Hispanics are now up to 53% twice
as much. The incarceration rate of Mexican-Americans in California shoots up 8 times between the
first and second generation to equal the black incarceration rate.
Gang involvement is endemic in barrio schools, I wish I could take some of my fellow open
borders conservatives to the Berrendo Middle School, in Pico Rivera in Los Angeles where
I've spent time. They would see a massive social service bureaucracy of anti-gang councilors
serving the children of single mothers. This social service bureaucracies in barrio
schools is just the tip of the iceberg. Welfare use among immigrants in their progeny is high,
the highest in the country. Their poverty rates remain so stubbornly low. Hispanics
are the highest uses of government healthcare, and they are the biggest supporters of Obamacare.
They favor big government and the higher taxes necessary to pay for it. The claim by open
borders conservatives like low skill denigration is an economic boon to the country is not
true. It fails to taken to account, the government services consumed by low skilled immigrants
and their children. Such as education, healthcare and prison cost and it ignores the fact that
low skilled workers pay no income taxes but instead received tax credits.
What should be done, first of all resort the primacy of the rule of law. That means at
the very least, rehabilitating deportation as a response to illegal immigration and ceasing
to normalize illegal immigration with our huge array of sanctuary policies. I fear however
that, that battle is lost. I expect Liberals to be in different to the
erosion of law. It stuns me that so many of my conservative colleagues are willing wink,
at immigration law breaking and their eagerness to placate what they believe I think a little
naively to be a Republican voting bloc in waiting. I would not offer an amnesty to those
adult immigrants who voluntarily entered the country on their own.
Since every amnesty in the US and Europe, has acted as a magnet for more illegal immigration.
People who come into the country illegally, or overstay their Visa do so knowingly. They
assumed the risk of illegal status, it is not our responsibility to wipe it away. Their
children if they're born here are already American citizens.
Thanks to the misguided policy of birthright citizenship. The illegal status of their parents
is a problem that will eventually fade away, as that first generation dies out. As importantly
I would reorient our legal immigration system towards high skilled immigrants like the parents
of Sergey Brinn, the founder of Google. Open border types consistently conflate low
skilled and high skilled immigration. It's a very effective rhetorical trope, that say
"Look at Sergey Brinn. Look at the billions of value is created to the American economy."
Look at the millions of people he's employed, absolutely right. That's very different than
people who come from a culture that value, that things third grade education is as much
as one should attain and the results speak for themselves.
Immigration policy should be forge with one consideration in mind. What is in the country’s
economic self-interest. Emigration is not a service we provide to the rest of the world
To be sure we are a nation of immigrants, and we continue to be the most generous nation
on earth towards people who want to come to this country legally, and join the American
dream. Rewarding illegal immigration does an injustice
to the many legal immigrants who played by the rules to get here. We owe it to them,
and to ourselves to adhere to the law. Thank you very much. Do you have questions? Yeah
I love to. Heather Mac Donald: Okay I'd be happy to take
questions if anybody disagrees that would be even more interesting. I can't think that's
really possible. Speaker 4: All right, please raise your hands
and we will bring the microphones to you. Doug: I have heard definition of deportation,
and it certainly is affecting our borders. I know the explanation I've been given
Heather Mac Donald: An explanation for the change in deportation?
Doug: The explanation of the definition. Does that make sense?
Heather Mac Donald: Do I have an explanation for the definition of deportation?
Doug: To change the definition. Heather Mac Donald: Well I think it's still
being defined as removing somebody from this country to return to his native country. There's
various category certainly. I mean what the Obama administration is doing, they go around
claiming that deportations are at the highest level ever. What they're counting is people
that they catch right at the border and send them back immediately.
That's not what a deportation is. A deportation is when you enter the country and take residence
here, and then removed. Removals at the border are not what deportation is. Is that ... Am
I understanding you correctly? Doug: Got a little bit different explanation
in Arizona from the locals who are affected by this, but that's essentially it. I wanted
you to say that there is a change so that Obama can challenge and say that he has done
a magnificent ... Heather Mac Donald: Exactly right, that's
what it is. He is counting when border patrol agents are on the border, and they spot somebody
literally crossing and pick that person up. There is usually an expedited removal. Of
course as we saw this summer with the flood of juveniles, who were coming across juveniles
being usually across 18 year old, and sometimes much older.
The press was, pretending that this was like a bunch of 5 year old fleeing gang violence
in Guatemala that simply was not the case. We saw, we had a little advanced picture of
what amnesties do, and this juvenile border search was inspired by the earlier Obama amnesty
for the so-called dreamers, the children of illegal aliens.
There too, even though they were being apprehended at the border, the advocates were pushing
and pushing to get them in, get them into detention centers and they've been spread
throughout the country. There were no real deportations there, they come in and many
communities are having a very hard time providing the education and healthcare cost of those
families. You're right, at the border, deportation has
been redefined in order to give Obama this talking point about him having been so resolute
with deportation that now we get an amnesty. I got a cold. Let me just have a coughing
moment. It’ll past. Wow, thank God for water. Man I got sick in New York and I haven't been
in Florida long enough to get better yet. Someone has the problem.
Okay I'm ready, I apologize. Speaker 6: Last summer, my wife and I were
in Poland. Heather Mac Donald: You were here?
Speaker 6: We were in Poland in Europe. One of the ... More than one person remarked how
difficult it is for a Polish citizen to get a Visa to come to the United States and stay
in work. The immigration policy of this administration is extremely selective. There are groups that
are being targeted that as you said would support politically the rules of this administration
and the progressives. I'd like to have you have comment on that.
Then also I would like to disagree with you, when you said that the single question to
be address is the economic interest of the nation relative to our immigration policy.
I think also there is a moral interest of the nation, as you articulated in this business
of adhering to a rule of law. Heather Mac Donald: I agree, but I think that
the economic interest are not sufficiently attended to. The assumption is, is that we
owe this to the rest of the country. Really we have to be I think unapologetically aware
of what is going to keep us competitive with the rest of the country, the rest of the world
rather. America is falling further and further behind
educationally, there's arising proportion of our students who are low income now it's
way over 50% of American K-12 students are eligible for free federally subsidized lunches.
This is largely because of mass illegal immigration. It's not in our economic, and I just completely
agree with you it's a moral imperative as well.
Yes, there's sort of emerging theory going out there about the 1965 immigration law that
radically revised the traditional sources of immigration away from the European countries,
Canada, towards 3rd world countries. Some people are arguing that was farsighted on
the part of Democrats who saw over the long term what they were going to be bringing in
was a Democratic voting bloc, and that certainly what has been happening.
It's very frustrating that people from places that have a different tradition, have such
a hard time getting them in here. This re-categorization goes on again and again we have something
called the diversity lottery as if our immigration flows are not diverse enough which is totally
arbitrating a random system that just hands out Visa's on a random basis to people.
Again this is the opposite of what we should be doing, which is being very precised about
what we want. This is not some new idea, Canada, Australia they give points for levels of education,
and language skills there's a very good proposals in congress now. The Democrats are always
saying, "The Republicans have nothing to say. They've got no proposals." No they have a
series of very targeted specific laws one of which would basically as they say stamp
a green card on every PhD. Because our own education skills are getting
so low, our graduate schools in science depend on foreign students.Without people from China,
and India I hate to say it. Our medical technology would disappeared. We should make sure that
graduate students who come here ... Men it's sticky stuff. Who come here, and take advantage
of our still brilliant medical faculties, science faculties, and it's the one good thing
about the university that is still intact but it is so under assault.
I cannot tell you the feminist are coming, there's not a single engineering school in
this country that is not under massive pressure to hire faculty and admit students on the
basis of gender quotas. I have a fri0end that the engineering, electrical engineering department
at UC San Diego. The last 8 candidates that they were ... That
they interviewed for a job, were all female. I can tell you that is not an accident. That
was created by their dean. Before that, they had a position that had opened up which is
a very rare thing in the university of California, because it's so physically challenge.
Thanks to the States huge physical cost from in large part, but not exclusively unions
have a large part to do that as well from mass immigration. They got the opportunity
to hire somebody, and they found the 3 top candidates in the world who all sadly happen
to be male. Now they were not only white males. In the feminist universe now in Academia.
Being a person of color male doesn't count. Their dean told them, "These 3 top candidates
aren't good enough." Demanded that they interview a subpar female. They voted her down, the
dean demanded a second vote. By secret ballot, voted her down again.
What did the faculty ... What did the administration do? They then create excellence positions
an extraordinarily Orwellian term for diversity candidates who can't get hired on their qualifications.
In any case, as much as I value our American Science faculties, and they are a magnet to
universities for alumni donors who are a little bit clueless about the defamation of the humanities
and the ... In the tragic destruction of the legacy of western civilization that is being
propagated by our university system. Don't think that the sciences are safe. In
any case, they do depend on foreign graduate students. They should be sent through the
system as quickly as possible, and encourage to become American residents and American
citizens. Thank you. Speaker 7: You mentioned the argument of prosecution
discretion. Could you elaborate on that a little?
Heather Mac Donald: Prosecutorial discretion is just that. It tends to be on a case by
case basis. That's not what Obama is doing. He is deciding to legalize 5,000,000 illegals
on this extraordinary bootstrap argument that they've got children here. Now if ever there's
an incentive, to cross the border and have a child, that's it.
Sometimes local prosecutors will act more categorically and say, in general, let's say
marijuana offenses I think this is mistake, but it's not going to be our top priority
in deciding what cases to prosecute and take to court. There is still have the flexibility
to look at it as an individual on an individual basis.
Obama himself, I mean the shamelessness. We've heard like Kudlow mention last night the Jonathan
Gruber quote that was caught about the stupidity of the American public. That was not an accidental
quote. That's what this people believe. Obama, thinks that we're so stupid that before the
election he was quite explicit in saying, I'm not going to pass my executive amnesty
now because it's so unpopular. It would result in too many Democrats losing their seats.
That happened anyway." He actually said I'm going to do it afterwards
when it's not going to matter. He thinks we're not going to notice this, but he's also said
several years ago that he wouldn't do this because it's so blatantly so unconstitutional.
Well it was, until it wasn't I guess. Things changed that's what a living constitution
is. It lived another year, and they decided he
has the power to grant to basically create a law himself. All right I better get to this
quick, it's on a slope. Hollie: Hi Heather.
Heather Mac Donald: Hi. Hollie: I'm Hollie Strom from Los Angeles.
Of course I agree with everything you said about California, and I was hoping that you
could comment about the recent, well a couple of things. I don't know what the Hispanic
recent precinct population with the percentages in California. I expect it's pretty high,
and how is that early release program from the prisons, the breaking of certain crimes
from felonies to misdemeanors, and the emptying out of the jails in prisons. How does that
impacting crime in California? Heather Mac Donald: Well the Hispanic population
in California especially in Los Angeles is about 20% illegal aliens. Which is higher,
disproportionately involved in felony crime. It tends to be about overall somewhat proportionate
to their population because Blacks are ... When you compare it to the entire alien population
it's a higher rate. It's much higher than whites.
The rule of thumb for black and Hispanic and white crime rates is that the black crime
rate is about 7 times higher than the white rate. The Hispanic rate is about 3 to 4 times
higher than the white rate. That means this is interesting ... If Hispanics are moving
to a predominantly black neighborhood as they did in South Central Los Angeles.
The crime rate actually goes down somewhat. If they move into a predominantly white neighborhood
as we saw when the vast migration of Hispanics across the country started happening into
Virginia, West Virginia. Crime rates start shooting up and you see gang activity the
MS13 started coming to East coast cities that had never been there before.
They're sort of in the middle of criminality, but as I say one name that you hear a lot
from advocate is that immigrants have a much lower rate of criminality than natives. That's
hard to say because the federal government does a such a good job of not asking status
when they can. What is has been documented as between the first and second generation
as I say the crime rates shots way up because we are creating a second under class culture.
Our questioner ask a very complicated question there, say, "Program going on in California
that Jerry Brown instigated in response to a long standing litigation between the prison
advocates and the state about the conditions in California's prisons." Jerry Brown to his
credit fought this thing. He has been pouring billions, billions into
California prison medical care. It's now gold plated, it's better than the federal government
provides. Yet the advocates are still claiming that it's unconstitutional. My judge that
I clerked for in Los Angeles, Judge Stephen Reinhardt who's probably the most left wing
judge in the country. This is when I was still a Liberal, a Liberal by default is what it
is. Unless you think your way out of the received
wisdom in this country. I clerked for him after law school. Alas he's on this federal
panel that has been California responsible for putting more and more billions of dollars
in the healthcare. Brown to his credit, fought this thing for a long time.
What they started doing, is sending mis- Re-categorizing felonies, as misdemeanors and shipping people
who ordinarily would have gone to prison to jails, it's known as realignment. It's very
... One of these semantic switches, you're no longer a felon, you're a misdemeanor, you've
committed a theft, you've engaged in very high level drug dealing. Now you're just a
misdemeanor. You're going to go to county jail ... Guess what? The county jails are
bursting, they're releasing people early, the jail sheriffs have the possibility of
early releases and people ... Sex offenders are cutting off their GPS bracelets with impunity
because they know that the jails are so full that they're not going to go back.
This is a massive shift in the California criminal justice landscape and is resulting
in a rise in crime. Certain Southern California localities like Pomona, San Bernardino, Riverside
have had huge increases in robbery and other felonies. It's sort of under the public awareness
radar screen, but you're obviously very, an astute observer of the criminal justice system
in California. I'm sure there's an immigration component
to that as well, because the absolute number of offender sin California are Hispanic, and
of course the gang situation in this prisons is just extraordinary. I went to the Chino
prison which is in the inland empire East of Orange County. It's the usual situation
where the Hispanics played basketball at one time, and if a black or a white goes on the
court, there's going to be a fight, there's going to be violence.
They bring that mentality with them from the streets but they come back with an even worst.
Nobody has an idea really how to break that down. It's a very disturbing situation. We
very used to in this country talking about white racism and we forget that blacks and
Hispanics have a lot of racism towards each other and towards whites.
Speaker 9: Can you help us Heather. Thanks for suffering through your cold. Help us with
the motivation here, I can't call our president annoyed traitor, I can't call him stupid.
He went to Harvard Law School, he read the law review there. We say in the law this is
all about money, power, and glory. I did hear you say, that in
the 60s there was an effort to try to log
in a Democratic voting class. What is the motivation? What is behind this. Because everything
you say is self-evident to me. It should be obvious to everybody as a citizen of this
country, and yet expect for unusual venues like this, even in a place like North Dakota
where I come from. You can't say a thing. Diversity is a wonderful thing, we can't be
mean. I just got done reading Voegeli's book called The Pity Party. He says that it's all
a matter of feeling good, a self-fulfilling feeling from pitying people and helping people.
It doesn't get me all the way either. I'm sure you thought about this.
If we can identify what the motivation is here, that way, give us a clue as to how we
go forward. What is your attitude, what is your best guess about what the motivation
of these people are. Heather Mac Donald: That's a great questions,
and there's so many answers to it. There is obviously crass political self-interest. Hispanics
and again when we talk about mass illegal immigration. That's is let's be honest that
is what we're talking about. What we have today is unlike what the law did immigration
history of this country was a turn of the 20th century when you had different countries,
different languages, sending an equal parts, immigrants.
That did not have a predominant culture and then we had in the 1920s an immigration pause
we basically close the borders because people were saying, "We don't have a simulation going
on." They were right, and that allowed people overtime to in fact join American culture.
What we have now is very different. Mexicans alone are way over 50% of all legal immigrants.
When you talk about illegal immigration it's way even more so taken up by central America
and Mexico. I think there's a political calculation going
on because these immigrants are just resolutely Democratic voters. Larry Kudlow spoke so importantly
last night about family breakdown. I could not agree more it is a social catastrophe,
and it is the biggest problem, social problem facing this country.
Single mothers are the frequent fliers of government programs. Because they are so inevitably
poor, that they are the overwhelming consumers of poverty programs, and with the Hispanic
out of wedlock birth rate, and when you hear conservatives talking about Hispanic family
values, I laugh. Extended family yes, but the nuclear family
is not there. Democrats see this, and they know that what they have is many generations
of welfare consumers and ways of expanding the state. Years ago I was on the O'Reilly
radio show, on Fox. He asked me back then, if there was another motivation which was
a innate hostility to western civilization the rule of law, and a certain tradition of
Anglo American, and European culture and civilization. Back then, I hedged and I wasn't willing.
Because that's a very provocative statement and I just fudged a little bit. I hope this
isn't on Twitter. There's a part of me that actually now agrees with that, that I think
the diversity ideology is not just a positive statement, it's a negative one as well. It
is targeted at what this country has been, and is determined to destroy that.
We are losing as I say the universities it breaks my heart, because there is nothing
that is more important to me than the preservation of the humanities and Western civilization.
We should be down on our knees, before these creations of Mozart’s and Bach, and Escalus,
and Tiepolo and it is all being trashed now in the universities.
You people probably know it, but I am astounded by how many Americans are still clueless,
and the universities are obviously the primary engines of the diversity ideology. It's about
race, but it's also about gender. The feminist have taken over the university. They're also
why it's so darn hard, going to be so hard to reconstitute the 2 parent, biological family
because of the preposterous feminist idea that women can do it all and that means raising
children. Actually men and women bring complimentary
skills in raising children and boys need their fathers. That is becoming impossible to say
no, mostly because of feminism but also because of gay marriage. Because I predict there's
going to come a moment when Father's day is declared a hate crime. Because it means that
you're dissing that child in the classroom with 2 lesbian mothers.
Things are getting very complicated and very difficult.
Speaker 10: This will be our final question. Heather Mac Donald: Okay which is?
Jodie: Good morning, thank you so much for your comment.
Heather Mac Donald: My pleasure. Jodie: I'm Jodie from Wisconsin. I agree with
everything, I have studied the constitution and made my students outline it. That time
is passed for me. My question is what can we do? We have already raised ... My sister
made 4 sons who adhere to our values and they are raising grandchildren, but what else can
we do? Heather Mac Donald: That's such a heartbreaking
question, and Larry Kudlow is an optimist as he said last night. It's really a genetic
thing. I'm not ... I tend towards pessimism. Obviously I see the world as lot of empirical
validation for that. Let me try to be an optimistic, and say people like you who so understand
the preciousness of this civilization and it's legacy. If you can keep telling your
friends that it's at risk and continue to fight for schools and for an education that
asks only one thing, is this a work of beauty? I was, I was an undergraduate at a time when
this crazy literally theory known as deconstruction was taking over the humanities in the 1970s.
I was at Yale which was the bastion of it. I view myself as very fortunate. Because I
went to school at a time when nobody asked what's the gender or race of this author.
I was allowed to read Milton and Chaucer and Spenser and Wordsworth, and Shakespeare, without
anybody complaining. That's not possible anymore. We have to start fighting for the primacy
of genius and beauty and save it, race and gender does not matter.
It doesn't ... I could not care less about reading female authors. All I want to know
is am I reading somebody that could possesses language and cease the truth of human existence.
Now that view is viewed as blind, and insufficiently narcissistic. We have a culture of narcissism
now where every students just want to study himself. If he's gay, you want to study gayness,
if he's female, he wants to study female, if he's a black, he wants to study black.
No education is about moving outside yourself. Outside of your petty narrow conceptions to
Shakespeare actually knew something more than we did. Let's acknowledge that. All I can
say is we fight the battle. Sometimes you feel like you're not losing, you're not winning
but you got to go down fighting at least.
