Some Knew Bush was an Open Borders Anarchist in 2000

Lawrence Auster has a right on target assessment of Bush in 2000 in his September 2000 article "My Bush Ephiphany." Now as we contemplate the insane Senate "Destroy America" Immigration Bill, we can look back at Larry's article and say, 'the clues were all there, why didn't we see this liberal Democrat in Republican drag?'

My Bush epiphany

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Posted: September 20, 2000
1:00 a.m. Eastern


By Lawrence Auster
© 2000 WorldNetDaily.com


A few weeks before he was nominated as the Republican candidate for president of the United States, I happened to see Bob Dole being interviewed on TV. As I watched, everything I knew about Dole came to mind -- the love for big government that he had unembarrassedly revealed in his Senate retirement speech a few days earlier, the constant hints and sardonic asides by which he distanced himself from conservatives and accommodated himself to liberals, even the way his eyes kept shifting from side to side as he spoke. Suddenly the thought flashed into my mind: "He's not on our side; he's on their side."

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On the matter of national identity, W. delivered in Miami on Aug. 25 a major address on U.S.-Latin American relations, in which he unveiled a startling -- at least for a Republican -- view of America. We should pay close attention to his words:


We are now one of the largest Spanish-speaking nations in the world. We're a major source of Latin music, journalism and culture.
Just go to Miami, or San Antonio, Los Angeles, Chicago or West New York, New Jersey ... and close your eyes and listen. You could just as easily be in Santo Domingo or Santiago, or San Miguel de Allende.

For years our nation has debated this change -- some have praised it and others have resented it. By nominating me, my party has made a choice to welcome the new America.

Let us be clear that W. is not (as Republican politicians including Reagan have done for decades) celebrating immigrants from diverse backgrounds on the assumption that they are becoming part of our culture and way of life. On the contrary, he is applauding the expansion and the increasingly dominant role of the Hispanic culture and the Spanish language in this country. He is explicitly welcoming the very things that are making America less and less like its historical self and more and more like Latin America.

To repeat, this is not the usual establishment conservative line of "immigration with assimilation." This is multiculturalism, the view of America as a collection of unassimilated yet "equal" cultures in which our former national culture will be progressively downgraded and marginalized.

Also surprising is W.'s claim that Republicans have "made a choice to welcome the new America." Did Republicans realize that by nominating W. they were not only committing themselves to a pro-multicultural candidate, but shutting down all debate on the issue?

Complementing W.'s support for the Hispanicization of American culture was his view of Mexico-U.S. relations:


I have a vision for our two countries. The United States is destined to have a "special relationship" with Mexico, as clear and strong as we have had with Canada and Great Britain. Historically, we have had no closer friends and allies. ... Our ties of history and heritage with Mexico are just as deep.
In equating our intimate historic bonds to our mother country and to Canada with our ties to Mexico, W. shows a staggering ignorance of the civilizational facts of life. The reason we are so close to Britain and Canada is that we share with them a common historical culture, language, literature, and legal system, as well as similar standards of behavior, expectations of public officials, and so on.

We share none of those things with Mexico, which, along with the rest of Latin America, constitutes a cultural region quite distinct from that of the United States and Europe. Everyone, on both the left and the right, has always known this to be so. W., apparently, does not. As he sees it, our mere physical proximity to Mexico is tantamount to cultural commonality with Mexico.

W.'s delusions of cultural similarity don't stop there. "Differences are inevitable" between Mexico and the U.S.," W. continued. "But they will be differences among family, not between rivals."

Coming from the Republican candidate for president of the United States, the statement boggles the mind. It was bad enough when the Democrats in the 1980s started their socialist rant (soon echoed by the Republicans) that Americans are all "one family." But now George W., "The Man from Inclusion," has taken the "family" idea several steps further. For W., it is not just the United States, but the United States and Mexico, and ultimately the United States and the whole of the Americas, that constitutes one "family."

With this thoughtless cliché, W. is moving in symbolic terms toward the goal that Mexico's newly elected president Vicente Fox is calling for in concrete terms: the opening of the U.S.-Mexican border. After all, who would want to maintain national borders and high-tech barriers between members of the same family? Within a family there is unconditional support, mutual obligation, and the sense of a shared destiny -- not armed patrols and checkpoints.

Whether or not W. himself understands the logical implications of his "family" rhetoric, its political consequence if he becomes president will be the same -- the further delegitimization of our borders and our national sovereignty.

All of which leads up to the question: Why is he doing this? Most conservatives had accepted, if without enthusiasm, the pragmatic need for W. and other Republicans to project a warm and "inclusive" image, conspicuously embracing minorities and so on. But by no reasonable calculation did that require W. to embrace multiculturalism, any more than the need to avoid "negative attacks" on his Democratic opponent required him to praise Reno's cover-up of Gore.

Since his adoption of a multicultural vision of America makes no sense in political terms (indeed, it would tend to alienate his own base), the only explanation is that W. really believes in it. Watching his speech in Miami, you couldn't help but feel that W. is genuinely moved by this "We're all one family" sentiment. It is as central to his heart (about which he is always telling us) as the love of big government is to Bob Dole's.

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