Discouraging Moments in American Political Debate

There’s a spirited debate going on at National Review. Mark Krikorian, NRO’s resident immigrant‐​basher, supposed yesterday morning that maybe one more reason we should keep immigrants out is because the grandchildren of Hispanic‐​American Catholics might turn out to less supportive of Israel than their Anglo coreligionists (a condition he calls “anti‐​Semitism”).


Charging to challenge this thesis is John J. Miller, coauthor of a book calling, umm, France, “America’s oldest enemy.” (Strangely enough, the book was published around the beginning of the Iraq war.) Bernard‐​Henri Levy “characterized the book this way:

the whole book is a mad charge (whose only equivalent I know is the fascist French literature of the 30’s) against a diabolical nation, the incarnation of evil, bearing in the body and soul of its citizens the stigmata of an ill will the only aim of which throughout the centuries has been the humiliation of America the great.

Good Lord, what’s happened to American conservatism? The debate between these two reminds me a bit of Henry Kissinger’s remark on the Iran‐​Iraq War.