# Yes, I know we've done the Pat Buchanan is a fucking racist thing before. **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [October 21, 2009, 1:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-i-know-weve-done-the-pat-buchanan-is-a-fucking-racist-thing-before/514601 "2009-10-21T13:59:38Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2009, 10:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-i-know-weve-done-the-pat-buchanan-is-a-fucking-racist-thing-before/514601/81 "2009-10-24T22:16:44Z")
These are choices. They can be made by anyone, American or immigrant, illegal or not. ---
**Author:** ![Starving\_Artist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/aeb1de/32.png) [@Starving\_Artist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Starving_Artist)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2009, 10:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-i-know-weve-done-the-pat-buchanan-is-a-fucking-racist-thing-before/514601/82 "2009-10-24T22:23:15Z")
Yeah, but who _is_ making them? ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2009, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-i-know-weve-done-the-pat-buchanan-is-a-fucking-racist-thing-before/514601/83 "2009-10-24T23:33:34Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > I think they do have an ability to get by on less. Asians do too. My guess is that Buchanan thinks the same way I do: that they work long, hard hours, live frugally and several together to cut expenses, and send as much as they can to help their families back home. I think they’re rather admirable myself…apart from the fact that there here illegally. > > There’s also the fact that illegal immigrants generally don’t have the same expenses that your typical American citizens do. They aren’t buying new cars and houses and trying to feed and clothe their families, furnish them with health care, and finance college educations for their children. Can you name any point in history when unskilled construction workers or farmhands could buy new cars and health insurance and finance college educations for their families? ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2009, 12:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-i-know-weve-done-the-pat-buchanan-is-a-fucking-racist-thing-before/514601/84 "2009-10-25T00:13:34Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > > [@](#): > > > > had somehow come to be of the belief that “pussy” meant “twit” and “twit” meant “pussy.” > > Close – only off by one letter. “Twit” means “pushy”? ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2009, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-i-know-weve-done-the-pat-buchanan-is-a-fucking-racist-thing-before/514601/85 "2009-10-25T02:51:28Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > I think they do have an ability to get by on less. Asians do too. My guess is that Buchanan thinks the same way I do: that they work long, hard hours, live frugally and several together to cut expenses, and send as much as they can to help their families back home. I think they’re rather admirable myself…apart from the fact that there here illegally. Yes, that’s the point : immigrants (legal or no) are generally willing to work harder, for lower pay, and to live in much less luxury than natives, either because they’re used to it since their home country living conditions are even worse, or because they’re simply desperate or tough enough to do it. As you say, it’s admirable. Yet Pat counts it as an evil scheme by them brownies to screw over decent, hard-working (but apparently, not hard-enough-working 😉 ) Americans. His statement, in effect, is saying that Americans can’t work longer hours, can’t work for lower salaries, and can’t possibly live with less luxuries than they do. It’s a moronic and rather self-defeating argument if he intends us to root for the home team. ---
**Author:** ![Starving\_Artist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/aeb1de/32.png) [@Starving\_Artist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Starving_Artist)\ **Post date:** [October 25, 2009, 5:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-i-know-weve-done-the-pat-buchanan-is-a-fucking-racist-thing-before/514601/86 "2009-10-25T05:00:59Z")
> [@Kobal2](#): > > Yes, that’s the point : immigrants (legal or no) are generally willing to work harder, for lower pay, and to live in much less luxury than natives, either because they’re used to it since their home country living conditions are even worse, or because they’re simply desperate or tough enough to do it. > > As you say, it’s admirable. > > Yet Pat counts it as an evil scheme by them brownies to screw over decent, hard-working (but apparently, not hard-enough-working 😉 ) Americans. His statement, in effect, is saying that Americans can’t work longer hours, can’t work for lower salaries, and can’t possibly live with less luxuries than they do. It’s a moronic and rather self-defeating argument if he intends us to root for the home team. I don’t think he’s saying illegal immigrants are scheming to come here with the express purpose in mind of screwing over anybody. They are just fleeing abject poverty and attempting to make what they can here. What Buchanan is critical of is the United States allowing them to flood in here virtually unchecked, which results in employers being able to pay them less than Americans would allow them to get away with, and American liberals in government and society who then champion the rewarding of them with welfare, free health care and education. It’s primarily America that Buchanan is being critical of in this regard. His only complaint about illegal Mexican immigrants themselves is that they come here illegally and have the effect of depressing the going rates for the labor pool. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2009, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-i-know-weve-done-the-pat-buchanan-is-a-fucking-racist-thing-before/514601/87 "2009-10-30T21:04:53Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > I don’t think he’s saying illegal immigrants are scheming to come here with the express purpose in mind of screwing over anybody. They are just fleeing abject poverty and attempting to make what they can here. What Buchanan is critical of is the United States allowing them to flood in here virtually unchecked, which results in employers being able to pay them less than Americans would allow them to get away with, and American liberals in government and society who then champion the rewarding of them with welfare, free health care and education. It’s primarily America that Buchanan is being critical of in this regard. His only complaint about illegal Mexican immigrants themselves is that they come here illegally and have the effect of depressing the going rates for the labor pool. I daresay Buchanan would have little problem with all of that, and the Minutemen would not exist, if the illegal-immigration pressure were coming from Canada instead of Mexico. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2009, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-i-know-weve-done-the-pat-buchanan-is-a-fucking-racist-thing-before/514601/88 "2009-10-30T21:52:20Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > The Oath Keepers are funny. > > I almost hope the government _does_ try some of that stuff, just so we can laugh at the oath keepers when they band together to express their outrage by blogging about it. Things like this remind me of the stories of the Georgia State Legislature during Sherman’s March. They were in the [then capital](http://images.topix.com/gallery/up-6TPBQ50VJGCRT0UU.jpg)at Milledgeville where it was believed that Sherman’s left wing would be taking Macon (40 miles west of M’ville) and moving south towards Pensacola and that his right wing would be taking Augusta (almost 100 miles northeast) then moving north towards Charleston. The men took turns giving hyperbolic speeches and resolved unanimously that they would die in their defense of Georgia before they would cowtow to Yankee butchers. The same day- literally the same day of that unanimous proclamation- it was announced that Sherman wasn’t where they thought he was but was rather about 30 miles from M’ville and heading straight for them, with his other wing moving in from the west. Also announced: there was only one more train that would be able to get out of Milledgeville on the spur line that connected it with the last functional train tracks in Georgia Confederate hands. The same men were soon getting into fistfights and offering bribes of gold, greenbacks, and their wife’s jewels for seats on said train. Sherman arrived to find the place almost completely free of legislators, and in fact held a mock session of the legislature in their own chambers. ---
**Author:** ![Starving\_Artist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/aeb1de/32.png) [@Starving\_Artist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Starving_Artist)\ **Post date:** [October 30, 2009, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-i-know-weve-done-the-pat-buchanan-is-a-fucking-racist-thing-before/514601/89 "2009-10-30T22:36:47Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > I daresay Buchanan would have little problem with all of that, and the Minutemen would not exist, if the illegal-immigration pressure were coming from Canada instead of Mexico. Oh, I don’t know. If they were flooding in here with their snooty French attitudes ()and working for pennies on the dollar…not to mention _BREAKING THE FUCKING LAW!_ (why don’t lefties ever care about that?), I doubt that he’d be all that pleased about it. You might notice that we don’t allow people from any other countries to just come flooding in here virtually at will, do we? (I heard it said one, around here I believe, that there are more illegal Mexicans in the U.S. than Canadians in Canada. So that’s another aspect Buchanan would likely take into account. The entire Canadian population would be here by now so illegal immigration from Canada would no longer be a problem anyway.) ---
**Author:** ![Starving\_Artist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/aeb1de/32.png) [@Starving\_Artist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Starving_Artist)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2009, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-i-know-weve-done-the-pat-buchanan-is-a-fucking-racist-thing-before/514601/90 "2009-10-31T00:19:40Z")
Ahem…there should be a wink smiley in the parentheses after ‘snooty French attitudes.’ I know I clicked on it and saw it. Can’t imagine where it went. Editing, I guess. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2009, 12:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-i-know-weve-done-the-pat-buchanan-is-a-fucking-racist-thing-before/514601/91 "2009-10-31T00:36:25Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > Oh, I don’t know. If they were flooding in here with their snooty French attitudes ()and working for pennies on the dollar…not to mention _BREAKING THE FUCKING LAW!_ (why don’t lefties ever care about that?), I doubt that he’d be all that pleased about it. You might notice that we don’t allow people from any other countries to just come flooding in here virtually at will, do we? From [Blood, Class and Nostalgia: Anglo-American Ironies,](http://www.amazon.com/Blood-Class-Nostalgia-Anglo-American-Ironies/dp/0374114439) by Christopher Hitchens, discussing the “official English” movement of 1988: > [@](#): > > U.S. English, it emerged, was a project of “U.S. Inc.,” a tax-exempt body which underwrote a number of other groups, such as the Center for Immigration Studies, Americans for Border Control, and Californians for Population Stabilization. There was no mistaking the timbre of this joint output, which had little to do with the teaching of “the Queen’s English” except as this bore upon the connection between that English and certain inherited conceptions of race and tribal security. Dr. John Tanton, the originating author of this cluster of groups and initiatives, was himself in no doubt that “the question of bilingualism grows out of U.S. immigration policy.” > > So much might have seemed obvious, at least until Dr. Tanton wrote a paper which, phrased in the poor and affected English which is often found among the language’s more ostentatious upholders, created a crisis for his hitherto blue-chip WASP and Jewish campaign. As he coarsely put it: > > > [@](#): > > > > _“Gobernar es poblar”_ translates as “to govern is to populate.” In this society, will the present majority peaceably hand over its political power to a group that is simply more fertile? Can _homo contraceptivus_ compete with _homo progenitiva_ if borders aren’t controlled? > > Having rather clumsily Latinized or Romanized his argument, Tanton moved to a more demotic style. He warned sternly of such alarming cultural imports as "the tradition of the _mordida_ (bribe), the lack of involvement in public affairs, and Roman Catholicism with its tendency to “pitch out the separation of church and state.” He continued to skirt around these aspects of the problem – the most conspicuous opponents of church-state separation in the 1980s have been fundamentalist Protestants – making an excursion through allegedly low “educability” before returning with relish to his main theme, which was, as ever, sex and fertility: > > > [@](#): > > > > Perhaps this is the first instance in which those with their pants up are going to get caught by those with their pants down. As whites see their power and control over their lives declining, will they simply go quietly into the night? Or will there be an explosion? > > This piece of inadvertence – the shift to “white” as the key word speaks volumes in the extract above, as well as showing the secondary significance of ideas like “culture” and “language” – led to the resignation of many of the U.S. English board members, among them Walter Cronkite and the neoconservative Hispanic Linda Chavez. It also led to closer scrutiny of the network of which Dr. Tanton was the convenor. The chairman of the Florida English campaign, for example, had advocated the elimination of emergency telephone services in Spanish in order to supply what he called an “incentive” to the learning of the tongue of Shakespeare and Dickens. His Dade County equivalent had warned that “the United States is not a mongrel nation.” Rusty Butler, an aide to Senator Steven Symms of Idaho, had forwarded the senator’s call for an English-language amendment to the Constitution by saying that “the language issue could feed and guide terrorism in the U.S.” Finally, it was discovered that among the donors to Dr. Tanton’s network was the Pioneer Fund, established in the unpropitious year of 1937 to proselytize for what it then called “applied genetics in present-day Germany.” [Pioneer Fund](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_Fund) [John Tanton](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Tanton) ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2009, 2:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-i-know-weve-done-the-pat-buchanan-is-a-fucking-racist-thing-before/514601/92 "2009-10-31T02:19:47Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > Oh, I don’t know. If they were flooding in here with their snooty French attitudes ()and working for pennies on the dollar…not to mention _BREAKING THE FUCKING LAW!_ (why don’t lefties ever care about that?), I doubt that he’d be all that pleased about it. You might notice that we don’t allow people from any other countries to just come flooding in here virtually at will, do we? Who says we “don’t care” about breaking the law? Nobody on the left is _advocating_ illegal immigration. We simply empathize were our fellow human beings, and remember that it’s only thanks to an accident of birth that we’re over here and they’re over there. Rounding up illegal immigrants and deporting them is difficult, inefficient, and above all, _extremely_ expensive. If you want to control illegal immigration, there is absolutely no point in focusing on the immigrants themselves. You can’t keep them all out, and you certainly can’t send them home as quickly as they come in. Focus on what you _can_ control - employers who hire them. Criminal penalties for failing to properly establish a prospective employee’s right to work in the US would do in months what a great big fucking wall and ~[10,000](http://www.globalsecurity.org/security/library/report/2005/050524-border-final-version.pdf) Border Patrol agents could never do. ---
**Author:** ![Starving\_Artist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/aeb1de/32.png) [@Starving\_Artist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Starving_Artist)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2009, 2:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-i-know-weve-done-the-pat-buchanan-is-a-fucking-racist-thing-before/514601/93 "2009-10-31T02:30:14Z")
> [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](#): > > Who says we “don’t care” about breaking the law? Nobody on the left is _advocating_ illegal immigration. I didn’t say you advocated it; I said that you don’t care about it. The last thing your side seems to care about is that these people are breaking the law. And you get mad when someone else brings it up and more often than not you call them racists, as though racism is the only reason anyone would mention it in the first place. And then you want to give them benefits paid for by American taxpayers. I submit that the main reason lefties get so cranked about illegal immigration from Mexico is that it allows them to paint conservatives as racist. It defies logic otherwise. I cannot imagine that absent the oceans it would be just fine with the left to let people stream in here unabated from other countries in whatever amounts they were able to do so. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [October 31, 2009, 2:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-i-know-weve-done-the-pat-buchanan-is-a-fucking-racist-thing-before/514601/94 "2009-10-31T02:45:29Z")
I don’t want to give them anything, thanks. I think we should educate their kids - they’re citizens, after all - and that they should receive some basic level of healthcare so they aren’t dying in the street. The reason we care about immigrants from Mexico is the same reason people like us cared about immigrants from Ireland, Poland, Italy, and the other “less civilized” European countries two hundred years ago - because conservatives wanted to send all of _them_ back, too. Show me an America where the waves of immigration that were decried in bars and newspapers and Congress never happened, and I’ll show you an America without identity. You think of America as a country of white, English-speaking people (though I won’t accuse you of thinking of it as a country _for_ white, English-speaking people). It isn’t. What makes America America is pizza and Bank of America and Fenway Park and the atom bomb and the semiconductor and the very idea of democracy that you claim to hold dear - none of which would exist without non-white (or at least swarthy), non-English speaking immigrants who conservatives were sure would ruin a great nation. You know what America would be without the people conservatives would have turned back at the gates? Britain, only with prairies and without the Queen. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yes-i-know-weve-done-the-pat-buchanan-is-a-fucking-racist-thing-before/514601.md?page=4)