6.07.2007 | On immigration

Somebody has fed Anne Coulter some red meat; she's on one of her tears. This time, it's about immigration, and the notion that "current immigration law is intentionally designed to reduce their [whites] percentage in the population." Perhaps she is simplifying cause and effect, but consider this from her column:

In 1960, whites were 90 percent of the country. The Census Bureau recently estimated that whites already account for less than two-thirds of the population and will be a minority by 2050. Other estimates put that day much sooner.

This is factual. Now,two questions arise: what caused and continues to cause it; and can it, or even, should it, be reversed or stopped?

Unfettered immigration from Third World nations, especially Mexico and Central America, is the first obvious cause. The second cause, pace Ann Coulter, is simply the fact that white Americans have a significantly lower birth rate than Hispanic immigrants, especially Mexicans. From Heather Mac Donald of the Manhattan Institute:

The dimensions of the Hispanic baby boom are startling. The Hispanic birthrate is twice as high as that of the rest of the American population. That high fertility rate—even more than unbounded levels of immigration—will fuel the rapid Hispanic population boom in the coming decades. By 2050, the Latino population will have tripled, the Census Bureau projects. One in four Americans will be Hispanic by mid-century, twice the current ratio. In states such as California and Texas, Hispanics will be in the clear majority. Nationally, whites will drop from near 70 percent of the total population in 2000 to just half by 2050. Hispanics will account for 46 percent of the nation’s added population over the next two decades, the Pew Hispanic Center reports.

Heather Mac Donald is no Ann Coulter; she's rather, a serious think-tanker, as opposed to Ann, who tanks thinking. No, seriously, I get a huge kick out of Ms. Coulter; I just don't turn to her for policy prescriptions.

But Ann Coulter does make a serious point, if in a flippant manner. From her column:

In Samuel P. Huntington’s book "Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s National Identity," he asks: "Would America be the America it is today if in the 17th and 18th centuries it had been settled not by British Protestants but by French, Spanish or Portuguese Catholics? The answer is no. It would not be America; it would be Quebec, Mexico or Brazil."

I don’t want to live in Mexico, Quebec or Brazil.

I have to agree with the underlying thesis: that the United States was founded, and throughout its history has achieved national greatness, precisely because it was founded on a combination of Protestant and Enlightenment values. Values that are sometimes in tension with each other, but both of which prize an individual's freedom of conscience above all else.

We are a nation of individuals, which contributes to our often chaotic politics. And, up until now, we have shared a culture that is based on being part of the Anglosphere. And make no mistake: it is a Protestant culture, one that it linked, as with mighty chains, to those of us who do not need an intermediary between ourselves and God. Except Jesus Christ, of course.