MY SAY: A SPEECH TO REMEMBER
Richard D. Lamm was a Democrat who served as governor of Colorado for twelve years from 1975 to 1987. His speech “My Plan to Destroy America” given in 2004 at a Federation for Immigration Reform is worth reading again. It is brilliant and prescient. rsk
” I have a secret plan to destroy America. If you believe, as many do, that America is too smug, too white-bread, too self-satisfied, too rich … then let’s destroy America. It is not that hard to do.
History shows that nations are more fragile than their citizens think. No nation in history has survived the ravages of time. Arnold Toynbee observed that all great civilizations rise and they all fall, and that “an autopsy of history would show that all great nations commit suicide.” So here is my plan:
- We must first make America a bilingual/bicultural country. History shows … that no nation can survive the tension, conflict and antagonism of two competing languages and cultures. It is a blessing for an individual to be bilingual; it is a curse for a society to be bilingual. …
Scholar Seymour Martin Lipset put it this way: “The histories of bilingual and bicultural societies that do not assimilate are histories of turmoil, tension and tragedy.”
- I would then invent “multiculturalism” and encourage immigrants to maintain their own culture. I would make it an article of belief that all cultures are equal … there are no cultural differences that are important … and the black and Hispanic dropout rate is only due to prejudice and discrimination by the majority. Every other explanation is out-of-bounds.
- We can make the United States a “Hispanic Quebec” without much effort. The key is to celebrate diversity rather than unity. As Benjamin Schwarz said in the Atlantic Monthly recently: “… the apparent success of our own multiethnic and multicultural experiment might have been achieved not by tolerance but by hegemony. Without the dominance that once dictated ethno-centrically and what it meant to be an American, we are left with only tolerance and pluralism to hold us together.”
- I would encourage all immigrants to keep their own language and culture. I would replace the melting pot metaphor with a salad bowl metaphor … I would make our fastest-growing demographic group the least educated. I would add a second underclass, unassimilated, undereducated, and antagonistic to our population. …
- I would then get the big foundations and Big Business to give these efforts lots of money. I would invest in ethnic identity, and I would establish the cult of victimology. … I would start a grievance industry blaming all minority failure on the majority population.
- I would establish dual citizenship and promote divided loyalties. I would “celebrate diversity.” … It stresses differences rather than commonalities. Diverse people worldwide are mostly engaged in hating each other … when they are not killing each other.
A diverse peaceful or stable society is against most historical precedent. People undervalue the unity it takes to keep a nation together, and we can take advantage of this myopia. … Dorf’s World History tells us the [ancient] Greeks believed they belonged to the same race; they possessed a common language and literature and worshiped the same gods. All Greece took part in the Olympic games in honor of Zeus and venerated the shrine of Apollo at Delphi. A common enemy, Persia, threatened their liberty. Yet all of these bonds together were not strong enough to overcome two factors … local patriotism and geographical conditions that nurtured political divisions … .
- Then I would place all these subjects off-limits and make them taboo to talk about. I would find a word similar to “heretic” in the 16th century that stopped discussion and paralyzed thinking. Words like “racist,” and “xenophobe” halt argument and conversation. I would next make it impossible to enforce our immigration laws.
I would develop a mantra: because immigration has been good for America, it must always be good.
- Lastly, I would censor Victor Davis Hanson’s book, “Mexifornia.” This book is dangerous. It exposes my plan to destroy America. … This guy is on to my plan.
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