It begins by acknowledging the historical role that immigration has played in our nation:

From the beginning, it has been the policy of the United States, both officially and according to the prevailing sentiment of our people, to tolerate, to welcome, and to encourage immigration, without qualification and without discrimination. For generations, it was the settled opinion of our people, which found no challenge anywhere, that immigration was a source of both strength and wealth.

It goes on to note that support for immigration generally rests on two key ideas:

1. Immigration boosts our population, which we need because our birthrate is lower.

2. Immigration brings laborers that do work that Americans are unwilling to do.

These two opinions were, first, that immigration constituted a net reinforcement of our population; secondly, that, in addition to this, or irrespective of this, immigration was necessary, in order to supply the laborers who should do certain kinds of work,…

The article then dismantles each of these two ideas. First, on the idea that we need immigration because our birthrate has declined — in fact, the article shows, our birthrate has declined because of immigration:

The arrival in the United States, … increasingly, of large numbers of degraded peasantry created for the first time in this country distinct social classes, and produced an alteration of economic relations which could not fail powerfully to affect population. The appearance of vast numbers of men, foreign in birth and often in language, with a poorer standard of living, with habits repellent to our native people, of an industrial grade suited only to the lowest kind of manual labor, was exactly such a cause as by any student of population would be expected to affect profoundly the growth of the native population. Americans shrank alike from the social contact and the economic competition thus created. They became increasingly unwilling to bring forth sons and daughters who should be obliged to compete in the market for labor and in the walks of life with those whom they did not recognize as of their own grade and condition.

And second: the idea that we need immigrants to do work that Americans are unwilling to do — this too is turned on its head. In fact, Americans only become unwilling to do certain “degrading” labor only when new groups of immigrants arrive:

Does the Italian come because the Irishman refuses to work in ditches and trenches, in gangs; or has the Irishman taken this position because the Italian has come? The latter is undoubtedly the truth; and if the administrators of Baron Hirsch’s estate send to us two millions of Russian Jews, we shall soon find the Italians standing on their dignity, and deeming themselves too good to work on streets and sewers and railroads. But meanwhile, what of the republic? what of the American standard of living? what of the American rate of wages?

Finally, the article points out that we just don’t have the room to absorb this influx of immigrants any more:

First, we have the important fact of the complete exhaustion of the free public lands of the United States. Fifty years ago, thirty years ago, vast tracts of arable laud were open to every person arriving on our shores, under the Preemption Act, or later, the Homestead Act. A good farm of one hundred and sixty acres could be had at the minimum price of $1.25 an acre, or for merely the fees of registration. Under these circumstances it was a very simple matter to dispose of a large immigration. To-day there is not a good farm within the limits of the United States which is to be had under either of these acts. The wild and tumultuous scenes which attended the opening to settlement of the Territory of Oklahoma, a few years ago, and, a little later, of the so-called Cherokee Strip, testify eloquently to the vast change in our national conditions in this respect.

Finally, the author calls for a national “rest” from immigration, to give our country a chance to recuperate from its devastating effects, before more undesirables arrive:

For one, I believe it is time that we should take a rest, and give our social, political, and industrial system some chance to recuperate. The problems which so sternly confront us to-day are serious enough without being complicated and aggravated by the addition of some millions of Hungarians, Bohemians, Poles, south Italians, and Russian Jews.

And yes, it was written in 1896.

Where this started: So Sunday Mrs. Prophet and I went to see the opera Don Quixote down here in Buenos Aires. We had a wonderful time marveling at the opera house and those within it, and by the fourth act really enjoyed the production as well.

But for the first twenty minutes, we both were simply shocked and dismayed. Because, as you probably remember, much of the action and humor of the book revolves around the fact that Quixote proclaims as his “beautiful beloved” a plain, coarse, peasant girl. Everyone else knows perfectly well that this woman is ugly, loose, ill-mannered and entirely undeserving of his title Dulcinea of Toboso. Yet Quixote composes endless love poems exalting her beauty, her refinement, and chasteness, while promising Sancho that he will share some part in her vast riches when Quixote has won her heart.

So we both a little, uh, surprised when the opera begins with Dulcinea, who is, in fact: rich, beautiful, chaste, and refined (though a bit mischievous). Apparently Jules-Émile-Frédéric Massenet, the silly Frenchmen who wrote the opera, had a favorite mezzo-soprano in mind for the part of Dulcinea, and it wouldn’t do well to launch her career playing an ugly wench, would it? So he tidied up the part by inverting it.

Now there are plenty of lousy adaptations out there. But what others can you think of pull this kind of inversion?

Today we have a pair of readings, illustrating the alternately generous and brutal, ultimately xenocidic mindset of 16th century Argentina.

This first excerpt is from the account Voyage to Río de Plata and Paraguay by Ulderico Schmidt, a German soldier and adventurer, published in 1554. Do be patient and read all the way to the end, as it gets rather interesting.

There we built a new town and called it Bonas Aeieres, that is, in German, Guter Wind.

We also brought from Hispania on board the fourteen ships seventy-two horses and mares.

Here, also, we found a place inhabited by Indian folk, named Querandíes, numbering about three thousand people, including wives and children, and they were clothed in the same way as the Charrúas, from the navel to the knees. They brought us fish and meat to eat. Those Querandíes have no houses, but wander about, as do the Gipsies with us at home, and in summer they oftentimes travel upwards of thirty miles on dry land without finding a single drop of water to drink.

And when they meet with deer and other wild beasts, when they have killed them they drink their blood. Also if they find a root, called Cardos, they eat it to slack their thirst. This — namely, that they drink blood — only happens because they cannot have any water, and that they might peradventure die of thirst.

These Querandíes brought us daily their provisions of fish and meat to our camp, and did so for a fortnight, and they did only fail once to come to us. So our captain, Pedro de Mendoza, sent to them, the Querandíes, a judge, named Johan Pabon, with two foot-soldiers, for they were at a distance of four miles from our camp. When our emissaries came near to the Indians, they were all three beaten black and blue, and were then sent back again to our camp. Pedro de Mendoza, hearing of this from the judge’s report (who for this cause raised a tumult about it in our camp), sent Diego Mendoza, his own brother, against them with three hundred foot-soldiers and thirty well-armed mounted men, of whom I also was one, straightaway charging us to kill or take prisoners all these Indian Querandíes and to take possession of their settlement. But when we came near them there were now some four thousand men,for they had assembled all their friends. And when we were about to attack them, they defended themselves in such a way that we had that very day our hands full. They also killed our commander, Diego Mendoza, and six noblemen. Of our foot-soldiers and mounted men over twenty were slain, and on their side about one thousand. Thus did they defend themselves valiantly against us, so that indeed we felt it…

In due course God Almighty graciously gave us the victory, and allowed us to take possession of their place; but we did not take prisoner any of the Indians, and their wives and children also fled away from the place before we could seize them.

…

---

And when we returned again to our camp, our folk were divided into those who were to be soldiers, and the others workers, so as to have all of them employed. And a town was built there… The town wall was three foot broad, but that which was built today fell to pieces the day after, so that they suffered great poverty, and it became so bad that the horses could not go. Yea, finally, there was such want and misery for hunger’s sake, that there were neither rats, nor mice, nor snakes to still the great dreadful hunger, and unspeakable poverty, and shoes and leather were resorted to for eating and everything else.

It happened that three Spaniards stole a horse, and ate it secretly, but when it was known, they were imprisoned and interrogated under the torture. Whereupon, as soon as they admitted their guilt, they were sentenced to death by the gallows, and all three were hanged.

Immediately afterwards, at night, three other Spaniards came to the gallows to the three hanging men, and hacked off their thighs and pieces of their flesh, and took them home to still their hunger.

…

After all this we remained still another month together in great poverty in the town of Bonas Aeieres, until ships could be prepared.

At this time the Indians came in great power and force, as many as twenty-three thousand men, against us and our town of Bonas Aeieres. There were four nations of them, namely, Querandíes, Charrúas, and Timbúes. They all meant to go about to destroy us all. But God Almighty preserved the greater part of us, therefore praise and thanks be to Him always and everlasting, for on our side not more than about thirty men, including commanders and ensign were slain.

– from The Argentina Reader, pp 22-25.

This the Unitarian Jihad. Their manifesto was recently published by Jon Carroll in the San Francisco Chronicle:

Greetings to the Imprisoned Citizens of the United States. We are Unitarian Jihad. There is only God, unless there is more than one God. The vote of our God subcommittee is 10-8 in favor of one God, with two abstentions. Brother Flaming Sword of Moderation noted the possibility of there being no God at all, and his objection was noted with love by the secretary… We are Unitarian Jihad. We are everywhere. We have not been born again, nor have we sworn a blood oath. We do not think that God cares what we read, what we eat or whom we sleep with… We are Unitarian Jihad. We will take over television studios, kidnap so-called commentators and broadcast calm, well-reasoned discussions of the issues of the day. We will appear in public places and require people to shake hands with each other. People of the United States! We are Unitarian Jihad! We can strike without warning. Pockets of reasonableness and harmony will appear as if from nowhere! Nice people will run the government again!

It think the world needs more martyrs for moderation. I might even be willing to commit an act of reasonableness for this outfit; recruiters, feel free to contact me.

Also, thanks to a loose coalition of affiliated cells, you can get your own Unitarian Jihad name.

-Mithras, aka “Brother Spikey Mace of Mild Reason”

Everyone is talking about Church and State these days. Is America a secular nation, imperiled by a new breed of religious radical? Or is our proud religious and Christian tradition under assault from an unprecedented liberal, anti-religious agenda?

As the above straw men make clear, neither is true. This is a nation founded by and composed of mostly religious Christians, yet with a deeply secular governing tradition. Forces promoting and opposed to religion, and promoting and opposed to the mingling of church and state, have been battling for the past two centuries. These latest kerfuffles are pretty mild in the context of the controversies that have riven the nation before.

An early debate in the drafting of the Constitution in 1787 was whether and how a religious oath should be required of national leaders. The Massachusetts Constitution extended the equal protection of the law, and right to hold office, to any Christian (though Catholics had to swear to renounce papal authority “in any matter, civil, ecclesiastical or spiritual.”) The 1777 New York Constitution implicitly permitted Judaism, but required immigrating Catholics to renounce papal authority, and prohibited Catholics from holding office. The 1776 Maryland Constitution extended “protection in their religious liberty” to “all persons professing the Christian religion” but not Jews or deists.

Only Virginia’s constitution established complete freedom of religious opinions and belief, and explicitly separated civil duties from religion. So it was a matter of some controversy that the Constitutional Congress modeled the federal constitution after Virginia’s, explicitly stating in Article VI that federal officials “shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”

In 1794, Thomas Paine, popularizer of the American Revolution, wrote The Age of Reason, a treatise on religion. While he disavowed atheism, he embraced a deist worldview and viciously attacked Christianity and clericalism of all stripes. This did not make him a popular man in America. The book was written in a French jail (where Paine sat because he rejected the overzealous heights of the French Revolution), and Paine stayed in France until 1802.

He returned at the personal invitation of Thomas Jefferson, who had been elected president in 1800. Jefferson himself was not a Christian — he wrote, but declined to publish, The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, a version of the New Testament with all miracles and theology removed. Paine’s reputation as a radical and anti-Christian preceded him; Jefferson came under furious attack from Federalists for his invitation:

If, during the present season of national abasement, infatuation, folly, and vice, any portent could surprise, sober men would be utterly confounded by an article current in all our newspapers, that the loathesome Thomas Paine, a drunken atheist and the scavenger of faction, is invited to return in a national ship to America by the first magistrate of a free people. A measure so enormously preposterous we cannot yet believe has been adopted, and it would demand firmer nerves than those possessed by Mr. Jefferson to hazard such an insult to the moral sense of the nation. If that rebel rascal should come to preach from his Bible to our populace, it would be time for every honest and insulted man of dignity to flee to some Zoar as from another Sodom, to shake off the very dust of his feet and to abandon America.

Makes Tom Delay look positively civil. (source: Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism by Susan Jacoby)