Ninety-five percent of the time I revere Bob Novak as a wise elder of the tribe (the tribe of political/opinion hacks, I mean). The other five percent I gape with incredulous bafflement/amusement/rage–depending on the precise topic–as I watch him laying a big fat egg.
This morning’s Novak column is squarely in five percent territory. Novak comes out with every creaky old tune in the songbook of the open-borders nutsos, and garnishes it all with a big greasy dollop of huddled-masses sentimentality.
He ignores–is apparently unaware of–every counter-point so carefully made by immigration-enforcement proponents this past 20 years. He ignores the 1924-65 “pause,” the rise of the welfare state and associated long-term costs of mass unskilled immigration, the ditto of the cognitively-competitive postindustrial society, the ditto of multiculturalism and group-identity politics, the lack of diversity in current immigration, the statistical profiles of Hispanic communities, the revanchist claims of Hispanic-immigrant intellectuals, the sinister meddling of the Mexican government and its narco-financiers, the distinction between legal and illegal immigration…He ignores **everything** that immigration wonks have been thrashing out for years.
Mark Krikorian and his CIS buddies (not to mention the NumbersUSA people, the FAIR people, etc., etc.) must tear their hair to read this ignorant, flippant, slanderous buncombe from the pen of a senior opinion journalist.
Novak should retire–or else hire a really strict personal editor who will know when to say to him: “Bob, this won’t do. Stick to what you know.”