Digby explains the Republican panic

Panic isn't too strong a word, either. Digby deconstructs a new whine from David Frum over at NRO about the huge advantage Democrats have with young voters. Frum points out that young white voters still prefer Republicans by about 2%, but that Hispanic and African-American young voters overwhelmingly prefer Democrats. So what is the republican problem? According to Frum, not Bush's social policies. The problem is the failure of the Bush administration is

... the legacy of immigration non-enforcement.

Digby points out that the poll was not of new immigrants. It was of voters, most of whom are American born and educated. But this piece of right-wing Republican ignorance certainly explains why immigration reform and a fence across the border between Mexico and the U.S. are such great right-wing priorities.

Essentially Frum complains that young Hispanics and African-America voters detest the Republicans. Does he ask why? Of course not, because the only answer to that is the fact that the Republican Party is the party of institutionalized Racism in America today. Digby provides the evidence, as well as economic studies that show the reason why America does not have the social support system fitting to a modern industrial nation is that very Racism Frum so studiously ignores.

Essentially Frum is lamenting that the vote is not restricted to White Americans only. Digby points out that this very Racism is something that Bush and Rove have tried to wean the Republicans off of, but failed. So it is very likely that the alternative was the Attorney General's DoJ efforts to suppress likely Democratic votes in key states.

Go read Digby for the full details. As usual, her post is worth reading.

Why Islamic attacks in Europe and not the U.S?

A new McClatchy news report points out that there have been numerous terrorists attacks in Great Britain, and very few in the United States. You have to ask why. Turns out that the answer isn't that hard to find.

Karl-Heinz Kamp, the security policy coordinator at Germany's prestigious Konrad Adenauer research center, said it was easy to understand why.

"The U.S. has a historical advantage; America is still the land of opportunity to the whole world. The people moving there believe the American dream of social mobility," he said. "In Europe, we've historically treated our immigrants as hired help, and waited for them to finish the work they arrived for and go home."

Bob Ayers, a security and terrorism expert with London's Chatham House, a foreign-policy research center, thinks that immigrants to the U.S. actually become Americans, giving the United States a huge advantage in avoiding homegrown al Qaida terrorists. Europeans encourage immigrants to retain their native cultures, causing them to be ostracized more readily.

"The Islamic population in the United States is better assimilated into the general population, whereas here, in Germany, in France, they're very much on the outside looking in," he said. "When people get disaffected, sadly, there's not much loyalty to country in that sort of situation."

In short, the policy built into the U.S. Constitution that any child born in the U.S. is a full U.S. citizen prevents pockets of disaffection from developing in the U.S.

Anyone familiar with the German policy of allowing Turkish Guest Workers into Germany to work, then expecting them to leave and take their families with them doesn't work. That was obvious in the 1960's and has not changed.

That's not the only reason for so few attacks in the U.S. but it is a lot of it, and it sure makes the "guest worker" ideas in the proposed "Immigration Reform" legislation real non-starters.