law rooted in ethnicitv” is somehow “outdated.” In fact,rnexactly the reverse is true. The nation-state, the sovereignrnpolitical entity based on specific ethnicity, is the product ofrnmodernization. What are now regarded as archetypal nation-rnstates like Germany and Italy were actually united onlvrnin the 19th century. Multinational and multilingual statesrnorganized on other principles, like the Ilapsburg Empire, didrnnot survive into the modern age.rnAnd for good reason. Modern society is organized aroundrnthe free flow of information. So modernization inevitablyrnputs a premium on linguistic unity. It doesn’t matter whatrnlanguage the people in the next village speak if you have norntruck or trade with them. But if ou do, it does.rnWhich brings us to the natural enemy of the nation-state:rnthe New Class. These are the people—politicians, educators,rnbureaucrats, and their assorted media parasites—whornbenefit from government’s ability to control and tax the economy.rnThey don’t like the nation-state, basically for the samernreason they don’t like capitalism: both are machines that runrnthemselves. The services of the New Class are not required.rnA classic example of this reflex appears in my second clip,rnfrom Insight magazine (November 30, 1992). I like the WashingtonrnTimes, so I don’t mind crediting its publications althoughrnthey have attacked mv National Review cover storyrnon immigration not once, not twice, but three times. CokiernRoberts, reporter for National Public Radio and ABC News,rnwas quoted attacking the idea of term limits for congressmen.rnShe argued that her father, former House MajorityrnLeader Thomas Hale Boggs, Sr., was able to buck the prejudicesrnof his Louisiana and ote against segregation because ofrnthe seniority he had accumulated.rnRoberts claimed “some experienced souls” arc necessaryrnto provide “institutional memory, explaining the importancernof protecting congressional prerogatives.” She went on:rnLIBERAL ARTSrnCONDOMS SERVING PEACErn”A half million condoms, large and small, have been sent tornCambodia in order to make happy the 1S,700 U.N. soldiersrnwho shall shape the peace there, it has been reported fromrnPhnom Penh.rn”Between June and the end of October [1992], 1,251 U.N.rnsoldiers had contracted enereal disease and three had beenrndiagnosed as carrying the HIV-virus. Earlier a crisisshipmentrnof 300,000 condoms had been sent over, when thernU.N. force’s immediate need proved to be greater than calculated.”rn—from the January 25, J 995, issue of Aftonbladetrnin Stocliholm.rnTo say that we want only non-professionals governingrnus is to show a basic disregard for government, andrnthough that sentiment may be popular, it is dangerous.rnWe have nothing binding us together as a nation—norncommon ethnicity, history, religion, or even language—rnexcept the Constitution and the situations it created.rn[Italics added.]rnWhen Roberts says “nation,” of course, she means “state”rn(or polity). And when she says, incredibly, that Americansrnhave no common ethnicity, history, religion, and languagernwhat she really means is frankly if naively made clear: morernpower for the political class. Anything that further deconstructsrnthe American nation—immigration, multiculturalism,rnbilingualism—will tend to bring about the situationrnRoberts hopefully describes. And the political class, driven byrnthis view of its self-interest, will applaud.rnLet me conclude now with my third press clip, from thernfnjnt page of the December 2 Wall Street journal. Many ofrnyou will have seen it. It was headlined “Mosaic of Hope: EthnicrnIdentities Clash with Student Idealism at a CaliforniarnCollege.” So you know what to expect. The college in questionrnwas Occidental in Los Angeles, yvhich the Wall Streetrnjournal describes as a “prestigious private liberal arts collegern. . . founded in 1887 to educate the white elite.” And I guessrnit was successful in achieving this reprehensible goal. Onernof its graduates, class of ’57, was Jack Kemp.rnAnyway, Occidental College has seen the light. Or therndark—yvhichever you prefer. Under its president, John BrooksrnSlaughter, whom the Wall Street journal tells us “is black,”rnOccidental “is reaching out for an emerging America.” Inrn1987, it “‘went multicultural,’ aggressively recruiting minorityrnstudents and revamping its curriculum to give more emphasisrnto non-Western cultures. Today, more than 40 percentrnof its 1,650 students are minority.” I won’t go into therndetails of what is going on at Occidental. Essentially, thernstudents are dividing into warring tribes. I will note, however,rnwhat the Wall Street journal typically describes as “the bedrockrnfact” underlying the Occidental experiment: “America’s whiternmajority is shrinking, both in relative size and importance.” Inrnfact, America’s white majority is not “shrinking.” It is beingrninundated, quite deliberately, as a matter of public policy followingrnthe 1965 Immigration Act.rnI would also like to note the final lines of the story. ThernWall Street journal’s starry-eyed hack, one Dennis Farney, is inrna discussion class entitled “The American Dream.” Let mernquote this:rnThe students, as diverse as their America is diverse, arerngathered around a conference table. And their visitorrnasks: suppose they were to grade tfic American civilization,rngrade it just as their professor grades them? Howrnwould thev grade America?rnIt is freshman Jona Goong, a Hawaiian of Chinesernancestry, who says it best. “If I were to grade America,”rnshe says, softly, “I would give it an incomplete.”rnWell, my twin brother and I did have to grade America,rnfrom a distance of three thousand miles, in the summer ofrn1967, yvhen for various reasons we decided all was lost in England.rnWe gave it an A-plus. I still give it an A-plus, what’s leftrnof it. And I yvant it to stay that way. ^rn20/CHRONICLESrnrnrn