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Title: Forward to C.G. Jung and Hermann Hesse
Source:
Daimon Publishers
URL Source: http://www.daimon.ch/3856305580_1F.htmi
Published: Jun 1, 1991
Author: Miguel Serrano
Post Date: 2009-05-31 17:21:10 by Deasy
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Keywords: Odin, Aryan, Hindu, Revisionism
Views: 301
Comments: 19
Poster's note: see also: La falsificación de Hermann Hesse por Miguel Serrano C.G. Jung and Hermann Hesse I reread the pages of this book with an overpowering feeling of nostalgia. How many years have there been, and how many editions? - twenty in the United States alone, as well as translations into most of the European languages, even Dutch and Greek, not to mention Persian and Japanese. How many years have passed since I experienced this great adventure of the soul! Truly, I have been blessed with a magical existence, since I was lucky enough to live for ten years in Montagnola, in the ancient Casa Camuzzi, which had once provided a home for Hermann Hesse. It was a nobleman's house, built in the Saint Petersburg Baroque style by one of the architects of the Golden Hill, its balconies and terraces facing the peaks of the Alps and the Lago di Lugano - but also opening onto the Garden of Klingsor. Youthful pilgrims from East and West beat a path to its door, carrying in their knapsacks The Hermetic Circle, often in its German translation but more often in the English version. They retraced, step by step, the journey I had made so many years earlier (more than twenty years earlier, in fact) and, quite unexpectedly, they found themselves fact to face with the author of those pages, who acted as their guide, sat them down at his table to drink wine and offered them hospitality, just as all those years ago Hesse had done with me - then merely another youthful pilgrim, who had arrived from the Polar South with no more credentials than a recently-published first work entitled: Neither by Sea nor by Land. Many things had changed since those far-off days. The streets of Montagnola were no longer of earth but of asphalt, and the pilgrims who trod them were different, too. Almost all of them had gotten to know Hermann Hesse via the biased propaganda of an adulterated form of Hinduism or of the drug culture. I tried to make them see that Hermann Hesse was not at all like that, and that he was being used, distorted. Of course, I realized that I would only achieve limited success among a small number of those I spoke to, whom I might just be able to save before an entire generation plunged into the abyss. I was encouraged in my endeavor by the memory of Ninon Hesse, the author's wife, who had confessed to me, in the last interview we ever had, her own discouragement in her struggle to ensure that Hesse was not distorted. She told me that she had had a visit from a Canadian television company, which wanted her to write a script from Steppenwolf. She had refused, because Hesse had expressly stated in his Will that his works were not to be filmed. Ninon was having problems with the author's children, too. While she was alive, Hesse's instructions were obeyed faithfully, but this was to change after her death. One day, in Montagnola, I received a visit from Hermann Hesse's son, Heiner, accompanied by some North American filmmakers. Heiner Hesse had given them permission to make a film of Steppenwolf. They wanted to consult me. I questioned Heiner about the terms of his father's Will and reminded him of what Ninon had told me. He confirmed that those were indeed the terms, but explained that there was an additional clause to the effect that 'if any of his children were to find himself in an adverse economic situation, he could authorize a film of one of the books.' I asked him if he was in such a situation, and he said 'no,' but that he was '... doing it to help present-day youth.' They left me the script, saying that they would return in a week's time for my opinion. As I read the pages, I was surprised to discover statements by the protagonist of Steppenwolf that were lengthy diatribes against Nazism - something that had never appeared in the original book. I pointed this out at our subsequent meeting, and I can still remember - with a sense of something akin to shock - the reply: 'We had to put these in because the North American public tends to see in Hermann Hesse's cultural baggage the same tradition that gave rise to Nazism in Germany.' This was appalling. It goes without saying that I told them that I was opposed both to this falsification and to the making of the film itself - but, of course, it went ahead after the payment of $ 70 000 to Heiner Hesse. The film was a complete failure. The total lack of discretion and respect shown by the North Americans and the information media, as well as their lack of culture, led them to try to destroy a German - and so German! - author's links with the very roots of his nationality so as to use him for their own aims, to use him in the great conspiracy of 'universal revelation,' so to speak, which had just begun and which was soon to spread with vertiginous speed across the whole planet. This phenomenon was doubtless encouraged by the vast lack of culture which was generalized and propagated by so many circles in the United States of America. By this time, my book, The Hermetic Circle, had acquired a certain reputation and was being read by young people and by university circles and professional psychiatrists, in Jungian groups, to a point where the Australian Psychiatric Society sent me a letter of congratulations signed by the president and all its members. For several years, symposiums were held in Montagnola or its immediate vicinity, at the instigation of enlightened North Americans, in which writers and university professors from Europe and America took part. They invited me, too, with the result that I was afforded the opportunity to give two talks. One was about Nietzsche and the Eternal Return, which was subsequently published in book-form under the same title, after I had also given the talk at a university college in Madrid and at the Institute of Hispanic Culture in Madrid and Barcelona, as well as in various Chilean universities. My second lecture was on 'The Transformation of Hermann Hesse in the United States of America.' In this talk, I sustained the thesis that Hermann Hesse's essential meaning had been adulterated, making him appear to be some kin of Bohemian, a hippy, an apostle of the drug culture, a pacifist vagrant (although he was indeed a pacifist) who preached liberty at the expense of discipline and method and who, by some subtle means, hinted at homosexuality - or, if one prefers, bisexuality. I affirmed most emphatically that Hermann Hesse could not really be understood if he was cut off from his roots in the literary tradition of German Romanticism, in the ongoing tradition of Novalis, Hölderlin, Kleist and of Nietzsche himself, whom he so admired. Hesse had become the ultimate flower of German Romanticism and of the philosophical line of thought that, with Schopenhauer and Goethe himself (an admirer of Shakunthala), had initiated the great conceptual journey to the East. (Hermann Hesse wrote an extraordinary study of German Romanticism, which has long since disappeared and is completely unknown today.) Under the influence of C.G. Jung, with whom he underwent psychoanalysis, Hesse entered fully into the Germanico-alchemical dream of the Androgyne - which is the opposite of homosexuality - whose aspiration is totality and the fusion of the opposites, the unity of Nietzsche's 'Self,' the inner homo, of coelo, Demian, beloved and admired by Sinclair; that is to say, by Hesse. His most intimate ego. Narcissus and Goldmund. In the original German version of Steppenwolf, the female protagonist is called Hermina, which is the feminine of Hermann. And this is the same alchemical-tantrio game as in Mozart's Magic Flute: Pamino and Pamina. Hermann Hesse, like the great Germans of the grand tradition, was steeped in the music of Mozart and Bach. An attempt has been made to turn Hesse into a product of the Consumer society and a propagator of its rites and orthodoxy. He has been firmly inserted in the sinister current of the Kali Yuga. But the young Chilean who, many ears ago, walked the dusty streets of Montagnola and who later returned as his country's ambassador to India, went in search of the other Hesse, the real one; just as he went in search of the real India - that of the eternal ones, the beloved, the Immortals. These, I can still encounter in the pages of this book. Poster Comment: 110 pages, illustrated, ISBN 3-85630-558-0 / 978-3-85630-558-1, Daimon Miguel Serrano, a Chilean diplomat and writer who has traveled widely in India studying Yoga, had a close friendship with Jung and Hesse at the end of their lives. This book is the outcome of his meetings and correspondence with them. Many letters are reproduced including documents of great importance written to the author by Jung shortly before his death, explaining his ideas about the nature of the world and of his work. On January 22, 1961, I had lunch with Hermann Hesse at his house in Montagnola, in the Italian section of Switzerland. Snowflakes were fluttering by the window, but in the distance, the sky was bright and clear. As I turned away from the view, I caught the clear blue eyes of Hesse sitting at the far end of the table. 'What luck,' I said, 'to find myself lunching with you today.' 'Nothing ever happens by chance,' he answered. 'Here, only the right guests meet. This is the Hermetic Circle....' I first discovered the works of Hermann Hesse in about 1945. At that time, he was almost unknown in Chile, appreciated only in the coteries and discussed almost furtively. Indeed, before 1946, Hesse had hardly any reputation at all outside of Germany. In that year, however, he was given the Nobel Prize for literature, and subsequently his works have been translated into many languages. Even so, his books are received enthusiastically in only a few countries. The Anglo-Saxon world, for example, considers him to be heavy and dull, and for this reason, his complete works have never been published in English. Once when I was in London, I had to look for days to find some of his best-known works in order to give them to a friend of mine who was literate but who had never heard of Hesse. In the Spanish-speaking world, the situation is quite different, however, and Hesse has been so widely and repeatedly read that the young people of Spain and South America virtually consider him as a prophet. Once, a Mexican painter gave me a color slide of a painting of his depicting the Magister Musicae and Josef Knecht in Hesse's Magister Ludi. The old teacher is shown at the piano, and young Knecht accompanies him on the violin in the first sonata they played together. The Mexican had been so excited by the book that he had not only made the painting, but had sent it to Hesse as a gift. This enthusiasm of the Mexican painter is quite easy for me to understand. Even today, I would go halfway round the world to find a book if I thought it essential to my needs, and I have a feeling of absolute veneration for those few authors who have given me something special. For this reason, I can never understand the tepid youth of today who wait for books to be given to them and who neither search nor admire. I would go without eating in order to get a book, and I have never liked borrowing books, because I have always wanted them to be absolutely mine so that I could live with them for hours on end. As with men, it has always seemed to me that books have their own peculiar destinies. They go towards the people who are waiting for them and reach them at the right moment. They are made of living material and continue to cast light through the darkness long after the death of their authors. The first of Hesse's books which I read was Demian. It made an extraordinary impression on me and gave me a strength which I had never found before. The edition I read was a Spanish translation, and it probably contained many errors; nevertheless the magic and the energy remained. While still young, and living in the Pension Verenahof in Baden, Hesse had concentrated such force into it that it was still alive and vital many years later. The hero Demian was destined to influence many lives, and undoubtedly hundreds have tried to emulate his strength and serenity. After reading it, I myself used to wander through the streets of my city feeling myself a new man, the bearer of a message and a sign. Thus Hesse has always been more than a literary man or a poet, not only for me but for whole generations of men. His magical books delve into regions that are usually reserved for religion, and these are the ones that are important for me - Demian, The Journey to the East, the fantastic Autobiography, Siddhartha, Magister Ludi, Steppenwolf and Death and the Lover. Demian is not actually a physical being, since he is never separated from Sinclair, the character who narrates the book. In fact, Demian is Sinclair himself, his deepest self, a kind of archetypal hero who exists in the depths of all of us. In a word, Demian is the essential Self which remains unchanging and untouched, and through him the book attempts to give instruction concerning the magical essence of existence. Demian provides the young boy Sinclair with a redeeming awareness of the millennial being which exists within him so that he can overcome chaos and danger, especially during the years of adolescence. In our own lives, many of us have encountered people like Demian, those young men who are sure of themselves and who consequently earn our respect and admiration. But in fact Demian resides within all of us. At the end of the book, Demian approaches Sinclair, who is lying on a bed at a field hospital, and as he kisses him, he says, 'Listen, little one, if you ever need me again, do not expect me to come back so openly on a horse or in a train. Look for me within yourself.' Hesse wrote this at a time of great personal anguish, when he was about to abandon his country because of the war that had enveloped all of Europe. He had been forced to find Demian within himself. This message is not literally specified within the book; rather it is hinted at magically. Moreover, this symbolic truth can only be understood intuitively, but when it appears, it enlightens the whole being, and that is why many years ago I was able to walk through the streets of my city, feeling that something new had come into my life. Although life is an affair of light and shadows, we never accept it as such. We are always reaching towards the light and the high peaks. From childhood, through early religious and academic training, we are given values which correspond only to an ideal world. The shadowy side of real life is ignored, and Western Christianity provides us with nothing which can be used to interpret it. Thus the young men of the West are unable to deal with the mixture of light and shadow of which life really consists; they have no way of linking the facts of existence to their preconceived notions of absolutes. The links connecting life with universal symbols are therefore broken, and disintegration sets in. In the Orient, and especially in India, the situation is very different. There, an ancient civilization based on Nature accepts a cosmos of multifaceted gods; and thus the Easterner can realize the simultaneous existence of light and shadow and of good and evil. Absolutes do not exist, and if God is thus disarmed, so is the devil. But the price of such an understanding is a direct tribute to Nature itself. Consequently, the Hindu finds himself less individualized than the Westerner; he is little more than a part of nature, one element in the collective soul. The question which the Western Christian now has to face is whether, without losing his individuality, he can accept the coexistence of light and shadow and of God and the devil. To do so, he will have to discover the God who was Christian before the personalized Christ and who can continue in a viable form after him. Such a deity would be the Christ of Atlantis, who once existed publicly, and who still continues to exist - even though submerged under the deep waters of our present civilization. Such a god would also be Abraxas, who is God and the devil at the same time. The first time I heard of Abraxas by name was in Demian, but I had really known about him from my childhood days. I had sensed his existence in the heart of the Cordillera of the Andes and in the unfathomable depths of the Pacific Ocean which beats against our coasts. This ignis fatuus, the flames of heaven and hell which exist in him, flickered even in the foam of these waves. Abraxas is a Gnostic god who existed long before Christ. He may be equated, too, with the Christ of Atlantis, and is known by other names by the Aborigines of the Americas, amongst them the Indians who inhabited my country. Hermann Hesse speaks of him in this way: The modern Christian and the Western world as a whole have now reached a point of crisis, and the choices open seem less than attractive. We neither want one of those apocalyptic catastrophes which have so disfigured our past history, nor do we want the dehumanizing path of the Orient, which would result in an irremediable lowering of our standards. Perhaps, then, the only possibility that remains is Abraxas; that is to say, a projection of our souls both outwards and inwards, both to the light and to the deep shadows of our biographical roots, in hopes of finding in the combination of the two the pure archetype. This pure archetype would be the authentic image of the god which is within ourselves and which has been sunk for so long, like Atlantis, under the waters of our consciousness. Thus Abraxas would also come to mean Total Man. For those familiar with Hesse's works, the names of Narcissus, Goldmund and Siddhartha are well-known. They are also figures who have much in common, since Hesse's books contain a leitmotif which is always the same. Thus, as Sinclair and Demian are the same person, so Narcissus and Goldmund represent two essential tendencies in man - contemplation and action. Similarly, Siddhartha and Govinda represent the opposed characteristics of devotion and rebellion. These are qualities contained in all of us individually; we love ourselves but we are also charitable towards others; we are torn between introspection and extroversion. Magister Ludi contains the themes of love, pity and understanding, and develops them into the fugues and arabesques which are so dear to the musical soul of the Germans. The concepts with which Hesse deals are influenced by Hinduism, Chinese Taoism, Zen Buddhism, and even mathematics, but they are worked together into a form as pure as a Bach fugue or a painting by Leonardo. When I first met Hermann Hesse, I found him more like Narcissus than Goldmund. He had ceased wandering and was living a life of introspection in his isolated retreat at Montagnola. Nevertheless, both Narcissus and Goldmund continued to exist within him together until the end of his life. For myself, at that time I was more like Goldmund than Narcissus, although I, too, was torn between those two ways of being. And like Siddhartha, I was to meet this wise being many times, visiting him in various guises. For that first interview, I was carrying an alpine knapsack and had a book under my arm. I was young, and it was the first time that I had ever left my own country. When I first arrived in Switzerland, in June of 1951, I found that very few people knew where Hesse was staying, and it was only in Berne, after many inquiries, that I discovered his general whereabouts. I took the train to Lugano, where I made further inquiries, and was told that Hesse was living in Castagnola. I took a bus there only to find that Hesse's home was really in Montagnola. Another bus took me to that mountain village with its view of the snow-covered Alps and Lake Lugano. The bus climbed up through the narrow streets until at last it reached its destination. A young woman got off the bus with me, and I asked her if she knew where Hesse lived. She told me that she was his hausekeeper and asked me to follow her. It was dusk by the time we reached the entrance to the garden. Over the gate there was a sign which read in German: 'Bitte keine Besucher' - No Visitors Permitted. I passed through the gate after the girl and walked along a path bordered by tall trees. At the front door, there was yet another inscription in German which I later learned was a translation from old Chinese: At the time, it was too dark to read this inscription and so, when the girl opened the door and asked me to enter, I did so. She offered me a chair beside a small table in the dark passageway and asked me for my visiting card. I didn't have one, so I gave her my book, Neither by Sea nor Land. I had brought it specially for Hesse and had inscribed it for him in Spanish. The girl went off down the passageway, and as I waited in that cloistered atmosphere, I had the feeling that I was enveloped in an aura of sandalwood. Then a side door opened, and a slim figure dressed in white came out into the shadows. It was Hesse. I stood up, but I was unable to see him clearly until after we had left the passageway and entered a room with large windows. His eyes were very bright, and although his face was thin, he smiled openly. Dressed all in white, he looked like an ascetic or a penitent. I then realized that he was the source of the sandalwood perfume. 'I am sorry, but you have arrived at an awkward moment,' he said. 'We were supposed to have gone on vacation yesterday, but my wife was stung by a bee, and we have had to postpone our trip. Everything is topsy-turvy here, but let's go into my study.' We crossed through the living-room, which had bookshelves reaching to the ceiling and entered another smaller room. In the center was a desk, and here, too, the walls were lined with bookshelves and paintings. Hesse sat down with his back to the window, and I could see the sun setting over the mountains and lake in the distance. The desk had been cleared of papers, and I sat down next to it facing him. Hesse continued to smile, but did not say a word. He seemed to be waiting for an atmosphere of peace to take possession of the room. I felt the importance of the moment, and now, as I recount it, I realize that those were intense years in my life and that my whole being was then capable of trembling at a meeting; it was a time, indeed, when meetings still existed. There I was before the object of my veneration. I had crossed the seas to meet him, and the welcome that he gave me was in complete accord with the feelings with which I had begun my pilgrimage. It seemed to me that Hermann Hesse had no particular age. At that time, he had just turned seventy-three; but his smile was the smile of a young man, and his body seemed so spiritually disciplined that it was like a blade of fine steel sheathed in white linen. 'I have come a long way,' I began, 'but of course you are very well known in my country....' 'It is strange that my books are read so much in the Spanish speaking countries,' he answered. 'I often receive letters from Latin America. I wish you would tell me what you think of the new translations, especially the one of Magister Ludi.' I told him what I thought and said that the translation of Death and the Lover preserved both the spirit and the sense of the original. We then began to speak of more general matters. 'Narcissus and Goldmund represent two contrary tendencies of the soul.' he said. 'These are contemplation and action. One day, however, they must begin to fuse....' 'I know what you mean,' I broke in, 'because I, too, live within that tension and am caught between the two extremes. I dream of the peace of contemplation, but the necessity of living always pushes me into action....' 'You should let yourself be carried away, like the clouds in the sky. You shouldn't resist. God exists in your destiny just as much as he does in these mountains and in that lake. It is very difficult to understand this, because man is moving further and further away from Nature, and also from himself....' 'Do you think the wisdom of Asia can be helpful?' I asked. 'I have been more inspired by the wisdom of China than by the Upanishads or the Vedanta,' he answered. 'The I Ching can transform a life....' Outside the late afternoon sky began to pale, and a tenuous blue light tinted the windows and played over Hesse's slight form. 'Tell me,' I asked, 'have you been able to find peace here in the mountains?' Hesse remained silent for a time, although his soft smile never disappeared. We seemed to hear the gentle murmur of the afternoon light and the silence of things until at length he spoke: 'When you are close to Nature you can listen to the voice of God.' We remained seated there until at length I realized that it was time to leave. Hesse gave me a small watercolor which he had painted himself, and he wrote on the back, 'Ricordo di Montagnola.' He loved painting and was a good watercolorist. He accompanied me to the door and shook my hand like an old friend saying, 'If you come back another time, you may no longer find me here.' That was how my first interview went. Those who are still young enough to ask questions like those I asked Hesse that afternoon, or like those that Siddhartha asked the Buddha, will understand my impression. On my return through the narrow streets of Montagnola I could not find a bus, but a young man took me to Lugano on his motorcycle. That same night I found myself in Florence, that city so imbued with Renaissance magic. But those were the postwar years, and impoverished Italy was still seeking refuge in the dollar and in the alcohol of the occupation troops.
by
Miguel Serrano Foreword
Foreword
Miguel Serrano
Valparaíso, Chile
June 1991
Miguel Serrano
C.G. Jung and Hermann Hesse
Excerpt Demian
Abraxas
Contemplate the fire, contemplate the clouds, and when omens appear and voices begin to sound in your soul, abandon yourself to them without wondering beforehand whether it seems convenient or good to do so. If you hesitate, you will spoil your own being, you will become little more than the bourgeois façade which encloses you, and you will become a fossil. Our god is named Abraxas, and he is both god and the devil at the same time. You will find in him both the world of light and of shadows. Abraxas is not opposed to any of your thoughts nor to any of your dreams, but he will abandon you if you become normal and unapproachable. He will abandon you and look for another vessel in which to cook his thoughts.
Narcissus, Goldmund and Siddhartha
Words of Meng-Tse
When a man has reached old age
And has fulfilled his mission,
He has a right to confront
The idea of death in peace.
He has no need of other men;
He knows them and knows enough about them.
What he needs is peace.
It isn't good to visit this man or to talk to him,
To make him suffer banalities.
One must give a wide berth
To the door of his house,
As if no one lived there.
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#1. To: Deasy, christine (#0)
=============================================== This describes quite well the disposition of my beloved next door neighbor, whose house and property are now in my care since his stroke this past December. He had to relocate to his daughter's residence in another state, and our friendship caused me to offer my help. Tis a sad thing to watch an able bodied man go from standing tall and strong to weak and careless in such a short time. He still cares for his property, but that is all it is now .. just property. BTW: I didn't know the extent to which Hitler's strongmen abandoned him in the end. For example, Heinrich Himmler sent a secret message to Winston Churchill begging for amnesty and refuge in exchange for his knowledge of The Reich. Churchill threw the message into the fire. Also, the Allies stalked Hitler for several years early in the war and had assassins within arm's reach many times. The order was never given to kill Hitler, with the reason given that Hitler was killing more of the German military through his wild and reckless fits of rage upon his own armies than even the allies could - he was seen as an asset in terms of the damage he inflicted on his own forces through ineptness. The SS Men wore black uniforms with a skeleton's head on their hats, the motto Unsere Ehre heisst Treue on their belts and their symbol was the double S-rune. They had sworn eternal faith to Adolf Hitler and they were his most ruthless henchmen, men often seen as the very personifications of evil. A violent group who rose to power in a democracy and established institutions of legitimized terror.
That was true on both sides, but Vae victus. Woe to the vanquished. The victor will tell their story for them. We haven't even begun to talk about the incompetence of the Allied commanders. If we had lost the war, knowledge of our atrocities would be publicized. We did not hesitate the implement nuclear weapons. We destroyed the large population centers of Germany and Japan with incendiary bombs that were known to cause sweeping firestorms when dropped on cities. We killed captive soldiers. And worse, we were fighting against the Axis alongside the leading nation controlled by the biggest enemy of mankind: communism. And look at us now. By 2042 at least the peoples who "won" WWII will be outnumbered here in the United States. Is that why we fought? The war was a mistake. Our grand children will come to know this with great certainty. They will also discovery why we were misled into fighting the war in the first place. What's more interesting is that Serrano knew and was respected by Hesse and Jung, and that Hesse's writing was allegedly falsified to present anti-nationalist sentiments. Also interesting are Jung's observations of archetypes and race. Serrano was evidently fascinated by that. One problem we face in understanding people like Serrano is that his positions have been put into the verboten category, and made taboo. How can we understand history when we refuse to evaluate it openly? The answer is that we can't. And looking around at the world today, we can see that failure to learn the lessons of history are costing us dearly. After the next few chapters of American history are written there may not be a Republic at all. Failure to understand history is no longer an option.
#3 - I agree, both from a perspective point and a historical point. What is the answer to being misled in the first place? ;>)
Spelling aside, we need to learn that our roots matter more than our politics. Liberty won't last if the people don't know who they are. When we threw open Ellis island, we opened the gates of Hell.
=============================== Perspective (cognitive), one's "point of view", the choice of a context for opinions, beliefs and experiences I have no problem with Ellis Island immigrants, whatsoever. They are legal immigrants. The twenty million illegal aliens from Mexico are an entirely different matter.
You don't see yet that one led to the other. We let Jews in from Europe, and once here, they started demanding that we let more people in for all kinds of reasons. Jews were heavily involved with lobbying for the 1965 Immigration Act that eliminated restrictions on non-European peoples and raised limits drastically. On the basis of legal immigration we have set in motion the wheels of history that will overwhelm Anglo-Saxon populations in North America. You can fight for legal immigration all you like, but the population bomb is already set to explode. By the way, Norman Podhoretz was one of the open immigration advocates. He can probably trace his lineage back through Ellis Island. See Kevin MacDonald on this topic. Link: Jewish Involvement in Shaping American Immigration Policy, 1881-1965: A Historical Review.
| 12-10-02 | Ben Johnson Posted on Tuesday, December 10, 2002 7:08:57 AM by SJackson America's current mass immigration mess is the result of a change in the laws in 1965. Prior to 1965, despite some changes in the 50's, America was a low-immigration country basically living under immigration laws written in 1924. Thanks to low immigration, the swamp of cheap labor was largely drained during this period, America became a fundamentally middle-class society, and our many European ethnic groups were brought together into a common national culture. In some ways, this achievement was so complete that we started to take for granted what we had achieved and forgot why it happened. So in a spasm of sentimentality on the Right and lies on the Left, we opened the borders. Born of liberal ideology, the 1965 bill abolished the national origins quota system that had regulated the ethnic composition of immigration in fair proportion to each group's existing presence in the population. In a misguided application spirit of the civil rights era, the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations saw these ethnic quotas as an archaic form of chauvinism. Moreover, as Cold Warriors facing charges of "racism" and "imperialism," they found the system rhetorically embarrassing. The record of debate over this seismic change in immigration policy reveals that left-wingers, in their visceral flight to attack "discrimination," did not reveal the consequences of their convictions. Instead, their spokesmen set out to assuage concerned traditionalists with a litany of lies and wishful thinking. Chief among national concerns was total numeric immigration. Senate floor manager and Camelot knight-errant Ted Kennedy, D-Massachusetts, assured jittery senators that "our cities will not be flooded with a million immigrants annually." Senator Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, further calmed that august body, insisting "the total number of potential immigrants would not be changed very much." Time has proven otherwise. Average immigration levels before the 1965 amendments took effect hovered around 300,000 per annum. Yet 1,045,000 legal immigrants flooded our cities in 1996 alone. The 1965 "reform" reoriented policy away from European ethnic groups, yet implemented numbers similar to 1950's rates in an attempt to keep immigration under control. However, Congressmen managed to miss a loophole large enough to allow a 300 percent in immigration, because they did not take into account two "sentimental" provisions within the bill. Immediate family members of U.S. citizens and political refugees face no quotas. Their likely impact on the nation was ignored, presumably because aiding families and the dispossessed cast the right emotive glow. Yet leftists could sound like hard-nosed defenders of the national interest when necessary. In urging passage of the 1965 bill, Senator Robert F. Kennedy, D-New York, wrote in a letter to the New York Times, "The time has come for us to insist that the quota system be replaced by the merit system." As if merit is the operative principle along the Rio Grande today! Similarly, Representative Robert Sweeney, D-Ohio, insisted the bill was "more beneficial to us." In fact, the 1965 bill made "family reunification" - including extended family members - the key criterion for eligibility. These new citizens may in turn send for their families, creating an endless cycle known to sociologists as the immigration chain. The qualifications of immigrants have predictably fallen. Hispanic immigrants, by far the largest contingent, are eight times more likely than natives to lack a ninth-grade education, and less than half as likely to have a college degree. The bill did not end discrimination based on what President John F. Kennedy called "the accident of birth." (This of course begs the question of whether birth within the nation, the basis of common national community, is just an accident, but let that pass for now.) It de facto grossly discriminates in favor of Mexicans and certain other groups. Not only has the bill failed in its stated purpose, it has realized many of its critics' worst nightmares. Concern mounted that this bill would radically change the ethnic composition of the United States. Such things were still considered legitimate concerns in 1965, in the same Congress that had just passed the key civil rights legislation of the 1960's. Specific influx predictions that were made seem tragicomic today. Senator Robert Kennedy predicted a total of 5,000 immigrants from India; his successor as Attorney General, Nicholas Katzenbach, foresaw a meager 8,000. Actual immigration from India has exceeded by 1,000-times Robert Kennedy's prediction. Senator Hiram Fong, R-Hawaii, calculated that "the people from [Asia] will never reach 1 percent of the population." Even in 1965, people were willing to admit that we have a reasonable interest in not being inundated by culturally alien foreigners, and it was considered acceptable to say so on the floor of the Senate. Try that today, even as a supposed conservative! (Asians currently account for three percent of the population, and will swell to near 10 percent by 2050 if present trends continue.) The only remaining Congressman who had voted on the 1920s quotas, Representative Emanuel Celler, D-New York, insisted, "There will not be, comparatively speaking, many Asians or Africans entering this country." Today, the number of Asians and Africans entering this country each year exceeds the annual average total number of immigrants during the 1960s. Yet the largest ethnic shift has occurred within the ranks of Hispanics. Despite Robert Kennedy's promise that, "Immigration from any single country would be limited to 10 percent of the total," Mexico sent 20 percent of last year's immigrants. Hispanics have made up nearly half of all immigrants since 1968. After a 30-year experiment with open borders, whites no longer constitute a majority of Californians or residents of New York City. As immigrants pour in, native Americans feel themselves pushed out. In 1965, Senator Hugh Scott, R-Pennsylvania, opined, "I doubt if this bill will really be the cause of crowding the present Americans out of the 50 states." Yet half-a-million native Californians fled the state in the last decade, while its total population increased by three million, mostly immigrants. This phenomenon also holds true in microcosm. In tiny Ligonier, Indiana, (population 4,357) 914 Hispanics moved in and 216 native Americans departed during the 1990s. Hispanics now outnumber the Amish as the area's dominant minority. Thirty-plus years of immigration at historic levels have also had an economic impact on America. In 1965, Ted Kennedy confidently predicted, "No immigrant visa will be issued to a person who is likely to become a public charge." However, political refugees qualify for public assistance upon setting foot on U.S. soil. The exploding Somali refugee population of Lewiston, Maine, (pop. 36,000) is largely welfare-dependent. Likewise, 2,900 of Wausau, Wisconsin's 4,200 Hmong refugees receive public assistance. In all, 21 percent of immigrants receive public assistance, whereas 14 percent of natives do so. Immigrants are 50 percent more likely than natives to live in poverty. Ted Kennedy also claimed the 1965 amendments "will not cause American workers to lose their jobs." Teddy cannot have it both ways: either the immigrant will remain unemployed and become a public charge, or he will take a job that otherwise could have gone to a native American. What is presently undisputed - except by the same economic analysts at Wired magazine and the Wall Street Journal who gave us dot-com stocks - is that immigrant participation lowers wages. Despite the overwhelming assurances of the bill's supporters, the 1965 Immigration Reform Act has remade society into the image its critics most feared. Immigration levels topping a million a year will increase U.S. population to 400 million within 50 years. Meanwhile, exponents of multiculturalism insist new arrivals make no effort to assimilate; to do so would be "genocidal," a notion that makes a mockery of real genocides. Instead, long-forgotten grudges are nursed against the white populace. Native citizens take to flight as the neighborhoods around them, the norms in their hometowns, are debased for the convenience of low-paid immigrants and well-heeled businessmen. All the while, indigenous paychecks drop through lower wages and higher taxes collected to provide social services for immigrants. And this only takes into account legal immigration. These results were unforeseen by liberals easily led about by their emotions. Others were not so blind. Jewish organizations had labored since 1924 to unweave national origins quotas by admitting family members on non-quota visas. The B'nai B'rith Women and the American Council for Judaism Philanthropic Fund, among other Jewish organizations, supported this reform legislation while it was yet in subcommittee in the winter of 1965. Roman Catholics had the twin motivations of still-evolving social justice doctrine and the potential windfall of a mass influx of co-religionists from Latin America. Other organized minorities pressured for increased immigration to benefit relatives in their homelands. The ultra-liberal Americans for Democratic Action, the ACLU and the National Lawyers Guild joined the chorus. Further, the Communist Party USA supported higher immigration on the grounds that it destabilizes working Americans. Americans must realize demographic trends are not inevitable, the product of mysterious forces beyond their control. Today's population is the result of yesterday's immigration policy, and that policy is as clearly broken as its backers' assurances were facetious. A rational policy will only come about when native Americans place the national interest above liberal howls of "prejudice" and "tribalism." --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
That's rich. Jews and their Christian advocates criticizing immigration but neglecting to mention that Jews themselves are immigrants. Jews are as foreign to Anglo-Saxon traditions as you can get. If you look at their relative influence over the century since their numbers began to increase, you can see how far we've gone astray from our original roots since they began to influence our media and education.
Yep. Time Mag, Hollywood, CNN, MSM, et.al. Which also controls the congress and the senate. Popular propaganda rules.
Who is SJackson?
====================================== Actually .. he is a ... Jew.
No surprise, he's citing a heavily Zionist news source. He must be very concerned about Islamic immigration. One tribe threatening another. It's a little late for Jews to speak up now about immigration, don't you think? The damage is done. Besides, the backlash against immigration will eventually come to them, as it has historically. Their primary duty as Americans today is to speak out against America's relationship with Israel, but that's also counter to their interests. Until we recognize that interests are racial as well as ideological, we're going to continue to see an erosion of our liberties and our economic stability. Asking Jews to speak out against our relationship with Israel is like asking a leopard to change its spots. That a few are concerned about immigration now is just too ironic.
#17. To: Deasy (#16)
I'm sure you're up on this. I've only been doing it daily for 11 years. With over 10,000 posts across the web on it, I'm still a rookie.
Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/LatestWords of Meng-Tse
When a man has reached old age
And has fulfilled his mission,
He has a right to confront
The idea of death in peace.
He has no need of other men;
He knows them and knows enough about them.
What he needs is peace.
It isn't good to visit this man or to talk to him,
To make him suffer banalities.
One must give a wide berth
To the door of his house,
As if no one lived there. 
These masterminds of death were found to be quite psychologically normal. They were men of fine standing, husbands who morning and night kissed their wives, fathers who tucked their children into bed.
But murders, brutalities, cruelties, tortures, atrocities, and other inhuman acts were an everyday occurrence.
#3. To: HAPPY2BME-4UM (#1)
(Edited)
But murders, brutalities, cruelties, tortures, atrocities, and other inhuman acts were an everyday occurrence.
#4. To: Deasy (#3)
They will also discovery why we were mislead into fighting the war in the first place.
#5. To: HAPPY2BME-4UM (#4)
#7. To: Deasy (#5)
When we threw open Ellis island, we opened the gates of Hell.
#8. To: HAPPY2BME-4UM (#7)
(Edited)
#10. To: Deasy (#8)
The 1965 Immigration Act: Anatomy of a Disaster: When will we value our national interest?
#12. To: HAPPY2BME-4UM (#10)
Ben Johnson Ben Johnson is Managing Editor of FrontPage Magazine and co-author, with David Horowitz, of the book Party of Defeat. He is also the author of the books Teresa Heinz Kerry's Radical Gifts (2009) and 57 Varieties of Radical Causes: Teresa Heinz Kerry's Charitable Giving (2004).
#13. To: Deasy (#12)
#14. To: HAPPY2BME-4UM (#13)
#15. To: Deasy (#14)
Who is SJackson?
#16. To: HAPPY2BME-4UM (#15)
Replies to Comment # 16.
End Trace Mode for Comment # 16.