THE ROBERT W. WHITAKER ARCHIVE

CALIFORNIA BROWNOUT | 2001-04-07

Two big stories have been coming out of California. The first is that the state has abruptly ceased to be America's special Land of Opportunity. Its power supply is collapsing under the weight of those who are already there, and even they are paying out-of-sight prices for it.

The second big story out of California is that it now has a majority of non-whites and non-Anglos for the first time in a century and a half.

No one is allowed to say this, but the two stories are related.

As soon as a person crosses the border from Mexico to the United States, his wages explode upward by several times. We are required to believe that this is the result of Magic. There is a Magic Formula that makes the United States what it is.

Liberals say that America is built entirely on some liberal formulas. NATIONAL REVIEW, representing respectable conservatives, says that America is based on five words: "All men are created equal." ( Please see October 24, 1998 article, Five Words and Emma Lazarus).

What you are not allowed to say is that the difference between the United States and Mexico is a product of the PEOPLE who inhabit the United States and Mexico. (Please see May 15, 1999 article, WORDISM).

Only a heretic like me will say what everybody knows to be true. The major reason that Mexico is so poor relative to the United States is because Mexicans do such an awful job of governing themselves.

Mexican politics has historically been a seesaw of revolutionaries who promise to right all wrongs and military dictatorships which impose stability after the revolution.

So as Mexicans come into America, they will enjoy the American standard of living for a while. But eventually they will take over, and the United States will begin to enjoy Mexico's standard of living. The California energy shortage is a first step in this process.

The environmental kooks took over California and forced both parties to accept their program. This program has caused the state, despite its enormous growth, to stop the building of all power plants for the last twenty years. That is liberal policy, and everybody agrees that, if you want Hispanic votes, you have to appeal to the left.

After all, America's left is just like the politics of Mexico: liberalism makes enormous promises, and what it does never WORKS.

Revolution after revolution promised to give Mexicans a high standard of living. No country has ever been given a higher standard of living by a leftist regime, but particularly foolish people keep supporting them. What happens next is that, after the revolution fails again, reactionaries take over again.

Then the revolutionaries promise that, when they overthrow the ruling reactionaries, everybody will be well off.

And so on, ad infinitim.

People who will fall for that will fall for anything.

And they do. That's why their side of the border is poverty-stricken.

Liberals say, for example, that the first generation of anti-Castro Cubans voted conservative, but their children are voting "more traditionally Hispanic" -- meaning liberal Democrat.

Liberal Democrats now dominate everything in California. The minorities put them in power and will keep them there.

Republicans have two simultaneous arguments to make about this. First, they say that multiracialism is a holy cause, and racial differences are not important to anything. Secondly, they say that, while conservative policies make sense and work, you simply will never sell them to brown and black folks.

And no one ever asks if this is not just a little bit racist. The only people who would be allowed to point this out are liberals, and they won't say anything because liberals like that kind of thinking.

This explains why Republicans adopted disastrous liberal energy policies in California. They take on leftist, sound-good policies that appeal to the brown and black electorate, as well as to white liberals. So environmentalists were in charge even when Republicans held power.

What happened to energy in California was that, until the collapse came, everything that led to it and sounded good was OK. That is third-world thinking.

So California now looks third world, and thinks third world. Respectable conservatives will be the first to lynch anyone who says this, which is why it is both true and unmentioned.