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Well, Someone Out There Knows Nothing

I think that the hate-the-illegal-but-love-the-immigrant mantra is in many cases the 21st century version of the 19th century movement called the “know-nothings”. Ashamed and aware of the revulsion which polite society held toward their anti-immigrant views, they simply refused to state them openly. When asked what their party stood for, they claimed to know nothing […]

I think that the hate-the-illegal-but-love-the-immigrant mantra is in many cases the 21st century version of the 19th century movement called the “know-nothings”. Ashamed and aware of the revulsion which polite society held toward their anti-immigrant views, they simply refused to state them openly. When asked what their party stood for, they claimed to know nothing about it. Everyone knew, of course, that they didn’t like immigrants. ~Jerry Bowyer, TechCentralStation Daily

This article is like a hanging curve ball on a humid summer’s day in Houston–it’s just sitting there, waiting to be smashed into the distance by Lance Berkman.  However, since the Astros can’t generate any offense lately, the metaphor doesn’t work as well as I might like.  But this ridiculous claim about the Know Nothings is still begging to be knocked out of the park.

The context of Mr. Bowyer’s remarkably inaccurate statement about the Know Nothings (the colloquial name given to members of what would later become the American Party) is, of course, an argument in favour of amnesty.  This is an argument where being a “nativist” is bad, but the opposite, being a “foreignist,” is admirable and virtuous.  But Mr. Bowyer gets so carried away in his foreignism that he forgets that in the bad (read good) old days of the mid 19th century nativists didn’t have to hide their sentiments from a disapproving public and they certainly never did.   

The Know Nothings did operate as a semi-secret organisation, so that their members were supposed to answer, “I know nothing” when asked about what went on at their meetings.  In this they would not be different from Masons or other lodge brethren today who keep the proceedings of their gatherings confidential.  What the phrase did not mean, what it could not possibly have meant, was that they did not openly express their nativism and anti-immigrant sentiments.  They weren’t playing coy with the public.  They didn’t like the Irish and the Germans, and they particularly didn’t like the Catholics, and they let everybody know it.  Their nativism and anti-immigrant sentiments were the declared principles of their movement–the candidates affiliated with them ran on nativist platforms and vowed to appoint only the native-born to office.  Here in Chicago a Know Nothing mayor barred immigrants from all city jobs–so much for keeping a lid on the “secret”!  Here were several of the American Party’s platform positions:

  • Severe limits on immigration, especially from Catholic countries.
  • Restricting political office to native-born Americans
  • Mandating a wait of 21 years before an immigrant could gain citizenship.
  • Restricting public school teachers to Protestants.

Obviously, they were deeply ashamed about their views.  The platform tells us what every schoolboy used to learn in his American history classes: nativism was virtually their entire appeal, tied together with related anti-Catholicism, and it was practically the only thing they had going for them.  Had they supposedly hidden their hostility to immigrants under a cloak of secrecy, for fear of some mythical “polite society” that did not exist in the 1850s, they would have received no votes!  It would be like a labour party that never campaigned on labour issues for fear of what people might say, or a prohibition party whose members could only abstain from liquor in the privacy of secret conclaves because they were ashamed of their own opposition to drink! 

The Know Nothings made no bones about their opposition to the immigrants themselves; they were not hamstrung by tiresome arguments that require pro forma declarations of love and admiration for all legal immigrants but a deep concern over immigrants who break the law.  Like them or not, these people did not hold back their real feelings on the matter. 

That Mr. Bowyer actually thinks the Know Nothings were “ashamed” of their own nativist views, which they then kept hidden, or that there was a “polite society” that viewed these ideas with revulsion (this came quite a lot later) renders his opinions on any related historical question essentially worthless.  Why should pro-immigration writers be taken seriously when they haven’t any clear idea about the history of immigration (or the history of nativism) in this country?  Why do others cite this sort of nonsense without comment, as if it were some sort of incisive or intelligent analysis of the problem?

Update: One of the commenters at Amy Welborn’s site dubs the article a product of “the Wall Street Journal-TCS-libertarian axis of stupid.”  Nicely put.

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