Blaming It All on ‘Them’

Our own Congress is so amusing that it seldom is necessary to look abroad for legislative diversion. We make an exception, however, in the case of British parliamentarian Norman Tebbit.

Tebbit, former chairman of the Conservative Party, is among those men who politics often thrusts forward, though their character is that of an 18th-Century Earl of Oxford of whom it was rightly said, “He melded cunning with mediocrity.” Tebbit made his Tory bones bashing socialists, but last week he turned his attention to the havoc he fears a few thousand Chinese immigrants from Hong Kong may do to British culture. Normally, his xenophobia would be his constituents’ concern, but he also had something to say about immigration’s impact on the United States.

Non-European immigration to this country, Tebbit said, “inevitably” will push Britain and America apart. “I am sorry to see the United States becoming a less Anglo-Saxon country, a less European country.” As a consequence, he said, American foreign policy will be “less concerned about Europe” and more preoccupied with the Third World.

A little more interest in the Third World wouldn’t hurt, though the logic of current European history is against it. More to the point, values--particularly Western values--are a product of choice and not of blood and soil. Today’s immigrants, like those who came before them, have chosen our way of life. We will not suffer from their vote of confidence.