A Plan To Destroy America

There is an e-mail making the rounds on the Internet that claims to be an account of a speech by former Colorado Governor Richard D. Lamm. I'm not a huge fan of these kind of e-mails. When they arrive, I usually just delete then ... unless my spam-catcher has already deleted it. And, yes, they are usually spam, or what I consider spam, because they are usually unsolicited, but worse, just plain wrong.

A lot of these spam e-mails are misquotes, or false attributions, or statements made out of context, or something like that. And, if the mood strikes me, I'll research the matter and write back telling the sender just where they went wrong.

Lots of folks don't like that. In fact, they dislike it almost as much as I dislike getting spam. And they'll usually drop me from their spam listing. Which suits me just fine.

However, every now and then, one arrives that isn't full of inaccuracies. Such is the case of the e-mail that gives an account of Governor Lamm's speech of a year-and-a-half ago. Snopes, a very reliable (but not 100% accurate) source of debunking Urban Legends and spam, contacted Governor Lamm recently and confirmed the accuracy of the e-mail. Lamm went so far as to offer a revised version of his speech. The e-mail that's making the rounds and the story around it can be found on the Snopes site here.

I Have A Plan To Destroy America

Richard D. Lamm

I have a secret plan to destroy America. If you believe, as many do,
that America is too smug, too white bread, too self-satisfied, too
rich, lets destroy America. It is not that hard to do. History shows
that nations are more fragile than their citizens think. No nation in
history has survived the ravages of time. Arnold Toynbee observed that
all great civilizations rise and they all fall, and that "an autopsy of
history would show that all great nations commit suicide." here is my
plan:

1. We must first make America a bilingual-bicultural
   country. History shows, in my opinion, that no nation can survive the
   tension, conflict, and antagonism of two competing languages and
   cultures. It is a blessing for an individual to be bilingual; it is a
   curse for a society to be bilingual. One scholar, Seymour Martin
   Lipset, put it this way:
   

   The histories of bilingual and bicultural societies that do not
   assimilate are histories of turmoil, tension, and tragedy. Canada,
   Belgium, Malaysia, Lebanon-all face crises of national existence in
   which minorities press for autonomy, if not independence. Pakistan and
   Cyprus have divided. Nigeria suppressed an ethnic rebellion. France
   faces difficulties with its Basques, Bretons, and Corsicans.
   

   
   


2. I would then invent "multiculturalism" and encourage
   immigrants to maintain their own culture. I would make it an article of
   belief that all cultures are equal: that there are no cultural
   differences that are important. I would declare it an article of faith
   that the black and Hispanic dropout rate is only due to prejudice and
   discrimination by the majority. Every other explanation is
   out-of-bounds.
   


3. We can make the united states a "Hispanic Quebec"
   without much effort. The key is to celebrate diversity rather than
   unity. As Benjamin Schwarz said in The Atlantic Monthly recently:
   

   ...the apparent success of our own multiethnic and multicultural
   experiment might have been achieved not by tolerance but by hegemony.
   Without the dominance that once dictated ethnocentrically, and what it
   meant to be an American, we are left with only tolerance and pluralism
   to hold us together.
   

   
   I would encourage all immigrants to keep their own language and
   culture. I would replace the melting pot metaphor with a salad bowl
   metaphor. It is important to insure that we have various cultural
   sub-groups living in America reinforcing their differences rather than
   Americans, emphasizing their similarities.


4. Having done all this, I would make our fastest growing
   demographic group the least educated - I would add a second underclass,
   unassimilated, undereducated, and antagonistic to our population. I
   would have this second underclass have a 50% drop out rate from school.
   


5. I would then get the big foundations and big business
   to give these efforts lots of money. I would invest in ethnic identity,
   and I would establish the cult of victimology. I would get all
   minorities to think their lack of success was all the fault of the
   majority - I would start a grievance industry blaming all minority
   failure on the majority population.
   


6. I would establish dual citizenship and promote divided
   loyalties. I would "celebrate diversity." "diversity" is a wonderfully
   seductive word. It stresses differences rather than commonalities.
   Diverse people worldwide are mostly engaged in hating each other-that
   is, when they are not killing each other. A diverse," peaceful, or
   stable society is against most historical precedent. People undervalue
   the unity it takes to keep a nation together, and we can take advantage
   of this myopia. Look at the ancient Greeks. Dorf's world history tells
   us:
   

   The Greeks believed that they belonged to the same race; they possessed
   a common language and literature; and they worshiped the same gods. All
   Greece took part in the Olympic games in honor of Zeus and all Greeks
   venerated the shrine of Apollo at Delphi. A common enemy Persia
   threatened their liberty. Yet, all of these bonds together were not
   strong enough to overcome two factors . . . (local patriotism and
   geographical conditions that nurtured political divisions . . .)
   

   
   If we can put the emphasis on the "pluribus," instead of the "unum," we can balkanize America as surely as Kosovo.


7. Then I would place all these subjects off limits - make
   it taboo to talk about. I would find a word similar to "heretic" in the
   16th century - that stopped discussion and paralyzed thinking. Words
   like "racist", "xenophobe" that halts argument and conversation.
   
   Having made America a bilingual-bicultural country, having
   established multiculturalism, having the large foundations fund the
   doctrine of "victimology", I would next make it impossible to enforce
   our immigration laws. I would develop a mantra - "that because
   immigration has been good for America, it must always be good." I would
   make every individual immigrant sympatric and ignore the cumulative
   impact.
   


8. Lastly, I would censor Victor Hanson Davis's (sic) book
   Mexifornia - this book is dangerous - it exposes my plan to destroy
   America. So please, please - if you feel that America deserves to be
   destroyed - please, please - don't buy this book! This guy is on to my
   plan.
   

   "The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit
   the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within
   that spectrum." - Noam Chomsky, American linguist and us media and
   foreign policy critic.
   

   
   
   

Snopes notes that Victor Davis Hanson's name is incorrectly given in the e-mail making the rounds and in Governor Lamm's missive.