[Carry_Okie]

The reason it is so expensive to produce here has more to do with with regulatory paperwork than with labor costs that are too often a deliberate creation by those with something to gain from their investments in competing corporate agriculture abroad.

Hanson needs to read my book.

[AuntB]

I bet he would read it. Send him one.

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON 12/08/04

DOBBS: This debate over what is effectively assimilation in this country is the at center of our Face Off tonight. Joining me from Dallas, syndicated columnist with the Dallas Morning News, Ruben Navarrette. He says Latinos are making strides in assimilating into this country.

Victor David Hanson disagrees, saying we're allowing immigrant groups to vulcanize and to separate from our mainstream population. He is a senior fellow from the Hoover Organization, joining us tonight from Palo Alto, California. ~snip~

DOBBS: The cultural right. Victor Davis Hanson, is that you?

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON, SR. FELLOW HOOVER INSTITUTION: I don't know. That's kind of a buzz word. But the problem is we've never had in the United States 13 million, 10 to 13 million people here illegally. Nor have we had a situation where the host has lost confidence in the powers of assimilation so that we have people who go to school and learn in two languages.

People always -- immigrants spoke their native language for a while. But because of the sheer number of people, we're having a constant pull now of first and second generation people who simply don't speak English.

By any historical marker we know what happens in places like Iraq with Shi'ites and Kurds and Sunnis, or in Rwanda or the Balkans. Anytime a person owes their allegiance to a particular language or language or tribe rather than as a nation as a whole, you start to unravel these very precious, historic bonds that keep us together. We're a nation, not cultures, but of different races that have one common culture. We're really the only successful multiracial society in the history of civilization. ~snip~

DOBBS: Victor, this issue is boiling up, as I said to Ruben, this cultural right stuff, I think personally, is nonsense. I think the cultural left is also nonsense. I think what we have, if I may say, and I would love to hear your thoughts on this, and yours as well, Ruben, we have a bunch of people with a vested interest in this subject that are distorting the reality for all of us who are not directly involved in that first or second generation of immigration into this country whether legal or illegal.

And by that, I mean, we have unions that are trying to bring in cheap labor to be exploited, frankly. We have corporate America who want to bring in cheap labor to be exploited. Both are benefiting.

And we're not even beginning to control our borders, let alone our schools or the cultural institutions, including church's, including our schools. And there's a tremendous problem.

How do we deal with it?

HANSON: I agree with you. I don't see this as a political left or right. My experience in talking to a variety of people, it's a class issue. People who are in the halls of corporate American, people in the Chicano studies departments, people in journalism, people in politics who don't live with the reality every day tend to think it's not a problem. People who try to go to school in the public schools, assimilate, they want this.

Some of the success stories Ruben is referring to came in spite of, not because of, a lot of the leadership in the Latino community that fought tooth and nail, bilingual education and ethnic identification.

One of the reasons that we're starting to recover our confidence in the melting pot in California is that the people rose up and said, no more bilingual education. They said no more ethnic identification for jobs, we're all here as Californians. And now we have this ironic Orwellian situation that, with the powers of popular culture and the revolt of the people, they've started to bring back this idea. And all of a sudden spokesmen say, see it's working. It's working despite people in the past who have tried to separate us.

DOBBS: Victor Davis Hanson, Ruben Navarrette, we thank you very much. We hope you'll both be back as we continue our examination on this. And we know you will continue to examine the issue from your perspectives, almost daily.

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0412/08/ldt.01.html

Aired Dec. 8, 2004