Peggy Noonan gets goofy again
"Lately in the immigration debate we have been discussing and debating statistics on such things as family breakdown, education levels, and criminality among Hispanic newcomers. This reminds me of a number of things, some of them perhaps to this day delicate. One is that among the immigrant Irish of the late 19th and early 20th centuries there were fairly high levels of dysfunction, family neglect, alcoholism. As for criminality, they didn't call it the paddy wagon for nothing. My tribe was an obstreperous one. Many tribes are, at least the interesting ones. People are human and human is messy.
"Another thought is that statistical breakdowns on our ethnic groups, Bell Curves and Reports on Out of Wedlock Birthrates, are not in themselves necessarily wrong, but there's something rather rude about them. That is perhaps a sissy thing to say..."
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Blah blah blah.
At least the Irish spoke something resembling English.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, welfare didn't exist.
Neither did well connected and financed organizations with names like "The Race", encouraging (nay, demanding) that newcomers NOT assimilate. The surrounding culture insisted upon it, unlike today.
People say: The Mexicans are just the new Italians! Like that's a good thing? Twenty years ago, a gay friend was taken on a trip to Italy by his rich boyfriend. We all said, "Blech! Go anywhere but there!" But said friend reported back to our amazement that the Italians left in Italy were all exquisitely mannered, well groomed and showed signs of at least knowing how to read. They sent us their Newfies, was his explanation. How unlike the mouth breathers who'd shuffled through my high school halls, seemingly rehearsing for gorilla parts in The Dian Fosey Story, who amused themselves by throwing teachers out the window. (Male teachers -- no female teachers were allowed, or able, to work at the Boys School. They wouldn't last a day.)
I'm Catholic, so I have lots of friends of Irish descent. I'm also a "go back where you came from" prole. Trying to watch the abominable Gangs of New York, I felt like the anti-Kissinger: can't they both win? But as long as backward looking, sepia toned sentimentality like Noonan's is the norm, we will all lose.