Customer Reviews

Americans No More

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3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I picked up this book on a whim at the airport discount bookstore for a song. When I started reading this book I was amazed how accurate Ms. Geyer had predicted the future (This book was written in 1996).

One of the most important points of the book is that the weakening and outright destruction of the idea citizenship is the crux of many of America's problems. Not race or religion as some of the other reviews claim (I wonder if they actually read the book).

I highly recommend reading this book for insights on possible ways we can avoid a balkanization of the USA. Bring back the strength of real Citizenship and strengthen this country for all of its citizens.

America needs to be a melting pot with a common thread of freedom and American ideals (read 'real' citizenship), not a collection of groups with loyalties that lie elsewhere that are constantly lobbying for their rights over the good of the individual citizen.

As someone who lived in southern California for a decade, I see the truth in this book. It may be too late already, but these issues should be seriously addressed. Left-wing hysterics will be sure to hate it, but they can't stop the argument by hurling epithets and making bogus comparisons to Nazi Germany and/or Stalinist Russia

American patriots will be forever grateful to Geyer for her ample contribution to reversing the decline of American citizenship. However, I doubt that people can shed their ethnicity as easily as she implies. Nor does she explain why immigrants are needed at all. Americans can give birth to the next generation of citizens, the same as all other nations. And if our citizenship is in need of repair, immigration isn't going to help.

She blames ethnic problems on a few bad men stirring up trouble. That ethnic groups have leaders, tells us nothing about what an ethnic group is and why people feel attached to their ethnic group. Nor does this book. Ethnicity is consistently disparaged as in ANM: "... all the old differences and hatreds that divided men so murderously according to tribe, clan and creed." (p46) For every "ethnic hatred" example, I could give an example of "national hatred" or "country hatred." Please note that two World Wars were carried out by dozens of COUNTRIES not CLANs. What is an ethnic group? It is a group that customarily intermarries. That is simply the social nature of humans. What is evil about that?

What is a nation? Unfortunately, this is not discussed. But I suggest it is one or more CLOSELY related ethnic groups, fully assimilable, that considers itself to be one people, of a right to sovereignty, independence and self government.

The use of the term "hatred" stops discussion and thought processes. At the base of any ethnic conflict are people wanting to survive. People want their families and their ethnic groups to survive because these are the carriers of their genetic and cultural heritage. Land, independence, and security are key elements of survival.

ANM: "When a multinational society has to accommodate so many different demands, which can include court procedures and public papers in many languages, in addition to actual changes in the laws to suit various cultural tastes, a country is inevitably bound not only to divide into conflictive camps but also to decline economically; there is simply no way that a country can with such expensive and disruptive demands, keep up with the much more easily functioning one-culture, one-language, and one-heritage countries." (p47,48) Is that the same as a homogeneous society? This gem of wisdom should be developed into a whole chapter. If one-heritage countries are so advantageous, why should we discourage their formation? Why don't we pursue it for ourselves, so far as is practical? If Bosnia wants to form one-heritage countries, why does this book oppose it?

ANM: "Jim Daton, a political scientist and futurist at the University of Hawaii... saying in contemptuous terms about America: 'Nothing will be more rare in the future than a white person, and nothing may be less important than the white man's ways.'" (p88) Are we not discussing bloodless genocide? This is a subject few books dare to discuss. Unfortunately nothing more is said about this demographic trend.

ANM: "We had become so proudly tolerant that we would feel 'guilty' if African or Arab immigrants were told that you do not mutilate your little girls in America!" (p176) Why should we expect people to become something they are not, just because they arrive here? It is as difficult for them to give up their customs, as it would be for us to move there and adopt theirs. The discussion should not be how to fit square pegs into round holes, but how to develop policies that will encourage the square pegs to return to their homelands.

ANM: "(Wisconsin) is vulnerable to the undermining problem not of immigration (which they need and welcome), but of uncontrolled immigration..." (p246) Why does Wisconsin need immigrants? What great harm would come to Wisconsin if they didn't have aliens streaming in? What is this magic the aliens have that America so desperately needs and the rest of the world doesn't want?

Ms. Geyer reports on the Hmong from Southeast Asia who settled in Wausau, Wisconsin.

ANM: "It was the more recent group, not so socialized, not so assimilated, who began imposing their own culture on little, unsuspecting Wausau. Yes, Virginia, THERE IS A CRITICAL MASS. There is a moment, in social or political change, when power shifts irrevocably to the side that has been gaining."

ANM: "And by the time the elite intellectual and political group realizes the danger, it really IS too late. The ties that have held the society together have been ineluctably rent; worse, rent by its own hand." (p49)

ANM: "The people of Wausau are not racists, nativists, restrictionists, exclusionists, or America-Firsters--indeed, they are just the opposite! But they had assumed that the newcomers were coming to be PART OF THEM, and not to transform them. Indeed, under what possible principle of personal morality or national interest must longtime Wausau residents acquiesce in the destruction of the life and the community that they have built up--and by people to whom they have no special responsibility, people who have made no commitment to this land?" (p275,276)

A key question for her book: "Who belongs, and in what numbers?" Ms. Geyer appears to imply that the Hmong, in large numbers, do not belong in Wausau or the U.S., but she does not come out and say so explicitly. No where in the book does she exclude anyone on the planet specifically.

The issue of what should be the ethnic composition of America is not addressed. A common ethnic descent is what binds a nation together for the long haul. Multi-national states are short term affairs lacking in true commitment.

Despite my few criticisms, I believe Georgie Ann Geyer has made an enormous contribution to the cause of patriotism. She has stood, almost alone, against the gale force of an intolerant orthodoxy, and should receive a special honor from a grateful nation. "Americans No More" is a milestone for a society that is in more trouble than it knows.

Here in 2008 this 12 year old book amazes in how it touches so many issues around illegal immigration. Lack of assimilation. Fake IDs. Day Labor Centers. The Ford Foundation. Loyalty to Aztlan. The cheapening of citizenship. And the big one, balkanization of America.

Geyer is first and foremost a journalist. She interviewed X who said this. She visited Y where she saw that. Being a hot-shot in her trade, she does get big names on record and worldwide locations into the picture. She is alarmed, some say without reason. True, in the 12 years since she published there has not been civil war between ethnic groups in the US. We have not, like Canada, become officially bilingual. However, one can hardly say the tensions are less. One cannot say there's no potential for a racist firebrand attempting power by becoming the spokesman for his "Raza". We have made it this far, but Geyer's book is, unfortunately, still relevant.

To call her book "scaremongering" is irresponsible. Reviewers who've called her fascist are ignoring her dislike of corporate-government collusion in the addition of plentiful low-wage labor to the American scene. It is inaccurate to call someone fascist if they are merely patriotic.

Minus two stars for failing to give a clear statement of what American citizenship should mean. Communities of self-actualized positive souls? Willing participants in local civic governance? Everyone washes their hands, even without signs on the mirrors? Absence of bribery? Uniformly polite public behavior? She circles. She hints. But she fails to state.

Illegal immigration IS destroying America. As a so called evil white woman, it sickens me to see what is happened to CA. The Mexican population went from 20% to over 50% in THREE YEARS. I have first-hand experiences -- I was driven out of an apartment building in 1995 when about 30 illegal Mexicans moved into EACH apartment. There was an ever revolving sea of faces -- every day there were new people I had not seen before. And this was a FOUR UNIT apartment building!

It is so bad out here, that we are made to feel ASHAMED for being white, and ASHAMED for speaking English. If we speak out against illegal immigration, then we are deemed as racists.

We are slowly losing this country to people who just want to come here for government handouts, people who have NO desire to assimilate into our country or learn English.

We are losing the war without guns -- be warned, government oppression is going to ARRIVE in the next 20 years. WHITE PEOPLE will be persecuted in this country, actively, within the next 20 to 40 years, YOU CAN COUNT ON IT!

Geyer makes some good points, but overall her book comes across as an anti-immigrant diatribe. And while it may be fashionable to call those who oppose you liberals, in fact, the greatest advocates of open borders are conservative businessmen and newspapers such as Wall Street Journal..

As a member of one of those groups that are destroying the Eden that was America - the white, European, English-speaking, morally upright America of days now gone - I read works like this to try and gauge if there are legitimate reasons for their (conservatives like Geyer) dismay. It's hard however to sympathise with the author's underlying discomfort with the color of my skin or the language of my parents. Feeling sympathy for those who want to harm you, and would if they could, is a luxury for the very powerful or the very masochistic. This "white lioness" is just wrong for believing Americans are not Americans because they are different, not-so-pale inividuals.

Don't let the liberals steer you away from this great and provocative book. The establishment that believes in open borders, massive non-White immigration, and the inherent equality of all races and ethnic groups hates this book. Georgie Ann Geyer defends her America like a White lioness defending her cubs against an attack of savage hyenas. It's also very interesting and well written. Oh course, we would expect that from this author.

A syndicated writer of conservative, over-dramatic newspaper tirades, Georgie Anne Geyer is the Pat Buchanan of socially critical journalism, although her fascist tendencies are even more explicit than Buchanan's (if such a thing is possible). Indeed, "Americans No More" is a pathetic book, which would be worth reading for humor value alone if not for its dangerous, unfunny scapegoating of immigrants and immigration policy for America's problems.

Like Buchanan, Geyer comes from the marginal "communitarian" right wing of American politics (culturally conservative, anti-free trade), meaning that her book spends a great deal of time attacking both big business and "cultural elites" who travel a lot and eat foreign foods and supposedly feel no loyalty towards America or democracy. Into this predictably populist rant, however, Geyer throws in a scaremongering attack on immigration, blaming all these darn foreigners in our midst for sending America down the road to civic ruin. Here's just one comical example of her dark forecasts of a future America overrun by dark peoples:

"The borders, while not 'open,' will be effectively porous because Americans will have lost even any spirit to make choices or protect what they have built and fought for. Everyone will vote, even noncitizens or visitors from abroad, and so the vote will mean nothing; every 'civic duty' will get more and more dumbed down, and corruption will of course flourish in such a mood of ultimate permissiveness . . . most important for bringing the international mafias more deeply into American society." (p. 330)

Whoah! Look out everybody. Soon, the vote will mean nothing, and there will be something called "corruption" in America! Oh no! Well, we already knew all that, but what we didn't know is that we can conveniently blame immigrants for all this. That's right. All that "ultimate permisiveness" is their fault! Let's blame those who are less fortunate than ourselves for our own problems. After all, its clear that they want to tear down everything that we've built and fought for, with their evil "mafias" and all. Let's just conveniently ignore the fact that immigrants originally built AND fought for this country.

All of Mrs. Geyer's proto-fascist admirers reading this review should remember that in the little closed-off, culturally conservative world that she seems to wish for in this book, it would be very difficult for an Amazon.com, or even an internet, to allow for the worldwide, open discussion of ideas and works of literature. After all, the internet was built by skilled, foreign high-tech labor and is controlled by cultural elites and the "liberal media," right?

Georgie Anne Geyer, in "Americans No More", is nostalgic for an America that never was, an America where white, English-speaking children wear perpetual smiles, always salute the flag and never openly question the foundations of political power. In a bit of amateur political science, Geyer laughably compares the United States to Yugoslavia, ignoring five hundred years of Ottoman history, fifty years of communism, ten years of manipulation by nationalists, and the complete absence of a rule of law in the former Yugoslavia. As if ethnic differences alone somehow guarantee conflict. As if there is no way for people of more than one color or nation to live peacefully under a single flag, no matter what the conditions (Apparently, she's never been to Switzerland). Geyer writes of seeing:

"every major multinational and multiethnic country on the verge of disintegration. The countries of one people and one heritage were infinitely more secure and seemed almost totally exempt from this syndrome." (p. 27).

But wait a minute, can't a country be multiethnic without being multinational? Hasn't that always been the fundamental strength, and even the advantage, of the United States? Well, apparently not if Mrs. Geyer had her way. Luckily for us, however, her ethnically pure America could never be enforced in a truly free society. So let's make sure that it stays free, by rejecting her irresponsible scapegoating of immigration for the very real problems of political apathy and social disintegration.

Because I have always been a fan of science fiction, and slop shod writing by Martin Bormann and Heinrich Himmler wannabees, I absolutely loved this book. In Georgie Geyer's isolated and desolate household, where she has absolutely no contact with the outside world, she has concoted the theory that immigrants are the reasons for the cultural and intellectual poverty that permeates American society. But what seems to allude her mind is the fact that America has always been a decadent country, with a tradition of annihlating races and cultures on a scale that Adolf Hitler could only dream of.

Reminiscent of Hitler's idea of Aryans, Geyer believes that the United States was once a culturally rich, and considerate nation, well, I guess in her elitist community, the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960's and 70's never happened. If America was always such a great country before immigration became uncontrollable, why is it that African Americans, Native Americans, Asian Americans, and Hispanic Americans had to fight for basic human rights, that should have been granted years ago with the publication of the declaration of independence and the bill of rights. I must commend Geyer for using an age-old Stalinist tactic of placing the blame for your own incompetence on the down trodden minorities. To clarify, Stalin, blamed the Kulak, and the Trotskyists for the failure of his vaunted 5-year plans, even though the Stalinist bureacracy was the real reason for failure. In the tradition of Uncle Joe Stalin, Geyer has placed blame for the failure of the American Dream(the equivalant of Stalin's ridiculous 5-year plans, both are virtually un-attainable), on immigrants, specifically hispanics, as opposed to the corrupt and inefficent US government.

The population projections for the year 2000 are: whites 71.5%, African Americans 12.2%, Hispanics 11.8%, Native Americans 0.7%, Asian Americans 3.8%. Which brings me to my next point. The idea that 72% of the United States population is exempt from the responsibility of their own mediocrity, seems to be a ridiculous idea. Immigrants are in fact(contrary to what Geyer believes), the backbone of the United States. Just ask people who are in the agriculture business. Because many of the immigrants are not citizens, the land owners(people in agriculture), can exploit immigrant labor, and pay them less than minimum wage. And once their growing season is over(fall & winter), they can turn the immigrants into INS(which likely equals deportation), and turn a nice profit by not paying their workers an annual salary. Or you can ask the managers of hotel chains, where their principle employees usually originate, it's a sure bet that it's not the United States. The jobs that immigrants "steal", from American citizens, are jobs that could never be filled by American citizens(due to laziness and prejudices). I could not in good conscience, recommend this "wonderful", and "delightful" work of scholarship, because it is likely not worth the lumber that it is printed on.