NYT June 26, 1965: IMMIGRATION LAW PRAISED BY DAUGHTERS OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION (NOT!)
Since the preamble of the US Constitution specifies the purpose of the government was to “secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity”, it is rather significant when the New York Times wheels out a symbol of that “posterity” such as “The Daughters of the American Revolution”, as they did on June 26 of 1965 during the debate over the revolutionary Immigration and Nationalities Act of 1965, the chief debate issue over which was whether it would replace that posterity with other nationalities. Proponents claimed it would not. Opponents claimed it would.
The NYT’s principle headline read “IMMIGRATION LAW PRAISED BY D.A.R.”
So it looks like the posterity’s own watch-dog group, itself didn’t see it as a threat, just as John Derbyshire would today have us believe.
But wait…. here’s the first sentence of the article:
The Daughters of the American Revolution said today that President Johnson’s bill to abolish the national origins quota system of immigration would destroy “a first-line of defense in perpetuating our institutions of freedom and the American way of life.”
Gross incompetence in headline writing or gross mendacity by the US’s “newspaper of record”?
Either way, one can hardly claim that the posterity of the Founders suddenly decided in 1965, that the purpose upon which the US was founded had become obsolete, their rights alienable and hence embraced their revolutionary replacement by other nationalities.
