Denial in Today\'s World Weber,

Denial in Today's World

Weber, Mark. "America in Decline: A Society in Denial." Institute for Historical Review.

Retrieved January 8, 2011, from http://www.ihr.org/nov10weber.html (2010).

The address by Mark Weber, the director of the Institute for Historical Review (IHR), is called "America in Decline: A Society in Denial," and is published by the IHR. Weber's essay presents a very bleak examination of where the United States stands today in terms of its economy, its society, its institutions and its reputation around the world. In fact Weber's essay asserts that the U.S. is "rapidly becoming an unrecognizable 'third world' country" (p. 1).

Weber's first page offers a look back at the United States' reputation in the world in the 1950s and 1960s and launches into a very grim review of what Weber believes are all the things that have gone wrong in America. He says that gangs in Los Angeles have killed "nearly six thousand" innocent people over a ten-year period. He doesn't say where those data came from but it helps frame his assertion that "No one in the world today looks to Los Angeles as a model city" (p. 1).

Also on his first page Weber begins to show the reader where he places blame for the country becoming a "third world" country. The problem is to be found within the "dramatic transformation of the racial-ethnic character of this country's population," he explains. And that racial-ethnic character change is due to the "large-scale immigration from non-European countries, especially Mexico," Weber continues on page 1. His language is carefully crafted but when an alert readers takes care to study the tone of the essay, and read between the lines, it is clear Weber distrusts and dislikes "non-European" immigrants. In 1950, he explains, "every state and every major city" in the U.S. had "a majority European-origin population"; however, in 2010, according to Weber, "most of our major cities have majority non-white populations" (p. 1).

On page two Weber attacks political leaders "who deceive and mislead" Americans. And by the fourth paragraph on page 2, readers become aware that Weber is also blaming the Jewish community for the troubles Americans are experiencing. An objective review of Weber's essay cannot avoid seeing (by page 2) that Weber is anti-Semitic and that he blames Jews and immigrants for America's decline. He attempts to mask some of his antipathy for Jews and immigrants in his rhetoric. For example, on page 2, Weber says "no establishment politician, no matter how eloquent or seemingly sincere," can change the course of the downslide, because America's political, intellectual and cultural life "has been systematically skewed to serve alien interests" (p. 2). What are those "alien interests"? Weber doesn't say but the implication is Jews and immigrants, especially Latino immigrants, have brought the country down.