“Why is it so important, why does everyone have to explain the importance of having other people come to keep aspects of their culture but attack our desire to retain our own?” Tancredo asked the audience at the Conservative Western Summit.

Tancredo (see video below) was among a slew of conservative guest speakers, including U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., journalist Michelle Malkin and other talk-radio regulars addressing a crowded hotel ballroom at the event hosted by the Centennial Institute and 710 KNUS.

“We are the last hope of the western world, this country. Europe has been Islamisized,” Tancredo told the audience, which went on to laud Geert Wilders, the head of the Party for Freedom, an anti-Islamic group that looks to stop Islamic immigration. Wilders ran on a platform of banning new mosques and the Koran, according to the Telegraph http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/netherlands/7815699/Geert-Wilders-could-be-kingmaker-in-Dutch-parliament-after-coming-third.html.

Noting that Wilders is on trial in the Netherlands for hate speech, Tancredo said “this cult of multiculturalism has us by the throat.”

Tancredo pleaded for the country to fight against U.S. Balkanization by ensuring English is the predominate language. He said it was one way of keeping a nation of many backgrounds and nationalities together.

During his speech, Tancredo commented that when asking students at a Colorado elementary school if they liked their school, they said they “love it,” but when asked what they thought of the country, the room went into dead silence. He said they had never been taught what to love.

In his comments Saturday, Tancredo suggested multicultural educational programs teach students allegiance to “something other” than the American flag and the United States. He said that, although SB 1070– the law in Arizona that gives local police authority to investigate citizenship status– has gained much media attention for fears it will promote racial profiling, the bill outlawing mutlicultural programs is really more significant for its likely long term effects.

Drawing on Pres. John Kennedy’s famous speech in Berlin during the cold war, in which he called himself a Berliner, Tancredo said millions of Americans are likewise Arizonans today because they support the values “under siege” in Arizona from illegal immigration and from the politics that oppose Arizona’s new controversial laws.

It’s not just 1070 they got accomplished. I mean This is incredible stuff guys, no one talks about this but it’s amazing. Not only did they pass 1070, they passed a mandated e-verify for every private employer in the state of Arizona… the response, they got so many people going back to Mexico that the president of Mexico complained and said… build a fence! — He didn’t say that [laughter].

But it’s amazing because that’s the response of just one thing… then of course 1070– but then after that they passed a law, no one seems to know about this but it’s almost as important in my point of view than 1070 because it says… in the state of Arizona it’s against the law to teach the overthrow of the United States of America and you can also not go out and create these mutli-cultural little hangouts essentially that are school buildings called school buildings that teach children to owe their allegiance to something else beside that flag or this country. You can’t do that anymore in Arizona. I mean this is great stuff guys, great stuff.

So if you can… say you support them down there… It matters. They do feel under siege. They think, you know, ‘My gosh the whole world is against them.’ No the whole world is for you really. Only people who support illegal activity. Ignore the fact tha we habve things called borders and they should mean something and something called citizenship and it should mean something only people who despise those ideas– like the guy who’s in the White House today– only people like that are opposed to it.

[...]

You know, I keep thinking: Why doesn’t someone just put the damn bill on a teleprompter so Obama can read it. [laughter]

Multi-cultural education programs have been touted by education scholars for enriching instruction on the fabric of American life as a exceptional almost wholly immigrant society. The instruction also is celebrated for boosting the investment of minority students in their education.

The undocumented-worker monitoring system known as e-verify has been celebrated as a new way forward in bringing employers into the fight against illegal immigration but it has also been criticized as more flashy than effective. In test trials it has misidentified documented workers as undocumented and it has failed to identify undocumented workers angling to beat the system.

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“Their point is that we can not have our culture. In order to express our… commitment to the idea of diversity, we not only have to say everything about you is just fine, we have to say, It’s better,” he said.

Tancredo talked in dark tones about a battle being waged, a form of religious war between the multiculturalists and people like Tancredo and Boyles.

Tom 'Tank' Tancredo

Tancredo said the move in Texas was more evidence of the power of the devotion of the adherents to what he refers to as the “cult” of multiculturalism. He said the cult was “winning” and that, even though it was all a fraud, like he believed global warming is a fraud, they would “win” because they were as devoted to these beliefs as Tancredo and Boyles were dedicated to their Catholic religious faith.

TANCREDO: You know Peter, we have seen it happen. It is one of those things where you say Where did it come from? Where is the push for this? But you have to– it is like the environmental movement: You can have all of the evidence in the world now pointing to the fact that this global warming things is a –

BOYLES: It’s a fraud.

TANCREDO: Fraud. It doesn’t matter. They are committed to it, the same way that we are committed to our religion. “It isn’t simply the feeling about the importance of having diversity in your society and saying: ‘Yes, people are from other societies. We should understand and appreciate that,’” Tancredo said. “All that is insignificant to them.

Tancredo said that “they” the multiculturalists, didn’t see anything of value in “our” culture, by which he meant the culture of Boyles and Tancredo, presumably white American non ethnic culture.

“We don’t have anything of value,” he said. “We can’t ask you to accept anything that we have, including [our English] language, including a language! And they win because they are devoted to it.”

In a talk about Thanksgiving, Tancredo argued that Native Americans should have treated the Pilgrims the same way he has treated illegal immigrants. They should have guarded against the European settlers in order to save their own culture, he said.

The United States is, of course, an immigrant culture from its origins. The CIA World Fact Book lists no official U.S. language. Roughly 82 percent of the population speaks English. Roughly 10 percent speaks Spanish, roughly 4 percent speak Indo European languages and 3 percent speak Asian and Pacific Island languages.

BOYLES: Why would text book publishers take these people out of their pages?

TANCREDO: Well, it is a devotion to the concept of multiculturalism. To what I call the cult of multiculturalism. You know Peter, we have seen it happen. It is one of those things where you say Where did it come from? Where is the push for this? But you have to– it is like the environmental movement. You can have all of the evidence in the world now pointing to the fact that this global warming things is a –

BOYLES: It’s a fraud.

TANCREDO: Fraud. It doesn’t matter. They are committed to it, the same way that we are committed to our religion– although people will attack our religion. Things may happen to make you embarrassed by our religion– the Catholic priest in your neighborhood maybe– but you are not going to… You are committed. You are a Catholic. I am not picking on Catholics.

BOYLES: I know what you are saying.

TANCREDO: You are an environmentalist. You are a globalist. It is like a religion and you will push it regardless of anybody else. And it shows you the power of a group of committed people in a society like ours because most people aren’t watching. But you are doing it every single day of your life. You are committed to it and there is a group that surrounds you. And it is large enough to affect the outcome. That is how it happens. It’s a philosophy. And attached to that philosophy are people who are devoted to it as you can possibly imagine and that is why I call it the cult. It is the cult of multiculturalism.

It isn’t simply the feeling about the importance of having diversity in your society and saying “Yes, people are from other societies. We should understand and appreciate.” All that is insignificant to them. Their point is that we can not have our culture. In order to express our desire, I mean our commitment to the idea of diversity, we not only have to say our culture, everything about you is just fine, you have to say, “It’s better.”

BOYLES: Oh, yeah.

TANCREDO: Better than ours. We don’t have anything of value. We can’t ask you to accept anything that we have, including a language, including a language. And they win because they are devoted to it.

BOYLES: Well, they also seize the so called moral high ground. They make claims about themselves And then they jacket anyone who stands against them as a racist, a nazi, a xenophobe.

TANCREDO: Oh, Jesus.

BOYLES: But that is the game.

TANCREDO: Of course it is.

BOYLES: And that is the game that is played in the Denver Post. That’s the game that is played in the State House, the Congress. It is played in the media. It is played in education. It is played in sports. It is played everywhere. Our own governor of course has tapped out but now there is David Patterson in New York who happens to be black and by the way doesn’t have his vision. He is blind.

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Tancredo told the tale to KHOW radio listeners on Thanksgiving Eve, The Tank no doubt coming down from his work earlier in the week helping to draft and present the embattled Colorado GOP “Platform for Prosperity” meant to unite the state Republican Party and designed primarily, it seems, by McInnis and his one-time gubernatorial primary race rival Josh Penry. Tancredo, of course, likely worked in the lines about making sure employers verify workers are legal residents or citizens of the U.S.

Among other things, listeners to his show Wednesday learned that, although slavery was not good, African Americans are better off for having been brought out of Africa to live in America; that Native American culture was only environmentally friendly because it lacked industrial-age sophistication; and that the (perhaps) Dutch Pilgrims came to America not to flee religious intolerance, but as part of an admirable quest to start an exclusive and intolerant society of their own. They also, in this telling, seem to have paved the way for Columbus.

“They had come from Holland, where there was a great deal of religious freedom and far too much for them, as a matter of fact. They didn’t like it. They didn’t like living around other people who had a different attitudes about God. And so they thought, ‘Let’s get out of here and go where we can be what we want to be and don’t have to live by people who don’t think the way we do.’”

Tancredo then poses a rhetorical question:

“Were the [Pilgrims] brave Christians who risked everything to gain religious freedom in the new world or were they European interlopers guilty of genocide?– which is the way they are portrayed in most history books today and the way that most children think of them. The schools have done this. The cult of multiculturalism has done this.”

And here we land upon Tancredo’s Thanksgiving Day message: Multiculturalism is destroying American culture. He said that if the Native Americans had really wanted to save their own culture and were smart, they would have killed the pilgrims. Here Tancredo was drawing on a speech he gave to the American University earlier this year.

According to American Renaisance, a white nationalist magazine, Tancredo said at the function that, “Throughout history, people who are not white Anglo-Saxon have become American by adopting a white Anglo-Saxon culture. Today, this cult of multiculturality emphasizes our differences— things that pull us apart instead of bringing us together.”

He was no less adamant on the radio Wednesday:

“We were dividing our selves–this multicultural push that we have is dividing us up into camps… The Indians, the biggest mistake they made was accommodating us, if you want. The Puritans. The Pilgrims that followed them. Columbus later. And it led to their destruction. Undeniably true. Their society, their way of life ended. And the beginning of the end started the day the pilgrims set foot on Plymouth Rock.”

The Tancredo Thanksgiving Tale:

25 November 2009
KHOW
8:50 pm

TANCREDO: But going back before that we have this fact that the pilgrims came here to the colonies. Well there was no colonies. They came here to Plymouth Rock, established a new existence for themselves, their families, et cetera. We have a tendency of thinking of them as coming here trying to find religious freedom. In fact it was a little bit different than that.

They had come from Holland, where there was a great deal of religious freedom and far too much for them as a matter of fact. They didn’t like it. They didn’t like living around other people who had a different attitude about God. And so they thought “Let’s get out of here and go where we can be what we want to be and don’t have to live by people who don’t think the way we do.” So it wasn’t really to find religious freedom. It was to establish a place where they could do what they wanted to do unencumbered and uninhibited.

Now the way the history books treat them today — of course they are ravaged by most history books and revisionists and people who want to create the worst possible image of the people who came here and started the country. So the question was Were they brave Christians who risked everything to gain religious freedom in the new world or were they fanatical European interlopers guilty of genocide?– which is the way they are portrayed in most history books today and the way that most children think of them. The schools have done this. The cult of multiculturalism has done this. So the question I guess is whether or not– I mean what is accurate?

They came in 1620, I think it was, about 100 of them. Only half that many survived the first winter in new England, so you had about and 50 of them left. They did make friends with Indians there. The tribe was the Wampanoag. They were befriended by them. They had a treaty for about 40 years as a matter of fact. Why? A little lesson here.

The Wampanoag saw them as an ally. They could gain their support against their historical enemy, the Narragansett . They were fighting with them a long time, they thought “Geez, these guys might help us out.” So they became friends with the colonists. Then a lot of things happened and they got in a fight. So after 40 years a lot of other stuff occurred. But that is what happened. And yes at a certain point they did get together and share some of the bounty of the land but that wasn’t the first year that they were there.

But at any rate, the point that is really interesting is– and a different take that I have on this than perhaps a lot of people on my side of the political isle, on the conservative side, who look at this whole thing and say “Why is it that everything in American– everything in our history is portrayed in the worst possible light?”

Well, see, about I don’t know 6 months ago I was speaking at American University and I was talking about the problems with the whole issue and the phenomena of multiculturalism. And I was talking about the fact that we are dividing ourselves up in this country. We were dividing our selves– this multiculturalist push that we have is dividing us up into camps– linguistic and ethnic and religious and familial. All of these things. The cult of multiculturalism is not something which unifies us. It is something that divides us, I was saying. And it is a bad thing and we should fight it.

But by the end of this speech– and by the way this crowed was not friendly: American University, probably 400 students. I would say 50 were on my side; 350 certainly were not– came in with these signs all in Spanish. I couldn’t read them. But they would just sit there holding these signs up. Then at the end they started screaming and yelling and getting obnoxious. But during the speech they were fairly pleasant, I mean they just sat there with these signs.

And then one guy screamed out at one point in time: “Well you know what we should have treated– the Indians should have treated us the same way that you are talking about treating other immigrants to the country.”

And I guess he was surprised by what he said. Because what I said was “You’re right. You are absolutely right. The Indians, the biggest mistake they made was accommodating us, if you want. The puritans. The pilgrims that followed them. Columbus later. And it led to their destruction. Undeniably true. Their society, their way of life ended. And the beginning of the end started the day the pilgrims set foot on Plymouth Rock. And I think it was Malcolm X that coined that phrase “We didn’t land on Plymouth Rock; Plymouth Rock landed on us.”

In fact, in Plymouth– in Massachusetts where Plymouth Rock supposedly exists, the town there has for the last 6 or 7 years– 5 or 7 years ago, I should say, put up a big sign that said “The Native Americans in this area don’t believe that we should be celebrating this day. They say it is the beginning of the end.” You would think that you would see something that said “Here is where the pilgrims landed.” No. It is this other thing to stress the fact that it was a bad deal for the Indians. Excuse me, Native Americans.

And you know what? It was. A lot of bad things happened to them. And they probably should have done something different. If they wanted to preserve their culture. They should have resisted the onslaught of these Westerners. They didn’t however except in scattered and uncoordinated opposition. They really didn’t do anything that was going to be significant enough to stop it. Here are 51 people. Okay. 51 people survived the first winter in Plymouth colony. And those 51 people, how could they have possibly overcome the advantages that the Native Americans there have just in numbers? The [pilgrims] could have been gone in the blink of an eye. Just like that. Why were they not? Why were they not. How come they were able to do what they did?

How were they able to prosper and expand, and more people came. And how come when Cortez came to the quote New World and landed and eventually ended up in what is now Mexico, of course, and was able to defeat a civilization that was centuries old–hundreds of thousands of–in fact millions of people made that civilization which he with 400 and some people conquered. How could this be?

Because of course the Indians who were here, the native Americans, the Aztecs and all the rest were not unified. They were enemies. They had been killing each other off because they were tribal and they were unable to get together and respond. Hence, they fell.

Now there were other reason of course. The cultural advantages–I mean the technological advantages of the people who came here. Let’s face it the people–the Native Americans had not even created the wheel. That is a problem when you face a civilization that comes with ships and guns.

[...]

They were, by the way this was not a society that was friendly to the land as we were led to believe. Remember that commercial of the Indian on a horse looking out over a, I don’t know, it was a highway in California or something. Trash was all over the place and this tear came to his eye. Let me tell you, my friends, the only reason that the trash wasn’t here when we got here was because nobody could make paper. It wasn’t because of this love for this pristine environment.

If you think that there is that within the Native American culture, please just go up and take a look at the roads at the Sioux Indian Reservation, the Crow reservation, almost any reservation in the United States. This is not– not necessarily, I mean some are better than others– but for the most part they are not models of a clean society. Lots of things happening here. And I don’t mean to put them down. I happen to really enjoy the Native American culture and appreciate what they were all about. But we have to be realistic about things and recognize that
when one culture, as I say, gets here with the technology that the West had at the time and faced a culture without that technology and there was a clash– probably no one is going to be too surprised which side
wins.

Now, the– but all that said– I am not telling you it is a good thing. It is just the way it was. And I think to tell you truth that perhaps people who live here today that were not, that did not come here voluntarily, I think that many of those people are lucky that they do live here even though their ancestors didn’t get here on the Mayflower. Mine certainly didn’t. But made the decision to come. But a lot of people didn’t. African Americans certainly. They for the most part, their relatives, their ancestors did not choose to come here.

Now the question that we have to ask ourselves and certainly African Americans have to ask themselves is: Are they better off as a result of the fact that they came under any conditions? And it does not mean for a second–let me reiterate– it does not for a second mean that slavery was a good thing, that we should be happy about it. It is a black mark on our society and all societies that have had it since the beginning of time. Or recorded time… It doesn’t mean it is good. Is someone better off today in the United States of America as a result that they came under–or are Native Americans better off as a result that people came here from the West and created the society that we have here? Or would they have been better off if that had not happened?

Everything is relative and depends on what you consider to be better, of course. But in terms of being thankful on Thanksgiving, I think probably everybody here could be thankful. No matter how they got here.

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