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An American and Her Novel · Q & A, Hosted by Jay Nordlinger

0:00
SPEAKER_00: Hello, everyone, and welcome to Q&A.
0:03
SPEAKER_00: I'm Jay Nordlinger,
0:05
SPEAKER_00: and our guest is Linda Chavez,
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SPEAKER_00: whose life has been so multifaceted it takes a while to sum up.
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SPEAKER_00: She has held several governmental positions.
0:15
SPEAKER_00: She ran for the US Senate.
0:18
SPEAKER_00: She is the founder and chairman of the Center for Equal Opportunity.
0:22
SPEAKER_00: She is the vice chairman of the Renew Democracy Initiative.
0:27
SPEAKER_00: She is a policy analyst, a columnist,
0:30
A book author,
0:32
her autobiography,
0:34
An Unlikely Conservative,
0:35
is outstanding.
0:37
SPEAKER_00: She has now written a novel, The Silver Candlesticks.
0:41
SPEAKER_00: It has a subtitle, A Novel of the Spanish Inquisition.
0:46
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to hold up this book.
0:48
SPEAKER_00: That's what the cover looks like.
0:51
SPEAKER_00: Linda, good morning.
0:51
SPEAKER_00: Great to be with you, Jay.
0:54
SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much.
0:56
SPEAKER_00: Linda, I was thinking about how to describe you or sum you up.
0:59
SPEAKER_00: How do you do it?
1:01
SPEAKER_00: Someone meets you and says, hey, Linda or Ms.
1:03
SPEAKER_00: Chavez, what do you do?
1:06
SPEAKER_00: What do you say?
1:07
SPEAKER_00: It would take a while, I would think.
1:10
Well,
1:10
I don't go through everything that you just did,
1:12
which was very gracious of you.
1:14
SPEAKER_01: I basically say I'm a writer because in all of the positions I've had,
1:19
really starting with my first position on Capitol Hill back
1:22
when I was in my early
1:24
SPEAKER_01: 20s,
1:25
SPEAKER_01: that's what I did.
1:25
SPEAKER_01: I wrote.
1:27
SPEAKER_01: So I basically just say I'm a writer.
1:31
Well,
1:31
speaking of writing,
1:33
tell us about this novel,
1:35
how it came about and
1:37
SPEAKER_00: what it is.
1:38
SPEAKER_00: This is quite personal, I think.
1:40
SPEAKER_01: It is.
1:41
This is a fictionalized attempt to tell the story of my family
1:47
and how they came to America.
1:50
SPEAKER_01: It began when I was in graduate school,
1:54
SPEAKER_01: which is not as long ago as you might imagine,
1:56
SPEAKER_01: because I didn't get my MFA until I was 65 years old.
2:00
SPEAKER_01: But I was in graduate school at George Mason University in Virginia.
2:06
SPEAKER_01: And
2:07
And I received a call one day from producers of the television
2:13
show Finding Your
2:14
SPEAKER_01: Roots,
2:14
SPEAKER_01: which is on PBS.
2:16
Henry Louis Gates is the creator of that show,
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and it's been going on now for over 13 years.
2:24
SPEAKER_01: So I got a call and they said they wanted to profile me.
2:27
SPEAKER_01: And I was flattered.
2:28
SPEAKER_01: That was nice.
2:30
SPEAKER_01: And they went through my biography and my family history.
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SPEAKER_01: And because my family were a prominent family in New Mexico's history,
2:39
SPEAKER_01: I said,
2:39
SPEAKER_01: well,
2:40
SPEAKER_01: I really know most of my genealogy.
2:42
I go back to 1601 in the territory of New Mexico,
2:48
which was at that time a Spanish territory.
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SPEAKER_01: It was part of New Spain.
2:52
SPEAKER_01: Um,
2:53
SPEAKER_01: and so I said,
2:54
SPEAKER_01: I don't,
2:55
SPEAKER_01: you know,
2:56
SPEAKER_01: I don't know that I'll learn anything,
2:57
SPEAKER_01: but it will still be a fun journey.
3:00
SPEAKER_01: And they said, well, aren't there any mysteries in your family?
3:03
SPEAKER_01: And I said, well, yeah, my grandmother.
3:07
SPEAKER_01: My grandmother had a statue,
3:09
which is a very popular representation of the Christ child in
3:13
New Mexico called the
3:14
SPEAKER_01: Nino de Atocha.
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SPEAKER_01: And that statue hung on her shelves, but it was...
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SPEAKER_01: sometimes turned to the wall.
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SPEAKER_01: And I noticed that it seemed to be Friday nights.
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SPEAKER_01: My grandmother turned that statue to the wall.
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SPEAKER_01: So I said, there is that mystery.
3:35
SPEAKER_01: And then I said, the other thing is my, my,
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Grandparents on my father's side,
3:41
these two families kept marrying each other over 400 years.
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SPEAKER_01: And I thought,
3:46
SPEAKER_01: well,
3:46
SPEAKER_01: you know,
3:47
it might be because the Spanish were crazy about bloodlines in
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those days,
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SPEAKER_01: and they may want to have,
3:54
SPEAKER_01: you know,
3:55
SPEAKER_01: basically preserved children.
3:57
their Spanish heritage and not had mixing with Native Americans
4:02
in the population.
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SPEAKER_01: So that was what they began with in terms of mystery.
4:09
And lo and behold,
4:10
several weeks later,
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when I was in Sevilla,
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Spain,
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filming with the crew,
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SPEAKER_01: They put a book in front of me that was about the Spanish Inquisition.
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SPEAKER_01: And lo and behold, they showed my 11th great grandmother on the page.
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SPEAKER_01: And she apparently was under investigation by the Inquisition.
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SPEAKER_01: So that basically solved the two mysteries.
4:32
The Armijo family,
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which is the family that's featured in this novel and the
4:37
Chavez family.
4:39
SPEAKER_01: were probably both Jewish families, conversos, living in Spain.
4:44
And that may be why they preserved that intermarriage for
4:47
generations once they got
4:49
SPEAKER_01: to New Mexico.
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SPEAKER_01: And of course,
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SPEAKER_01: it explained that on the Sabbath,
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SPEAKER_01: my grandmother would not have wanted a false idol facing forward.
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SPEAKER_01: And so she turned it to the wall.
5:00
SPEAKER_00: Well, everyone talks about identity these days.
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SPEAKER_00: Did these discoveries affect your sense of, I don't know, yourself?
5:10
SPEAKER_00: Not to get gooey here.
5:13
SPEAKER_01: Well, they did.
5:13
SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's interesting.
5:15
I had always identified as Spanish,
5:17
which used to irritate a lot of people.
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SPEAKER_01: They say, oh, you're Mexican.
5:19
SPEAKER_01: You're Mexican-American.
5:21
SPEAKER_01: Well,
5:21
because my family came from Spain to New Mexico in the early
5:27
17th century and then
5:29
SPEAKER_01: early 18th century,
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SPEAKER_01: one branch,
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SPEAKER_01: And they, you know, I had always identified as Spanish.
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SPEAKER_01: And lo and behold,
5:39
SPEAKER_01: that is,
5:39
SPEAKER_01: in fact,
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SPEAKER_01: what showed up when they did the DNA testing and the genealogy.
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SPEAKER_01: But there was this Jewish angle.
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SPEAKER_01: So it turns out when I was 18 years old,
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I met a Jewish boy who was the son of my modern dance teacher
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at the University of
6:00
SPEAKER_01: Colorado.
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SPEAKER_01: She brought me home to meet him.
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SPEAKER_01: And 18 months later, we ended up getting married.
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SPEAKER_01: I converted to Judaism in order to have the marriage in the synagogue.
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And it turned out that my half sister,
6:14
whom I was not raised with,
6:15
also married a Jewish guy.
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SPEAKER_01: And my aunt in Chicago also married a Jew.
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So there did seem to be this attraction to Jewish men,
6:26
at least among the women in my family.
6:29
SPEAKER_00: What was it like to write a novel?
6:31
SPEAKER_00: I've never done so.
6:32
SPEAKER_00: Did you sort of hew to facts and then imagine and embellish?
6:38
SPEAKER_00: Did you have a playbook?
6:41
SPEAKER_01: Right.
6:41
SPEAKER_01: I mostly imagined.
6:44
I had facts that I wove into the story because thanks to the
6:48
Finding Your Roots
6:48
SPEAKER_01: team,
6:49
SPEAKER_01: I had lots of facts.
6:50
I had estate sales that described dresses of my 10th grade
6:55
grandmother,
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for example.
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SPEAKER_01: I had the manifest when my family left Spain.
7:01
So I had all the names,
7:02
not just my family,
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but my family were slave owners at the time.
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SPEAKER_01: They were wealthy merchants.
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SPEAKER_01: I had the slaves names.
7:12
SPEAKER_01: I had their children's names.
7:13
SPEAKER_01: So I took some of those kinds of facts.
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SPEAKER_01: And then I spent a great deal of time in Sevilla.
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SPEAKER_01: I went 10 or 12 times over the course of writing the novel,
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and I basically soaked in as much as I could of Spanish culture
7:29
of the sounds and
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SPEAKER_01: sights and smells and tastes of Spain,
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SPEAKER_01: and that was interwoven.
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SPEAKER_01: And I wrote and researched at the same time.
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SPEAKER_01: You know,
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SPEAKER_01: began reading books as I began writing about Judaism,
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SPEAKER_01: about the Converso experience and about the Inquisition.
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SPEAKER_01: But I continued to do research.
7:51
SPEAKER_01: And for example,
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SPEAKER_01: there was one dinner party and and I was having,
7:58
SPEAKER_01: you know,
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SPEAKER_01: a piece of meat skewered.
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SPEAKER_01: And I thought, well, what would have been skewered by a knife, a fork?
8:04
And I learned that Spain introduced forks into their culture in
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the 16th century.
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And so I did talk about this newfangled invention that was used
8:20
in the home.
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SPEAKER_01: So I did that kind of thing.
8:22
SPEAKER_01: I made some anachronistic mistakes, which thank
8:25
Thankfully,
8:25
my editor caught I had the main character Guillemar striking a
8:30
match.
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SPEAKER_01: Well, there were not matches in 16th century.
8:34
SPEAKER_01: So I had to go back and, you know, fix that when I was my editing.
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SPEAKER_01: But that that was basically the process.
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SPEAKER_00: Well, Linda, we've been talking about your paternal family and ancestors.
8:47
SPEAKER_00: And I'm looking at you, your beautiful face, darkish, but Irish.
8:54
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
8:57
SPEAKER_00: Irish face.
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SPEAKER_00: It is.
9:00
SPEAKER_01: It is.
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And I will tell you,
9:01
Jay,
9:02
that my first time in Ireland was two years ago.
9:05
SPEAKER_01: And I was like,
9:06
I was walking down the street in Westport and this gentleman
9:11
accosted me and
9:12
SPEAKER_01: started talking to me.
9:13
SPEAKER_01: He clearly thought I lived there.
9:15
And I think if I'd had my black hair then,
9:18
maybe not so much,
9:19
but it might even then.
9:21
SPEAKER_01: Everybody always says,
9:22
SPEAKER_01: well,
9:22
SPEAKER_01: you have these high cheekbones that must be from your father's side.
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SPEAKER_01: No, actually, no one in my father's family has high cheekbones.
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SPEAKER_01: The cheekbones are from my mother's Irish Celtic background.
9:33
SPEAKER_00: You know,
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SPEAKER_00: I met someone recently in the last few months,
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SPEAKER_00: a friend of my sister and brother-in-law's,
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SPEAKER_00: I think.
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SPEAKER_00: He, an older guy, but very youthful looking.
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SPEAKER_00: And I said, what explains this?
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SPEAKER_00: He said, Irish.
9:50
SPEAKER_01: Yes, it's the skin.
9:53
SPEAKER_01: You know, I don't know.
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SPEAKER_00: It's the skin.
9:55
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
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Maybe because of all the prejudice growing up,
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I was not one who got suntanned.
10:00
SPEAKER_01: It was,
10:00
SPEAKER_00: you know,
10:00
I didn't want to be all that dark skinned growing up in a
10:04
society in the 50s and
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SPEAKER_01: 60s.
10:06
SPEAKER_01: And so I stayed out of the sun.
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SPEAKER_01: But my mother...
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who lived to be 90,
10:10
had absolutely beautiful skin until the day she died.
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SPEAKER_00: And is your entire maternal ancestry Irish?
10:20
SPEAKER_01: It's all British Isles.
10:21
SPEAKER_01: It's Scots,
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SPEAKER_01: Irish,
10:24
SPEAKER_01: and probably a little bit of English,
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SPEAKER_01: but it's mostly Ireland,
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SPEAKER_01: both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland,
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SPEAKER_01: and tiny little bit of the genealogy showed Scotland,
10:37
SPEAKER_01: so.
10:38
SPEAKER_00: You really are an American.
10:40
SPEAKER_00: Yes, I'm a mutt.
10:41
SPEAKER_00: I am a mutt.
10:42
SPEAKER_00: Yes, yes.
10:44
SPEAKER_00: Thank goodness we have this national identity American.
10:47
SPEAKER_00: Yes, exactly.
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SPEAKER_00: It helps a lot of things.
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SPEAKER_01: Do you think I'm a heritage American by the new standard?
10:53
SPEAKER_01: I'm not sure.
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SPEAKER_01: My family's certainly been here long enough.
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SPEAKER_01: On both sides, my mother's family came in the 1600s as well.
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SPEAKER_01: The Scots-Irish and Scottish part came in the 1600s.
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SPEAKER_00: I'm not entirely sure about you.
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SPEAKER_00: I think you're suspicious.
11:09
SPEAKER_00: Your views make you suspect.
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SPEAKER_00: You are a woman who expresses a pluribus unum.
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SPEAKER_00: Linda, Center for Equal Opportunity.
11:24
SPEAKER_00: What does equal opportunity mean?
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SPEAKER_00: It's such an important concept.
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It means that we are endowed by creator with a certain dignity
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as human beings.
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SPEAKER_01: And in our form of government and under our constitution and our laws,
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SPEAKER_01: what is supposed to happen is that you're supposed to be judged by God.
11:50
your behavior,
11:52
by your effort,
11:54
by your talents,
11:55
but not by your skin color.
11:57
And so that was the goal of the civil rights movement as it was
12:03
envisioned initially.
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SPEAKER_01: Martin Luther King Jr.,
12:08
talked about being judged by the content of our character,
12:11
not the color of our skin.
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SPEAKER_01: And for the first,
12:16
SPEAKER_01: I would say almost decade after the Civil Rights Act was passed,
12:20
SPEAKER_01: that's the way it worked.
12:22
The laws said that you could not discriminate against people
12:25
based on the color of their skin.
12:27
SPEAKER_01: And that was the way the federal government tried to enforce them.
12:30
SPEAKER_01: But along the way, starting really in the 70s,
12:34
we began to look not so much at opportunity and equal
12:37
opportunity as at equal results.
12:40
SPEAKER_01: And if you're going to have equal results,
12:42
SPEAKER_01: since people are not,
12:44
SPEAKER_01: in fact,
12:44
SPEAKER_01: endowed with the same talents,
12:46
SPEAKER_01: people don't necessarily put the same amount of effort into what they do,
12:50
they're going to be different results regardless of the color
12:53
of your skin.
12:55
SPEAKER_01: And so when you begin to try to fool around with the results,
12:58
SPEAKER_01: you have to use some pretty aggressive methods.
13:02
SPEAKER_01: And that,
13:03
SPEAKER_01: unfortunately,
13:04
SPEAKER_01: is a way that,
13:05
SPEAKER_01: in my view,
13:06
SPEAKER_01: the civil rights movement went astray through the 70s,
13:10
SPEAKER_01: 80s,
13:11
SPEAKER_01: 90s into the 21st century.
13:13
SPEAKER_01: And ironically,
13:15
it's really the Supreme Court decision in Students for Fair
13:19
Admissions against
13:20
Harvard that basically put that on the right track that said
13:25
that we have to have
13:26
SPEAKER_01: the same rules
13:28
SPEAKER_01: They need to apply to people regardless of who they are,
13:31
SPEAKER_01: where they come from,
13:31
SPEAKER_01: what the color of their skin is.
13:33
And we can't have one set of rules that apply to one group
13:37
that's in favor and a
13:38
SPEAKER_01: different set of rules to those who are out of favor.
13:41
SPEAKER_01: Because as it turns out,
13:44
Blacks were horribly discriminated against for much of our
13:47
nation's history.
13:49
SPEAKER_01: And rather than just stopping discriminating and judging people equally,
13:53
SPEAKER_01: people tried to to make the balance what they thought it should be.
13:58
SPEAKER_01: And so they started applying different tests, different rules.
14:03
And that is not the way to really adhere to what the civil
14:07
rights movement was all about.
14:11
SPEAKER_00: Linda,
14:11
probably most people wouldn't think of you as a civil rights
14:14
activist or Ward
14:15
SPEAKER_00: Connerly as a civil rights activist or advocate.
14:18
SPEAKER_00: But in my book, you are.
14:20
SPEAKER_00: Well, thank you.
14:22
SPEAKER_00: That term should be broader than people think.
14:25
SPEAKER_00: Linda, I suppose most of us think of the American founding.
14:30
SPEAKER_00: I'm not talking about the 1770s.
14:34
SPEAKER_00: I suppose most people think the beginning of this project,
14:38
SPEAKER_00: the New World,
14:38
SPEAKER_00: as a New England English affair.
14:40
SPEAKER_00: I wonder if you think of it as a southwestern Spanish affair as well.
14:45
SPEAKER_00: I do.
14:46
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
14:46
SPEAKER_01: of course,
14:47
because I began school in New Mexico and learned a lot of New
14:50
Mexico history,
14:52
SPEAKER_01: and I learned it in my family.
14:54
SPEAKER_01: I mean,
14:54
SPEAKER_01: we had stories,
14:56
SPEAKER_01: you know,
14:56
SPEAKER_01: my relatives,
14:58
SPEAKER_01: the Armijo family who were the subject of my novel.
15:02
SPEAKER_01: They rose to prominence, the last territorial governor.
15:06
SPEAKER_01: of New Mexico was a man named Manuel Armijo.
15:09
SPEAKER_01: So I knew all of that.
15:11
SPEAKER_01: And of course,
15:13
SPEAKER_01: the United States came into being with the Declaration of Independence,
15:17
SPEAKER_01: which we will be celebrating the 250th anniversary this year.
15:21
In 1776,
15:23
by that time,
15:24
my family had been in what is now the United States,
15:28
almost 200 years.
15:30
SPEAKER_00: Talk about a so-called heritage American.
15:32
SPEAKER_00: Right.
15:32
SPEAKER_00: But I know what you and I believe, though.
15:34
SPEAKER_00: We don't think it has to do with blood.
15:36
SPEAKER_00: We think you're a heritage of American if you embrace our heritage,
15:40
SPEAKER_00: which is to say liberal democracy.
15:42
SPEAKER_01: That is exactly right.
15:45
SPEAKER_00: Linda, tough question.
15:47
SPEAKER_00: Probably not probably.
15:48
SPEAKER_00: Definitely unanswerable.
15:51
Do you think the world,
15:52
do you think humanity at large will have a Jew thing forever?
15:55
SPEAKER_00: Century after century,
15:58
SPEAKER_00: millennium after millennium,
15:59
SPEAKER_00: will it will they always be hung up on the Jews?
16:03
SPEAKER_01: You know,
16:03
it is really a fascinating question because it is often
16:06
described as the oldest
16:08
SPEAKER_01: prejudice.
16:09
SPEAKER_01: And I was listening to a podcast recently by a woman.
16:13
SPEAKER_01: who wrote a book about the Jewish Jesus,
16:17
who described the fact that Jesus certainly didn't think he was
16:20
starting a new
16:21
religion when he was out preaching to the multitudes in Galilee
16:25
and elsewhere.
16:25
SPEAKER_01: And even St.
16:26
SPEAKER_01: Paul,
16:29
um who was one of the the first writers of what we now consider
16:33
the new testament
16:35
um was a jew and thought of you know he he thought he was when
16:40
he was writing his
16:40
various letters he was writing to fellow jews in in many
16:44
communities and sometimes
16:45
to to um people gentiles and or original sense in the original
16:51
sense strangers
16:52
SPEAKER_01: foreigners right right right um
16:55
But very soon there was prejudice,
16:59
but apparently there was prejudice even before this split.
17:03
There was prejudice against Jews,
17:06
certainly by the Romans,
17:09
the Greeks,
17:09
maybe,
17:10
I don't know.
17:11
SPEAKER_01: But it's been around a very long time.
17:13
SPEAKER_01: I will say about the Spanish Inquisition,
17:16
SPEAKER_01: it is the longest sustained persecution of the Jews in history.
17:22
because it was state concert and i didn't know that yeah it was
17:25
it went until the
17:27
19th century it didn't end until like the 1850s uh and it was
17:32
here in the seems
17:32
like yesterday yes it was here in the new world it was uh there
17:36
were auto defes
17:37
with the burning of jews in mexico uh in fact the theory lord
17:43
the reason my family
17:44
SPEAKER_01: and others um
17:45
who were converso Jews who came to the new world ended up in
17:49
New Mexico was that
17:50
SPEAKER_01: was about as far away from the reach of the inquisition as you could get.
17:55
SPEAKER_01: That was the outer most of the Spanish empire in North America.
18:01
SPEAKER_01: And so it was a long distance from Santa Fe to Mexico City.
18:09
SPEAKER_00: Goodness gracious.
18:12
SPEAKER_00: So much to ask you about.
18:15
SPEAKER_00: I want to ask you about this.
18:17
SPEAKER_00: Some friends of ours,
18:18
SPEAKER_00: of yours and mine,
18:21
SPEAKER_00: people whose views are like ours,
18:24
SPEAKER_00: have always been conservatives,
18:27
SPEAKER_00: don't,
18:27
SPEAKER_00: here's that identity thing again,
18:28
don't identify as conservatives anymore because of the abuse of
18:33
that term and its
18:35
SPEAKER_00: adoption by nationalist populist and worse.
18:42
SPEAKER_00: People say, what are you to me?
18:44
SPEAKER_00: And I give different answers.
18:45
SPEAKER_00: But I might give a quick set of views.
18:48
SPEAKER_00: And I might say, you label them as you like.
18:52
SPEAKER_00: Are you a self-conscious conservative still?
18:56
SPEAKER_00: I am.
18:58
SPEAKER_01: I am.
18:59
SPEAKER_01: I am.
18:59
Let me just mention the title of your autobiography again,
19:02
because it's such a wonderful book.
19:04
SPEAKER_00: An Unlikely Conservative.
19:07
And,
19:07
you know,
19:08
Jay,
19:08
it's very interesting because that book was widely reviewed.
19:11
SPEAKER_01: And I can't remember which of the reviews mentioned that,
19:15
SPEAKER_01: you know,
19:15
SPEAKER_01: this title was ridiculous and unlikely conservative.
19:19
Because if you read the autobiography,
19:21
she was clearly a conservative all her life.
19:24
SPEAKER_01: Well,
19:25
SPEAKER_01: that would have been a surprise to Don Edwards,
19:28
who was chairman of the Subcommittee on Civil Rights and the
19:31
Judiciary Committee
19:32
SPEAKER_01: back in the Watergate days.
19:34
SPEAKER_01: And,
19:35
SPEAKER_01: you know,
19:35
SPEAKER_01: back when I was working at the Democratic National Committee,
19:39
they would have probably been surprised to learn that I was a
19:42
conservative.
19:42
SPEAKER_01: And at the AFT?
19:45
SPEAKER_01: And at the AFT, yeah.
19:48
SPEAKER_01: But in a certain sense...
19:49
SPEAKER_00: I should just say for our listeners,
19:50
SPEAKER_00: American Federation of Teachers,
19:52
SPEAKER_00: correct?
19:53
SPEAKER_01: Right.
19:54
SPEAKER_01: But, you know, it's...
19:56
SPEAKER_01: It's true, in a sense.
19:58
SPEAKER_01: I was conservative in my manner, in my demeanor, in my worldview.
20:05
SPEAKER_01: I wanted to conserve the best of the past.
20:09
SPEAKER_01: And there was a certain reverence for history.
20:14
SPEAKER_01: And so that, I think, was important.
20:17
SPEAKER_01: And so I still consider myself a conservative.
20:21
SPEAKER_01: I make a big differentiation between conservative and MAGA.
20:26
SPEAKER_01: I am definitely not MAGA.
20:29
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
20:30
SPEAKER_00: Well, it's a big topic.
20:34
SPEAKER_00: Linda, you spent much of your policy analyzing life on immigrations.
20:41
I am an immigration restrictionist,
20:44
as is anyone who is not for open borders.
20:48
SPEAKER_00: But I hate, and hate's a strong word, and I use it with forethought.
20:53
SPEAKER_00: I hate this current hostility to immigration and immigrants.
21:00
SPEAKER_00: I hate it, hate it.
21:03
SPEAKER_00: And this hostility is not confined to illegal immigration either.
21:08
SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
21:09
SPEAKER_01: So back in 2015,
21:12
when Donald Trump came down the escalator and announced his
21:18
presidential bid,
21:19
I wrote an article which was published in commentary magazine
21:23
called Donald Trump's
21:25
SPEAKER_01: America.
21:26
SPEAKER_01: And in it,
21:27
I warned that while it seemed that Trump's target was on
21:32
illegal immigration and
21:33
SPEAKER_01: stopping the flow of people
21:35
SPEAKER_01: illegally into the country over our southern border.
21:39
SPEAKER_01: But in fact, it was much, much broader than that.
21:41
And that what he really wanted to do was to move back to an
21:46
early 20th century idea
21:48
SPEAKER_01: of restricting immigration.
21:50
And he wanted it done on the basis of the countries that people
21:55
came from,
21:55
as it was done after the first restrictions on immigration were
21:59
put in place in the
22:00
SPEAKER_01: early 20th century.
22:02
SPEAKER_01: It was entirely based on country quotas.
22:05
SPEAKER_01: And that it was not just about controlling illegal immigration.
22:11
SPEAKER_01: And we're seeing that now in this administration.
22:15
SPEAKER_01: He is cutting the number of visas.
22:18
SPEAKER_01: They talk about H1 visas.
22:21
They are going to give a platinum card or whatever to any
22:25
person who can bring a
22:26
SPEAKER_01: million dollars,
22:27
SPEAKER_01: pay a million dollars to come to the United States.
22:30
SPEAKER_01: Now,
22:31
SPEAKER_01: there is something to be said for Canada's system,
22:35
SPEAKER_01: which is entirely skills-based and,
22:38
SPEAKER_01: in fact,
22:39
does reward people who are willing to invest in Canada a
22:43
certain amount of money.
22:44
SPEAKER_01: And we could have that in place.
22:46
SPEAKER_01: But that is not to say that we have to restrict
22:51
SPEAKER_01: the countries where people come from to places like Scandinavia,
22:56
SPEAKER_01: frankly,
22:56
there aren't a whole lot of Scandinavians who want to come here
22:58
these days.
22:59
SPEAKER_01: They did in the 19th century.
23:01
And by the way,
23:02
they were as reviled as Central Americans and Mexicans are
23:06
today.
23:06
SPEAKER_01: So this idea that
23:08
You know,
23:08
oh,
23:08
gee,
23:09
the reason we don't like immigrants today is because they're
23:11
brown skin.
23:11
No,
23:12
we don't like them even when they were coming from northern
23:14
Europe in the 19th century.
23:15
SPEAKER_01: It's just sort of the way it goes.
23:17
We're always happy to think of ourselves as an immigrant nation
23:22
when we're talking
23:22
SPEAKER_01: about our grandparents and great grandparents generation.
23:26
SPEAKER_01: No matter what time we're living in,
23:27
the people we're coming across now are never quite the
23:31
Americans we want them to
23:32
SPEAKER_01: be.
23:34
SPEAKER_00: A lot of people speak about merit and merit-based immigration.
23:38
SPEAKER_00: Got to have merit, they say.
23:40
SPEAKER_00: Well, I think of our ancestors, so many of them, what were their merits?
23:45
SPEAKER_00: Daring,
23:47
SPEAKER_00: desperation maybe,
23:49
SPEAKER_00: determination,
23:51
SPEAKER_00: pluck,
23:52
SPEAKER_00: grit,
23:54
SPEAKER_00: wanting to be in a free country,
23:58
SPEAKER_00: have a better life,
23:59
SPEAKER_00: have greater opportunity,
24:02
SPEAKER_00: I mean,
24:02
SPEAKER_00: I know a very prominent businessman in Madison,
24:05
SPEAKER_00: Wisconsin,
24:06
SPEAKER_00: of Norwegian origin,
24:07
SPEAKER_00: and he spoke about his forebear in America.
24:11
SPEAKER_00: This fellow was the victim of primogeniture.
24:13
SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure how to pronounce that word, by the way.
24:15
SPEAKER_00: I think that is it.
24:16
SPEAKER_00: He wasn't the eldest son.
24:17
SPEAKER_00: He didn't want to work as a serf to his older brother's entire life.
24:22
SPEAKER_00: He set out for America to be his own man.
24:26
SPEAKER_00: That, to me, is a can I believe in wealth now.
24:29
SPEAKER_00: I'm for, by the way, why should the fancy people come here?
24:32
SPEAKER_00: Why should the lawyers and the engineers and the doctors,
24:36
SPEAKER_00: they're fine where they are,
24:37
SPEAKER_00: aren't they?
24:37
SPEAKER_00: Correct, right.
24:39
You know,
24:39
but other people- But Jay,
24:41
you know,
24:41
you hit on a very important point.
24:43
SPEAKER_01: There is a reason that immigrants,
24:45
SPEAKER_01: no matter where they come from,
24:47
SPEAKER_01: no matter what country,
24:49
SPEAKER_01: I won't use the president's foul language.
24:52
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, asshole.
24:53
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, right.
24:54
SPEAKER_01: But the fact is immigrants are self-selected for exactly-
24:58
The human characteristics,
25:00
the human capital that you're referring to,
25:03
it takes a lot of nerve.
25:05
SPEAKER_01: It takes a lot of planning.
25:07
SPEAKER_01: It takes a lot of,
25:09
SPEAKER_01: you know,
25:10
adventurousness to set off for a world where you don't speak
25:13
the language.
25:14
SPEAKER_01: You don't necessarily know anybody there.
25:17
SPEAKER_01: You're taking a huge risk.
25:19
SPEAKER_00: And may I add, it's unnatural.
25:21
SPEAKER_00: And I believe I mean that in a biological sense.
25:23
SPEAKER_00: It's unnatural to leave hearth and home.
25:26
uh there's got to be a reason and if we have it made why leave
25:31
right right so
25:32
that's the reason they do so well is because they have that
25:35
human capital and even
25:36
if they come here as many mexicans did uh in the 20th century
25:40
late 20th century
25:41
with a sixth grade education on average over time their
25:46
children in fact do just as
25:48
well as the children of people like yourself and myself whose
25:52
family's been here
25:53
SPEAKER_01: forever
25:56
SPEAKER_00: Linda, here at the end, I want to say this.
25:58
SPEAKER_00: I am not an alarmist.
26:02
SPEAKER_00: I hope I'm not a drama queen.
26:05
SPEAKER_00: There is a great deal of ruin in a nation, Adam Smith said.
26:10
SPEAKER_00: But I'm going to ask you a serious question.
26:13
SPEAKER_00: Here in 2026, the 250th anniversary, are we losing America?
26:20
SPEAKER_01: Well, of course, we've heard that before.
26:22
SPEAKER_00: I know.
26:23
That's another thing that embarrasses me because in every
26:25
generation,
26:26
I know.
26:27
SPEAKER_01: I will tell you,
26:28
I watched an incident that occurred quite recently where a
26:34
woman was shot by Border
26:36
SPEAKER_01: Patrol agents as she tried to pull away in her car.
26:40
SPEAKER_01: It turned out the woman was an American citizen.
26:43
and she had been parked in a way to sort of block the exit of
26:48
other cars.
26:50
SPEAKER_01: But I saw that woman shot, and then I watched the tape.
26:57
SPEAKER_01: They were taped from two different angles, watched it all.
27:00
Then I heard the President of the United States and the
27:03
Secretary of the Department
27:05
SPEAKER_01: of Homeland Security described what happened,
27:08
SPEAKER_01: and it was an absolute lie.
27:11
SPEAKER_01: And I thought there just is not a time.
27:14
SPEAKER_01: It's certainly not my memory and I'm old.
27:16
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to be 79 in June.
27:19
SPEAKER_01: I've never ever witnessed, not during the Nixon years, never.
27:23
a president or a department secretary stand up before the
27:28
American people and tell
27:30
SPEAKER_01: bald-faced lies,
27:32
SPEAKER_01: particularly when there is documentary evidence to show the contrary.
27:37
SPEAKER_01: I've never seen that before.
27:38
SPEAKER_01: So I do think we are in a different place.
27:41
SPEAKER_01: I think the norms have been broken.
27:43
SPEAKER_01: And it's not just about the laws and the Constitution.
27:47
Our country survives because of norms,
27:50
because we have certain norms of behavior.
27:53
SPEAKER_01: And this administration has shattered them all.
27:57
SPEAKER_00: Ladies and gentlemen,
27:59
SPEAKER_00: we've been listening to Linda Chavez,
28:01
SPEAKER_00: novelist,
28:03
SPEAKER_00: in addition to other things.
28:05
SPEAKER_00: This is the book, The Silver Candlesticks.
28:09
SPEAKER_00: I'm Jay Nordlinger doing Q&A.
28:12
SPEAKER_00: Linda, I have loved you forever since before we met.
28:16
SPEAKER_00: Since I was a mere reader.
28:19
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for being you.
28:20
SPEAKER_00: And I'll say in this day and age, you'll know what I mean.
28:23
SPEAKER_00: Remaining you.
28:24
SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much.
28:26
SPEAKER_00: So long, everyone.
28:27
SPEAKER_00: Until next time.