O'Reilly's "white, Christian, male power structure"

FOX News pundit Bill O'Reilly has mentioned something called the "white, Christian, male power structure" in relation to immigration several times this week on his television program, "The O'Reilly Factor." In particular, he has presented illegal immigration amnesty as being a threat to this structure. O'Reilly has raised more questions than he has answered, it seems. Just what is this mysterious "white, Christian, male power structure" and why is it so necessary to save it and why are some people so devoted to wanting to end it?

This all probably has something to do with the Founding Fathers and their legacy. They, like so many other great Americans, were white and male. Many of the leaders in finance and politics in America today remain white and male. The "Christian" part is definitely the hardest to accept; most political liars and financial cheats I've read about don't seem to have any particular deeply-felt religious beliefs at all despite them definitely being highly influential for a time. Similarly, the Deism followed by some of the Founding Fathers is not really Christianity as I understand it. Still, I can accept that some of the greatest, most influential Americans have been and continue to be white, male, and Christian...however, I don't think their greatness was necessarily due to their demographic, and I don't think America's continued success is necessarily dependent on it being ruled by white, male Christians. At the same time, I wouldn't want to see white, male Christians denied their right to influence their nation -- indeed, I'd expect to see this "class" continue to be very powerful for the foreseeable future.

The term "power structure" to me brings to mind what Aristotle wrote about those "born to serve" and those "born to rule." Seemingly, O'Reilly is saying that white, male, Christians are the ones born to rule in America. Where do people like Nancy Pelosi and Condoleezza Rice fit into this structure? They seem to wield great power at the present time, but don't belong to the class "born to rule." It seems like the very concept of a "white, Christian, male power structure" essentially marginalizes a sizable group of people who nominally at least wield a great deal of power: for instance, female business owners, black Congressmen, and several presidential candidates are all outside this structure. I have utterly no idea how O'Reilly classifies Jews and Mormons, but I would think they'd be outside O's "power structure" too. Surely a better debate could be sparked simply by O'Reilly saying, "This new wave of immigration threatens to change America, and I'm deeply disturbed by the nature of that change." The "white, male, Christian power structure" is a nebulous term that fails to reflect the distribution of power that currently exists in the United States.