On President Bush's six-year watch, the illegal alien population increased at least by 7 million, a criminal negligence of the presidential duty to guard America's borders. Our fox leaders sing the praise of democracy, but they have been running an ethnokakistocratic kleptocorporatocracy. How else to explain that piece of treasonous twaddle that the upper chamber of the self-proclaimed "world's greatest deliberative body" in collusion with the "leader of the free world" have cooked up in Washington?
Part 2 — When Reynard guards the henhouse
The picture above is from an 1869 children's story, Reynard the Fox; The Crafty Courtier. In medieval European folklore, the trickster fox was known under appellations like Reynard or Reynardt. In France, tales of a crafty fox named Renart started appearing in the late 12th century. They would become such an essential part of the culture that renard was ultimately incorporated into French as 'fox.'
As I watched over the past month the internment of the remains of the country's future carried out in Saudi-powered homes on Korean-import flat screens bought with Japanese savers' money by a Chinese-clothed audience knocking back Dos Equis con nachos under the leadership of the man from Kennebunkport and the man from Hyannisport, it occurred to me that we have elected crafty courtier foxes to watch over a henhouse in which we are the hens.
Others had similar impressions but expressed them differently. Peggy Noonan, who normally writes peans to immigration, called the amnesty bill a big dirty ball of mischief, malfeasance and mendacity. Newt Gingrich wrote: This proposed agreement is a disaster of the first order, and it will severely cripple America for the foreseeable future. And U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions said:
It is clear the people who drafted this legislation had an agenda and the agenda was not to meet the expectations of the American people. The agenda was to create a facade and appearance of enforcement, an appearance of toughness in some instances. When you get into the meat of the provisions and get into the bill and study it, tucked away here and there are laws that eviscerate and eliminate the real effectiveness of those provisions. It was carefully done and deliberately done. This is a bill that should not become law.
What else can one say that hasn't been said about that piece of treasonous twaddle that the upper chamber of the self-proclaimed "world's greatest deliberative body" in collusion with the "leader of the free world" have cooked up in Washington? Two Latin words shine light into murkiness: Cui Bono?
There are seven main beneficiaries, in addition to factions of the electorate, e.g. "Hispanics," who will reap the fruits of majority, one day. The motives of the first five are easy for encapsulation:
1. The Wall Street Journal / "Business Republican" crowd, characterized by Victor Davis Hanson on the NRO blog as, [T]he amoral, nationless corporate right wants cheap labor any way possible, the government to pay for the ensuing entitlement costs, cares little about the stability of its own country, and figures its own elites have enough privilege to shield themselves from the social consequences.
2. The New York Times/"Hamptons Democrat" crowd that, through its support of amnesty, gets to indulge its moral vanity while securing a supply of cheap nannies, gardeners, and Chardonnay grape crushers, while evading all the negative consequences of amnesty. After all, the liberal grandees, like their Republican counterparts, do not live in the crime-ridden neighborhoods of Third-World immigrants, or consume public services, from schooling to medical care to prisons, that are reeling under a deluge of legal and illegal Third-World "clients."
3. The Race Industry that, as Victor Davis Hanson has described, feels that a new Latino majority is, with just a few million unassimilated more, almost here in American Southwest, and it will require an entire cadre of special interest, bloc politicians, academics, and journalists, as well as providing some sort of psychological tweaking for an array of past perceived ethnic grievances.
4. The Democratic Party, which increases its client-voter base in direct proportion to the number of immigrants in the US, particularly in the poor, nonskilled category like the illegal aliens. The delusions of the strategists of the Stupid Party notwithstanding, it's a near certainty that with the legalization of the 12-20 million illegals, and the resulting chain migration of tens of millions more, predominantly semi-literate Mexicans, all compounded by their high fertility rates, the Evil Party will assume a permanent ruling franchise in the US.
5. Mexico, which gets $20 billion a year from its US subjects' remittances. The Mexican Hispanic (i.e. predominantly white) ruling and deeply corrupt oligarchy gets a social pressure release valve, it gets vast influence on US politics through the vote of its subjects in US elections, tens of millions of indigent Mexicans get American jobs making them 20 times more than they could get in Mexico if they could get jobs in Mexico. Looks like a win-win deal if you are driven in a chauffeured car in either Mexico City or Washington DC.
The next two beneficiaries, the President of the United States and the US legislature, are more difficult to analyze correctly. The former will be the subject of the remainder of this article, whereas the latter we will leave to a separate treatment, later.
6. President George W. Bush – an enigma that lends itself only to speculative interpretations. In her WSJ column on June 1, Peggy Noonan described her "sense of separation from the Bush administration," starting with the President's January 2005 utopian declaration that, '[I]t is now the policy of the United States to eradicate tyranny in the world,' and 'the survival of American liberty is dependent on the liberty of every other nation.'
For me, there has been much more on the separation side, and it started much earlier. There was the staggering incompetence in non-preparing the Iraq war and non-preparing for Katrina emergencies hypothetical or actual; the aggressive implementation of "affirmative action;" successful or foiled attempts to place ill-suited cronies in important posts, e.g. Harriet Miers, Alberto Gonzalez, Julie Myers, "Good Job Brownie" etc.; Big Government Conservatism; the risibly Wobegonish 'No Child Left Behind;' the runaway printing presses at the Federal Reserve, the biggest government budget in history; the slo-mo destruction of the US dollar; the frozen veto pen; and more.
But my overriding malaise stems from feeling a shallowness in the President: smarts but no wisdom, intelligence but no erudition, feeling but no thinking, audacity but no courage, patriotism but cultural deracination from the patria. Here is how Noonan characterizes her own discomfort:
[T]he great shortcoming of this White House, the great thing it is missing, is simple wisdom. Just wisdom — a sense that they did not invent history, that this moment is not all there is, that man has lived a long time and there are things that are true of him, that maturity is not the same thing as cowardice, that personal loyalty is not a good enough reason to put anyone in charge of anything, that the way it works in politics is a friend becomes a loyalist becomes a hack, and actually at this point in history we don't need hacks.
In a speech on May 29th, Mr. Bush characterized the controversy surrounding the Senate Amnesty Bill as follows:
This reform is complex. There's a lot of emotions around this issue. Convictions run deep. Those determined to find fault with this bill will always be able to look at a narrow slice of it and find something they don't like. If you want to kill the bill, if you don't want to do what's right for America, you can pick one little aspect out of it, you can use it to frighten people. Or you can show leadership and solve this problem once and for all.
In his NRO blog response, the President's former apologist, David Frum, included this reader's letter:
[Bush] always says inarticulate, incoherent stuff similar to this when he’s speaking off the cuff. And he always put groups on the defensive, by claiming that their desires are somehow “un-American." [H]e can’t imagine anyone who doesn’t share his views having a good faith desire to do what’s good for America. Why? Because he’s an under-read, unreflective solipsist who conflates his own wishes with missions of world historical significance.
The blogger, Randall Parker, wrote under the heading: Bush Lies On Immigration Amnesty: Bush keeps widening the gap between what is good for the nation and what he tries to implement as policy. When preceded by an assertion of lying, this widening the gap could be interpreted as deliberate sabotage of the United States.
Mickey Kaus ascribed Bush's motivation to the insane, Chalabi-esque fantasies behind this bill (snip) that it will produce more net Latino votes for Republicans. So just among these few pundits we find attributions of stupidity, banality, solipsism, pig-headedness, intentional sabotage, lying, misguided political gamble — and there have been numerous other scathing comments by public thinkers.
That presidential speech, in Glynco, Georgia, contained so many more lies, dangerous delusions and disconnects with reality that it would take a book to list and refute them all. We will quote just a few here, with relative comments about SB 1384 based on analyses by U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions, Heritage Foundation's Robert Rector, law professor Kris Kobach, National Review's John Fonte, and English First executive director, Jim Boulet, Jr.
The President referred to the most ludicrous, nation-destroying bill that the US Senate has produced in a least a generation as, [A] comprehensive immigration plan in place that makes it more likely we can enforce our border and, at the same time, uphold the great traditions of — immigrant traditions of the United States of America. He repeats the same later in the speech, [M]y answer to the skeptics is, give us a chance to fix the problems in a comprehensive way that enforces our border.
One does not know whether to laugh or to cry. Of course, Mr. Bush has had six years in which to "enforce the border." Nor is there any connection between the enforcement and the amnesty charade. The connection is one that the President has created, holding the American citizen, who overwhelmingly desires strict border enforcement, hostage. You want your borders? I want my amnesty; I am offering to trade.
As to giving the government a chance, it has already been given for the 21 years since the 1986 amnesty bill. Between 2000 and 2006 alone, the illegal alien population grew from 6.7 million (per Pew Hispanic Center) to at least 13-14 million (per Professor George Borjas) not to speak of estimates of 20 million. On President Bush's six-year watch, therefore, the illegal alien population increased at least by 7 million, i.e. it doubled. This amounts to a deliberate, and in view of the enemy jihadi component of the border crossers, some would say, criminal, negligence of the presidential duty to guard America's borders.
Proceeding further in George W. Bush's speech we find:
We are a nation of laws, and we expect people to keep the laws. And if they break the laws, there will be a consequence.
This is pitiful drivel. The amnesty consequences for breaking the law, that Mr. Bush touts, include a complete waiver of back taxes, and a lifetime subsidy from the American taxpayer at approximately $20,000 per family per year, according to Robert Rector, who estimates the lifetime costs for the Senate amnesty at $2.6 trillion.
There's a focused, concerted effort to enforce our border.
President Bush repeated this sentence multiple times in the speech, in different permutations. But Mr. Bush has been intentionally asleep at the switch since assuming the presidency, and started engaging in some window dressing efforts only a few months ago, as a smokescreen for the real action, which is the perpetuation of a massive transfer of the lowest Mexican social stratum to the United States.
If you're serious about securing our borders, it makes sense to support legislation that makes enforcement our highest priority. And that's what this bill does. And then: The first step to comprehensive reform must be to enforce immigration laws at the borders and at work sites across America. And this is what this bill does . . . We're going to build miles of state-of-the-art fencing.
These are not just lies but contemptible lies. SB 1384 contains faked enforcement "triggers." A few thousand more Border Patrol agents are supposed to be hired (not deployed), and 370 miles of the already authorized 854 miles of border fence are supposed to be built. Then the issue of Z visas will start. To see how such promises can be trusted, it suffices to hear Congressman Duncan Hunter account how, of the 854 miles of fence signed into law in October 2006, six months later the government has built only two miles.
Moreover, SB 1384 is weak on employer verification. There are no provisions for a biometric identification card. Massive fraud is baked in the cake, with a wink and a nod.
It seems to me it makes sense to give those people a chance to come and work here on a temporary basis. This bill says, temporary, it means temporary. Repeated in various forms, e.g. A temporary worker plan, that is truly temporary.
A major lie. The Bush/Kennedy bill has no provisions for enforcing the exit of these temporary workers from the country.
I know there are some people out there hollering and saying, kick them out. That is simply unrealistic. It won't work.
Another lie; there are no such people, at least not people who count and have a public voice. Even the most radical opponents of the amnesty advocate nothing more than shutting the border for good, and letting the illegal population dwindle by attrition.
Amnesty is forgiveness for being here without any penalties — that's what amnesty is. I oppose it. The authors — many of the authors of this bill oppose it. This bill is not an amnesty bill. If you want to scare the American people, what you say is, the bill is an amnesty bill. It's not an amnesty bill. That's empty political rhetoric, trying to frighten our fellow citizens.
It's a lie, repeated six times in one paragraph. Rich Lowry, the National Review editor, commented on this paragraph, How stupid do these people think we are.
Let me explain how it works. Under the bill, those who want to stay in our country who have been here can apply for a Z visa. At some point in time, those who are coming to work will get temporary work visas. Those who have been here already can apply for a Z visa. To receive the visa, illegal workers must admit they violated the law and pay a meaningful penalty, pass a strict background check, hold a job, maintain a clean record, and eventually earn English — learn English. That's how it works.
This is hallucinatory mincemeat hash pie studded with candied prevarications. Illegal aliens would be entitled to receive probationary legal status within 24 hours from application. The "strict background check" must, under the bill, be performed in 24 hours, after which any petitioning illegal alien would be entitled to receive probationary legal status. And that's despite the alien's identity being easily counterfeit, as we require no passports of these people. All this at a time when every couple of weeks enemy illegal aliens are discovered plotting to blow up American people and installations.
The agency that would be performing this, the old INS pig now wearing the ICE and CIS lipstick under the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), is so notoriously dysfunctional that it alone could provide enough material for a late night comedy show. This is the agency that sent Mohammed Atta's flight school student visa approval six months after he definitively concluded his pilot's career. An agency that takes four years to process a legitimate green card application and that cannot find the 600,000 aliens in the US who are under orders of deportation.
The key to unlocking the full promise of America is the ability to speak English. That's the language of our country. If you can speak English in this country and work hard and have dreams, you can make it. That's the great story of America. I believe it's true today like it was true yesterday, as well.
This is risible Boob Bait for Bubba. The full dimensions of the lie emerge in light of Mr. Bush's August 27, 2000 speech, quoted below. Mr. Bush misrepresents the "English" issue in a way opposite to the one in which SB 1384 actually treats it. For Section 702 Declaration of English affirms all legal and Presidential Executive Orders precedents related to the status of English in America. By affirming such precedent, the bill enshrines into law multilingualism, including its worst manifestation, President Clinton's Executive Order 13166. That order, among its other egregious provisions, requires all recipients of federal funds to provide their services in any language a person may request, at no cost. At no cost to that person, who is always a Third World immigrant, legal or not.
But there is a humongous cost, fiscally and culturally, to the American taxpayer of this and future generations. What that cost is, nobody has bothered to assess, though it's in the many billions of dollars. The social cost, on the other hand, is incalculable. When you voluntarily turn a good country into the Balkans, you are courting the fate of the Balkans.
It's relevant that President Bush's administration has not only failed to repeal the odious Clinton E.O. 13166, but has affirmed it on multiple occasions. Now, the Senate amnesty bill would codify this expensive Babel travesty in permanent legislation. All this, while asserting that it's preserve[ing] and enhance[ing] the role of English as the language of the United States of America.
This is beyond tragedy. It's a comedy. And the joke is on us.
One wants to ask, why? Why are they doing it? Is the government in the business of executing the social contract on behalf of the people, or is it in the business of screwing the people and destroying the country?
In the interest of truth, and there is no higher interest, we need to qualify the word "lie" as used here. For to lie, is to utter falsehood with an intention to deceive. And indeed Mr. Bush's Glynco speech, and all others like it, have been full of falsehoods with intention to deceive. But the deception in a lie implies a hidden agenda; whereas Mr. Bush has stated his agenda publicly, and before he was nominated, let alone elected. This is what he said on August 27, 2000:
"America is finished. It is now Hispano-Multicultica." Expressed as:
America has one national creed, but many accents. We are now one of the largest Spanish-speaking nations in the world. We're a major source of Latin music, journalism and culture. Just go to Miami, or San Antonio, Los Angeles, Chicago or West New York, New Jersey and close your eyes and listen. You could just as easily be in Santo Domingo or Santiago, or San Miguel de Allende. By nominating me, my party has made a choice to welcome the new America.
"I have pandered and will continue pandering to Hispanics." Expressed as:
There are over 6,000 Hispanic officials elected or appointed in this country — and more than two thousand in my state, including some appointments I have made: our Secretary of State at one time, our Insurance Commissioner, and a justice of the Supreme Court.
"I will do all I can to abolish the borders and the sovereignty of the United States, to ram through the NAFTA Super Highway, and to create another continent-wide, supranational bureaucrat oligarchy like the European Union." Expressed as:
But I see a hemisphere of 500 million people, striving with the dream of a better life. A dream of free markets and free people, in a hemisphere free from war and tyranny.
"I am a naïf, without a clue as to what is really happening in Mexico, and what Mexico really feels about the US. I shall be carrying water for the Mexican oligarchy and its US-based outposts. I shall keep open borders, protect illegal aliens, and do nothing about the inundation of the United States by Mexicans." Expressed as:
Should I become president, I will look South, not as an afterthought, but as a fundamental commitment of my presidency. Just as we ended the great divide between East and West, so today we can overcome the North-South divide. [snip] As I speak, we are celebrating the success of democracy in Mexico . . . The United States is destined to have a special relationship with Mexico, as clear and strong as we have had with Canada and Great Britain. Historically, we have had no closer friends and allies. Our ties of history and heritage with Mexico are just as deep.
"I shall continue confusing what's good for Mexico with what's good for the United States. I shall overlook the NAFTA-caused, growing imbalance of trade with Mexico and the export of American jobs to Mexico. I am determined to ignore that in the 13 years of NAFTA the US has accumulated a $500 billion trade deficit with Mexico." Expressed as:
Thanks to NAFTA, America now trades $200 billion worth of goods with Mexico, and half of it crosses the Texas border. The economic case for NAFTA is strong, and the moral case is just as powerful. As barriers fall and markets open, people in Mexico are finding good jobs in their own country. [T]the ultimate goal will remain constant . . . free trade from northernmost Canada to the tip of Cape Horn.
"I am a quixotic Wilsonian gringo dupe. I know nothing about the harsher dimensions of reality in or out of the United States. I don't believe they exist." Expressed as:
We can make it peaceful and compassionate and lasting. We can bring new hope to the new world — building an age of prosperity, in a hemisphere of liberty.
That was the most upsetting speech I had ever heard by a major American politician. And there were others who were not only upset, but put it in print, too. The man was elected, nonetheless.
So here is our own speculative attribution of motive. The Bushian propellant in the Mexicanization venture may be a mixture of four buoyant elements that substitute for analysis, realism, and intellectual rigor:
1. Personal sentiment and loyalty based on a silver spoon-fed lifetime of fraternizing with the progeny of Mexican oligarchs, being serviced by Mexican help, and being helped by Mexican-American politicians or appointees.
2. Emotion-based, Christian evangelism combined with political liberalism to produce the spurious certitude that We have a responsibility that when somebody hurts, government has got to move. Moreover, because we are all equal and substantially the same, this applies across national boundaries and cultural, ethnic or religious divides.
3. Texas gung-ho capitalism, political loyalty to "The business of America is business" crowd, and perhaps personal loyalty to big-business cronies.
4. Willful arrogance conflating personal beliefs, preferences and loyalties with the national good, and not hampered by the doubts that a wiser, more erudite man would have based on his cultural grounding, knowledge of history and geopolitics, with particular emphasis on the fate of multi-lingual, multi-ethnic states and empires.
A political vision to merge Mexico, America and Canada in a "Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America" is debatable, even if it entails buying out Mexican poverty to the tune of trillions of dollars, and opening America's gates to tens of millions of additional "Hispanics." But not when such a scheme is hatched based on personal affection for "Hispanics" and personal loyalty to cronies. Not when President Bush says repeatedly that the amnesty is "personal" for him, gets himself photographed waving the Mexican flag, vilifies the opponents of his Mexicanization scheme, bases his advocacy on rank lies and distortions, stubbornly rejects any rational analysis and arguments that counter his purpose, and refuses to engage in the issue intellectually and analytically. That's no way to run a country, let alone a superpower.
Indeed, the same arrogant and reality-denying decision-making process that has led to the 4-year fiasco in Iraq now drives the President toward the illegal alien amnesty. To paraphrase Mickey Kaus, Operation Amnesty is the Bush administration's domestic version of Iraq: a big, risky gamble, based on wishful, ideology-driven thinking and nonexistent administrative competence, that will end in disaster.
That two such enormous, simultaneous blows could be visited on the nation by a popularly elected, two-term President is incomprehensible. Unless we dwell deeper into psychology.
Narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) is a psychological warp characterized by an excessive focus on oneself, an inability to empathize with others’ experience, interpersonal rigidity, an insistence that one’s opinions and values are “right,” a "thin skin" and a tendency to take things personally. According to the well-sourced Wikipedia NPD entry, at least five of nine symptoms are necessary for NPD diagnosis. Among the nine are these seven that seem to fit George W. Bush:
1. Has a grandiose sense of self-importance,
2. Preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited power, success, brilliance.
3. Believes that he is special and unique and can only be understood by other special people.
4. Requires excessive admiration.
5. Strong sense of entitlement.
6. Takes advantage of others to achieve his own need.
7. Arrogant affect.
Before we give rise to suspicions of our being a Rahm Emmanuel mole in the conservative movement, it behooves us to quote another personality disorder, more grievous than NPD. It's the Malignant Narcissism (MD) syndrome, which is NPD with additional anti-social features, paranoid traits, ego-syntonic aggression, and an absence of conscience. This is NPD raised to pathological proportions. And one could not find a better clinical case of malignant narcissism than the Clintons, President Bush's opponents in the 2000 and 2004 elections, and many other prominent figures on the Left.
Tammy Bruce used this key to unlock the enigma of the crusading liberal's psyche, in her book, The Death of Right and Wrong: Exposing the Left's Assault on Our Culture and Values. Important characterisitcs of the malignant narcissist's use of power are: seeking to destroy the concepts of judgment between right and wrong or true and false, self-gratification, embracing victimhood as a driving personal and social force, destroying rather than debating opponents, lying and manipulating as a basic modus operandi. If there is a motto to be carved on the gate through which all malignant narcissists pass, it ought to be the Latin translation of, "It depends on what the meaning of the words 'is' is."
The subject of comparing Presidents Clinton and Bush is too rich for us to go into here. Let us say that, with the exception of the Iraq war, where no easy comparison avails, there is hardly a lie, treasonous neglect, corruption or incompetence one can find in Bush that one could not find worse in the slicker Clinton. If one compares the respective administrations, Bush's comes out ahead even more.
But that's no consolation. For under the one administration or the other, our civic equality no longer obtains. When the choice at the ballot box is between a narcissist Tweedledee and a worse narcissist Tweedledum — the earnest "compassionate conservative" or the lip-biting "I feel your pain" liberal — it is no choice. Our fox leaders sing the praise of democracy, but they have been running an ethnokakistocratic kleptocorporatocracy. That's how we can name a political system where preferred ethnic factions are empowered by a government of the bad (Clinton) or the incompetent (Bush) to nullify the rights and interests of the majority for the sake of implementing the private agendas of the Reynard-fox elite and its financial backers.
Using gimmicks, lies, manipulations, falsification of data, and willed inattention to the concerns of citizens, our political leaders ascend by the consent of the governed, but then proceed to implement their own onanistic dreamscapes, for the benefit of the few, at the expense of the many. This is no longer the mechanism of a republic that a Calvin Coolidge or a Harry Truman might recognize, but George Orwell's Ministry of Truth dispensing war as peace, freedom as slavery, and ignorance, disguised as "diversity," as strength.
Look again at the standard hoisted by the fox leader in that old picture, above. The accolades from the cat and the dog and the crow have sent a rush of self-adulation to his head, impairing his crafty mind for a moment. As he takes his bow, Mr. Fox is unaware that the standard has flipped, so that the side he was showing while campaigning, the one with the Stars and Stripes, is now invisible. Inadvertently, the true side of the standard can now be seen, the one reading his name, Reynard.
In Europe, Reynard standards are now flying from the masts of every nation. In the United States, where memories of dunking tea in saltwater and feathers in tar may still be alive, perhaps the coup d'état by political foxes can still be repulsed. But to change the culture of Washington, DC, will take more will and wiles than evinced by the citizenry, so far.
taksei@gol.com
Read more articles by Takuan Seiyo
Close the borders, pass an ID act that involves SSA and IRS records in the worker validation process, enforce laws already on the books including the federal felony of abeting an illegal, remove tax exemptions for local, county, state, and federal for any entity harboring or otherwise abeting illegal immigrants, confiscate the property of employers using illegals AND take the pledge:
I will vote for the opponent of any elected official voting for any form of legislation, resolution, or proclamation offering illegal aliens:
1. sanctuary,
2. any form of taxpayer funded benefits including tax funded contributions to organizations offering benefits to illegal aliens,
3. anchor baby citizenship,
4. police no ask policy,
5. church or non-profit sanctuary protection without fully removing tax exemptions for the churche or non-profit,
6. day worker centers,
7. legal services,
8. Chain migration instead of needs of the United States,
9. amnesty, earned citizenship, parole, or other politically correct name for amnesty.
UNLESS your opponent also voted for the legislation, resolution, or proclamation
THEN I will vote for a write-in candidate.
I also will not make a contribution to your campaign and I will return your campaign material marked as refused return to sender.
Comment by Mickey G | June 22, 2007
I too have wondered what the reason might be that illegal immigration has so many advocates in government.
My conclusion is that the uniqueness, the excellence, the nobility of America, is offensive to many. We "unfairly" use too much of the world's resources, we "unfairly" make people work for their money, we "unfairly" demand that people follow the law, we "unfairly" let achieving people get too wealthy.
America is successful, liberty works, Judeo-Christian morality is superior, and free market capitalism is the best system ever devised. These facts are a burr under the saddle of socialist utopians.
Comment by Mountain Man | June 22, 2007
The biggest concern should be how will we as a nation change if we take in millions of immigrants, illegal or otherwise, from Mexico and South America?
Few could argue that the road to stability, much less greatness, is paved with millions of unskilled, undereducated socialists who American businesses naievly believe will continue to settle for low wages and few if any benefits.
It was one thing for business to expect illegal immigrants to take what is offered when they were illegal and in constant fear of being deported, yet quite another when that fear is lifted and they have a vote. And what happens when, millions more in extended immigrant family members arrive and they all become voters?
Some conservatives believe they have a shot at these new Americans, but be sure that if Latino immigrants ever had a chance of becoming anything resembling individuals driven only by a thirst for freedom and independance from government and a new life in America as God-fearing conservatives, liberal politicians seeking to keep them in perpetual misery to hold them together as a voting block will see to it that it never happens.
As the new special interest, the new swing vote, Democrats can hardly wait to work their magic on the unsuspecting "new voters."
I wonder how a group of brown-skinned have-nots from a corupt country run by Mexican whites, and who are expected by corporate America to perpetually continue to provide their services for next to nothing will respond a sales pitch from the left than amounts to revenge on the haves?
These new Americans will be dazzled by the promisses: "In America, you can write your own ticket to the future and it does not include picking lettuce for slave wages; IT ONLY REQUIRES PICKING US AS YOUR LEADERS."
"Act now and take what is rightfully yours, a share of the American dream you came here seeking, but have yet to realize as you struggle daily as second-class citizens in your new country, victims of racism and exploited by the corporate machine." "If you elect us, we have the power to make your exploiters pay - pay you."
Of course, like any other group to which Democrats pander, the ongoing interest will be to ensure that the new underclass of voters stays suitably needy, remain victims of racism, never are paid enough to vote Repulican, etc., etc.
If it were just the game continued, we might be fine with it. But most have the smarts to realize that we are talking about millions and millions of voters who historically vote 5-1 Democrat at a time when Democrats are turning farther and farther to the left.
We have been able to endure the game and in recent years many hard working people from traditional underclasses have realized that their biggest barrier to success has been those liberal socialists who first lock them in chains, then each election year promise the key.
Socialist/liberal politicians see it as the time to replenish the voting rolls with useful idiots. It is most unfortunate that their need for a new underclass coincides with the need for an underclass by businesses seeking to keep their cheap labor.
The insanity and transparency of all this is manifesting itself in severe strangeness. It may as well be raining frogs when we actually have socialist progressives arguing that we need immigrants from Mexico to do the jobs we are not willing to do.
Ask yourself when was the last time you heard people who idolize Marxism, despise capitalism and advocate equality of the classes, argue that it is important to enact laws and policies that will gaurantee capitalist American corporations have a ready supply of unskilled, exploitable labor?
Will our elected leaders fall over themselves to pander to the new American voters,ignoring the rest of us in the process?
I think the answer to that question is evident - they are falling overthemselves to pander to them now and they are not even voters yet. All the while they are disregarding what is the largest groundswell of opposition from the American public that any of us have seen in our lifetimes.
Comment by nick adams | June 22, 2007
I enjoyed this article and admired the research and thought which went into the author’s analysis of President Bush. But, I would add additional reasons to the list of why politicians support amnesty.
Guilt and Frustration over the Status Quo.
In my home state of California there is no escaping the obvious for any politician, illegals are everywhere. Senator Feinstein in her travels around our state is constantly confronted with illegals; the maid that replaces the towels, the kid that parks the car, the room service guy that brings up her midnight snack, the porter who carries her luggage, a seemingly endless parade of temporary servants, many of which are probably here illegally. And, while illegals don’t wear a sign around their necks proclaiming their status, politicians like Feinstein must suspect but can never publicly acknowledge their presence.
The news media voluntarily co-operates in a symbiotic partnership to deny the obvious. Senator Feinstein is never directly asked by reporters about the immigration status of those she’s tipping and politely thanking. For Feinstein, as with many other United States senators, who travel frequently and stay in hotels, this situation is intolerable; on the one hand they are willing enablers assisting illegals in flouting the very laws the senators helped to enact, while on the other hand they must pretend not to notice the illegals toiling under their very noses.
Amnesty, in a single stroke, solves this dilemma by conferring both legality and an opportunity to play the hero. With an amnesty, Feinstein need no longer feel guilty about illegals flouting our laws on her behalf, while amnesty will also allow her to publicly acknowledge their presence and give pious speeches about enhancing their economic and social conditions as future American citizens.
Recently, California Governor Schwarzenegger, himself a legal immigrant, expressed this frustration in a different manner by urging Hispanics to turn off the Spanish television stations and learn English. Citing himself as an example, Arnold believes Hispanics should blend in by learning our language, which also brings us to another reason politicians support amnesty; to bring millions of new customers into the nanny state market.
Multiculturalism and Diversity Supports the Role of Big Government.
Multiculturalism and diversity gradually destroy the ability of citizens to form a consensus by eliminating the common cultural factors that differentiate a community from a group of strangers gathered in an airport terminal. And, when the citizenry can no longer form a natural consensus, governing becomes a simple process of playing one faction off against the others with economic giveaways and special privileges conferred on those ethnic or racial groups displaying the most loyalty to the office holder. Diversity may seem a disadvantage to politicians at first glance, but divide and conquer worked well when ruling ancient empires and still works well in ruling modern quasi-socialist democracies.
Many Americans intuitively feel there is something wrong with an endless wave of immigrants, both legal and illegal, to our country. This intuitive belief is poorly expressed in the frequently stated demand that immigrants should learn English quickly in order to become true Americans. But, simply learning English doesn’t solve the problem, otherwise immigrants to Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand and most of Canada who learn English would also qualify as “true” Americans. There has to be something more subtle to being an American than just the ability to speak English.
In order for citizens to discuss political issues and develop a consensus addressing current problems, the ability to communicate is important, but shared cultural values, shared religious teachings, similar worldviews and common philosophies are also important. Joseph Bottum (editor at First Things) has opined that even death is a foundational root of a shared culture.
For example, to many immigrants, Arlington National Cemetery and all the other military cemeteries around our nation represent nothing more significant than the final resting place of, for the most part, a bunch of dead white guys. If this “mostly dead white guys” opinion were publicly expressed, it would be an insult to the many native born Americans of every race and ethnicity who acknowledge the shared sacrifice of our military dead in defending our country as well as the debt we owe to their surviving families, whether of white, African-American, Asian-American – or Hispanic-American - heritage. But, in a literal sense, the immigrants’ viewpoint is true; they have no sense of a shared history as represented by our military dead and see no reason to acknowledge this aspect of our common heritage as it is understood by native born Americans. While they don’t actively dishonor our dead, they can’t possibly feel the sense of community we do when we publicly acknowledge our war veterans’ sacrifice: Memorial Day, 4th of July or Veteran’s Day has no more significance to them than a day off work and a barbecue in the park.
A polyglot citizenry, which California so obviously is, has constant problems with many cultural/political issues. California’s national reputation for general nuttiness and eccentric behavior is based in part on this lack of shared cultural heritage. When a state is a magnet for people from every country on the globe, for every religion from Christianity to Lesser Way Buddhism to atheism, for every language spoken somewhere in the world, for every funeral custom, for every cuisine, for every other “cultural something”, then that state can tolerate and even encourage almost any form of behavior. Who can authoritatively say some behavior is wrong? Who sets the standard for behavior and based on which culture’s values?
I can point to a personal example of this diversity problem. My employer hired a well-known business consultant to evaluate our California facility and determine how we could work together as a team to improve the business. The consultant spent several days talking to the workers and reviewing our work behavior and relationships. In his final verbal and written reports, the consultant indicated we had a fundamental problem that was almost impossible to overcome. There were 11 separate languages spoken daily within the facility, ranging from tagalog (Filipino) to Mexican to Vietnamese, with English being the native language of less than half of the employees. But, more than language was the problem. For example, in the lunchroom, the various ethnic and racial groups formed into distinct lunch buddies and always ate at separate tables, gossiping and playing cards only among themselves. While there was no outright hostility between the various groups, there was definitely no shared commonality either; nothing that could be built upon that would engender natural work groups and group loyalty. How to build team relationships and mutual cooperation along the lines of a Japanese factory workforce when the employees have no more in common than the timeclock and the lunchroom? The consultant acknowledged he was at a loss to offer specific recommendations that would overcome our basic cultural diversity. Not welcome news for an employer and, extended to California as a political group, not conducive to developing political consensus.
Electing Hollywood actors to political office makes sense in a state where only movies, and action/comedies at that, are the common thread that binds the citizenry. And, it’s no coincidence that California is owned by the Democratic Party and a handful of wannabe Democrats called Republicans. For average Americans, the constant arrival of new immigrants may intuitively seem a disadvantage – but, conversely for the politicians, the political advantages flowing from widespread cultural diversity aren’t merely intuitive, they’re very obvious.
Comment by Pat Skurka | June 24, 2007
I could not help but notice in reading an AP story on my Yahoo! homepage today that the writer chose to refer to them as "undocumented" aliens - as in "gee, my papers were RIGHT HERE just a minutes ago, let me check this filing cabinet again, I'm sure I just misplace them."
What dictionary do these guys use? The American Heritage Dictionary of Politically Correct English?
I guess I naively thought that "illegal" was the appropriate adjective, but apparently that verbiage is too harsh in the land-of-the-free-lunch.
And my Sunday paper was graced with several editorials (oops, I mean news stories) written by reporters in Miami with hyphenated American-Hispanic names that expected me to express shock and moral outrage because the number of employer "raids" by the INS has risen in the past 12 months…and, and, and…some people are too scared to show up for work…and, and, and…pregnant women are missing their (are you sitting down?) PRENATAL CLASSES! What a positively vile country we have become! How dare we enforce our laws! Why, the nerve of our civil servants!
Call me a simpleton, but I cannot for the life of me understand the two sides of this argument, particularly by our elected representatives. Why do we feel even the tiniest shred of obligation to people who are here ILLEGALLY (uh, I mean undocumented).
Is it economic? Humanitarian? Lust for votes? I am genuinely clueless. If they are here illegally, they cannot vote, so who are we pandering to? Is big business really that dependent on sub-standard wages for their labor force? I thought NAFTA was supposed to create jobs south of the border rather than simply import the workers. And why is it that we have a supposed "special obligation" to those south of the Rio Grande that we do not have for any other ethnic group that is economically less well-off? What about, say, those suffering religious persecution in China? Or somebody working for $100 per month in the Dominican Republic? Or a Cambodian orphan whose parents dies of AIDS?
Comment by Steve Sabin | June 24, 2007
I should think that those - like Governor Schwarzenegger - who have immigrated to America legally, would be among the most strident of voices opposing amnesty, and PARTICULARLY those who have legally immigrated here from Latin American countries. They played by the rules and most overcame significant obstacles. One would assume that they, among all people, would value American citizenship even more than those of us who are American by birth, because they have first-hand experience with the effort and sacrifices required to obtain it. For many, the wait was long and the road was paved with hardship.
I'm a US citizen by birth. However, when I got married in 1983, it was to a Canadian citizen. It took us a full year to go through the process so that she could work and reside permanently with me in the US. Then, four years later, we decided to move to Canada for a time; again, the wait was approximately 18 months. Then, in 1994, when we decided to return to America, it again entailed a 1-year process of paperwork, medical exams, interviews at the US consulate, fees, police background investigations, etc.
The current administration's plans to give amnesty (in spite of their protests that it is not "amnesty") are an affront to every person who - like myself - has ever gone through the INS processes and procedures legally.
And let's not be deceived: this is not an ethnically agnostic movement that is simply acting out of humanitarian altruism to reach out to all illegal immigrants. It is a politically motivated movement that could care less about anyone except those of Hispanic ancestry. Those in support of amnesty are not fighting for all illegal aliens…they are fighting only for one particular category: illegal HISPANIC aliens. That other ethnicities will benefit from the proposed legislation is merely a by-product.
Surely I am not the only one who find this both unbelievably racist and highly offensive.
More than abortion, taxation, socialized medicine, school vouchers, multiculturalism, or religious liberties - this is the single issue that will once and for all alienate the Republican Party from the conservative constituency it is supposed to represent. There is a reason why this has eclipsed every other topic, including the upcoming presidential elections and the Iraq War.
Finally, although I am in full agreement with Mr. Seiyo on most everything in the very well-written essay, the one item that I do not agree with is his statement below:
Bush: I know there are some people out there hollering and saying, kick them out. That is simply unrealistic. It won't work."
Seiyo: "Another lie; there are no such people, at least not people who count and have a public voice. Even the most radical opponents of the amnesty advocate nothing more than shutting the border for good, and letting the illegal population dwindle by attrition."
I'm afraid I'm well beyond just shutting the border, so I guess I'm well beyond radical. With an estimated 20 million people who do not belong here and have no right to be here, dwindling by attrition is a very lengthy and expensive proposition. Last time I checked, the illegal population was not sterile. They reproduced. And quite copiously at that. We are not talking about 20 million people here who are Harvard-educated DINKS and whose net effect on population will be negative. We are talking about people who give new meaning the concept of geometric progression. Attrition is going to require some outside intervention - as in deportation - not just the ashes-to-ashes, dust-to-dust way of all flesh.
Besides, the problem I have with so-called "meaningful penalties" that are anything short of out-and-out deportation, are that they are unlikely to work. Think about it: what will these penalties be if not monetary? Incarceration? Prisons cost money folks. Locking these folks up is a huge drain on an already over-taxed system. So about all that is left is monetary penalties. And this is extremely problematic. What it suggests is that if you break the law, we have the "installment plan" that lets you buy your way into America. Enter first, pay later with our easy monthly payment plan.
Comment by Steve Sabin | June 24, 2007
I was onboard here until the author began to psycho-analyze the President and pronounce him as having NPD. It is spurious, at best, to ascribe such severe character flaws based on wrong-headed policy stances. Bush wants this amnesty Bill because he's an Internationalist, not because he's a narcissist. He believes that democracy and capitalism here at home should be extended to the whole world and has even stated that he believes workers around the world should be allowed to seek employment anywhere they like. I'm paraphrasing that last statement, but it is accurate in his intent. He believes that such open borders will help spread democracy. These beliefs are a result of his philosophy, not his psychology. As much as Bill Clinton deserves and is rightly defined as a malignant narcissist, even his policies were rooted in radical leftism rather than his dysfunctional psychology.
Further, it bothers me when thinkers, be they Right or Left, take what is essentially moral and philosophical concerns and attempt to define them in terms of psychology. That is a primary tactic of the Left to obfuscate the moral questions people might raise about their odious views. We Conservatives ought never do that. Moral and philosophical issues need to be grounded and debated in those terms rather than switching the basis for debate to psychology. Psychology is a social science dominated by Leftists and takes as a primary premise that human behavior is not defined in terms of right and wrong.
It also disturbs me that the author makes a personal attack on Bush via an unqualified psycho-analysis, as a means to bolster what is already a sound argument. The author already successfully attacked and destroyed the Bill and the basis for it. Why launch a personal attack on Bush's sanity? Again, this is something the Left would do and we ought never do this, not without much more substantial evidence and some expert opinion, as in the case of the Clintons. Discrediting the policy by discrediting the man is the vicious tactic of the Left. Discrediting the man after you've already legitimately discredited the policy seems to spring from anger and bitterness rather than a desire to know the truth about the policy process.
Now before I get any replies accusing me of being a Bush apologist, know this. I did not vote for Bush in the 2000 primaries and I never wanted him to be our President. The reason I voted for him in the general election of 2000 and 2004 is because many of you did vote for him in the primary. I had no choice. Going back further, I didn't vote for his father in the primaries of 1980, 1988, or 1992. In each case, I voted for a true Conservative and didn't vote at all in the general elections of 1992 and 1996. About the only thing I can say that I've been pleased with in the 6 1/2 years Bush has been President is his determination to fight the War on Terror. I've been a Bush critic from the beginning, a lot sooner than many of you, but I don't think a personal attack based on dime store psychology is justified or correct.
Regards
Comment by Julian Cate | June 27, 2007
Mr. Cate,
You are not engaging with my argument but only with your feelings about my argument. In brief:
1. The Bill was not my issue. A syndrome was my issue, of which Mr. Bush's multiple actions, in addition to Shamnesty, are the symptoms. Yet another grave display of the symptom occurred yesterday, on 7/27. Mr. Bush gave a speech –-of all places–at the most prominent Wahhabist mosque in the US. The blogger, Dymphna, posted a long entry about it, Sitting Here in the Wreckage, She quotes from the speech:
Today we gather, with friendship and respect, to …renew our determination to stand together in the pursuit of freedom and peace. We come to express our appreciation for a faith that has enriched civilization for centuries. We come in celebration of America's diversity of faith and our unity as free people. same." [snip]
Moments like this dedication help clarify who Americans are as a people, and what we wish for the world. We live in a time when there are questions about America and her intentions. For those who seek a true understanding of our country, they need to look no farther than here. This Muslim center sits quietly down the road from a synagogue, a Lutheran church, a Catholic parish, a Greek Orthodox chapel, a Buddhist temple — each with faithful followers who practice their deeply held beliefs and live side by side in peace.
Then Dymphna comments (inter alia): Does he actually believe these poisonous platitudes? Doesn't he read the newspapers? Hasn't he seen what they're doing to Christians in Gaza? To Hindus in Europe? What moral universe does our President inhabit?
I am counting the days until this man goes back to Texas and morphs into just another ex-President shill for the same oily money bags that Jimmah and the Clintoons haul around. He has become as smarmy as Hillary, as beholden as Barack, and every bit the turncoat that Kerry was. I would say it can't get worse but Bush has another eighteen months to take us down.
An erstwhile Bush supporter posted this reax to Mr. Bush's filowahabbi speech:
Who is scripting this zombie's life?
This is an utter horror.
It is almost like Hitler in his bunker, doing everything he can to bring the country he destroyed into final and supreme Apocalypse.
2. Mr. Bush is destroying the country. It's not a moral or philosophical issue. It's not an existential issue, even. It's an issue of existence. And when a President is deliberately and repeatedly punching his people knockout blows in the face, I find that your protestations about "desire to know the truth about the policy process" and "essentially moral and philosophical concerns" are too thin to wield in our self-defense. I am, as you ought to know, an Oriental thinker. Truth, to me, is in the belly shout of Katsu!, not in a 350-page clay pigeon.
We are dealing here with a phenomenon of usurpation of powers, a coup d'etat, perverting democracy to subdue and irreparably damage the demos. Forget moral/philosophical issues. Think how to save your life, liberty and your country's future.
3. Ultimately, and I stressed it in the article, one cannot know why Mr. Bush is doing what he is doing. It is a mystery when a man whom I believe to be a morally decent man, and a patriot, does so much, with such determination, to destroy his country. I could have but did not resort to name calling, and words like fascist or Hitler are outside of my framework. As to my attempt to provide (a rather benign) explanation to Mr. Bush's actions, you may find it "unqualified," though you don’t know of my qualifications. I have speculated, and admitted so, but my speculation does answer the criteria that a viable hypothesis must fulfill:
1. It explains the multi-event phenomenon fully;
2. It is simple;
3. It is heuristic, i.e. useful for the explanation of future manifestations of the phenomenon.
It is legitimate for you to reject my hypothesis, but not on the flimsy grounds you cite and not without offering an alternative explanation.
4. NPD is not a "severe character flaw." It's mid-range as character flaws go. Malignant Narcissism is a severe character flaw, and I specifically excluded Mr. Bush from that. BTW, I believe that NPD as a behavioral hypothesis provides a good explanation also for John McCain's otherwise inexplicable Senate follies (Shamnesty, Gang of 14, McCain- Feingold etc) while MD fits Kennedy like a glove. And you are dead wrong in what you write about psychology. It's a highly valuable tool—in the hands of a non-liberal– for understanding oneself, and one's foes . Had Mr. Bush known more about the Muslim Arab psyche, he would not have engaged in the Iraq war with such awful and humiliating consequences. But then, the man could never have admitted that there is such a thing as "Muslim-Arab psyche," which is precisely why he is unfit for command.
5. A Conservative knows, based on history and accumulated wisdom, never to use the term "never."
Comment by Takuan Seiyo | June 27, 2007
This may be the only silver lining to losing the 2006 election. As seen by the immigration bill and the fariness doctrine, republicans are acting like conservatives again. When the GOP had control of the house, senate, and the Presidency they made liberals look like Barry Goldwater in terms of spending. I guess the ability to handle the power of responsiblity was too much to ask.
Comment by Honker | June 29, 2007