All across our nation, concerned citizens called their senators and told them no to amnesty, no to rewarding lawbreakers, no to “z-visas.”
It was close, entirely too close. By a vote of 53-46, the U.S Senate refused to limit debate and effectively kept the Bush-Kennedy-McCain amnesty bill from going to the floor for passage.
It could easily have gone the other way, and undoubtedly would have were it not for the efforts of talk radio, the blogosphere – and thousands upon thousands of everyday Americans. All across our nation, concerned citizens called their Senators and told them no – no to amnesty, no to rewarding lawbreakers, no to “z-visas” and no to being told they didn’t matter. Ultimately, several wavering lawmakers listened to their constituents and said no as well.
It wasn’t just “conservatives” who said no. According to a Rasmussen poll, only 22% of Republicans, and 23% of Democrats were in favor of this bill. Further, only 20% of those who described themselves as conservative, 32% of liberals, and 18% of moderates were in favor. The public clearly smelled a rat, and that rat was a group of elitists who kept telling us this “comprehensive immigration reform” bill wasn’t amnesty, when that is exactly what it was. With an arrogance unprecedented in our nation’s history, the President, members of his administration and a number of Senators tried to shove a horrible, destructive piece of legislation down our throats.
With such stunning public opposition, why were so many of our elected leaders willing to ignore our wishes? Why was this bill so important that they were willing to employ such strong-armed tactics to affect its passage? What agenda is at work when the vast majority of us, who want only for our immigration laws to be enforced, are maligned as “racists?” It’s bad enough that liberals like Teddy Kennedy spout such nonsense, but when supposedly “conservative” senators like Lindsey Graham start painting those in opposition to amnesty as “bigots,” you know that something else is at play.
Is it as simple as Democrats seeking to gain new voters and Republicans seeking to supply cheap workers for big business? That is certainly part of the equation, but there is something lurking in the background that is far more sinister. Consider some remarks made by Lindsey Graham recently in front of the National Council of La Raza (“the Race”). First of all, why is any U.S. senator, let alone a Republican from a conservative southern state, being honored by a group with known ties to MEChA, and other radical elements of the “Reconquista” movement? Does Senator Graham believe that a large portion of the western U.S. belongs to Mexico?
The La Raza 2007 Capital Awards was the venue for Graham’s despicable “bigots” comment. Graham should be ashamed of employing the same tactic to shut off debate that is the trademark of such race hustlers as Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. Graham should know this is a dishonest way of attempting to silence the opposition. He should also know that it no longer works. The overwhelming majority of the American public has no problem discerning legal immigrants from those here illegally. It has nothing to do with any particular race or group – just whether someone obeyed the law to get here or not. So Senator Graham (and being from South Carolina myself I feel especially compelled to say so), on behalf of all of us, take your “bigots” remark and stuff it.
Worse than the “bigots” remark though was something Graham said that perhaps shines the real light on all of this:
An American is an idea. No group owns being an American.
What happened to citizenship? Obeying the laws? Speaking English? Assimilating into our unique American culture? In fact, what about borders Senator Graham – do you believe in them, or are they too, just an “idea?”
Graham probably revealed more in those two sentences about the real agenda of the amnesty crowd than could be explained in a single column. When you consider that President Bush, Teddy Kennedy, John McCain and Lindsey Graham are all allies for amnesty, one begins to understand that the real goal is globalism. When being an American is just an “idea,” it means that America itself is also just an idea – a place with no borders – and no national sovereignty. Enter the North American Union . . .
The political divide of the future may indeed no longer be that of conservative versus liberal, certainly not in the conventional sense. No, the battle from here forward is likely to be drawn between traditionalists – those who believe in the sovereign, constitutional republic given to us by our founders; and the globalists – for whom such things as national borders, languages, cultures and governments are irrelevant.
As we once again celebrate Independence Day, we may take heart in a victory won by the people against amnesty. We must also realize it is but one battle, one that doubtless will be fought many times. Benjamin Franklin may not have been a fortune teller, but he saw with great clarity how hard it would be, when he said after being questioned at the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787 about what system of government our new nation would have: “a republic, if you can keep it.” More than 200 years later, we’re still trying to keep it.
chipslogic@capitolhillcoffeehouse.com
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Read more articles by Chip McLean
Either being an American means something, or it means nothing. If it means everything, it means nothing.
Comment by sedonaman | July 3, 2007
Chip McLean asks rhetorically: “With such stunning opposition, why were so many of our elected leaders willing to ignore our wishes?” Good question and McLean rightly suspects that the “globalists” in Washington were caught by surprise at the vehement negative reaction by the electorate. Others have attributed Washington’s motives to securing the illegal immigrant vote for one or the other party or just trying to clear the “what to do with the illegals” question from the public square prior to the 2008 elections.
And, while the voters flexed their muscles and won a great victory in the Senate, I think what also fueled the negative reaction is a growing realization that something is very wrong with our government in recent years. Despite the celebrated triumph last week, we haven’t solved the illegal immigrant problem; we merely kept the politicians from making it worse.
“In your face, stupid voters” best describes what the Senate attempted with the latest immigration bill. The incredible complexity, the attempt to rush passage, the Pollyanna provisions for 24 hour background checks, the “xenophobic racists” rhetoric and so on. The Senate and President Bush performed the work we hired them to perform badly and it was blindingly obvious to the voters. In fact, poor job performance in Washington is becoming more and more the expected norm.
Is our system of government at the federal level broken and seriously so? Washington blissfully ignored the growing problem with illegals for years. Despite 9/11, the borders weren’t secured as promised. The average Joe on main street could see the problem clearly, so why couldn’t the politicians? So many questions and no answers that make any sense.
But, it was also a good thing if the voters come to realize that we’ve become too complacent. We have a highly unusual pre-employment interview and hiring process for elected politicians and no effective means to supervise their efforts once they’re on the job. We’ve also lost track of the passage of time. It no longer takes 2 weeks for a message to reach Washington as it did in Ben Franklin’s day. Yet, we believe nothing has really changed (or should have changed) since the Founding Fathers conceived a new form of government. Has their conception become outdated or even obsolete? Have Americans come to worship our system of government instead of realizing it is an ongoing experiment and it’s permissible, even desirable, to drastically change the process and rules from time to time.
We need to shift our attention away from “got you last” politics and discuss why our government is functionally incompetent, why problems aren’t solved, why self-interest has taken the place of public service among our Washington employees. We should be asking if the basic “process” of our government is still viable and, if not, what changes to the process are needed. We’ve been pondering these questions for over 200 years and the traditional fix is “vote the bums out come next election” or pass a constitutional amendment. But, if these remedies are so effective, why don’t they work anymore, or did they ever really work as intended? Remember, the victory last week solved nothing, except preventing our unsupervised and rather arrogant employees in Washington from implementing a bad solution to a very serious problem.
Comment by Pat Skurka | July 3, 2007
"We need to shift our attention away from “got you last” politics and discuss why our government is functionally incompetent, why problems aren’t solved, why self-interest has taken the place of public service among our Washington employees."
I completely agree but until the moderates get off their bloody couches and get active in the primaries, we will not have anything more than the same questionable performance by our government. Getting off the couch for one election won't do it either, it will have to be a continious effort.
Comment by dflickiss | July 3, 2007
Having lived in Canada for seven between 1988 and 1994 and listened to the liberal elites that served as members of that country's parliament, their media pundits, and their editorialists, their tired mantra to show how they were "different" from the United States was this:
"We are a mosaic, not a melting pot, where each individual tile retains its unique characteristics and culture, forming a beautiful work of art."
[cue string section and "we are the world" footage]
Poetic, but, like all liberal ideas, hopelessly misguided.
As I wrote satirically in another post to one of Phil Jackson's recent columns, the idea that every culture, ideology, religion, and worldview can co-exist in harmony is simply ridiculous. Some ideas are so categorically opposed to one another, that they cannot coexist.
Lest I be branded a racist, let's completely divorce ourselves from skin color, physical attributes, and genetic ancestry for a moment. Let's talk only about shared ideology. One of the biggest problems that I have with our current immigration program that trascends our porous borders, our unwillingness to deny aid to anyone that wanders in, and our inability to keep track of those who are "guests." No, my biggest problem is that we insist upon allowing any and every ideology a place at the table, and that we feel somehow obligated to create the mythical Canadian "mosaic" in our country. The Canadian liberal elites act as though a melting pot is a shameful thing that gives rise to a wall painted in dull gray, while their glorious mosaic is a beautful, multi-colored thing of beauty. But the mosaic model's fatal flaw is that is assumes that all tiles are actually willing to co-exist peacefully and actually *want* a mosaic.
Multi-culturalism is not the same thing as multi-ideology. Different cultures don't bother me much. I like different foods, musics, dress, and customs. But multiple ideologies puts us on a collision course with disaster. We require no shared belief system, no common ideology of Americans any more. To be an American is apparently, in Mr. Graham's world, to simply inhabit the same patch of soil.
To borrow from Sedonaman's succinct summary, Canadians proved that they had become so "everything" that they had in fact become "nothing" as evidenced by a contest that they had a few years ago. The populace was invited to come up with a national slogal that would fill in this blank: As Canadian as [insert answer here].
The winning submittal? "As Canadian as can be."
Need I say more? They couldn't come up with even a single attribute that differentiated themselves…without risk of offending or excluding someone?
America is hurtling towards the same destiny. Increasingly, it means nothing other than geographical location. Not beliefs, not ideology, not culture, not anything.
Would Americans given the same challenge as Canadian be able to come up with a better slogan? I doubt it. Baseball, apple pie, and motherhood are too conformist for the mosaic crowd. Sadly, that doesn't leave much except "As American as Anything."
Comment by Steve Sabin | July 4, 2007