Maverick Philosopher

Thomas Aquinas Against Open Borders

Substack leader. 

With linkage to a passage (pun intended) from the doctor angelicus.

Another Day, Another Outrage

Biden DOJ sues SpaceX for following the law. Another example of 'lawfare,' the use of the law to undermine the rule of law.  Should 'asylum seekers' and 'refugees' be given the rights of citizens when they are neither, but are economic migrants who have entered the country illegally? Obviously not, unless you are a hate-America leftist out to destroy the republic. Then it makes perfect sense.

France's Agony

Rod Dreher reports on the ravages of the allowance of the mass immigration of unassimilable elements. Will we learn? Little chance of that. Dreher concludes:

I feel strongly that one reason so many of us in the West — including many conservatives — cannot bring ourselves to deal with realities like those posed by mass migration is because the things we would have to face in order to deal effectively with the situation make us sick, or at the very least confused. We thought the world was one way, but it’s not. There is a direct line between the hubristic, cruel, catastrophic US invasion of Iraq to make it a liberal democratic bastion, and the disaster France (and Europe more broadly) has brought onto itself, and continues to bring onto itself, through mass migration, coupled with a woke elite that detests their own civilization.

UPDATE (7/2): 'Migrants' destroy French public library. But it's only property damage. No big deal, right? A guy I know raised the question whether our Christian values have made us unfit to survive in a world of savages aided and abetted by 'woke' leftist globalists.  Are the decadent French getting what they deserve?  But we are right behind them, just a little less decadent.

Why Secure the Border?

For many good reasons, none of them 'xenophobic' or 'racist.' Here is one that will certainly be ignored by the Sino-compromised Biden administration. Gordon G. Chang reports.

I'm no socialist, but here I present -- wait for it -- a socialist argument for border control. 

Extremism and Leftist Projection: The Border

Mainstream leftists promote extreme ideas and policies; mainstream conservatives do not. But this fact does not stop leftists from projecting their extremism into us. They call us extremists! Uncomfortable with their extremism, and not wanting to admit it, they suppress their awareness of  their extremism by projecting it into us. There are numerous examples of this political-psychological projection. This entry will discuss just one. 

Consider the question of national borders. My thesis is that conservatives at the present time in the USA are moderates on all or most questions pertaining to national borders and their enforcement.

A moderate position is one that is more or less midway  between two extremes. One extreme is the de facto if not de jure open borders  view according to which anyone at any time may immigrate  without being in any way vetted as to health status, criminal status, or in any other way. The opposite extreme is the closed border view according to which no immigration of anyone at any time is permitted by law and the law is strictly enforced. 

Now no one is for the second extreme. No one in the USA holds that all immigration should be illegal, than no one should ever be granted political asylum, etc.

But the Biden administration's position is very close to the first extreme. That cannot be denied by anyone who is  both well-informed and intellectually honest.

The conservative position is commonsensical and moderate, lying as it does between the extremes. Conservatives, to harp on the obvious, are not opposed to immigration; they are opposed to illegal immigration. Among conservatives there are debates as to how latitudinarian immigration policy ought to be. But that is a further question.

I could go on from here and show that on every or almost every issue that divides the nation, mainstream conservatives are moderates. I solicit your help. Tell me in the ComBox what those further issues are and how the mainstream conservative treads the via media.

'Asylum Seekers'

Is a home invader an asylum seeker? Only in very rare cases.  So why are people who immigrate illegally called asylum seekers? A few are but most are not. What we have here, once again, is the characteristic 'progressive' abuse of language.  At the same time that so-called progressives abuse 'asylum,' they also abuse 'xenophobic' when they apply this terms to those of us who stand for the rule of law. You are one dumb conservative if you acquiesce in the Left's abuse of language.  He who controls the terms of the debate controls the debate.

Rockland County to NYC

A massive middle-fingered 'salute.'

Quite rightly. ('Quite rightly' is in my head because I heard Donovan's Mellow Yellow on the way to the range Friday morning. Donovan uses 'quite' to mean entirely, but in American English at least it also can mean somewhat.  Does it have both senses in British English?)

The article mentions 'migrants.'  Conservatives should not acquiesce in leftist-prog-'woke' language abuse. There are two distinctions here that ought to be respected: illegal-legal; immigrant-emigrant.

'Migrant' manages to elide both distinctions in one fell swoop. Par for the course for a leftist journo. But dumb is the conservative journalist who plays along.

'lllegal immigrant' and illegal aliens' are the correct terms for what the article calls 'migrants.'

Language matters. It's a war. Subversion of language is the mother of all subversion. Don't let the 'mothers' get away with it.

"But no person is illegal!" But who ever said that any person was? (I can explain the point here if you need it explained. Better yet: you tell me what my point is in the combox.)

Rockland County

To Those Fleeing California

DO NOT come to Arizona! It's just too damned hot here for you snowflakes. And on top of that everybody is packing heat. That's why you don't hear any honking on the highways and byways. "An armed society is a polite society."

We are racist to the core in this rattlesnake-infested inferno which is also home to the scorpion, the Gila monster, and other venomous critters no librul would want to tangle with. There is nothing here but hot sand and dirt lightly covered with some dessicated but still prickly-as-hell vegetation such as cat claw.

Everything here either sticks, stings, or stinks.  Go elsewhere! Oregon and Idaho would love to have you.  Or better yet: wallow in the shit you shat. Enjoy the sanctuary that your sanctimonious silliness has built. Receive the wages of wokery.

 

 

California lost a Congressional seat due to mass exodus. Excellent! Geographically beautiful, California is now a political craphole to rival the People's Republic of Taxachusetts. I say that as a native Californian who lived for most of the '70s in Boston.

Polity and Comity

Substack latest

On 'Illegal Alien' and 'Illegal Immigrant'

Substack latest.

The Republic is probably beyond saving at this late date. So why do I bother to write pieces that underscore what really ought to be obvious? One reason is selfish: I like to write and then re-read what I have written. But having taken the time to write something clean, coherent, and sensible, why should I hide my light  under a bushel? It is not impossible that a half-dozen readers will actually read what I have written and be led to think a bit more clearly and act a little more responsibly.  

Another Good Dementocratic Reason to Keep the Southern Border Wide Open

Here:

Between 2018 and 2022, seven Catholic priests were murdered in Mexico. There has been an increase in the kidnapping of religious, as well as 800 reports of “collection” of derecho de piso by organized crime: an extortion “fee” demanded to keep Catholic churches open.

 

Immigration and Social Order

I linked to this outstanding essay about seven years ago. It is jam-packed with insights. See if you agree. The graphic below is from the essay mentioned:

Schemata such as this are useful up to a point. 

The Melting Pot

A melting pot can't do its job if unmeltable ingredients are thrown into it.

A Response to Liccione on Border Enforcement

From my Facebook page, 22 March 2019

 

Michael Liccione writes,

 

Totally open borders would be a surrender of sovereignty. Totally closed borders would be inhumane. There must surely be a via media that would be neither. But Washington seems unable to define it, because both Capitol Hill and the White House see more to be gained by political posturing than by working together on finding it. And that, my friends, is the problem--in this area as in so many others.

 

1. Who is for totally closed borders? No conservative of note. Certainly not Trump. Conservatives oppose illegal immigration, but not legal immigration. Nor do they oppose asylum provisions. They oppose the misuse thereof.

 

2. You can't look for a *via media* where there is a false alternative.

 

3. There is no moral equivalence between Capitol Hill and the White House. The House Dems and the the anti-Trump Republicans are pursuing a dangerous and morally irresponsible course. Trump is not posturing. He is doing what must be done under the circumstances.

 

4. Work together? Come on Michael Liccione. I don't mean this personally. I like you and I respect you. But, with all due respect, you are not thinking clearly. You can't work together with a Speaker of the House who incoherently babbles about walls being immoral and her colleagues who wax Orwellian in their advocacy of border security without border barriers. You can't work together with political opponents whose transparent motive is to win demographically by flooding the country with 'undocumented Democrats.'

 

5. One last shot. Some 58,000 Americans died in Vietnam over a 20 year period. Some 70,000 American died of drugs last year alone due in large part to a porous border. Does that concern you? And that is JUST ONE problem with lax border enforcement.

 

............................

 

And now, three years later, it is easy to see just how right Trump was on all the issues Biden is wrong on. Biden has proven to be a disaster on all fronts, foreign and domestic.  The United States and the world are incalculably worse off now than they were when Donald J. Trump was president.  In particular, had he been reelected, Putin would not have invaded Ukraine.

 

Weakness invites aggression, especially when amalgamated with senility and leftist nonsense.

A Socialist Argument for Border Control

Three years ago on this date on my Facebook page.  Redacted and improved.

 

....................

 

Suppose you want a massive expansion of the welfare state. You want, among other things, a college education to be free to anyone who wants one. In addition, you want free health care for all, and perhaps a guaranteed minimum income. Suppose further that you want your socialist government to work and not go bankrupt. To will the end is to will the means. Among the means:  A stemming of the tide of illegal immigration. So here you have the makings of a socialist argument for border control, an essential component of which is a physical barrier at the southern border. An essential component, not the only one. Mirabile dictu: A socialist argument for a conservative conclusion.

 

You can't have both open borders and socialism. I say to the libertarians: You want open borders? Go for it, but ONLY AFTER you have stripped the government down to its Lockean functions and instituted something like a Nozickian 'night watchman' state. (See Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia.) But of course that strip-down is not in the offing: the libertarian dream is u-topian. It's like Nowheresville, man, as Maynard G. Krebs might have said.

 

The welfare state in the USA is here to stay.  The only question concerns its size and scope. Will it metastasize unto the collapse of the nation?

 

An equal but opposite utopianism to that of the libertarians is the utopianism of the Green New Dealers.  To them and their democratic socialist fellow travellers, I say: you are going to have to become what you call 'xenophobes' and 'racists' if you want to implement a workable socialist scheme. You are going to have to become like us conservatives: 'nativists' and 'white supremacists' who hate the Other simply in virtue of his being Other.

 

Of course, none of these epithets apply to us. You only think they do in your perversity, ill-will, and deliberate self-enstupidation.

Why Not Allow Illegal Immigration?

It is important to present calm, rational arguments for the few people left who can be reached in this way.  

No Polity without Comity

No polity without comity, and no comity without commonality.

E pluribus unum is a noble goal. But a durable and vibrant One cannot be made out of just any Many.  Not just any diversity is combinable into unity.

This is why the oft-repeated 'Diversity is our strength' is foolish verbiage that could be spouted only by a liberal-left shallow pate. 

We blew it as a society and now we are in trouble and teetering on the brink of collapse.  No polity without comity, and no comity without commonality. The commonality that insures social harmony requires the stoppage of illegal immigration and reasonable limits on legal immigration together with the demand that potential immigrants be assimilable and willing to assimilate. But we no longer have the will to make that demand. We don't even have the will to protect the borders.

But of course foolishness about immigration and its effects is only one part of the explanation of our decline and eventual dissolution.

Still, we fight on, but only part-time because, being conservatives, we understand that the political is but a limited sphere. So ride the bike, traipse the trails, make music, draw and design, contemplate the constellations, make love to the wife. 

Above all, lift up your eyes, if you can, to a Reality superior to this passing scene, superior to this vain world whose vanity will vanish along with it.

Did Sexism Bring Elizabeth Warren Down?

That's what she thinks, but she is fooling herself. Her extremism brought her down. 'Progressive' politics is like a progressive disease: it just gets worse and worse as leftists compete to see who can go farthest Left.  But while the leaders of the Democrat Party are sick with the disease and barking mad, most rank-and-file Dems retain their grip on common sense. And so they gave Warren the boot.  This despite the great support she received from the distaff contingent.

The over-ambitious 'Cherokee'  committed suicide by political correctness. Good riddance!  The hyperactive little hustler was a fraud on the personal level who gamed the Affirmative Action system to promote herself, and her ideas were insane: 'free' health care for illegal aliens; inventing new forms of  'racism' including health-care 'racism,' environmental 'racism,' and a couple of others; choosing a trans-gendered child to advise on selection of a Secretary of Education.  The last bit of lunacy amounted to political suicide by intersectionality, as Tucker Carlson remarked. If she had exercised some restraint, she, and not the senile Biden, would be going up against Trump, and the Dems would have a shot at beating him.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren said that funds being used to construct the president’s border wall with Mexico should be redirected to help contain coronavirus, a quickly spreading epidemic with origins in China.

“I’m going to be introducing a plan tomorrow to take every dime that the president is now taking to spend on his racist wall at the southern border and divert it to the coronavirus,” the candidate said during a CNN town hall on Wednesday evening. (Rolling Stone, 27 February 2020)

Leftists have painted themselves into a corner. They think, absurdly, that borders are 'racist.' But even they realize, despite their willful self-enstupidation, that borders are needed for disease control.  The solution, however, escapes them: jettison the absurd belief that borders are 'racist.'

They can't see their way out because the race card is all they've got and because of their blind hatred for Donald Trump. What a pathetic bunch of losers!

Will Leftists Now Re-Evaluate their Espousal of a "Borderless World"?

We of the Coalition of the Sane understand that one of the many reasons for enforced national borders is to impede the spread of deadly diseases. So I am hoping that such globalist nitwits as John Kerry and Hillary Clinton will learn something from COVID-19.  They will perhaps learn the importance of border control. If they do, something good will have come of the Wuhan virus.  One can hope.  Here's a report on something the illustrious Mr. Kerry said a few years back:

Taking a jab at Donald Trump for promising that Mexico would pay for a wall on the Rio Grande, the secretary [Kerry] enthused over his vision of a borderless world, and hectored those reluctant to join his flight to Utopia. Once offstage, Mr. Kerry ducked into an armored vehicle surrounded by heavily armed guards who shepherded him from one secure place to the next, and then home, where he could relax behind sturdy walls.

In other words, borders and guns for us, but not for you "bitter clingers" (Obama) and "deplorables" (Hillary). 

Just remember, folks, political correctness can get you killed. "Killed dead," as a deplorable might say.

Is Meaningful Dialog Possible with Leftists?

I rather doubt it. Suppose a bunch of leftists such as the editors of Commonweal say the following:

We reject the xenophobia and racism of many forms of ethno-nationalism, explicit and implicit, as grave sins against God the Creator. Violence done against the bodies of marginalized people is violence done against the body of Christ. Indifference to the suffering of orphans, refugees, and prisoners is indifference to Jesus Christ and his cross. White supremacist ideology is the work of the anti-Christ.

First of all, insistence on a nation's right to control its borders is not xenophobic. To suggest that conservatives have no good arguments for border control and that their insistence on it is based on irrational fear of foreigners is SLANDER. How Christian is that?

Second, illegal aliens do not constitute a race of people. So where is the racism in border control?  And where is the white supremacism?

Third, every nation has the right to decide whom to allow to immigrate.  There is, after all, no right to immigrate.

Reasons for opposing illegal immigration 

There are several sound specific reasons for demanding that the Federal government exercise its legitimate, constitutionally grounded (see Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution) function of securing the national borders, and none of these reasons has anything to do with racism or xenophobia or nativism or any other derogatory epithet that slanderous leftists and libertarians want to attach to those of us who can think clearly about this issue.

There are reasons having to do with national security in an age of terrorism. There are reasons having to do with assimilation, national identity, and comity. How likely is it that illegals will assimilate if allowed to come in in great numbers, and how likely is social harmony among citizens and unassimmilated illegals?  There are considerations of fairness in respect of those who have entered the country legally by satisfying the requirements of so doing. Is it fair that they should be put through a lengthy process when others are allowed in illegally? 

There are reasons having to do with the importation of contraband substances into the country. There are reasons having to to do with the sex trade and human trafficking generally. There are reasons having to do with increased crime. Last but not least, there are reasons pertaining to public health. With the concern over avian influenza, tuberculosis, ebola, and all sorts of tropical diseases, we have all the more reason to demand border control.

Borders are a body politic's immune system. Unregulated borders are deficient immune systems. Diseases that were once thought to have been eradicated have made a comeback north of the Rio Grande due to the unregulated influx of population. These diseases include tuberculosis, Chagas disease, leprosy, Dengue fever, polio, and malaria.

You will have noticed how liberals want to transform into public health issues problems that are manifestly not public but matters of private concern, obesity for example. But here we have an issue that is clearly a public health issue, one concerning which Federal involvement is justified, and what do our dear liberals do? They ignore it. Of course, the problem cannot be blamed solely on the Democrat Party. Republicans like G. W. Bush and John McCain were just as guilty. On immigration, Bush was clearly no conservative; he was a libertarian on this issue. A libertarian on some issues, a liberal on others, and a conservative on far too few.

Illegal Aliens and Black Reparations

Here is another problem for the ill-starred notion of black reparations. Should those who reside illegally in the U. S. pay them? Why not? Don't they benefit from the putative legacy of slavery like everyone else?  On the  other hand, if you think that only the  descendants of slave-holders should pay reparations, then we citizens who are are not descended from slave-holders are off the hook. And what about the blacks who are descended from blacks who held slaves? Do they get reparations too? And who is black anyway? Rachel Dolezal?  If race is just a social construct, can I re-identify as black and get in on the goodies? If I can identify as a girl and then compete in an all-female athletic event, why can't I identify as black?

There will never be black reparations for slavery. The idea is just too incoherent for implementation. And it perpetuates the victim mentality that keeps blacks on the bottom. Nor should there be reparations for slavery. See the following. Trigger warning! They are exercises in reasoned discourse.

David Horowitz on Black Reparations

On Black Reparations

Kevin Kim on John Pepple on Sweden as Europe's Sacrificial Lamb

A tip of the hat to Bill Keezer, and greetings to fellow bloggers Kim and Pepple. The titles of their blogs do not, however, earn the coveted MavPhil transparency of content award.

Feed: BigHominid's Hairy Chasms
Posted on: Thursday, September 5, 2019 1:22 AM
Author: Kevin Kim
Subject: Pepple on Sweden

Is Sweden Europe's sacrificial lamb, to be laid out as a bloody example of what happens when you heedlessly allow an influx of Muslims who refuse to assimilate into your culture? In John Pepple's grim blog post, Dr. Pepple quotes a Frenchwoman who immigrated to Sweden, but who is now leaving the country for Budapest because the crime has gotten so bad, and because PC politicians, who fear being branded as racists, refuse to recognize that there's any problem with current immigration policy and law enforcement. Here's an excerpt of something the woman wrote—one long, cri de coeur sentence: I can no longer live under this immense mental stress, insecurity, murder, shooting, executions, explosions, rapes and gang rapes, robberies, home burglaries, beatings, car fires, school fires, serious criminals who, after a relatively short prison stay, may again be released to move freely among us, an increasingly dismantled welfare system, lack of health care staff, teachers, elderly housing, lack of elderly care, an increasing number of poor pensioners, municipalities in principle bankrupt or in bankruptcy, all these no-go zones called something else, lack of police resources where it may take 1.5-2 hours for them to arrive at the scene of ongoing crimes if they arrive at all, the lying politicians regardless of political color and the accomplished so-called PC media, the demonization of people who think differently, the shrinking freedom of expression, the increasingly diminishing democracy, and last, but not least, the ongoing and widespread Islamization of the country. Go read the rest. A similar picture is being painted of countries like France, which is dealing with its own immigration/assimilation problem. France has a built-in cultural immune system called laïcité or, roughly, secularism. This is why French law has made no bones about disallowing the wearing of religious items like Muslim veils (hijab, etc.). But in the area surrounding Paris, which is filled with tenements and housing projects, there are the same no-go zones, with plenty of robbery, rape, car fires, and so on. In Paris itself, tent cities—with their attendant filth and violence—can be found as well. But once you leave Paris, you'd be forgiven for thinking France is still France. In the area where my buddy Dominique lives, in the small town of Le Vanneau-Irleau, life goes on much as it has for decades, utterly untouched by what's happening in France's big cities. In the United States, there's a similar state of affairs, albeit with somewhat different demographics. Still, the heart of the US problem has much in common with Europe's problem: a lack of political will when it comes to things like immigration and the true causes of poverty, and a lack of will when it comes to law enforcement. Any teacher knows that losing control of the classroom means the students will rule and nothing of significance will be learned. This is basic human psychology: people need structure if they are to live in harmony and to flourish. Without structure, life is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. This is the paradox of freedom: true freedom is, far from being unstructured, veined throughout with structure. The creative freedom and amazing technique you can see in a great painter or martial artist is the result of focus and discipline. It's strange, but it's strictures that allow humans to flourish. And a society is no different from an individual in this regard: a society without strictures—an organic system of rules and laws and unspoken social contracts—becomes flabby and moribund. Look at New York City before and after Rudy Giuliani's two terms: Giuliani enforced the law, and his policies resulted in a few years of glorious prosperity between long periods of poverty and crime. Sweden is experiencing this problem now; so is France, at least in its big cities. The US has its own similar urban problems. As the folk song goes, When will they ever learn?

View article...

I am not Totally Opposed to Open Borders

I'm for half-open borders, borders open in the outbound direction.  Anyone who wants to emigrate should be allowed to do so. 

Communists need walls to keep people in; we need walls to keep them out.  Hence the rank absurdity of the comparison of a wall on our southern border to the Berlin Wall.  Now the mendacious leftists who make this comparison cannot be so historically uninformed as not to see its rank absurdity.  But they make it anyway because they will say or do anything to win.  They are out for power any way they can get it.

It is interesting that even hate-America leftists do not want to leave the United States. They talk about it, but few do it. And where do they say they will go?

Canada is high on the list. Why not Mexico? Are they perhaps racists?

Gun Violence and Border Control: A Plea to Our 'Liberal' Brethren

Dear 'Liberal,'

If you are concerned with gun violence, then you ought to be concerned with controlling the border. A porous border allows for human trafficking, drug trafficking, and -- wait for it -- gun smuggling. Now can you grasp that weaponry illegally brought into the country can and will end up in the wrong hands?

Sure you can! And you CARE SO MUCH, don't you? Then you ought to support President Trump and oppose the obstructionist Democrats who either want open borders or practically promote them via their Trump-hating obstructionism.

Michael Kearns, Profile in Civil Courage

Erie County Clerk Michael "Mickey" Kearns took his first legal step to fight a new state law that allows immigrants in the country illegally to obtain a New York State driver's license.

At the time the illegal aliens receive, illegally, their driver's licenses, they will be able to register to vote, again illegally. Now in possession of photo ID, they will be able vote illegally in our elections.

The contemptible Dems profess to be worried about Russian interference in our elections. But these Democrat scumbags actively support illegal-alien interference in our elections. They are mendacious, hate-America leftists.

So please don't complain about a culture of contempt. Comrades Cuomo and de Blasio and all the rest of their ilk are fully deserving of contempt. Sorry David French, but these people are not fellow citizens but domestic enemies.

buffalonews.com

 

Erie County clerk: 'I will not be granting licenses to illegal immigrants'

The Greatest Risk We are Taking

Patrick J. Buchanan:

But the greatest risk we are taking, based on utopianism, is the annual importation of well over a million legal and illegal immigrants, many from the failed states of the Third World, in the belief we can create a united, peaceful and harmonious land of 400 million, composed of every race, religion, ethnicity, tribe, creed, culture and language on earth.

Where is the historic evidence for the success of this experiment, the failure of which could mean the end of America as one nation and one people?

There is none. Most people with a bit of life experience know that one can get along and interact productively with only some people. There has to be a broad base of shared agreement on all sorts of things. For example, there ought to be only one language in the U. S. for all public purposes, English. It was a huge mistake when voting forms were allowed to be published in foreign languages. Only legal immigrants should be allowed in, and assimilation must be demanded of them.

No comity without commonality as one of my  aphorisms has it.

The Left, however, wants the end of America as she was founded to be, "one nation and one people." That is why leftists support the illegal invasion from the south.  But being mendacious leftists they will never openly admit this, but instead speak with Orwellian obfuscation of "comprehensive immigration reform."

The enemy has been identified.

Do not think of leftists and 'progressives' as fellow citizens; they are merely among us as disorderly elements and domestic enemies.  There can be no peace with them because they represent an 'existential threat.' Not to our physical existence so  much as to our way of life, which is of course more important than our mere physical existence as animals.

But I must add, contra certain of the Alt Right, that "one people" should not be understood racially or ethnically. An enlightened nationalism is not  a white nationalism.  America is of course  'a proposition nation.' You will find the propositions in the founding documents such as the Declaration of Independence.  

I don't give a flying enchilada whether you are Hispanic or Asian.  If you immigrated legally, accept the propositions, drop the hyphens, and identify as an American, then I say you are one of us. I'll even celebrate the culinary diversity you contribute.

That being understood, it is also true that whites discovered these America-constitutive propositions and are well-equipped to appreciate and uphold them, and better equipped than some other groups. That is a fact that a sane immigration policy must reflect.

My view is eminently reasonable and balanced. It navigates between the Scylla of destructive leftist globalist internationalism and the Charybdis of racist identity-political particularism.

Patrick J. Buchanan:

But the greatest risk we are taking, based on utopianism, is the annual importation of well over a million legal and illegal immigrants, many from the failed states of the Third World, in the belief we can create a united, peaceful and harmonious land of 400 million, composed of every race, religion, ethnicity, tribe, creed, culture and language on earth.

Where is the historic evidence for the success of this experiment, the failure of which could mean the end of America as one nation and one people?

There is none. Most people with a bit of life experience know that one can get along and interact productively with only some people. There has to be a broad base of shared agreement on all sorts of things. For example, there ought to be only one language in the U. S. for all public purposes, English. It was a huge mistake when voting forms were allowed to be published in foreign languages. Only legal immigrants should be allowed in, and assimilation must be demanded of them.

No comity without commonality as one of my  aphorisms has it.

The Left, however, wants the end of America as she was founded to be, "one nation and one people." That is why leftists support the illegal invasion from the south.  But being mendacious leftists they will never openly admit this, but instead speak with Orwellian obfuscation of "comprehensive immigration reform."

The enemy has been identified.

Do not think of leftists and 'progressives' as fellow citizens; they are merely among us as disorderly elements and domestic enemies.  There can be no peace with them because they represent an 'existential threat.' Not to our physical existence so  much as to our way of life, which is of course more important than our mere physical existence as animals.

But I must add, contra certain of the Alt Right, that "one people" should not be understood racially or ethnically. An enlightened nationalism is not  a white nationalism.  America is of course  'a proposition nation.' You will find the propositions in the founding documents such as the Declaration of Independence.  

I don't give a flying enchilada whether you are Hispanic or Asian.  If you immigrated legally, accept the propositions, drop the hyphens, and identify as an American, then I say you are one of us. I'll even celebrate the culinary diversity you contribute.

That being understood, it is also true that whites discovered these America-constitutive propositions and are well-equipped to appreciate and uphold them, and better equipped than some other groups. That is a fact that a sane immigration policy must reflect.

My view is eminently reasonable and balanced. It navigates between the Scylla of destructive leftist globalist internationalism and the Charybdis of racist identity-political particularism.

Nationalism: Ethnic and Civic

Here:

Much of today’s debate fails to distinguish between two types of nationalism: ethnic and civic. The former is based on language, blood or race. American nationalism is the latter, civic in nature, holding that the United States is a nation based on a set of beliefs — a creed — rather than race or blood. This understanding of nationalism is equivalent to “patriotism.”

This is a good start, but it doesn't go deep enough. I applaud the distinction between the ethnic and the civic. But American nationalism is not wholly civic.  Indeed, it is hard to imagine any nation that could be wholly civic, wholly 'propositional' or wholly based on a set of beliefs and value.  And yet the United States is a proposition nation: the propositions are in the founding documents. I don't see how that could be reasonably denied. 

I also don't see how it could be reasonably denied that the discovery and articulation and preservation of classically American principles and values was achieved by people belonging to a certain tradition.  

This has consequences for immigration policy. I take it to be axiomatic that immigration must be to the benefit of the host country, a benefit not to be  defined in merely economic terms. 

And so I ask a politically incorrect but perfectly reasonable question: Is there any net benefit to Muslim immigration?  Immigrants bring their culture with them. Muslims, for example, bring with them a Sharia-based, hybrid religious-political ideology that is antithetical to American values.

So I ask again: Is there any net benefit to Muslim immigration?

On 'Illegal Alien' and 'Illegal Immigrant'

Liberals, whose love of political correctness gets the better of their intellects, typically object to the phrase 'illegal alien.' But why? Are these people not in our country illegally, as the result of breaking laws?  And are they not aliens, people from another country? 

"But you are labeling them!"  Yes, of course.  Label we must if we are not to lose our minds entirely. 'Feral cat' is a label.  Do you propose that we not distinguish between feral and non-feral cats?  Do you distinguish between the positive and the negative terminals on your car battery?  You'd better!  But 'positive terminal' and 'negative terminal' are labels. 

Label we must.  There is no getting around it if we are to think at all.  There is a political outfit that calls itself "No Labels."  But that too is a label.  Those who eschew all labels label themselves 'idiots.'

Related to this is the injunction, 'Never generalize!' which is itself a generalization. Label we must and generalize we must.  Making distinctions and labeling them, and constructing sound generalizations on their basis are activities essential to, thought not exhaustive of, the life of the intellect.

Liberals also object to 'illegal immigrant.'  In fact, the AP has banned the phrase.  But given that there are both legal and illegal immigrants, 'illegal immigrant' is a useful label.  There is nothing derogatory about it.  It is a descriptive term like 'hypertensive' or 'diabetic.' 

One consideration adduced at the AP site is that actions are illegal, not persons. But suppose your doctor tells you that you are diabetic, and you protest, "Doc, not only are you labelling me, you are forgetting that diabetes is a medical condition and that no person is a medical condition." The good doctor would then have to explain that a diabetic is a person who has diabetes.  Similarly, an illegal immigrant is one who is in the country illegally.  There is the act of illegally crossing the border, but there is also the state of being here illegally.

Plain talk is an excellent antidote to liberal nonsense. When a liberal or a leftist misuses a word in an intellectually dishonest attempt at forwarding his agenda, a right-thinking person ought to protest.  Whether you protest or not, you must not acquiesce  in their pernicious misuse of language.  Or, as I have said more than once in these pages,

If you are a conservative, don't talk like a liberal!

Bear in mind that many of the battles of the culture war are fought, won, and lost on linguistic ground. If we let  our opponents destroy the common language in which alone reasonable  debate can be conducted, then much more is lost than these particular  debates.  The liberal-left misuse of language is fueled by their determination to win politically at all costs and by any means, including linguistic hijacking.

Language matters!

'Liberal' Immigration Hyper-Hypocrisy

You may remember Trump Labor Secretary nominee Anthony Puzder who came under fire for having employed an illegal immigrant as a housekeeper.  But why should 'liberals' care given that they do not distinguish legal from illegal immigrants while standing for open borders and sanctuary jurisdictions in defiance of the rule of law? Suddenly, these destructive leftists care about immigration law? 'Liberals' should praise Puzder for giving the poor woman a job.  After all, as they say, no human being is illegal!

What the Left is doing here is employing a Saul Alinsky tactic.  The fourth of his Rules for Radicals reads:

Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.

Leftists judge us by rules for which they have nothing but contempt. 

The ordinary hypocrite will not practice what he preaches, but at least he preaches, thereby paying lip service to ideals of conduct that he puts forth as binding on all.   The Alinksyite leftist is a hyper-hypocrite who preaches ideals of conduct, not to all, but to his enemies, ideals that he has no intention of honoring.

Of course, I am not saying that Puzder did not do wrong in hiring the illegal immigrant. He did, assuming he knew she was illegal.

Is Illegal Immigration a Crime?

It is. Nancy Pelosi and other prominent Democrats have been lying to us. Illegal immigrants are subject to criminal penalties. While improper entry is a crime, unlawful presence is not a crime. One can be unlawfully present in the U. S. without having entered improperly, and thus without having committed a crime. 

If a foreign national enters the country on a valid travel or work visa, but overstays his visa, failing to exit before the expiration date, then he is in violation of federal immigration law. But this comes under the civil code, not the criminal code. Such a person is subject to civil penalties such as deportation.

So there are two main ways for an alien to be illegal. He can be illegal in virtue of violating the criminal code or illegal in virtue of violating the civil code. 

Those who oppose strict enforcement of national borders show their contempt for the rule of law and their willingness to tolerate criminal behavior, not just illegal behavior.

9/11 Seventeen Years Later

The morning of 9/11 was a beautiful, dry Arizona morning.  Back from a hard run, I flipped on the TV while doing some cool-down exercises only to see one of the planes crash into one of the towers. I knew right away what was going on.

I said to my wife, "Well, two good things will come of this: Gary Condit will be out of the news forever, and finally something will be done about our porous southern border."

I was right about the first, but not about the second.

Do you remember Gary Condit, the California congressman?  Succumbing as so many do to the fire down below Condit initiated an extramarital affair with the federal intern, Chandra Levy.  When Levy was found murdered, Condit's link to Levy proved his undoing.  The cable shows were awash with the Condit-Levy affair that summer of 2001.  9/11 put an end to the soap opera.

But it didn't do  much for the security of the southern border. 

We got lucky in November, 2016. Now do your bit to vote down the obstructionsts and defeatists, whether living or dead, legal or not,  this coming November.

Voter Fraud is Real

Leftists of course deny the fact since it serves their purposes to do so. Their grand strategy is to win by demographic means. 

Truth is not a leftist value. Or rather, it is if it supports their agenda, but is not if it doesn't.

For a leftist, the difference between a citizen and a non-citizen is the difference between someone who is physically present within a nation's boundaries and one who isn't.

John Fund has done good, objective work on voter fraud. See here and here.

The Institutionalized Race War

Things are going to get 'interesting.'

I'm glad I'm an old man. I've had a good run. Trouble is, I take care of myself. 

More on the Left's Grand Demographic Strategy

Here:

We also now know, thanks to four different studies, that between 2.2 and 5.7 million illegal aliens have voted in the last few presidential elections.

The best guess is that at least three million illegal aliens voted in 2016, enough to give Hillary the popular vote but not quite enough to win some of the key rustbelt states won by Trump. This is why liberal state legislators all over the nation have pushed legislation granting illegals driver licenses. So far, 12 states have passed such laws.

The left knows full well that holding a driver’s license gives illegal aliens the confidence to also register to vote, not to mention many states have “motor voter” laws in which the DMV automatically registers to vote anyone granted a driver’s license. In California alone, the DMV has reported that one million “undocumented” immigrants have received driver licenses over the last three years. Unless they refused to register to vote, those non-citizens can now vote. Remember, in California, as in most states today, no one asks for proof of citizenship in order to register to vote.

The illegal alien vote is the Democrats secret voting bloc and it’s growing. This is why Obama’s Attorney General, Eric Holder, threw the full weight of the DOJ at every state that even thought about implementing a voter ID program of any kind.

It is therefore Orwellian in excelsis when ID requirements are denounced as "voter suppression."

Democrats Only Pretend to Care About the Integrity of Our Elections

 

Here are three very important points. Please pay attention.

1) Barack Obama, you will recall, made light of the suggestion that U. S. elections could be rigged or stolen back in October of 2016.  You can hear his own words here. He and almost everyone else was sure Hillary would win a couple of weeks later. That is what all the pundits were saying, and anyway how could such an obnoxious cretin as Trump who had insulted so many people  possibly become president? When Hillary  lost in the electoral college, lefties couldn't believe it. It shocked them deeply.  You can see the depth of their reaction if you watch the many videos from election night depicting the tears of anguish and the tears of rage.  And so it is very easy to understand how lefties, who never stray from their enclaves, and never sully their precious minds with conservative commentary, and have no contact with the unwashed deplorables who stink of Wal-Mart and the barnyard, could believe that Trump just had to have colluded with the Russians to secure his victory. To their minds, there is no other possible explanation.

I heard Rosie O'Donnell say the other night that she "firmly believed" that Trump's win was due to Russian help.  I don't doubt that Rosie and her fellow travellers firmly believe it in a way that admits of no possible disconfirmation. It has become an idée fixe in their benighted brains.  They can't help it. They see themselves as good people, as progressive, bien-pensant, caring people, on the right side of history. It is simply incomprehensible to them that Trump won fair and square.

The reversal of position from 'no possible rigging' to 'Russian rigging' is very easy to understand: it's all about getting Trump out of office by any means.  The only reason the Dems care about election integrity now when they didn't before is that it aids and abets their drive toward impeachment.

2) Democrats support open borders, sanctuary cities, the sanctuary state of California, and the awarding of the franchise to illegal aliens. All of this is a giant middle finger in the face of the rule of law. Their grand strategy is perfectly obvious: to advance leftism and destroy America as she was founded to be, and to do so  by demographic means. If you don't see that you need the services of that proctologist I mentioned in an earlier post, the one who specializes in head injuries and especially difficult extractions.

3) And then there is the business about photo ID that Dems insanely oppose.  The reason they oppose it is obvious: they intend to make the polling places safe for voter fraud. It is part of their demographic grand strategy.  You will enjoy this YouTube video in which white liberals claim that blacks lack ID and blacks on the street react to the absurd claim.

Birthright Citizenship: Michael Anton Replies to Critics

Here

The issue becomes moot if we just open the borders.  Bryan Caplan believes that there is a strong case for doing just that. I'll leave it to you to evaluate his argument.

San Francisco Registers Illegal Aliens to Vote

Story here. 

Memo to 'liberals': If you hadn't been so extreme in your ill-starred project of  "fundamentally transforming the United States of America" (Barack Obama, October 2008, Columbia, Missouri), Trump would never have been elected.

In other 'progressive' news, San Francisco's crap spreads to Portland.

Soon a crap map will be needed to navigate that city as well.

Leftists have something inversely analogous to the Midas touch: whatever they touch turns to crap. Their motto should be, Mi caca es su caca.

And another thing. (7/19) Isn't there something curious about people who rightly worry about Russians interfering with our elections, but without a second thought give illegal alien foreign nationals  the right to interfere with our elections?

Richard Fernandez on the Border Crisis

His piece concludes:

Trump and the European populists are picking up political assets at a bargain. Glenn Reynolds observed:

[T]he press has three main kinds of power. One is to motivate the left. Another is to swing the middle. And the third is to demoralize the right. It’s pretty much lost the last of these, and I suspect the second one is fading too.

A status quo that used to be able to buy on the margin has let its account fall below the minimum level, and perhaps for the first time has nothing more it can deposit.  The media is shrill in the way a customer whose credit is bad must shout at the waiter to get service. But it was grand while it lasted -- the idea we could live without borders, without defense, or even without civilization. Money for nothing and your checks for free. The music played for so long that even now no one can even imagine it could stop. How many will really prefer reality to illusion?

Reynolds is right: far from demoralizing the Right, the mainstream lamestreamers are energizing the Right. Why are the progs behaving so stupidly? Do they have a death wish?  

Things should prove 'interesting' come November.

What is Wrong with Illegal Immigration? (2018 Version)

Immigration is proving to be a major issue of our time. It is important that we think as clearly as we can about it.

1) First of all, we must insist on a distinction that many on the Left ignore, that between legal and illegal immigration. Libertarians also often elide the distinction. The elision is aided and abetted by the use of the obfuscatory term 'migrant' which manages to conflate two distinctions at once: that between immigrants and emigrants, and that between legal and illegal immigrants.

Language matters here as elsewhere and one must oppose the linguistic mischief of those who speak of 'undocumented workers' to hide the fact that the law is being broken. It is also important to say, once again, that illegal entry is a violation of the criminal code. It is not a mere civil violation.

Legal and illegal immigration are separate, logically independent, issues. To oppose illegal immigration is not to oppose legal immigration. We assume, then, that no one should be allowed to enter illegally. But why exactly? What's wrong with illegal immigration? Aren't those who oppose it racists and xenophobes and nativists whose opinions are nothing but expressions of bigotry and hate?  Aren't they deplorable people who cling to religion and guns?  Doesn't everyone have a right to migrate wherever he wants?

2) The most general reason for not allowing illegal immigration is precisely because it is illegal.  If the rule of law is to be upheld, then reasonable laws cannot be allowed to be violated with impunity simply because they are difficult to enforce or are being violated by huge numbers of people.  Someone who questions the value of the rule of law is not someone it is wise to waste time debating.

But of course a practice's being illegal does not entail its being unjust or wrong or reasonably opposed.  So we need to consider reasons why immigration controls are reasonable.

Reasons for opposing illegal immigration 

3) There are several sound specific reasons for demanding that the Federal government exercise its legitimate, constitutionally grounded (see Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution) function of securing the national borders, and none of these reasons has anything to do with racism or xenophobia or nativism or any other derogatory epithet that slanderous leftists and libertarians want to attach to those of us who can think clearly about this issue.

There are reasons having to do with national security in an age of terrorism. There are reasons having to do with assimilation, national identity, and comity. How likely is it that illegals will assimilate if allowed to come in in great numbers, and how likely is social harmony among citizens and unassimilated illegals?  There are considerations of fairness in respect of those who have entered the country legally by satisfying the requirements of so doing. Is it fair that they should be put through a lengthy process when others are allowed in illegally? 

There are reasons having to do with the importation of contraband substances into the country. There are reasons having to to do with the sex trade and human trafficking generally. There are reasons having to do with increased crime. Last but not least, there are reasons pertaining to public health. With the concern over avian influenza, tuberculosis, ebola, and all sorts of tropical diseases, we have all the more reason to demand border control.

Borders are a body politic's immune system. Unregulated borders are deficient immune systems. Diseases that were once thought to have been eradicated have made a comeback north of the Rio Grande due to the unregulated influx of population. These diseases include tuberculosis, Chagas disease, leprosy, Dengue fever, polio, and malaria.

You will have noticed how liberals want to transform into public health issues problems that are manifestly not public but matters of private concern, obesity for example. But here we have an issue that is clearly a public health issue, one concerning which Federal involvement is justified, and what do our dear liberals do? They ignore it. Of course, the problem cannot be blamed solely on the Democrat Party. Republicans like G. W. Bush and John McCain are just as guilty. On immigration, Bush was clearly no conservative; he was a libertarian on this issue. A libertarian on some issues, a liberal on others, and a conservative on far too few.

Illegal aliens do not constitute a race or ethnic group

4) Many liberals think that opposition to illegal immigration is anti-Hispanic. Not so. It is true that most of those who violate the nation's borders are Hispanic. But the opposition is not to Hispanics but to illegal entrants whether Hispanic or not. It is a contingent fact that Mexico is to the south of the U.S. If Turkey or Iran or Italy were to the south, the issue would be the same. And if Iran were to the south, and there were an influx of illegals, then then leftists would speak of anti-Persian bias.

A salient feature of liberals and leftists -- there isn't much difference nowadays -- is their willingness to 'play the race card,' to inject race into every issue. The issue of illegal immigration has nothing to do with race since illegal immigrants do not constitute a race. There is no such race as the race of 'illegal aliens.' Opposition to them, therefore, cannot be racist.  Suppose England were to the south of the U. S. and Englishmen were streaming north.  Would they be opposed because they are white?  No, because they are illegal aliens.  

"But aren't some of those who oppose illegal immigration racists?" That may be so, but it is irrelevant. That one takes the right stance for the wrong reason does not negate the fact that one has taken the right stance. One only wishes they would take the right stance for the right reasons.  Even if everyone who opposed illegal immigration were a foaming-at-the-mouth redneck of a racist, that would not detract one iota of cogency from the cogent arguments against allowing illegal immigration.  To think otherwise is to embrace the Genetic Fallacy.  

5) The rule of law is a precious thing. It is one of the supports of a civilized life. The toleration of mass breaking of reasonable and just laws undermines the rule of law.

6) Part of the problem is that we let liberals get away with obfuscatory rhetoric, such as 'undocumented worker.' The term does not have the same extension as 'illegal alien.'  I discuss this in a separate post.  

7) How long can a welfare state survive with open borders?  Think about it.  The trend in the USA for a long time now has been towards bigger and bigger government, more and more 'entitlements.' It is obviously impossible for purely fiscal reasons to provide cradle-to-grave security for everyone who wants to come here.  So something has to give.  Either you strip the government down to its essential functions or you control the borders.  The first has no real chance of happening.  Quixotic is the quest  of  strict constructionists  and libertarians who call for it.  Rather than tilting at windmills, they should work with reasonable conservatives to limit and eventually stop the expansion of government.  Think of what a roll-back to a government in accordance with a strictly construed constitution would look  like.  For one thing, the social security system would have to be eliminated.  That won't happen.  Libertarians are 'losertarian' dreamers.  They should wake up and realize that politics is a practical business and should aim at the possible.  By the way, the pursuit of impossible dreams is common to both libertarians and leftists.

'Liberal' arguments for border control

8) Even though contemporary liberals show little or no understanding for the above arguments, there are actually what might be called 'liberal' arguments for controlling the borders:

A. The Labor Argument. To give credit where credit is due, it was not the conservatives of old who championed the working man, agitated for the 40 hour work week, demanded safe working conditions, etc., but the liberals of those days.  They can be proud of this. But it is not only consistent with their concern for workers that they oppose illegal immigration, but demanded by their concern. For when the labor market is flooded with people who will work for low wages, the bargaining power of the U.S. worker is diminished. Liberals should therefore oppose the unregulated influx of cheap labor, and they should oppose it precisely because of their concern for U. S. workers.

By the way, it is simply false to say, as Bush, McCain and other pandering politicians have said, that U.S. workers will not pick lettuce, clean hotel rooms, and the like. Of course they will if they are paid a decent wage. People who won't work for $5 an hour will work for $20. But they won't be able to command $20 if there is a limitless supply of indigentes who will accept $5-10.

B. The Environmental Argument. Although there are 'green' conservatives, concern for the natural environment, and its preservation and protection from industrial exploitation, is more a liberal than a conservative issue. (By the way, I'm a 'green' conservative.) So liberals ought to be concerned about the environmental degradation caused by hordes of illegals crossing the border. It is not just that they degrade the lands they physically cross, it is that people whose main concern is economic survival are not likely to be concerned about environmental protection. They are unlikely to become Sierra Club members or to make contributions to the Nature Conservancy. Love of nature comes more easily to middle class white collar workers for whom nature is a scene of recreation than for those who must wrest a livelihood from it by hard toil.

C. The Population Argument. This is closely related to, but distinct from, the Environmental Argument. To the extent that liberals are concerned about the negative effects of explosive population increase, they should worry about an unchecked influx of people whose women have a high birth-rate.

D. The Social Services Argument. Liberals believe in a vast panoply of social services provided by government and thus funded by taxation. But the quality of these services must degrade as the number of people who demand them rises. To take but one example, laws requiring hospitals to treat those in dire need whether or not they have a means of paying are reasonable and humane -- or at least that can be argued with some show of plausibility. But such laws are reasonably enacted and reasonably enforced only in a context of social order. Without border control, not only will the burden placed on hospitals become unbearable, but the justification for the federal government's imposition of these laws on hospitals will evaporate. According to one source, California hospitals are closing their doors. "Anchor babies"  born to illegal aliens instantly qualify as citizens for welfare benefits and have caused enormous rises in Medicaid costs and stipends under Supplemental Security Income and Disability Income.

The point is that you can be a good liberal and oppose illegal immigration. You can oppose it even if you don't care about increased crime, terrorism, drug smuggling, human trafficking, disease, national identity, national sovereignty, assimilation, the rule of law, or fairness to those who have immigrated legally. But a 'good liberal' who is not concerned with these things is a sorry human being.

Charles Krauthammer: Build the Wall

The wisdom of the late Charles Krauthammer is on display in this short (5:39) PragerU video.

It is a gem of logic and good sense. Study it and then pass it on.

This is the solution. Had anyone other than Trump been elected president in 2016, there would have been no chance of its implementation. But as things are, there is some chance.

But it is a slim chance given the countervailing forces which include the obstructionist Democrats, the never-Trumping Republicans, the viciously biased left-wing media, the Deep State totalitarians, and the Bergoglio Brigade represented here by the U. S. Catholic bishops.

They Said it But They Didn't Mean it

Did the Dems mentioned above change their view? It is rather more likely that they never meant what they said in the first place, but were simply saying what they thought was politically expedient at the time.  Trump forced them to show their true colors. He exposed them as unserious about solving the problem of the illegal invasion and at the same time so enraged them that they radicalized their position in blind reaction to the extent that they are in danger of losing a good percentage of their base.

Andrew Sullivan, who is virulently anti-Trump, understands this very well indeed:

Democrats in 2017, in general, tend to criticize the use of immigration enforcement, and tend to side with those accused of violating immigration law, as a broad matter of principle beyond opposing the particular actions of the administration … Democrats are no longer as willing to attack “illegal immigration” as a fundamental problem anymore.

This is, to be blunt, political suicide. The Democrats’ current position seems to be that the Dreamer parents who broke the law are near heroes, indistinguishable from the children they brought with them; and their rhetoric is very hard to distinguish, certainly for most swing voters, from a belief in open borders. In fact, the Democrats increasingly seem to suggest that any kind of distinction between citizens and noncitizens is somehow racist.

Child Abuse and 'Cages' at the Southern Border?

Jacques writes,

Welcome back to the internet, for better or worse.  I have to ask:  Do you know if there's anything to the current hysteria over the illegal immigrants' kids being held in 'cages'?  I've seen pictures that appear to confirm this and, while I have no problem with illegals being detained or deported, or even separated from their parents if that's really necessary, this does seem wrong to me.  Based on long experience with the MSM and the left, I'm assuming there is _probably_ some reasonable explanation for the pictures that are making the rounds.  But do you know anything?  For some reason there is nothing much about this on the usual immigration sanity sites like vdare.  And I assume they would have posted something to clarify or correct the propaganda if they knew anything about it.  I'm a bit puzzled and concerned.  I want the invasion to stop, but I don't see why that couldn't be done humanely. 

As far as I can tell, the leftist propaganda on this issue is just that. Truth is not a leftist value. Leftists  are out for power any way they can get it. So one must expect lies and distortions from their camp. The strategy of the Democrat Party is to win demographically by obstructing effective attempts to control the borders and stem the tide of illegals on the reasonable expectation that the vast majority of illegals will support the Democrat Party.  That is the Grand Strategy. Trump was elected to oppose it. Because he alone among Republicans has the civil courage to tackle the issue head-on, he is mindlessly despised both by the destructive Left and the Never-Trumper Right.

Again we see that for the Left, the issue is not the issue.  Although individual lefties may care about the plight of immigrant children, leftists in general do not.  They use the children issue to advance their agenda which is to subvert the rule of law, gut the U. S. Constitution, and advance on all fronts toward their goals.

The following videos credibly rebut the 'caging' and 'child abuse' charge:  here and here.

Tell me what you think.

For the Left, the Issue is Never the Issue

David Horowitz (2013):

Here is another statement from [Saul Alinsky's] Rules for Radicals: “We are always moral and our enemies always immoral.” The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the immorality of the opposition, of conservatives and Republicans. If they are perceived as immoral and indecent, their policies and arguments can be dismissed, and even those constituencies that are non-political or “low-information” can be mobilized to do battle against an evil party.

In 1996 Senator Bob Dole — a moderate Republican and deal-maker — ran for president against the incumbent, Bill Clinton. At the time, Dick Morris was Clinton’s political adviser. As they were heading into the election campaign, Clinton — a centrist Democrat — told Morris, “You have to understand, Dick, Bob Dole is evil.” That is how even centrist Democrats view the political battle.

Because Democrats and progressives regard politics as a battle of good versus evil, their focus is not on policies that work and ideas that make sense, but on what will make their party win. Demonizing the opposition is one answer; unity is another. If we are divided, we will fail, and that means evil will triumph. (emphasis added)

A good recent example of how, for the Left, the issue is never the issue is the furor over the separation of the children of illegal immigrants from their parents.  Why are 'liberals' apoplectically concerned about the separation of the children of criminals from their parents? Because the issue is not the issue. That is, the issue is merely a means to the end of more power. They have no objection to the use of State power in separating children from criminal parents when the ones affected are citizens.

This meme bears the title 'Hypocrisy.' But it is worse than hypocrisy. And it is not correctly called a double standard. Leftists, liberals, progressives -- whatever you want to call them -- don't share our values and standards. They use them against us in the approved Alinskyite manner.  

Why Would Anyone Want to Come to the USA?

Heather Mac is a national treasure. As long as we of the Coalition of the Sane have people like her to speak for us there is hope. A taste:

But why should social-justice warriors want to subject these potential asylees to the horrors of America? In coming to the U.S., if you believe the dominant feminist narrative, the female aliens would simply be exchanging their local violent patriarchy for a new one. Indeed, it should be a mystery to these committed progressives why any Third World resident would seek to enter the United States. Not only is rape culture pervasive in the U.S., but the very lifeblood of America is the destruction of “black bodies,” in the words of media star Ta-Nehesi Coates. Surely, a Third World person of color would be better off staying in his home country, where he is free from genocidal whiteness and the murderous legacy of Western civilization and Enlightenment values.

A 'Fake News' Smear

Donald Trump baits the so-called journalists of the lamestream media with his largely, but not entirely, true accusations of 'fake news' and what do the 'journalists' do? They bite. They take the bait. 

In their TDS-driven rage they verify the accusations by violating their own professional standards. Well, keep it up knuckleheads! You are destroying what is left of your credibility.

By the way, when John McCain and others accuse Trump of attacking the Fourth Estate they are merely flailing about in frustration.  Trump is rendering a salutary service by punching back effectively at the patently biased and leftward-leaning mainstream/lamestream media.

Trump's genius is that he knows how so to needle them that they show their true colors. Or as Dan Bongino rather less delicately put it the other night, "He gets them to pull down their pants and show their asses."

Bongino then went on strangely to remark that he didn't mean the comment literally! No?

The only thing wrong with Trump's 'animal' comment is that it is not fair to animals. They don't have free will; MS-13 gangsters do.

It is clear proof that  leftists in high positions in the Fourth Estate are moral scum that they could with impunity slander a duly elected president in such a vicious and absurd way.

The Populist Surge in Italy and Elsewhere

Immigration, both legal and illegal, is perhaps the central issue of our time. Robert W. Merry:

And, of all the issues roiling Europe these days, none generates more political force and energy than the immigration crisis—representing a direct threat to the very definition of the West as well as its cultural coherence and health. The globalist elites don’t get it, even now, but their days are numbered. It is noteworthy that the two political institutions seeking a coalition government in Italy represent some 69 percent of the March 4 vote. That’s a lot of populist sentiment, and the elites may be able to chip away at it if the coalition stumbles, but they won’t be able to reverse it. The country is set upon a populist course for years to come.

Bill Galston, who is no populist (his latest book is entitled Anti-Pluralism: The Populist Threat to Liberal Democracy), nevertheless understands the wellsprings of populist movements. “Throughout Europe,” he writes, “immigration is at the core of the populist critique of the liberal democratic order.” He notes that Orban in Hungary, Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, France’s Marine Le Pen, and Matteo Salvini “all have highlighted the EU’s stance on immigration, raising important questions about economic globalization, political transnationalism, and cultural liberalism.” He adds that dismissing these concerns as simply retrograde is “counterproductive.” Instead, Europe’s leaders will have to take them seriously—“while offering better answers than unscrupulous demagogues like Orban can muster.”

Why should populism be considered a threat to liberal democracy? It is a threat to a leftist internationalism that rejects national borders and denies to nations the right to preserve their cultures, the right to stop illegal immigration, and the right to select those immigrants who are most likely to prove to be a net asset to the host country, and most likely to assimilate. There needn't be anything white supremacist or white nationalist about populism. (By the way, white supremacism and white nationalism are plainly different: a white nationalist needn't be a white supremacist.)  And of course there needn't be anything racist or xenophobic or bigoted about populism.

Populism in the Trumpian style is not a threat to liberal democracy as the Founders envisioned it, but a threat to the leftist internationalism I have just limned and which contemporary 'liberals' confuse with the liberal democracy of the Founders. It is also quite telling that these 'liberals' constantly use the word 'democracy' as if it is something wonderful indeed, but they almost never mention that the USA is a democratic republic.  Our republic has a stiff backbone of core principles and meta-principles that are not up for democratic grabs, or at least are not up for easy grabs: the Constitution can be amended but it is not easy, nor should it be. 

Those who think that democracy is a wonderful thing ought to realize that Sharia can be installed democratically. This is underway in Belgium. Brussels could be Muslim within 20 years.  Let enough Muslims infiltrate and then they will decide who 'the people' are and who are not 'the people.'  The native Belgians will then have been displaced. Ain't democracy wonderful?

Let enough illegal aliens flood in, give them the vote, and they may decide to do away with the distinction between legal and illegal immigration as well as the one between immigration and emigration. Ever wonder why lefties like the word 'migrant?' It manages to elide both distinctions in one fell swoop.

A sane and defensible populism rests on an appreciation of an insight I have aphoristically expressed as follows:

No comity without commonality.

There cannot be social harmony without a raft of shared assumptions and values, not to mention a shared language. Merry, above, speaks of "cultural coherence." A felicitous phrase, that. Our open, tolerant, Enlightenment culture cannot cohere and survive if Sharia-supporting Muslims are allowed to immigrate. For their ultimate goal is not to assimilate to our ways, but to impose their ways on us, eventually replacing us.

This is happening in Europe, Belgium being one good and chilling example. Muslim culture, however, is inferior to ours (on balance, not in every respect) and it is our decadence that blinds us to this fact. Suppose you are a benighted relativist who cannot or will not comprehend what I just wrote. Still, a nation has a right to its heritage and its culture. This is why there cannot be open borders. We have every right to preserve our culture just as Muslims have a right to preserve theirs.  

In sum:

1) Immigration issues will drive our politics, and not just ours, for the forseeable future.

2) The populist juggernaut will be hard to stop, and not just here.

Addendum (5/21):

Bill Keezer recommends Civilizational Jihad in the USA: The Practicum. You will find it very interesting, if that's the word.

We Are all 'White Supremacists' Now

Even the San Francisco lefty, Angela Alioto. She has been called the following names: white supremacist, Trumpian, fascist, Nazi, and racist.  For despite her leftist wobble, she retains some common sense: she proposes a reform of the S. F. sanctuary city law so that it no longer protects felons as she explains on the Tucker Carlson show.

How 'insensitive'! What a 'racist,' as if felons constitute a race. 

And if wanting to crack down on felons proves one a 'white supremacist,' does that not imply that all felons are 'people of 'color'?

There is no wisdom on the Left.  Dennis Prager:

The left in America is founded on the rejection of wisdom. It is possible to be on the left and be kind, honest in business, faithful to one’s spouse, etc. But it is not possible to be wise if one subscribes to leftist (as opposed to liberal) ideas.

Last year, Amy Wax, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, co-authored an opinion piece in the Philadelphia Inquirer with a professor from the University of San Diego School of Law in which they wrote that the “bourgeois culture” and “bourgeois norms” that governed America from the end of World War II until the mid-1960s were good for America, and that their rejection has caused much of the social dysfunction that has characterized this country since the 1960s.

Those values included, in their words: “Get married before you have children and strive to stay married for their sake. Get the education you need for gainful employment, work hard, and avoid idleness. Go the extra mile for your employer or client. Be a patriot, ready to serve the country. Be neighborly, civic-minded, and charitable. Avoid coarse language in public. Be respectful of authority. Eschew substance abuse and crime.”

Recognizing those norms as universally beneficial constitutes wisdom. Rejection of them constitutes a rejection of wisdom — i.e. foolishness.

Yet the left almost universally rejected the Wax piece, deeming it, as the left-wing National Lawyers Guild wrote, “an explicit and implicit endorsement of white supremacy,” and questioning whether professor Wax should be allowed to continue teaching a required first-year course at Penn Law.

To equate getting married before having children, working hard and eschewing substance abuse and crime with “white supremacy” is to betray an absence of wisdom that is as depressing as it breathtaking. It is obvious to anyone with a modicum of common sense that those values benefit anyone who adheres to them; they have nothing to do with race.

Exactly right, but not much is achieved by re-iterating these commonsensical points.

One has to defeat the destructive, slanderous  leftist swine. And let's hope to God we can do it without resorting to extra-political means. The milque-toast McCains and Romneys of the G. O. P. are manifestly not up to the job. What is needed is  an alpha male like Trump the Jacksonian who has already racked up an impressive series of accomplishments and has delivered stinging rebukes to the obstructionist crapweasels of the Jack Ass party. 

Tribalism and Diversity

Tribalism is on the rise. Given this fact, does it make sense to admit into one's country ever more different tribes? A piety oft-intoned by leftists is that diversity is our strength. An Orwellianism, that, if tribal diversity is at issue.  For that would amount to the absurdity that the more domestic strife, the stronger we become. It is plain, after all, that tribes do not like each other, and do not see themselves in the other. Tribal identification is other-exclusive.

I am against tribal identification. I realize, however, that I am sawing against the grain of the crooked timber of humanity. So the realist in me says that immigration policy must favor those who are assimilable to our values and principles and must exclude those who aren't.

Now isn't that the sanest thing you've heard all day?

It is, an sich, eminently sane, but not to the destructive and self-enstupidated. 

Related articles

Has Giving Leftists What They Want Made America Better?

Governor Moonbeam at the Golden Gate

The Ideology of Illegal Immigration

An outstanding column by VDH. Excerpts:

The entire vocabulary of illegal immigration has become Orwellian. Once descriptive nouns and adjectives such as “alien” and “illegal” have melted into “undocumented” and “immigrant” and then into just “migrant,” ostensibly to mask the reality of both legal status and the fact that migrants go in one direction — and there is an existential difference between immigrants and emigrants.

Excellent point about 'migrant.'  The term blurs the distinction between those who emigrate and those who immigrate as if there is no difference. But as Hanson says, the difference is "existential."  What could that mean? Well, no emigrants but some immigrants pose an existential threat to us, not so much to our physical existence, though I wouldn't point this out to the parents of Kate Steinle, but to our way of life, which is more important.

Here, then,  is another example of what mendacious scum 'liberals' or 'progressives' are.  Instead of addressing the issues in an honest and forthright way, they commit acts of linguistic hijacking.

Remember: he who controls the terms of the debate controls the debate.

Once someone makes a decision to enter a country illegally — his first decision as an incoming alien — and thus breaks a U.S. law with impunity, then most subsequent decisions are naturally shaped by the idea of exemption. Zealots argue that entering the U.S. illegally is merely a civil infraction. But the IRS in 2017 identified some 1.2 million identity-theft cases, in which illegal aliens had employed illegitimate or inconsistent social-security numbers to file tax returns — and implicitly thereby cause innumerable problems for the U.S. tax system.

Professor Hanson should have pointed out that illegal immigrants are subject to criminal penalties. Improper entry comes under the criminal code. While improper entry is a crime, unlawful presence is not a crime. One can be unlawfully present in the U. S. without having entered improperly, and thus without having committed a crime. 

If a foreign national enters the country on a valid travel or work visa, but overstays his visa, failing to exit before the expiration date, then he is in violation of federal immigration law. But this comes under the civil code, not the criminal code. Such a person is subject to civil penalties such as deportation.

So there are two main ways for an alien to be illegal. He can be illegal in virtue of violating the criminal code or illegal in virtue of violating the civil code. 

Those who oppose strict enforcement of national borders show their contempt for the rule of law and their willingness to tolerate criminal behavior, not just illegal behavior.

So much of the discussion of illegal immigration is predicated not just on fantasy, but on Soviet-style censorship, and not just of speech, but of our very thoughts. Taboo are suggestions that illegal immigration could be a prime reason that California now has the highest basket of income, sales, and gas taxes in the nation; the highest number of welfare recipients (one of three in the United States), with a fifth of the state living below the poverty level; and now a fourth of all hospital admittances found to be suffering from diabetes or prediabetes; or that national rankings of infrastructure quality place the state nearly last in the country.

 Talk of race has approached something like Lewis Carol’s Through the Looking Glass, in which everything is upside down. “La Raza” — until recently the nomenclature of the nation’s largest Hispanic advocacy organization — has supposedly nothing to do with race, while others who would never have an odious desire to use its odious English equivalent, “The Race,” are deemed racists for their objections to La Raza terminology.

Residency is deliberately conflated with citizenship, as if the two are legally and morally equivalent. But again, nowhere else in the world is this true, and certainly not in Mexico. I have lived abroad for over two years. As a guest in Athens, I followed Greek politics closely. I paid steep Greek sales taxes and assorted fees and tariffs as a legal resident alien. But at no time did I imagine that taxes or my physical presence as a lawful guest on Greek soil allowed me to interfere with the politics of my host, much less to issue demands on Athens, or to give me de facto the same legal rights as Greek citizens. As a legal alien, I surely did not think I could vote. I knew better than to tell Greeks that their country was not to my taste. And I knew fellow aliens who overstayed visas, worked without permits, and did not register as foreign residents. At least before the days of the latest incarnations of the European Union, the resulting fines were stiff, and expulsions were uncontested.

Once again one sees what utter misological filth these leftists are. They will engage in any kind of obfuscation to win while we waste time being polite.

I have made the point recently that the constant yapping about 'democracy' aids and abets the conflation of residency with citizenship.  Leftists just love that word. When you hear it from their mouths know that nasty obfuscation and sophistry is on the way.

When Jerry Brown or Nancy Pelosi lectures the state on its illiberality, or on the immigration sins of Donald Trump, or the advantages of nullification and a sanctuary state, we assume that these are just the penultimate chest poundings and virtue signals of rich septuagenarians about to go into apartheid retirements in Napa or Grass Valley.

In that context, all of their legacies above make perfect sense.

Indeed, they do. These ancient knuckleheads will depart the scene with their virtue intact while leaving behind a crap hole for others to live in. I can't bring myself to believe that these two clowns are animated by evil intentions; the consequences of their folly, however, are evil in excelsis. Pelosi in particular is not so much evil as just plain stupid. It says a lot about the electorate that she should have had so much power for so long.