GOP must "Get Beyond Deportation"

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul Says GOP Must Appeal To Hispanics, Get ‘Beyond Deportation’

[...] This certainly was not the first time that Paul, since being elected to the Senate in 2010, has attempted to connect with Hispanics and other minorities.

However, Republicans’ interest in his policy vision and his vision for broadening the party base continues to grow as he ascends in the very, very early 2016 polls and travels the country. Recent stops have included those in Democrat-heavy Detroit and at the University of California, Berkeley.

Paul said Tuesday that Republicans need to focus on such issues as reforming the country’s work visa system and improving educational and employment opportunities for minorities.

However, the GOP must first make clear it is not “just the party of deportation,” he argued.

“The bottom line is that the Hispanic community … is not going to hear us until we get beyond that issue,” Paul told attendees at a symposium sponsored by the conservative Media Research Center and the American Principles Project. “They’re not going to care whether we go to the same church or have the same values or believe in the same kind of future of the country until we get beyond that. … We’ve got to get beyond deportation to get to the rest of the issues.” [...]

It's been pretty obvious for quite some time. But there is a segment of the GOP that has been too slow to wake up to the reality of changing demographics. Not to mention, popular opinion. Two realities that decide elections.
   

Fire Ants better than Crazy ones

What's worse than fire ants? Crazy ants:

Invasive Crazy Ants Are Displacing Fire Ants, Researchers Find

[...] “When you talk to folks who live in the invaded areas, they tell you they want their fire ants back,” said LeBrun. “Fire ants are in many ways very polite. They live in your yard. They form mounds and stay there, and they only interact with you if you step on their mound.”

LeBrun said that crazy ants, by contrast, “go everywhere.” They invade people’s homes, nest in crawl spaces and walls, become incredibly abundant and damage electrical equipment.

The crazy ants were first discovered in the U.S. in 2002 by a pest control operator in a suburb of Houston, and have since established populations in 21 counties in Texas, 20 counties in Florida, and a few sites in southern Mississippi and southern Louisiana.

In 2012 the species was formally identified as Nylanderia fulva, which is native to northern Argentina and southern Brazil. Frequently referred to as Rasberry crazy ants, these ants recently have been given the official common name “Tawny crazy ants.”

The Tawny crazy ant invasion is the most recent in a series of ant invasions from South America brought on by human movement. The Argentine ant invaded through the port of New Orleans in about 1891. In 1918 the black imported fire ant showed up in Mobile, Ala. Then in the 1930s, the red imported fire ant arrived in the U.S. and began displacing the black fire ant and the Argentine ants.

The UT researchers studied two crazy ant invasion sites on the Texas Gulf Coast and found that in those areas where the Tawny crazy ant population is densest, fire ants were eliminated. Even in regions where the crazy ant population is less dense, fire ant populations were drastically reduced. Other ant species, particularly native species, were also eliminated or diminished.

LeBrun said crazy ants are much harder to control than fire ants. They don’t consume most of the poison baits that kill fire ant mounds, and they don’t have the same kinds of colony boundaries that fire ants do. That means that even if they’re killed in a certain area, the supercolony survives and can swarm back over the area.

“They don’t sting like fire ants do, but aside from that they are much bigger pests,” he said. “There are videos on YouTube of people sweeping out dustpans full of these ants from their bathroom. You have to call pest control operators every three or four months just to keep the infestation under control. It’s very expensive.”

LeBrun said that in northern Argentina and southern Brazil, where the ants are native, populations are likely held in check by other ant species and a variety of natural enemies. In the U.S. there is no such natural control.

Here the crazy ants can attain densities up to 100 times as great as all other ants in the area combined. In the process, they monopolize food sources and starve out other species. LeBrun said the crazy ants, which are omnivorous, may also directly attack and kill other ant and arthropod species.

The overall result is a significant reduction in abundance and biodiversity at the base of the food chain, which is likely to have implications for the ecosystem as a whole. [...]

Yikes. What can be done? The rest of the article talks about ways of slowing the spread of crazy ants, to buy time to find and answer about what to do about them in the long run. See the article for pics and embedded links.

     

South Africa, black on black crime

South Africa police charged with dragging murder

[...] The video shows Mr Macia struggling with police after apparently parking his vehicle illegally.

Police officers then overcome the taxi driver and tie him to the back of a van by his arms before driving off.

Police Commissioner Riah Phiyega: "The behaviour displayed in the video... is to be abhorred"

Former South African President Nelson Mandela's wife, Graca Machel, joined hundreds of mourners at a Daveyton sports stadium on Wednesday.

Wednesday's emotional ceremony saw mourners, many wearing t-shirts and holding posters printed with Mido Macia's photograph, joining together to sing, clap and dance.

Graca Machel, who is herself Mozambican, told reporters: "As a society we are bleeding. We are grieving. We are in pain. We just don't know how to deal with the pain."

Sonnyboy Ndlovu, a witness to the dragging who was at the ceremony, told Reuters news agency: "The police are used to terrorising people here in the township, especially the Ethiopians and Mozambicans." [...]

During the Aparteid years, any crime by the white-controlled police against blacks made international headlines. When Apartheid was abolished, and blacks assumed majority rule and control of the police, crimes by police continued, I would read about them in SA newspapers on the internet. They were reported in South Africa, but no longer made international headlines. The international press was not interested in reporting black on black crimes by police.

So what made this case different? Someone recorded it on video with their cell phone, and it got shown on South African TV (the article has a link to that video). And Nelson Mandela's wife Graca Machel got involved.

There has been an ongoing problem in South Africa with crimes against black foreigners. When Apartheid was abolished, so were much of the border controls with neighboring countries, which allowed millions of foreign nationals to come streaming into South Africa, competing with South Africans for jobs in an already tight job market. Unfortunately, it continues to be a problem.

   

Which is more dangerous: Invading Immigrants, or Large Centralized Government?

This article at the Brussel's Journal applies this question to the fall of the Roman Empire, examining two books on the topic:

What Caused Rome’s Collapse: Immigration or Centralisation?

It's a long article, great if you like history. An argument is made that invading immigrants often wanted to uphold the better parts of the Empire and it's culture, and that the true collapse of Rome came from it's large, centralized government.

After examining two detailed books about the fall of Rome, which this article is about, the author seems to lean towards Centralized Government as the greater danger. In the last paragraph he sums up this lesson as a warning for the European Union and the United States:

[...] An ex-KGB officer, Igor Panarin, has apparently argued in a recent monograph that the United States will soon split up, as the Soviet Union did twenty years ago. That spontaneous disintegration of the Stalinist Empire was the best fate that could have overcome the superannuated Bolshevik experiment and its subject peoples. In one of history’s ironies, the European nation-states began their march into lock-step rule by apparatchiks at exactly the moment when their old enemy ceased to exist. The United States, too, under Bush I and Bush II and now Obama, has embraced a new doctrine of centripetal authoritarianism and coercive ideological reconstruction. The much-to-be-hoped-for failures both of the European Community and the socialist-in-fact-but-not-by-name Democrat-Party regime in the United States, followed by the genuine re-federalization of Europe and North America, might be the most providential turn of events as the world lurches stupidly into its Twenty-First Century “Globalist” delusions.

For those who enjoy detailed historical examination, treat yourself to the whole of this article by Thomas F. Bertonneau.
     

The disappearance of Hitchcock's San Francisco

Former San Francisco resident Takuan Seiyo talks about the San Francisco of the late 50's and early sixties, when Hitchcock made movies there. He compares it then to what it has become now, and how and why it got there:

From Meccania to Atlantis - Part 7: The True Horror in Hitchcock Films

I used to live in San Francisco. The San Francisco that despite having been roiled by hippies, beatniks, anti-this-and-that, still had the feel of the charming, civilized town that it had been when Alfred Hitchcock was shooting his masterpieces there.

Observe the setting of Davidson’s Pet Shop in The Birds. It’s a staged scene, but this is San Francisco’s Union Square in 1962-3 and that is the way middle class people looked and dressed in San Francisco. Tippi Hedren is an upper class society girl in this movie, so perhaps her suit has a finer cut and her clutch purse a higher price tag – but watch the other people milling about (and don’t miss Hitch himself).

Union Square was where middle class San Franciscans, dressed in suits, white shirts and ties for men, and high heels, ankle-length dresses, gloves and often hats for women, shopped.

[...]

Union Square now reeks of urine and reverberates with the shrieks of lunatics who use its sidewalks and benches as their bedroom, kitchen and toilet. It’s no longer politically acceptable to call them crazy or to put them in institutions. Besides, California doesn’t have the money. It has given the bounty robbed from its taxpayers to Mexican and other “Hispanic” legal and illegal immigrants (now 37% of California’s residents), and to public employees’ unions who thrive from dispensing the ransom to the colonizing aliens.

Put Tippi Hedren, dressed so that only her calves are exposed, next to a 2009 spoiled rich girl, say Paris Hilton, whose body hundreds of millions of people know virtually in its entirety, save for a crevice or two. Which figure is charged with more female sexuality, not to use such no-longer-comprehensible terms as class and elegance?

[...]

San Francisco had its upper crust, mainly of the demographic known as WASP, but it was also a town of immigrants and ethnics: primarily Irish and Italian, some White Russians, some Jews, some Chinese, some Californios harking back to the 19th century, and some blacks whom the currents of the U.S. military effort in World War 2 had deposited in Northern California. Its people had manners, and its working class had a touch of the contentment that comes from being able to support a large family decently on one blue-collar salary.

It was a town of peaceful ethnic neighborhoods and eateries, and exotic, for America, churches like the Holy Trinity Orthodox Cathedral. It was charming, beautiful and diverse. But not “diverse.”

San Francisco is “diverse” now. And this is what it means: [...]

He goes on to describe the disappearance of the city he knew, and what it's been replaced by, and the how and why of it. I've seen a lot of what he talks about; I lived there for 24 years, and left for many of the reasons of which he speaks.

I enjoy reading Seiyo's writing because of his sharp wit and politically incorrect bluntness, even if I don't always agree with all of his conclusions. He's great at identifying causes of problems, but the solutions, if there are any, are much harder to come by. There's fragments, suggestions, but no whole answers.

The entire world is changing in ways I don't care for. It's a lament that every generation goes through as they age. In the end, one does one's best to save what is best of the past and to bring it into the future. I don't know that we CAN do anything more. The older you get, the less future you have, and the more you see that the future belongs to you less and less. For the sake of peace of mind, a certain amount of acceptance of that fact is required. And yet, we don't just let go of what we value. Like so much of life, it's a continuous balancing act.
     

More reasons for not visiting Portland, OR

I live in rural Oregon, but I'm not at all tempted to visit Portland. The following article by Takuan Seiyo at the Brussel's Journal gives me many reasons to feel that way:



Postcard from Zinnlandia

I am on the MAX Red Line light rail car going from downtown Portland to the Airport. Some things socialists do better. Among them are public transportation, recycling, French poetry readings, yoga, coffee, artisan food and arthouse cinema. Would it that the counterscale were not so much more loaded.

Two hefty women in Birkenstocks and Nordic sweaters sit on the bench in front of me. They are either academics or lesbians or both. Portland is a babe magnet for this kind of babes.

One of them, silver bangles jangling, is showing a souvenir purchase to the other. It’s a garden gnome, complete with a red cap and a Walt Disney tunic stretched taut over a rotund belly. The face, though, is less jovial than one expects on a gnome. An etched inscription on the base reads, “Howard Zinn.”

We are leaving Zinnlandia, after all – that great land of the Pacific Northwest, rich in good wine, including zinfandel, and other bounties of nature. Howard Zinn and his doppelgänger, Noam Chomsky, are to the coastal zones of this blessed land what St. Patrick is to the Emerald Isle. And, like Finlandia, Jutlandia and Hollandia, Zinnlandia too has much Northern European DNA.

Zinnlandia is in Amerikka – that racist, capitalist land of injustice, sexism, specieism, lookism, theism, militarism and homophobia. As a material and cultural Marxist, and skillful propagandist, Zinn – a master of sieving American history for its worst nuggets – is the perfect avatar for the self-flagellating white inhabitant of this land.

A Zinnlandian I met on this trip, a WASP physician endowed with the best education much money can buy, told me that he does not celebrate July 4th because the Declaration of Independence had been written by a slave owner and signed by other slave owners. He was just as hotly critical of the “racism” of Americans in dealing with the growing Muslim immigrant minority. The conversation unfolded over a bottle of Oregon Vino Pinko, with the likeness of a notorious Cuban mass murderer on the label.

Besides the pervasive lefty obtuseness as to the true nature of Che Guevara, there is one central paradox in this Zinnlandian, as there is in all of them. [...]

He goes on to describe his experiences in "Zinnlandia", and the history of crimes committed on the very train he is riding on. They all tie together. In the end, he compares Portland with many other cities he's visited. I enjoy the authors wit, but it's not a pretty picture for a Sunday. I think I need to go work in the garden now... thank God I live in the country.


Related Links:

Attracting a crowd means what exactly?

Anti-American "Art" at Portland Oregon Airport
     

Illegal Immigration is a Pain to Spain. But is it also making Spain the Gateway to Europe?

Spain granted an amnesty to almost a million illegals three years ago, the largest amnesty in Spain's history. Today, they now have another million illegals, along with a soring crime rate and growing unemployment.

Recently Spain has been attacking Italy's new government, which has been cracking down on illegal immigrants in Italy. More from Soeren Kern at the Brussels Journal:

Why Spain Lectures Other Countries on Immigration

Italian voters in April returned Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi to a third term in office. The center-right leader was given a strong mandate to crack down on runaway immigration and spiraling street crime, two hot-button issues that are intrinsically linked, not just in the minds of Italians, but in those of many other Europeans too, especially in Spain.

As a result, Spanish Socialists are (rightly) worried that Berlusconi’s get-tough approach will jeopardize their own fantastical vision of turning Europe into a post-modern multicultural utopia.

[...]

Since Spanish Socialists (more often than not) have trouble winning arguments on their own merit, the preferred tactic is to demonize their opponents instead. And so De la Vega’s comments were echoed by the new Spanish Minister for Labor and Immigration, Celestino Corbacho, who felt obliged to accuse Berlusconi of wanting “to criminalize those who are different.”

[...]

Apart from the strategic threat that Italy’s immigration crackdown poses to the post-nationalist multicultural vision that Spanish Socialists have for Europe, there are two more practical (and inter-related) reasons why the Socialist Party has latched onto the immigration issue: Domestic politics and fear that the immigrants expelled from Italy will come to Spain instead.

During the recent general election campaign in Spain, survey after survey showed that Spanish voters perceived the center-right Popular Party to be far better equipped than the Socialist Party to tackle the issues of immigration and crime.

[...]

As a result, the Socialists are now trying to make these issues their own. But they are doing so by reframing the question of immigration through the use of post-modern word games that give the appearance that they have a more benevolent approach.

[...]

By rewarding illegal immigrants with Spanish (and thus European) documentation, Zapatero has unleashed what is known as the “call effect” to people as far away as Kashmir who now believe that Spain is an easy gateway into Europe. [...]

It's quite a dance Spain is doing. The article goes on to give more details of Spain's predicament, and how it fits into immigration in Europe as a whole. The socialists in Spain have been using every trick in the book to vilify their opponents, but it's wearing thin as reality sets in and grates away at the Spanish Public. Their current government sounds like the city council of Berkeley, CA. Strident and hysterical, posturing while lacking real content or ability to accomplish or solve anything.

Lots of high drama in this story, with accusations being hurled. But as the pressure builds, it looks to me like... somethings gotta give. I'll be watching.
     

Immigration Riots... in South Africa

The backlash is occurring against both legal and illegal immigrants:

Anti-Immigrant Violence Continues in South Africa

JOHANNESBURG — Violence against immigrants, like some windswept fire, spread across one neighborhood after another here in one of South Africa’s main cities at the weekend, and the police said the mayhem left at least 12 people dead — beaten by mobs, shot, stabbed or burned alive.

The violence continued to rage on Monday, as police fired rubber bullets and made arrests to try to quell the violence in and around Johannesburg, and said the death toll had reached 22, The Associated Press reported.

Thousands of panicked foreigners — many of them Zimbabweans who have fled their own country’s economic collapse — have now deserted their ramshackle dwellings and tin-walled squatter hovels to take refuge in churches and police stations.

On Monday, men wielding clubs and sticks patrolled along the road near one camp — apparently South Africans trying to prevent foreigners from returning, The A.P. said.

This latest outbreak of xenophobia began a week ago in the historic township of Alexandra and has since spread to other areas in and around Johannesburg, including Cleveland, Diepsloot, Hilbrow, Tembisa, Primrose, Ivory Park and Thokoza.


Amid so much violence, the police were spread thin, sending in squads of officers in armored vehicles. “We are using all available resources and will call in reinforcements if the need arises,” a police spokesman, Govindswamy Mariemuthoo, told reporters. [...]

The NY Times article goes on to blame rising food prices as one of the contributing factors. I don't doubt it. South Africa and Zimbabwe both used to export food to the rest of Africa. But then Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe forcibly took the farms away from white Zimbabwean farmers, and turned that country into a starving basket case, with 1000 percent inflation.

Since coming under majority rule, many in South Africa also want farms taken away from whites. Years ago I read that a white farmer is murdered every 3 days in South Africa. As a result many have immigrated out of the country. South Africa now has to import food just to feed itself. It's real cause for concern. A country that loses the ability to feed itself is in trouble.

The anti-immigration riots aren't new, but they have been increasing. When the majority government took over, they opened the borders to neighboring countries. Many MILLIONS of illegals poured into South Africa, straining an economy that already had high unemployment. As the situation in neighboring Zimbabwe worsened, many more people from there fled to South Africa.

The sooner Mugabe is removed from power in Zimbabwe, the better. Then Zimbabweans can return to their country and hopefully make it livable again, and take pressure off an already over-burdened South Africa.

Update 05-22-08:
Hostels raided in South Africa clampdown
'Necklace' lynching returns to South Africa
     

Why the Dutch are leaving the Netherlands

While there has been a steady rise in emigration from Western Europe, Holland is unique in that more people have been emigrating from the country than are immigrating to it. From the Brussel's Journal:

Eldorado or Home. Europeans' Flight from Europe

[...] Since 2003, emigration has exceeded immigration to the Netherlands. In 2006, the Dutch saw more than 130,000 compatriots leave. The rise in Dutch emigration peaked after the assassinations of Pim Fortuyn and Theo van Gogh. This indicates that the flight from Europe is related to a loss of confidence in the future of nations which have taken in the Trojan horse of Islamism, but which, unlike the Trojans, lack the guts to fight.

Elsewhere in Western Europe immigration currently still surpasses emigration, though emigration figures are rising fast. In Belgium the number of emigrants surged by 15 percent in the past years. In Sweden, 50,000 people packed their bags last year -- a rise of 18 percent compared to the previous year and the highest number of Swedes leaving since 1892. In the United Kingdom, almost 200,000 British citizens move out every year.

Americans who think that the European welfare state is the model to follow would do well to ponder the question why, if Europe is so wonderful, Europeans are fleeing from it. European welfare systems are redistribution mechanisms, taking money from skilled and educated Europeans in order to give it to nonskilled newcomers from the Third World. [...]

There are lots of reasons why this is happening, but in the case of the Netherlands, it may be simply that people are beginning to fear for their very lives. I'm sure many people would rather not be killed for voting for the party or politician of their choice:

“People Who Vote Wilders Must Die”

A Moroccan youth group from Delft in the Netherlands, calling themselves “Scheme 015 Delftse Samenzwering Shit,” [samenzwering means conspiracy] has posted a video clip threatening to kill voters and sympathizers of Dutch politician Geert Wilders. The clip shows a group of Moroccans youths provoking two Dutch lads on a crowded public train. The hooded Moroccans ask the lads, who are dressed in black, what the badges on their clothes mean. At first the lads do not react. When the Moroccans start pulling at the lads’ clothes the latter ask to be left alone. At this the Moroccans grab them from their seats and beat them up. [...]

The video clip is in Dutch, the first part is kinda boring, but you don't have to speak Dutch to understand the violence of the hooded thugs at the end. Try living with that. The government won't let you own guns, but they also can't protect you. In fact, the thugs are so confident, they are making videos of their attacks, their crimes, to put on-line?

Sounds like a good case for emigration to me. When more people emigrate from your country than immigrate to it, something is seriously wrong.

In the comments section, there was some speculation that the two Dutch boys who got beat up might have been Goths. The Brussels Journal also has an interesting article about the Goth movement, why it's become popular, and why many of it's adherents end up in conservative professions. It's interesting:

Goths: Fashion’s Unlikely Conservatives
     

The American People Win This Round...

Is it possible our government might now actually get a clue that the majority of Americans didn't want their amnesty bill?

Senate Immigration Bill 'Dead'

It's worth noting too that the opposition was bi-partisan; Democrat labor unionists in particular opposed the flood of cheap labor the work visa program would provide. Many Republicans felt the president was ignoring, and even abusing, the base of his own party:




I don't think that every part of the bill was bad. And like it or not, some form of amnesty for some illegals might be inevitable, as the majority of Americans don't want to see families split up with forced mass deportations, which would be unworkable anyway. But whatever solution about that is reached, it should not be rushed through without thorough, intelligent debate, and input by the American people. The way this bill was attempted to be pushed through in a grand rush is disgraceful.

Most Americans are for LEGAL immigration. But our whole immigration department is backlogged; it needs to be fixed. Solutions need to be found to deal with current illegals already here; a consequence we have to face because we did not enforce our laws for so long. We CAN deal with it. But NONE of that can be accomplished effectively without securing our borders FIRST. Most Americans understand that this failed immigration bill would have done nothing meaningful to accomplish that:




It's absurd to talk about reforming immigration without FIRST gaining control of our borders. This latest bill made a few token gestures at doing that, gestures that have too often been made in the past, that went nowhere. We have seen our government promise to strengthen the border before, and they never do; we no longer believe them on their word. They have to PROVE it by DOING it!

Once you put a halt to the invasion, you can rationally discuss what to do with the folks already here. Secure the border first, and everything else will fall into place. If the people in Washington aren't listening to that, they need to be made to listen, and act accordingly... or be replaced. They serve at OUR discretion, not the other way around.


Related Links:

Law and order

Small towns helped beat immigration reform

Liberal scientist finds the opposite of what he sought
This last one explains perfectly why we want legal, assimilating immigrants under the rule of law, not an illegal invasion.
     

Selective Outrage and the Rule of Law

In this essay, Victor David Hanson examines the phenomena of people and groups who disrespect, disregard and work to destroy the rule of law, but who are then upset when it doesn't magically reappear to support THEM:

Hypocrisy That Undermines Civilization

There is only a thin veneer that separates civilization from man's innate barbarity. Some 2,500 years ago the historian Thucydides once warned us about the irony of revolutionaries and insurrectionists destroying this fragile patina of culture, as if they themselves might be exempt from ever wanting it back again.

Yet no sooner, he warned, have such outsiders torn down the system of law than they are in need of it themselves when they assume power and the responsibility of governance. Even the worst terrorist apparently wants his wife and kids to be safe--and able to drink clean water when turning on the faucet. The trick apparently is to blow up the neighborhood's electric pylon while still finding enough light and power to assemble an IED device. [...]

He goes on to give examples of this dynamic in action in Iraq; among the Palestinians; and throughout Muslim cultures generally, in the Middle East and abroad.

He also examines the same thing happening in Mexico:

[...] To facilitate such massive illegal immigration, Mexican officials hector their American counterparts about our supposed illiberality in not letting millions more stream in unchecked. They have even gone so far as to publish a government comic book instructing their own citizens how to cross the American border safely--and in flagrant violation of our laws.

But Mexico has nearly the same problem with its own 600-mile southern border with Guatemala as we do with our own 1,800-mile common boundary with Mexico. Hundreds of thousands of Central and Southern Americans try to cross into Mexico, either to work as cheap laborers or to make their way eventually into the United States as competitors to illegal aliens from Mexico.

In response, Mexico's policy toward illegal immigrants on its southern border is as brutal as America's is humane. Violators are often summarily deported--if they are not first robbed by Mexican officials or beaten and killed by criminal gangs. Mexicans may lecture Americans about our purported sins in trying to secure our border, but they don't seem to care what their own government does to Guatemalans. Again, the irony arises that a government that has abandoned the rule of international law suddenly is worried that another country may be doing to it what it does to others.

What lies behind this abject hypocrisy of first undermining civilization and then demanding that it reappear in the hour of need?

Double standards depend on demanding from United States and Europe a sort of impossible perfection. When such utopianism is not--and never can be--met, cheap accusations of racism, colonialism, and imperialism follow. Such posturing is intended to con the West into feeling guilty, and, with such self-loathing, granting political concessions, relaxing immigration, or handing over more foreign aid. Left unsaid is that such critics of the West will always ignore their own hypocrisy, and, when convenient, destroy civilized norms while expecting someone else to restore them when needed.[...]

(bold emphasis mine) I call it the dishonest side of Multiculturalism at work. So what's to be done about it? Victor has some thoughts about that. Read the whole thing, it's not very long.


Related Links: (From Fjordman at the Brussels Journal blog)

The Great Conversation

[...] It is true that if you cannot define your enemy, your criticism is bound to be vague. But this is part of my point: I, and numerous others with at least average intelligence, have spent a considerable amount of time trying to analyze the doctrines of Multiculturalism. We have found this to be quite challenging, precisely because it is vague, incoherent and doesn’t have any clear philosophical foundation. Multiculturalism seems to be a curious mix of older, Enlightenment ideas such as Rousseau’s “noble savage” and later Marxist ideas, among other things. There are those who claim that it was never supposed to be logically consistent and that we shouldn’t look for any cohesive, rational arguments behind it because there are none. What little can be discerned from its ideas is sometimes quite disturbing, with elements of anti-Western hatred, totalitarian impulses and Utopian ideas involving large-scale social engineering.

But isn’t this alarming? Multiculturalism is now official state policy in many countries, together accounting for hundreds of millions of people. Isn’t it disturbing that millions of people are subject to a radical ideology that is almost impossible to comprehend, and thus to criticize? Many of its proponents seem to know that it cannot be rationally defended, which is why they simply shut critics down with charges of racism and shame them into silence whenever they sense some opposition. In fact, it is now more or less illegal in some countries to criticize it, although it could mean the most massive transformation of our countries in modern history. [...]

On Bureaucracy, Liberty and the Rule of Law

[...] When does the rule of law break down? It breaks down when laws are no longer passed with the consent of free people, when citizens no longer feel that the law is just, when regulations become so numerous that it is virtually impossible even for decent individuals not to break the law on a regular basis and when the authorities are incapable of protecting their country’s borders while criminals rule the streets. It breaks down when the law appears increasingly arbitrary, when it invades the most intimate details of the life of law-abiding citizens while it allows great freedom to criminals. In short, it breaks down when it no longer corresponds to reality and to the sense of justice experienced by ordinary people. [...]

     

Harry Reid's Clay Pigeon Ploy

Here's and excerpt of the details of his plan to push the immigration bill through, from an article by Julie Hirschfeld Davis:

Rare Tactic May Allow Immigration Votes

WASHINGTON (AP) - Only in the arcane world of the U.S. Senate could a quirky gambit known as a "clay pigeon" make the difference between passage of an important immigration measure and its death at the hands of opponents.

Democratic leaders hope the complex maneuver - which makes use of the Senate's labyrinthine rules to insist on votes on amendments - will frustrate conservatives' attempts to derail the embattled immigration bill, instead putting it on a fast track to passage next week.

Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said he would revive the bill to legalize as many as 12 million unlawful immigrants late this week. To do so, though, he needs backing from 60 senators, and a way to guarantee votes on a tentative list of 22 Republican and Democratic amendments whose consideration is seen as vital to satisfying key waverers.

The so-called clay pigeon is how he's expected to do it, under a strategy that was still taking shape Monday.

The tactic gets its name from the target used in skeet shooting, which explodes into bits as it is hit. In the Senate, an amendment is the target, and any one senator can demand that it be divided into separate fragments to be voted on piecemeal.

Under the tentative plan, Reid as early as Friday would launch his target - an amendment encompassing all 22 proposals - and shoot it into its component pieces. The Senate would then vote on ending debate on the immigration measure, which would take 60 votes and limit discussion of the bill to 30 more hours. After that interval, all 22 amendments would have to be voted on, with little opportunity for foes to interfere.

Ironically, the move is usually used by mavericks - not leaders - to slow down legislation, not free it from a procedural thicket. [...]

What an insult to the American people. I hope this backfires on Reid and the Democrats in the worst possible way. And also on the Republicans who vote for this terrible bill that the majority of Americans clearly oppose.

Before dealing with ANY immigration reforms, our politicians need to do their damn jobs, by SECURING OUR BORDERS. Anything else they propose will be useless unless our borders are secured FIRST.

I'm just wondering what is the best way to kick their asses until they "get it"?
     

Our Immigration Reform Dilemma

Like so many people, I think the current immigration reform bill stinks. It's being rushed through without enough debate, and tries to accomplish too much. So much of what I've read about it sounds like it's unworkable and unenforceable. Our politicians are ignoring us, which is infuriating.

The American people have said again and again, we want our borders secured. What part of that sentence don't the politicians in Washington understand?

SECURE OUR BORDERS
If they would simply do that, the rest could be sorted out in good time. Secure our borders first, and I think much of the opposition to everything else would calm down, and reasonable debate could ensue. I think what makes so many Americans angry is that our government repeatedly fails to demonstrate any serious intention of securing the border. They focus instead on everything else related to immigration, which is like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.


Polls show that the majority of Americans don't want mass deportations that split up families. Proponents of the current immigration bill keep trying to smear all opponents with accusations of racism, to silence their criticism. Whatever happened to REAL debate?

Multiculturalism, which has advocates on both the left and right, has become the favorite tool of the new Stealth Socialists. They've not been able to dominate politically, so they support the open borders concept to bring in a new proletariat underclass they can manipulate. The Multiculturalists on the right support open borders, to bring in cheap labor.

The Open Borders crowd, both left and right, uses accusations of racism to try to silence any debate about or opposition to their open borders agenda. The end result is squashing debate, which is just plain wrong. Rushing faulty legislation into law without public debate is WRONG.



I do realize that we are trying to fix something that has gone unattended for far too long. I realize that we don't have endless time to do something, and that no bill is going to ever please everyone. Yet something MUST be done.

I say listen to the folks in the middle. The moderate center. Work for compromises that are WORKABLE and REALISTIC. Break this bill up into segments. Secure the border first. Then work on the rest, a chunk at a time.

It's fine if the extremists on both sides of the aisle are displeased. But debate these things properly, and listen to the moderates in both parties, and WORK for consensus. The way it's being handled now disrespectful to the American people.


Related Links:

Slow Down and Absorb:
Open borders? Mass deportations? How about some common sense instead?

Capitulation, from A------ to Z

Don't Run for the Border:
America needs comprehensive immigration reform, but not a law enacted in haste.

Opposition to Senate immigration bill fading?

THE AMNESTY BILL .. HEADED FOR PASSAGE?

[...] It's all very simple, really. Close the border. Stop the invasion. Turn off the faucets. Then we'll have time aplenty to sit back and figure out what to do with those illegals who are already here. Americans are not cold blooded monsters who want to uproot established Hispanic families and dump them across the border. You present the average American with the story of a Hispanic high school graduate trying to get into college, a young adult who was brought to this country by their parents at the age of three, and you aren't going to find many who would insist that this person, who has known nothing but life in America, be sent back to a country they don't know.

Why is nobody talking about the cost to the taxpayers here? Since 1990 Hispanics have accounted for 92% of the increase in poor people in this country. Only about 53% of the Hispanic adult population in the U.S. even have a high school education. This means we are legitimizing a huge number of people who will eventually end up on the receiving end of our hundreds of local and federal welfare programs. Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation has compiled some of the costs. He says that government tax payments ... entitlements and means-tested benefits ... would increase by about $8000 per American household. We're looking at about 20 billion a year .. and that's just starters.

You've read about the increases in crime across the country, haven't you? For every 100,000 U.S. residents in a specific age group you'll find Hispanics in prison at a rate of about two-and-one half that of whites. There seems to be some reluctance to report this in the news, but what would you like to bet that a huge portion of the increase in crime in this country is coming from the fine people who have been part of the Mexican invasion. This isn't rocket surgery. What, after all, have we been teaching these people? They cross our border illegally, and nothing happens. They stay here illegally ... they use forged documents to get jobs and they work here illegally, and nothing happens. Can you blame some of them for not believing that we're all that serious about enforcing our laws?

Again .. it's very simple. When the government becomes selective in enforcing our laws, it's only natural that the people would become selective in obeying them. [...]

Neal Boortz makes a lot of sense here. I hear lots of people saying ALL illegal immigrants are criminals. Technically, that may be true. But when we don't bother to enforce our own laws, people will not bother obeying them. That's human nature.

We haven't enforced our immigration laws for decades, and the consequences are 12 million or more illegals. That's the price we are paying.

We can send back the actual criminals in this group that are currently in our prisons. A path for citizenship for the rest who have otherwise been law abiding may be possible. Many don't WANT to become US citizens, they are here to earn money; perhaps some sort of work visa could be created. But none of this will be viable if we don't FIRST secure our borders. The open borders advocates on the left and right need to stop obstructing that. Then perhaps we can find real, workable solutions.


UPDATE 06-06-07:

From Neal Boortz:

AMNESTY BILL UPDATE

[...] Alabama Republican Senator Jeff Sessions released an excellent report of 20 different loopholes he found in the bill.

* -Loophole 1 – Legal Status Before Enforcement
* -Loophole 2 – U.S. VISIT Exit Not In Trigger
* -Loophole 3 – Trigger Requires No More Agents, Beds, or Fencing Than Current Law
* -Loophole 4 -- Three Additional Years Worth of Illegal Aliens Granted Status, Treated Preferentially To Legal Filers
* -Loophole 5 – Completion of Background Checks Not Required For Probationary Legal Status
* -Loophole 6 – Some Child Molesters Are Still Eligible
* -Loophole 7 – Terrorism Connections Allowed, Good Moral Character Not Required
* -Loophole 8 – Gang Members Are Eligible
* -Loophole 9 – Absconders Are Eligible
* -Loophole 10 – Learning English Not Required For A Decade
* -Loophole 11 – Earned Income Tax Credit Will Cost Taxpayers Billions In Just 10 Years
* -Loophole 12 – Affidavits From Friends Accepted As Evidence
* -Loophole 13 – Taxpayer Funded Legal Counsel and Arbitration
* -Loophole 14 – In-State Tuition and Student Loans
* -Loophole 15 – Inadequacy of the Merit System
* -Loophole 16 – Visas For Individuals That Plan To Overstay
* -Loophole 17 – Chain Migration Tippled Before Being Eliminated
* -Loophole 18 – Back Taxes Not Required
* -Loophole 19 – Social Security Credits Allowed For Some Illegal Work Histories
* -Loophole 20 – Criminal Fines Not Proportional To Conduct

[...]

That's just part of it. Read the whole thing. This bill is NOT ready, it's too rushed. What can I say? AAAARGH!!!


UPDATE 06-10-07
Here's two bloggers that sum it up perfectly:

The Bloody Immigration Debate

Well-meaning but misguided Senate immigration bill dead
     

Multiculturalism: it isn't your grandfather's Communism

Multiculturalism is supposed to be about tolerance for cultural differences. But too often, its used as a social engineering tool. Tolerance for different cultures isn't itself necessarily a bad thing. I'm not against every aspect of Multiculturalism; what I object to, is the sneaky way it is being used to advance agendas that have nothing to do with tolerance.

Leftists who have failed to bring about their goals through political means have found better methods; accusations of racism, enforced political correctness, immigration issues and the abolishing of borders. Having failed to sufficiently sway the proletariat in Western societies, the left wishes to replace it with a new one, an under-class they can manipulate. Fjordman at the Brussels Journal addresses these ideas and more in detail in his latest article. Some excerpts:

A Communism for the 21st Century

[...] On one hand, we’re supposed to “celebrate” our differences at the same time as it is racist and taboo to recognize that any differences between groups of people exist at all. This is hardly logically coherent, which is why Multiculturalism can only be enforced by totalitarian means. Perhaps it boils down to the fact there are no major differences, just minor quirks, all cute, which should be celebrated at the same time as we gradually eradicate them.

We are told to treat cultural and historical identities as fashion accessories, shirts we can wear and change at will. The Multicultural society is “colorful,” an adjective normally attached to furniture or curtains. Cultures are window decorations of little or no consequence, and one might as well have one as the other.

[...]

We should remember that this view of culture as largely unimportant is essentially a Marxist view of the world, which has now even been adopted by segments of the political Right, united with Leftists in the belief that man is homo economicus, the economic man, the sum of his functions as worker and consumer, nothing more. Marxism doesn’t say that cultures or ideas are of absolutely no consequence, but that they are of minor or secondary importance next to structural and economic conditions.

[...]

Imagine you have two such houses next to each other. In House A, the inhabitants have over a period of generations created a tidy and functioning household. They have limited their number of children because they wanted to give all of them a proper education. In House B, the inhabitants live in a dysfunctional household with too many children who have received little higher education. One day they decide to move to their neighbors’. Many of the inhabitants of House A are protesting, but some of them think this might be a good idea. There is room for more people in House A, they say. In addition to this, Amnesty International, the United Nations and others claim that it is “racist” and “against international law” for the inhabitants of House A to expel the intruders. Pretty soon, House A has been turned into an overpopulated and dysfunctional household just like House B.

This is what is happening to the West today. Europe itself could become a failed continent by importing the problems of Africa and the Islamic world. The notion that everybody should be free to move anywhere they want to, and that preventing them from moving into your country is “racism, xenophobia and bigotry,” is the Communism of the 21st century. And it will probably lead to immense human suffering.

One of the really big mistakes we made after the Cold War ended was to declare that Socialism was now dead, and thus no longer anything to worry about. Here we are, nearly a generation later, discovering that Marxist thinking has penetrated every single stratum of our society, from the universities to the media. While the “hard” Marxism of the Soviet Union may have collapsed, at least for now, the “soft” Marxism of the Western Left has actually grown stronger, in part because we mistakenly deemed it to be less threatening.

Ideas about Multiculturalism and de-facto open borders have achieved a virtual hegemony in public discourse. By hiding behind labels such as “anti-racism” and “tolerance,” Leftists have achieved a degree of censorship they could never have achieved had they openly stated that their intention was to radically transform Western civilization and destroy its foundations.

According to the French philosopher Alain Finkielkraut, “the lofty idea of ‘the war on racism’ is gradually turning into a hideously false ideology. And this anti-racism will be for the 21st century what Communism was for the 20th century: A source of violence.”

Alexander Boot, a Russian by birth, left for the West in the 1970s, only to discover that the West he was seeking was no longer there. This led him to write the book How the West Was Lost. Boot believes that democracy, or in the words of Abraham Lincoln, the government of the people, by the people and for the people, has been replaced by glossocracy, the government of the word, by the word and for the word.

In a culture where language is power and words are used as weapons, those who control the most fearsome of these weapons control society. In the West, where equality in all walks of life is the highest virtue and “discrimination” is a mortal sin, the “racist” is the worst of creatures. Those who control the definition of “racist,” the nuclear bomb of glossocracy, have a powerful weapon they can utilize to intimidate opponents. The mere utterance of the word can destroy careers and ruin lives, with no trial and no possibility of appeal.

Currently, the power of definition largely rests in the hands of a cartel of anti-racist organizations dominated by the extreme Left, often in cooperation with Muslims. By silencing all opposition to mass immigration as “racism,” they can stage a transformation of society every bit as massive as that of Communism, yet virtually shut down debate about it.

[...]

Ideas matter. Individuals matter. Cultures matter. Truth matters, and truth exists. We used to know that. It’s time we get to know it again, and reject false ideas about the irrelevance of culture. We are not racists for desiring to pass on our heritage to future generations, nor are we evil for resisting to be treated as lab rats in social experiments on a horrific scale. We must nip the ideology of transnational Multiculturalism and unlimited mass migration in the bud by exposing it for what it is: A Communism for the 21st century.

(bold emphasis mine) There's more; how Europe is becoming a laboratory, treating it's citizens like lab rats. Many of the trends that the Multiculturalist elites of Europe have established there are also catching on here, and I fear the same motives are behind them. Let's not let it continue.


Related Link:

Political Correctness and Multiculturalism:
The New Tools of "Stealth" Socialism?