Shut Up And Put Up

 

I woke up this morning to a comment in my comments section in Spanish, telling me that President Bush is an idiot, and that I had better get used to this commenter's language, as it will be officially recognized in his part of the country, within a few years.

Deal with it.

That's what we get, and yes the President is being naive. So as Michelle Malkin has predicted all along:

The open-borders lobby has been phenomenally successful at getting the Beltway elite in both parties and in the media to embrace its blanket overgeneralizations and platitudes about the illegal alien population.

"They just come here to work."
"They're all Americans, too."
"Illegals aren't criminals."

And so on.

Those who impertinently challenge such characterizations in an effort to bring the homeland security debate back to reality are attacked as overwrought immigrant-bashers with no compassion. We're the ones accused of overgeneralizing even as the pro-illegal immigration forces blather about lazy Americans who won't do the jobs "undocumented workers" will do.

Well let me tell you what I would say to the illegals in this country, if it were up to me: I would get them by the scruff of their neck and tell them to sling their hook, before they get a chance to tell me again that Spanish will become my first language. It was a mistake to have allowed them to stand in the streets countrywide protesting and in turn sticking their finger up at us, and our naive idea of democracy, in dire need of a hard reboot. This is how they treat their own, so it should not come as a great shock to anyone, other than Ted Kennedy who is petrified to lose fertile ground for desperate votes.

Whilst in one of my previous posts, I let my emotions get the better of me, today, my middle finger is firmly up, the immigration chip is back and I am being called a xenophobe.

We knew that Bush has always been more of an open-borders politician than any true conservative on immigration. Most of us hoped to get the border fence and truly credible security on the southern border as a minimum once he came to office, and figured we would have to give way on some sort of compromise on the status of those already in the country as a trade-off.

This, however, is disappointing. The nature of legislation is compromise, but this appears to be closer to capitulation. Nowhere in this article does Bush appear to express any support for the House bill that strengthens the border even as a companion to the Hagel-Martinez compromise. Instead, we get this Republican president conspiring with Harry Reid to give him political cover with immigration hard-liners in his own party.

And finally:

At least one Republican acts presidential on immigration by arguing for actual enforcement of existing law and creative thinking for long-term solutions. Unfortunately, that Republican does not currently live in the White House, but he may be building a case as the next occupant.

UPDATE: An interesting debate on immigration with a Jewish twist. (H/T Jeremayakovka)

UPDATE II: Listen to our new national anthem on Hot Air. The President is however not rushing to add it to his iPod selection, not impressed:

"And I think people who want to be a citizen of this country ought to learn English," Mr. Bush said. "And they ought to learn to sing the national anthem in English."

Comments

[Monica]

Yes illegal immigrants are breaking the law. That still doesn't justify the brutal attacks not only on illegal immigrants, legal U.S. citizens, and reporters that were merely trying to cover the news at the rally May 1, 2007. My parents immigrated to this country when the U.S government lacked personnel for their aerospace projects in the 70's from Argentina. It was a different Era when immigration to the United States was easier. People say well immigrate "legally" well folks sorry to put a damper on your parade but now a days it’s not easy. If you don't have at least $100,000 in your bank account to establish a business in the U.S, married to a citizen (which is slowly getting harder), or have family that can petition for you well your outa luck. We have to come to a middle median protecting our borders and at the same time offer opportunities to legalize immigrants. The North Americans yes not American because that also engulfs Central and South America as well, need to wake up and take a hard look at what’s taking place in their back yard. They need to be realistic because many of their "legal" citizens that are either on welfare, homeless, ect are not willing to take on a minimum wage job working in the fields, washing dishes, or in a sewing machine plant. I have not meet one Latino/a yet, who can proudly say they want to be on welfare cause its easier than picking onions in a field getting paid $1.50 for a 10 pound bag. It’s called solid work ethics!! Oh, and where Mexican gangs and violence is concerned well how about the bloods, crypts, and skin heads? Violence is everywhere folks you can't just pin it on one race. Everyone in this country unless you are of Indian decent comes from immigrant roots. So why not give the same opportunity to hard working people who are enriching our economy & enhancing their quality of life?

[brian]

In his really long anti-capitalist screed, Craig forgot that little 70 year evil empire, whom if you remember, declared "we will bury you." the realpolitik from the Cold War must be seen through the context of responding to Soviet attempts to dominate regions of the world for their true empire. No mention either of the effect that Jimmy Carter had on the Iran situation. So much hot air, so little substance.

[Kenny Pierce]

Craig,

Listen, I’m not trying to pick on you, but it’s only fair to tell you that my daughter has just told me she’s signing up for debate next year, and she and I are starting to work through basic logic and basic rhetorical tactics. And your last comment is remarkably educational; so I’m using it to educate her – because (forgive my bluntness) it’s rare to see so many intellectually dishonest rhetorical tricks all pushed together in one or two comments like your last two. That, um, well, that sort of means you’re inspiring a series of posts over on my own blog.

You’re probably a nice guy and I don’t mean to get after you mercilessly, but anyone who wants to teach his kids logic and rhetoric needs bad examples to point to, and your last two comments are hard to top.

At any rate, the first two pieces are already up, and you have the right to go over to my blog and defend yourself if you want. Please note, however, that over on my blog I’m not really interested in the particular issues, nor am I interested in your character or intelligence (the sample size is too small for me to have an opinion on either, though I would say with some confidence that, like most Americans, you’ve never taken any formal courses in logic). I’m interested in the structure of the reasoning and in the rhetorical tactics.

Basic topics to be explored:

1. Michael’s interest is in the question of, “What is the right thing to do?” Your interest appears to be entirely in the question, “Just how evil a guy is that bastard George W. Bush anyway?” This difference in focus goes to the heart of the nature of judgmentalism and the habitual use of the argumentum ad hominem. That post is already up.

2. You structure your whole argument around a particular pattern of the ad hominem that has become sufficiently common in the last few years (especially on the left and in European/Middle-Eastern anti-Americanism) for me to decide it deserves its own name in the taxonomy of rhetorical tactics of distraction. I’ve been meaning to write a post on the argumentum ad hypocrisem, and your own comment is such an untoppably perfect example of the genre that it spurred me to go ahead and get the post written while your example was readily available for linking. That post is also already up.

3. You also use the widespread rhetorical tactic of the accusation-by-hypostatic-confession. That post isn’t up yet but will be in the next couple of days.

4. Meanwhile you’re mixing in a constant heaping helping of the fallacy of hypostasization. I’ve been meaning for a very long time to write a big essay on the fallacy of hypostasization, which has in the history of human political thought been the single most destructive of all the logical fallacies. It lies at the heart of Marxism; at the heart of all sorts of variants of tribalistic racism from Naziism to Jesse Jackson to the group-think Palestinian apologists to the “indigenous peoples” nonsense of la Raza; it is woven into the fabric of Keynes’s General Theory; it underlies all defenses of economic protectionism; it is the default mode of argument for those trying to defend a whole host of policies that actually harm those on whose behalf those policies' defenders claim to be acting (affirmative action, the minimum wage, etc.). I don’t think I have time right now to write the post that the fallacy really deserves; so perhaps we’ll just make do with a quick explanation of what the fallacy is and then a brisk fisking of your last couple of comments, in which the fallacy is so blatant that the mere fisking should make it extremely clear exactly what the fallacy is and why it’s stupid.

5. And finally, I defy anybody to find a better example of special pleading than your repeated appeal to “the facts,” by which you mean “those particular facts that can support my point and here’s hoping the people I’m talking to are too ignorant to be aware of all the inconvenient facts that don’t support my point and that I’m going to be bloody well careful not to mention.”

For all I know you’re a nice guy and even reasonably intelligent when not contemplating the sulpherous excrescence of incarnate perdition that is Chimpy McHitler. Everybody has hot-button issues that just wind us up and make our brains stop functioning; Bush, it seems likely, is yours. I don’t particularly think any the worse of you for that, and I don’t intend this as a personal attack. I want my daughter to understand what it is that’s wrong with your arguments logically, what are the rhetorical tactics you’re employing, and how to make those tactics blow up in the face of anybody who tries to use them on her in competition. That’s all. Your comments just happen to be handy for use in her education. Nothing personal is meant.

But I can understand if it feels like a personal attack, and when a person is attacked he naturally wants to defend himself. So I felt I had a moral obligation to let you know that I’m making use of your comments in this way. If you want to fight back on my blog I certainly will grant you the forum to do so.

[Kenny Pierce]

Komplex,

Can you tell us whom you were addressing? Since I can't tell whom you're addressing, and therefore don't know what issues that person has with immigration, I can't tell what problem it is that you think your advice would solve. It's not so much that I object to your advice (I think), having gotten personally involved in helping impoverished illegal aliens myself from time to time. I just don't know what specifically you propose to accomplish by it.

[Komplex]

If you are really serious about immigration, go down to the home depot, pick up a few illegal aliens and take care of them.

[Craig]

"Craig, I see you point, I really do, but how does it change it the situation that the US 'used' to support Saddam? The time is always right to do right. The time is always right to set things straight."

Were our motive to 'correct a wrong' and to benevolently help the Iraqis, that would be a good point. I don't believe it was.

Those things are marketing, and nice effects when they happen.

Understand that power uses marketing. Corrupt televangelists say Satan tries to make you doubt their honesty. Drug companies harming people with their policies put out ads of people grateful for the benefit of their drugs. After Exxon was forced to use double-hulled tankers, after their successful fighting against it for years was ended by the Valdeez disaster, they took out full page ads bragging about how they were buying the ships as if it were out of their own concern for the environment. Al Queda cites the plite of the Palestinians in its recuiting, despite a lack of evidence they've ever cared about them otherwise. There's some truth to nearly all of these. The US uses democracy and liberty as marketing tools. There's an element of truth to that message, too.

It's important to recognize the role these things play. A government's ideal is to have freedom of action, to be able to attack whome, when and where it likes. In a democracy, in theory, that freedom is limited; if marketing techniques can remove those limitations, they're pleased.

Look at our history - have you ever wondered why nearly every war we've fought has had some sort of 'trigger' to justify it, a pretense, the other guy shot first sort of thing? It's because the government first decides to go to war for whatever reasons, and then the stagin occurs to set up the justification.

When our president was determined to take half of Mexico, he couldn't have been much more blatant; he sent a small force to camp within Mexico's land, claiming a 'new' border no one else recognized. After weeks there, when a few soldiers on patrol finally ran across some Mexican soldiers, the Mexicans attacked the intruders - and we had our 'they shot first'.

Of course, not everyone is fooled; President Grant, who fought in the war, called it 'perhaps the most unjust war ever fought by a large power against a smaller'. Lincoln spoke eloquently against the war and saw it for what it was.

When the west did not want Japan becoming an industrial rival, we refused to meet with their peace delegation, and cut off their oil supplies, things with little other explanation than provoking an attack. In Viet Nam, our destroyers were escorting rafts of terrorists we'd trained into North Viet Nam when their gun boat shot at our ship - Gulf of Tonkin, 2-3 million killed.

When we were ready to take out Saddam's military, following the weakening of Iraq and Iran's forces following the longest war of the 20th century with over a million casualties which we'd instigated and helped both sides at times on, Saddam came to our ambassador and asked if we'd mind if he acted on his views that Kuwait was really his. The US has no concern on that, she said.

Pretense set up again; read the PNAC document which in the late 90's calls for US dominance of the Middle East, and says that the plans are going to take decades unless there is a 'new pearl harbor type event' under which more aggressive action can be justified; enter Bush in 2001, a near-total absence of activities to prevent a terrorist attack, laying in wait for the event widely predicted to occur, ready to jump on it as a pretense for invading Iraq.

If you see the US as I do, as the greatest force for liberty in the history of the world, the nation best positioned to spread freedom, the 'law' that "absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely" still applies to the US, and I'm concerned about how to keep the US a force for freedom, and to thwart the corruption there are such huge pressures to compromise with.

The huge 'military-industrial complex' the well-informed Eisenhower chose to warn the nation of in 1961 as his farewell message as president, the issues of selfish US interests corrupting our policies, the strategists who put power ahead of principle, the misguided neocons who think they support good things but really want to 'destroy in order to save', these are all things which threaten the US's role for good, which we the people must notice and limit.

It's a huge challenge to ask how any nation - the US or not - can have leading global power, and yet remain a force for good.

The US may have the best shot to do it, but it's hardly an automatic result, despite the blind patriotism of the right.

An sadly, it's a challenge which is almost not present in our nation's current political debate.

There was a time when it was - when we created the idealistic if flawed United Nations - but we cannot improve those efforts when we're instead losing the battle of democracy for an informed people to rule the nation.

Given the choice between a Saddam and a democracy in Iraq, I choose the democracy. But given the real choices - between Saddam and the next step in the power chasing by our more corrupt factions, setting up Middle Eastern dominance, as evidenced by everything in our initial plans before the resistance prevented them, from installing a puppet (Chalabi) to an economic set up to exploit them to our establishing permanent military bases, not to mention the precedent of the US waging aggressive war based on lies, violating the UN charter, undermining international law and our own position, I may prefer that we not take action until we get our own leadership fixed.

I know some compromises are needed. I think the current Bush regime goes far beyond the needed, and does much unnecessary.

The real lesson you should draw from the fact that we used to support Saddam, at the height of his wrongs, is not that we're now correcting a mistake to do the right thing. Rather, the lesson is that we are so overwhelmingly powerful in the region that we are able to support and overthrow governments with only the slightest effort to maintain our 'moral' cover. It could hardly be more blatant that our claims are phony than to switch our position on the SAME LEADER over a decade after his crimes and our opposite earlier support for him. You should draw the lesson that it's a pretense and you are being lied to, and look for the 'real agendas'.

Let's all work towards the ideals most Americans share on the right, middle and left of freedom around the world. Continuing to support our government when it acts against that goal is evil. Our coming challenges include protecting our cherished 'power of the individual' in the face of threats from within (corporate power) and without (e.g., China).

Democracy is frail. All the phrases in our history about the vigilance needed are not just pretty words.

They mean the vigilance of seeing past the marketing used by power to deceive the public.

We're already at the point that the public has become all but irrelevant in the selection of leaders, as campaigns become a function of money (there's a near-total correlation between spending and election), where the citizen's role is reduced mostly to the consumer of advertising - 'citizen groups' are almost never able to change the results of an election. The public's interests certainly are not being represented, unless they overlap with the most wealthy, or the minimum needed to sustain support - for example, look at the flat real wages in the last 25 years for 90%, compared to the skyrocketing hundreds of percent increases for the top 0.01%. It's not an accident; even further tax shifts from the most wealthy to the public are planned now, such as the repeal of the estate tax.

The American people are hardly 'really in charge' any more, just as some political leaders are sometimes turned into figureheads.

Look at the facts in front of your face: see the GOP take huge drug company donations. See the GOP pass legislation giving over a $100 billion windfall to the drug companies, banning the government from negotating for lower prices as the VA does. See the more honest reps, even in the GOP, oppose the bill. See the GOP leaders bribe and threaten the opponents on the floor.

And there is no public accountability enforced on these people. The American people are spared even worse because they are the economic engine which fuels the machine - but that only will last so long.

We need to figure out how to set up a just system for the most powerful nation in the world, which prevents the worst effects of corruption, just as our founding fathers set up a system which was revolutionary in its distribution of power to the public.

And it's not even in the public debate now. Short of that, all we can do is oppose the most corrupt on whatver grounds.

And that means not giving them a pass on the pretense they use for the war in Iraq of 'spreading democracy', not becuase Saddam is good, but because they are bad for our country and for the world, too, and we have so lttle leverage.

The radical Muslims are disastrous for individual freedom. If they were an immediate threat to us, I'd put these concerns to the side and say we need to unite against them to defend our country. But we're not in danger of losing our country to them - we can improve our own country first, and then figure out how to help others avoid the repression from these leaders.

But when we're the ones keeping dictators in power, we're not at a point to be overthrowing them in the name of democracy.

How much of all these problems go back to no more than the west not wanting to pay a fair price for oil, and takin steps not to have to, by crating countries and dictators and such to serve our needs, as we try to make people not connect the dots showing how phony our pretenses are?

[Michael Galien]

You really need to learn that the US has in its history the use of propaganda about supporting fredom simply to cover up evil acts, and stop ignoring the reality of how much we've done to support 'brutal dictators' for our own interests.

Craig, I see you point, I really do, but how does it change it the situation that the US 'used' to support Saddam? The time is always right to do right. The time is always right to set things straight.
In other words: Although the US (and other western nations may I add) used to support Saddam, that does not mean they have no right to remove him from power. Actually, I concider it a good sign that some people feel the moral need to remove dictators.

If we're really against the brutal dictators you mention, where are our troops on Darfur, now, with 400,000 killed?

Agreed. European countries and the US should take a leading role in my opinion, in order to solve the situation in Darfur. Did you hear that the UN is reducing its help (food in this case) for Darfur with 50%?
They are used to 'get' 2100 calories from the UN of food per day, the UN, however, will now reduce it to 1050: that is not enough to live on.

[Craig]

Assistant village idiot:

Your argument consisted pretty much entirely of assertions of the type of saying my economic information is 'bad'.

You really need to learn how to make an argument, and have some basis of 'facts', and logic, and all that stuff.

Michael Galien:

"Fourth; it might come as a suprise for you, but Iraq was ruled by a brutal dictator. One that would not allow any opposition. One that killed thousands every year. Thus, one could concider it the moral duty of the West to liberate them.

I find it funny how some people constantly act as if they have the moral highground, although they are the ones willing to let a people suffer for decades."

Fifth, it might come as a surprise for you, but the US helped keep that brutal dictator in power.

After he used the WMD on 'his own people' (as we now know, that phrase is disengenuous given the fact that groups are enemies within the country, it's more like Lincoln attacking 'his own people' in our civil war than like Bush slaughtering democrats), the United States *restored* diplomatic relations with him, before 15 years later using the same to condemn him.

And oh by the way, the United States also overthrew a democratic government in Iran which was standing up to the exploitation of their country by a scam to get cheap oil, putting in place a 'brutal dictator' by giving him a brutal police force.

You really need to learn that the US has in its history the use of propaganda about supporting fredom simply to cover up evil acts, and stop ignoring the reality of how much we've done to support 'brutal dictators' for our own interests.

You need to understand how the system works where we set thigs up to give us all the options in who gets power, and we selectively apply the righteous 'we're the good guys for liberty' argument to justify war only when we want to.

If you set out to write the story of a powerful nation acting in the most obvious hypocrisy, you could not go much further than the history actually is regarding our relationships where we flip-flopped with the Batistas and Saddams and Shahs and Somozas and Marcoses ad nauseum. The facts are staring you in the face and you can't see what they say.

If we're really against the brutal dictators you mention, where are our troops on Darfur, now, with 400,000 killed?

I agree with you that Saddam was a bad guy, but that doesn't make any alternative better - and it doesn't remove the moral problems we have when we trample on international law to get our way, when we pursue an agenda of dominance in the Middle East more for our own good than the people there (you do know that Nixon made a deal with Saudi Arabia to guarantee their corrupt, repressive government's security in exchange for guaranteed access to oil, not to mention our aid for the pretty brutal Egyptian government, etc.)

I'd consider a policy for regime change in Iraq *if* it were 'done right' for the benefit of the Iraqi people.

That's not the case - we didn't have Chalabi in the wings as our puppet for their good.

So, yes, the moral high ground can well lie with those who oppose the US doing wrong, even when it leaves a Saddam in place, and who support other policies even while opposing a Saddam. And there is an element that we're more responsible morally for our actions than for others'.

How different would things be had we not overthrown Iran's government and let them have reasonable compensation for their oil (and democracy) since 1953, had we not propped up Saddam, not encouraged him to invade Iran in the 1980's with over a million casualties as we sought to weaken those countries?

How different had we listened to the please of Viet Nam to support their independance from French colonization in the 1930's, or following WWII when the Japanese were driven out before the French returned?

The moral high ground does not belong to the right who abuse the ideas of 'liberty' in the name of evil foreign policy.

[Kenny Pierce]

If one is going to have fun bashing away at other people's silly ideas about immigration, a simple sense of fair play and decency requires that you make your own silly ideas available for them to bash in return. Which I accordingly do here. This isn't a subject I've thought that much about so there should be much fodder for ridicule constructive criticism; so, tally-ho, y'all.

[Kenny Pierce]

Michael,

Actually it depends on what you mean by "extreme."

My mother-in-law, for example, thinks my opinions are extreme -- as a public school counselor she particularly isn't happy about my belief that having the government run your schools is a bad idea, for example, and that position is certainly "extreme" by American standards. But extreme views in that sense tend to belong to people who are quite unpredictable just because they are outliers in terms of thought patterns -- no American who is the embodiment of either the Republican or the Democratic platforms is going to go that far out of the mainstream.

If, on the other hand, what you mean is extremism in rhetoric (all conservatives are "fascists," all liberals are "socialists" or "communists," all of society's problems are the fault of the "big corporations" or the "oil lobby" or the "secular humanists" or the "MSM," etc.), then I think your principle is more nearly true. I believe there have been empirical studies that show that if a group of people who all agree on a topic sit around and discuss it without input from someone who disagrees, their opinions become both more uniform and more extreme; this suggests that uniformity of opinions and extremism are (up to a point) correlated (though this does not assert causality in any particular direction).

And if what you mean is extreme frequency in the use of rhetorical cliches, then your principle becomes pretty bloody reliable. The whole point of the use of cliches like "cultural elites" or "big business" is to call up comforting and self-reassuring emotions without the inconvenience and exertion of actual thought. People who use borrowed language, are usually reciting borrowed ideas (to use the term "idea" rather loosely).

And in the immortal words of Owen Wister's Scipio, "When a man has no ideas of his own, he ought to be careful where he borrows 'em from."

[rorschach]

Don't take the spanish-speaking guy too seriously. You say he's from Arizona - hell, so am I.

And I think I know a little about his frustration (given the possibility that he really ISN'T Mexican). "Get used to this language, we'll all be speaking it soon:" I hear this all the time from pissed-off Republicans in my state.

Our Governor was elected on border security, among other issues; of course she showed her true colors not long ago when she vetoed a bill in the State Legislature to step up that security. She made a promise to make the borders safer, but she miffed a chance to actually keep that promise and prove herself honest; we had the pro-amnesty rallies in Phoenixtoo, and I suppose that seeing 50,000 angry Mexicans in the street outside City Hall really did a number on her dedication.

[Robert]

Michael Galien,

Darfur?

[Michael Galien]

One question though Kenny; wouldn't you agree with me, how more extreme someone is (either to the right, or to the left), the more 'stereotypes' proove to be true? How more predictable their behaviour is?

Kenny, please let me answer this one:
Oooh, you righties are so tuff! So brave, courageous, and all that. Big talkers. So why aren't you in Iraq, chickenshit?

First: I would like to say I greatly appreciate all of you who simply come here to insult everyone. Very much appreciated, keep it up.
Second; if everyone would join the army, nobody would be making the money to pay for the army. As you might understand it costs money.
Third; everyone that the government steals money from, uhm I mean, everyone that pays taxes becomes something like a stockholder of the government: people are the government. The army is part of the government, thus everybody has a right to say what they think the army should be doing right now.
Fourth; it might come as a suprise for you, but Iraq was ruled by a brutal dictator. One that would not allow any opposition. One that killed thousands every year. Thus, one could concider it the moral duty of the West to liberate them.

I find it funny how some people constantly act as if they have the moral highground, although they are the ones willing to let a people suffer for decades.

[Kenny Pierce]

By the way, because I'm very much amused by the Salon commentators' reliance on stereotypical assumptions when interacting with "neo-fascists," I'm sending Alexandra an e-mail containing some basic predictions about responses to my last. A couple of days from now we'll see how those predictions pan out. My own feeling is that they won't pan out all that well -- even though as generalizations they're based on many years of interacting (usually civilly) with persons from the left of center.

This may serve as an illustration of either of two general principles, depending on your temperament.

(1) You may take it as confirmation that stereotypes of groups of people you personally don't like, are not accurate. If you are one of the Salonites who've been so impressively active in this thread, you may of course amend that to triumph in your knowledge that conservative stereotypes of liberals are inaccurate, while remaining serenely confident that liberal stereotypes of conservatives are infallible gospel. It's not like anybody can force you to have an open mind, after all.

I think, however, that there's actually a much more interesting principle at work:

(2) Even when you have stereotypes that are generally valid for groups of people (in the sense that any one such stereotype is true more often than not), people are so fascinatingly individually variable that pretty much anybody you meet will break out of at least some of the stereotypes that are generally true of his group.

I've had a great deal of fun in this thread picking off easy targets where people like Randy or Stormcrow make stereotypically negative assumptions about individuals that -- surprise! -- turn out not to be true. For example, Randy assumed that I was a Republican and a fan of Bill O'Reilly; Stormcrow assumed that Alexandra was a "Gomer." (I wonder, though -- perhaps he meant to equate her not with Gomer Pyle, but with the prophet Hosea's whore of a wife? Perhaps I myself leaped to a false conclusion about his intent.) Neither of those assumptions either harmed are advanced the rationality of their cause; but it made it easy to poke fun at them. And since their purpose in coming here appears to have been neither to learn, nor to persuade, but merely to reassure themselves that they are morally and intellectually superior to conservatives, making themselves look needlessly stupid was rather counterproductive.

And therefore all those times when I said to Randy, "But I don't want to assume that's what you mean," or, "We can hope that's not what you're saying" -- I was entirely sincere. People break stereotypes sometimes. It's what makes them interesting. And forgetting that people break stereotypes sometimes -- well, it tends to make you look stupid.

[Kenny Pierce]

Valerie,

>
On the other hand, our laws governing the influx of people into our country are both asinine and unenforced.
>

That is the single most undeniably true thing anybody's said on this thread.

[Kenny Pierce]

Ah, how disappointing. Here I had written up a genuinely serious response for Randy, and he's already left. Thus he will never learn that I am not a Republican and have no respect for the Republican Party whatsoever; nor will he be able to enjoy the Bill O'Reilly parody that I link to on my own blog, nor to agree with my opinion therein stated that "you can never make too much fun of Bill O'Reilly." And I wonder what he would think about the fact that I have historically spoken more positively of Molly Ivins than of Michelle Malkin ("I am so proud of Molly Ivins I could burst")?

It's so inconvenient when people don't fit into the neat little slots that allow you dismiss them...notice how Randy attacks Bill O'Reilly in an apparent utter lack of ability to tell the two of us apart? Perceptive dude, that.

Meanwhile, in re "Why are conservatives so angry all the time?":

From now on, when you neo-fascists (and that's what you people really are) hit us, we are going to hit you back harder. You claim the moral high ground but you are being exposed daily as petty, mean-spirited, hypocitical bullies. Real Americans, not the cowering kind, want no part of your dishonest wars, torturing, illegal wiretaps, endless lies, etc. etc.

It's a good thing we have liberals like Randy around to keep things calm, objective and charitable, eh?

Now, here's the serious post to which I was interested in hearing Randy's response.

---

I will now actually proceed to add a serious and respectful comment in disagreement with Randy, who has actually behaved in a manner deserving of respect. [A sentiment now rather out of date but we'll let it stand.] Even though I think he’s wrong; but then he thinks I’m wrong so we’re even and it’s all good.

>
If I had known I was in the presence of royalty I would have minded my p's and q's.
>

Oddly, Randy, the regulars here at ATB tend to think people generally deserve civility (unless they forfeit it by their own rudeness) even when they’re just common folks. (The hard time I gave to the fellow who called Alexandra “Gomer” was mostly an inside joke for the amusement of the regulars, who know that Alexandra never under any circumstances appeals to her social status for special deference.)

Now, to your points: your thinking is awfully muddled by two consistent flaws. The first is question-begging emotionalized language, where you embed silently into your writing lots of premises that you don’t defend – indeed, of which you are perhaps not even aware – simply by your choice of loaded words. The second is a tendency to the presentation of vague platitudes, utterly without specific details of implementation, presented under the impression that you’re actually providing a solution. There may be a third, which would be the constant commission of the fallacy of hypostasization (in particular, practically all attempts to defend the minimum wage flagrantly employ that fallacy), but I’m not sure – the steps in your reasoning aren’t clear enough to allow for confident diagnosis.

For an example of the first, you speak of cheap labor as a “drug.” Since you don’t presumably mean that a Mexican worker – who is a human being with dreams and aspirations and loves and free will – is in literal fact an inanimate reefer of pot, you are presumably trying to draw an analogy. It’s very difficult to see any way in which the analogy could be stated explictly without becoming absurd unless you take refuge in the fallacy of hypostasization. That is, it’s an effective analogy as long as you’re purely emoting and you’re talking to people who share your preconceptions, but as a rational tool it’s hard to see how it could function.

Here, I’ll take a couple of shots at it. I almost certainly won’t correctly guess what it is you’re trying to communicate; so by all means clarify at will.

If you’re trying to emote, well then at least one explication is simple: you would be positing there is such a thing as the “American people,” the best interests of whom are identical to those of the “American common man;” but the decisions of whom are disproportionately driven by an “elite.” The importation of cheap labor is bad for “America,” but it feels good to the decision-makers; and so “America” short-sightedly keeps mainlining.

If you were trying to say, “This is how I feel,” then that would perhaps be enlightening as a psychological confession. Unfortunately, as an attempt at a rational public policy argument this explication is hopelessly shot through with the fallacy of hypostasization, along with an unstated assumption that “the common American” is the center of the universe and that the interests of both the American “elites” and of the Mexican worker should be ignored where they conflict with the self-interest of “the common American.”

Since that would be a pretty dumb and tribalistically immoral analogy (though a very common one), we can hope that’s not what you’re trying to say. But then what is it, exactly, that you are trying to say? What are the explicit points in the analogy you wish to draw? If your analogy is valid, you’ll be able to draw it out explicitly, point for point. Would you mind doing that for us?

Now, as for vagueness: “We need to pressure Mexico to come into the 21st century and start developing their dismal economy.” I absolutely agree. How exactly do you propose to do that? Myself, I look at the fact that the Mexican “elites” (that term is clearly for you a fundamentally negative word) use immigration into the United States, with the resulting mass infusion of American dollars back to the old folks at home, as the safety valve that keeps them from having to reform themselves; and therefore I can think of few things that would provide more pressure on them than effectively to close the borders and to begin massive reinjection into Mexico of Mexican citizens who, having lived in the U.S., will be all too aware of how much life as a Mexican sucks when you are governed by Mexicans rather than Americans. Perhaps that’s precisely what you have in mind; perhaps you have a better idea. Since you are not at all specific, there’s no way to tell.

Or again, “The elites in Mexico who have perpetuated this situation, need to be swept away and a more democratic society needs to be created there.”

(1) With whom are you going to replace them, and what will their replacements’ philosophy of government be? The history of Latin American popular government in general, and of Mexican popular government in particular, hardly inspires confidence. What matters to a country’s health is not who governs nearly so much as it is the ideas with which they govern, and human history is full of disastrously badly governed democracies led by unscrupulous or foolish demagogues. (In which category you yourself might very well place the present-day United States, for all I know.) On this side of the border we have the sort of political philosophy that is peculiarly characteristic of the Anglosphere; on their side they have always had the sort of political philosophy that is characteristic of the banana republics of Latin America. Mexico has absolutely no history whatsoever of sound economic policies or of the kind of governance that leads to widespread prosperity. From where do you draw your confidence that if Mexico begins to be governed by the uneducated and poverty-stricken Mexicans instead of by the corrupt “elite” Mexicans, they will suddenly adopt wise and far-sighted economic policies that go completely against the entire grain and history of the culture, and also in the opposite political direction from that in which the rest of Latin America generally speaking is moving?

(2) Perhaps you would care to explain who is going to do this “sweeping away?” I’ll give you a simple challenge: recast that platitude in the active voice, so that you have to specify who exactly is going to accomplish this task that nobody has ever successfully accomplished in the two centuries since the Mexican War of Independence.

Now I hasten to say that I’m not making fun of your optimism; the fact that a problem has never been solved is no reason not to try to solve it, and if you have serious suggestions to make then I will applaud them. I’m just saying that if you want to be taken seriously you have to actually propose something resembling a plan of action with a few concrete steps, rather than waving your hand grandly in a magic gesture that is supposed to make deep-rooted cultural pathologies disappear in a sudden fit of meek cooperation. Especially when one considers that the “elites” include thousands of village policemen who enthusiastically participate in the culture of localized extortion and graft that has been endemic in Mexico pretty much since Cortez arrived, and that hardly any public policy task is more difficult than rooting out political corruption once it has been allowed to spread throughout your political system and become one of its intrinsic characteristics...well, you must not be surprised if we find ourselves wondering whether there is any meat in your Mexican public policy stew.

As far as your question of, “I mean, really, what is American culture anyway?” Let’s assume that you were admitting ignorance and asking a genuine question; fortunately, there’s a fairly straightforward general answer. It is what makes the north side of the border a great place to live and the south side of the border a crappy place. It is precisely the difference between the fundamental political precepts of that part of the New World that was settled by the heirs of the Magna Carta and shaped by the writers of the Federalist Papers and the Constitution, and the fundamental political precepts of the part of the New World that was raped by the conquistadors and then dominated for centuries by the grandees and huge landholders of the Spanish and Portuguese nobility – it is precisely that difference that makes the part of Santa Anna’s Mexico that is still run by Mexicans the kind of place that Mexicans risk their lives to get away from, while the part of Santa Anna’s Mexico that was stolen by the gringos is the kind of place that Mexicans risk their lives to get into.

Of course it is also possible that you were simply using a rhetorical question to say, “I don’t think American culture is worth bothering about.” If that is the case – which I hope it isn’t – then go live in Monterrey for a year, and then come back and tell me whether or not America has a clearly defined culture – and whether we’d all be just as well off if the American political culture of, say, Tyler, were replaced by the Mexican political culture of Monterrey. Or, alternatively, you could go spend one month in an American jail and compare it to one week in a Mexican jail. Or, alternatively, you could just take twelve million Mexican illegal immigrants’ word for it.

Very well, there is a dramatically significant difference in political culture between America and Mexico, and the American political culture is (by our and the illegal immigrants’ standards) markedly superior. But one of the fundamental differences in political culture is precisely that in America, we have traditionally been a nation of rule by law, where every citizen is expected to uphold and abide by the laws, whereas Mexico is now (as you yourself point out) and has always been (as you do not) a place where corruption and abuse of political power are endemic at every level, and where laws are obeyed only insofar as they happen to coincide with the individual’s own self-interest. The fundamental idea that our laws are to be obeyed, even by the President (I’m sure you would argue passionately for that one), is an absolutely essential part of what makes America the great nation that the voting Mexican feet assure us it is – but by defying the law to come and live here illegally, they undermine that fundamental civil compact, and by marching in protest and showing open contempt for the law, they begin to take active steps toward turning America back into what Mexico is now and what Texas would be if it were still part of Mexico.

---

But I suppose it's just as well that Randy has already gone back to doing his part amid the "throws of the culture war" -- odd, actually, that he's engaging in a culture war despite being somebody who claims to be unable to answer the question, "What is American culture, anyway?" I wonder how he can tell what he's defending and whom to attack, in his state of self-professed definitional confusion? At any rate, if he had stuck around, there's no telling how sickening he would have found my "neo-fascism." And I would never want to be the reason somebody found it necessary to throe up.

[Drindl]

Oooh, you righties are so tuff! So brave, courageous, and all that. Big talkers. So why aren't you in Iraq, chickenshit?

[Wendy]

Hey Beautiful,

Impressive hateful rhetoric about poor families willing to work for peanuts. Frankly, anyone facing poverty like they have in Mexico would do the same thing. The blame needs to put on th employers. If there's no jobs, they won't come. Bush and Co isn't interested in fixing the problem. Via Michele Malkin:

POLITICALLY-TIMED IMMIGRATION RAIDS
By Michelle Malkin · April 20, 2006 09:05 AM
http://michellemalkin.com/archives/2006_04.htm

As Rubenstein points out, this means that from 1997 to 2003, worksite arrests under the Bush administration fell by a factor of some 97 percent since 1997--and plunged by another 2/3rds by 2004.

[Valerie Alexander]

What really annoys me about this particular issue is that both sides seem to be determined to "agree at the top of their lungs." That's not just at this site. As far as I can tell, there's a good, sensible deal possible, provided both sides stop having so much fun flinging rude remarks at one another.

Somebody is trying to hijack this debate and use it in hopes of causing harm to our country, and people keep biting. Alexandra made a perfectly acceptable point: nobody has the right to barge into our country and tell us that we have to adjust to them. That kind of behavior makes her angry, as well it should.

People who promote a May Day strike in the United States are not interested in passing legislation: they are trying to torpedo any possible legislation. Similarly, people who post taunts in ersatz spanish saying they are going to impose themselves on our society are deliberately trying to insult American sensibilities. They are not interested in winning friends and influencing people. They want the situation to remain as it is, and so they are trying to make people on all sides angry. Many of the signs I have seen, and the comments I've heard, are simply unacceptable as part of a national dialog in the United States. We aren't part of Mexico, and nobody in their right mind wants the US to become more like any of the Central and South American countries. What most people on BOTH sides of the border want is for South America to be more like the US!

Also provocative are some of the people who cannot get beyond the word "ILLEGAL." Yes, we do have a lot of workers in this country who are here illegally, and it won't do to call them by some stupid euphemism as "migrant" or "undocumented." They are "illegal" and they are "aliens." On the other hand, our laws governing the influx of people into our country are both asinine and unenforced.

And, this situation would not be a pressing problem, but for the Islamist terrorists. They remain deluded about the outcome of the war they started. They will lose, the only question for us is the cost. I, personally, do not wish to see a truck-delivered dirty bomb exploded anywhere in the US. The cost of that one event would dwarf that of any cost imposed on our social network by working people, illegal or not.

We do need control of our borders, and we need to find ways to allow people to come to the US and work in bottom-level jobs, and then go home, legally, and in sufficient numbers to meet the needs of our ever-changing economy. We need to find ways to encourage Mexico, especially, to provide a better life for its own citizens. We need to be able to keep known criminals out, and to deport criminals, and to make sure they stay deported. We need to pay attention to the burdens that are being placed on our social system, and eliminate some of the presently-existing perverse incentives.

All of this is doable, but first, people need to take a deep breath, and recognize how close to a consensus we actually are on this issue.

[Alexandra]

Well the plot does seem to thicken, as I have just received an email from one of my readers:

"The Spanish-language comment posted to your blog is almost certainly not written by a native speaker, as it makes no sense in Spanish and is not colloquial at all – accent marks notwithstanding. I am certain this is written by some sort of campus-bred leftie for whom Spanish is a second language."

Which prompted me to discover that the commenter is indeed based @ Maricopa Community College in Tempe Arizona.

[tankerboy]

Alexandra,

And to think you got a bit miffed because I disagreed with you over a fence a couple weeks ago. I think someone has really pushed you over the edge on this topic.

I don't necessarily disagree with the substance of what you are saying but I disagree with how you are saying it. Nothing productive will come of your post. Of course, this is the blogsphere, so I don't think much comes of anything that goes on here anyway.

[Saul Davis]

Randy: A response to your request for proof that Democrats are seeking the illegal immigrant vote [although they are unable to vote at this time, they are being recruited so that if amnesty passes the democrats hope they will vote for the democrats]; see the following posts with pictures of signs seeking illegal immigrant votes:

1. http://wizbangblog.com/2006/04/10/democrats-recruiting-at-illegal-immigrant-protests.php

2. http://michellemalkin.com/archives/004957.htm [some are repetitive, but demonstrate the concern many of us have expressed];

3. http://mediamatters.org/items/200407290001 {read the entire piece including reports of local legislation passed to permit illegal immigrant votes since '92];

4. http://www.washtimes.com/upi-breaking/20040621-024645-8821r.htm [SF is a notoriously democratic controlled town];

5. http://flapsblog.com/?p=2314 {same sign as 1 and 2 -- but read the article]

6. http://socalpundit.com/blog/index.php/2006/04/15/democrats-court-the-illegal-alien-vote/

There's much more; but this is enough for now; you must remember that the democratic recruiting poster is the proverbial picture that speaks a thousand words. That should be enough for any reasonable person to understand the concern some of us have.

[MarcH]

Reading Randy's (blog equivalent, @5:50 pm) of declaring victory, stomping out of the room and slamming the door made my day.

Thanks Randy!

[MarcH]

John Gillnitz – Your objections to the possibility of Americans regaining control of our southern border fall into two basic categories: First, it’s technically “impossible” and second, we lack the political will.

1. Your first argument, that it’s technically “impossible” to secure the Mexican border, doesn’t hold up. Here are some simple steps that would make it quite possible:
a. Expedited deportation hearings;
b. Expansion of the US Border Patrol (USBP) (an under-rated but elite group of agents)
c. Application of proven smart fence (http://www.securityfence.mod.gov.il/Pages/ENG/operational.htm) and UAV technology in remote areas (http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htterr/articles/20060427.aspx); and,
d. Criminal enforcement actions against employers.
2. Concerning your second argument, that the US lacks the political will, I think if you stick around you’ll see that Alexandra (along with her linked blogs and loyal readers) are on a mission to revive US political will, along with its close cousin, US civilizational confidence (I love that Mark Steyn phrase). I expect that is why this post has enjoyed so many hostile comments from visiting leftists.

On a related note, readers may enjoy this very informative tribute site (http://www.usborderpatrol.com/) dedicated to the Agents of USBP. Warning: “nuanced” readers may find it a little corny or jingoistic.

[Jeremayakovka]

Randy wrote:

"Kenny, Alexandra, it's been fun helping the lefties take over your blog and all, but I gotta go now.

Oh and by the way, bite me. This country is in the throws of an internal war from which it may never recover. Don't blame me, I didn't start this. It's a culture war that I wanted no part of and have only just recently joined. From now on, when you neo-fascists (and that's what you people really are) hit us, we are going to hit you back harder. You claim the moral high ground but you are being exposed daily as petty, mean-spirited, hypocitical bullies. Real Americans, not the cowering kind, want no part of your dishonest wars, torturing, illegal wiretaps, endless lies, etc. etc...."

I'm so sorry I didn't make your final edit, Randy. Are you aware -- and I'm really trying to be non-partisan -- that if you cut our your bullet points ("dishonest wars", "torturing", etc.) and replace them with (presumably) ours ("defeatism", "rogue states", etc.), you'd merely add to the echo to the chamber? Is this an "internal war"? If it's war you don't chime in and say "Nyah, nyah!" and "Liar, liar! Pants on fire!" -- you operate with stealth and cunning, and without mercy until you have neutralized your adversary. Neutralize him, I might add, "by any means necessary," to co-opt a line from Malcolm Little (aka "X") who, if he were alive today, Dean, Reid, Pelosi, Kerry, Kennedy, and Billary would be courting as "a moderate".

So I ask again, is this an "internal war" you're fighting? Please. Save that for when you're making a move on a college intern at an inside-the-beltway bar as the Congressional races heat up this summer. Better yet, just grow up, face reality, and do something charitable for our brave men and women in uniform in the frontlines of our *real* (and external) war.

"We are going to hit you back harder." With *what*, pray tell? Another John Kerry presidential run? A Warren Beatty gubernatorial campaign? Another Andrew Cuomo gubernatorial campaign? I feel like a sad parent before an unruly child: because this lecture hurts me more than could possibly hurt you. Our republic needs two vibrant, competitive parties. We Republicans need you to bring out the best in us, not just yawns and bullet-point putdowns.

(Yeah, this is a little ranty, Randy. But it's the end of the day. Had to get it out of my system.)

[Crusader.NoRegrets.]

Alexandra

Please help us get rid of this horrid little mountain troll, the one named Randy. Actually on second thoughts, lets swat him around a little.

Randy, I'm afraid the real torture in America is listening to people like you go on and on in the way you do. There is only one thing you'll hear from us on the right if you ever decide to take these disagreements into a more robust form:

"They came on in the same old way, and we stopped them in the same old way". (Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, commenting on the performance of the French Imperial Guard at Waterloo.)

(forgive me if I got the battle wrong - it may have been in the Peninsula. I can look it up if people wish to challenge the quote)

But seriously, Randy, for a peacenik, you sure use a lot of warmongering language. I didn't know you were at war, old boy.
By the way, what is a "neo-fascist"? Definition please. And what on earth leads you to believe we are coming to hit you? Help, my head hurts from all this moonbat logic. Explain.

Otherwise we must assume you are "mercifully free of the ravages of intelligence".

[Assistant Village Idiot]

Kenny Pierce, I thought your comments were brilliant. I will have to be alert for you on other threads.

Randy, read the Rumsfeld comments on Limbaugh's show firsthand. They are archived and available. Scaife's personal rhetoric, and the rhetoric and actions of the organizations he funds, have a tone more in keeping with the standards of discussion and polite debate. Soros funds hate speech and uses it himself. That might be part of O'Reilly's "scathe."

Craig has got an amazing ability to not only absorb bad economic statistics, but exagerrate them after passing through his organs of thought.

[slowtrain]

Steady, people, steady.

Preconceived notions and passionate sentiments will get us now where. Acting from such dispositions is like throwing punches with eyes closed, one either hits something or nothing, worse still one might hit someone he did not intend to hit, might even give himself a bloody nose in the process.

This whole debate has degenerated into a mud fight, and in a mud fight people get muddy and lose their garments to mud. People should think rather than convulse in rage, speak rather discharge angry rants.

But I suppose it is necessary for people to get emotionalism out of the way before they can get into the business of really tackling a difficult problem, especially one that will not go away, just because people are yelling at each other. So go for it, the sooner you get through it, the sooner the business of finding a solution can begin.

[Randy]

Kenny, Alexandra, it's been fun helping the lefties take over your blog and all, but I gotta go now.

Oh and by the way, bite me. This country is in the throws of an internal war from which it may never recover. Don't blame me, I didn't start this. It's a culture war that I wanted no part of and have only just recently joined. From now on, when you neo-fascists (and that's what you people really are) hit us, we are going to hit you back harder. You claim the moral high ground but you are being exposed daily as petty, mean-spirited, hypocitical bullies. Real Americans, not the cowering kind, want no part of your dishonest wars, torturing, illegal wiretaps, endless lies, etc. etc.

Bye now.

[Craig]

"Thank God the pure-hearted Democrats have only the support of working men like you and me and George Soros..."

Well, the right-wing propaganda industry dwarfs anything the democrats do in terms of deceptive, manipulative information, having interests against the public interest which try to convince people to do things which are bad for them, in terms of the funding, the number of so-called think tanks, an entire News network (Fox), and much more.

For example, what's behind the left's efforts to combat global warming? Not a selfish interest, such as the oil companies have on the issue, but rather the broader public interest. Contrast that to Exxon funding 50 'think tank' type propaganda groups to spread the lie that 'the evidence is inconclusive' on the issue.

So, you have an Air America spreading the word that it's important, while you have Exxon paying for lies.

The head of the National Academy of Sciences said he has never seen an issue with a broader consenus among the world's scientists than there is on global warming - so yes, Exxon is paying for lies.

That's the difference. And the results are clear.

While the 0.01% wealthiest Americans' incomes are going up hundreds of percent, 90% of Americans are flat in real terms in the last 25 years since Reagan, with a brief improvement under Clinton - even while the national debt is skyrocketed as republicans take from the public trough and put it in their own pockets.

And at this peak point of the wealth inequality, they're trying to repeal the estate tax which will only help the extremely wealthy, and leave a hole in our bills to be filled by the public even more.

The Estate Tax repeal propaganda is being paid for in part by eighteen of the nation's wealthiest familiest, including the Waltons, and yes, it's based on lies that average Americans are hurt by the tax, when in fact only 1 in hundreds of estates are taxable.

[John Gillnitz]

1. Having spent a considerable amount of time along the Texas-Mexico boarder I think that it is impossible to secure it. Texas can't even keep it's jails staffed, much less secure a massive wall through hundreds of miles of Chilean Desert. Gov. Perry purchased millions worth of motion sensing equipment and it was left laying out in fields unassembled. Most immigrants don't swim the Rio Grande, but come over via smugglers called coyotes who have connections in law enforcement on both sides of the boarder.
2. Why not allow dual citizenship? When Mexicans work over here they pay taxes and have rights. When in Mexico they pay taxes to Mexico. We add workers to registration offices along the boarder so we can keep track of who goes in and out and the problem is solved.
3. Republicans will never stop immigration. Corporate interests make too much money from a permanent underclass.
4. Nice pictures. Racist tone...not so nice.

[Randy]

Kenny, when Bill O'Reilly starts bellyaching about Scaife with the same vitriol he reserve for Soros, maybe then I'll take his "fair and balanced" monikor seriously. He's not big enough to admit he's a partisan hack. I may be partisan and gladly admit to preferring the work Soros does to the kind of scurrilous slander that Scaife engages in, but at least I'm not a fundamentally dishonest hack like O'Reilly.

[Randy]

Kenny, when you have the Secretary of Defence declaring on the Rush Limbaugh show that Al Qaida operatives have inflitrated the media, it's not a very big leap to think that some guy on internet might be serious when he claims that Democratic Party operatives are recruiting illegal aliens. I did not detect a bit of irony when Rumsfeld made his jaw-droppingly ridiculous assertion, nor did I detect any irony in your post. You Republicans are just not good at irony. Your party has gone so far over the deep end when it comes the telling the truth that sadly, you could say anything and I would probably think you were being serious.

[Kenny Pierce]

Craig,

>
A few ealthy people, the Richard Mellon Scaife types, fund the propagandists who serve the special interests.
>

Thank God the pure-hearted Democrats have only the support of working men like you and me and George Soros...

[laughing delightedly] I mean, do you people ever actually stop and listen to what's coming out of your mouths?

Whaddaya think, Randy...what do you think is Craig's source for that one, and how much steam do you think is rising from it?

[Kenny Pierce]

Randy,

[apologetically] Well, the trap was really for Scarecrow (Stormcrow, whatever); I didn't mean for you to walk into it.

And yes, I have been mostly yanking chains on this thread because (a) the silliness of the typical Salon commenter (not yourself) is the equivalent of a big self-imposed "Kick Me" sign, (b) it's quite clear that there is no point in trying to change their minds by politeness or reason, and (c) their quite extraordinary rudeness weakens the degree to which I would ordinarily feel constrained by civility and charity. I mean, the unintentional comedy of a line like, "Why is the right always so angry?" after comments like Ladylady's and patx77's...[chuckling delightedly]

Ah, well, from the intelligent people who disagree with us, we learn; and from the morons who disagree with us, we derive amusement; and thus all our opponents duly serve their appointed purpose... [grinning]

[Jeremayakovka]

Gosh, it's nice to be mentioned on the H/T! Speaking to the Jewish twist in this immigration debate, I raise a bright yellow flag of caution regarding Ms. Rachel Biale's column (see link above). Progressive Jewish commentators, like her, frequently employ Biblical parables to muster a moral basis for their temporal political stances. But beware! It's usually little more than adulterated religiosity, a thin veneer of righteousness.

Dennis Prager has a good, concise take on why too many Jews are like this:
http://jewishworldreview.com/0406/prager042506.php3

[jim]

It's like this:

Any attempt to limit illegal immigration that does not involve fines and jail times for people who hire them, is simply a joke.

There are enough laws already on the books to take care of this. They just aren't being enforced. Why? Because many huge corporations, especially large, corporate farming, are built on the use of cheap, illegal labor.

They're coming here for jobs. As long as there are jobs, they'll keep coming.

But we'll see how many politicians actually acknowledge this level of the debate - because these large corporations fund BOTH parties.

[Jeremayakovka]

Conservatives are angry? Yes. But bitter? No.

[Randy]

OK Kenny, I get it. You weren't being serious. It's hard to know these days. Still, a vast majority of those illegals are here to work, and anyone who employs an illegal for less than the going rate for an American worker is an enabler in my book. I would submit that a large number of these illegals are employed by big businesses that put cheap labor above all other considerations. It's the same mindset that would set up factories near the border and pay the workers the absolute minimum they could get away with, then move that factory to China at the first opportunity. Despite what you may have read from Ayn Rand, unbridled greed creates problems.

[Alexandra]

So some crank illegal says they're going to make Spanish the first language in America.

Ahem, over to you.

[Kenny Pierce]

Randy,

Kenny, you just reffered to "Democratic Party operatives who have done everything in their power to attract unskilled and uneducated immigrants into the United States because they see them as a natural Democratic Party constituency."

Do you have any factual evidence to back that up or was is served steaming hot from where the sun don't shine?

[grinning] I'll give you the same answer Jesus gave the Pharisees: when Stormcrow (or whoever it was) provides actual factual backing for his claim that all our immigration problems are due to evil nasty big corporations, then I'll provide actual factual backing for my claim that the Democratic Party also has made some small contribution to the problem. A rhetorical point was being made. I didn't think I was being all that subtle but it seems to have been a bit too demanding of the reader's attention.

It was a tu quoque, my friend, the point of which was precisely that blamestorming is a waste of time and energy that (a) solves nothing and that (b) tells you much more about the prejudices of the person doing the blaming than it tells about actual facts.

But what I'm really curious about now is this: Stormcrow was in stone cold seriousness, whereas I was responding with an obvious parody of his silliness to show its absurdity -- labelled with his name and everything just to make it really easy to follow the flow of the dialogue. So why, I wonder, didn't you ask Stormcrow where he got his facts? -- since he was the person who was actually in deadly earnest.

An interesting question to ponder, that...why was it my tongue-in-cheek comment, rather than Stormcrow's earnest one, that put you into a scatological frame of mind?

[Craig]

I should clarify - what I mean is, they have a lot more to fear from us than you do of being forced to pray to Mecca.

The radical Muslim leaders are indeed a group we should oppose - they are hardly a force for the good of man. The tyrannies they create, whether the Taliban or the ruling clerics of Iran or elsewhere, use brutal force to oppress and protect their own power. We should oppose that - but there's a right and a wrong way to go about it.

The US can and should stand for freedom. But when the US instead puts its own economic needs ahead of the good of the people of a nation, it's hardly doing that. The Iranian people generally like the US and our professed values and freedoms. While much of the American public is unaware that the US and British set up the brutal dictatorship in Iran for decades to secure cheap oil, probably no one in Iran is unaware of that fact - and how can we expect them to react warmly to that behavior which so contradicts the values we profess?

This is why we need to keep the US doing the right thing, and not abusing its power. The Bush administration had plans for very selfish policies, putting a puppet in charge of Iraq and right-wing economic wet-dream policies in place to grab the nation's resources; they were stopped only by the security problems.

If we really had simply pursued the goals in Iraq where we had followed the experts' advice, secured the country, and set up a system for them to have democracy and restored services, perhaps things could have been very much improved. It was almost a freebie, after lifting the catastrophic economic sanctions. But instead, it was done badly, with billions wasted.

I should not and am not denying the problems with the muslim extremists - they're really terrible for opression.

But when I see an American complain about feeling threatened that they'll be forced to become Muslim, it's a joke, given the history of who has used, and is now positioned and threatening to use, force against the other side.

The Muslim nations are perfectly capable of living peacefully and keeping the extremists out of power - we're often at fault when they get power. Americans so often just fail to know the facts - our role behind the government of Saddam, the secret police force of the Shah, we even armed and trained the Al-Queda/Taliban related forces to oppose the USSR.

Alexandra, thanks for the nice part of your message.:)

[Michael Andreyakovich]

All right, let me see if I can translate what he said THIS time...

"Your post was based on a misunderstanding. I am not Mexican, I am American; in fact, I'm a WHITE American.

In the Southwest, that means I'm in the minority.

The President has stabbed us in the back; his poisonous statement about amnesty, in SUPPORT for these S.O.B.'s, is in a sense a betrayal of all those admirable words that he has spoken about our national security in the five years previous.

And those of us who have to live on the borders won't forget it."

Sounds like a Malkin clone to me.

[Randy]

So some crank illegal says they're going to make Spanish the first language in America. Then some crank conservative takes this stupid statement and runs with it as if it has any bearing on the reality of the situation... and on and on it goes. I'm really tired of stupid people defining the debate.

[Crusader.NoRegrets.]

Well from one Capetonian (that's one word) to another - Hi Alexandria, thanks again for the beautiful blog. And Cape Town is still the coolest-looking city in the world, don't you agree.

I am still waiting (and have been for a very long time) for the leftist response to the following question:

"How do you propose to defeat the forces of Islamic supremacism by fighting the war at the borders of the US?"

Clearly the notion that the fight against this enemy can be won by a whole bunch of "multilateral" nifty security measures is bunk. With 11 000 000 "undocumented" people in the US, just how secure are you? Especially if they can openly flout US laws at will.

This war has to be fought "over there".

[Alexandra]

Craig,

And just as I was beginning to like you...

Ah, and we have our very own Spanish speaking friend from this morning, who has come back to join us. Anybody got a dictionary, or should we simply just get used to it?

[Craig]

"So now I need to think about the rule of Islam and the law of Shari'a, as well as someone telling me Spanish will be forced upon me as a first language, right after I finish my 180 degree turn toward Mecca?"

Which side has hundreds of thousands of troops invading the other side?

Which side overthrew the democratic government of the other side and put in a brutal dictatorship for decades to get cheap oil?

Which side has orchestrated war with over a million caualties to weaken the other side?

You sound awfully wounded for being on the side which is the far larger threat to the other side.

They have a lot more to fear from our government than we do from theirs.

[Sin Nombre]

Su artículo fue inspirado por un malentendido. No soy mejicano. Soy norteamericano; yo soy, en hecho, un gringo.

En el sudoeste, ese medios que estoy en la minoría.

El presidente nos apuñaló en la parte posteriora; su declaración venenosa sobre la amnistía de soporte para estos hijos de putas es, en un sentido, una traición de todas las palabras admirables sobre nuestra seguridad que él ha hablado en los cinco años pasados.

Y ningunos de nosotros que tengan que vivir en las fronteras se olvidarán de ella.

[Craig]

"Why are conservatives always so angry about everything?"

Because the right-wing propaganda machine knows that anger is a good button to push to get people to respond how you want.

It's the same button that leads many on th eleft to embrace the "Chimp" name for Bush, and similar hostile attacks.

A differnce is that today, there's much more of a bought and paid for agenda behind the right-wing propaganda. A few ealthy people, the Richard Mellon Scaife types, fund the propagandists who serve the special interests.

A 'strategist' like Rove determines that a target group like fundamentalist Christians are needed, and the next thing you know the blowhards like Limbaugh, Dobson or other media figures are yelling about how Christians are under attack, how there is a war against Christmas, in order to get the Christians angry and voting for the right-wing politicians - for another agenda.

Works like a charm.

[Alexandra]

Randy,

1. Crack down on the hiring of illegals.

2. Enforce and hopefully raise the minimum wage.

3. Better enforcement of our borders.

4. Get used to hearing Spanish if you live in the Southwest. It's not going away. Cracking down on 11 million or so illegals is like closing the barn door after the horses have left, to use a corny cliche.

Well I could not have said it better myself, there is nothing I disagree with there. Are you sure you are not a Libertarian? LOL. I wrote about all this before. I speak five languages myself for Goodness sake. I simply object to being told that Spanish is going to be my first language and I had better get used to it. It's like a red rag to a bull.

So now I need to think about the rule of Islam and the law of Shari'a, as well as someone telling me Spanish will be forced upon me as a first language, right after I finish my 180 degree turn toward Mecca? "Yeah right", as Malkin would say...

JPE,

if you want to do something that's actually useful, you could choose to give thought to solutions (the natural response of effective and successful people)

I did that in my previous two posts on the subject. Doesn't anyone read links anymore? This post is a result of the previous ones, which I made clear in the main text. I am simply fed up, with your permission...