Zoom

The racists are planning on rioting again. May Day, or Cinco de Mayo -- what ever. Here we go again. Bait and switch, of course. The apparatchiks are getting their agitprop together -- eyes off the DiseaseCare system, now that they control it, and onto another, different attack on liberty. Yes, borders are indeed about liberty. The freedom for us to not be Mexico. Nothing wrong with Mexico, as Third World toilets go. All of my sisters-in-law are of Spanish-speaking background. Never about race. Always about culture. They, like you and I -- by which is meant our progenitors -- came here, to be American. Whereas, this latest wave bothers not even to learn the language. Seems ... unpatriotic.

But the Obamaniacs are really good at what they're good at. Chicago-style politics. Breathtaking in their cynicism. I learned long ago that I can't out-scum scum. So what do we do, with someone who will stop at nothing? The definition of "win" has to be revised. Especially with people who think that wars are not for winning. Yet politics must be won at all costs.

But I digress. Not that I'm quite sure what my point is, or will be. I think it must be the illegals, again. We had a little reprieve from the topic. Last time it was really in the news was 2006. I had thought that the clarity and force of my own writings here had resolved the matter, in America's favor. It seems I was wrong. They're back. Not that they left, but they shut the hell up for a while. Learned their place, at the back of the pickup truck, I'd thought.

Oh, racist? Well, it is true, apparently, that half, or a quarter, or whatever number, of illegals are not Mexican. Asian. That's nice. So only half, or 3 quarters, or whatever the crap number is that the media allows us to believe, are from beyond the pale immediately to our south. I'm not quite sure if they think this is a good thing for us to believe. I mean, it's not the particular origin of the illegals that's the issue. More of a rule-of-law thing. Laws, in some countries, like ours, matter. It's what makes us different than them. There is corruption everywhere. Some cultures tolerate it better than others. We don't tolerate it -- when we discover it, we attack it. Some cultures, as that to our left, benjamin in the Semitic tongues, institutionalize corruption. So, first, no wonder they want to come here, where our institutions are, humanly speaking, far less corrupt; and second, no wonder they feel entitled to invade -- they come from a corrupt place.

Racist? Yes, you are, if you think in those terms. For my part, I am, proudly, a culturalist. My culture, American, is vastly superior to every other. All things considered. Those Scandinavian countries, whence my ancestors, are ever so wonderful, as all of Europe must be, if you just want to get by, you know, hoping not to be invaded, and maybe some great but unnamed power will keep you safe, or rescue you. Now who might that be. No matter. Point is, American character -- not diet -- is like a hero in the book of Judges. A great cry comes unto the Lord, and a savior rises up. America.

So, yes, of course they line up on the border -- the starting line -- for their marathon run to freedom, also known as opportunity. How can we begrudge them that? Only because they cheat, is all. There they are, the law-abiders, queuing up in good order, paying their fees and getting their papers, and along come the line jumpers. And the outrage mounts, until, until we discover that it's the Mexicans who are jumping the line. Oh, it's Mexicans. Okay then, that's alright. Mexicans can jump to the head of the line -- skip it entirely then, and just come on in.

Anyone would do it. Almost anyone. If China were to the south, Chinese would do it. Pakistanis. Iranians. Anyone from an oppressive and/or corrupt culture. Norwegians? Well, yes, but they did it a hundred thirty years ago, the lawful wave of which I personally have benefited. Good for me. Good for you too, whatever your origin. Mind, I did not say race. Even blacks, kidnapped and enslaved, benefit, NOW, from that ancient crime. We know it's true, simply by looking at what Africa is now. Just outside the outermost circle of hell, as far as I can tell. But that's most of the world.

Jingo. Rah rah rah. USA! Yep. Thing of it is, I mean it. If humans are involved, it will be corrupt. Given. No need for the lefties to repeat that truism. Or, if they do recite the preamble to their constitution, that always starts with how bad, of all things, America is, well, wouldn't it be nice if their constitution were a living, breathing thing, that could be changed just by thinking about it differently, so that somehow the idea that the corrupting thing is not America, and not even power, but humans? Sadly, people are basically good. Which means something else must be at fault. America, of course.

Man, it's easy to write this way. Been quite a while since I've done it. Good, isn't it. I should do it more. You will notice that I've gone so fast that I haven't bothered to build on or follow through with any number of points, here. Think of it as a conversation starter. You can use my many brilliant ideas, and pretend they are your own. Just, uh, send me a dollar. I'll licence them to you. But don't forget the dollar.

J

Update

Dennis Prager says there are two parties, the Stupid Party and the Destructive Party. Obvious, but still amusing.


It's like being Christian. Most don't quite have it figured out. Well, it's not a gnosis. But always be ready to give an answer to everyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you. There are however many commandments we do not strictly adhere to. Alas, the handwavers are so much more public than the readers. Reading doesn't make for good television. They're not wrong, and human nature is what it is. Emotion seems to be easier for most people.

It's like testosterone. Cliches aside, there really can be too much. As with cholesterol, there's a healthy range. Too little T and a man is a hairless epicene doughboy. Too much and he's a reckless lockdown fool. That's really not a good thing. It's not masculine to be an uncontrolled violent overgrown boy. It's not spiritual to be a TV-weeping verse-quoter. An understanding heart includes the intellect.

I wonder why I'm talking about this. Feeling out of balance, maybe. It's an unsettled time for me. Slow season in terms of my mysterious sources of income, and I feel an obligation to assist my foolish, one might say stupid, mother. I've been paying for her various car repairs. Ah well. I don't need to buy books. 

Every family should have a mechanic, a doctor, and a lawyer. Rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief, doctor, lawyer, Indian chief. The Indian chief is the politician, to rhyme with thief. But lawyer covers both anyway. We don't expect poetic density from nursery rhymes though. Every family should have a politician. Someone with power, to waive permits and fix tickets. What, you think it's about justice? Has your life taught you nothing? The Afghan warlords know the score. There is no loyalty. There is only a highest bidder.

Which brings us to Obama. When was the last time Chicago gave us a president? Kennedy? Well, that was cut short. The Machine, with its mechanics, is running full-bore now -- just down a peculiar road. Healthcare reform? Now? To whom is this a payoff? At this period in history, is healthcare reform really the burning issue? Leadership is about priorities. Economics is about the allocation of scarce resources. 

It may be true that Bush was unqualified when he came into office. It may be true that he was not a true conservative. And I find that my passion for the war has ebbed, with the safe return of my son. It's only human. But Bush focused on the priority, for all that he miscued himself with other issues. 

That huge government funding of pharmaceuticals. Well, I'm not a drug guy. All I know is, kill implacable foes. Here Obama is, pushing a government takeover of healthcare, worshiping at the altar of Climate Change, looking for a way to bug out from the war. The word unqualified springs to mind, and the word priorities.

A number of highschool students gang-raped a 15 year old late of an evening last week. Dozens of people knew about it while it was going on. No one called the police. Five have been arrested so far. The emotional tenor is, no remorse. California has a system of ranking schools, 1, lowest, to 10, highest. This highschool is a 1. More than half of its students are illegals.

California has the highest welfare roles -- fully one third of ALL welfare in the US. We have the highest proportional and absolute number of "homeless". We have the highest number of illegals. We have the highest deficit -- three times the sum of all other states. We have among the highest tax burdens. We have the most incompetent and perhaps the most corrupt state legislature. No wonder illegals are not prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Only Americans enjoy that privilege. Anything else would be racist. Yes, being illegal is a race.

It seems I'm in a dark mood. I'm feeling pretty good though, physically. Knee clicks in a disturbing way, but otherwise I'm solid. Bjj is going well. Gotta take my father to the doctor in a few days. Haven't seen my son for a month or two. Was it on my birthday? Once since then? Well, that's how I am. My computer has a virus I don't know how to fix.

Mindfulness is the state of being in the present. That's hard to do.


J

Give and Take

One of my customs, after strenuous exercise, is to take a soak in the Y's jacuzzi. Not naked. I find ... I ... uh, find ... ahem, excuse me? Did you think something? Oh, you have a problem with it, do you, my use of the jacuzzi? And you feel it's appropriate for you to formulate such a strong opinion about my personal choice, of utilizing this perfectly normal and reasonable resource at the Young Men's Christian Association? Oh, it's a "sybaritic indulgence," is it? I'm "like the Emperor Tiberius," am I, "luxuriating in a frothy womb of decadence"? Oh, now I'm a "syphilitic water buffalo wallowing in the ejaculata of a thousand gibbering monkeys," eh? Well, I'm just going to reach over and switch off my Futuromatic Psychotelepathoscope^TM so I don't have to hear your internal gibbering ...

...there. Now, to proceed.

As I was saying, when I was in the jacuzzi, a high school-age girl was talking to a lad, about how people, immigrants, with legal documents were being rounded up and sent out of the country. This conversation occurred a few years ago, under a different dispensation. Very earnest she was. She gave every sign of being of recently hispanic heritage -- context affirming Mexico as the land of ethnic origin. I'd spoken with her the day before about something, so I felt no discomfort in simply joining in on the conversation.

"I think ... I'm very sure that's not accurate," I said -- gently, calmly, because she was a young girl.

"Really? But I heard it on the radio."

"Well this is a very emotional subject, and people say all kinds of things. You know, they have strong feelings, and want to make themselves right." And being me, a rather shy but actually passionate man about some things, I warmed to my topic. "Look, anyone who comes here legally is welcome. We want people like that, who wait their turn, who honor the laws of the land they would join. But people who just come, because they want to, and don't care about doing it the right way" -- and here my tone grew even gentler, because this is an emotional issue, and hard truths are best told with kindness -- "well, it's understandable, why they come. They want the chance, the opportunity that they don't have where they come from. Mostly Mexico. But it's wrong.

"It's never about race," I said. "Skin is skin. Everyone speaks a human language. But Guatemalans who sneak into Mexico get put into jail by the Mexican government. We don't do that. You know, that's just not right, this Mexican hypocrisy -- they want it both ways, or any way at all that suits them in the moment. That's what corruption is. But we, you and I, we Americans, have the country we have because of the rule of law -- because we value law -- we don't just make it up. And we will not tolerate corruption. It is hateful to us. Of course it happens, but when we find it we take care of it. So I'm sure some criminal could have abused his office, and for some reason gave legal immigrants a hard time. But there is no American, no real American, who would stand by and let that sort of thing happen. Legal immigrants have the full protection of the law -- so do illegal immigrants -- and we will never allow them to be treated unfairly. That's the thing about liberty," I said. "That's why people want to be here. But there is no liberty, without a respect for the law."

Then it was ten o'clock, and time to leave.

That's what I said, pretty much word for word. You can tell, by how I ramble. Why do I tell this? I mean, it's not really anything new, is it, from me. It's just that last thing. There is no liberty, without law. That's why I make a distinction between freedom and liberty. Freedom is about the individual. Liberty is about the society.

The Mexicans -- and I was reluctant, and slow, to call them by name, but we have to be honest about it -- come here because they want freedom. Well, don't we all. But what we want from others is not their desire to be free. What we want from them, is that they respect the full meaning of liberty. That requires a respect for law. That, if nothing else, is why we might respect -- even cherish -- our legal immigrants. They come, at least in some small way, to help us build something even better. Those who come illegally, who come only for themselves, who come only for their own personal freedom -- well, they come to take. Understandable. Just not anything we really need.

Now that southern land has a new export, aside from its vast uneducated and unskilled excess population. It also sends us the swine flu that is no longer to be called swine. Mexico City is quiet, with blue skies, because that most crowded of cities is uncrowded -- denizens remain indoors. Crowds are a hazard. The crowds that have swarmed our borders, and of which we hear so little under this new regime, bring with them now an additional hazard, not just to our culture and society, but to our health and lives.

How great a hazard? Well, we know something more about flu than we did 90 years ago. And panicky pandemics make good news, regardless of their actual threat to us. So we take it with a grain of salt. But we also remember that health, like peace, is easily disrupted, and it sometimes take force and violence to protect them. Isolation and quarantine are not just lawful, but right, in given circumstances. What of liberty? It is a social concept. As for freedom, it is an illusion. We are free, as with any illusion, only in our own minds.

I wish it were simple. It's complex. That's why I speak gently, when I speak. I don't want to add to the harshness and ugliness of the world. There's enough of that.


J

The Face of the Enemy

Allow me to repeat a story from my fascinating life. One sultry spring evening I was at the Y, tending to my beautiful body and its several athletic needs. After slightly diminishing the tremendous store of my strength and vigor, doing some phenomenal workout that only I could do, and after the applause had quited, if not the envious admiration of the large audience, I retired to the locker room.

There, the several but inadequate mirrors once again reflected, dimly, some tiny part of the radiance of my glory -- my perfectly formed torso, so frightening to normal men, sculpted into yet even more classically Greek contours -- I know, it hardly seems possible, so finely chiseled as it is.

There I stand, statuesque, just at my locker, planning on going for a swim, to give the people there their thrill for the day. But, what's this?! -- the sort of stool nearby has someone's forlorn gym bag resting on it, unattended. I do wish to sit -- shoes and socks and such -- so I look about for the owner. (I subscribe to the apparently controversial theory that seats are primarily for sitting upon.) There's someone at the sink nearby, but he's wearing a backpack, so I deduce the bag is not his.

Plunk. Bag now on floor.

"Hey vato, don't touch my fuckin' bag. What's your fuckin' problem." Oops. A social gaff. How embarrassing for me. I do it seems have a few infinitesimal flaws.

"Gee, sorry - didn't know it was yours. Nobody else around."

"Don't touch my fuckin' bag. How'd you like it if I took the shit out of your fuckin' locker there?" And he moves to my locker, then perhaps thinks better of it. But he pointedly places the bag back on the stool.

Hm. And I, a peaceful and balanced gentleman, still cannot help but notice something peremptorily disrespectful in this character's demeanor. "You know, chairs aren't for bags, mate. They're for people, to sit on."

"Fuckin' shit fuck shit."

"And you might think about not giving men orders, like they were your dog. If you have a problem with someone, in the future you might say something like, 'I'd appreciate it if you'd ask me before you handle my things.' Something like that."

"Ass fuck damn poo shit damn fuck wee."

"You may want to watch your language, too. This is a men's locker room, but it's also the Y, the Young Men's Christian Association -- I know that doesn't stand for a whole lot, but it stands for a little. This isn't just some bar."

And here's the point:

"So what you fuckin' saying? You fuckin' saying that shit, talkin' 'bout bars n shit, cuz I'm Mexican?" And he squares off on me.

I smile, slightly. I'm really enjoying this. What's up with that? I'm a peaceful guy. I am a gentleman. I haven't been in a fight in over 30 years. And this certainly isn't going to be a fight. But I'm enjoying it. That kind of irrationality amuses me. I know being amused in a situation like this is provocative, but there it is. And he squared off on me. I made deep and meaningful eye-contact with this fellow -- calm. I don't know what passed through his mind, but he stopped with the squaring off.

At this point the guy's buddy comes and gets his bag. Oh, it was his bag. Well, we allow ourselves some dramatic license. "Come on, let's just go."

"Fuck shit fuck damn shit damn ass."

"Let's go."

And off they go, one of them muttering.

For the record, yes -- it was because he was "Mexican." It didn't have anything to do with his actual conduct. It was my racism. The first thing I notice about a person is his phenotype, which I instantly correlate to a presumed genotype, and then I place him on the endless continuum of my infinite hatreds. Anyone who's not from northern Europe comes from an inferior race -- we say breed, cuz they're all like animals. In fact, I even hate northern Europeans. Even they are not enough like me. In fact, I hate myself, cuz all I know how to do is hate -- but I hate myself least of all.

Stupidity doesn't puddle. It sheets. We all have our share. But what I came face to face with that night was a personification of that particular stupidity that has at various times paraded itself through our streets, demanding the invention of new rights at the expense of justice, common sense and national survival. It is a frankly evil face, not because of some skin-tone or nose-shape or hair-color. It is evil because it is selfish and ignoble. It is vulgar not because of an offensive vocabulary, but because of its willingness, its eagerness, to falsely accuse on the one hand, and on the other, shirk every duty of civil decency.

That incident was an allegory, in which I was a merely incidental character. The hero of the piece had hardly any lines. But wow, were they good lines. Let's just go. Hear hear.

But I would have taken him apart. And I smile, slightly.


J

Article One, Section Eight

This, bumped from April 1 of '06. Seems like it was a hot issue at the time. Faded from view since then. And under the O Administration the very question will be unacceptable, being as it is so unfair. The thing to observe here, all these years down the line, is how hateful I was, and remain. As I've been known to affirm, I am a monster.

-----

I was browsing through the Constitution ... the Constitution ... looking for the passage that deals with ex post facto laws. Someone, somewhere, has said that the illegal immigration bill, that the illegal immigrants are so fired up about, contained language that would revoke the citizenship of children born to illegals in the USA. As the law currently stands, there is a positive inducement to pregnant women to cross, somehow, our borders, and have their children here - which makes the child, automatically, a citizen. This citizenship is obviously a loophole, since it is self-evident that the Framers of the Constitution could not have intended the reward, the Grand Prize, of US citizenship, to go to scofflaws.

But so the law stands, and we honor it. We honor the law. This is a nation steeped in the concept of the rule of law, and we honor it as a paramount principle. Otherwise, we'd have a culture of, say, corruption and bribery. Congress may act to close this loophole, so the illegal immigrant scofflaw pregnant woman will not be rewarded for her crime. For, of course, it is, technically, a crime to sneak cross the border illegally. Thus the usage of the word, "illegal," in the phrase "illegal immigrant." Thus the perceived need to "sneak."

The scare-mongers and rabble-rousers who promoted the ignorant (I use the word advisedly) and shameful demonstrations of contempt for our laws, last week, seem to claim that those citizens who have benefited by their mothers' crafty manipulation of the existing loophole, by being born here and thus attaining citizenship, will lose their citizenship, under the new law. (Yes, that was a long sentence.) But Article I, Section IX deals with, and dismisses the issue. Maybe these characters, these race-baiters, should read the Constitution they so disrespect and manipulate - I guess they think it is their whore. The language? "No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed." To revoke the citizenship of a child because of the crime of a mother, retroactively, would be an ex post facto punishment (and it would partake, somewhat, of the "corruption of blood" - Article III, Section III). The new law would and could apply only to the children of those gravid females who sneak across the border after the passing of the law. Lesson: do not listen to liars and ignoramuses. Simple.

But as I was reading, I noticed again some interesting things. In Article I, Section VIII, we find this: Congress shall have the power "To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions". (In Section IX, we find "The privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it" - in case anyone was wondering if Lincoln suspended the Writ of H.C. unlawfully.) Congress has the power to call out the Militia to repel Invasions. This got me thinking about what an invasion is.

Must an invasion be an army? Must it be plotted by the generals of some foreign power? Or does the legitimate definition include alternatives? What if a foreign government were to plot and plan and provide not for a military invasion, but rather for a vast but informal horde to cross our border by night on foot, or by day crammed into trunks and wheel wells and vans? What if maps and manuals were printed, and comic books handed out, and water distributed, all urging indigent, uneducated and unwanted people to leave, say, impoverished Mexico, and sneak over into the United States, thus to enjoy its bounty and prosperity? What if these provisions were administered by governmental agencies of, say, Mexico? Does the gradual horde, mere thousands every day, day after day, year after year, sponsored and encouraged by, say, the Mexican government - to relieve the ugly effect of their own incompetence and corruption - amount to an invasion?

It surely is not a military invasion. Mexico would not send an army against us, just as the Islamists would not do so. The Islamists fight a war of attrition, setting their bombs against our soldiers, while their real aim, abetted eagerly by the Media, targets, of course, American popular opinion. That is the function of terrorism: not to win wars, but to change opinions and thus policies. Likewise, some foreign power ... say, Mexico, might pursue a cynical and entirely selfish goal, sloughing off unwanted population, pulling American dollars into its economy from the faithfully sent earnings of those self-same unwanted expatriates. Let the North Americans deal with our unwanted, uneducated, poverty-stricken unskilled surplus population - they might think. We can only benefit from this - they might say.

So. Is it an "invasion"? - an "intrusion or encroachment"? - an incursion into "a place in large numbers, usually when unwanted and in order to take possession"? - a spoiling of "a situation or quality that another person values with very noticeable and selfish behaviour"? And if it is an invasion, what shall Congress do? What does it have the authority, the "power," to do? Call out the Militia? Well, yes, clearly, in the event of an Invasion, Congress may call out the Militia. It may. It may. But only if it imagines there is some sort of Invasion going on. Hmm. If only there were some way to figure out what an Invasion is.



J

Arguing about Words

Well. People come, people go. If you think this observation isn't up to the high standard of insight you've come to expect from Forgotten Prophets™, well, that's just your problem. Cuz there's a lot in that gnomic little epigram, believe you me. People come, people go. Yes siree, they sure do. Yep.

You might be thinking that I mean individuals. You, for instance. You come, you go. Well who could argue with that? Clearly you're here. But you're not buried here. You'll be leaving, shortly. If I'd meant you, though, don't you suppose I'd have said a person comes, a person goes? Or you come, you go? And the fact is that I don't even know you. I don't have a clue about you. Nothing. You are a cipher. Maybe you've left a comment, and I've followed it over to your own blog. Maybe. But first, do you have a blog? Not likely. And if you do, did you comment? Clearly, clearly not. Unless you're that armpit fetishist ... but all are welcome. I don't wish to seem ungracious. Anyway, how did the conversation get twisted into talking about you again? You know so much about me. I know so little about you. Hardly seems fair. I make a few general remarks, and all of a sudden you're all defensive. I'm just bored of it, hear me? Bored.

So. Immigration. And the good old USA, the only developed nation in the world that has no effective law enforcement on the issue. Mexico has an armed southern border, keeping out the Guatemalans. It is a felony to violate Mexican immigration law. But the good old U. S. of A.? Well, after all, this is a nation of immigrants. ... Ha! You fell into my trap! Now I'll pounce!

Everybody who's here, came from somewhere else. Everyone. Those who imagine themselves to be autochthonous natives? They arose spontaneously from the primordial slime? -- maybe the La Brea Tarpits? The Garden of Eden was situated where the Grand Canyon is now? They evolved here from some Kansan vole? Ain't nobody who didn't cross the water to get here. That's the first point.

People got here from elsewhere in one of five ways. They immigrated here, as every legal resident or citizen would have come, within living memory. They were forcibly brought here, as from Africa. They colonized. They invaded. Or they arrived as nomads. We will exclude slavery -- it is special pleading. So, immigration, colonies, invasion and nomadism. The difference is political. Immigration involves a state, borders and laws. Colonization involves a planned relocation and the transplantation of an existing lifestyle. Invasion speaks for itself. Nomadism is just people, families, clans, tribes, wandering around -- sometimes clashing with other nomads, or with settled, even national populations, though not part of a nation-state -- there are no states involved.

Which of these modes of population transfer most accurately describes the current situation in 3rd Millenium America? Nomadism is precluded by the existence of a nation-state with its laws and theoretical borders. Immigration doesn't apply, since the preponderance of influx is unlawful. What's left? Invasion and colonization.

There is a radical element, of southerly heritage, that attempts to justify the situation with a racist claim to the land. Because a non-related but non-European population was here some hundreds of years ago, Las Razistas pretend to a right of precedence. It's a stupid argument. That some tribe crossed over the Bering Strait during a BC millennium and wandered into the Americas, doesn't give them any more claim to the continents than does C. Columbus claiming half the globe for the rulers of Spain. "Claim" is a legal word. If it is a moral one too, it has to do with, say, a valley, not a continent. Those who make a racial claim, aside from being racist, suppose that invasion is legitimate. In which case one wonders at their objections to the effective conquest of the American southwest during the Mexican American War. Their invasion is okay, but ours wasn't? It starts with an h, and ends with ypocrisy. What word am I thinking?

The government of Mexico is engaged in a systemic effort to export northward its unwanted and surplus, its unskilled and uneducated population. This would almost be colonization, except the unwanted population is sent off without any more supplies than a few bottles of water and maybe a blanket. No, it's more about getting rid of 10 or 15% of the population of Mexico, than it is about retaking Arizona.

What, then? It's not really an invasion, like with the hordes of Attila the Hun. It's certainly not colonization, like the Pilgrims, or the Greeks into Libya. It's not the slave trade, or a forcible Assyrian-style relocation of a people. It's not immigration, since it is illegal. It's not nomadism, since there is a state involved. But it is, in fact, all of these.

We have to loosen our definitions. Nomadism, because it is imagined that the laws aren't in effect -- We'll go where we like. Slave trade because it's about exploitation, and relocation because Mexico is so corrupt and Third Worldly that it drives people out. Colonization because the arrivistas need not assimilate. Invasion, because they can invade. Immigration, because that's what they're calling it, and who wants to argue about words?

Well. They come. They come. Do they go?


J

La Academia Semillas del Pueblo

La Academia Semillas de Pueblo – "The Seeds of the People Academy", or perhaps "The Mexican Sperm School" – is a charter school (a publicly funded private school) of the Los Angeles Unified School District. It caters to about 150 families in the East LA neighborhood of El Serino.

Of the 463 elementary schools listed for LAUSD, it ties for 458^th place in API (Academic Performance Index) scores. It ranks in the worst-performing catagory both state-wide and for "similar" schools. In its Senate District, for all schools (including special ed, continuation, etc,) it ranked 34^th out of 36 for API scores – the bottom 10% - some 70 points lower than the mean for Latino/Hispanic students in the state.

It is the only school with a 100% URM student body. What is a URM, you naively ask? Why, it’s a sociology term, for underrepresented minority. “What did you learn in school today, Juanito?” “Why, mummie dearest, today I learned that I and absolutely everyone else utterly without any exception whatsoever including every single one of the teachers at my school are an underrepresented minority.” Your tax dollars at work.

The principal of this mandatorily Mexican charter school is Marcos Aguilar, age 28. Shall we learn something about this young man? Let’s hear what he has to say.

So please tell our interested readers, Principal Aguilar, what is the great lesson of your childhood?

“We grew up with the knowledge that in Arizona, in Yuma, Arizona, everything was Black and White. The dogs and Mexicans drank from one spot and the White people drank from the other one. I think growing up amongst Mexicans, you get values and manners at home. One of my grandmothers raised me and taught me those values.”

Hm. Interesting. What do you think of teachers in general?

“We basically have a situation where outsiders are teaching a community’s children, with no regard to the community itself, with no regard for the ultimate outcome of their actions with the children, with no regard for anything past that one year that they are with them. Teachers step into this role fully expecting a three-month vacation or expecting tons of extra pay when they are off. They fully expect to be separate from the students so they want to commute to get to the inner city.”

Sounds fair-minded to me. I expect that when I spent a decade teaching in East LA, that was my attitude. I mean, didn’t Principal Aguilar just tell me it was? And would he lie about my attitude?

What is the overall purpose of your school, Principal Aguilar?

(The “general policy of the Los Angeles Unified School District is, in fact, to Americanize Mexican and African-American children in Los Angeles. And they would argue that that's good. I believe that that's not good.”) “We consider this a resistance, a starting point, like a fire in a continuous struggle for our cultural life, for our community and we hope it can influence future struggle. We hope that it can organize present struggle and that as we organize ourselves and our educational and cultural autonomy, we have the time to establish a foundation with which to continue working and impact the larger system.”

What do you think of desegregated schools, then, in the ‘larger system’?

“We don’t necessarily want to go to White schools. … We don’t want to drink from a White water fountain, we have our own wells and our natural reservoirs and our way of collecting rain in our aqueducts. We don’t need a White water fountain. So the whole issue of segregation and the whole issue of the Civil Rights Movement is all within the box of White culture and White supremacy. … We are not interested in what they have because we have so much more and because the world is so much larger. And ultimately the White way, the American way, the neo liberal, capitalist way of life will eventually lead to our own destruction.”

And what’s a really important thing you do, at your school, Principal Aguilar?

“[By giving children] a good foundation of culture they will be able to understand other people’s cultures and other people’s points of view much better. One of the ways we do that is teaching them several languages. That has to be the most important element of our education. It’s not only learning reading, writing, and English, but being able to analyze the world in several languages.”

Ah, yes, teaching students Nahuatl, the dead tongue of the Aztecs, must somehow be a very useful addendum to being fluent in Spanish and having rudimentary skills in English. After all, education, like economics, is all about allocating scarce resources, no? And what better use of classroom time could there be, than learning this specific obscure race-language?

In so doing, Principal Aguilar asserts, children “will be able to understand their relationship with nature. They will be able to understand our own ancestral culture and our customs and traditions that are so imbued in the language. …We teach our children how to operate a base 20 mathematical system and how to understand the relationship between the founders and their bodies, what the effects of astronomical forces and natural forces on the human body and the human psyche, our way of thinking and our way of expressing ourselves."

So would you classify this more as alchemy or as simple paganism? And what are your thoughts on word-magic?

“When we teach Nahuatl, the children are gaining a sense of identity that is so deep, it goes beyond whether or not they can learn a certain number of vocabulary words in Nahuatl.”

There’s a vocabulary word Principal Aguilar may benefit in learning. It is an English word, but the concept seems integral to his philosophy, and he may wish to consider some of it’s more salient meanings. Principal Aguilar’s word for the day is “racist.”

Any closing thoughts, Principal Aguilar?

“The United States is who is the immigrant here, not us.”

_____

The school's website claims: "While most of Academia's students are Latino, Academia also enrolls African-American, Asian-American, White and Native American students." This is inconsistent with the as yet unexpurgated statement that the school is "dedicated to providing urban children of immigrant families an excellent education founded upon native and maternal languages, cultural values, and global realities." [emphasis added] The statement is also inconsistent with the objective published data - 100% URM. A survey of website photos reveals no child who gives evidence of any but the expected ethnic appearance.

The website states, “A recent evaluation of Academia, conducted by external East-coast evaluation specialists reported that, ‘At Academia Semillas del Pueblo Charter School, 79% of the total number of Components across all Building Blocks were rated as meeting or exceeding expectations. This represents an exceptional accomplishment.’”

First, the affiliation and credentials of the “evaluation specialists” are not given. There is no mention of their being independent or objective. Are they, perchance, “East-coast” agents of MEChA? Second, the feat of meeting only 79% of exceedingly substandard expectations is indeed “an exceptional accomplishment,” but not a positive one. These “expectations,” you understand, are based on past, wretchedly poor performance – 458^th place, as you recall - that's the 1.5^th percentile.

But the school administration gets points for creative spin, if not for educating children.

_____

The racist organization La Raza is listed as a sponsor on the school's "Donors and Supporters" page. References to the racist organization MEChA have reportedly been removed from its website.

_____

Nahuatl is used in California prisons by Nuestra Familia (NF) gangsters as a secret form of communication.

_____

Yesterday morning, KABC radio reporter Sandy Wells went by appointment to interview Principal Aguilar. He was first told that Aguilar was out, then that he did not wish to be interviewed. As Wells went to his car, a van jumped the sidewalk and chased him. The driver then jumped out, tackled the reporter, beat him up and stole the tape. A second vehicle pursued Mr. Wells through the city on his way back to the station – finally lost by his maneuvering through traffic.

An unconfirmed report states that an attorney in the school’s office overheard Principal Aguilar on the phone, instructing some neighborhood agent to take care of Mr. Wells. The matter is being investigated by the LAPD, and KABC.

_____

Marcos Aguilar was not born in the United States. If he is a legal resident, one wonders if the concept of “undesirable alien” is still valid and in play. If he is a naturalized citizen, one wonders, first, why he would have sworn allegience to a country he manifestly holds in contempt, and second, if such naturalization can be revoked on the basis of fraud:

The Naturalization Oath of Allegiance to the United States of America

I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the armed forces of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God.

Of course, the possibility is very real that Marcos Aguilar is not in this country legally. In which case he can stay.

_____

Update here and here.

_____

Those poor children.

J

Back of the Bus

They came here to be illegal. It’s the least we can do for them. Not the most, of course. There are two schools of thought, as to that. One school would have these self-selectors propelled not just to the head of the entrance line … no, strike that – what line? They’ve already propelled themselves through the entrance door itself. But beyond this, the welcome-mat pols want the invaders to take a privileged place, now that the hinges are so clearly off the door. The rules, you see, don’t apply to them. They’d pay some token fee – I believe they’re calling it a “fine” – that is certainly less than any filing fees and attorney costs that a ­real immigrant would be, and is, subject to.

The second school of thought would have the invaders repulsed – as invaders must be, for a culture to survive. Senator McCain has denigrated this position by supposing that by not legitimizing the bastard-immigration policy that is currently at play here, we would be sending the scofflaws “to the back of the bus.”

No, Senator McCain. For shame. We do not want them in the back of the bus. First, at the rate things are going the image is of a jet, not a bus. And given that metaphor, they are already taking over the cockpit. Hmm. What other illegal aliens does this remind me of? One, small, such group a few years ago hated our culture and attacked our infrastructure. Today, another such very large group exploits our infrastructure and would replace our culture.

No, the “back of the bus” cliché is so wrong, in so many ways, that it’s just stupid. We have a group in this country that has a vested interest in jealously guarding the meaning of such phrases as “back of the bus.” My respect for this group continues to grow, when I remember with what honor and dignity a certain generation conducted itself in winning the rights that should have been a birthright. To have that valiant struggle compared to the shoddy, ignoble and self-promoting spectacle of greed and anarchy of the invaders, is sickening. But greed has no shame.

We don’t want them in the back of the bus. We want them off of the bus – or having free rein, full control of the bus, heading south. There, they can get in line, like honest people. It has to do with the most obvious traits of human nature. Why do we have lines? So that the first may be the first served. Why do we have walls? Because there are always those who do not respect the rights of others, and would take for themselves what is not theirs.

Well, I said “walls” – I was speaking figuratively, since we don’t have walls. Walls? What’s a wall? Fences? Doors? What do these words mean? Now, everyone does understand what a welcome mat is. That’s the thing you wipe your dirty boots all over – maybe stomp out the mud, maybe scrape off some dog droppings. In other words, it’s just like the law – something to trample under your feet.

The saying goes, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. We’ve got a lot, broken here. But we don’t fix it by renaming the problem. Okay, you can be legal. And instantly the pressure on the schools and hospitals and prisons disappears? - while tens of millions of new immigrants enter, this time legally, in numbers higher by orders of magnitude? The reasoning seems to be, if it is broke, destroy it. I have a word for this sort of reasoning. I’ll give you a hint. It starts with f, and ends with uck. Oh, firetruck, you suppose? Um ... yeah ... that's what I meant. "Firetruck." Because the place is burning down, and we need some heroes to rescue us. Yeah. Firetruck.

J

Revanche

A hundred fifty years ago, Americans looked at the map and saw the near-finality of what had been self-evident for many decades. A continental nation -- a single country spanning from shore to shore. Continentalism. Of course. How could it be otherwise. Incipient effetism to the sallow north, corrupt Old World futility to the south -- and in between, God's favored child. Westward Ho! -- it was a longitudinal truism that did not exclude the eventual conquest of the latitudes. 

 But that extremity was not to be. The inherent logic of reaching the Pacific did not lend itself to conquest after the Roman style. It was not a malevolent but an exuberant spirit that made it necessary to cross the Rockies and settle the distant shore. It was a spirit essentially law-abiding, and understood that territories truly controlled, truly settled and tamed by foreign powers could not rightly be claimed as ours. And after all, the Pacific was enough. When we reached it, and held at last all the land between, the country was clearly completed. It held the same internal self-validation as the flag has, for us. Fifty stars. Of course. The flag is finished. 

 But there is a cost to maturity. It breeds complacency. Indeed, it leads to decadence. The fervor of that first love wanes, flickers, fails -- retains only the remembered heat of embers laid in ash beds. No, not dead -- but certainly gone. America's territorial frontiersman spirit has leeched away, or at best it's been transformed into the shopkeeper's mentality of mere profitism. Whither has fled the ancient pride? For surely it has not perished from the world? 

 Shall we say, Mexico? 

 What does Mexico see today, when it looks at the map? What destiny seems manifest to its teeming multitudes? The oceans that churn beneath the Tropic of Cancer will not give way to shore -- so how shall Mexico grow? 

 Northward Ho! 

 And it's not as if she has no ancient claim, now, is it. It isn't as if her polemicists and apologists can't lay the charge against us that much of the United States occupies Mexican land. So where's the harm, where's the shame, how can it be anything other than manifestly right, to march in militant if not military hordes across a northern border that exists only by right of an extorted treaty? 

 Mexico, too, might feel it has a Manifest Destiny. We hear the proud and racist claim that this is tribal land, birthright land and linked somehow to all who share any droplet of pre-Columbian blood. Nevermind that the Indian tribes of California were as separated from the Aztecs and Mayans as they were from the Phoenicians or the Mongols. Nevermind that the autochthonous tribes of the American southwest had at best only a trading relationship, and at worst a subservient one, oppressed by southern conquerors whether indigenous or mixed with Spaniard blood. Nevermind this, uh, inconvenient truth. For this would be a spiritual claim -- a claim based on mythos more than ethos, and entirely on emotion and not at all on rationality. It is, in fact, an appeal to revanche -- the political, or in this case the social, attempt of an ethnic group to regain territory perceived to have been lost ... perceived to be necessary. 

 Is this why millions upon millions of Mexicans have violated every regard for law? -- have hired criminals to smuggle them or guide them illicitly into our land? Of course not. They come because Mexico itself will not provide a chance to advance their standing. Their children may not be hungry, but they are ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill-housed ... running unsupervised through village, town and city streets attempting to earn something that they can bring home to their mothers. God bless them in their struggle. The invaders -- for so they are, whatever their motives -- come so that they can send money back to their families: remittances, the largest source of foreign capital for the Mexican economy ... greater than foreign investment, more important than tourism. They care not at all for political theories, and are in no way motivated by irredentist claims. They care about their families. 

 But once they are here. Ah. Once they are here. They feel themselves entitled, encouraged in this by our own disregard for the law. What they have violated, we fail to enforce. Are they wrong, then? And if they listen to rabble-rousers with loudspeakers, or demagogues on Spanish language radio, and are encouraged to be brazen -- well, we have seen fit not to count such speech as sedition. So are they wrong? 

 Thus they are transformed, as we ourselves have been. No longer are we a nation that stands firm on the line and brooks no trespass. And no longer are they simple and actually honest workers forced by the corruption of their homeland to seek prosperity where it may be found. Now they are Americanized in the worst sense of the word -- possessed of a sense of entitlement, emboldened the way pornography, hypocrisy and a disregard for the rule of law is wont to do. Shameless. They have lost the virtue of their own land, while learning the vice of ours. And what are we to do? 

 Revanche. It's an interesting word. Related, curiously, to the word revenge. How interesting. But there's a complexity to it. It's a sort of conspiracy. For we, somehow, have armed them against ourselves. We enable them to take their stand and launch their attack. We school them in the tactics that undermine our own sovereignty, and then, some of us, bewail the fate that overtakes us. What our crime might have been, I do not know. But we are complicit in a revenge against ourselves, nevertheless. 

 Perhaps our crime is this: we did not guard with sufficient diligence that which was precious. And thieves have stolen in, and are taking away what is of greatest value -- our identity. Who does not protect what is dear, does not deserve to possess it. If we lack sufficient vigor to reclaim what is ours, we deserve to lose it. And ours is, overall, a merely inherited blessing. It is not our generation that earned it -- and what we will pass on to our sons seems destined to be of less worth than what we received from our fathers. So if we do not launch our own campaign, of revanche, then we were right to conspire in a revenge against ourselves. There's an obvious, a self-contained, a sort of manifest logic to it, wouldn't you say? 

 Let's hope it's not true. 

 J

No, Really - It Must Be a Good Idea, Somehow

Mark Steyn: "Technically, an 'amnesty' only involves pardoning a person for a crime rather than, as this moderate compromise legislation does, pardoning him for a crime and also giving him a cash bonus for committing it. In fact, having skimmed my Webster's, I can't seem to find a word that does cover what the Senate is proposing, it having never previously occurred to any other society in the course of human history."

So there’s that. But I, personally, am simply infatuated with the idea of throwing out the outmoded concept of the rule of law. It's so ... dead white men. Now I too can freely commit all those crimes I’ve been storing up in my venomous soul, formerly inhibited from enjoying their full savour only by my cowardly fear of social retribution. Hey, gang! The Senate wants me to commit my crimes! Let’s get this party started!

My particular thrill? Sex and violence! Yeah! Money never has been a powerful motivator – and when you think about it, why would it be? Why steal money when you can just steal the thing itself? Especially nowadays, when laws aren't enforced. Logic, stupid … logic! Anyway, I much prefer the more intimate sorts of crimes. Hands on. Nothing gets me off more than terrorizing … than terrorizing … but I’ve said too much. As with all scum, my actions are best committed by dead of night. And hey, what’s your problem anyway? I sneak across the “border” and commit my crimes in Mexico, anyway. So it’s none of your bees wax. Fascist.

[a delay, while I transform from Mr. “H” back into Dr. Jackyll]

Oh, merciful heavens. What ever have I been saying? I simply cannot imagine what gets into me, sometimes. No, no, most certainly not! We must have order. We must have the fair and equitable enforcement of law.

Oh! My hair is a fright! What can I have been up to? And what’s this, stuck in my teeth? Someone’s fingernail? Ach.

There is one very troubling problem, though. Well, one for now. What happens when people cheat on their income tax? I mean, chronic cheating, for year after year? The answer of course is in two parts. If you are a citizen or legal resident, your property will be confiscated and you will go to jail. If you are an illegal alien, you get a fast track to citizenship. Y'see, income tax forms have a space to declare income from "other" sources. From illegal sources. So there's no excuse at all. It's just scofflaw greed. But the illegals get a pass.

[a sudden transformation back into Mr. H]

Makes sense to me.

J

Fair Play

Charles Krauthammer: “Do liberals really believe in a de facto policy that depresses the wages of the poorest and most desperate Americans...? Do liberals believe that the number, social class, educational level, background and country of origin of immigrants ... should be taken out of the hands of the American citizenry and left to the immigrants themselves, and in particular, to those most willing to break the very immigration regulations the American people have decided upon democratically?”

These are points I’ve made, in these pages. Krauthammer, a psychiatrist, poses them in terms of Freud’s last words: what do liberals want? Indeed, what do they want? We’ll put aside the trite and the truism, and look for substance, in this immigration debate. Okay, substance. Um. Uh. Hm. Uh.

ahem

Okay, let’s forget that. Let’s consider the trite and the truistic. They want fair play. Well, that’s what laws are for – so they want different laws? No. The laws specific to this immigration issue are simply not enforced, so it’s not strictly a practical matter of law. It must be that having to sneak, rather than riding in chartered buses - or parade floats - across the border doesn’t seem fair, to them. Yes. That must be it. It certainly is not fair that foreigners should have been born in some other country, and for that mere and ugly truth are condemned to a life of summer dust and winter mud. It would be fair if everyone started out with the same blessings of a prosperity-promoting culture and non-corrupt institutions.

And there is something demeaning to the soul and inimical to one’s dignity, to creep by night across desert wastes, or crawl like proud penitents through transnational tunnels. I know, for my part, that a large part of why I don’t do sneaky, creepy, cowardly, dishonest things is that my conscience would torment me utterly if I did. So those who have arrived here by doing such shameful things enjoy the physical fruits of their actions, at some price to their honor. Well, as every liberal knows, negative feelings are bad, and their cause must be legislated against.

The guilt - or rather the inconvenience - of being here unlawfully must be a grave emotional burden. It ought not be. Their crime should be expiated, and can be simply by saying it is so. Amnesty is absolution. And pardon my bias, but that seems just about the only forgiveness a liberal wants – from society.

It boils down to conscience. And with a liberal, to me, it seems that conscience has more to do with feeling right, than doing right. It’s alright to change the rules retroactively. It’s required that everyone, losers along with winners, gets a trophy. Morality is a continuum of infinite gradations of gray, with no final resolution into black or white. We’ll just vote on the definition of right or wrong, and that’ll settle it. The imposing trove of defense mechanisms by which we justify ourselves will be the sacraments of sanctification in a secular faith of fair play.

Oh my. Is this a rant? My tone is quite calm ... but I intended to deal with so many other points. Because I’m sure liberals want more than just illegals to have high self-esteem. Should there be a Part Two? Hardly seems worth the bother. It’s like writing a manual on the care and feeding of unicorns. I’d just be guessing.

But after all, nobody has the right to tell me I’m wrong. It’s a free country. Whatever that means. I get the free part. But the definition of country seems increasingly gray.

J

Always Sane

I’m not. Not always sane. Sometimes I think matters of principle are beyond all possibility of compromise, and that’s simply nuts. Yes, we have to compromise even on matters of principle, sometimes. Without such a clear-eyed, rational understanding of how the real world works, there would be no United States.

Slavery was a matter on which there could be no compromise, by decent people. Yet there was. John Jay, the first Chief Justice, wrote in 1786 that “To contend for our own liberty, and to deny that blessing to others, involves an inconsistency not to be excused.” But it was excused. Oliver Ellsworth, signer of the Constitution, said, “All good men wish the entire abolition of slavery, as soon as it can take place with safety to the public, and for the lasting good of the present wretched race of slaves.” But to realize such wishes of ‘all good men,’ nothing was done. Thomas Jefferson wrote, “The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions, the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submissions on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it…” Yet…

Slavery was somehow supposed to be eliminated sometime in the mid-1800s – no new slaves were to be brought into the country starting in 1808, and it was imagined that the South’s peculiar institution would simply whither away. Or something. Turns out, it was drowned in blood. And that war, too, was fought not over slavery, but to preserve the Union that compromise had made possible. In this instance the South would not compromise, simply because Lincoln, who was no abolitionist, had been elected. For his part, Lincoln was not a man who would allow his country, his Union, to vanish. Two implacable opposites – and so a most costly war.

It isn’t high-sounding rhetoric, as of Jay or Ellsworth or Jefferson. Their sentiment had no passion, and amounts to moral onanism. Their compromise with slavery couldn’t have been unbearably distressing, or they would have taken pains to undo not the effects of their compromise - Union – but the damage to the nation’s honor. They would have started fifty years earlier the organs of the abolitionist movement.

Again, it isn’t a fanatical devotion to some theory – say, States rights over individual rights (the individuals being, of course, also property). This rigidity reflects no beauty from the inner man, but rather a smallness of imagination, and a selfishness of purpose that makes one actually ugly. If we must be fanatically devoted to something, let it not be to a theory, but reality. I know - a vague platitude, but there it is. Indeed, it's all there is.

This is what wisdom is: knowing what the right, or rather the righteous action is, in a given circumstance. Sometimes we must be hard, sometimes soft. Sometimes we must comfort, sometime rebuke. Sometimes we must be Job at the beginning of the story, clinging to his integrity, and sometimes we must be Job at the end of the story, repentant of even his righteousness.

Too frequently, the answers aren’t as clean-cut as we may imagine. Not everything is, as it were, black or white.

So, with illegal immigration. It needs to stop. Period. It is Lincoln’s position, that the Union might be saved. How to achieve this end, in the real world? Not how it should be done, but how it can be done? Remembering that we’re dealing with politicians, a constitutionally craven lot? How can it be dealt with? Alas, by whatever name, given the panderers and traitors with whom we must trade, some version, by whatever name, of amnestia. “Regularization.” “Guest workers.” Whatever.

This must be the odious three-fifths compromise, that might achieve a worthy end. A wall? Necessary. Enforcement of existing law? Well, duh? New laws? This Congress certainly doesn’t even seem to recognize the laws made by their predecessors of 20 years ago – or in many cases by their younger selves. So, sure, why not – new laws. Enforced. Jail time for CEOs? Yes – let’s build prisons for them, on the moon. In other words, that’s not likely to happen.

We bend, and get some movement in the right direction. We refuse to bend, and we break. And remember we’re dealing with cowards in Congress, and criminals crossing in hordes across “our” “border.” So, for this country to remain a sovereign nation-state, action must be taken. Remember, after all, what the actual, technical, legal name of Mexico is. Los Estados Unidos de Mexico. The Unites States of Mexico. Let’s do what we can to keep this from becoming more than an homage.

Can we handle the ten or fifteen or twenty million illegals here now? Yes, we can. Can we handle all their siblings and parents and children? - for citizens have the right to bring their families here. Can we handle that? Not if we wish to preserve the Union. These newly legal immigrant citizens would transport the population of Mexico into the USA, a sort of reverse slave trade – blacks came involuntarily, illegals rush to come, illegally. If we imagine huge enclaves of scores of millions of non-English speaking, unassimilated immigrants, then we must imagine entire cities, and entire states, dominated by them. And we have a new Confederacy – a population dedicated to an alien way of life, importing a third world culture of socialism, of illiteracy, of poverty.

We have a strong culture, and a powerful self-identity. But it is not immortal. It can be damaged. It can be destroyed. This is what is at stake. For its preservation, we must compromise. We must do what it takes, to dam the flood. And what it takes, I think, is compromise. Citizenship? They do not deserve it and ought not receive it - and if they get it, we get their whole vast family. Legal status? It seems the give part, of give and take. Employer sanctions? Jobs are why they come, mostly, so yes, sanctions are necessary. A wall? Yes, please – a long one, and high. Not to fence anyone in. To fence unwanted, unnecessary, unwelcomed people out. Ours are not prison walls - they are treasury walls. We must protect what is valuable, because not all greed is ours.

Why don't these people get it, these Congressmen of the Future Confederacy? I'm not a big believer in conspiracies. It's not some grand plot to undermine the concept of national sovereignty. Rather, it has to do with a heart that has so much gooey, squishy softness to it that it's swollen out of the ribcage, refluxed up the esophagus, through the sinuses and into the brain - turning it too into a sort of gingerbread sugar-dough. There must be, somewhere, a third half of the brain that they're using, neither intuitive nor rational - just somehow magical, where nice things happen because you have a kind motive. Maybe that's the brain the Scarecrow got from the Wizard. 'Cause that's what it feels like. Oz. But even the Emerald City had a wall.

Sanity is that state of mind that is most in harmony with reality. Let’s be sane.

J

"Please, sir - can we have some more?"

A day without illegal immigrants. Ah, if only. There was one segment of the economy that did not benefit from this action. Social services. The emergency rooms were just as over-crowded. The social security office was just as busy. The welfare checks flowed just as freely. The police were as busy as ever. The social workers had just as heavy a case load. The parole officers worked just as hard. Only the classrooms were not over-full, for once. The students who were in class - the serious ones, the ones there to learn rather than just be warehoused, kept off the streets - were able to benefit from sufficient attention from the teacher.

So. Please, Nativo ("Nativo" - does that mean "native"?), would you please organize this again? As soon as possible? But this time so that it's really a day without illegals? No social benefits at all? Please? Would you? Because that is exactly what most of us want. By "us," I mean citizens. Patriots who love this country, rather than who just want to exploit it like a pimp exploits a whore. Tax payers. Not just leeches - scabs who undercut the wages for entry-level jobs - ingrates who flee their own poverty-ridden country and then want to turn ours into the same third world basket case - hypocrites who publicly celebrate their "race" while calling "racist" those who support the law. Please, Nativo, let's do this every day. You have your race parades every day - we'll dedicate as many streets as you need for it, and just re-route traffic - we'll accommodate this ... if you just don't exploit the rest of the infrastructure that we built and that you just want to use.

Deal? Three-hundred sixty-five days without illegals. Deal? Please?




J

May day! May day!

A gigantic army of FIRE ANTS has invaded the streets - they're crawling over everything! God! The horror! Devouring everything in their path! So hungry, so voracious! Such inhuman greed! The noise is deafening - can barely think ... OH GOD NO!!! Africanized honey bees! ATTACKING! Swarming everywhere - destroying everything they see! Wait - they seem to be working TOGETHER!!! OH GOD!!! A sort of intelligence, primordial, vicious, appears to be guiding them - what have we done to deserve this fate? Attacking ... why, they're attacking only specific things! How can this be? The colors red white and blue - seem to drive them into a frenzy of hatred! And ... how can it be?!? they've somehow learned to generate a distorted sort of human music! - why ... oh my .... NOOOOOOO!!!! It's the National ANTHEM!!! I feel ... so sick - some poison is filling the air - some noxious sulfurous gas - I can't .... GREAT SCOT!!! A huge crevasse has opened up in the middle of the street! No! NO!!! Locusts!! and giant FROGS!!! some sort of toads - monstrous slimy ... pouring out from the fiery depths of HELL!!! What - what's that - I can hardly make it out through the flames and smoke ... OH SWEET JESUS NOOOOOO!!!

oh

god


J

In Brief

Charles Krauthammer says it perfectly:

"Blacks were owed. For centuries they had been the victims of a historic national crime. The principal crime involved in the immigrant crusade is the violation of immigration laws by the illegals themselves.

"To be sure, that is not a high crime. But it does not behoove one who has stealthily stolen into another's house to then make demands about rights -- or to march under the banner of 'The National Day of Action for Immigrant Justice.'

"Justice? On what grounds do those who come into a country illegally claim rights? They seek good will and understanding. And Americans might give it -- but on request, not on demand."

Yes. Exactly. Believe me. They do not want justice. It is the last thing they want. They want injustice. Well, we try not to do that, here. And if we do, we try to remedy it. So you see, a conflict.

They have no legal claim. They have no case. They have only emotion - this is what we want! Neither the tantrum of several weeks ago, nor this week's more studied and cynical and manipulative affair (oh, so many American flags! How patriotic!), will suffice. It is, after all, a very simple question. Whose country is this, anyway? The answer is simple, too. My country.

J

10% of the population of Mexico is in the US. Illegally.

I was just humming and buzzing along, the way I do, and it suddenly hit me, again. How absolutely surreal. Ten percent. At least ten percent -- maybe fifteen. Maybe more. How Kafkaesque. And even though nobody's going to accuse me of having a low opinion of myself with regard to clarity of thought, it cannot be that I'm the first to have noticed this. What is going on, here? Absolutely weird.

I was reluctant to get into this whole thing. I've said that from way back. Because there's no way to be gracious, really gracious, about it. It is ungracious just to notice the fact. Like smelling someone's intestinal gas. Yes, it stinks, but we politely pretend we didn't notice. But now I have noticed. I guess this gas thing just got to be someone's habit. Maybe it was the shamelessness of it. The in-your-face disrespect of it. The celebration of it. The not only am I entitled to vent my gas but you'd better call it bells and roses attitude. That's what it's like.

What fresh wind will clear the air? How many amnesties shall we try? If the government doesn't enforce the existing laws, why would they enforce any new laws? If stealing a diamond is a crime but keeping it is not, what becomes of the rule of law? We have to catch them in the act, but once we see they're here, they win? This is an obscenity against common sense and civil probity. As a matter of principle, how can there possibly be compromise on this issue? All enforcement of law has a human cost, takes a human toll. Shall this dissuade us from the clearly right course? What has America become, that it is so craven.

No, we do not round them all up and send them south. The idea is stupid, and no serious thinker could suggest such a thing. It is the utterance of the emotional moment, repented of when calm is regained. We arrest them when they make themselves apparent to the police through unlawful - additional unlawful conduct. We dry up the inducement to come, by enforcing existing employment laws. We announce a crackdown on employers of illegals, to give them time to get their house in order, and then we act, with meaningful fines and prison time. We publish and enforce the penalties for document fraud - a serious crime that is engaged in lightly, by this population.

Will prices rise? Yes, wages to lawful residents will rise, and the cost will be passed on to the consumer. If the guy who hands me my fries gets 7 bucks an hour rather than 5, I think I can absorb the extra dime it'll cost me. If the price of letuce doubles, well, gas prices have doubled, and we survive - maybe we'll economize by getting fuel efficient ... a wonderful outcome in itself. Will social stresses in Mexico increase, under the pressure of its returning citizens? Perhaps they will demand there, what they found here - an honest rather than corrupt government, an honorable rather than contemptable police force. But what I know is that we are not Mexico's spittoon. We do not want its effluvia, and do not need it. We are not its outhouse, to absorb its stench.

Of course we're talking about people, not garbage -- brave and industrious people, often. But a government owes allegiance to it citizens. Period. As individuals of conscience, we might do what we can to alleviate Mexican suffering. But it is not the obligation of American society to tend to Mexico's needs. This is the most basic and obvious tenet of the idea of a social compact. Does your heart bleed for the poor country folk down south? Go there and teach them. It is no one's place to invite them here, because it is no one's place to operate above the reasonable law. Would you leave water in the desert for them? This is charity, and a kindness. But if you take them by the hand and lead them from there to here, you are a criminal too. These facts are self-evident, and that there is a need to spell it out is ... is ... well, it's Kafkaesque.


J

Common Nonsense

Tony Snow imagines that he can bring some common sense to the topic of immigration. He soothingly writes (presumably of those who are liable) that “62 percent of illegal immigrants pay income taxes (via withholding) and 66 percent contribute to Social Security.” Snow reports these facts as if they were good things. Uh, dude … that means 38% are not paying income tax. That’s sort of illegal. You’d go to jail for that. Well, you’d go to jail for it. They don’t. As for the 66% who pay into Social Security, someone commented on this site that this was a good thing: they’ll never collect, and so we benefit. No, no, my dear, that is a very cynical argument. We do not want to benefit by cheating people out of what is theirs.

Snow goes on to say that “Skeptics counter that immigrants have clogged our hospitals, which is true -- but primarily in places that offer lavish benefits to illegal immigrants.” Um, duh? And these would be places that offer, uh, “lavish” benefits to lawful residents too – that is, they would be offered if illegals didn’t make them unavailable. An eight hour wait in the emergency room ain’t all that convenient, sometimes, except for the illegal horde that uses it as their primary caregiving facility.

Snow admits that “illegal immigrants in 2004 accounted for 95 percent of all outstanding homicide warrants in Los Angeles and two-thirds of unserved felony warrants.” Yet he, illogically, attempts to excuse this by pointing out that, according to national statistics, immigrants are in general less likely to be involved in criminal activity than comparable groups. Shall we analyze this statement? He doesn’t say illegal immigrants. Well, that waters it down quite a bit, doesn’t it. I don’t imagine there’s a huge Canadian immigrant crime wave going on. Further, he’s talking about national statistics. Again, I don’t think the Mung immigrants in Minnesota are spiking the crime stats upward. But where we have a high concentration of illegal immigrants, 95% of the fugitive homicidal felons are illegals. Golly, Tony, can you explain to me again how this is good news?

Oh, you say the “Latino homicide rate in Miami is three times that of El Paso, Texas, which has one of the nation's largest immigrant populations.” So Texas border towns are safer than Florida coastal towns? And that would be because ... Mexicans are more law-abiding than Cubans? Could it be that there’s more employment for immigrants in El Paso than in Miami? Could it be that immigrants, legal or otherwise, in border towns are newer to America, and so more cautious? Could it be that Texas enforces its laws more diligently?

Snow goes on playing with some not terribly relevant data, then says, “Virtually everyone agrees that we need to secure our borders, deport lawbreakers and slackers among the illegal-immigrant population, and revitalize the notion of citizenship by insisting that prospective citizens master the English language and the fundaments of American history and culture.” While this sounds very commonsensical to me, it is factually in error. Not virtually everyone agrees with these goals. A very large and vocal group of protestors, not many days ago, was clearly opposed to every one of these agreed-upon points. Snow concludes profoundly: “Before someone razes Lady Liberty and decides to erect a wall to ‘protect’ America from the world, shouldn't we at least spend a little time trying to get our facts straight?” Good advice, Tony - very commonsensical. But here’s another bit of common sense: if walls didn’t work, people wouldn’t build them.

Let me explain to you the confusion in you mind, Tony. The controversy isn’t over migration. We have laws that regulate this process, and there’s no real trouble about it. The problem is illegal, illegal, illegal immigration. Did you get that, Tony? Illegal. So what I’d like you to do, is go back and re-write your article, on the same theme, of bringing common sense to the immigration debate – only this time, make sure that it’s about the right debate, the only debate ... the one over illegal immigration. I’ll expect it on my desk tomorrow morning. Get busy.

J

Lying with Statistics

Eleven percent of the population of Mexico is in the United States illegally. Did you hear me? Eleven percent! Well, I think the math is right. I mean, the population of Mexico is 106 million, and there are supposed to be twelve million illegals here, almost all Mexican … but maybe Mexico doesn’t count them, so it really should be 118 million … or maybe it does count them, so there’s actually only 94 million in Mexico. God, confusing, isn’t it. But they don’t count here, I think, so the 296 million Americans is accurate, I think. But maybe it’s 308 million, um, people in America. Or maybe it’s 284 million real Americans, and then these 12 million other illegal people.

But something around 10% of Mexicans seem to have sneaked over our, um, border. I guess a border is just an imaginary line on a map, a sort of gentlemen’s agreement, and not an actual geophysical phenomenon, or some sort of enforceable geopolitical reality. Good thing we’re not serious about it, though, because it could really get ugly, if we decided to think it was an actual for real border, like with passports and laws and stuff.

How ugly? Well, Joe R. Hicks, again, writes, “A 2005 Pew Hispanic Center survey on attitudes toward immigration, conducted in part in Mexico, found that an estimated 70 million adults in Mexico would come to the U.S. if they had the means and the opportunity. About half of those said they would be willing to move to and work in this country illegally. The study also found that 35% of Mexican college graduates want to come to the U.S., even if that means they would have to work at a job below their qualifications — and many also said they'd be willing to come illegally.”

Um. Uh. So, like literally two thirds of Mexicans want to be in America. No, wait! - that's like all the Mexicans - all the adult Mexicans. Seventy million - there must be 36 million kids in Mexico, I'd suppose. That's ugly - a depopulated Mexico, abandoned except for all the kids. And such a noise of weeping ... at least from the kids ... the adults would be celebrating up north, maybe outside city hall. How crappy must Mexico be, that no adult wants to be there? Even a third of the educated people, the ones with real opportunity and chances for success - that tiny little fraction - want to be here. And these people are racist for themselves, over this? Well, no, that’s not it, of course. It isn’t that Mexico is crappy. As not-American countries go, it’s okay. It’s just that it isn’t America.

You’d think they’d be more respectful, though, right? Since they don’t want to be there, and are lucky enough to have gotten away with sneaking over the border, here. Maybe their racism for themselves warps the mind, so they can’t think straight. Ah well. It’s a mystery.

And me? Well, I kid, because I love.

J