Posted on 05/26/2006 10:47:11 PM PDT by catholicfreeper
I had doctor’s appointments most of the day, and while I was in the car I kept switching around on the radio. I pulled up Rush and couldn’t listen more than a few minutes. What I heard was a disappointing, strange, paranoia-feeding rant on how the “moderate Republicans and Democrats in the Senate” have a deliberate plan afoot to “enlarge the number of victims and people who will need welfare services” so as to “enlarge government…”
It’s all a plot and a conspiracy, you see…nothing could possibly simply be about stupid and lackluster career politicians trying to finally, finally, finally do something about an issue no one has wanted to touch for 30 years and doing it haphazardly, fearfully and imperfectly, and with the usual suspects trying to add their own flourishes, which must always be batted down, whether the issue is illegal immigration or almost anything else.
No, no. It’s a plot! It’s a conspiracy, meant to bring down America and put the conservatives in their place! To create a permanent underclass! To enlarge government, create more victims and raise our taxes! (what nonsense…we’re in a freaking war and spending more than ever, yet our revenues are growing thanks to the tax cuts…it’s funny how, when it suits a need, suddenly taxes will have to be raised…)
Maybe I should launch a conspiracy theory of my own…say…oh, something silly, like maybe this hysteria is just the conservatives doing everything they can to foment enough discord and discontent to create the “demand” for a third party candidate.
Which worked out so well for all of us in 1992. Hey, one conspiracy theory is as good as the next, isn’t it?
Now, I grant you, some of what is in this Senate immigration bill is objectionable and must be striken - it makes no sense at all for illegals to have better job-protection and benefits than American citizens. Social Security entitlements? I don’t think so. The idea of giving Mexico veto power over a fence or barrier idea is ludicrous.
But…for heaven’s sake, the thing is going to go to Congress, it’s going to get cleaned up and turned around - what has come out of the senate will not be the thing that (assuming anything actually gets passed) will be passed. There is some evidence that something workable may actually emerge from all of this ‘initial’ hoo-ha.
I know there are different opinions on the issue of these illegals, and everyone, on every side, “has a point” but I was extremely disheartened by what I heard on the radio, and by some of what I am seeing in blogs and in my email. I had to turn Rush off - there was something so insideous about the “ship them all back,” rhetoric flying between him and his callers that it was making my flesh feel crawly. “Round them up and ship them back, devote a whole law-enforcement team to it, we can get rid of all of them in 7 years, Rush!” Stunning. Appalling. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
Aside from the legal and moral ramifications of trying to “round them all up -” I got out of the car thinking, are they forgetting that we are talking about human beings, here? Many of whom have been here for years, initially through legal means, and who have created lives? People with lives and families who - like how they got here or not - are HERE and are mostly contributing to society in positive ways? Honestly, the folks on the radio sounded extremely narrow and over-the-top. The humanity of the illegals seemed as unmentionable to them as the humanity of a baby-in-utero is to a feminist.
And funnily enough, I didn’t hear anyone complaining about the annual influx of illegal Irish immigrants who come in via Montauk and stay. But they’re charmers, aren’t they? Good senses of humor, they work and they don’t ever cause trouble…right?
Build a wall, by all means. Make sure you build it deep, so tunneling is difficult. Arm it and stand guards. I’m all for it. But this overheated rhetoric, this astonishing willingness by too many to keep blowing on the flames until something erupts…this is not good.
I cannot buy into this idea that suddenly America will be overthrown unless 11-12 million illegals are “shipped out, no matter what the story is…” I also cannot buy into the idea that there is a conspiracy afoot to create a socialist state, anymore than I buy the idea that this brouhaha is a conspiracy on the right to form a third party. But what do I know? Maybe everything is a grand conspiracy, after all. In which case, everyone is working at cross-purposes and all of this sound and fury may signify nothing…
I still believe angels ride in whirlwinds.
I also believe that Hispanics are the upcoming huge voter bloc in this nation, and that most of them (not the A.N.S.W.E.R. rowdies or the useful idiots who exist in EVERY ethnic group) are fairly conservative types of folks, and the conservatives are doing all they can to convince the Hispanics that they will never be welcome in the GOP. I have emails from Hispanics who have worked on GOP campaigns and contributed to GOP causes and who are dazed and feeling very much like they are not welcome. One fellow - Mexican/German - of immigrant parents, has gone from supporting the initial idea that immigrants should be encouraged to come here legally to deciding that the conservative tone has crossed a line where he cannot follow.
I am concerned about people running so hot on this issue - with the heat being enhanced by the bellows blowing on it via talk radio and some blogs - I am concerned that someone is going to get hurt. I’m concerned that people are losing their heads over this.
“Oh, Anchoress, the whole nation is going to be hurt if we don’t ship them all back and seal the borders and blah, blah, blah…”
Are we? I have a plumber friend who owns his own business, and he can’t find young white or black men to come learn the trade under him. “The black kids all want to be rappers and athletes, and the white kids think the sweat is beneath them. The Asian kids are all going to college to become doctors.” But the Hispanic kids want to learn. They want to work and support themselves, they want to learn the language so they can enter the marketplace. I hear a lot of sneering about the “jobs Americans don’t want to do” line…but the truth is, while the line may be just a line…it has some (limited) basis in fact.
70 or 80 years ago, my own ancestors were coming in, legally, and learned to hang drywall and fix automobiles and fight fires. Yes, they were legal…the nation had well-run, functional programs to handle a huge influx. Had such a program not been in place, they would have come, anyway…and they would have been illegal!
I wonder why it is that we do not, today have a well-run, functional immigration program to handle the huge influx of people who wish to live here. Why aren’t we WORKING on creating such a program? Why isn’t that part of any immigration bill - the reform of the INS?
We’re going to need our immigrants as the boomers retire and weigh heavy on our SocSec system and their children barely reproduce at replacement levels. Why can’t we bring back the idea of Ellis Island - create an Ellis Island West, so to speak which would prevent the “illegality” of our immigrants.
That might be helpful, you know? Make ‘em legal, get ‘em paying taxes…Sure, some people called my grandfather a “filthy wop” and my other grandfather a “lazy mick” and they bitched because the carousel at Coney Island suddenly played Italian hurdy-gurdy instead of genteel songs from the gay 90’s, but everyone adjusted. The nation grew stronger.
Alexandra has a good post up on the issue, and she ends by linking to this very interesting partial transcript of an interview between Rush and Tony Snow.
Funny thing about this interview…I saw it linked to yesterday at another right-wing blog, but when I went back to access it, the link had - for unexplained reasons - been taken down. Once I finally got a chance to listen to it, (thanks to a pal) my sense was that Rush was not convincing in his arguments and he knew it. He sounded tentative and uneasy the whole time, and I came away thinking Snow got the better him and had been entirely too convincing for Rush’s liking. And I am not a Rush-hater by any means. I’ve often admired his skill and enjoyed his humor…but lately…
I wrote a few days ago:
The right has a disproportionate number of Christians in its tent, and Christians are supposed to know a thing or two about forgiveness and second-chances. By the light of Christ, a whore is not forever a whore and a thief is not forever a thief. Are we conservative Christians going to forget our own second chances - some of them known only to God and ourselves - and declare that while we might not always be wretches, “an illegal is always an illegal and there is no mercy, no chance to be something more…”
I can’t believe that. Can’t accept it. Won’t be part of it. Our Lord demands more from us than a shrill dehumanization of what He has created, some demagoguery and a quick look-away as we shout, “ship ‘em back! Bad! All Bad!”
There are no negatives in Christ.
I also put forth my own admittedly simplistic and probably unrealistic idea:
Maybe the answer is something I’ve been thinking about for a little while - a sort of registry in which a “guest-worker” who has been here for a while and has demonstrated his peaceable intentions would register and pay a recurring fee (not a tax, which would give rise to demands for representation and votes, but a fee - a usable source of revenue for the local government) and in exchange have the “right” to work without being harassed or having to look over his shoulder all the time. Perhaps these registration centers would offer classes in English for nominal fees, to help them in their assimilation. Such a registry might even be able to eventually offer affordable group health insurance to take some of the burden off of the hospitals (and the rest of us). Okay, maybe it’s a stupid or naive idea. I never said I was brill. That’s why I’m not a community leader. But someone, somewhere has an idea that will work.
I seem to be losing friends over this issue which is not my choice - but there you go. I cannot get on the train with the people who are spitting mad and convinced that the nation is utterly doomed, and will die quickly unless their EXACT RECIPE is followed. There is just something really wrong with that - with the whole mindset. And there is an undercurrent of something - not among the friends I am losing so much as in the blogs and on the radio - I can’t put my finger on, but I don’t like it. I can’t embrace it.
If your convictions demand that you no longer read me, that you de-link me, that you consider me unfit to be a friend, a conservative, a woman, a Christian, or whatever…well…I’m sorry to hear that, but so be it. I agree with some of what you say, I support some of the measures you propose…but I cannot go where you want me to go, and I cannot fume and boil and roil and churn as you clearly wish I would. And I cannot embrace the hate - yes, real hate - that I am seeing roll off some of you like fog off the sea. Nothing good ever comes from embracing the hate.
Here I stand, I can do no other.
I hear ya, switched to EWTN radio or the Bible on CD when driving.
Oh yes. She has a lot of credibility with a statement like this.
Oh, Ms. Anchoress...you mean cleaned up like...McCain-Feingold? Is THAT how the clean-up process that we all trusted so much in is supposed to work?
If those arrogant pieces of bull crap we call Senators allowed an abomination like THAT to get through, we are supposed to trust them to do this correctly?
You live on another damned planet.
Of course one could argue that Mccain Feingold was what the masses wanted out there. We got to get money out of politics bla bla bla. I heard that all the time from the oridnary folks out there. The same ordinary folks that were experts on campaign finance reform are all now experts on illegal immigration. Alot of focus groups and not enough issues.
Of course Mccain Feingold was a tad different. The politcos said "Ah the SUpreme Court will declare most of it Unconstitional" so dont worry. Well thats was a bad plan it seemed. But hey the folks wanted it and got it.
I've read your posts for some time.
Just who are you?
Banned...retread...plant?
A current FReeper?
What?
By all means...go buy a Sat radio,
and leave us alone.
The America of 150 years ago, with a large demand for low skilled labor and virtually no government mandated social spending, could support a class of immigrants because they caused no real net drain on the nation. But what was fine in an age when few attended school and even less graduated is incompatible in an era of high tech business where people who fail to earn a simple high school diploma have virtually no chance to succeed beyond the poverty they were born into.
I don't see how anybody thinks that millions more entitled to benefits they never paid for in the first place will be a net benefit to the economic health of the nation.
But in the end the argument is not about economics. It is about the rule of law. America has always been the most welcoming nation on the face of the globe. But what we demand is that the law is followed. Those who wish entrance abide by the system that we as a nation have set in place. Failure to do so is a slap in the face to those who have shown the patience and fortitude to deal with a system that is both bewildering and glacial in pace.
It sickens me to see the criminal enablers in the left and the cheap and lazy right cry for this Amnesty-through-hoops program in order to secure their own economic security without thought to the effects on the nation as a whole.
I have a suggestion if you don't like my post don't read them. Its pretty simple. Also, I said the level of discourse on this topic and other topics have fallen down. FR is is not the entire conservative Universe so please calm down I wasnt talking about FR in particular.
No, dear.
You are a plant, or a retread, or have been banned before.
You have an agenda.
I've been reading your posts for some time.
You are not nice.
One thing I have always wanted to ask, but given my screen name, have been reluctantant...
Is English your first language?
Well I think this blogger is thinking of America as whole in her arguments. Its been interesting watching her thoughts on this play out. She is where I am at on many issues regarding this. I suspect that I am pretty much where the President is at but realize there will have to be some compromises if anything is to succeed.. I was most intrigued with the first part of her blog entry I guess. The conspiracy talk has been too rampant in all this, and I suppose I feel its taking off the spotlight from issues that each side has.
Have you gone out for cigs because the store is about to close?
"It’s all a plot and a conspiracy, you see…nothing could possibly simply be about stupid and lackluster career politicians trying to finally, finally, finally do something about an issue no one has wanted to touch for 30 years and doing it haphazardly, fearfully and imperfectly, and with the usual suspects trying to add their own flourishes, which must always be batted down, whether the issue is illegal immigration or almost anything else."
So is acnchoress admitting that liberal special-interests wrote this bill or denying the same? Her tortured language makes it impossible to make out.
It's funny that Anchoress is talking about a rant but in fact, Rush made factual point-by-point slams against the Senate CIRA bill and backed them up. Whereas the Anchoress article seems to be a rather content-free rant, filled with the usual suspects of strawman arguements and missing-the-point assertions. #1 missing the point assertions is the usual blather about immigration being great. Ahem, we have 1 million legal immigrants. There is NOT any proposal about cutting that number.
This is about whether we repeat the failed formula of 1986 again, and make ILLEGAL immigration worse, through the failed concept of amensty/legalization.
CIRA doesnt just do that, it has poison pill provisions to undermine enfrocement, gut the immigration courts, assure mexico before we build any wall, regulate wages heavily, allow 60 million immigrants in the next 2 year, quadrupling immigration flows. oh, and it will cost tens of billions a year for this.
A bad bill. Period:
http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=15145
This is SENATOR SESSIONS whose own staff READ THE ACTUAL BILL AND EXPOSED DOZENS OF HIDDEN PROVISIONS THAT ACTUALLY GUT THE BILLS ENFORCEMENT PROVISIONS...
http://www.humaneventsonline.com/article.php?id=15165
"It is clear the people who drafted this legislation had an agenda and the agenda was not to meet the expectations of the American people. The agenda was to create a facade and appearance of enforcement, an appearance of toughness in some instances. When you get into the meat of the provisions and get into the bill and study it, tucked away here and there are laws that eviscerate and eliminate the real effectiveness of those provisions. It was carefully done and deliberately done. This is a bill that should not become law."
There are a lot of people, and I am one of them, that stopped trusting the legislature and the executive branch to support the constitution AS THEIR OATHS REQUIRE THEM TO DO the day that McCain-Feingold became law.
It should have NEVER been created. It should Never have got out of committee. It should NEVER have been passed. And it should NEVER have left the President's desk without a veto.
The fact is, that ALL of those things happened. And now we have an egregious violation of the First Amendment. Sure, it will get overturned someday, probably during the next Presidential election cycle.
But if this immigration legislation is passed and approved, overturning it five years down the road is going to be as relevant as tossing a brick in the Grand Canyon.
And we are supposed to trust them to do it right this time? Well, *SOMEONE* in the Senate slipped in a clause to require us to consult with Mexico if and when we build a fence. Really? Consult with Mexico? What in the HELL is that clause supposed to be in there for? Oh sure. Maybe it will come out in a compromise. Maybe it won't. So, the First Amendment is already shat upon by OUR elected officials, our right to act independently as a nation to do things that are in our best interest is on the block now, thanks to Arlen Specter and others.
And this doesn't even address the portion of the legislation that forgives illegals who STOLE and abused the Social Security numbers of Americans. These people who did this used those stolen numbers to open bank accounts and get credit cards. In many cases, the credit standing of many Americans has been completely fouled up and trashed. The Senate may wish to forgive and forget perpetrators of those crimes, but the law abiding US citizen who gets denied a car loan, takes a gander at his or her credit report and sees things mixed up in there that they have no conception of, that person has no recourse! Have you ever tried to fix things like that? I have, and I can tell you, it takes YEARS to do it, to clean out your credit report because some slimeball with the SAME SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBER AS YOU decided to live the high life on your number and abscond with the goods without paying.
Please don't take this personally, I don't know you, and I certainly don't know a thing about the Anchoress. I am sure she has relevant and well thought out positions on a variety of subjects (as I am sure you do) and she does make references to the idiotic notion of consulting with Mexico on a fence and Social Security benefits for the illegals.
But to discount out of hand the concerns, and anger that people feel over this issue displays the same arrogance and disdain for others that our elected officials are so explicitly demonstrating for all of us to see.
Ah The famous Tancredo thread lol from I think early this week. I saw a whole blow by blow of that was posted on another forum with a ton of commentary when I surfing the Covervative Forums tonight.. However, I did return to the discussion later on that night.
"Of course one could argue that Mccain Feingold was what the masses wanted out there. We got to get money out of politics bla bla bla."
It's well know --- NOW, after the fact --- that a small number of very liberal foundations, one of them associated with Bill Moyers, put several hundred million dollars into the campaign.
Groups like Soros even admit this about McCain-Fiengold ...
http://www.soros.org/initiatives/gov/articles_publications/articles/between_20020301
Soros.org crowing on their achievement:
"The exception is the Pew Charitable Trusts, which should be commended for supporting research and bipartisan meetings which led to long-needed specific solutions, such as the Snowe-Jeffords compromise on the regulation of issue advocacy advertising."
McCain-Feingold was the hobby-horse of some liberal elitists who wanted to use funding control as a mechanism for political control. Just as immigration is delivery the votes, the mcCain-Feingold agenda is about controlling the debate, and you cant control the debate if groups can simply fund political debate at will. That is so, gee, *free speech* like.
"FOLKS" didnt want campaign finance reform. Specific special interests wanted it.
Likewise, "FOLKS" dont want what the Senate created on immigration. Special interests wrote the bill and wanted the bill to do certain things, to help them achieve particular ends. The folks writing the Seante CIRA bill were the illegal immigration lawyers, LA Raza, and the cheap-labor-lobby among businesses. If you were one of the above, you got what you wanted ... if you are an ordinary American, you are SOL.
I deeply admire Catholicism. That said, this woman is a twit.
I used to live in your neck of the woods.
I KNOW those folks, and you don't represent them well, at all.
"As to being not nice. I have no idea what you are talking about."
Dang! After reading your posts for some time, if we don't agree with you, then we are "nativists", which happens to be the new term for "racists"?
And, you don't know what I am talking about?
"Anyway its much too late to get into one of these Poster bashing sessions at least for me."
LOL!
Coward!
What you don't know is that I am, probably, the least confrontational person here.
The very fact that * I * took you on should tell you something.
You are a sham, and the mods should get rid of you.
It will be a test, for sure.
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