Posted on 01/02/2024 8:48:20 AM PST by ChicagoConservative27
It was Jan. 19, 1989. Ronald Reagan was in his final full day as president of the United States and was making remarks at a Presidential Medal of Freedom presentation. As he finished celebrating the achievements of the honorees, he turned to another subject that was on his mind:
“Since this is the last speech I will give as president, I think it’s fitting to leave one final thought, an observation about a country which I love.”
What followed is remembered as Reagan’s most majestic description of America as a welcoming harbor for immigrants. Here is just some of what he said:
“You can go to live in France but cannot become a Frenchman,” he said, quoting a letter he’d received during his tenure. “You can go to live in Germany, Turkey or Japan but you cannot become a German, Turk or Japanese. But anyone from any corner of the earth can come to live in America and become an American.
(Excerpt) Read more at ajc.com ...
Ping. Still here?
I disagree with your characterization of my interpretation of Reagan’s stance on immigration as “total nonsense”. The context is important.
The situation in 1980 is not even in the same galaxy of what is happening today. Reagan wasn’t perfect by any means, as he did sign the Democrat immigration bill which they immediately ignored any strictures on.
His stance on immigration back then was for an illegal flow that was numbering in the 600K to 700K per annum in 1980 when he was running for President at the time that video.
And we actually had some border enforcement then.
Now, it is in the millions, and that is only the encounters where someone is stopped or turns themself in. Not even close to the same scale, or even in the same ballpark.
Reagan my indeed have been more of a centrist in that day when some Democrats existed who weren’t angling for the downfall of this country, but that is much different than being a centrist today.
That’s a great story and I had fun poking around in that thread!
I very much admired those of you who were out FReeping before the big influx that came in around the same time I did, in 2004.
I made the acquaintance of Kristinn Taylor, and he invited me down to one of their Walter Reed Freeps with the DC Chapter, and I was hooked.
You folks were somewhat legendary to me...:)
That was amnesty for foreigners, not US citizens for breaking the law. They chose foreigners over Americans, and have always chosen that. Even now, there is no charge to go after businesses who hire illegals, no mass raids, and other efforts to enforce current law. The most obvious tell was not securing the border post 9/11, rip USA. There is no going back, these parties sold out America years ago, yet people still support them.
I cannot disagree with you, however, saying that they didn’t care when it was 650K a year doesn’t mean a given person won’t feel differently when it is 3 million a year...or more.
But to both you and Freeper Reverend Wright, I concede your assertion that “they don’t care”, because as you point out, there is no countervailing evidence to disprove that.
We do know of at least one politician who has done something, and that is Trump.
And he did it with zero help from Congress or his own party.
People rightly point out it wasn’t much comparatively speaking to the extent of the problem, but given that he did the scraping and searching for funds all on his own, when we could have taken some of that hundreds of billions sent to Ukraine (with little or NO popular support) I am impressed that he did what he did, and SHOWED it could be done.
What is your solution, Theoria, to those in government “that people support” who have “sold out America”? Get different people to run? If so, have you had any involvement or success in this? Just curious.
Add in student, car, house, and then SS debt (and yes, it is debt) and you get to a rather disturbing place.
Dump the various military obligations of empire, and it gets rather stark. Then the fact that only the middle really pay taxes, and that number gets so high it is meaningless.
The point I always make is that support for mass third world immigration, legal and illegal, has been going on in every single Western country since the mid 1960’s with the support of the corporate-supported “conservative” parties in those countries.
There have been individual politicians like Enoch Powell, Trump and political movements like the Canadian Reform Party and populist parties in Europe who went against mass immigration.
In the past these were dealt with via ridicule and marginalization by elite institutions.
However, they are becoming more powerful, and we see the Regime now turning to the legal system to exclude. (charges against Trump; AFD likely to be made illegal in Germany).
I’ll suggest a standard to identify if an anti-immigrant political program is genuine: If the Regime is not trying to criminalize them, they’re not for real.
I don’t think there is a solution within the existing political structures. This Regime has to collapse in order for change to occur.
Fortunately, it is well on its way to collapse.
Regan got tricked.
No, he didn’t. The guy spent too many years in politics to get hoodwinked like that.
You are accusing him of being part of the nwo I guess. The man who destroyed the Soviet Union and freed millions
The nature of technology and innovation is to spread the system of family and community away. Advancements in travel, and tech, allows for less need of community. Planes, trains, the wheel and such have all dispersed peoples and clans.
‘Conservative’ policies works in closed systems, fighting and hardships. The phenom of creating more wealth via ‘capitalism’ allows for nations and communities to be more ‘accepting’ to deviants, migration, legal or otherwise. Summary: Success breeds immigration, unless ya want to be N. Korea, America will be conquered. Migration always conquers.
Yes. They can.
We're having serious problems with people who come to America illegally, for felonious purposes, with no intention whatsoever of becoming American.
That's the difference between an immigrant and an invader.
The whole “immigration” thing has been abused. ALL forms of immigration needs to stop for 20, maybe 30 years.
That may be true, but it doesn’t have anything to do with the distinction I made.
All legal immigrants do is cause more wage supression.
Pretty much.
Increase supply, lower the price. Which is why immigration has happened since the dawn of history.
I understand your state of mind on this, but I am not ready to go down that road. It isn’t yet in my nature to accept that this country I love, that has given me so much, is irretrievably lost.
As I said, I cannot disagree with your premise. I feel much the same way in many aspects, and I feel in my heart that we are going down the road to dissolution, but I can’t go into that dark night.
Not yet.
I just don’t know how to fight back. I am trying to get involved in my town’s electoral process in this bluest of blue states by getting a seat on the Board of Registrars, which seems utterly futile as the lone Conservative, but I must try.
I cannot reconcile myself to just sitting down and waiting for the end to come. I am a realist, and at a debt level of tens to hundreds of trillions of dollars in debt and nobody hearing our voice and fighting back, I cannot see things lasting forever like this. It just isn’t sustainable.
But I don’t know what to do except prepare for what is coming, and I am only marginally capable of psychologically accepting that as a course of action.
You may be right that it has to collapse. But it is painful for me to consider for a country I hold so dear.
National level politics is futile. The local level is where people can have an impact.
For example. The local congressman was on this county board, so if he was still there he could have blocked it.
Instead he got elected to Congress, but was trying to block this via changes in Federal Tax law (obviously, not possible).
North Korea is going to win because South Korea has the lowest birthrate in the world.
Tech and globalized work destroys family and community and those people don’t get married and have children.
Those who are there for it will inherit the future - even if it is North Korea.
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