Multicultural Heaven (We Did It to Ourselves)
The new government stimulus legislation will help unemployed Americans by providing 300,000 jobs for illegal aliens. Your Congresspersons voted down a provision requiring a simple check to identify illegal workers.
As a patriotic veterans’ organisation recently pointed out, illegal immigration is not a victimless crime.
U.S. Marines have been declared not to be tough enough to be allowed in Tijuana.
There are now more members of recognised criminal gangs in the U.S. than there are Episcopalians. The number of Muslims and illegal-alien anchor babies passed the Episcopalians some time back.
There are over 50,000 members of the vicious Ecuadoran criminal cult MS-13 in the U.S., in nearly every State. Why?
What if the government put as much effort and resources into finding illegal persons as it does into finding illegal drugs?
The new stimulus passage also provides for building a high-speed train to serve gamblers and illegal immigrants traveling between Los Angeles and Las Vegas.
Entries(RSS)
Unfortunately none of this is surprising. We will go the route of the Balkans after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
MS-13 is Salvadoran, not Ecuadoran. As to the why, thank Mr. Reagan. His proxy war in El Salvador drove hundreds of thousands of Salvadorans to the relative safety of the US, where they were easily granted asylum for the duration of the war. Like many gangs, MS-13 started out as a defensive organization - to protect Salvadorans from predatory Mexican gangs. Soon MS-13 became a tough competitor in the world of crime and expanded to include useful members of other ethnic groups for entry into new markets. Some members have been expelled to their native country, but usually find it easy enough to return to the US. And by this time, a lot are US born and can't be deported.
Ecuador, Salvador...
All those "dors" in this hemisphere are hard to tell apart. Like all those "stans" in the other hemisphere.
At least now I know the difference between an MS-13 and an M-16: the former probably arm themselves with the latter.
However you slice it, whatever aspect you wish to emphasize, be it proxy wars, undeclared wars, wars on abstractions (poverty, drugs, terror), selective law enforcement (immigration, fraud), omnipotemt government, the thesis stands unchallenged. We did it to ourselves. The bullet train from Los Angeles to Las Vegas is as apt a symbol of our wretchedness as I can imagine. Now here come the NAFTA truck-trains to kill us all on the interstates.
I know all those furiners look alike and their countries have names that sound alike, but El Salvador and Ecuador have much different relationships to the US imperium. El Salvador has contributed troops to the US aggression against Iraq and even lost a few. (Dare we hope they were MS-13 members?) Ecuador under its new president has opted out of the "war on drugs" and told the US to leave the large airbase it has in Ecuador - unless it wants to give the Ecuadoran air force an equivalent base near Miami. You gotta like an anti-imperialist patriot with a sense of humor.
I apologise for the mistake. Incipient senility. I do know the considerable difference between El Salvador and Ecuador, as well as agree that the latter deserves congratulations. In fact, I probably know the difference better than Dubya does.
El Salvador sounds like the perfect U.S. client state---furnishing killers to help cow feds' enemies, foreign and domestic.
@5 Kirt
The benefit is that rednecks in suburban Washington can now enjoy pollo a la brasa (Salvadoran), and tacos (Mexican).
@6 Clyde
That's not very difficult because W did not seem to know anything.
Dr. Wilson,
Do you know of any example in history of any government to consistently set policies against the best interest of its own citizenry other than our own?––or are we setting a precedent?
If there were others why did the government do it? And why do you think ours is doing it? Ideology or money––or both?
Dr. Wilson,
Does the U.S. Constitution, if interpreted correctly, classify the votes of those Congressmen and actions of the President (Obama, Bush, whoever - to give jobs and welfare and entitlements to illegals, to let illegals stay in the country, to cease checking citizenship status, etc.) as acts of treason punishable by death, comparable to or perhaps indistinguishable from the case of the Rosenbergs in '53?
Tom Ridnour @9
Indeed, an easy example is the European Union. These countries have surrendered their national heritages to a gang of multicultural bureaucrats in Brussels. The latest outrage: Brussels has directed the politicians of the European Union to cease and desist from using Mr. or Mrs., Senor and Senora, Frau and Fraulein, etc. in referring to female colleagues. Why? Such references are inherently discriminatory since they call attention to the woman's marital status!
Brock H.
The Constitution provides for conviction of treason only by testimony of two witnesses in open court. The politicians who betray our nation in the manner described may be guilty of "treason" in the vituperative sense, but not constitutionally. They might be called by some unmitigated scoundrels, but I am not among them. I have more vulgar descriptions.
#11 Indeed, an easy example is the European Union.
David, thanks for that response.
Of course, there is the EU, including England, so it's clearly a modern western phenomena. affecting western Europe and those nations in the European tradition. (I wonder how severe the situation is in Australia and New Zealand.)
That notwithstanding, I think my question still stands, refined a bit: is there evidence of such actions by governments in history or is the modern western cultural suicide unique in history?
#9. I have often thought of how strange it is that a people be destroyed and displaced by their own rulers. I suppose it has happened before and it is usually product of the inevitable disintegration of an empire. I doubt if it has ever been before so blatant or so celebrated as a wonderful thing as in the good ole United State. The wise men, mostly despised "Populists." who opposed the Yankee leap into imperialism in the Spanish War/WW I period warned of exactly this.
Sorry, Clyde, I can't let you get away with blaming Yankees for our imperial ventures. They had largely opposed even the Mexican War earlier, and in the Spanish War period, remember, the Anti-Imperialist League was founded in Massachusetts. Two real, bonafide Yankees, Grover Cleveland and Calvin Coolidge, bookended that era as perhaps the last two real America First Presidents. And speaking of America First, the great majority of its members were from, alas, the north. Our imperial ventures are very much a mixed bag, but this is one sorry part of our history you just can't pin on us Yankees.
#9: it is usually product of the inevitable disintegration of an empire.
Do such things have a necessary connection? I can certainly see such internal betrayal is less likely at the empire's apex, but does the betrayal of the people logically follow as the empire collapses?
Empires, historically, have disintegrated and weakened from within by decadence in the people and self-serving leaders. The people have been most harmed by the leaders indulging the them with the soporifics of bread and circuses, not by setting laws and policies preferential to invaders.
I keep trying to see what is unique about our conditions and our modern society to cause this phenomenon to be so widespread, so thoroughgoing, so uncanny in consistency throughout the halls of imperial power, and I can't quite see it. Our leaders are clearly witless, dull, lacking in character––the whole nine yards, but they are not completely insane. Well, maybe Ted Kennedy is completely insane, and Nancy Lugosi, America's Marie Antoinette, would be if she had been born with a brain capable of higher functions, such as reasoning and knowing right from wrong.
One thing I know: our post-Linconian, imperial society is a zero sum game. For every loser there is a winner, and winners are closely calculated.
I tend to think if we can find the group that consistently wins in our society whenever the people lose we can find a large piece of the puzzle.
Bankers, the international investment institutions and domestic companies that employ illegals strike me as those who can possibly consistently profit from the weakening of the citizenry (especially the heirs of the children of the Revolution).
Of course, one non-business group that might be pointed to as a cause of such policies is the group that has bought into the mania of "egalitarianism gone wild". But they strike me as useful idiots; mere means that will be jettisoned as soon as they are no longer useful.
So, the questions persist; who is behind the treasonous behavior of our general government? Is this situation unique to us? If so what are the causes of that uniqueness? If not where is there an earlier precedent and what were the consequences?
Dear John, The Mexican War was not imperialism., it was a necessary move into empty territory on our borders. Grover Cleveland was not a Yankee, born and raised outside the New England orbit and declined to participate in Lincoln's war. Though they are not alone to blame, it was largely the Northeastern establishment that launched into imperialism with the seizure of Philippines, Hawaii, and China involvement (TR, Lodge, Hay, etc.) It is the northeastern establishment that has been the primary beneficiary of internationalism. True, Midwesterners resisted FDR on WW II, but that war was not strictly speaking imperialist, though the results were. It is literally true that many Easterners saw the imperialism of the early 20th century as an extension and repeat of Lincoln's crusade and so did many Southern opponents of it. (The Republican platform of 1900 recommended giving the evil Filipinos for resisting the greatest government on earth the same treatment as the evil Southerners got for the same thing a few decades before.)
You might call Wilson a Southerner (though his primary origins were really Northern Calvinist) and Southerners supported him. But the Eastern Republican establishment was also very strong for entry into the European war, whil many of the most vocal opponents were Southern Democrats.
#9
In the twentieth century, far more people were intentionally killed by their own governments than died in wars conducted by their governments.
@#4, The statement "We did it to ourselves" is about as accurate as the politicians' claim in regard to the national debt, "We owe it to ouselves".
Actually, we, the American people, had nothing whatsoever to do with the actions of members and employees of our federal government who have created the current situation we're in. We have no input at all into their decisions and have to peaceful remedy to their agression against us.
If the idea is that somehow we inflicted all this harm on ourselves by voting or not voting, it would have to be shown that the electoral process is honest and transparent and, at the same time, that there are candidates running in these elections who have discernible differences in their intentions once they gain office.
My view is that this mess has been inflicted upon us and the only blame we can accept as a people is that we have not yet resorted to violence against our self-appointed masters. Any man with family to defend can easily see the folly in going out of his way to provoke a violent response from the violent people in the employ of the ruling class.
Sorry, but that should read "no peaceful remedy"
Mr. Roberts, I think it is broadly true that people get the government they deserve. True, our rulers are corrupt, but where is the outrage and resistance on the part of the people?
where is the outrage and resistance on the part of the people?
The colonists were very patient and long suffering. I'm not sure we're all that much different. The more disenfranchisement we experience the closer to the edge the people are being pushed. I think it's clear to increasing numbers of people that our leaders are regarding us as fools and dupes.
So be it.
I think Obama's excesses may just push us over the edge. If that happens I think Glenn Beck may be right, the resistance will take the form of the French, not the American, revolution.
I apologize if this has been discussed on this blog before, and indeed it probably has in an indirect way.
What role do for-profit corporations play in conditioning common people to swallow crap from the top-down? Consider for a moment that modern business organizations are not democracies and are, in fact, dictatorships in many senses of the term. Now consider the fact that most working people spend most of their waking hours at work, where they are conditioned to comply (as an aside, is anyone else but me sick of the emphasis on "compliance" within business in recent years?)
I think common people are so conditioned into obeying for fear of losing their position that they do not easily switch gears when it comes time to deal with civic affairs. There is more to the "cozy relationship of big government and big business" than mere monetary profit. Another substantial by-product is unquestioned "compliance" on the part of the plebians.
Dear Clyde, Without going over ground that is somewhat tangential to what should be the main thread here (and I neglected to say before that I agree with almost every one of your original comments) I must respectfully and vigorously disagree that Grover Cleveland was not a Yankee. He was born in northern New Jersey of Connecticut Presbyterians who had come to New England in 1635, the year after my ancestors arrived. His kinsman Moses Cleveland opened up the Western, or Connecticut Reserve in Ohio; I am also one of his line. Grover lived most of his life in western New York, Yankee-land if ever there was any. His manner and habits and religion were all those of New England. He was anti-imperialist as most old New Englanders were. The rest I'll let go for now, except to say that southern Democrats were all for war in 1898, if not for annexation, and that the Mexican War was not imperialistic in its result, because among other things New Englanders argued so vigorously to cease considering the annexation of all of Mexico.
Dr. Wilson, in what way are we to resist? Given the example made of unoffending 7th Day Adventists at Mt Carmel in Texas, any armed resistance will be quickly stamped out and the resisters propagandized on TV and in print as criminal monsters.
There is plenty of outrage. I hear it daily when talking to people. The outrage of ordinary citizens goes unreported by the news media. Given the obvious fact that most people are bombarded daily by propaganda so that most do not know what a farce the electoral process is, how can the people at large be blamed for the sins committed by the ruling class?
I still conclude that what has been done by our government has been done to us, not by us. We are only guilty of failing to excercise the one option left to us, violent resistance. I can't accept blame for what our government does since I have had no input into their decisions and have no means of influencing them in any meaningful way.
If it's your view that I deserve to be robbed, cheated, bullied and ruled by the gang of thieves who have been in control since before I was born, so be it. I don't see my fellow citizens as the authors of this mess, nor as deserving of the crimes visited on us all by a criminal government. The blame for the crimes of the political class belongs purely to the members of the political class, not to the 300 million+ people who live under the rule of that class of criminals.
I think that H L Mencken had it right when he wrote that democracy is the idea that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it, good and hard. That's the view held by the political class, not my view.
I retain a residual faith in the people, in that I don't think any elite can govern any better. The solution of our Founders was to limit government. I don't see much of that understanding or sentiment. Since the mid-19th century the Powers have been doing all in their power to destroy any sense of unity and community in the people, except when they need us, as in WW II. I am not sure that there is any "American people" any more able to recognise and vindicate its identity. Didn't the last election make that clear?
The last election looked to me like the one before last, where the candidates were chosen by the party bosses before any primaries took place, and the media piled on to claim that the outcome was the voice of the people. That's how elections have gone ever since I can remember.
You're probably right about the existence of any identifiable "American people". Maybe there just simply ain't any such animal anymore. Thanks for the exchange of thoughts. I have enjoyed reading your answers here and have enjoyed reading your prose for the past several years on LRC and here.
@#26.....Dr. Wilson: With regard to your comment, "I am not sure that there is any “American people” any more able to recognise and vindicate its identity."
I agree with you on a macro basis about our polyglot population but I know real Americans when I meet them. It happens to me all the time as I meet people who in the first ten minutes of conversation make known their love of country, distrust of government, reverence for our ancestors and a not to subtle hint that only over their dead bodies will the government take their guns away. There are millions out there......