0 comment Monday, April 28, 2014 | admin
In this Pittsburgh Tribune-Review piece, Dimitri Vassilaros asks
Are we anti-immigrant racists?
The Diocese of Pittsburgh is all but calling its hometown racist.
This is the essence of its stunningly offensive ad airing on local radio stations.
"There is an unjustified discomfort today with immigrants, particularly from Latin America. That sentiment has even taken root in Southwestern Pennsylvania, though clearly the problem here is too few immigrants rather than too many.
"It is ironic that Pittsburgh, built by European immigrants, has displayed an anti-immigration mentality. But worse than that, it's dangerous. Without immigrants, Southwestern Pennsylvania is doomed."
Whoa. Southwestern Pennsylvania is doomed? Isn't that rather hysterical rhetoric?
The open borders zealots say this kind of thing all the time, and the media, with their pro-immigration axe-grinding, repeat it endlessly. But how about some evidence or some proof of this 'doom'? There is no proof. This is just propaganda, plain and simple.
And what about the earlier statement that the area had "too few immigrants"? Too few by what standard? What makes these clerics or religious spokesmen the arbiters and the authorities on how many immigrants are 'too few'? I would ask how many they would consider 'too many', but that question would be meaningless to them; I would bet that they think the sky is the limit; one can't have 'too many immigrants', especially if these immigrants are warm bodies to fill their pews or their collection plates.
Lest anyone accuse me of anti-Catholic sentiments, I am not anti-Catholic, but I resent the open-borders, America-abolishing agenda of the Church hierarchy. I am aware that not all Catholics agree with the Church's enthusiasm for mass Latino immigration, but still there seems to be little vocal opposition to it.
To be fair, I know that all the mainline Protestant denominations have similar politics, and are agitating for open borders and the usual leftist program. And it is not just the mainline denominations who have been in the leftist camp for at least half a century, but now it is the more 'conservative' and traditional churches who are jumping on the bandwagon. Many traditional churches have some kind of Hispanic ministry and 'outreach' involving special programs and social service help to Hispanics, mostly illegals, and in some cases, set up a kind of dual church, with the Hispanics having their own services in Spanish, with a Hispanic pastor.
So there is a wave of universalistic, open borders fervor involving many churches.
Paging the ACLU: where are the 'separation of church and state' fanatics? Where is Reverend Barry Lynn, carping about the church intruding into the public sphere? Where are all the liberals and lefties uttering dark warnings about 'theocracy'? Suddenly the cat has got all their tongues, when it comes to churches' activism on behalf of illegal invaders.
Double standards, anyone?
And why are these Christians being so judgmental of their fellow Americans:
'Why is the diocese saying such hateful things about its good neighbors?
"I almost have to say it has a strong racial element to it," says Robert Lockwood, the diocese's director of communications.
Does the alleged hostility surprise him?
"Personally, yes," Mr. Lockwood says. "This is such a town with a (historically) diverse immigrant population, particularly from the Catholic perspective. The idea of welcoming immigrants and knowing in the long run what they mean, who would know better than that other than Pittsburghers?"
What about those who are concerned about lawbreakers, since there are 12 million-plus aliens in this republic illegally?
"Well, they say it's because of illegality," Lockwood says. "A certain element says, 'By God, let's make sure we keep them illegal because we don't want them coming here.' "
Those opposed to immigration are motivated by a fear of the poverty and crime the poor may bring with them from south of the border, he says.''
Well, yes, Mr. Lockwood, that is true. Many of us are motivated by a concern that poverty and crime are increasing along with the perpetually rising number of illegals -- and legal immigrants too, for that matter. And how is a concern about real problems 'racist'? Are we allowed to be concerned and upset about crime and poverty only when it involves native-born Americans? Are illegals and other immigrants above criticism simply because they are mostly non-white? Is that not discrimination, making some races accountable and exempting others, based on their race?
Mr. Lockwood, I could show you statistics from now till doomsday about immigrant poverty and crime, and I could show you statistics about the social pathologies, and the exotic diseases introduced by mass immigration. Do you have no concern for the American people who will suffer as a result of these things? Do you have no heart for the many people who are killed by illegals driving drunk? Or those killed in acts of willful violence by illegals?
And what about all the Americans who are in need who are pushed to the back of the line because of the overwhelming numbers of illegal AND legal immigrants who are given special consideration? Subsidized housing, for example: there are long waiting lists in many cities; years long, actually, for the elderly, the disabled, and low income people generally. Granted, most conservatives would like to abolish such programs, but there are those born in our country who need help at times because of age and ill health. Yet these people are elbowed aside by the pandering to illegals. The waiting lists are growing longer and longer; state budgets for social services are strained, and cuts are often threatened because of the sheer number of immigrants arriving and asking for help. Is this fair to Americans? Illegals and legal immigrants often draw some kind of assistance, such as SSI and other forms of welfare, sometimes under multiple IDs. They receive medical assistance, EBT cards, and many such benefits. Yet there are finite funds for these social programs. How can we knowingly import more dependent people and opportunistic milkers of the system? That is what we are doing in opening the borders. Does Mr. Lockwood think that American taxpayers have limitless money from which to extort assistance for his beloved illegals? Does he open up his own home to the illegals? If not, why not? Does he propose to care for them solely out of church funds? Why not practice charity without forcing taxpayers to foot the bill, without their consent?
I suspect many of the illegals and legal immigrants also draw some kind of handouts from church funds: housing vouchers, clothing and shelter assistance, food bank use. And when the funds run out, how many Americans are being deprived of help?
And how many Americans have lost their jobs to illegals and legal immigrants who undercut them? How many Americans are underemployed, their wages and benefits driven down by the presence of so many immigrants?
Mr. Lockwood, why are you and your kind so fixated on the immigrants? Why your love affair with them? Do you think they are better human beings than your own kin and your fellow Pennsylvanians? This seems
to be the pattern with liberals. They care about everybody before their own:
"Some say that ravens foster forlorn children, The whilst their own birds famish in their nests." - William Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus, Act 2, Scene 3, lines 142-3
Liberals are fond of 'fostering forlorn children' in preference to their own countrymen. To me, this seems a perversion of the natural order of things. Our responsibility starts with our own, with those closest to us, and works outward: family, extended kin, neighbors, countrymen. All of these 'forlorn children', these changelings that have been deposited in our nest, have a homeland, and a country into which they were born; why do they have the right to demand this country and all the benefits of citizens as well? The rest of us have no claim to another country; this is the only country we have and we are loath to give it away to people who despise us, covet what we have, and who will, in very short order, outnumber us greatly. And if and when they do so, it will be due to the turncoats, the people "without natural affections", the people like Mr. Lockwood and all the other open borders fifth columnists.
And those Catholic clergy who agitate for open borders and amnesty for invaders would do well to read this passage from St. Thomas Aquinas:
Our parents and our country are the sources of our being and education. It is they that have given us birth and nurtured us in our infant years. Consequently, after his duties toward God, man owes most to his parents and his country. One�s duties towards one�s parents include one�s obligations towards relatives, because these latter have sprung from [or are connected by ties of blood with] one�s parents�and the services due to one�s country have for their object all one�s fellow-countrymen and all the friends of one�s fatherland."
[Emphasis mine]
But apparently the gospel of Karl Marx is the only one in which the liberal church activists believe.
Dimitri Vassilaros is usually fairly sound in his writings about immigration, but it looks very much to me as if he is toeing the PC line here:
Being an advocate for U.S. sovereignty, such as calling for an airtight defense of the borders, does not make one a racist. And neither does demanding the laws of this land be enforced.
Do opponents of illegal aliens claim the laws apply only to Hispanics?
Any discomfort most yinzers might have about aliens is based on legality, not nationality.
The diocese's misguided moralizing, which borders on holier-than-thou name-calling, adds nothing to the immigration debate other than hate talk. ''
Please note how he falls back on that favorite rationalization of the PC 'right': the protestation that it's only the illegality that we object to; now recite it along with me, class. We all know it by heart:
''I'm in favor of all immigration just as long as it's legal. What part of illegal don't you understand? "
I have repeatedly revisited this issue time and again, probably to the point of tiring my readers: we who love our country and want to preserve it, and not see it overwhelmed and transformed into something else, need not apologize to anyone for that; it is a natural impulse. Only we in the Western countries, because our forefathers produced the best civilization and the highest standard of living, are being asked to stand aside while invaders usurp our homelands, and while our heritage and culture are obliterated in the name of making these invaders comfortable in our land. Is this not a bizarre and unnatural state of affairs? Has it ever been seen before in history? Yet these liberals act as though it is a given that we are simply supposed to make way for the invaders, lay out the red carpet, all without a whimper.
We should never, ever allow the invaders and their turncoat accomplices to make us feel guilty about wanting to keep our country and our way of life. We should not allow them to continue to put us on the defensive. The onus is not on Americans to 'prove' we are not 'racist'.
There is no need for us to recite this silly formula about how we only object to illegal immigration, but we love all legal immigration. Please, folks, think about that: if 30 or 40 million illegals suddenly became legal tomorrow, would anything change? Would our country be less endangered by 30 or 40 million legal immigrants with the same qualities? Will the crime and the public expenditures disappear when they are legal? Will our displacement be more acceptable and less painful if we are pushed aside in favor of people who are here legally? Will our children be any less outnumbered and marginalized if their replacements are all 'legal'?
And suppose we let in 5 million legal immigrants each year. We now allow 1.3 million legal immigrants yearly, and our electeds want to increase that. Can we say we are happy with that, as long as it's legal?
Legal or illegal, it's mass immigration, on an unprecedented scale, that is the problem, the cause of the crisis here. Vassilaros is either toeing the PC line when he says the illegality is the only issue, or maybe he is just one of those libertarians who does not see any value in preserving a nation and its culture. I believe Vassilaros has indicated he is a libertarian, and sometimes their viewpoint focuses on the economic aspect, at the expense of ties of kinship and culture. It's only the conservatives, the true conservatives, who care about these things, and who reject the nonsense of the 'proposition nation', so beloved of the liberals of both right and left.
And if we prefer our own countrymen, those who share our culture and our ways and our history, is that now a crime? If so, we need to rectify that. There should be no public censure just for preferring our own fellow Americans above strangers. This was always the natural order of things, everywhere, before the world became unhinged by leftist ideas. Anyone who sees an affinity for one's own, and for the familiar, as a crime or an evil is a stone leftist, or is simply a freak of nature, 'without natural affections'.
One "need not believe that one�s own ethnic group, or any ethnic group, is superior to others�in order to wish one�s country to continue to be made up of the same ethnic strains in the same proportions as before. And, conversely, the wish not to see one�s country overrun by groups one regards as alien need not be based on feelings of superiority or 'racism��the wish to preserve one�s identity and the identity of one�s nation requires no justification�any more than the wish to have one�s own children, and to continue one�s family through them need be justified or rationalized by a belief that they are superior to the children of others." Ernest van den Haag, 1965
Are we anti-immigrant racists?
The Diocese of Pittsburgh is all but calling its hometown racist.
This is the essence of its stunningly offensive ad airing on local radio stations.
"There is an unjustified discomfort today with immigrants, particularly from Latin America. That sentiment has even taken root in Southwestern Pennsylvania, though clearly the problem here is too few immigrants rather than too many.
"It is ironic that Pittsburgh, built by European immigrants, has displayed an anti-immigration mentality. But worse than that, it's dangerous. Without immigrants, Southwestern Pennsylvania is doomed."
Whoa. Southwestern Pennsylvania is doomed? Isn't that rather hysterical rhetoric?
The open borders zealots say this kind of thing all the time, and the media, with their pro-immigration axe-grinding, repeat it endlessly. But how about some evidence or some proof of this 'doom'? There is no proof. This is just propaganda, plain and simple.
And what about the earlier statement that the area had "too few immigrants"? Too few by what standard? What makes these clerics or religious spokesmen the arbiters and the authorities on how many immigrants are 'too few'? I would ask how many they would consider 'too many', but that question would be meaningless to them; I would bet that they think the sky is the limit; one can't have 'too many immigrants', especially if these immigrants are warm bodies to fill their pews or their collection plates.
Lest anyone accuse me of anti-Catholic sentiments, I am not anti-Catholic, but I resent the open-borders, America-abolishing agenda of the Church hierarchy. I am aware that not all Catholics agree with the Church's enthusiasm for mass Latino immigration, but still there seems to be little vocal opposition to it.
To be fair, I know that all the mainline Protestant denominations have similar politics, and are agitating for open borders and the usual leftist program. And it is not just the mainline denominations who have been in the leftist camp for at least half a century, but now it is the more 'conservative' and traditional churches who are jumping on the bandwagon. Many traditional churches have some kind of Hispanic ministry and 'outreach' involving special programs and social service help to Hispanics, mostly illegals, and in some cases, set up a kind of dual church, with the Hispanics having their own services in Spanish, with a Hispanic pastor.
So there is a wave of universalistic, open borders fervor involving many churches.
Paging the ACLU: where are the 'separation of church and state' fanatics? Where is Reverend Barry Lynn, carping about the church intruding into the public sphere? Where are all the liberals and lefties uttering dark warnings about 'theocracy'? Suddenly the cat has got all their tongues, when it comes to churches' activism on behalf of illegal invaders.
Double standards, anyone?
And why are these Christians being so judgmental of their fellow Americans:
'Why is the diocese saying such hateful things about its good neighbors?
"I almost have to say it has a strong racial element to it," says Robert Lockwood, the diocese's director of communications.
Does the alleged hostility surprise him?
"Personally, yes," Mr. Lockwood says. "This is such a town with a (historically) diverse immigrant population, particularly from the Catholic perspective. The idea of welcoming immigrants and knowing in the long run what they mean, who would know better than that other than Pittsburghers?"
What about those who are concerned about lawbreakers, since there are 12 million-plus aliens in this republic illegally?
"Well, they say it's because of illegality," Lockwood says. "A certain element says, 'By God, let's make sure we keep them illegal because we don't want them coming here.' "
Those opposed to immigration are motivated by a fear of the poverty and crime the poor may bring with them from south of the border, he says.''
Well, yes, Mr. Lockwood, that is true. Many of us are motivated by a concern that poverty and crime are increasing along with the perpetually rising number of illegals -- and legal immigrants too, for that matter. And how is a concern about real problems 'racist'? Are we allowed to be concerned and upset about crime and poverty only when it involves native-born Americans? Are illegals and other immigrants above criticism simply because they are mostly non-white? Is that not discrimination, making some races accountable and exempting others, based on their race?
Mr. Lockwood, I could show you statistics from now till doomsday about immigrant poverty and crime, and I could show you statistics about the social pathologies, and the exotic diseases introduced by mass immigration. Do you have no concern for the American people who will suffer as a result of these things? Do you have no heart for the many people who are killed by illegals driving drunk? Or those killed in acts of willful violence by illegals?
And what about all the Americans who are in need who are pushed to the back of the line because of the overwhelming numbers of illegal AND legal immigrants who are given special consideration? Subsidized housing, for example: there are long waiting lists in many cities; years long, actually, for the elderly, the disabled, and low income people generally. Granted, most conservatives would like to abolish such programs, but there are those born in our country who need help at times because of age and ill health. Yet these people are elbowed aside by the pandering to illegals. The waiting lists are growing longer and longer; state budgets for social services are strained, and cuts are often threatened because of the sheer number of immigrants arriving and asking for help. Is this fair to Americans? Illegals and legal immigrants often draw some kind of assistance, such as SSI and other forms of welfare, sometimes under multiple IDs. They receive medical assistance, EBT cards, and many such benefits. Yet there are finite funds for these social programs. How can we knowingly import more dependent people and opportunistic milkers of the system? That is what we are doing in opening the borders. Does Mr. Lockwood think that American taxpayers have limitless money from which to extort assistance for his beloved illegals? Does he open up his own home to the illegals? If not, why not? Does he propose to care for them solely out of church funds? Why not practice charity without forcing taxpayers to foot the bill, without their consent?
I suspect many of the illegals and legal immigrants also draw some kind of handouts from church funds: housing vouchers, clothing and shelter assistance, food bank use. And when the funds run out, how many Americans are being deprived of help?
And how many Americans have lost their jobs to illegals and legal immigrants who undercut them? How many Americans are underemployed, their wages and benefits driven down by the presence of so many immigrants?
Mr. Lockwood, why are you and your kind so fixated on the immigrants? Why your love affair with them? Do you think they are better human beings than your own kin and your fellow Pennsylvanians? This seems
to be the pattern with liberals. They care about everybody before their own:
"Some say that ravens foster forlorn children, The whilst their own birds famish in their nests." - William Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus, Act 2, Scene 3, lines 142-3
Liberals are fond of 'fostering forlorn children' in preference to their own countrymen. To me, this seems a perversion of the natural order of things. Our responsibility starts with our own, with those closest to us, and works outward: family, extended kin, neighbors, countrymen. All of these 'forlorn children', these changelings that have been deposited in our nest, have a homeland, and a country into which they were born; why do they have the right to demand this country and all the benefits of citizens as well? The rest of us have no claim to another country; this is the only country we have and we are loath to give it away to people who despise us, covet what we have, and who will, in very short order, outnumber us greatly. And if and when they do so, it will be due to the turncoats, the people "without natural affections", the people like Mr. Lockwood and all the other open borders fifth columnists.
And those Catholic clergy who agitate for open borders and amnesty for invaders would do well to read this passage from St. Thomas Aquinas:
Our parents and our country are the sources of our being and education. It is they that have given us birth and nurtured us in our infant years. Consequently, after his duties toward God, man owes most to his parents and his country. One�s duties towards one�s parents include one�s obligations towards relatives, because these latter have sprung from [or are connected by ties of blood with] one�s parents�and the services due to one�s country have for their object all one�s fellow-countrymen and all the friends of one�s fatherland."
[Emphasis mine]
But apparently the gospel of Karl Marx is the only one in which the liberal church activists believe.
Dimitri Vassilaros is usually fairly sound in his writings about immigration, but it looks very much to me as if he is toeing the PC line here:
Being an advocate for U.S. sovereignty, such as calling for an airtight defense of the borders, does not make one a racist. And neither does demanding the laws of this land be enforced.
Do opponents of illegal aliens claim the laws apply only to Hispanics?
Any discomfort most yinzers might have about aliens is based on legality, not nationality.
The diocese's misguided moralizing, which borders on holier-than-thou name-calling, adds nothing to the immigration debate other than hate talk. ''
Please note how he falls back on that favorite rationalization of the PC 'right': the protestation that it's only the illegality that we object to; now recite it along with me, class. We all know it by heart:
''I'm in favor of all immigration just as long as it's legal. What part of illegal don't you understand? "
I have repeatedly revisited this issue time and again, probably to the point of tiring my readers: we who love our country and want to preserve it, and not see it overwhelmed and transformed into something else, need not apologize to anyone for that; it is a natural impulse. Only we in the Western countries, because our forefathers produced the best civilization and the highest standard of living, are being asked to stand aside while invaders usurp our homelands, and while our heritage and culture are obliterated in the name of making these invaders comfortable in our land. Is this not a bizarre and unnatural state of affairs? Has it ever been seen before in history? Yet these liberals act as though it is a given that we are simply supposed to make way for the invaders, lay out the red carpet, all without a whimper.
We should never, ever allow the invaders and their turncoat accomplices to make us feel guilty about wanting to keep our country and our way of life. We should not allow them to continue to put us on the defensive. The onus is not on Americans to 'prove' we are not 'racist'.
There is no need for us to recite this silly formula about how we only object to illegal immigration, but we love all legal immigration. Please, folks, think about that: if 30 or 40 million illegals suddenly became legal tomorrow, would anything change? Would our country be less endangered by 30 or 40 million legal immigrants with the same qualities? Will the crime and the public expenditures disappear when they are legal? Will our displacement be more acceptable and less painful if we are pushed aside in favor of people who are here legally? Will our children be any less outnumbered and marginalized if their replacements are all 'legal'?
And suppose we let in 5 million legal immigrants each year. We now allow 1.3 million legal immigrants yearly, and our electeds want to increase that. Can we say we are happy with that, as long as it's legal?
Legal or illegal, it's mass immigration, on an unprecedented scale, that is the problem, the cause of the crisis here. Vassilaros is either toeing the PC line when he says the illegality is the only issue, or maybe he is just one of those libertarians who does not see any value in preserving a nation and its culture. I believe Vassilaros has indicated he is a libertarian, and sometimes their viewpoint focuses on the economic aspect, at the expense of ties of kinship and culture. It's only the conservatives, the true conservatives, who care about these things, and who reject the nonsense of the 'proposition nation', so beloved of the liberals of both right and left.
And if we prefer our own countrymen, those who share our culture and our ways and our history, is that now a crime? If so, we need to rectify that. There should be no public censure just for preferring our own fellow Americans above strangers. This was always the natural order of things, everywhere, before the world became unhinged by leftist ideas. Anyone who sees an affinity for one's own, and for the familiar, as a crime or an evil is a stone leftist, or is simply a freak of nature, 'without natural affections'.
One "need not believe that one�s own ethnic group, or any ethnic group, is superior to others�in order to wish one�s country to continue to be made up of the same ethnic strains in the same proportions as before. And, conversely, the wish not to see one�s country overrun by groups one regards as alien need not be based on feelings of superiority or 'racism��the wish to preserve one�s identity and the identity of one�s nation requires no justification�any more than the wish to have one�s own children, and to continue one�s family through them need be justified or rationalized by a belief that they are superior to the children of others." Ernest van den Haag, 1965
Labels: Church-State Separation, Illegal Immigration, Open Borders, Political Correctness