0 comment Sunday, August 10, 2014 | admin
If there is an immigration 'debate' in this country, it's stagnant, stuck. And what has been passing for debate is merely a lot of rote phrases, emotion-based cliches, and name-calling from the open-borders side (which dominates the media, the blogosphere being the only exception), answered by an inhibited set of arguments from the restrictionist side, who suffer under the handicap of political correctness. The restrictionist side is constantly on the defensive, trying to disprove charges 'racism' and 'xenophobia', and trying vainly to fend off the name-calling which is the stock-in-trade of the open-borders coalition.
The mainstream media work tirelessly to push the pro-open borders agenda, and each and every day there is a spate of formulaic articles which I call the 'Jose and Maria stories', always about some poor-but-honest 'undocumented migrants' driven northward by poverty and want, and suffering various trials in the 'Promised Land'; confronting racism, heartless bureaucracy, and the other tribulations of 'seeking a better life.' The MSM have a stock set of propaganda pieces that they employ repeatedly; surely they must be embarrassed at repeating themselves so much, but the stories just keep on a-coming. I suspect that even the more gullible among the American readers are getting somewhat jaded and inured to all the heart-rending sympathy pieces. We are all suffering from sympathy fatigue, I think.
Apart from the touchy-feely stories, there are pieces like this one by Mark Helprin in the Washington Post, in which the writer assumes a superior, detached pose, and feigns objectivity by dismissing both sides from on high.
Mr. Helprin, unfortunately, resorts to name-calling ('febrile militia of Willie Nelson look-alikes ' - alluding to the Minutemen, whom he also calls 'armed geezers'), along with the typical slurs such as 'nativist' and 'xenophobe'.
I would ask Mr. Helprin for his definition of 'nativist', and I would expect him to explain why exactly favoring the interests of one's own country and countrymen is a bad thing, in his eyes. I would ask him, if nativism is a negative quality in his opinion, then what is the positive opposite of a nativist? And were our Founding Fathers 'nativists'? I say they were, and I choose to be on their side rather than on the side of bloodless intellectuals who have no love of country or their fellow citizens. As Sir Walter Scott wrote, 'Breathes there the man with soul so dead/Who never to himself hath said/This is my own, my native land?' Scott, were he alive today, would be surprised to see many such soul-dead men, usually of the intellectual 'world citizen' type, who disdain those rednecks who cling to their backward patriotism. Helprin's description of 'armed geezers' smacks of perceived superiority.
And while Helprin can find no flattering words for those 'armed geezers' and 'febrile' defenders of America, he positively fawns over immigrants. Good Lord, can anyone write an immigration piece these days without resorting to that cheap cliche 'nation of immigrants' or without praising the 'hard-working' 'new Americans'? This hackneyed set of phrases should embarrass the speaker or writer who resorts to them. They are just worn verbal counters, lacking any real meaning. The only purpose for uttering those words is to attempt to establish one's 'non-racist' bona fides. However, to me, it establishes only that the writer or speaker is a Politically Correct pharisee, saying 'I thank you, Lord, that I am not as other men', that I am not a xenophobe or a hater.
Helprin actually says:
Of course everyone in the New World is an immigrant or a descendant of immigrants, and immigrants have built America and continue to do so. Legal or illegal, they are almost universally good people who work to better their lot and that of their children.
Now we should be convinced, he hopes, that he is not one of those Willie Nelson lookalikes, nor a sympathizer with those distasteful 'armed geezers' he disdains. But as for his repetition of that cliche about 'almost universally good people who work to better their lot' -- I say, prove it, Mr. Helprin. Where is the evidence for that, or is it just another way of establishing how 'tolerant' and unbiased you are? Where are the statistics to show that the immigrants are 'almost universally good people'?
Mac Johnson writing in Human Events, December 5, 2005 said
...a simplistic good-faith estimate is that illegal aliens kill between 1,806 and 2,510 people in the United States each year. We have just passed the much-vaunted 2,000 deaths mark in the invasion of Iraq, a necessary endeavor. In that same 32 months, there have possibly been between 4,800 and 6,700 deaths in the invasion of the United States by illegal aliens, a corrupt endeavor tolerated in a frivolous pursuit of cheap labor.
The PC pharisees with their cant phrases about the 'universally good', 'hard-working' immigrants are partially responsible for this harm to American citizens. Their need to appear 'fair-minded' and non-xenophobic is more important than the safety of Americans, apparently. Combine their need to feel good about their tolerance and openness with the cheap labor lobby's need to 'fumble in a greasy till' and increase their profits, and this is the result.
America is under siege, from an ongoing invasion, from a terrorist threat, and from our own homegrown leftists. Our intelligentsia, especially in the media, are complicit; they are dithering and pontificating as our country slips away from us, more concerned about how they look to the world than about the fate of their country and their neighbors.
The mainstream media work tirelessly to push the pro-open borders agenda, and each and every day there is a spate of formulaic articles which I call the 'Jose and Maria stories', always about some poor-but-honest 'undocumented migrants' driven northward by poverty and want, and suffering various trials in the 'Promised Land'; confronting racism, heartless bureaucracy, and the other tribulations of 'seeking a better life.' The MSM have a stock set of propaganda pieces that they employ repeatedly; surely they must be embarrassed at repeating themselves so much, but the stories just keep on a-coming. I suspect that even the more gullible among the American readers are getting somewhat jaded and inured to all the heart-rending sympathy pieces. We are all suffering from sympathy fatigue, I think.
Apart from the touchy-feely stories, there are pieces like this one by Mark Helprin in the Washington Post, in which the writer assumes a superior, detached pose, and feigns objectivity by dismissing both sides from on high.
Mr. Helprin, unfortunately, resorts to name-calling ('febrile militia of Willie Nelson look-alikes ' - alluding to the Minutemen, whom he also calls 'armed geezers'), along with the typical slurs such as 'nativist' and 'xenophobe'.
I would ask Mr. Helprin for his definition of 'nativist', and I would expect him to explain why exactly favoring the interests of one's own country and countrymen is a bad thing, in his eyes. I would ask him, if nativism is a negative quality in his opinion, then what is the positive opposite of a nativist? And were our Founding Fathers 'nativists'? I say they were, and I choose to be on their side rather than on the side of bloodless intellectuals who have no love of country or their fellow citizens. As Sir Walter Scott wrote, 'Breathes there the man with soul so dead/Who never to himself hath said/This is my own, my native land?' Scott, were he alive today, would be surprised to see many such soul-dead men, usually of the intellectual 'world citizen' type, who disdain those rednecks who cling to their backward patriotism. Helprin's description of 'armed geezers' smacks of perceived superiority.
And while Helprin can find no flattering words for those 'armed geezers' and 'febrile' defenders of America, he positively fawns over immigrants. Good Lord, can anyone write an immigration piece these days without resorting to that cheap cliche 'nation of immigrants' or without praising the 'hard-working' 'new Americans'? This hackneyed set of phrases should embarrass the speaker or writer who resorts to them. They are just worn verbal counters, lacking any real meaning. The only purpose for uttering those words is to attempt to establish one's 'non-racist' bona fides. However, to me, it establishes only that the writer or speaker is a Politically Correct pharisee, saying 'I thank you, Lord, that I am not as other men', that I am not a xenophobe or a hater.
Helprin actually says:
Of course everyone in the New World is an immigrant or a descendant of immigrants, and immigrants have built America and continue to do so. Legal or illegal, they are almost universally good people who work to better their lot and that of their children.
Now we should be convinced, he hopes, that he is not one of those Willie Nelson lookalikes, nor a sympathizer with those distasteful 'armed geezers' he disdains. But as for his repetition of that cliche about 'almost universally good people who work to better their lot' -- I say, prove it, Mr. Helprin. Where is the evidence for that, or is it just another way of establishing how 'tolerant' and unbiased you are? Where are the statistics to show that the immigrants are 'almost universally good people'?
Mac Johnson writing in Human Events, December 5, 2005 said
...a simplistic good-faith estimate is that illegal aliens kill between 1,806 and 2,510 people in the United States each year. We have just passed the much-vaunted 2,000 deaths mark in the invasion of Iraq, a necessary endeavor. In that same 32 months, there have possibly been between 4,800 and 6,700 deaths in the invasion of the United States by illegal aliens, a corrupt endeavor tolerated in a frivolous pursuit of cheap labor.
The PC pharisees with their cant phrases about the 'universally good', 'hard-working' immigrants are partially responsible for this harm to American citizens. Their need to appear 'fair-minded' and non-xenophobic is more important than the safety of Americans, apparently. Combine their need to feel good about their tolerance and openness with the cheap labor lobby's need to 'fumble in a greasy till' and increase their profits, and this is the result.
America is under siege, from an ongoing invasion, from a terrorist threat, and from our own homegrown leftists. Our intelligentsia, especially in the media, are complicit; they are dithering and pontificating as our country slips away from us, more concerned about how they look to the world than about the fate of their country and their neighbors.