0 comment Tuesday, September 30, 2014 | admin
"The punishment suffered by the wise who refuse to take part in the government, is to live under the government of bad men." - Plato
That quote from Plato comes to mind as I read this piece about the 'immigration issue.'
This op-ed piece from the Washington Times takes a very pessimistic tone in regard to the pending amnesty bill.
Immigration disaster looming
Judging by what took place in the first hours of the Senate immigration debate last week, critics are deluding themselves if they expect lawmakers to improve the bill when debate resumes after the Memorial Day recess. Most of the organized political pressure on the immigration issue is coming from open-borders advocates intent on enabling more illegals to obtain amnesty and bring their relatives to the United States, and from Washington elites on the left and the right who think anyone who doesn't share their permissive philosophy is backward and xenophobic. Unless the American people rise up en masse and tell their senators in no uncertain terms that they cannot accept amnesty, the Senate bill will easily pass and no one should be surprised if it passes with amendments making it even more harmful to taxpayers and detrimental to hometown safety and homeland security.
[...]Right now, the open-borders side is on the offensive, while border-security proponents face an uphill battle in the Senate.''
The op-ed writers are simply being realistic; there are highly organized, activist, well-funded groups pushing aggressively for the amnesty to be passed, and our side, the side of the American people, seems to consist mostly of individuals and a few immigration restrictionist lobbying groups. We are not evenly matched. The fact is, it is a David-and-Goliath situation, and we the people, though the majority, are little David, and the Senators and their open-borders partners are Goliath.
However, the fact is, despite the money and the activist pressure groups pushing mightily for amnesty, there are far more Americans who oppose it, and who want our borders closed and our laws enforced. We are the majority, despite the opinions of people like Linda Chavez, who in her recent Townhall piece, asserted that we 'nativists' are a tiny minority. No; we are the majority, and our American system is theoretically based on majority rule, and the will of the majority should always prevail, as Jefferson said. The amnesty forces, the open borders zealots, are the minority, despite the loudness of their voices and the depth of their pockets and their stranglehold on the media. They are the 'tiny minority' as of now. For their will to prevail over the will of the majority of the citizens of America is an injustice, and a usurpation of our rightful power. We have to remember that: we, the people, are the repositories of power in this country, and our elected officials govern with the consent of the governed. If they are acting as rogue officials, representing foreign interests and corporate interests, not the American people, they are violating the principles on which America was founded. The prospect of our country being transformed by millions of strangers is troubling enough, but the deeper issue is that our government, in taking the side of these aliens, has displaced the American people from their rightful position of power. This is deeply wrong; our Founding Fathers warned of this kind of thing.
Here is someone who understands this, and who may be on the right track in proposing a Constitutional Convention. He makes his case here:
Why 'we the people' need to assert our sovereignty, or risk losing it
by Frank Miele
In the France of Louis XIV, the king could say without a shred of irony, "L�etat, c�est moi! The state, it is I."
In the years following the adoption of the U.S. Constitution, Americans could proudly say, "The state, it is we the people."
But in this day and age, who exactly is invested with sovereignty in the United States of America? Is it "we the people"? And if so, why do we feel so disenfranchised, so alienated, so used?
[...]Or perhaps sovereignty today belongs to the Congress of the United States? Could our elected representatives have seized power from us, right under our noses, and left us none the wiser?
[...]...last week I proposed that the people of the United States, through their state legislatures, ought to take back the reins of power and ask for � no, demand! � a convention to propose amendments to the U.S. Constitution � in particular, an amendment that requires border enforcement and denies citizenship to anyone in this country illegally, including those who were born here because their parents were here illegally.
If you think it is going to happen any other way, you are mistaken. And if you think the Constitution should not be handled by "we the people" because it is too fragile and too delicate, then you missed the point of having a Constitution. We are a self-governing people. It is not "we the dead people" who have the power in this country; it is "we the living."
[...]we should not be afraid to seize the power granted to us by our forbears and by God in order to revivify the words of Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence that "Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the consent of the governed" and "That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government..."
[...]Thus, taking my cue from Jefferson, I am calling for a constitutional convention to quickly and once and for all establish the duty and necessity of the commander in chief acting to secure the borders of the country against foreign intrusions of any kind and establishing the authority of the Congress to regulate legal immigration but never to provide blanket amnesty of any kind for illegal residents of this country.
Such drastic action is necessary because it now becomes apparent that the people of the United States can no longer depend on the Congress of the United States to do our business. A constitutional convention may well be the only way to deprive the Senate of its plan to legitimize as many as 20 million illegal immigrants and change the face of America for all time.''
Please read the whole piece; Frank Miele is a rarity in the media these days: a real patriot who understands what is at stake.
I think we should do all we can, including keeping up the pressure on the politicians, but I believe Miele is right; Americans have become too disengaged, and too willing to be passive and assume that our politicians 'represent' us and our interests, when it's clear that most of them do not, at this point.
It may be that we need something as dramatic as a Constitutional convention; we Americans have to reconnect with our rightful role as the repositories of power in this country. We have to remind our forgetful politicians that they govern only by our consent, and that if we withdraw that consent, then they have lost their legitimacy to govern us.
Most of our Senators, judging by the crucial votes on the amnesty bill, have already broken their contract with us, their constituents, and have shown that they do not respect the will of the people. Something is needed to get their attention, and to remind them of their solemn responsibilities to us.
As Miele says at the conclusion of his piece,
Let�s take back our Constitution, and take back our country.'
"When once a republic is corrupted, there is no possibility of remedying any of the growing evils but by removing the corruption and restoring its lost principles; every other correction is either useless or a new evil."- Thomas Jefferson
"If ever time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin."
- Samuel Adams
Friends, those 'vain and aspiring men' sit in the halls of power now. Are there enough of us "experienced patriots to prevent the country's ruin?"
That quote from Plato comes to mind as I read this piece about the 'immigration issue.'
This op-ed piece from the Washington Times takes a very pessimistic tone in regard to the pending amnesty bill.
Immigration disaster looming
Judging by what took place in the first hours of the Senate immigration debate last week, critics are deluding themselves if they expect lawmakers to improve the bill when debate resumes after the Memorial Day recess. Most of the organized political pressure on the immigration issue is coming from open-borders advocates intent on enabling more illegals to obtain amnesty and bring their relatives to the United States, and from Washington elites on the left and the right who think anyone who doesn't share their permissive philosophy is backward and xenophobic. Unless the American people rise up en masse and tell their senators in no uncertain terms that they cannot accept amnesty, the Senate bill will easily pass and no one should be surprised if it passes with amendments making it even more harmful to taxpayers and detrimental to hometown safety and homeland security.
[...]Right now, the open-borders side is on the offensive, while border-security proponents face an uphill battle in the Senate.''
The op-ed writers are simply being realistic; there are highly organized, activist, well-funded groups pushing aggressively for the amnesty to be passed, and our side, the side of the American people, seems to consist mostly of individuals and a few immigration restrictionist lobbying groups. We are not evenly matched. The fact is, it is a David-and-Goliath situation, and we the people, though the majority, are little David, and the Senators and their open-borders partners are Goliath.
However, the fact is, despite the money and the activist pressure groups pushing mightily for amnesty, there are far more Americans who oppose it, and who want our borders closed and our laws enforced. We are the majority, despite the opinions of people like Linda Chavez, who in her recent Townhall piece, asserted that we 'nativists' are a tiny minority. No; we are the majority, and our American system is theoretically based on majority rule, and the will of the majority should always prevail, as Jefferson said. The amnesty forces, the open borders zealots, are the minority, despite the loudness of their voices and the depth of their pockets and their stranglehold on the media. They are the 'tiny minority' as of now. For their will to prevail over the will of the majority of the citizens of America is an injustice, and a usurpation of our rightful power. We have to remember that: we, the people, are the repositories of power in this country, and our elected officials govern with the consent of the governed. If they are acting as rogue officials, representing foreign interests and corporate interests, not the American people, they are violating the principles on which America was founded. The prospect of our country being transformed by millions of strangers is troubling enough, but the deeper issue is that our government, in taking the side of these aliens, has displaced the American people from their rightful position of power. This is deeply wrong; our Founding Fathers warned of this kind of thing.
Here is someone who understands this, and who may be on the right track in proposing a Constitutional Convention. He makes his case here:
Why 'we the people' need to assert our sovereignty, or risk losing it
by Frank Miele
In the France of Louis XIV, the king could say without a shred of irony, "L�etat, c�est moi! The state, it is I."
In the years following the adoption of the U.S. Constitution, Americans could proudly say, "The state, it is we the people."
But in this day and age, who exactly is invested with sovereignty in the United States of America? Is it "we the people"? And if so, why do we feel so disenfranchised, so alienated, so used?
[...]Or perhaps sovereignty today belongs to the Congress of the United States? Could our elected representatives have seized power from us, right under our noses, and left us none the wiser?
[...]...last week I proposed that the people of the United States, through their state legislatures, ought to take back the reins of power and ask for � no, demand! � a convention to propose amendments to the U.S. Constitution � in particular, an amendment that requires border enforcement and denies citizenship to anyone in this country illegally, including those who were born here because their parents were here illegally.
If you think it is going to happen any other way, you are mistaken. And if you think the Constitution should not be handled by "we the people" because it is too fragile and too delicate, then you missed the point of having a Constitution. We are a self-governing people. It is not "we the dead people" who have the power in this country; it is "we the living."
[...]we should not be afraid to seize the power granted to us by our forbears and by God in order to revivify the words of Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence that "Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the consent of the governed" and "That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government..."
[...]Thus, taking my cue from Jefferson, I am calling for a constitutional convention to quickly and once and for all establish the duty and necessity of the commander in chief acting to secure the borders of the country against foreign intrusions of any kind and establishing the authority of the Congress to regulate legal immigration but never to provide blanket amnesty of any kind for illegal residents of this country.
Such drastic action is necessary because it now becomes apparent that the people of the United States can no longer depend on the Congress of the United States to do our business. A constitutional convention may well be the only way to deprive the Senate of its plan to legitimize as many as 20 million illegal immigrants and change the face of America for all time.''
Please read the whole piece; Frank Miele is a rarity in the media these days: a real patriot who understands what is at stake.
I think we should do all we can, including keeping up the pressure on the politicians, but I believe Miele is right; Americans have become too disengaged, and too willing to be passive and assume that our politicians 'represent' us and our interests, when it's clear that most of them do not, at this point.
It may be that we need something as dramatic as a Constitutional convention; we Americans have to reconnect with our rightful role as the repositories of power in this country. We have to remind our forgetful politicians that they govern only by our consent, and that if we withdraw that consent, then they have lost their legitimacy to govern us.
Most of our Senators, judging by the crucial votes on the amnesty bill, have already broken their contract with us, their constituents, and have shown that they do not respect the will of the people. Something is needed to get their attention, and to remind them of their solemn responsibilities to us.
As Miele says at the conclusion of his piece,
Let�s take back our Constitution, and take back our country.'
"When once a republic is corrupted, there is no possibility of remedying any of the growing evils but by removing the corruption and restoring its lost principles; every other correction is either useless or a new evil."- Thomas Jefferson
"If ever time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin."
- Samuel Adams
Friends, those 'vain and aspiring men' sit in the halls of power now. Are there enough of us "experienced patriots to prevent the country's ruin?"
Labels: Amnesty, Illegal Immigration, Open Borders, Senate