Polite Kid

Here's a rather interesting situation: author Orson Scott Card is the cause of some liberal handwringing among librarians. It seems he is being given an award by the American Library Association, but this can't be, because the 'library community' (liberals love that word community, don't they?) is in a tizzy over his homophobia. What to do?
This is a difficult issue, as librarians (supposedly) believe that information, in all of its forms, should be available to everyone, regardless of how repugnant we may personally or politically find it to be.
Especially in academic libraries, it behooves us to select things with which we disagree on occasion. The question then becomes, what message does giving Card this award send? I've drawn a couple of conclusions from this whole thing.
1) It is vitally important, when deciding to give someone a really big award, to know as much about that person as possible. Remember, in this case, the award was given to the person, not the work. Librarians involved in this particular award didn't do their homework, which has caused some serious problems for them, as well as a major public relations hit for ALA.
On the other hand, we cannot know that the committee would have decided any differently with the information in hand. 2) Awards for children's and young adult literature are particularly thorny, because there is always a struggle between those who wish to protect children from "bad things" in the world, and those who acknowledge that "bad things" exist, and wish to help their children navigate them through reading and discussion. These two groups, often, also disagree rather violently about which things are defined as "bad."
3) Card's internal, personal feelings about homosexuality are not necessarily the issue; his public statements condoning hatred of homosexuals are. As Karen Schneider pointed out, if Card's statements about homosexuals had replaced the word "homosexual" with any number of racial epithets, there is no way that Card would EVER have been considered for the award. Period. While I try very hard to separate the person from the work when I can, and often do read fiction by folks who are politically different from me, in this particular case, I admit I am less than enthusiastic about the prospect of picking up one of Card's books to read. On the other hand, I firmly believe that his materials belong in our SFWA Collection, if only so that some scholar might, 20 years from now, write a lovely dissertation about this whole event, and how it relates to his work.''
Another liberal librarian blog tsk-tsks over Card's 'homophobia':
Jolly and righteous teen author, Orson Scott Card, is the topic of much discussion as honor bestowed by the ALA�s YALSA has brought to general attention Card�s views against tolerance for homosexuals.
Card is quoted as follows:
We Latter-day Saints know that we are eternal beings who must gain control of our bodies and direct our lives toward the good of others in order to be worthy of an adult role in the hereafter.�Orson Scott Card''
Here is Card writing about tolerance:
Tolerance is not the fundamental virtue, to which all others must give way. The fundamental virtue is to love the Lord with all our heart, might, mind, and strength; and then to love our neighbor as ourself. Despite all the rhetoric of the hypocrites of homosexuality about how if we were true Christians, we would accept them fully without expecting them to change their behavior, we know that the Lord looks upon sin without the least degree of tolerance, and that he expects us to strive for perfection.�Orson Scott Card
I am sure this is especially confusing for the poor dears in the 'library community' because Card otherwise hews to all the politically correct shibboleths when it comes to race and immigration. Oddly, or perhaps not so, considering Card's Mormon beliefs, he has nothing but tolerance for tens of millions of illegal 'immigrants', while withholding 'tolerance' toward homosexuals. The rather surly piece Card wrote in defense of illegal immigration was titled 'Ethnic Cleansing or ''Amnesty'', if that hints at his beliefs.
I hate to link to the source of this insulting piece by Card, but here it is.
Read it, if your blood pressure can stand it.
I suppose, as always, race trumps everything. If white Canadians were hopping our Northern border in droves, I suspect Card would be in favor of deporting them en masse, but because illegals are overwhelmingly non-white, they are automatically to be given special consideration.
Here is an excerpt of Card's hit piece on old-stock Americans Needless to say the 'liberal' seems to represent the sanctimonious Card:
"So lawbreakers don't deserve to live here. Have you ever had a speeding ticket?"
"I'm an American. And I pay my traffic fines."
"But you broke the law."
"I was born here."
"But your ancestors weren't," says the liberal. "Your ancestors, somewhere along the line, were born somewhere else."
"But they came here legally."
"No sir, they did not," says the liberal. "I knew we'd get to this point, so I had your genealogy researched. Here's a list of your German ancestors who broke the law of their German-speaking state by emigrating."
"Those weren't American laws, so they weren't criminals here."
"And here are your Puritan New England ancestors, who came here as criminals because of their defiance of the laws concerning religion in England."
"They wanted freedom of religion."
"But they broke the law. And look � here are your Scotch-Irish and German ancestors who settled in Pennsylvania and North Carolina without getting legal title to their lands. They were all law-breaking squatters, and they kept getting caught farming on other people's land and had to move on."
This, quite honestly, infuriates me. Religious dissent is quite different than breaking and entering, and living a life of chronic lawbreaking as most illegals do. Every day, their whole way of life involves lying, defrauding, and otherwise deceiving, exploiting, and plain old stealing. To compare our ancestors with these unprincipled people, who often commit quite egregious crimes in addition to illegal entry and fraud, is insulting to our forefathers.
Card purports to be a religious man and Mormons protest that they believe in the Bible. Where is his honoring of his fathers and mothers? Card, as a Mormon, must know his own family ancestry; Mormons are quite obsessive about genealogy. Does he consider his ancestors as lawbreakers, on a par with the drug-smugglers and sneaks who enter via our Southern border? Apparently so. Apparently he has no honor for his ancestors, or he foolishly (and quite unbibilically) believes that all 'sin' is equal in the eyes of God; he thinks that people who commit crimes such as smuggling and drug dealing are on a par with people who do not worship as their government insists that they should. He is a moral illiterate if he believes such things.
But let's go back to his nasty little rant against patriotic Americans:
It was wide-open country then, and the laws were different �"
"And look � here are your ancestors who crossed over the Appalachian Mountains like Daniel Boone, into areas that the federal government absolutely declared off-limits to white settlers. Then when the Indians attacked them for illegally trespassing, they demanded that the US Army come and kill Indians so your ancestors could keep their illegally occupied land."
"I know the Indians were badly treated, but �"
"In fact, through most of the territory of the US, the first settlers were illegal immigrants, weren't they? US treaties supersede all other laws except the Constitution. So what about it? Do you favor the expulsion of all these white illegal immigrants to restore the land to the legal titleholders by US treaty?"
I am sick beyond description of this lie that the first settlers were 'illegal immigrants'. How can a supposedly educated, intelligent man promote such rank nonsense? To say that the first settlers or colonists were 'illegal' is idiotic; in order to be illegal, they had to be in violation of some legal code or in defiance of some ruling authority -- which did not exist.
I just want, frankly, to slap people upside the head when they say such imbecilic things; the very fact that they say these things indicates that they are not capable of reason and common sense. You may as well reason with a mule. The only response to idiocy like this is a slap upside the head.
Whose permission did the colonists or settlers need to obtain before immigrating? There were a lot of squabbling tribes and clans scattered across the continent; there was no centralized ruling authority, no king (despite what you read in history books about various Indian chiefs who styled themselves 'Kings'). There were no codified laws. What 'laws' did the settlers break? Who had the authority or the power to forbid them to come here? Whose permission should they have sought, and how, considering that there was no means of communication by which to ask? Could they have written a formal request? To whom? To Indian tribes who had no written language and who, in any case, spoke no English? So all this talk of illegal immigration in that context is just ignorant and obtuse, probably willfully so.
And if Card wants to talk about 'illegal' settlers, my settler ancestors who came to Texas were INVITED by first, the Spanish and then the Mexican officials to settle. They had an invitation. They had paperwork and official documents. There was nothing remotely illegal about their presence in Texas.
And by the way, Mr. Card, whose permission did the Mexicans' ancestors obtain to settle in what is now Mexico?
Whose permission did the so-called 'Native Americans' who came from Asia obtain before they took up residence in North America? If you want to play this game, we are all 'illegal' if you go back some generations. Nobody is really indigenous to their present countries. Not even the hallowed Native Americans. When there was no organized government, whoever was strongest took possession.
But in Card's tendentious diatribe on amnesty, this is supposed to be his blockbuster zinger at the end, with which he thinks he can mortally wound the xenophobe racists:
No, sir, you are the traitor. You're the one who declared that America was no longer a nation built around an idea, which accepted all who embraced that idea. Now it's just like any other nation on Earth. It stands for nothing except for holding on to what we've got and making sure there's no room for the people most desperate to come and join us."
Here we go: the old 'nation built around an idea' nonsense. No, America was not a nation built around an idea. It was a nation built around a group of English colonists, who possessed certain ideas as part of their culture and part of their heritage. Somehow, though, the foolish notion became widespread that we could bring people from many peoples and cultures together and pretend that the 'idea' was all that mattered, and that anybody could be 'American' by giving lip service to that 'idea'. But as it turns out, that hasn't worked at all well; the people who cling desperately to the 'America as an idea' are people, generally, not of the original stock, and because they feel no kinship to the founders of this country, they insist that the Idea is everything. The 'idea' is become an idol for them; the proposition is an empty substitute for kinship to the founding people of this country. Blood is thicker than ideas.
But the 'idea' around which this nation was supposedly built is never clearly defined by these liberals; is the hallowed 'idea' supposed to be freedom? Democracy? Equality?
If we bring together people from drastically different cultures and heritages, we will have many conflicting definitions and interpretations of what 'freedom, democracy, equality' mean to them. To the Latino illegals, 'freedom' means the freedom to sneak into our country and demand special treatment and privileges, paid for by American taxpayers. Freedom seems to mean, to them, their right to disregard the laws of the land, and to trespass on others' property as they trample the border areas. Freedom means the right to speak Spanish and demand that we provide interpreters at our expense and learn their language.
Moslems, in their turn, have their own definitions of 'freedom', as Andrew Bostom points out.
So it's foolish and vain to try to make this country a country based on an idea. What idea? Whose idea? Whose definition? Whose interpretation? We have the Babel situation all over again, when we try to unite the whole world and erase borders. If Card reads and believes the Bible, he knows that God confounded the language of the human race after the hubris of Babel. We now no longer speak the same languages, in more ways than one. Interpreters and translators all do an imperfect job of bridging the linguistic gulf between us. The language barrier only reflects the differences in thought and perceptions among various peoples.
And when we talk about linguistic barriers and thought barriers, Card's diatribe only reminds us of the fact that even among ourselves, we have been divided hopelessly, and our language confounded. When Card talks about 'tolerance' and sin and virtue, it's obvious that those of the liberal persuasion, especially those liberals who are obsessed with re-creating the Tower of Babel in the West, speak a different language that only sounds like English.
I can certainly understand their meaning, although I find their ideas dishonest, spiteful towards their own people, and sanctimonious. However I am convinced that liberals do not understand our side. They have completely rejected the old meanings of words and the traditional understandings underpinning those words. They no longer speak the language of their forefathers, of all the past generations. This is made abundantly clear by the way in which they condemn the morality and the ways of thinking of the past. They have made themselves orphans and strangers in the West because they have disowned the past and their forefathers.
Only by having done so can Card and all others who think as he does believe that wanting to preserve our nation is bad and sinful. Only by cutting themselves off from tradition can they convince themselves that they are the moral betters not only of their traditional contemporaries and countrymen, but the moral superiors of their fathers, grandfathers, and great-grandfathers, who assuredly believed in 'America for Americans', and who believed -- imagine! -- that borders were essential to a nation, and that wholesale violation of laws was not acceptable.
Still Card is in an odd position; on the one hand, the liberal PC police are about to haul him in for failing to hold the correct beliefs on hallowed homosexuality, but on the other hand, how can they condemn him for being a 'right-wing bigot' when he is clearly on their side as regards that other hallowed victim group, illegal 'immigrants'?
I suppose this must cause considerable cognitive dissonance on the part of the orthodox leftists, who studiously follow the party line on who is owed deference. To be a liberal in good standing, one has to truckle to homosexuals but also to people 'of color.' Card is not being consistent.
On the other hand, I think there are quite a few politically correct Christians who think much as Card does: homosexuality bad, but illegal border-jumping good.
But if the leftward trend continues, these little dilemmas will be solved, as the liberalizing churches decide that homosexuality is just another lifestyle choice, just as illegal invaders are making a lifestyle choice in seeking a better life by lawbreaking.
But I can't help feeling a little smug schadenfreude about Card running afoul of the pharisaical PC brigade. He is really a friend, if they but knew it, but for now, he's a transgressor. PC bites.
Forum comments here.

Labels: American History, Freedom Of Expression, Illegal Immigration, Liberalism, Open Borders, Political Correctness

A while back when the subject of 'Favorite People on the Right' came up, among my choices, I mentioned Lou Dobbs, mostly because of the work he does on bringing immigration issues to the attention of many Americans. He also does great work reporting on the sovereignty issues, like the plans for a North American Union.
However occasionally he says things which indicate he still has a very liberal consciousness in certain ways. For example on this evening's show, he went into a rant about the latest Center for Immigration Studies report; he thinks the report conflates legal and illegal immigration, and he was very adamant that it's illegal immigration that is the problem. Of course that point of view, in my opinion, is one that is harmful to the cause of America, promoting the rather legalistic and simplistic view that the only problem with the millions of illegals here is that they don't have the correct paperwork. That viewpoint denies the importance of culture, demographics, and a number of other important considerations. But I'll just quote Lou's rant, and let you judge for yourselves. Dobbs introduces Bill Tucker, who reports on the CIS study:
DOBBS: Well, the presidential candidates in both political parties have now discovered that illegal immigration is a critical and important issue for Americans and anyone who doubts that illegal immigration is a tremendous and rapidly escalating crisis need only look at the most recent study of Census Bureau numbers. That study shows this nation is experiencing the highest level of immigration legal and illegal in three generations. And as Bill Tucker now reports more than half of the 10 million people arriving in the United States over the past seven years have arrived here illegally.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
TUCKER (voice-over): No other nation is as welcoming to immigrants as the United States. Thirty-eight million people living in the country are immigrants. That's one out of every eight Americans. Not since the days of Ellis Island have immigrants represented so much of our population, but not all immigrants are here legally.
One-third of them are here unlawfully and since 2000, more than half of those entering the United States have been illegal aliens. The Center for Immigration Studies analyzed data collected by the Census Bureau in March of this year. The analysis is revealing and raises some tough questions. STEVEN CAMAROTA, CENTER FOR IMMIGRATION STUDIES: When we looked at rates of poverty, health insurance coverage and welfare use, it reminds us that when people say all that matters is a willing worker and a willing employer. That's not all that matters. There are many other things.
TUCKER: Such as the impact on poverty rates, social services, health care and schools.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: One of the things that has been going on in a lot of schools is a lot of overcrowding. And what we found was that in the last 20 years immigration accounts for all of the increase in school enrollment in the United States.
TUCKER: Twenty percent of illegal immigrants lack any health care insurance and all immigrants account for 71 percent of the uninsured since 1989. While immigrant households are more likely to have someone in the house with a job, the poverty rate is sharply higher in immigrant households than it is in native born households and one-third of immigrant households use it at least one welfare program. The primary reason for these problems comes down to a poor education. Since 2000, 35.5 percent of immigrants never finished high school. They are fit for only low wage, low skill jobs.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
TUCKER: And that represents a huge shift in historic trends. Thirty years ago immigrants coming to this country were more likely to have a college degree than native born Americans. Lou, today that is clearly not the case.
DOBBS: Now who did this study?
TUCKER: The Center for Immigration Study looked at data provided by the Census Bureau, March...
DOBBS: Well I have to say that what I resent here on the part of the Census Bureau and the center is this conflation again of immigrants and illegal immigrants. Frankly, as we bring in people lawfully into this country, as a matter of public policy, I don't think any of us should care one way or the other about their education level, any of that, or the number of programs, social programs that are being employed.
The issue here is illegal immigration. This government, this federal government, and each of its agencies refuses to deal with the distinction between legal and illegal immigrants and we should never be a part of that conflation and that purposeful obfuscation on the part of those who are pro-amnesty, pro-open borders and pro-massive illegal immigration at any cost to the United States.
Those are dramatic numbers. But again, I just -- I'm deeply concerned that this Census Bureau, this federal government is not making a distinction between legal and lawful immigrants. Of course, more than two million people entering the country lawfully every year. Thank you very much. Bill Tucker.''
[Emphasis mine]
Now, what immediately raised my hackles is that Dobbs says that we shouldn't be concerned about the low educational levels of immigrants or about their usage of social programs, as long as they are legal immigrants. However he offers no argument to justify his views on that issue.
He says that it is the proponents of amnesty who are purposely lumping together legal and illegal immigration. In a sense, I suppose that is correct; the open borders proponents generally try to tar any restrictionist with the 'anti-immigrant' brush, implying that restrictionists in general are bigots who hate immigrants ''just because''; just because they are different, or just because most immigrants nowadays, as the study confirms, are from third-world countries.
But most restrictionists play into the hands of these people by protesting loudly 'I'm not opposed to immigrants or immigration; I'm only opposed to illegal immigration!' This of course suits the open borders crowd just fine; they've made the restrictionist become defensive, and act like a cornered animal, and most importantly, they've managed to extract from the restrictionist the statement that he or she supports 'any immigration just as long as it's LEGAL.'
So there you go; the open borders crowd has gotten a blank check from you; you've said that as long as immigrants are here legally, with the correct documents, you are happy to welcome them, and you can raise no objection to their being here, because they are LEGAL, and you've just said that legality is the only issue with immigration.
So I immediately doubt the seriousness of any restrictionist who says the 'as long as it's legal' line. Now, I haven't heard Lou Dobbs say this so plainly in the past, but maybe I haven't been paying enough attention.
I have often wondered why CNN, which is the most politically correct, leftist, open-borders, one-world, news channel, would employ Lou Dobbs, if he really were such a staunch opponent of one of their cherished leftist/globalist causes.
If his rant today accurately represents his beliefs on immigration, that legality is all that is at issue, then he is simply another variety of liberal, and not the hard-line immigration restrictionist as embodied in his image.
His point that the quality of the immigrants we take in, as indicated in their educational level and their welfare usage, is not a valid concern, is also troubling.
Suppose our sneaky elites somehow manage to increase legal immigration levels substantially, as would have been the case with the failed amnesty bill. Suppose we start taking in 5 or 10 million legal immigrants each year. Will all our troubles evaporate? Obviously not. The quality of the immigrants we receive is all-important. If the immigrants come here legally, and are granted citizenship quickly as seems to be the trend as everybody frets over the poor immigrants being forced to 'wait too long' for citizenship, then they are here to stay, as are their progeny, forever. Once upon a time, when we actually had standards for our immigrants, that was not such a problem, but now, we allow people from countries where good record-keeping is not part of their culture, and we thus have no knowledge of their history: are they law-abiding? Do they have communicable or hereditary diseases? The quality of the immigrants that we now accept is not comparable to that of past generations of immigrants. Quality does matter, as much as quantity. To say that a legal document is all that's needed to fit into our society, and that anybody with the right paperwork is good enough to join our American family is naive at best, and deluded at worst.
Culture matters. Genetics matters. Educational level and skills matter. Compatibility with our country matters. Attitude matters.
In all of the above areas, the immigrants we receive at present, the legal ones as much as the illegals, don't measure up.
The people who are touting Lou Dobbs as a possible independent candidate for the Presidency are naive; his tough-talking persona does not mean that he is anything more than another media personality, whose restrictionist persona may be deceiving.

Labels: American Identity, Illegal Immigration, Legal Immigration, Mass Immigration, Open Borders

God Will Be an Illegal Immigrant With An Ankle Monitor
I have a friend with an interesting theology.
He believes that God takes the form of whoever we are disgusted by.
He believes that God takes the image of the person, or group of people, that most revolt us. God does this to teach us mercy, compassion, humility. God does this to teach us grace.
He tells the story of a conversation with two policemen. Going back and forth, the two policemen spoke with great disgust about certain populations of people in the area.
''I can't stand the homeless,'' said one policeman. ''Yes, and I hate those Hispanics,'' said the other. ''And the gays and queers too,'' returned the first policeman.
And at that point, my friend realized that for those two policemen, God will take the form of a gay, homeless, Hispanic who will ask them: why did you not love me? Why were you so estranged from your fellow human?''
Frequently in various discussions around the Internet, some conservative accuses Christians of being to blame for the crises of our age, namely, mass, uncontrolled immigration, multiculturalism, and politically correct universalism. Ultimately, all of these things are facilitating our dispossession, all of us in the West, and our ethnic cleansing, in effect.
I've grown weary of trying to offer a defense of Christianity to deaf ears; people are just not willing to listen to arguments which absolve Christianity of blame for what is happening to our countries -- especially when they read things like the above-linked piece. The writer is a prime example of why a growing number of people think that Christianity is a mushy one-world socialist religion.
I thought to post this piece over in the Forum in the Christianity section, but decided that it isn't just an issue that Christians only have to deal with; it affects all of us, because it has to do more with liberalism/leftism/cultural Marxism than with real Christianity. The article illustrates the perverse thinking of liberals and leftists very vividly.
I've remarked on this many times: liberals and leftists are obsessed with society's downtrodden, or those they perceive as downtrodden, almost to the degree of idolatry. They actually place the 'others' of society -- those who are antisocial or aberrant in some way -- above the rest. They perceive that mainstream society mistreats and looks down on these aberrant people, whether illegal immigrants, prisoners, sexual deviants, or other such outsiders, and rather than merely treating these others as brothers, they overcompensate and exalt the outsiders as actually being above the rest of us, and in this piece, even equate these people to God himself.
It's true that our Lord exhorted us to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the prisoner, and give to those who ask, saying ''Inasmuch as ye have done [it] unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done [it] unto me.'' But when we are enjoined to feed the hungry and be hospitable to the stranger, does this refer to occasional individuals, or does it extend, as the liberals insist, to feeding and welcoming tens of millions of uninvited guests?
I cannot imagine that the scriptures in question ask us to welcome mass invasions or to help people to the extent that we are harming ourselves and our own people, which we are doing when we welcome mass influxes of aliens. And the illegals for example: are they not guilty of covetousness, of greed, of avarice? Are they hungry? Or are they merely wanting more and better material goods than they have in their countries?
Our Christian forebears were much more devout, in general, than many Christians of today, with our casual, undemanding brand of Christianity. And yet for all their devoutness, they never imagined that the Bible told them to welcome mass invasions or to martyr themselves in the name of charity or hospitality. They had no qualms about fighting the Moslem invaders of Europe, but according to these modern liberals, they should have simply acquiesced to conquest in the name of hospitality. They should have 'seen God' in the Moslems, after all, if God chooses to manifest as the thing we most recoil from, they should have fallen on their knees to the Mohammedans.
Liberals in general, not just Christian liberals, tend to idealize and romanticize the outlaw, the deviant, the alien, and the marginal. To exercise tolerance toward such people is one thing, but the liberal/leftist goes much further: he, or should I say she (liberals are all feminine in their attitudes) lionizes the deviant or the transgressor. Look at the way liberals and leftists make heroes of killers, as with Mumia Abu Jamal . Look at the way the French liberals protected the fugitive murderer Ira Einhorn , and thwarted justice for years. Why? Because he was a leftist himself, or because he was a member of a 'protected' group like Mumia? I notice that liberals are rather discriminatory in choosing which criminals to defend; the criminal has to be of a victim group.
It seems as if the French were very impressed with Einhorn's supposed intellectualism and more, they wanted to stick a thumb in the eye of the bloodthirsty Americans who were demanding Einhorn face justice:
One thing that has impressed him and many French people about Einhorn is his voracious reading, the constant references to literature, historical events, scientific concepts. Concludes Guilloton: "I think this guy is a superior intelligence." If Einhorn is representative of an evolved American, then his case presents the opportunity to chastise uncivilized, fanatical, wolfish Americans. A number of people invoke boilerplate examples of despicable behavior, mostly hyperbole from Philadelphia columnists and editorialists, such as encouraging folks to throw tomatoes at photos of Einhorn. Fayaud had told me she was appalled by American blood lust and what looked to her like a kind of hysteria, conduct unbecoming.''
Liberals and leftists: they're the same the whole world over. Leftism, not music, is the universal language, it seems. The excerpt sums up the liberal attitude: defending the criminal is often just an in-your-face to ''the system'' or those evil conservatives who actually believe in backward ideas like law and order. The same motives are at work with the leftists who defend illegals. It's just a way of spitting in the eye of the rednecks, the nativists, all those troglodytes who aren't as 'compassionate and evolved' as the liberals. The liberal or leftist is in a permanent state of rebellion against Daddy and therefore all authority, order, and tradition, and will in a perverse way defend everything that offends ordinary, law-abiding people.
The homeless, a group that the left especially champions, are in rather a different category than say, illegal immigrants or criminals or sexual deviants. There are no doubt some who are homeless through some set of circumstances beyond their control, but in general, in our country, only a lifetime of bad choices can explain chronic homelessness. Some estimates put the rate of alcohol and drug abuse at 65-80 percent among the homeless.
The liberal will no doubt answer that addiction is a 'disease' over which these people have no control, but I am not convinced the 'disease' model has been proven. There is always an element of choice in these things. The liberal, of course, believes that most people are mere pawns, that they are victims in some way of bad upbringing, cruel conservative policies, and an uncaring society. In the liberal universe, we are all children who are not accountable for our actions -- with the exception, of course, being conservatives, who are to be blamed and held accountable at all costs.
Am I a bad Christian or a bad person if I find it hard to see the divine in a drug addict or a street drunk? I do feel pity and compassion, but if I give money to that person (which I have done, many times in the past) am I only helping them to harm themselves? Of course even the criminal and the addict are made in the image and likeness of God, I believe. But living a life of addiction and criminality tends to efface God's image in the human being; that's one of the tragedies and the sins of living a debauched or lawless life -- we deface the image of God in ourselves.
No doubt we should do all we can to help those lost in this kind of life; some Christians are very good at reaching out to the people most in need of help, but the individual has to want to be helped. And when we do 'reach out' to the criminal or the addict, do we embrace the image of God in them, or do we exalt instead their defects as being something admirable? I think the liberals and leftists do the latter: they have a lurid fascination with the dark side, and they tend to be drawn to criminality and the transgressive for its own sake.
In addition, many liberals are exhibiting pride in their superior 'compassion'. They feel puffed-up because of their superior ability to be 'caring'; they think they are the moral betters of the rest of us who don't share their morbid fascination with darkness. They don't try to lift the addict or criminal out of their sordid lives, but instead treat this kind of life as being something valuable in itself. For example, liberal Christians have decided that homosexuality is not unnatural or sinful, and they would like us to remove the stigma from that behavior, if not to outright 'celebrate' it.
In all of these habits, they are putting themselves outside the mainstream of Christian belief. I understand many liberals proudly call themselves ''allophiles'':
...positive attitudes for a group that is not one's own�is a term derived from Greek words meaning "liking or love of the other" (Pittinsky, 2005). Studied by social scientists, allophilia is the antonym of negative prejudices and the antonym of a host of "�isms": sexism, racism, heterosexism, ageism, anti-Semitism, elitism/classism, and phallocentrism. Allophilia can be felt towards members of a different race, sex, gender, sexual orientation, religion, disability, class, nationality, school, team, or workplace (occupation).''
Of course they try to make it a virtue, but in the old order of things, people like this were just called turncoats or, despite their delusions of moral superiority, traitors. For all their vaunted compassion, they are merely acting as accomplices and apologists for evil when they defend criminals and aggressors. The pharisaical liberal asks why some of us are 'so estranged from our fellow human beings'. I ask in turn: why are you so estranged from your blood kin, your fellow American human beings?

Labels: Allophilia, Cultural Marxism, Leftism, Liberalism, Open Borders, Political Correctness, Xenophilia

Here's an interesting piece on Mitt Romney and his shifting positions on immigration:
Some excerpts below.
Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney had a tough message on immigration at a March 22 luncheon in Council Bluffs, Iowa.
``I don't think there should be a special pathway to citizenship for those that are here illegally,'' he said. ``It makes no sense at all to have a border which is basically concrete against skill and education but wide open to people to just walk on in who have neither.''
That position sets the former Massachusetts governor apart from a major rival, Arizona Senator John McCain, as well as President George W. Bush, both of whom back a guest-worker plan that gives undocumented workers the opportunity to become U.S. citizens. It also sets him apart from some of his own former positions.
Over a year ago, Romney said it would be impractical to deport 11 million undocumented workers and suggested giving some the path to citizenship he criticizes today. ``The 11 million or so that are here are not going to be rounded up and box-carted out of America,'' Romney said in a March 29, 2006, interview with Bloomberg News.
Romney's decision to shift his stand demonstrates how a big issue sometimes boils up from the voters, forcing candidates to adjust their messages. ``For Republicans it's immigration; for Democrats it's trade,'' Illinois Democratic Representative Rahm Emanuel said yesterday at the American Society of Newspaper Editors meeting in Washington. ``Both issues reflect the unease Americans feel about the effects of globalization.''
[...]
According to a Jan. 5-12 Harris Interactive poll, 73 percent of Republicans see large-scale immigration as an extremely likely or very likely threat; only 43 percent of Democrats feel that way.
[...]
Greg Mankiw, former chairman of Bush's Council of Economic Advisers and another top Romney adviser, was responsible for the 2005 economic report of the president that made the case for open borders.
``On net, immigration is a positive for the U.S. economy,'' Mankiw said Feb. 17, 2005, on the Public Broadcasting System's Nightly Business Report. During a news briefing earlier that day, he said he remembered his Ukrainian immigrant grandmother sending remittances back home.
``The tradition of workers coming to the U.S. and helping support their often much poorer families abroad is a phenomenon that's existed for many, many decades,'' he said. ``We are a country that absorbs immigrants quite well.'
Romney spokesman Kevin Madden plays down the idea of a philosophical divide over immigration within the campaign. ``Advisers and campaign staffers are just exactly that,'' he said. ``We're dedicated to promoting the ideas and policies of Governor Romney, not our own agendas.''
[Emphasis mine]
However, despite the aide's disclaimer of promoting their own agendas, the comments by Greg Mankiw, with the obligatory sentiments about his 'immigrant grandmother', seems to indicate that personal feelings do influence policy. How liberal is that?
This piece points up some inconsistencies in the opinion polls: while, as the article says, a sizeable majority of GOP voters (73%) see immigration as a threat, still most of these voters seem quite content to accept and support candidates who, like Romney, range from pro-immigration to equivocal pro-enforcement statements.
So why the disconnect? Why do so many people (and not just poll respondents, but real-life people) seem up in arms about our illegal invasion, yet they are happy to settle for the same old, same old, when it comes to picking possible candidates?
The woman, quoted in this part of the article, seems to feel much as I do:
Romney, 60, confronts grassroots anger over the flood of illegal immigrants almost daily. In Council Bluffs, that meant hearing from people like Carol Cates, 53, a local police officer.
``It's going to bankrupt our nation if we don't make some changes soon,'' said Cates, who came to size Romney up at the luncheon. ``That's almost a deal-breaker for me. If they're soft on immigration, I won't even consider them.''
Thank you, Carol Cates; you are a discerning woman, and a woman of integrity. Still I think she is an exception; people who are talking tough on the border issue one moment may be praising Rudy Giuliani or Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich in the next breath. What is that about? Is it denial? Is it cynicism and resignation? I hear comments about how 'Tancredo (or Paul, or Hunter) is not electable; he could never get nominated, much less elected, so we have to be realistic.' That resigned attitude is very common. Yet is there not something of the self-fulfilling prophecy about it? If we never try to raise up a candidate who represents the popular will and traditional principles like, oh, maybe enforcing our borders, and protecting our Republic and our historic culture, we will definitely never have such a candidate. But to this attitude of resignation, I have to ask, what does it say about our Republic if we tell ourselves that the popular will, the will of the majority, has no chance in our system? If we say that, we have all but announced to the world that our system, our Republic, is defunct, deader than a doornail, and that we live in some kind of despotic state now. Have we decided that to be the case? If we believe it, then our belief makes it so.
Look, Mitt Romney may be a good, clean-living, decent man, but I agree with Carol Cates, the policewoman. His wishy-washiness on immigration is a deal-breaker.
I have heard all the responses to this; usually they run along the lines of ''well, we can't have everything we want, and I don't vote just on one issue; smaller government is important, and the War on Terror, and pro-life issues, and stopping gay marriage, and protecting our Second Amendment rights...'' and on and on. Fine; those issues are important to me, too, but I am dumbfounded that people don't see the primacy of the immigration/border issue.
If we fail to take control of our borders and our exploding population of immigrants, legal and illegal, and the transforming of our country, all the rest is moot. Smaller government is impossible when we are being overrun by invaders who are overwhelmingly net users of expensive social programs; there is no way, with open borders and mass immigration that we can ever reduce the size of government and reduce spending. Social programs in particular can only grow and grow, with immigrants being infinitely more costly than our home-grown poor folks. And as far as the terror threat, closing our borders and curtailing all immigration would only reduce our vulnerability to terror attacks. Remember, open borders and amnesty would increase not just Mexican and Latino populations and influence, but also the Moslem 'community' and the implicit dangers thereof. As far as the rest of the conservative agenda, the presence of millions more immigrants will only ensure that the country will move hopelessly leftward, and the conservative influence in our government would dwindle away to nothing; we will be swamped by left-leaning demographics. There will be little hope of preserving our Constitutional rights and our traditional American values in a country which will be made up of a disparate collection of people from diverse countries, the vast majority of whom do not share any, not one, of those traditional American values we claim to cherish.
Our country will be more crime-prone, less safe and secure, and our government will be even more Politically Correct or culturally Marxist than it already is, should we fail to get control of our borders and our promiscuous immigration policy.
Immigration is THE issue; the rest is all secondary, folks. If we fail to take back control of what was once our country, and to elect people who truly represent us, then we will be forever marginalized, and our country handed over to strangers and their collaborators in 'our' government.
Conservatives are supposedly people who are profoundly realistic, but I am seeing a distressing amount of denial and wishful thinking when it comes to picking our next President.
So despite the talk and the complaining about immigration, too many of us are willing to settle for a candidate who represents more of the same, who will at best, do nothing to reverse the dire situation we are in, or who will, at worst, be in favor of an amnesty and the destruction of America as we have known it. We have Rudy 'Sanctuary' Giuliani, with his melting-pot, immigrant sympathies, and we have Romney, who changes with the wind, depending on his audience, and we have John 'Amnesty' McCain; these are our frontrunners. And moving up fast, we have Fred Thompson, who has a lackluster record on immigration, a 'C' grade on his Senate record in the past, and some carefully phrased tough talk on borders. The prospects are not promising.
What will it take to remove the blinders from voters' eyes? I fear we will have just more of the same failed policies, thanks to the timidity and lukewarmness of the American electorate, and the fate of our country will be sealed.

Labels: Conservatism, Illegal Immigration, Open Borders, Political Parties

"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?"

Labels: Amnesty, Illegal Immigration, Open Borders, Senate

First, a hopeful sign or two: what a pleasant surprise to read about a judge who favors enforcing our laws -- equally, with no preference given to protected groups. What a radical notion in this age of liberal madness:
A state Superior Court judge called for a grassroots effort to change federal laws which he said currently allow legal immigrants and U.S. citizens to be prosecuted for unlawful activity, but prohibits prosecution of illegal aliens.
It's happening in communities like Gettysburg and Shenandoah and Tamaqua, Judge Correale "Corry" F. Stevens told members of the Adams County Republican Committee Thursday evening at the county ag center, and it could happen in Black Horse Tavern and Aspers and Zora. For example, he said state police stopped a van for speeding on an interstate and detained the four illegals they found inside.
They called ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) and they were told, "Let them go," Stevens said. The policemen had no choice.
He offered several additional examples showing that in situations that would result in arrest for legal immigrants and U.S. citizens, illegal aliens would be set free.
[...]"The federal policy is non-enforcement," he said.
[...]He said voters should ask their federal senators and representatives to amend the federal law to give:

police the power to arrest;

county district attorneys the power to prosecute; and

county judges the powers to deport;

all without needing the permission of the federal government.

"They're committing crimes and the federal government is not doing anything," Stevens said.'
So maybe common sense is not dead in our judicial branch, at least not in Judge Stevens' jurisdiction.
This is what is needed: to take action at the local level, since the feds seem determined to let anarchy reign where immigration and borders are concerned.
And here is a particularly ugly story of a crime by two of those hard-working, undocumented folks just looking for a better life in what was once a pleasant, safe town. The two perpetrators should have been dealt with by the judicial system long ago, but at least this judge, Judge Falcone, shows a no-nonsense attitude toward the demanding defendant.
Morristown rape suspect wants 5th lawyer
The trial of a man charged with dragging a woman off a Morristown sidewalk and raping her was put on hold Wednesday after he demanded a new attorney, his fifth in 21 months.
Superior Court Judge Joseph A. Falcone, sitting in Morristown, agreed to relieve the latest lawyer for suspect Joel A. Romero, 27, because Romero refuses to speak to counsel Douglas Del Tufo and claims he does not have "his best interests at heart."
Since he was caught in the act of assaulting a 20-year-old woman on July 10, 2005, Romero has gone through three public defenders and one private lawyer, Del Tufo.
[...]The Morris County Prosecutor�s Office has extended a 30-year plea deal. Falcone said he had been willing to consider a 24-year sentence but upped the offer back to 30 years Wednesday after Romero started making demands, through a Spanish-to-English court interpreter.
"I want one who speaks Spanish," said Romero, who is in the United States illegally from Honduras.
"Too bad!" blurted out deputy Public Defender Dolores Mann, who was watching the hearing in court.
"And I want to win the lottery!" the judge snapped at Romero. "You don�t run the system. Let me say this again: You don�t run the system."
I like Judge Falcone's gutsy attitude; too often I've read accounts of weakling liberal judges who coddle such defendants because of their 'special' status.
Now we will just have to see if somebody accuses the above-mentioned judges of 'racism' or 'xenophobia' for taking a non-coddling stance towards illegals.
Unfortunately this kind of decision by a judge is, depressingly, more typical.
And apparently our federal courts are being swamped by immigration felony cases. This is no surprise to any of us who have been following this situation. It's just one more cost of our 'cheap labor.'
And speaking of our judicial system and illegal aliens, the issue of 'sanctuary cities' has been in the news, with San Francisco possibly joining a growing list of cities which in effect have nullified our immigration laws, declaring that they will flout the existing statutes and protect the lawbreakers. Note that New York City is one of those scofflaw cities, which harbors illegal aliens. And with Rudy Giuliani being touted as the likely Republican presidential nominee in 2008, please keep in mind that he was a determined advocate of the sanctuary policy in NYC, to the extent of defying the courts, all the way up to the Supreme Court.
Heather MacDonald in the City Journal wrote this extensive piece in 2004, detailing Giuliani's defiant position:
Immigration politics have similarly harmed New York. Former mayor Rudolph Giuliani sued all the way up to the Supreme Court to defend the city�s sanctuary policy against a 1996 federal law decreeing that cities could not prohibit their employees from cooperating with the INS. Oh yeah? said Giuliani; just watch me. The INS, he claimed, with what turned out to be grotesque irony, only aims to "terrorize people." Though he lost in court, he remained defiant to the end. On September 5, 2001, his handpicked charter-revision committee ruled that New York could still require that its employees keep immigration information confidential to preserve trust between immigrants and government. Six days later, several visa-overstayers participated in the most devastating attack on the city and the country in history.
New York conveniently forgot the 1996 federal ban on sanctuary laws until a gang of five Mexicans�four of them illegal�abducted and brutally raped a 42-year-old mother of two near some railroad tracks in Queens. The NYPD had already arrested three of the illegal aliens numerous times for such crimes as assault, attempted robbery, criminal trespass, illegal gun possession, and drug offenses. The department had never notified the INS.
Citizen outrage forced Mayor Michael Bloomberg to revisit the city�s sanctuary decree yet again. In May 2003, Bloomberg tweaked the policy minimally to allow city staffers to inquire into immigration status only if it is relevant to the awarding of a government benefit. Though Bloomberg�s new rule said nothing about reporting immigration violations to federal officials, advocates immediately claimed that it did allow such reporting, and the ethnic lobbies went ballistic. ''
So if Giuliani has supposedly gotten religion on this issue, we should remember his sanctuary policies, and his past pro-illegal statements:
As other anti-immigration movements spread across the country in 1990s, Mr. Giuliani consistently pushed back. "The anti-immigration issue that�s now sweeping the country in my view is no different than the movements that swept the country in the past," he said in 1996. "You look back at the Chinese Exclusionary Act, or the Know-Nothing movement � these were movements that encouraged Americans to fear foreigners, to fear something that is different, and to stop immigration."
Giuliani misrepresents the Know-Nothing movement, or the American Party, as do most people who refer to it as a favorite whipping boy, a symbol of 'hateful' nativism and xenophobia.
And Giuliani invokes the 'proposition nation', the idea that being an American is only a matter of uttering some magic incantation about freedom or liberty, and adhering to an 'idea':
But as he talks about immigration on the campaign trail, Mr. Giuliani suggests that his core beliefs have not changed much since his days as mayor, often quoting a speech Abraham Lincoln gave in the 1850s.
"He made a beautiful speech in which he said the best American is not the American who has been here the longest or the one who just arrived," Mr. Giuliani said recently. "It is the one who understands the principles of America the best because we are a country held together by ideas."
This is just one more example of the 'my grandfather was an immigrant' syndrome; Giuliani, like so very many of the open borders, America-as-an-idea liberals, takes his position based on sentimentalism or defensiveness about his recent immigrant roots.
Will 'conservatives' fall for Giuliani's tough-guy persona? On the immigration issue, he is not on the side of the American people. Yet it seems that so many 'conservatives' are falling in line behind Giuliani. If he is nominated and elected, we will see mass immigration continuing if not accelerating.

Labels: Illegal Immigration, Justice System, Open Borders, Presidential Candidates

Is anybody surprised?
Judge denies freedom plea by jailed ex-agents
A federal appeals court judge yesterday denied a motion by former U.S. Border Patrol agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean that they be released from prison pending appeals in their convictions for shooting a drug-smuggling suspect.
[...]
They sought release pending the outcome of their appeals, but the motion was denied by U.S. District Judge Fortunato Pedro "Pete" Benavides of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, sitting in Austin, Texas, who said the men "had not shown unique or unusual circumstances that justify their release based on an exceptional reason."
Judge Benavides granted a motion by Ramos that his appeal be sealed and ordered the government's response to both men's motions sealed. ''
And here, there are allegations that another Border Patrol officer, who was a friend of the drug smuggler Osbaldo Aldrete-Davila, was a double agent:
I believe Rene Sanchez acted as a 'double agent' in the Ramos-Compean case," Joe Loya, father of Ramos's wife Monica, told WND. "He was doing everything he could to protect his life-long friend, Osbaldo Aldrete-Davila, but at the same time he was working with Johnny Sutton to make sure Ramos and Compean were convicted."
Loya further charged that he had reason to believe "Rene Sanchez's actions make it look like he could have been in the drug business with Aldrete-Davila all along.'
But the possibility of ascertaining the truth of this whole matter, much less of obtaining justice, looks more remote all the time, as the system seems to thwart every effort made to determine what really happened, and why.
Doug Patton, in this piece at Human Events, argues for a Presidential pardon for Ramos and Compean:
Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean, two former border patrol agents, are now serving hard time in prison. If you are unfamiliar with these two men, you are getting far too much of your news from the mainstream media, which has virtually ignored their story. Ramos and Compean were on duty along the Rio Grande in Texas when a Mexican drug smuggler named Osbaldo Aldrete-Davila tried to flee back across the river into Mexico. Aldrete-Davila brandished what the agents thought was a gun. Ramos and Compean fired their firearms at the suspect, but when he continued to flee, they logically assumed he had not been injured.
Fast forward two weeks, and our tax dollars were being used to transport the drug smuggler back into the United States, where he was given full immunity to testify against Ramos and Compean -- for shooting him in the buttocks! They were tried and sentenced to 10 years each.
Subsequent information has shown that "evidence" brought against Ramos and Compean was fabricated by officials from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
[...]
So let�s review: Two border agents shoot a drug smuggler and end up serving time in federal prison. A bounty hunter brings a dangerous serial rapist to justice and gets extradited to face the hell of a Mexican prison. And Scooter Libby faces a possible sentence of 20 years in prison for leaking the name of a CIA employee whose name was already known, while Bill Clinton�s former security advisor, Sandy Berger, gets a slap on the wrist for stuffing Top Secret documents in his pants and stealing them from the National Archives.
Pardon these men immediately, Mr. President.''
Meanwhile, Ramos and Compean have their own song now. Michael Britton, a Southern California musician, has recorded a song he wrote about Ramos and Compean.
Michael Britton, who makes a living performing an acoustic one-man-band show, said he was inspired to act when he learned details of the case. Ramos and Compean were convicted and sentenced to 11 and 12 years in prison respectively after a drug smuggler they shot fleeing across the border was given immunity to testify against them.
"I'm upset that men like Ramos and Compean are sitting in federal prison simply for doing their jobs, while drug smugglers are allowed to go free and sue the Border Patrol for violating their 'civil rights,' he said.
You can hear the song here.
And last, this op-ed piece implies that many immigration-restrictionist conservatives are rallying behind Ramos and Compean not because they are truly thought to be innocent, but because of frustration and anger towards our government in its refusal (I started to say failure, but decided refusal was correct) to enforce our laws.
Could the movement around Ramos and Compean simply be a byproduct of the American people�s frustration toward their government? Are Americans capable of excusing the actions of these men to make a statement to an administration that seemingly cares more about Iraqi confidence in their government�s ability to protect and preserve Iraq, than the American people�s confidence in its own leadership to protect and preserve America?''
The writer of this op-ed makes the same unconvincing arguments which I have read and heard from the usual 'respectable Republicans'; his supporting evidence being the U.S. Attorney's Office transcripts.
The writer points out that the official version of the story contradicts the version given by Ramos and Compean and other skeptics of the administration's version. But as usual, the administration, and Johnny Sutton's office, must be right, and the opposition wrong. Obviously this op-ed writer has not chosen to read any of the voluminous evidence, which I and others have linked to previously, casting doubt on the 'official' version of events. Even if one believes that the agents are guilty as hell, which the op-ed writer apparently believes, the fact remains that Ramos and Compean seem to have been way more important than they seemed, since the government seems to have gone to extraordinary lengths to see that they were made an example of and punished to the full extent of the law and more. I invite anyone who doubts that to check the records concerning the prosecution and sentencing of Border Patrol agents accused of wrongdoing. There are a number of such cases, involving agents who colluded with human smugglers, illegal aliens, and drug lords, often for an extended period of time, flouting the laws of the land, the laws they are sworn to uphold, and who received milder treatment from our government, and lesser sentences. How does that work? How do the knee-jerk defenders of the administration account for that? Surely men who may have gone a little overboard in doing their job should not be punished as harshly as agents who knowingly broke our laws and colluded with drug lords and illegals. It should give people pause that men who are trying to uphold our laws and protect our borders are made an example of, while rogue agents, with a long pattern of corruption, are given lesser sentences. It shows the priorities of our administration. But the op-ed writer's argument, following the usual pattern, is thus:
Either the US Attorney General for the District of West Texas, 12 jurors, two additional border patrol agents, and one judge are heartlessly lying to "get" these two agents for some dark motive or agenda, or these cause groups are using this event to elicit donations and pull media attention back to the border. Media attention that was lost when the majority of the politicians who responded to their pressure lost their offices in the last election.''
This writer is either being disingenuous or he has obstinately refused to read the many reports which cast doubt on the administration's case. I am not going to repost all the links I've previously posted here on the subject, but there is plenty of evidence of irregularities in the government's case. That is not the same as saying, in the straw man argument above, that Johnny Sutton, a judge, 12 jurors, and various others all 'lied' in a plot serving 'some dark motive or agenda.' Various people involved may have lied for venal ends of their own, and it is hardly unknown for the government to deceive in the name of 'secrecy' or in the name of plain old CYA. The op-ed writer surely does not think that people in official positions are scrupulously honest at all times; they are as human as anyone else, and government officials can and do lie and obfuscate. Homeland Security officials admitted during recent Congressional hearings on the Ramos-Compean case, that they did in fact 'mislead' the Congressmen in previous statements, admitting that the evidence they claimed to have never in fact existed.
And the stories of overzealous prosecution of law enforcement officers like Gilmer Hernandez and David Sipe should confirm that there is a pattern to these kinds of incidents: the message seems to be that those who are zealous in going after drug smugglers and illegals are going to be made an example of. As to what the 'dark motive or agenda' is, I can only guess, as can the rest of us; we need to examine this pattern and determine where the orders are coming from.
But the need of some people to defend their anointed elected leaders, and to defend their Party, often trumps the desire to know the truth, or to seek justice. It must make life incredibly simple, when your only concern is the well-being of 'your' political party our 'your' guys in office.

Labels: Border Patrol, Illegal Immigration, Justice System, Open Borders

Certainly the open borders liberals don't, and neither does Reuters writer Bernd Debusmann:
Around globe, walls spring up to divide neighbors
TIJUANA, Mexico, April 30 (Reuters) - What do Tijuana, Baghdad and Jerusalem have in common?
They all have walls that divide neighbors, cause controversy and form part of an array of physical barriers around the world that dwarf the late, unlamented Iron Curtain.
There are walls, fences, trenches and berms. Some are reinforced by motion detectors, heat-sensing cameras, X-ray systems, night-vision equipment, helicopters, drones and blimps. Some are still under construction, some in the planning stage.
When completed, the barriers will run thousands of miles (kilometres), in places as far apart as Mexico and India, Afghanistan and Spain, Morocco and Thailand, Malaysia and Saudi Arabia, and Iraq.
They are meant to keep job-hungry immigrants, terrorists and smugglers out, thwart invaders, and keep antagonists apart.''Their proponents cite the proverb "Good fences make good neighbors" but critics say they are a paradoxical result of globalization in so far as goods and capital can move freely but migrants cannot.'
"Good fences make good neighbors" is also a line from the same Robert Frost poem, 'The Mending Wall' which I quoted at the beginning. Actually in it, Frost seems to be arguing against the necessity of walls, likening his wall-building neighbor to a 'stone-savage.'
If I could put a notion in his head;
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall...
So, Bernd Debusmann, Reuters reporter, might consider who we are "walling in or walling out." Actually, Bernd, we are not walling out too many people, it seems, given that about 3 million illegals skulk across our erstwhile 'borders' every year. The figure may be even higher; it's just a rough guesstimate based on the numbers apprehended. And according to this article, one in two Mexicans polled has family members on our side of the 'border.' So our much-criticized wall, what there is of it, does pitifully little towards keeping intruders out. Bernd: what, exactly, is the problem? That the entire population of Mexico hasn't yet made it north to where the goodies are yet?
So what we are walling out is not much; they are coming in by the thousands day and night, 365 days a year. If you are going to weep crocodile tears over a wall, or write scathing words about how cruel the wall is, at least pick a wall that actually accomplishes the purpose. Our wall is mostly nonexistent, except for Tijuana and that little stretch along the California border.
Bernd Debusmann, Reuters reporter, like his innumerable liberal media comrades-in-arms, is either so obtuse or so disingenuous as to be unable to tell the difference between a wall to keep people in a police-state regime like East Germany once was, and a wall to keep invaders out, as the Wall of Hadrian used to be, or the Great Wall of China.
Likening the small stretch of wall on our southern 'border' to the Iron Curtain is just laughable. Is Debusmann too young to remember the days of the Iron Curtain? Or does he think that Mexico is trying to keep her citizens in, as the East Germans were? If anything, the Mexican government is pushing certain of their citizens, possibly their unwanted citizens, to cross our border and send back as much as they can loot on our side.
Are these liberal hacks, who write cookie-cutter articles on immigration every day, really that dense? I suppose it's possible; in order to embrace liberalism/leftism, intelligence is an actual hindrance. So these 'reporters' who report stories to order, and write them according to a template, probably are true believers. There is scarcely an honest word written or spoken about the immigration and borders issue in the mainstream media.
I wonder if Bernd Debusmann has a lock on his front door? Or does he helpfully leave it open in case there is a burglar, possibly a destitute illegal alien, who wants to let himself in? I wonder if the open-borders bleeding-hearts are consistent enough to remove the fences from their property and the locks from their doors and windows? After all, there are homeless people out there who might want to stake a claim to their homes, and people 'looking for a better life' who might want all those possessions they have so selfishly acquired.
As to 'what we are walling in or walling out', I know what I would like to wall out: the chaos, corruption, crime, and failure that characterize the nations to the South of us. I would like to wall out those who do not respect borders; those who believe, ignorantly, that they have a claim to this nation and its bounties; that their ancestors, whoever they might have been, were the rightful owners of America. I want to wall out those who want to change my homeland into something to their liking, without the least regard to the existing citizens of this country. I want to wall out those who would be a burden financially to an already overburdened country. I want to wall out diseases which have been so carefully and successfully eradicated from this country. I want to wall out ruthless savage gangs like MS-13.
I want to wall out those who would overpopulate my country until there is little open space or usable farmland, and those who treat the environment like a dumping ground, as we have seen the invading Mexicans do.
But so far, since a sizeable percentage of Mexico's population is in my country, and many of them brazenly walking the streets of my little town, thousands of miles from their homeland, Bernd Debusmann need not lose sleep; few Mexicans are being cruelly kept out of their rightful hunting grounds in America.
If we don't have the right to wall out, or simply close the door to anybody of our choosing, then this country is no longer our country. In fact, it's been often said that a country without borders (including walls, if need be) is not a country.
And just as I have the right, in my home, to open my door to only those I choose to welcome, and to eject anybody who arrives uninvited, sneaks in, or who refuses to leave at my request, we as the rightful people of this country have the same right. People enter or stay only at our pleasure; they have no inherent right to enter or to stay, against our will.
There are some who are now bluntly asserting that human beings should have free entry to any country they choose at any time; this is as radical and revolutionary an idea as can be. What next? Yet a lot of people seem unruffled by this idea that everyone has a 'universal human right to emigration.' This is an extreme leftist idea, and to the undiscerning, it may sound humane and compassionate, but the world would be turned upside down if that idea were to be put into practice. We are already seeing a slow-motion Camp of the Saints scenario, but we would be overwhelmed if this foolishness were declared law, or even if the odious amnesty proposals become law.
The trouble is, I am certain that this 'human right to emigrate anywhere' would really only be granted to the 'have-nots' of the world, and people who wanted to migrate away from the multicultural chaos would be denied any such right. It is meant only for the world's poor and 'diverse' populations, the people who depend on the fruits of others for their survival.
Maybe Robert Frost did not believe that 'good fences make good neighbors', and it's certain that Bernd Debusmann does not believe it, but nonetheless it is true. Perhaps we don't need fences to keep the law-abiding, decent neighbors on their side of the divide, but in a fallen world, with desperate or unscrupulous neighbors, a fence or a wall is an absolute necessity.

Labels: Immigration, Media, Mexico, Open Borders

Will wonders never cease? The New York Times, inexplicably, tells some truths on immigration. Whatever brought this about, I wonder?
Immigration at Record Level, Analysis Finds
Immigration over the past seven years was the highest for any seven-year period in American history, bringing 10.3 million new immigrants, more than half of them without legal status, according to an analysis of census data released today by the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington.
One in eight people living in the United States is an immigrant, the survey found, for a total of 37.9 million people � the highest level since the 1920s.
The survey was conducted by Steven A. Camarota, director of research at the center, which advocates reduced immigration.
Mr. Camarota has been active in the national immigration debate. Independent demographers disputed some of the survey�s conclusions, but not Mr. Camarota�s methods of data analysis.
A large proportion of recent immigrants, both legal and illegal, are low-skilled workers and about one-third of those have not completed high school, giving them significantly less education than Americans born in the United States, according to the study, which is based on census data as recent as March of this year.
The survey focuses on public costs associated with the new generation of immigrant workers. It does not, however, analyze contributions they make by paying taxes and taking undesirable, low-income jobs � an omission criticized by some immigration scholars.''
Well, the article was just fine until that last paragraph, in which the NYT reverts to form and brings in the old 'some scholars say...' kind of thing, in an attempt to provide their own editorializing about the content of the article.
But let's leave aside the New York Times and their political correctness, and go right to the source that they are reporting on here: the report by the Center for Immigration Studies.
Immigrants in the United States, 2007
Among the report�s findings:
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The nation�s immigrant population (legal and illegal) reached a record of 37.9 million in 2007.
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Immigrants account for one in eight U.S. residents, the highest level in 80 years. In 1970 it was one in 21; in 1980 it was one in 16; and in 1990 it was one in 13.
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Overall, nearly one in three immigrants is an illegal alien. Half of Mexican and Central American immigrants and one-third of South American immigrants are illegal.
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Since 2000, 10.3 million immigrants have arrived � the highest seven-year period of immigration in U.S. history. More than half of post-2000 arrivals (5.6 million) are estimated to be illegal aliens.
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The largest increases in immigrants were in California, Florida, Texas, New Jersey, Illinois, Arizona, Virginia, Maryland, Washington, Georgia, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania.
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Of adult immigrants, 31 percent have not completed high school, compared to 8 percent of natives. Since 2000, immigration increased the number of workers without a high school diploma by 14 percent, and all other workers by 3 percent.
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The share of immigrants and natives who are college graduates is about the same. Immigrants were once much more likely than natives to be college graduates.
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The proportion of immigrant-headed households using at least one major welfare program is 33 percent, compared to 19 percent for native households.
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The poverty rate for immigrants and their U.S.-born children (under 18) is 17 percent, nearly 50 percent higher than the rate for natives and their children.
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34 percent of immigrants lack health insurance, compared to 13 percent of natives. Immigrants and their U.S.-born children account for 71 percent of the increase in the uninsured since 1989.
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Immigrants make significant progress over time. But even those who have been here for 20 years are more likely to be in poverty, lack insurance, or use welfare than are natives.
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The primary reason for the high rates of immigrant poverty, lack of health insurance, and welfare use is their low education levels, not their legal status or an unwillingness to work.
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Of immigrant households, 82 percent have at least one worker compared to 73 percent of native households.
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There is a worker present in 78 percent of immigrant households using at least one welfare program.
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Immigration accounts for virtually all of the national increase in public school enrollment over the last two decades. In 2007, there were 10.8 million school-age children from immigrant families in the United States.
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Immigrants and natives have similar rates of entrepreneurship � 13 percent of natives and 11 percent of immigrants are self-employed.
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Recent immigration has had no significant impact on the nation�s age structure. Without the 10.3 million post-2000 immigrants, the average age in America would be virtually unchanged at 36.5 years.
[...]
California clearly has the largest immigrant population; New York, the state with next largest number of immigrants, has fewer than half as many. Table 1 shows how concentrated the immigrant population is: Only a few states represent the majority of the foreign-born population. In 2007, the nearly 10 million immigrants in California account for 27 percent of the nation�s total immigrant population, followed by New York with 11 percent, Florida and Texas with 10 percent each, and New Jersey with 5 percent. These five states account for 61 percent of the nation�s total foreign-born population, but only 32 percent of the native-born population. The table also shows evidence that the immigrant population is becoming more dispersed.''
[all emphases mine]
Note that last sentence: some people who by some amazing stroke of luck live in relatively unaffected areas imagine that the immigrant tidal wave is limited to the border states, and is thus not a national problem. These short-sighted people think they will escape the effects if they have been relatively unaffected as yet, but the reality, shown by this study, is that the immigrants are fanning out across the nation. I hear quite a few people saying 'give them back the Southwest; just write it off', but the Latino immigrants, legal and illegal, don't just want the border states; they are in every corner of the nation, or soon will be.
The study is very detailed, with statistics regarding education, health insurance, welfare use, and demographics among the immigrants.
One interesting bit of information quoted above is that even with the presence of these immigrants, the average age in America stays virtually the same. Doesn't that put the lie to the often-repeated canard that 'America is aging, graying, and we need these young, vital immigrants to give our country a new infusion of fresh energy and youth.' I have heard some variation of that statement more times than I've had hot dinners. I hear it in regard to Europe, too; 'Europe is graying and aging and dying off; they need young new immigrant blood to revitalize them.' But at least we know it's not true in our case. Immigration isn't making us 'younger' as a nation, and it certainly isn't making us more intelligent or better educated (look at the educational attainment of the immigrants) but it is making our country more crowded and our resources considerably strained.
There seems to be a large percentage of Americans who have accepted the cliches about how we are a nation of immigrants. These people are usually so deracinated that they have no loyalty to kin or nation or tribe. But even if these soul-dead people can't bring themselves to care about our heritage, our history, our way of life, our unique culture, can they not see the societal costs represented by tens of millions of uneducated, unassimilable, economically burdensome strangers?
And shouldn't the example of Europe, with its similarly dependent and unassimilable immigrants provide a warning to us? Before too long we might well be witnessing similar scenes in our streets, with angry immigrant 'youth' rioting and burning.
I don't know if this relatively objective bit of reporting by the NY Times represents a change, or if it's just a fluke or a mistake. I do know that most of the old media do nothing but obfuscate and propagandize in favor of immigration and 'diversity', but if they begin to publish facts like these, a few of the more obtuse among us might catch on that there is a huge demographic change afoot in America, and that it ain't just business as usual, and it isn't 'just like the immigration we've always had.'
Anybody with their eyes open and their brain engaged figured this out some time ago, but there are some stubborn deniers out there who may get a clue if the old media start putting the clues in plain language for the slow-witted.

Labels: Demographics, Illegal Immigration, Legal Immigration, Mass Immigration, Open Borders

Who could have thought that Jesus was an illegal alien?
At Faith and Heritage, 'Nil Desperandum' writes a very good response to a blog post by a Baptist scholar defending open borders. I encourage you to read Nil Desperandum's article, as he makes some effective points.
However the Baptist article to which he is responding prompts me to take issue with some of the arguments the writer makes.
First, and most egregious, is the statement that Jesus was ''an illegal alien'' and that the throne of God is occupied by an illegal alien. This is disingenous, to put it as charitably as I can. It is, in fact, exactly the same kind of sophistry and twisting of facts employed by Jesse Jackson some years ago:
''We hear a lot of talk about family values, even as we spurn the homeless on the street. Remember, Jesus was born to a homeless couple, outdoors in a stable, in the winter. He was the child of a single mother. When Mary said Joseph was not the father, she was abused. If she had aborted the baby, she would have been called immoral. If she had the baby, she would have been called unfit, without family values. But Mary had family values. It was Herod�the [Dan] Quayle of his day�who put no value on the family."
There was also the time when Jackson said that Jesus didn't speak English, so this country should not be English-only.
This is what we expect from liberals, this twisting of words and contexts. We shouldn't expect it from a Christian scholar or teacher, except for those under the influence of political correctness.
Was Jesus an illegal alien because his parents took him to Egypt when he was a baby? It's silly to even address such a claim, I suppose, but we have no reason to believe that Joseph and Mary were the kind of people who would enter Egypt (which was under Roman rule, like Palestine, then) illicitly. So the argument is disingenuous, putting it nicely.
Liberals like to quote the Biblical passages on strangers and sojourners as arguments against enforcing immigration laws. Rev. Edwin Childress writes
''[T]he Bible in a great many places uses "sojourner" to refer to those who are in a location which is not their original homeland. However, it is clear that while a sojourner shares some characteristics with an immigrant, the two are in very different pursuits. Using the term sojourner as a kind of proof-text for political statements about immigration clouds the issue because many people of faith find it hard to "argue against the Bible." Paul W. Lewis, an author on Christian engagement of social issues and a former missionary, admits "I have been greatly bothered by the way some people have used the term 'sojourner' to back up their own idea about immigrants. It was a totally different situation back then. We could also use the word "traveler' today.
[...]
Professor John B. Cobb, Jr. for 32 years the Ingraham Professor of Theology at the Claremont School of Theology concurs: "The Biblical term 'sojourner' implies someone who is residing in a land which is not his or hers by birth. Almost always it conveys a sense of temporary residence."
The terms immigrant and immigration do not appear in the Bible. The Oxford American Dictionary and Language Guide defines immigration, "to come as a permanent resident to a country other than one's native land." (p. 489)
Why does it matter? Isn't this just a small, semantic detail? It is a small detail indicative of a very large issue, and among communities citing the authority of scripture for belief and action, small details mean a great deal. Sojourners, while their future plans were not clear, were not intent on permanent settlement. To use sojourner and immigrant interchangeably in today's world is to obscure their distinction. While sojourners in the Bible were forced by necessity to move away from their homes, their intention was to return."
The Baptist scholar who wrote the blog piece under discussion is either not well-informed or he is disingenuous to argue about the term 'stranger' or 'sojourner' as being analogous to our illegal aliens or immigrants in general. Nowhere does the Bible teach that those who arrive in huge numbers, uninvited, to your country must be given the run of the country, or allowed to disobey laws, or to try to overturn existing traditions or the social order.
Condemning Christians who object to the out-of-control mass immigration in our country, labeling them as being disobedient Christians or immoral people, ignores the offenses of the aliens. We have just as much justification to decry or rebuke the wrongs done by immigrants; they are guilty of covetousness, envy, and wantonly disregarding the laws of the land. To say that they want ''a better life'' generally refers, by most immigrants' admission, to economic betterment. They see that we have a higher standard of living and they envy it, covet it. Some feel that we ''stole'' the Southwest from them, and they insist it is theirs. Do we need a better definition of covetousness or greed than that?
In response, the do-gooder liberals insist that the poor downtrodden immigrants ''just want to feed their children.'' Of course nobody wants to be found denying hungry children sustenance, or hungry adults either. But I occasionally challenge those who say the immigrants are hungry with the question: have you ever seen a gaunt-looking illegal? Even a lean one? No, they all look well-nourished, to put it mildly. All of them. Most of them here seem to be buying luxury items, (flat-screen TVs, flashy jewelry, fancy new vehicles), which does not spell 'poverty' to me. I remember a time when there were truly poor people in this country, and by that standard, everyone today is relatively wealthy.
However, even with our relative wealth (at least in terms of comforts and liveable communities) our country is in dire straits economically. Work is hard to find for many people, and each immigrant is likely occupying a job that would otherwise be taken by an American. And trust me, there are many Americans who are desperate for jobs now, and who have real needs. Some clerics and academics live in a little bubble in which they see only people like themselves, who are comfortable. There is real need; we cannot be the social service agency of the world and still take care of our own.
And then I ask the people who tak about hungry immigrants: is there a famine in Mexico? (Or Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras?) I haven't heard of any starvation conditions there. Nobody has anything to say in response to that question. But they will go on about how those poor folk in Latin America earn practically nothing. Or they try to say that the illegals 'have no jobs in their home country.' However, there have been studies indicating that the immigrants generally had jobs in their home country, and they were not living homeless on the streets or begging in rags. The following is from the Washington Post, hardly a conservative or 'xenophobic' source.
A majority of Mexican nationals who crossed into the United States illegally in the past two years left behind paying jobs that, in some cases, are similar to the agriculture, construction and manufacturing work they find north of the border, according to a study of Mexican immigrants released yesterday by the Pew Hispanic Center.
The study seemed to explode widely held beliefs that Mexicans risk deadly trips across the Rio Grande and through broiling Arizona and New Mexico deserts solely to find work.
None of the illegals I see in the pictures of them crossing the border look ill-clad or hungry. And then there's the matter of them paying thousands of dollars to coyotes to smuggle them in to our country. So much for their destitution.
And even if they earned little money in their home countries, they can also live there for very little; costs of living are minimal compared with the cost of living here. One does not need American-scale earnings to live comfortably in Latin America. That's why some Americans retire in such places. So we need not cry over the immigrants' low wages at home.
The Baptist writer of the blog piece indicates that these illegals are fleeing for their lives. By and large there are no conditions in Mexico requiring these people to come here to avoid death -- unless, of course, they are gang members involved in drug-running or other crimes, which of course does fit a certain number of these illegals. Among all those sainted poor people sneaking into our country, there are a number of drug cartel members, even drug kingpins, who then set up shop on this side of the border. Along with them comes various other kinds of crime, including kidnappings, beheadings, abductions, prostitution, and odious occult religious practices: voodoo-like cults with which the drug dealers think they can protect themselves from the law and from their competitors.
The good religious folk who think they are outdoing God in virtue with their non-judging attitude should stop and think about welcoming people who bring bizarre cult practices (like the cult of 'Saint Death') which then spread in this country. The Bible indicates that this kind of bloodthirsty 'religion' pollutes the land once it is established. Do these xenophiles even believe their Bibles? It seems they ignore many things which don't fit with their liberal views, and which clash with their determination to see only good in certain groups of people, particularly any minority, non-White group. What is happening to the Christian faith, under the influence of liberalism/Cultural Marxism/multiculturalism, is no less than a kind of veneration of non-White peoples.
It is as though these peoples must never be criticized, because they really can do no wrong. They must not be held accountable. They must not be expected to comply with the same rules, laws, and standards as the rest of us. They are considered childlike and innocent, always sinned against and never sinning. This is wrong. Biblically, we are all less than righteous; we are all equal in our proclivity to sin. But apparently minority groups are blameless, always. They are always given a pass. When any dispute arises between Whites and minorities, who is always presumed guilty?
This is not Biblical, this putting up on a pedestal a whole class of people. It is, in the Biblical phrase, being a 'respecter of persons.' Many Christians wrongly think that when we are enjoined not to be respecters of persons, that the phrase refers to giving excess deference to the wealthy and the popular, to treat them better just because of their personal power or attractiveness or wealth. Well, it can and does mean that, but neither are we to simply invert that attitude and place poor or supposedly oppressed people above others, just because they are seen as victims. Not all poor people or ''oppressed'' people are innocent victims. Some are victims only of their own bad choices and fecklessness.
Post-Christian ''Christianity'' is becoming a cult which makes idols of the ''wretched of the earth'', and I see this as a distortion or a corruption of the idea of ''seeing Christ'' in others. It seems that it's been perverted to mean seeing Christ only in the most ''other'' we can find. It is the idea of ''conspicuous compassion'', showing off how very virtuous we are, because we can empathize with death-row rapists/killers, terrorists, etc. This is where you will find liberal Christians devoting most of their ministering. I don't object to people doing that quietly if that is what they feel called to do, but to exalt such people above others is misguided, to put it in the most charitable terms. And it is sheer blindness to be able to dismiss or tolerate evil in the name of 'compassion.'
And where, I wonder, are the Christian do-gooders when it comes to their fellow White Christians in South Africa and Rhodesia (I mean ''Zimbabwe")? When I tell my fellow Christians about them and their dire straits, they register little emotion, but just bring up those poor Africans who need wells dug again, and they are moved and full of pity. I might say this betrays a condescending, paternalistic attitude; some will even admit that we will have to 'take care' of the Africans forever because maybe they can't take care of themselves. God wants us to tend to their needs.
Am I painting illegals as being the same as death-row criminals? No, but the fact is they are knowingly breaking our laws, not just by crossing the border but by their daily actions once in this country, when they defraud and game the system with multiple (forged) IDs and false statements when applying for aid or entering their children in school. Many of them are also active in other crimes while here: drug dealing, vice of various kinds, drunk driving, vehicular homicide, sex offenses. These things are far from isolated and rare. What has the liberal Christian to say about that? Where is your charity for your own people, who end up being prey to these immigrants? Is your virtue to be bought at the expense of your neighbors and kin?
Meanwhile, these illegals and other immigrants and refugees elicit the same paternalistic helpfulness, the messianic fervor. We are doomed to self-sacrifice in the service of these poor folk who can't do for themselves.
On the one hand, the liberal Christian thinks we are to sacrifice ourselves, taking Christ's place on the cross -- yet on the other hand, they seem to think that minorities are our redeemers in a sense; we have to atone to them, beg their forgiveness for the wrongs ''we'' did them over the centuries. Only minorities can save us, so they think.
Am I hard-hearted, condemning Christian charity? No. By all means, go to Mexico or Africa or wherever you feel called to go, and spend your substance there, if you choose. Send missionaries there, if you think it is of any use. It doesn't seem to have made much change over the last several centuries, though, from all the evidence. When you subtract the ''rice Christians'', I don't think there are many left.
But the notion that we have to pack this country with all the world's needy and helpless is just madness. It is not an idea that was held by the vast majority of Christians down the ages; it is, suspiciously, something that developed only since the advent of Marxist ideas in our Western countries. It is a product of the world's thinking, not of Biblical teaching.
In fact, it's Babel all over again; why do they not see that obvious fact?
Do the Super-Christians ever consider that in condemning fellow Christians today as xenophobes and haters, that they are in fact condemning previous generations of Christians (including their own parents or grandparents) as the same? Former generations agreed more with today's ''xenophobes'' than with today's Christian xenophiles. I suspect it will be very empty in heaven if the liberal Christians are right; our forefathers, as well as many of us today, will not make the cut, if they are right.
Where is the compassion for our own people? Our people are suffering though increased crime, fewer jobs for native-born citizens, loss of our way of life, and many other problems which are sure to be exacerbated with more and more immigration. Who is speaking up for our own people? Where is our voice? Our first duty is to our own. That is the way our fathers believed and that is the way a healthy, normal person, a person not infected with the liberal cancer, believes.
God never called us to give away our countries and our birthright and the future of our children in the name of 'compassion' or anything else. He set the boundaries of the nations, and he has never abolished them.

Labels: Cult Of Niceness, Cultural Marxism, Open Borders, Post-Christianity, Xenomania, Xenophilia