Posted on 11/17/2015 3:09:47 PM PST by Kaslin
BEGIN TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: The argument raging is what to do with these refugees. And the left just seems as eager as they can be, in utter defiance of common sense. They say it is the maximum expression of the American experiment. And what do they say the American experiment is? "The American experiment is the only experiment..." This is the way they describe the founding of the country, by the way. As it suits their purposes. "Here we have this lone experiment in the world of human freedom -- and, as such, we must be open to one and all, we must be tolerant of everything. Otherwise we are not being true to who we are. We are not being true to our values."
This is what Obama means, by the way. This is my opinion. I'm not quoting leftists here. When you hear Obama... Obama constantly refers to, "This is not who we are. This is not what America is." He is using the same definitions that these leftist intellectuals are hyping, that this is an experiment. It's an ongoing experiment. America's an ongoing experiment. And the results are not in yet! We are still in the test phase, and we are being really tested now.
And we're not America if we don't let anybody in who wants to come in, whether they're coming from the southern border, whether they are terrorists or whether they are just poor, whether they're uneducated. It doesn't matter. America means, "If you're oppressed -- if you're starving, if you're thirsty anywhere in the world -- you can come here. That's what America is. And any limits on that are not who we are. Any limits on that violate this great American experiment of freedom."
Now, that is one of the most half-baked explanations and definitions of America I've ever heard. It is totally absent any concern for American sovereignty. It is totally absent any concern of American national security. And the reason it is, is because, remember, undergirding this whole experiment thinking of theirs is that we are owed a lot of payback, folks. I've played the sound bites for you today. I played those sound bites to prove to you who these people are. I'm being truthful. This is who they are. This is what they think.
The sound bites I played today from two prominent libs prove it. We're guilty. And so when there are refugees all over the world -- Syrian refugees, it just happens to be. You know, Bernie Sanders says it's because of climate change. It's hot where these people live and they're trying to escape to at least where there's some ice to put in their water. They're just boiling out there, and climate change is making them move north. And we must accept them. The fact that there are Syrian refugees because of the turmoil in the Middle East is of secondary importance, or maybe doesn't even rank that high.
They're just people in need. They're suffering, they're starving, and America welcomes all, whether we could afford it or not. Really this is a smokescreen for the fact that they don't like the way America was founded. They don't like that America is predominantly Judeo-Christian. They don't like that America's predominantly a Western civilization country. And that's what they're trying to tear down. And they're tearing it down by allowing all of these people to emigrate and migrate and come as refugees, who have no interest in becoming Americans, who have no interest in assimilating.
And why would they?
We're guilty as sin!
Why would they want to become what we are when we torture, we rape, we murder, we overthrow democratically elected Middle Eastern regimes. We have CIA black sites! We spy on our citizens. Why in the world would they want to come here and become part of that? That's understandable they would want to come here and not become part of that. They want these refugees and these illegal immigrants to come here because that's part of the plan to water down and dilute what America is all about.
So in the midst of this, a bunch of governors are saying, "We don't want these refugees. We don't want them on our states." The leftist intellectuals and the president, media stand up and say, "Well, it's not for you to decide. You don't have to the right to decide! The federal government has total say-so over who gets into the country, who is a citizen and who isn't, and how they get here. You governors have nothing to say about it."
Andy McCarthy has a piece at National Review some months ago about this, and he quotes an opinion from the Supreme Court by Antonin Scalia, the related way of thinking. Scalia says, imagine yourself back at the time they are negotiating the country, trying to convince all the colonies to become part of the United States and ratifying the Constitution. If you tell these states that they're not gonna have any say-so over who lives in their states, you think they're gonna sign up for this country?
They're gonna make fast tracks for the exits at the Constitution hall and they're gonna be out of there. There is no way, Scalia writes, that this would ever, ever have been part of the founding of this country, that the governors, that the states have no say so. You people have forgotten, when this country was formed, the federal government ranked lowest on the totem pole. The states were supreme. The founders of this country were scared to death of centralized government.
They had spent their lives fighting it, escaping it, and establishing a new country that deemphasized the federal government and promoted individual liberty and freedom and states and state sovereignty. It's the concept called federalism. Now we've gotten to the point where everybody seems to want to anoint and empower the federal government power over everything, particularly when a Democrat president is in office. So the Reuters story: "Obama, Congress Heading for Budget Showdown over Syrian Refugees --
Some US Republicans sought to use a must-pass spending bill on Monday to block President Barack Obama's plan to accept thousands of Syrian refugees, saying the Paris attacks had proven they pose too much of a threat to the United States. Republican Representative Brian Babin circulated a letter asking that lawmakers include a provision in the spending bill to defund the plan to admit 10,000 Syrians this year. 'The terrorist attack in Paris by militant Islamists is a loud clanging alarm bell to Congress and the American people warning us why we must block Obama’s reckless and foolish plan,' Babin said."
Speaker of the House Paul Ryan just this morning said they're working on legislation that would create a pause in all of this. But all Obama has to do... I fear all Obama has to is threaten to veto this spending bill to which they're attaching the limit on Syrian refugees -- all he's gotta do is threaten to veto it, which will shut down the government -- and the Republicans will give in. Well, they have up to now. Whenever anything... Whenever a presidential veto in a spending bill might result in a shutdown of the government, who caves?
But back to the constitutionality of this. I mentioned Andy McCarthy earlier, who has written extensively on this. Well, first let me set it up with a couple of more news stories that would help make this make sense. LA Times: "Momentum Builds Among States to Reject Syrian Refugees After Paris Attacks." They go on to describe how Islamophobic the Republicans are and how racist this is and how un-American this is, to limit these dire people in need who are suffering and starving. And, "Who the hell do we think we are to tell them they have no refuge here? Who do we think we are? Who do these Republicans think they are?"
And then a number of intellectuals are cited, think-tank specialists, in which it is said that the states have no say-so over this. If Obama wants these refugees in and the federal government wants them in, the states have to take them. And then there's a CNN story: "Authority over admitting refugees to the country, though, rests with the federal government -- not with the states -- though individual states can make the acceptance process much more difficult, experts said. American University law professor Stephen I. Vladeck put it this way: 'Legally, states have no authority to do anything because the question of who should be allowed in this country is one that the Constitution commits to the federal government.'"
He's wrong.
But Vladeck noted that without the state's participation, the federal government would have a much more arduous task." Well, why? Wait a minute, now, Mr. Vladeck, Professor Vladeck. If the states have no say-so and Obama can say, "(Raspberry) you!" and bring in these refugees no matter what the governors want, then why is it "more arduous" if the governors have no power, if the governors can't say no? You want to hear the truth, as interpreted by constitutional scholar Andrew McCarthy?
"[N]owhere in the Constitution was the national government vested with an enumerated power," meaning spelled out, "over immigration enforcement." Let me read that to you again: "[N]owhere in the Constitution was the national government vested with an enumerated power," a specific power, "over immigration enforcement. Congress was empowered only to set the terms for naturalization -- to determine who qualifies for American citizenship.
"The police power, the power to enforce laws within their respective territories, was left to the states -- left to the representative governments closest to the people whose lives, liberties, and property were most affected by the manner of enforcement." This is exactly the way the country was founded. The Founding Fathers went to great lengths to avoid vesting all of this power in the federal government. They didn't trust it. The first 10 amendments to the Constitution limit the federal government. Folks, if I may...
Look, this, again, is another of many illustrations of why Kathryn and I are writing these Rush Revere children's history books. Because otherwise people are being taught something that's totally untrue. Essentially what kids and everybody's being taught today is the federal government's big, the federal government's great, the federal government's omnipotent, the federal government is benevolent, the federal government is the source of all that matters. And whenever you have a grievance, the federal government's where you go.
Whenever there's good in the country, the federal government did it. When there's problems in the country, the federal government had nothing to do with it. The founders of this country distrusted centralized power. This isn't even arguable. The fact that this is being obliterated in education curricula all over this country is worse than a shame. Nowhere in the Constitution was the federal government vested with an enumerated power over immigration enforcement.
Congress was empowered to set the terms for naturalization, to determine who qualifies for American citizenship. The police power to enforce the laws within their respective territories was left to the states, to the governors. If they don't want these people here, there's a clear argument they do not have to accept them. And the federal government can't make them. Except, we live in a world where everybody thinks the federal government is all powerful and infallible and you have no choice but than to bend over and take it, and it's simply not the case.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: And here's a dirty little secret about the Syrian refugees. Do you know what the voting tendencies of Muslim-Americans is? Would you believe me if I told you that the statistics are that 80% of believers in Islam vote Democrat? You'd believe it? Okay, so would it make sense to you knowing that, that all of these Democrats can't wait for all of these Syrian Muslim refugees to settle in America? We're not talking about going through citizenship. We're talking about granting them refugee status. So you couple that with illegal immigration and the voting characteristics of that group of people demographical, and you can see that all of this is about the furtherance of the Democrat Party agenda and to hell with whatever it means to the country at large.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Now, another question born of my common sense. This goes back to the explanation I gave you in the last hour of how leftists today are describing America as they advocate for us welcoming and accepting any illegal immigrant or refugee from wherever, that the United States is this lone experiment in the world in freedom and democracy and tolerance and acceptance -- civil rights and all that -- and, as such, we have to be open to any and all who want to come. If we're not, the American experiment is failing.
We can't ask any questions!
If they want to come here because they are fleeing oppression of any kind, anywhere else, it's not to us to say no. If we do, we are betraying our founding. The lone human experiment in freedom and tolerance is the United States of America. That's how they explain the founding of the country. So essentially we have to bring... Let's stick with the Syrians now since they are at news. We have to bring the Syrians here to test our experiment in democracy, because apparently you can't find the kind of freedom and tolerance and openness and whatever else anywhere in the world but here.
So have to come here.
But for eight years of the Iraq war, these are the same people who mocked, scolded, made fun of, ridiculed the idea of bringing democracy to the Middle East. Whatever you think of it, it was George Bush's... One of his motivations. George Bush really wanted to act out his belief that all human beings are created with a commonality, a yearning to be free; that we're all alike in that regard, that it's part of our creation. That we yearn to be free, not controlled, not lived under dictatorships and so forth.
He wanted to use Iraq as an experiment.
Bring democracy, freedom, elections, and prove that even in the Middle East, people are the same. He was laughed at, ridiculed, made fun of, even by people on our side. They said, "Well, it sounds noble, but it's a lousy reason for war." Even people on our side said so. But Bush did believe it. Bush still does believe it. The point is, he was ridiculed and laughed out of the White House for it. And what did the critics on the left say? "You're crazy! Those dumb people over there, they never like that!
Democracy, freedom? They don't know anything about dictators like Saddam. It's silly. It's stupid. You can't... You can't export freedom like that. You can't impose freedom on people." Remember that one? They laughed at the whole concept of people having free and open elections in the Middle East. They laughed at the idea that people in the Middle East wanted to be free. And yet, that's the American experiment. So now they flip! Apparently these people in the Middle East only want freedom and democracy in America.
They don't want it in their own countries.
They don't like it in their own countries.
Now not only do they want freedom and democracy -- after us being told for eight years it was impossible for them in Iraq -- but now they're mad because we're denying it to them. Would somebody help me to understand this in simply commonsensical terms? For eight years we were told, "No way! It's a stupid proposition! Freedom, democracy, Middle East? Bush is an idiot! People over there they're not capable of it." Even after the Soviet Union fell American leftists said, "You can't give those people freedom. They lived under the yoke all those years, they don't want freedom. They want to continue to live under big government!" Now all of a sudden they want to access the experiment of freedom in America.
Obama constantly refers to, “This is not who we are. This is not what America is.”
But, B0 campaigned on the promise to fundamentally transform what America “is.”
I take you to George Wallace standing on the steps of University of Alabama with JFK ordering the Alabama National Guard to escort a black student therein per a Federal court ruling. Despite the fact that the governor of each State's guard is its supreme commander, the Guard obeyed the President as commander in chief.
Rush is correct in every respect except for who controls the guns.
Obama was only speaking for himself & a few others sharing his beliefs;not the bulk of America.
Actually, even w/r/t the power of waging war, the People have the right of Mutiny. Elaine Scarry (who was really writing about something else, viz. nuclear-weapons doctrine and the 2nd Amendment) pointed out in her 1981 opus magnum, so to speak, that she wrote while at U. Penn., that the Framers reserved, when they wrote the Constitution, three distinct loci of power for the People and the People only, to keep them from being bullied and abused by their government(s), the federal government most expressly because it was the federal Constitution at hand.
The three area of power reserved to Us the People are the ballot box, the jury box, and the cartridge box. The People have an unreviewable right to elect whom they please. The People have an unreviewable right of jury nullification. And lastly, the People have an unreviewable right to Mutiny, to refuse to fall in for Acts of War they find repugnant, to refuse orders they find odious, and to resist tyranny with the arms they have a right to bear in their own defense.
She made these arguments at doctoral-dissertation length, but that's the short version.
Military authorities have frowned on a right of Mutiny for obvious reasons, but Scarry argued powerfully that that right is there. If an entire State's Militia refused presidential orders, as in 1861, the military authorities would play hell trying to make charges under UCMJ stand against the whole State in arms. In 1865, they didn't even try.
True, but that distinction is not the question I was addressing, which was about powers distributed between the Feds and the States.
But even then, the States can rebel, and we saw where that went. I guess it was a matter of plurality. ;-0
(Commander in nominal chief of the US ;-) It'll make good theater though. Perhaps some clever Sulla will splain it to him.
The People are the States, and vice versa. We have 50 People(s) and 50 States, and each State is a People, "the People". So when I talk, or rather Elaine Scarry talks, about powers reserved to the People, she is talking about the States<=>the People.
That was why the refusal of certain States to answer Lincoln's call for Militia to put down South Carolina by force was momentous. They answered his call with Mutiny, on the grounds that they were no longer in the Union and didn't want to kill Carolinians to appease his bankster associates in New York and Massachusetts.
Their refusal to serve, howbeit they had "grounds", was an absolute right, Scarry tells us: The right of the cartridge box, to refuse service in a bad cause.
The People of those States found the Republican doctrine of State enslavement to the federal government and its soon-to-be-forthcoming abolition program (and railroad land-grant program, and tariff program, and land giveaway program, and much else) to be odious and would contribute no troops to his purpose, but stood up their Militia for their own purposes.
The 1907 rewrite of the Militia Act (I think the 1795 Act, as amended, was still on the books) was something Theodore Roosevelt called for, to legalize and regularize his use of the Militia in foreign wars 10,000 miles away (the Philippines, specifically). That National Guard Act was and is problematic (not politically then, when the GOP had a death-grip on all branches of the federal government), and it needs to be readdressed to cure TR's executive overreach. That, or the Constitution needs to be amended to give the Executive what they've been (illegally) doing for 100 years, viz., committing us to foreign wars, engaging in hostilities just short of war, and conscripting people willy-nilly and eclipsing their rights completely in order to send them halfway around the world, many of them one-way.
But even then, the States can rebel, and we saw where that went. I guess it was a matter of plurality.
Even if a solid majority of States told Obama "no", do you think that would deter him from attempting, at least, to "discipline" or even "reorganize" them as John Quincy Adams theorized and Lincoln put into bloody practice?
The precedents set by Lincoln, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson have convinced many people that if and when the President tells the States to "jump", they must jump or else. They are, people think, legally prostrate and utterly helpless before USG, as before an Oriental despot.
I beg to differ, as legal persons they are totally different.
So when I talk, or rather Elaine Scarry talks, about powers reserved to the People, she is talking about the States<=>the People.
Insofar as the Tenth is concerned, they may share attributes, but they function entirely differently as entities. For example, an individual cannot constitute an entire board of directors. An individual cannot adjudicate contract disputes. There are all sorts of business activities that require more than one person and therefore a third party to settle disputes. They are not the same.
On the other hand, corporate and individuals do share attributes, such as your example with South Carolina.
Their refusal to serve, howbeit they had "grounds", was an absolute right,
You are not going to get an argument out of me that the States don't have a Natural Law right to secede; they clearly do. Lincoln was wrong about a lot of things. His ends did not justify his means.
Re TR: He was Morgans butt boy all righty.
That National Guard Act was and is problematic (not politically then, when the GOP had a death-grip on all branches of the federal government), and it needs to be readdressed to cure TR's executive overreach.
No argument there, but it's not exactly atop my Pareto chart. TR was the cheese who built the navy that made the financial panic that provided excuse for the Fed. See above. Yet before we get into war powers, I actually think amending the Constitution to clarify the supremacy clause as regards treaties, change the threshold for ratification either to the 3/4 of the full Senate or State legislatures, and rescind the 17th, are much higher on my list.
Still, I'm with you if what you intend is to dispense with the professional standing army in favor of compulsory national service such that we can return law enforcement to the people.
Even if a solid majority of States told Obama "no", do you think that would deter him from attempting, at least, to "discipline" or even "reorganize" them as John Quincy Adams theorized and Lincoln put into bloody practice?
I don't think there is anything this creep wouldn't attempt if he thought he could get away with it. Hence my comments about Sulla.
I think the idea of compulsory government education has had more to do with inculcating Federal authority than anything.
BTW, this conversation has been much like the old FR: a respectful exchange of thoughtful interpretations of historical facts without acrimony. It’s been pretty dispiriting here by comparison lately, so thank you.
I appeal to Scarry's article, and to Madison in the Federalist. I'm not talking about state governments, but the People of the State as a "committee of the whole" = the State. I agree that "to the States, or to the People" seems to make them separate, but I'd plead for a reading of the word "or" = "i.e."; but I think Madison's clear enough elsewhere, where he discusses why the Constitution was submitted to the States in convention assembled (outside the state governmental organs), and not to a mass omnium-gatherum "people" of all the States. The Framers shunned all impulses to amalgamation or massification of the States into one People/Nation-State. They established a federal government, not a national one as Madison made clear in Federalist 39, also 40, 41, and 44. He wore out his quill, nuancing what it was the Framers had designed.
I actually think amending the Constitution to clarify the supremacy clause as regards treaties, change the threshold for ratification either to the 3/4 of the full Senate or State legislatures, and rescind the 17th, are much higher on my list.
Sign me up, even though I'm not convinced yet about repealing the 17th yet; it cured a real abuse (purchase of state legislatures by the Interests), and I don't know how to make that problem go away if we went back to status quo ante the 17th.
And you might want to add some language curing Lyndon Johnson's federal grants to strap around the Tenth Amendment and the States and put big-city mayors directly in the President's pocket; that was what LBJ brought to the Constitution-dissolving party.
And while we're at it, the convention might want to address the (unconstitutional, fraudulent) personhood of artificial persons (corporations). That's a bit of Gilded Age fraud that never has been addressed, and which underlies a lot of complaints about corporate political activity like bribery, lobbying, Kelo, and SLAPP suits.
According to the Tenth Amendment, Kelo was correctly decided. I wrote a lengthy article about it you can peruse here. The point is this: If what you want is Natural Law libertarian competition pursuant to Federalism, you must permit injustices within the States such that they fall afoul of their mistakes. The moment unalienable rights are enforced by the Feds, the Feds gain the power to define their scope and interaction, as we have seen.
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