Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

Bush revives bid to legalize illegal aliens
Washington Times ^ | November 10, 2004 | Bill Sammon

Posted on 11/10/2004 1:43:54 AM PST by ovrtaxt

President Bush yesterday moved aggressively to resurrect his plan to relax rules against illegal immigration, a move bound to anger conservatives just days after they helped re-elect him.

The president met privately in the Oval Office with Sen. John McCain to discuss jump-starting a stalled White House initiative that would grant legal status to millions of immigrants who broke the law to enter the United States.

(Excerpt) Read more at washtimes.com ...


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Front Page News; Government; Mexico; US: Arizona; US: California; US: New Mexico; US: Texas; War on Terror
KEYWORDS: aliens; amnesty; binationalcommission; bush; criminalinvasion; foxbuttkissing; guestworker; illegal; tancredo
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 61-8081-100101-120 ... 381-386 next last
To: ovrtaxt

81 posted on 11/10/2004 7:42:17 AM PST by HamiltonJay ("You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: HiJinx

I hope Powell will not be in the cabinet for a 2nd term. I don't trust him.


82 posted on 11/10/2004 7:42:34 AM PST by redgolum (Molon labe)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 38 | View Replies]

To: ovrtaxt
Powell met w/ Fox................hummmmmmmmm I wonder how the Mexican press is reporting that......brb, I need to do some research......
83 posted on 11/10/2004 7:43:18 AM PST by OXENinFLA
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: BureaucratusMaximus
When no American worker is available and willing to take a job, the program should provide a labor supply for American employers.

Translation: When no American worker wants to take a job for $3/hour, the program should provide a labor supply for American employers.

The job market determines wages. Americans will do ANY job for the right wage.

Immigrant pooling is a way around this by denying the free market the opporunity to determine fair wages.

There is no shortage of American workers. Just a shortage of American workers who want to work for an obscenely low wage.

84 posted on 11/10/2004 7:43:40 AM PST by Stu Cohen (Press '1' for English)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 77 | View Replies]

To: redgolum
"We don't have the population that wants to work at the jobs that the illegals are"

The big lie, try paying a descent wage say 7 or 8 bucks and hour/benefits and lot's of poor Americans will do the job. Nobody but an illegal works for less. These jobs used to get done before illegals and still get done in areas wit low illegal populations by Americans!

85 posted on 11/10/2004 7:43:53 AM PST by jpsb
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 32 | View Replies]

To: WRhine

This support of the invasion is going to go through over the holidays, fast.>>

This is the ugly mask behind all the posturing tripe behind the protests here on FR. Call people on it and they will hypocritically claim "it is about ILLEGAL immigration, I have nothing against Latinos" ....., but when the possiblity comes to grent legal status to the millions of productive latinos whose ONE illegal act was one of crossing a border, watch the xenophobes HOWL.

The European immigrants earlier did NOT have to go through the labyrinthine Kafkaesque immigration visa requirements that we now have. THEY GOT ON THE BOAT AND CAME OVER. Half of em had no papers when they got here (ever hear of the phrase "WOP" ?). And guess what? We let them in, despite the ignorant howling of xenophobes about "pigsh!t Irish" and signs on the streets in NY stating "No Irish need apply." The idea that earlier immigrants lined up in neat ordely lines and got properly stamped visas in their passports is so stupid it is not even worth laughing at. They did not know what our immigration laws required back then (which was precious little!) and DID NOT CARE!!! They wanted a job, an opportunity, and a better life for their kids. This is the same spark that drives the immigrants today, except that the howling single synapse "conservatives" want to turn them back at the border by simpletons who think that brother Bob's plumbing company will have to COMPETE with "these people." I saw first hand the lazy, pathetic attitudes of whites towards aliens in Beaumont TX a few years ago when the Vietnamese refugees settled along the gulf coast. They DOMINATED the shrimp industry in a matter of years because they would work harder, longer, and for less money. The solution of the established shrimpers was to bring in the KLAN and harass these people. It would really piss them off when I told them that the "foreigners" were actually more American that they were, in that they were more in line with the attitudes of freedom and hard work than the native born whites. It is also true that many of the freepers, when it comes to this issue, are not conservatives at all, but rather resemble statists who want to use political power to protect the privilege and wealth gained by previous generations.

Stupid prejudice against Mexicans simply for seeking a better life for themselves and their children is UNAMERICAN, and I don't give a ratsass who hears it.

By the way, I am an anglo who never MET a mexican till I was 21 years old, and I am no "liberal" by any stretch of the imagination. I consider this type of posturing crap to be on a par with the moonbats over at DU. In some ways it is even MORE despicable. At least those nimrods have no moral or metaphysical basis for their "cause du jour." We, otoh, have centuries of statutes which recognize the plight of the widow, the orphan, and the foreigner among us, PLUS we grew to where we are by being the place where ANYONE could come and work hard and get ahead. Maybe we should change the inscription on Lady Liberty to read "give me your wealthy, your brain trusts, your elite with enough assets to prove they won't be a drain, and screw the huddled masses yearning to breathe free. We don't need em"


86 posted on 11/10/2004 7:44:53 AM PST by chronic_loser (Yeah? so what do I know?)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 48 | View Replies]

To: WRhine

This support of the invasion is going to go through over the holidays, fast.>>

This is the ugly mask behind all the posturing tripe behind the protests here on FR. Call people on it and they will hypocritically claim "it is about ILLEGAL immigration, I have nothing against Latinos" ....., but when the possiblity comes to grent legal status to the millions of productive latinos whose ONE illegal act was one of crossing a border, watch the xenophobes HOWL.

The European immigrants earlier did NOT have to go through the labyrinthine Kafkaesque immigration visa requirements that we now have. THEY GOT ON THE BOAT AND CAME OVER. Half of em had no papers when they got here (ever hear of the phrase "WOP" ?). And guess what? We let them in, despite the ignorant howling of xenophobes about "pigsh!t Irish" and signs on the streets in NY stating "No Irish need apply." The idea that earlier immigrants lined up in neat ordely lines and got properly stamped visas in their passports is so stupid it is not even worth laughing at. They did not know what our immigration laws required back then (which was precious little!) and DID NOT CARE!!! They wanted a job, an opportunity, and a better life for their kids. This is the same spark that drives the immigrants today, except that the howling single synapse "conservatives" want to turn them back at the border by simpletons who think that brother Bob's plumbing company will have to COMPETE with "these people." I saw first hand the lazy, pathetic attitudes of whites towards aliens in Beaumont TX a few years ago when the Vietnamese refugees settled along the gulf coast. They DOMINATED the shrimp industry in a matter of years because they would work harder, longer, and for less money. The solution of the established shrimpers was to bring in the KLAN and harass these people. It would really piss them off when I told them that the "foreigners" were actually more American that they were, in that they were more in line with the attitudes of freedom and hard work than the native born whites. It is also true that many of the freepers, when it comes to this issue, are not conservatives at all, but rather resemble statists who want to use political power to protect the privilege and wealth gained by previous generations.

Stupid prejudice against Mexicans simply for seeking a better life for themselves and their children is UNAMERICAN, and I don't give a ratsass who hears it.

By the way, I am an anglo who never MET a mexican till I was 21 years old, and I am no "liberal" by any stretch of the imagination. I consider this type of posturing crap to be on a par with the moonbats over at DU. In some ways it is even MORE despicable. At least those nimrods have no moral or metaphysical basis for their "cause du jour." We, otoh, have centuries of statutes which recognize the plight of the widow, the orphan, and the foreigner among us, PLUS we grew to where we are by being the place where ANYONE could come and work hard and get ahead. Maybe we should change the inscription on Lady Liberty to read "give me your wealthy, your brain trusts, your elite with enough assets to prove they won't be a drain, and screw the huddled masses yearning to breathe free. We don't need em"


87 posted on 11/10/2004 7:45:10 AM PST by chronic_loser (Yeah? so what do I know?)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 48 | View Replies]

To: redgolum
I hope Powell will not be in the cabinet for a 2nd term.

I heard a rumor that he may be appointed to Ambassador to Britain

88 posted on 11/10/2004 7:45:24 AM PST by OXENinFLA
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 82 | View Replies]

To: TomGuy

Isn't it piss pitiful that it comes down to W betraying America and her borders and Sheets defending U.S. sovereignty?


89 posted on 11/10/2004 7:48:42 AM PST by PresbyRev
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 14 | View Replies]

To: ovrtaxt

Amnesty and prescription drugs are pure pandering and are two reasons I had to hold my nose when I voted for Bush. However, the alternative was 1000 times worse.


90 posted on 11/10/2004 7:48:44 AM PST by UMFan
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: ovrtaxt
Every single person concerned about this issue should DEMAND that President Bush READ Victor Davis Hanson's Book, Mexifornia: A State of Becoming.

The Coming of Mexifornia
By John Fonte
Hudson Institute | August 21, 2003


When Victor Davis Hanson talks, Washington’s conservative elite listens. A brilliant classical scholar, a prolific military historian, and a hands-on, tractor-driving, fifth-generation California farmer, Professor Hanson has lectured the Joint Chiefs of Staff, dined at the Vice President’s home, and advised the President of the United States.

In his latest book, Mexifornia: A State Of Becoming, Hanson dissects America’s mass immigration/anti-assimilation status quo and details how it undermines our national interests.

He bluntly lays out the problem:

"The really perilous course lies in preserving the status quo and institutionalizing our past failed policies: open borders, unlimited immigration, dependence on cheap and illegal labor, obsequious deference to Mexico City, erosion of legal statutes, multiculturalism in our schools, and a general breakdown in the old assimilationist model."

And he presents a clear solution:

If we are serious people, we will "adopt sweeping restrictions on immigration;" end "separatist ideology;" promote a "stronger mandate for assimilation;" (meaning real civic education in our schools, emphasizing American culture and values); and end "the two-tier legal system for illegal aliens." By this he means ending practices such as allowing illegal aliens in California to get into state universities for reduced tuition rates while American citizens from neighboring Arizona and Nevada pay the full price.

As a leading military historian, Hanson is undoubtedly familiar with the crucial insight of Karl von Clausewitz, that the best way to defeat an adversary is to strike at what the great Prussian strategist called the opponent’s "center of gravity," a "hub of movement and power on which everything depends." This "center of gravity" could be an enemy’s main military forces, capital city, national morale, or alliance system. In any case, Clausewitz states, that if the enemy’s "center of gravity" collapses, the enemy will be defeated.

Left-Right Alliance

Hanson targets the "center of gravity" of the mass immigration/weak assimilation regime as the product of a de facto alliance of the Corporate/Libertarian Right and the Multicultural Left that protects and promotes this system. He states, "Both parties, after all, did their part to get us into this predicament and have so far escaped accountability for the harm they have done." Illegal immigration "continues on unabated" because "it unites the power and influence of employers with the rhetoric and threats of the race industry." Who, after all, "wants to be called an isolationist or a nativist by the corporate Right and a racist or bigot by the multicultural Left?"

But Hanson, a man with Mexican-American nieces, nephews, sisters-in-law, and prospective sons-in-law, who has labored in the fields alongside his workers, faced down illegal alien intruders on his property, and been the target of academic smear campaigns, is not a man to be intimidated. In Mexifornia he charges ahead and details the damage that the Right-Left open-borders coalition has wrought.

One of the major premises on which the pro-mass immigration Right’s worldview rests is the assertion that the assimilation of immigrants into the American mainstream is proceeding today successfully much as it has in the past. Thus, Michael Barone, a leading spokesman for this view, insists that "we have been here before." There is nothing to be concerned about because the history of American immigration will essentially repeat itself—Ellis Island redux—with today’s Latinos playing the role of yesterday’s Italians, assimilating, joining the middle class, and—as a bonus for political conservatives—even voting Republican.

After the publication of his influential book The New Americans, in 2001, the affable and well-connected Barone, was everywhere in the pre-9/11 world of the establishment center-right: the K Street business luncheons, the think-tanks, the Republican side of the Hill, spreading the word—let mass immigration continue; throw in an amnesty for good measure; and it will all work out fine, just like in did in the past. Hanson never mentions Barone, but Mexifornia is a root and branch repudiation of the vision of The New Americans and of the entire business/libertarian pro-mass immigration worldview.

Hanson begins by explaining that Mexican immigration is different. In contrast to immigrants from "the Philippines, China, Japan, Basque Spain, Armenia, and the Punjab," for the Mexican arrival in California there is little physical separation from the homeland; after all, "the Rio Grande is no ocean." This makes assimilation more difficult. Add to this the "enormous numbers" (Mexicans are the largest single immigrant group) and "the constant stream of new arrivals" which "means for each assimilated Mexican, there are several more who are not."

Also, Hanson notes, in the past, Italian, Jewish, and Polish immigrants knew that if they did not learn English they would be failures in America. Today, "A Mexican in California senses that if he fails to integrate into mainstream American society, there will always be thousands of more newcomers like himself who will . . . join him in a viable expatriate culture." Moreover, American leaders "lack confidence in the melting pot" and make little, if any, attempt to assimilate immigrants into their language or their culture.

While American elites of the both the left and right tend to pander to the Mexican governing class, Hanson is highly critical of this group, "which both deliberately exports its unwanted and, once they safely reach American soil, suddenly becomes their champion and absent parent, as much out of resentment toward the United States, as in real concern for people whom they apparently are so gladly free of."

Massive immigration to and financial bailouts from their northern neighbor are, in fact, what allows the Mexican elite to avoid real reform. Hanson insists that "Market capitalism, constitutional democracy, the creation of a middle-class ethic . . .will never fully come to Mexico as long its potential critics go north" instead of marching on Mexico City.

Assimilation Then and Now

With empathy Hanson describes the world of the illegal alien. It is mostly a young man’s world that starts in hope, but soon turns to resignation and is pretty much over by age forty, as knees, backs, and shoulders give way. Although the illegal aliens earn much more than they ever could in Mexico, they begin to compare their circumstances of backbreaking work, not to life in Mexico but to the seemingly easy life of their American employers sitting at poolside, sipping drinks, gossiping on cell phones. Human nature being what it is, they become resentful of these affluent "gringos." At the same time, their children, who know little of Mexico, become even more resentful.

The world of the illegal alien contains the pathologies as well as the strengths of young men. As Hanson puts it, "in the history of civilization it is single transient young men who build bridges and roads, but also bring societies their crime and violence." Not surprisingly, almost a fourth of all inmates in California prisons are from Mexico. The author describes a series of personal confrontations with young illegal aliens who vandalize, steal, and deal drugs on his property. Parroting Chicano Studies ideology, one gang member told him, "Hey, it’s our land anyway, not yours."

Hanson looks askance at upper- and middle-class Americans (both liberals and conservatives) who have winked at the development of a two-tiered peonage-style economic system based on cheap illegal labor that has created a new segregation in which the "helots" even live in their own towns that resemble, in many respects, some of the negative aspects of rural Mexico.

In contrast to today’s failed immigration and assimilation policies, Mexican immigration to America before 1970 was a great success story. The old assimilationist model worked. Hanson describes civic education in his predominately Mexican-American school in the small town of Selma in the heart of California’s Central Valley in the late 1950s and early 1960s. They learned a "tough Americanism" with "biographies of Teddy Roosevelt, stories about Lou Gehrig, recitations from Longfellow, demonstrations of how to fold the flag, a repertoire of patriot songs to master." He "can still remember" his fellow students singing "God Bless America" with the "Spanish accented refrains" of "Stand bêsid her."

Nor did they simply learn a one-sided "triumphalist" history as contemporary academics tell us. They learned about America’s failings, about slavery, segregation, discrimination and prejudice. But Hanson remembers that discussions of the negative aspects of America’s past did not "teach the cheap lesson that America was racist and oppressive." Instead, there was a sense of balance "achieved through the comparison with contemporary societies elsewhere, and confidence in our values, measured against a recognition of innate human weakness."

The end result of this type of civic education was a Selma, California, composed of and run by assimilated, patriotic Mexican-Americans, Hanson’s friends, neighbors, and in-laws. He writes, "If the purpose of such an education system as the one that formed us was to turn out true Americans of every hue, and to instill in them a love of their country and a sense of personal possibility, then the evidence forty years later would say that is was an unquestionable success." His former classmates, overwhelmingly Mexican-Americans, have become teachers, principals, business executives, army officers, skilled mechanics, insurance agents, and lawyers. They are the true heroes of this book, and they prove that successful assimilation is not based on race or ethnicity, but on embracing our common culture and the American Way of Life.

Race Industry vs. Pop Culture

The civic education of Hanson’s youth that achieved what may be called "patriotic assimilation" has been undermined for the past three decades by the other half of the Right-Left open-borders coalition, the Multicultural Left. If the Corporate/Libertarian Right marches under the banner of the Dollar, the Multicultural Left marches under the banner of Racial Separatism. In our colleges and universities there are separate admissions criteria, separate curricula, separate dorms, separate rules, and finally even separate graduation ceremonies for different races and ethnic groups.

In a chapter that examines the damage done both to Latinos in the United States and to the nation itself in the name of multiculturalism, Hanson strips the moral authority from those he calls "race manipulators." In blunt language he explains how a "new race industry" committed to an "agenda of separatism and racial spoils" in the schools, universities, bureaucracies, unions, and politics subverts our common culture, dis-integrates our nation, and harms the life-chances of the very "clients" it claims to speak for.

Mastery of the English language and of an academic curriculum that could help Latino students compete in California’s tough labor market is discouraged in the state’s public schools and colleges in favor of the separatist ideology of Chicano Studies and a bilingual education in which Mexican-American children become competent in neither English nor Spanish.

Hanson contemptuously denounces racial ideologists in the universities: "If there is truly a lingering racism in California, then one need go no further than the state universities, where so much money and power has been handed over to an elite class of racialists who in return have created a curriculum designed to guarantee failure for the children of migrants."

Hanson points out that Mexicans and Mexican-Americans have dismal high school and college graduation rates and are over-represented in "our jails, prisons, and welfare programs," yet the grip of the racial ideologues remains. He suggests, only partially tongue-in-cheek, that it is as if " a white supremacist and a crackpot racist got together" and "brewed the germs of our present school curriculum, concocted the virus of the La Raza separatist and racist mythology, and then released these pathogens . . . [on] unsuspecting Californians, who then proceeded unknowingly to destroy the aspirations of millions of desperately poor aliens."

After excoriating the Multicultural Left, Hanson suggests that the "wholly amoral power of a new popular and global culture" offers a countervailing force to their consciously anti-assimilation actions, in a chapter that has caused some consternation among conservatives.

Global popular culture—the new music, fast food, videos, MTV, boorish entertainment, crass magazines, slang speech, unisex clothes, defiant youth attitudes—is a revolutionary egalitarian development smashing old hierarchies, authorities, and standards—trumping family, ethnicity, race, gender, class, religion, and government. It indiscriminately levels both outmoded snobbery and good taste. It undermines the multicultural race agitator as well as the earnest teacher.

It is "schlock" Hanson tell us, "perhaps deleterious to the long-term moral health of the United States" but in "the short term it is about the only tool we possess to prevent racial separation and ethnic tribalism."

But obviously, Hanson notes, "superficial immersion" in American popular culture is "no substitute for real civic education about American history, culture, and values." In the end, the "leveling effect of popular culture does buy us a little time. It gives America a few years respite before we must deal with the catastrophe that we are not educating millions, not teaching them a common and elevated culture, and not addressing the dilemma of open borders." (And perhaps as the emergence of Arnold Schwartzenegger has revealed, popular culture might "buy a little time" a "few years respite" for the California Republican Party as well.)

Four Choices for America

In the concluding chapter, Hanson declares that Californians (and, thus, Americans) have essentially four choices in dealing with immigration. First we could "continue de facto open-borders" but insist upon assimilation. Second we could vastly reduce immigration and assume that assimilation will take care of itself. Third—Hanson’s choice—we could combine greatly reduced immigration (both legal and illegal) with vigorous patriotic assimilation.

The fourth path¾our present policy—would lead to "a true Mexifornia," an "apartheid state" that "even the universal solvent of popular culture could not unite." California would then combine the "worst attributes of both nations," an "American individualism shorn of both Anglo-Saxon-inspired allegiance to the letter of the law and traditional Mexican familial and religious bedrock values."

In this case, Hanson tells us, poverty becomes endemic; schools erode; crime soars; taxes increase; budget deficits explode; legal or illegal status becomes "irrelevant" for college tuition, driver’s licenses, welfare, and "perhaps soon even voting privileges." The assimilated upper and upper-middle classes of all races practice a "self-interested apartheid" while professing "selfless liberality." A new argot of Spanglish, the "dumbing-down of both languages," emerges among a large, unassimilated, constantly growing Latino underclass that dwarfs both the upper class and an assimilated and intermarried middle and working class.

Advancing Party of the Flag?

Victor Davis Hanson’s Mexifornia is creating quite a stir among mainstream conservatives. It is the summer sensation, with a cover story in National Review and overwhelmingly positive and enthusiastic reviews in the center-right press. Even the Wall Street Journal had some favorable comments.

One reason for this enthusiasm is that the book has arrived at just the right time. Conservatives are having "second thoughts" on immigration and assimilation policies. During the 1970s and 1980s, when there was broad support for relatively open immigration among conservatives, it was assumed that assimilation into the American mainstream would take care itself. With the publication of a seminal article ("Time to Rethink Immigration") in National Review in June 1992, by a free-market journalist and Forbes contributor named Peter Brimelow, opposition to mass immigration started to build on the right. Under the editorship of John O’Sullivan, National Review was at the center of this first-wave debate that faded in the late ’90s.

During the same period, however, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, it was becoming increasingly clear to many thoughtful conservatives that traditional assimilation was not working. Slowly and almost imperceptibly, leading conservative intellectuals and activists began having "second thoughts" about our de facto mass immigration policy. The events of 9/11 further strengthened the rethinking.

Today, this "second thoughts" group would include, in varying degrees, Californians such as Ward Connerly, Thomas Sowell, and former leftists David Horowitz and Peter Collier (Collier urged Hanson to write this manuscript in the first place for Encounter Books, his publishing house); City Journal writers such as Myron Magnet and Heather MacDonald; First Things editor Fr. Richard John Neuhaus; American Enterprise editor Karl Zinsmeister; Hudson Institute President Herb London; Nixon Center President Dimitri Simes and center scholar Robert Leiken; academics including Walter McDougall, James Kurth, Fred Lynch, and Samuel Huntington; National Association of Scholars stalwarts such as Carol Iannone, Glynn Custred, Thomas Wood, Gilbert T. Sewall, and Eugene Genovese; journalist Michele Malkin (whose new book on immigration and national security, Invasion, is a best seller); the National Review’s Ramesh Ponnuru; Claremont Institute scholars Ken Masugi and Tom West; neoconservative professor Fred Siegal; and, since 9/11, the prominent scholar of Islam and presidential appointee, Daniel Pipes. Even the venerable libertarian thinker Milton Friedman has noted that mass immigration and the welfare state don’t mix.

With the strong and positive reception given Mexifornia, conservatives have now entered the second stage of their internal debate over immigration and assimilation. In one sense, conservatives are divided between those who seriously believe in democratic self-government, that is to say, that a people that wants to limit immigration has the moral right and the ability to do so, versus those who believe in economic or demographic determinism, who tells us that the market requires and demands continuous mass immigration regardless of what the American people want and that there is nothing we can do to stop illegal immigration anyway. Hanson, who insists that the future is ours to shape, is clearly in the democratic camp as opposed to the determinist one.

In another sense, conservatives are divided between those who emphasize the long-term national interests in strengthening American unity and our common civic culture and those who emphasize the short-term economic interests of the benefits of cheap labor. The irony facing the "economy über alles" conservatives is that their open-borders policies create the types of social costs, high taxes, and left-wing politics that ultimately undermine both the free market and the nation.

Moral Arguments

In the name of national cohesion and self-government, Mexifornia strikes a major blow for The Party of the Flag against the Right-Left coalition that allies The Party of the Dollar with The Party of Racial Separatism. Hanson’s main weapons are moral arguments. He tells us that the current policies protected by this Left-Right alliance have undermined our common culture in the post 9/11 world; harmed the very Latinos they are designed to help; weakened the standard of living for working-class whites, African-Americans, native-born Mexican-Americans, and legal immigrants; and created new forms of segregation and a virulent race industry. Logically it follows that these policies are amoral, if not immoral.

Hanson’s emphasis on moral factors in Mexifornia is reminiscent of one of his books on military history. In The Soul of Battle (1999) Hanson narrates the campaigns of three extraordinary generals—ancient Greece’s Epaminondas, the Civil War’s Sherman, and World War II’s Patton—who led democratic armies against authoritarian, race-based regimes (Sparta, the Old South, National Socialist Germany). Common to all three generals was their moral vision of fighting against injustice—Spartan helotage, Southern slave society, Nazi race superiority. They were moralists as well as realists. They were "better warmakers," Hanson tells us, because they were ultimately fueled by democratic ideas and an ethical agenda.

Hanson’s Mexifornia is also compelled by a moral vision. He is a better policymaker because his writing is fueled by an ethical agenda. He strikes at the center of gravity of an amoral Left-Right alliance that, while obviously not authoritarian, is clearly cynical and opportunistic with its own, twenty-first century variants of race manipulators and helotage-creating systems that ultimately subvert the cohesion of the United States as a nation.

Like his hero William Tecumseh Sherman, who promised to "make Georgia howl," Victor Davis Hanson surely makes his opponents—these modern-day anti-unionists—"howl." But the larger question is this: As summer turns to fall, will the intellectual war over the relationship of immigration to American unity and our common culture accelerate? Is Mexifornia the beginning of a new ideological offensive by The Party of the Flag that outlines a moral vision in the name of a united American people? And if Hanson is Sherman, who will play Grant?My guess is that John O’Sullivan, a bloodied and savvy veteran of the immigration/multicultural wars of the ’90s who takes the helm of The National Interest in September, is ready to fill this role—ready like Grant to wage a war of attrition, issue by issue, trench by trench, against the forces of Separatism that make up the Corporate Right-Multicultural Left nexus: the business lobbyists, the libertarian editorialists, the pandering politicians, the immigration rights lawyers, the international law specialists, the group preference advocates, the race industry, the multicultural educators, the promoters of transnational and subnational arrangements that degrade our democratic sovereignty, and all those who directly or indirectly undermine the unity of the American nation.


91 posted on 11/10/2004 7:48:59 AM PST by Paul Ross (Deploy Real Missile Defense NOW. Iran will have nukes in 4 months.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Ed_in_NJ

Does W 'employ' such illegals at his ranch?

Very doubtful.

What is pushing him to this?


One reason is he is obsessed with capturing the hispanic vote for the GOP. The problem he has is the vast majority of his (and the GOP base) finds this idea an anathema.


92 posted on 11/10/2004 7:50:51 AM PST by Valin (Out Of My Mind; Back In Five Minutes)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 6 | View Replies]

To: truthandlife

Illegal aliens come here for a better life, "YOURS"


93 posted on 11/10/2004 7:52:01 AM PST by television is just wrong (Our sympathies are misguided with illegal aliens.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 39 | View Replies]

To: jpsb
In the 70's, a meat packing job payed $10-$15 an hour. My uncle worked at a local plant after he got back from Vietnam. Now, the jobs are going at about $8 an hour, with benefits. The reason was two fold.
1. They literally couldn't get anyone to do the work. So.
2. They got people from south of the border.

I don't like it, and think it is wrong, but that is what happened.
94 posted on 11/10/2004 7:52:31 AM PST by redgolum (Molon labe)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 85 | View Replies]

To: Paul Ross

ping for a later read. thanks for the post.


95 posted on 11/10/2004 7:52:52 AM PST by chronic_loser (Yeah? so what do I know?)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 91 | View Replies]

To: Stu Cohen
There is no shortage of American workers. Just a shortage of American workers who want to work for an obscenely low wage.

No. Again...that is not the root of the problem. An obscenely low wage to illegals would not exist if the taxes on business, environmental regulations, and union overhead was curtailed or eliminated for American companies. I don't want to hear any BS about this administration being "for American workers" or "for American business" or "for a strong economy" or "for immigration reform" until the real solution to the immigration problem is addressed: high taxation/regulation of business and government pandering to unions. Its really typical government, finding a solution to a problem by creating another one...while totally ignoring the obvious answer/root of the problem.

96 posted on 11/10/2004 7:52:57 AM PST by BureaucratusMaximus ("We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good" - Hillary Clinton)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 84 | View Replies]

To: CTpatriot
President Bush is already betraying the conservative base and the security of this nation. I knew this would be his number one issue after the election. So much for national security... Thank you for stabbing us in the heart, Mr. President.

Are you a drama queen or what?

97 posted on 11/10/2004 7:54:01 AM PST by Porterville (IT'S GOOD TO BE REPUBLICAN- ASK ME HOW)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 13 | View Replies]

To: OXENinFLA
http://www.cronica.com.mx/nota.php?idc=152404

Translated by............. http://babelfish.altavista.com


The Secretary of State of the United States, Colin Powell, affirmed that integral a migratory reform is a "high priority" for president George W. Bush, that maintains its commitment to work close by with the congressmen of its country in order obtaining that goal.
Nevertheless, he did not speak of a migratory agreement like which he looks for the Mexican government, but who talked about only to that the Bush administration "wants to advance towards the program of temporary workers".
Also, the estadunidense civil employee emphasized that "innovating efforts" are required to improve the border security between both nations and with it to close the passage to the terrorism, traffic of undocumented people and drug trafficking to him.
It, for "stopping to that they could abuse the opening of our societies and the great dimension of our border to damage to our citizens through the human being or drug traffic, or committing terrorism acts", established.
In the inaugural act of XXI the Binational Meeting United Me'xico-Estados, it maintained that the challenge for both States is to work to make of North America one more a more competitive region globally.
"We must begin the work for the morning, toiling together today to increase the opportunities economic and to overcome the common threats", said.
In that sense, the estadunidense civil employee referred that Mexico has become the second greater commercial partner of the United States, where more of a million people crosses to newspaper the common border.
He said that more than ten million of Mexican they live or they work in the United States, but recognized that many lack a legal status.
He remembered that at the beginning of 2003, president Bush proposed a program of temporary work to unite to foreigners with estadunidenses employers and to offer a legal status to the immigrants who contribute to the economy of that nation while they work to maintain to his families.
It indicated now that the bilateral relation subsequent to is in the period the 11 of September, "and that we make a better work to protect our borders and that (Bush) were reelecto for a second mandate and we have a new Congress, I believe that the conditions have improved significantly for this type of reform (the migratory integral)".
President Bush, said, "maintains his commitment around integral a migratory reform, like a high priority in his second period in the presidency, and will close by work with the congressmen reaching this goal", emphasized.
Powell assured that the administrations of presidents Bush and Vicente Fox are creating the conditions for working jointly to improve the education and infrastructure in both sides of the border to satisfy the necessities with people and the commerce.
It was also pronounced to look for the mechanisms that facilitate the opening of new companies in both nations, and referred that in the last decade the relation has been transcendental and is outstanding by visionary initiatives as the Free Trade Agreement.
It exposed that the four years of the first period of Bush have been particularly productive, since the cooperation as far as the application of the law has been deepened, in special in the antinarcotic subject of the combat.
Regarding the indicated thing by the secretary of Energy, Fernando Elizondo, in the sense that the Armed Forces of the United States would watch the oil platforms of Mexico, Powell clarified that that task corresponds only to Mexico.
"Obvious we are in contact with the enemy on some potential threat, but these are sovereign responsibilities and the United States of no form is going to take part in the sovereignty of the Mexican government in this aspect", said.
On the other hand, it commented that they have intensified and expanded the efforts against the terrorism and in favor of the border security, in addition to which the alliance public-private that presidents Fox and Bush sent, well-known as the "Society for the Prosperity" already is creating important opportunities at Mexico.
Powell said that another example of the productive thing of the bilateral relation is the fact that during the last year, the Corporation for the Investment Deprived in the Outside is had it jeopardize to give more than 40 million dollars to finance small estadunidenses companies that operate in Mexico, "and we anticipated that it will provide hundreds with million more in the next months".

Llama Derbez to reinforce the dialogue
The secretary of Outer Relations, Luis Ernesto Derbez, ratified the vocation of the Mexican government to take advantage of the present conjuncture and to construct the bridges between Mexico and the United States, in order that the economic migration, security and interchanges are constituted like strength for both nations.
When inaugurating the works of XXI the Binational meeting United Me'xico-Estados, Derbez emphasized the importance of creating conditions for a permanent bilateral dialogue, that extends particular conjunctures and generate the certainty level that demands a relation between countries united by geography.
The intensity, complexity and dynamism of the correlation between both States, added, demand a mutual permanent effort to maintain the dialogue channels open.
"an agenda with so diverse subjects that a depth level of and specialization without precedents, demand of the federal governments are approached at to guarantee a suitable coordination, and mainly, the establishment of lines of work that allows us to journey towards the future, taking advantage of the opportunities which it offers our shared border us", indicated.
In the presence of the estadunidense delegation headed by Colin Powell, Derbez asserted that Mexico and EU have drawn for a scene that threatened inhibiting the political interchanges, economic, social and cultural that forced them to the creation of new surroundings.
"This it has been characterized by a greater maturity in our dialogue and by the certainty of which we counted on the elements sufficient and the required confidence to surpass any obstacle", it considered.

The border with Mexico, attractive potential for the crossing of terrorists, maintains Ridge
The secretary of Internal Security, Tom Ridge, assured that if the next government of Mexico is of left, the United States will not have disadvantage in dealing and negotiating with him, as long as he has been elect democratically.
Within two years, he commented, "independently of philosophy of candidate victorious, if is government chosen democratically we go to follow with process and to be honest, because it is a process which already we began and we are going to work with that administration, without mattering whom he is".
The estadunidense civil employee and the secretary of Interior, Santiago Creel Miranda, presented the results the binational meeting in the scope of their competition.
They insisted on the subjects of the combat to the terrorism, the transit in the border and the migratory agreement that could ventilate the next year with the new members of the North American Congress.
Tom Ridge assured that the border with Mexico is an attractive potential for the crossing of terrorists or arms towards the United States.
It assured, in addition, that To the similar Qaeda and organizations "they have said that its primary target has been and will be the United States, his citizens and I interest, or within our borders or in any other place of the world, including Mexico like potential place".
It clarified that in Mexico there are at the moment no direct threats on the structures and the individuals of the United States --un million lives in Aztec territory --, reason why thanked for to president Fox and Creel secretary who "have taken their own initiative and effort to protect these North American interests".
In press conference, Tom Ridge and Santiago Creel mentioned the successful exchange of information of intelligence that has done possible to preserve the earth security, sea and airports of both nations, particularly in the Gulf of Mexico.
"We trusted our coastal guards to assure the assets the United States, and also we are going to trust our colleagues so that they assure his own assets", he indicated Ridge.
On the other hand, Creel Miranda took advantage of the occasion to deny that foreign and North American elements exist guarding strategic facilities. "This is not certain", indicated.
It commented, also, which thanks to that exchange of information have been results in the combat to the organized crime, fundamentally to the drug trafficking.
"We are in a new stage in the relation with the agencies of intelligence of the countries friends, democratic, in where we are constructing a confidence base that before was not had".
Tom Ridge abounded: "One of the successes that we have had with the work group of the border has been the capacity to identify the type of information that we needed to share [ Fernando Ortega Pizarro ]
98 posted on 11/10/2004 7:54:26 AM PST by OXENinFLA
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 83 | View Replies]

To: Stu Cohen
Yeah, um, we just had an election for that. It was last week. Tuesday I believe.

Huh? I don't remember Bush focusing on his retarded amnesty plan during his campaign. In fact, he tried to stay away from it as much as possible. Go check his website and literature and tell me how much he was talking about his freakin' reward the illegal alien plan!! Check his campaign speeches too, while you're at it.

Conservatives did not come out and work to get Bush elected only for him to reward lawbreakers and border intruders with amnesty and jobs! Jobs stolen from American workers - jobs that will be paid wages far below what American workers want and thereby depressing wages for all similar jobs. I can introduce you to a friend of mine who had to basically quit the construction business. He refused to hire illegal aliens on his job sites. The other builders put him out of business because they committed a felony, engaged in illegal and unfair business practices, hired illegal aliens who streamed through my neighborhood leaving their trash and feces behind, and paid the border intruders well below a decent wage (kind of like the sweatshops everyone used to get upset about). He could not compete with the lawbreakers. And Bush wants to reward those lawbreakers and the lawbreakers they hire.

That is just one example here in Arizona and it is repeated all over the United States. Dammit, the last time Bush announced this crap Cochise County, Arizona (where I live) was flooded with a huge increase of invaders. Now he's at it again, the weather is cooler...crap! The floodgates are going to be open again for the next few weeks. Just 3 weeks ago 2 Americans (and 6 border intruders) were KILLED by human smugglers who crashed their speeding truck full of border intruders into a line of cars waiting to turn at a stop light. This happened in my town, right outside the entrance of a sensitive military installation on which I work - the very gate that I pass through every day! This is the worst tragedy this small town has ever seen - the highway literally ran with blood. These people died because our government - to include the man I voted for and worked to re-elect - won't fix the border problem!! How many more Americans are going to die over the next few weeks as the green amnesty light blinks back on and the invaders make the run north!!?

No Amnesty! No Rewards!

99 posted on 11/10/2004 7:55:00 AM PST by Spiff (Don't believe everything you think.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 72 | View Replies]

To: ovrtaxt

I assume all the exorcised Freepers will have an alternative plan ... a PLAUSIBLE alternative plan ... to locate, identify and process the 6-10 million illegals already here.

Yeah, right.


100 posted on 11/10/2004 7:58:27 AM PST by Barlowmaker
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first previous 1-20 ... 61-8081-100101-120 ... 381-386 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson