A Southerner, Decorated War Veteran, Looks At John McCain
"The
Confederate flag is offensive in
many, many ways, as we all know. It is a symbol of
racism and
slavery."—John
McCain, January 9, 2000, South Carolina
I have several things in common
with John McCain. We are both combat veterans of the
Vietnam War; we both have
ancestors who
served in the
Confederate Army; and we are both
long-term Republicans.
But I am a Southerner. I love my
people, and I am justly
proud of our heritage. Senator McCain has
demonstrated time and time again that he has little
appreciation for the South, its people, or their
heritage. He has also demonstrated that he is either
ignorant of the causes of the
so-called "Civil War" or that he is a slave
to
political correctness and especially to
political expedience.
I suspect there are large measures
of both historical ignorance and political expedience
reflected in John McCain`s statements about the South
and the Southern Cross—the
Confederate Battle Flag.
The worst aspect: he is constantly
trying to make himself look righteous at Southern
expense. He often projects that combination of stubborn
ignorance and arrogant self-righteousness that
Southerners have
endured at the hands of their detractors for almost
two centuries. Those Southerners who have
some knowledge of the "Civil War"—beyond the
politically correct distortions and whitewash now taught
in public schools—have a reasonable grievance against
him.
On the other hand, "straight
talk" McCain is
notorious for flip-flopping his positions depending
on
where, when, and to whom he is speaking.
This on January 12, 2000, three
days after stating that the Confederate flag was all
about "racism" and "slavery," McCain made
this flip-flop on Fox News: "Personally, I see the
flag as a symbol of heritage."[Apologetic
McCain calls for removal of Confederate battle flag from
S.C.,
CNN.com, April 19, 2000 ]
But then, in his latest campaign
book Hard Call: Great Decisions and the Extraordinary People Who Made Them,
McCain continues to make the South and the
Confederate Battle Flag objects of moral scorn in
order to
make himself look principled and righteous. His
righteous posturing and political scapegoating of
Southern heritage slander the memory of courageous
soldiers and a brave people.
A winning plurality of
New Hampshire Republicans and independents were
apparently bamboozled into voting for John McCain
because of national security issues. And indeed,
following the news of the
Bhutto assassination, he did seem to be
a little more knowledgeable on
Pakistan than several other candidates.
Yet for the last several years
McCain has been a key Senate operative in several
attempts to push huge
amnesty-guest-worker bills though Congress. It is
hard to conceive of any Congressional action that would
be
more damaging to national security.
But to McCain, catering to the
cheap labor lobby and
ethnic activists apparently trump national security.
The Kennedy-McCain bill (S.1033
of 2006) would have rewarded 12 to 20 million
illegal aliens with guest-worker status and opened the
door for countless millions more. Even Homeland Security
Secretary
Michael Chertoff has
admitted that approximately 15 percent of them
have criminal records—over and
above border and visa
violations,
theft and fraudulent use of social security numbers,
tax evasion, and sundry
identification forgeries.
McCain claims that Kennedy-McCain
was not an amnesty because illegal aliens would have
been required to pay a $2,000 fine before being given a
guest-worker card and put on a path to citizenship. The
$2,000 fine—which was subject to many illegal
immigrant and employer facilitating loopholes—was more
public relations eye-wash than reality. But it did
indicate the
low value some of our globalist leaders place on
American citizenship.
McCain was also a sponsor of
several later bills (most notably S.2611 and S.1639) to
cram amnesty and thousands of new guest-workers down the
throats of the American people by means of stealth and
unprecedented despotism in Senate
parliamentary procedure. Little time was allowed for
hearings, and McCain and his conspirators gave little
study or heed to the consequences of their proposed
legislation. But others, such as the
Heritage Foundation, the Center for Immigration
Studies, the Federation of Americans for Immigration
Reform, and NumbersUSA did study the probable
consequences. These bills would have resulted in a
tsunami of 30 to 60
million more legal and illegal immigrants within a
decade or two. The impact on American workers and their
families would have been devastating,
displacing millions of American workers and
substantially suppressing their wages and benefits,
while also inflicting taxpayers with hundreds of
billions of dollars in increased educational,
healthcare, and law enforcement costs to support a host
of legalized invaders.
Islamic terrorists are
already exploiting the Bush administration`s Open
Border policies. The immigration tidal wave which would
have followed Kennedy and McCain`s amnesty-guest-worker
bills would have further facilitated both
penetration of our borders and
clandestine operations within our borders by Hamas,
Hezbollah, Al-Qaeda, Islamic Jihad, and other terrorist
groups. National security and public safety would have
been seriously compromised by these bills.
Do Americans want a President who
would place a higher priority on
subsidizing employers with cheap foreign labor than
on strengthening national security? Do we want a
President who would jeopardize national security to
appease
ethnic lobbies? Do we want a President who would
callously injure the economic security of tens of
millions of
American workers and their families to facilitate
the use of cheap foreign labor? Will that make us
more secure or just poorer and less secure? Will
fleecing American taxpayers to pay for the costs of
cheap foreign labor make us more secure or will it limit
our ability to provide for our defense and make us more
vulnerable to attack by foreign enemies?
Should Americans trust the sort of
leadership that sought to deceive them on the real
nature and provisions of several amnesty-guest-worker
bills? What sort of leadership seeks to
ramrod such important bills through the Senate
without proper examination and largely outside public
scrutiny? Would a Senator who gave little thought or
study to the
costs and consequences of a huge amnesty make a wise
President?
No—and that is why Americans should
not trust our
national security to
John McCain. Personally, as an Air Force combat
veteran (Purple Heart, Distinguished Flying Cross) and
former intelligence officer, I do not want
John McCain anywhere near a red phone.
McCain is no conservative, and
there are a number of other issues that rankle
knowledgeable Southerners about his record. There is
McCain-Feingold, passed in 2002 as "campaign reform,"—another
of his cooperative efforts with liberal Democrats—which
had the effect of curtailing the First Amendment
freedoms of grassroots organizations such as Wisconsin
Right to Life. He once referred to
Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson as "agents of
intolerance" too extreme to receive the
attention of the Republican Party. True to his
principles of political expedience, he flip-flopped on
that as well. His positions on gay marriage and civil
unions are as clear as mud.
Although I have been an active
Republican for over forty years, John McCain`s
irresponsible record and dissembling on immigration, his
slander against the Southern people and their symbols,
and his murky positions on social issues, would drive me
to revolt if McCain received the Republican nomination.
I believe this feeling is
widespread in the South.
Mike
Scruggs [email
him] is a retired business executive living in
Hendersonville, North Carolina, and is a former
Republican County Chairman. He holds a BS from the
University of Georgia and an MBA from Stanford
University. He is a decorated USAF combat veteran of the
Vietnam War and until recently was Chairman of the
Board of a Classical Christian School. He is the author
of
The Un-Civil War: Truths Your Teacher Never Told You
and writes a weekly commentary for the Tribune Papers in
Western North Carolina.


