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The Fulford File | Rubio, Republicans, “Our New Spanish-Speaking Overlords,” And How To Fight Creeping Bilingualism
Conservatism Inc. is falling over itself to welcome “our new Spanish-speaking overlords”—to adapt the famous scene from The Simpsons (itself adapted from the 1977 movie Empire of the Ants). The Republican Congressional leadership has chosen newly-minted Florida Senator Marco Rubio to give the response to President Obama’s February 12 State Of The Union—half in Spanish.
(It’s a pattern—Rubio gave the GOP response to the Supreme Court’s Obamacare decision partly in Spanish, and spoke in Spanish, briefly, at the Republican Convention).
Does this mean the United States is turning into Mexico?
No, it’s worse—it means the United States is turning into Canada.
Canada has a lot of experience with bilingualism, all of it bad.
I’ve noted before that the ludicrous Canadian custom of making speeches in both languages—saying everything twice, once in English and once in the minority language—is coming to America.
Well, the Canadians have invented an even worse absurdity: the speaker alternates between languages, leaving large parts of the audience unsure what he’s saying.
Thus Ottawa Citizen columnist Dan Gardner blogged acidly (April 19, 2010):
John Ralston Saul's public speech entitled: "Reinventing the language of citizenship/ inventer la langue de la citoyennete" will be presented in Canada's two official languages Please note the speech will alternate between French and English with no simultaneous translation.
John Ralston Saul is a member of the globalist elite, born in Ottawa, educated in Montreal and London. He writes books in English, but his website offers visitors the choice of English, French, or Spanish.
Gardner asked
I can understand why the lecture might be given in French. Or in English. Or in either with translation. But both with no translation? Do that and you will ensure that more than nine out of ten people in the city [VDARE.com note: Vancouver, B. C.] in which you are giving the lecture will be unable to understand what you are saying. So what is this except a symbolic gesture of... Of what, exactly? Bilingual idealism? Contempt for the unilingual?
The explicitness of that notice is rare but neither the attitude nor the practice are, at least not in Ottawa. Years ago, after moving here, I was amazed at how, in Official Ottawa—i.e. the Ottawa of the federal government—it's perfectly acceptable for public speakers to switch back and forth between languages, without translation, even to the extent of setting up a joke in one language and delivering the punchline in another. This would be admirable in an ideal world in which all Canadians could laugh along. But in this world, this is a very effective way to shutting out the overwhelming majority of Canadians who are unilingual.
Funny. But in fact creeping bilingualism is not funny at all. It’s a serious threat to unilingual members of the majority language community a.k.a. English-speakers, in both Canada and the U.S.
Among other things, bilingualism ultimately means job preference for the minority language group—and years of language lessons for English-speakers who want those jobs.
Thus in Canada, many federal civil service jobs are reserved for people who speak both languages, which means, de facto¸ it is dominated by French speakers.
George Jonas, a Hungarian immigrant to Canada, has described the dynamic:
If Canada was to be a bilingual country with most power concentrated in Ottawa's federal government, in the nature of things it would be Francophones [VDARE.com note: CanSpeak for French-speakers, but really it’s a matter of blood] who would end up occupying most positions of authority in it. The inclination is always stronger for minorities to learn the language of a majority. Anglos weren't going to be bilingual in significant numbers. Francophones would be, and so rule the land.
[Unintended Consequences, by George Jonas,
John Derbyshire Says Eric Cantor Made A Point—Conservatism Inc. Is Done. He Just Didn’t Mean To.
A politician of the opposing party once described a typical Warren Harding speech as "An army of pompous phrases moving over the landscape in search of an idea."
In fairness to our nation's first black President, Harding's speeches weren't that bad. (You can actually listen to a small selection here.) He at least revivified an almost-forgotten word—no small achievement for an orator.
In the present concussed state of the Republican Party, even a Hardingian level of political rhetoric may be too much to hope for. Such at any rate was the impression I took away from Tuesday's speech at the American Enterprise Institute by Eric Cantor, a congressman from Virginia and current House majority leader.
I made the following random notes while watching the Real Clear Politics video of the speech. Numbers in parentheses refer to minutes and seconds into the video.
There is an introduction 1m50s long by Arthur Brooks, president of the AEI (and to the best of my knowledge, no relation to David Brooks.) Then comes Cantor's speech, 36m15s long, title "Making Life Work." The video closes with a brief Q&A period, 10m17s (eight questions).
There's a full pre-delivery transcript of the speech here, and Cantor didn't deviate much from it. (Though, unlike the transcript, he did get "pogrom" right.)
After some preliminary routine flourishes—social mobility, the Wright Brothers, huddled masses, blah blah—we get to the first big segment, on education.
(11m00s) Since 1965, the federal government has poured hundreds of billions of dollars into improving schools, especially in low-income areas—over $15 billion last year. And frankly, the results have not matched the investment.
So, Congressman, you're going to cancel Head Start, then? Ha ha ha ha! Just kidding!
Still on education, at 11m17s we get the first of a parade of Lenny Skutniks. This first is one Joseph Kelley of Washington, D.C., whose son Rashawn was falling behind at school.
Joseph would try and sit in on classes in order to help Rashawn, but was met with hostility …
I should certainly hope so. Having taught inner-city kids myself, I can assure Mr. Cantor that no teacher could do his job with parents sitting in the classroom, even in a society less litigious than ours. If Mr. Kelley had shown up in mine, I'd have been yelling for the security guards.
When—I am asking rhetorically—when did it enter the heads of GOP panjandrums that being anti-schoolteacher is a good electoral strategy? I imagine that the train of thought pursued its sluggish course through their brains somewhat like this: The schools are lousy. Whom should we blame? The parents? Good grief, no! The school boards? They ARE parents. The students? Perish the thought! I know: Let's blame the teachers!
Even the premise is incorrect. When results are disaggregated by ethnicity, our schools do well in the international comparisons. We educate white kids as well as any white country, Hispanic kids as well as any Hispanic country, and so on. True, we have a fair proportion of ineducables, but so does everyone else. Our current approach to the ineducables—make them take Algebra!—is borderline insane, but you won't hear that from Cantor, only feelgood claptrap about "opportunity."
… and even had to obtain a court order so Rashawn could have a tutor.
Really? As detailed in Bob Weissberg's book Bad Students, Not Bad Schools, pp. 208-210), there is a huge array of affordable non-school options—online tutoring, "cram academies" and the like—even in the poorest neighborhoods. Some were made free to students from failing schools under the original No Child Left Behind Act. Weissberg:
City after city reported a nearly identical experience: huge numbers of lagging students were offered a free tutoring option, often in the school they already attend, but only about 10 percent signed up, and even then, most dropped out after a few sessions.
Cantor continues:
(12m00s) Violence was so prevalent in Rashawn's schools
"Hate Group" Stampede Threatens VDARE.com—And America
Liberals in the Main Stream Media have been up in arms over an official White House petition to
STOP WHITE GENOCIDE: Halt MASSIVE third world immigration and FORCED assimilation in White countries!
The petition states
Africa for Africans, Asia for Asians, White countries for EVERYBODY? White countries are being flooded with third world non-whites, and Whites are required by law to integrate with them so as to "assimilate," i.e. intermarry and be blended out of existence…Supporting White Genocide is not anti-racist. It's anti-white!
Followers of the Dissident Right will likely recognize this text. It frequently appears in the comment threads of race-related news articles and YouTube videos.
But it’s news to many on the Left. They are utterly outraged that anyone would think such thoughts:
- Andrew Kaczynski of Buzzfeed tweeted on the petition with the words: “Is this the most racist White House petition ever created?”
- Jonathan Capehart, a black Washington Post columnist, answered: “I would have to answer yes. Yes, it probably is.”
Capehart was particularly upset that some of the signers come from “unlikely places such as New York City, New Haven, Conn., Silver Spring, Md., and Berkeley, Calif.” A petition to ‘stop white genocide’?, January 18, 2012].
They're everywhere!
Capehart even appeared on MSNBC to express his outrage that 405 people had signed the petition— “not a whole lot in the grand scheme of things” but “way too many” for such unacceptable thoughts. [Conspiracy theories a way of life for conservatives, January 18, 2013]
Host Karen Finney (who is considered, but doesn’t look, African-American, see picture RIGHT) 
snarked that Rush Limbaugh probably had the same thoughts. And black commentator Touré, appearing on the same show, suggested that the entire GOP base agreed.
Unlike Capehart, I cannot manage to get outraged that four hundred people (or currently, almost 950 people) are willing to sign their name on the petition.
What does concern me, however, is that over 330,000 people—more than any other cause—have signed another White House petition to “legally recognize Westboro Baptist Church as a Hate Group.”
The Westboro Baptist Church is a fringe church led by Fred Phelps. Phelps began his political activism as a left-wing civil rights attorney. Among his many cases, he filed a class action lawsuit to compel forced busing, as well as forced integration of the American Legion. [As a lawyer, Phelps was good in court, By Joe Taschler and Steve Fry, Topeka The Capital-Journal, August 3, 1994]
Fox News has referred to the Westboro Baptist Church as a “left wing,” but did it not mention any of Phelps’ civil rights activism, leading the fashionista Leftists at Gawker to mock its claim. [Fox News Refers to the Westboro Baptist Church as a ‘Left-Wing Cult’, by Neetzan Zimmerman, December 26, 2012] Fox could have made a much stronger case had it mentioned Phelps’ past legal work—but that would involve an un-neoconservative concession that civil rights litigation is “left wing.”
Phelps and the Church gained fame in the 1990s when he began protesting “Gay Pride” events with signs emblazoned “God Hates Fags.” Eager for more and more attention,
Peter Brimelow Interviewed On Upcoming Amnesty Campaign [Audio]
Richard Spencer of Alternative Right has put up an audio interview with VDARE.com's Peter Brimelow on the new Amnesty Campaign.
Peter takes the position that we’ve been here before, and the Bad Guys lost. He observes that compensation offers about the Anchor Baby Loophole and Rand Paul’s references to an immigration moratorium might be interesting, but that in the end a Third Party will probably be needed.
National Data | January Jobs: Immigrants Displace Natives at a Record Clip—And That’s Even Before Amnesty!
It’s a sick labor market, with immigrants are already displacing Americans, into which our bipartisan political elite is inexplicably planning to amnesty 12-20 million illegal aliens and increase legal immigration, the January jobs report revealed last Friday
The unemployment rate ticked up to 7.9 percent in January. It has made no progress since September 2012 and is still about where it was when President Obama was inaugurated in January 2009.
American employers added 157,000 jobs in January, compared with a revised 196,000 jobs the previous month. For perspective (which you never see supplied by the Main Stream Media or, for that matter, by Establishment economists) about 90,000 legal immigrants arrive each month. Or about 1.062 million per year: see the DHS’s report U.S. Legal Permanent Residents: 2011.
(But the economy did add one-third of a million more jobs in 2012 than previously estimated, with a large chunk coming in the final months of the year).
This generally unimpressive assessment is based on the survey of employer payrolls. But the “other” employment survey, of households, finds a mere 17,000 jobs were created in January. (For a discussion of the differences between the Employer and Household surveys, click here).
The Household Survey reports immigrant and native-born employment. In January, there was record immigrant displacement of American workers:
- Total Household survey employment rose 17,000 (+0.01 percent)
- Foreign-born employment increased by 112,000 (+0.48 percent)
- Native-born employment fell by 95,000 (-0.08 percent)
Note that the January numbers also reflect revised population benchmarks.
Unfortunately no details are provided on how this change allocates among immigrants and native-born. The Labor Department lamely notes: “In accordance with usual practice, BLS will not revise the official household survey estimates for December 2012 and earlier months.”
So January 2013 job growth is based on updated population figures for January and older unrevised population figures for December 2012—literally comparing apples to oranges. In my experience, this is not “usual practice” for government statisticians. Could this asymmetry understate native-born worker displacement?
We do not know.
But we do know that data published over the course of Barack Obama’s first term show foreign-born workers relentlessly gained jobs, while native-born Americans lost them.
From January 2009 to January 2013:
- Total household survey employment rose 1.101 million (+0.77 percent)
- Foreign-born employment increased by 1.721 million (+7.95 percent)
- Native-born employment fell by 620,000 (-0.51 percent)
Month-to-month changes in native and immigrant employment in Mr. Obama’s first term are sketched in our New VDARE.com American Worker Displacement Index (NVDAWDI):
The blue line tracks native job growth, the pink line immigrant job growth, while the yellow line is the ratio of immigrant to native job growth, which we call the New VDARE.com American Worker Displacement Index (NVDAWDI).
American worker displacement is also confirmed by comparing the published figures for December 2012 and December 2011:
|
Employment Status by Nativity, Jan. 2012 to Jan. 2013 (numbers in 1000s; not seasonally |
Amnesty And The GOP’s Treasonous Gang Of Four
Contrary to what we’re incessantly told by the Main Stream Media, it’s not in the least surprising that Senators Jeff Flake (R.-AZ), Lindsey Graham (R.-SC), John McCain, (R.-AZ), and Marco Rubio (R.-FL), became the Republican half of the amnesty-promoting “Gang of 8.” Rubio was only elected in 2010, but his record on immigration has long been terrible, as I noted when expressing relief that he Mitt Romney did not pick him for VP. The others have been among the most vocal supporters of amnesty in Congress. As Tom Tancredo recently pointed out in Townhall.com:
Numbers USA gives Jeff Flake, Lindsey Graham, and John McCain F grades for their support of amnesty. [The Gang of 8 Proposal is Akin to Amnesty, January 29, 2013] Link in original
Indeed, of the 45 Republicans Senators, Flake, Graham and McCain, are the only ones with F Grades. It is fair to say, that these three men have the worst voting on amnesty in the entire US Senate. (Two other new Republicans, Rob Portman and Dan Coats, have F- grades, but that’s based on their votes for small amnesties in the House of Representatives more than a decade ago—both were out of federal politics during the Bush Amnesty Wars.)
What is particularly troubling about this: all of these RINOs faced primary challengers who ran as immigration patriots. Each time, they were able to pretend that they supported border security—and won.
- Jeff Flake
While Flake was better known to conservatives for his fiscal conservatism, he had always been one of the leading supporters of amnesty in the House of Representatives. He co-sponsored the House
The Super Bowl, The Rooney Rule, And The Spread Of Anti-White Quotas In Obama’s America
Sunday’s Super Bowl game between the Baltimore Ravens and the San Francisco 49ers is an anticlimactic finale to the National Football League (NFL) season—two minor teams with no iconic players. But it does have one interesting subplot: it’s the first time brothers are the head coaches of the respective teams—Jim Harbaugh for the 49ers and John Harbaugh for the Ravens.
Both are white, and, in a business where a head coach has all the job security of a Kamikaze pilot, they rose to the top on merit. However, it is increasingly clear that will soon be unacceptable in Obama’s America,
The reason? There were eight vacant NFL head-coaching positions after the 2012 season ended and every one of the positions went to a white man. That is just intolerable in 2013, when we have all been conditioned to believe that, wherever a white male is getting a job, some form of “racism” is being practiced.
(Ironically, even President Barack Obama has been embroiled in this controversy—for daring to hire white men for his Cabinet![America's first black president slammed for white male Cabinet, MSN, January 11, 2013] And he has duly groveled: Obama urges patience to critics of white male nominees, CNN, January 14, 2013.
After all, it’s 2013—hiring white males is so passé!
Remember, the NFL already has the infamous Rooney Rule in place, mandating that a black candidate must be interviewed for every head coach opening.
Here’s what NFL.com writer Ian Rapoport (Message him on Twitter) wrote about the scandal:
The numbers themselves do not look good. For any proponent of the NFL's Rooney Rule and any advocate of open-minded hiring, it was a shutout.
Eight coaches and seven general managers lost their jobs following the 2012 NFL season. None of those posts was filled by a person of color.
That has led Robert Gulliver, the NFL's executive vice president of human resources, to call it "disappointing."
But was it a failure of the Rooney Rule, which requires teams to interview at least one minority candidate for each coach or GM opening?
Pittsburgh Steelers chairman Dan Rooney, namesake of the decade-old rule, views it differently. He would advocate for tinkering with the rule he championed in 2003.
"Let me say this: In all eight cases, we have very excellent compliance," Rooney told NFL.com and NFL Network in an exclusive interview. "Every team followed procedures, interviewed minority candidates. From that standpoint, we were pleased. As far as, now people saying they didn't get the job. Maybe this year, there weren't the candidates they thought there would be so they would get the jobs. On the other hand, it's up to the coach, the candidate, to show the owner that they're capable of doing the job. That's a big thing. Evidently, they weren't able to do that this year."
Dan Rooney: The Rooney Rule 'workable,' can be tweaked, NFL.com, 1-20-13 [Links in original]
Rapoport is a white male sports journalist, bemoaning the lack of black male head coaches in the NFL for NFL.com. It’s like reading Pravda from the old Soviet Union. Rapoport has to choose between the party line and the unemployment line.
But it gets worse. An expansion of the Rooney Rule is in preparation, to include the positions of offensive and defensive coordinator. That will be yet another road block in the career of white NFL coaches:
The Rooney Rule, which requires NFL franchises to interview at least one minority candidate for head-coaching jobs, is a good thing. But it's not working. However, CBS Sports NFL Insider Jason La Canfora reports the Rooney Rule will probably undergo changes in 2013, with the rule likely being expanded to include coordinator and assistant head-coaching positions.
League sources tell La Canfora there is strong support for Rooney Rule expansion
Memo From Middle America| The "Evangelical Immigration Table"—A Treason Lobby Front
Another battle over amnesty is about to be joined. Informed members of the historic American nation have to mount another bitter grassroots struggle against our political, media, corporate and religious elite.
That elite definitely includes a group of Evangelical leaders that calls itself the “Evangelical Immigration Table”. (See my blog entry on this group here).
The Evangelical Immigration Table is staging a major PR campaign to bamboozle evangelicals into supporting amnesty as their Christian duty.
The group has released a video (entitled “I Was a Stranger”) in which a number of the organization’s leaders recite the words of Christ in Matthew 25:31-46. It’s the famous Sheep and the Goats discourse, wherein Christ exhorts his followers to help “one of the least of these brothers of mine”, the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the one needing clothes, sick or in prison. The video emphasizes the part about “I was a stranger and you invited me in”.
What they're trying to do here is to guilt trip evangelicals into thinking that if they don't support amnesty, they are disobeying Christ. The passage in question, however, is about voluntary good works, not about supporting a mass amnesty for foreign lawbreakers.
These evangelical Open Borders boosters are distorting the words of Christ in order to support their agenda, and they ought to be ashamed of themselves.
But how representative of evangelical opinion is the Evangelical Immigration Table ?
You have to read between the lines on the Main Stream Media coverage.
For example, look at one recent headline: Evangelicals Reign In Conservatives On Immigration Reform, Favoring Amnesty Over Enforcement. By Trisha Marczak, Mint Press News, January 16, 2013.
Now, besides the fact that “reign” should be spelled “rein”, that might lead you to believe that all or most “evangelicals” are supporting amnesty.
Well, I’m an evangelical Christian. I sure know that I don’t support amnesty—nor do I think that immigration enforcement and the nation-state are incompatible with Christianity. And I know I’m not alone in that.
In fact, it’s doubtful that any group—certainly not the Evangelical Immigration Table—could speak with authority for all evangelicals. That’s because, notwithstanding the left-wing stereotype of evangelicals as a monolithic movement, American evangelicalism is actually rather fractious.
The American evangelical world is one of endlessly multiplying and dividing denominations, non-denominations, independent churches and ministries. Many evangelicals, when they don't agree with something in their congregation, will often just quit and join another—or even start another church!
Moreover, while most American evangelicals could probably be classified as basically right-leaning, many are apolitical and some belong to the Evangelical Left.
On the question of immigration, I believe a 2009 poll is still valid: most evangelicals are immigration patriots. The poll showed that, when compared to mainline Protestants, Catholics and Jews, evangelicals had the highest percentage of respondents who believe that (1) the quantity of immigrants, illegal and legal, is too high; (2) illegal immigration is caused by lack of enforcement, (3) we have enough Americans who can do our labor, (4) amnesty for illegals is not the answer, (4) attrition through enforcement is a good strategy, and (5) enforcing the law is better than amnesty. [Religious Leaders vs. Members: An Examination of Contrasting Views on Immigration, Steven S. Camarota, CIS, December 2009].
Roy Beck of Numbers USA has estimated that one-third of his group’s members are evangelicals.
Which means that the Evangelical Immigration Table does not speak for most American evangelicals. Even its own website, at the bottom of the long list of evangelical leaders and their organizations who support amnesty, posts this disclaimer:
Titles and institutions are provided for identification purposes only and do not constitute endorsements by those institutions.
Indeed!
This naturally leads to the question: who is really running the Evangelical Immigration Table?
Well, at the top of the aforementioned list appear the names of the nine principal leaders—I’ll call them The Big Nine. Let’s look at the Big Nine and consider what sorts of motivation these people might have. Here are the names:
- Leith Anderson,[Twitter] President, National Association of Evangelicals
- Stephan Bauman, [email him]President and CEO, World Relief
- David Beckmann, [Email him]President, Bread for the World
- Noel Castellanos, [Email him]CEO, Christian Community Development Association
- Luis Cortes, [Email him]President, Esperanza
- Richard Land, [email him]President, Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission
- Samuel Rodriguez,[Twitter] President, National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference
- Gabriel Salguero, [Email him] President, National Latino Evangelical Coalition
- Jim Wallis, [Email him]President and CEO, Sojourners
Note that four of the Big Nine—Noel Castellanos, Luis Cortes, Gabriel Salguero and Samuel Rodriguez—are Hispanics.
Dare I say it? Is it possible that these four have an interest in supporting amnesty that is not entirely spiritual? Such as, possibly, increasing the proportion of the U.S. population
National Review Institute Summit: Conservatism Inc. Stunned—But Not Stunned Enough To Consider Patriotic Immigration Reform
The first stage in the grieving process is denial. That was the central message of the recent National Review Institute's Summit on the “Future of Conservatism.”
Ostensibly this was a meeting to discuss how Conservatism Inc.—the parasitical congerie of lobbyists, consultants, foundation executives, PR types pundits, etc. that exploits the votes of the historic American nation to advance a Big Business agenda—has once again snatched defeat from the jaws of victory .
But it was actually an exercise in telling attendees what they wanted to hear. The Main Stream Media, which extensively covered the conference (see Dave Weigel, Jonathon Chait, and Jonathan Krohn ) was, alas, quite right to note that there wasn't much actual soul searching—except for a near-consensus (among the speakers) on the need to pass amnesty for illegal aliens.
The overwhelmingly white crowd was assured that demographics is not necessarily destiny and that the Republican Party can eventually win over minority voters with better “messaging.” There was no discussion of the GOP’s chronic failure to mobilize its white base—and, of course, no discussion of any alternative to Likudnik war-mongering (which is particularly odd, given the increasing strength of libertarian ideologues in the GOP. For all intents and purposes, it’s still 2003 when it comes to foreign policy for National Review.)
Thus Friday's night star attraction was neoconservative political columnist (and born-again amnesty supporter) Charles Krauthammer. He received a rock star welcome and the applause only built as he confirmed what the audience already believed: “I don't believe in the demographic theories,” Krauthammer assured the throng.
Furthermore, Krauthammer claims to believe that Hispanics are “natural conservatives”—aside from immigration. He actually said: “I think that's one community, if we were running ideologically, we'd win.”
And Krauthammer even asserts that the same old Republican playbook that Conservatism Inc. has been using for 30 years will still work: he claimed that as long as Republicans “stay the conservative party... they will succeed. The reason is we are a center-right country.”
This largely set the Summit’s tone. Conservatives—both the Conservatism Inc. apparatchiks and the grassroots—know they are in trouble. Both were represented at the summit. The professional activists were from the vast array of economic conservative groups from inside in the Beltway—many of whom have long championed championing amnesty and mass immigration. Many of the grassroots attendees had come from out of town for the annual March for Life. They wore sweatshirts and backpacks with the names of various Catholic universities.
But confronted with the “Emerging Democratic Majority,” Conservatism Inc. has announced that the proper response is surrender. Having disregarded (and punished) prophets like Pat Buchanan, Sam Francis, and Peter Brimelow—whose prescient 1997 NR cover story, Electing A New People, co-authored with Ed Rubenstein, was absolutely not mentioned—Conservatism Inc. is now smoothly transitioning from claiming
The GOP's Amnesty Caucus Raises the White Flag
On Monday, Sens. John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Jeff Flake and Marco Rubio emerged with an offer of a Republican surrender to Barack Obama.
We will accept amnesty for 11 million illegal aliens, said the four, but you must get serious about securing the border against yet another invasion. Only after an independent commission agrees the border has been secured will the 11 million be given green cards and put on a path to citizenship.
The next day in Las Vegas, Obama, reveling in victory, instructed the four waving their white flags that the defeated do not dictate terms.
Get cracking on comprehensive reform now, Obama instructed Marco and John, or I send my own bill to the Hill, granting amnesty to every illegal alien, with no preconditions. Putting the 11 million illegal aliens on a path to U.S. citizenship should begin not after the border is better secured, but the day the bill is signed.
In a pointed lecture to Rubio, the Great Hispanic Hope of the GOP, Obama said, "We have done more on border security in the last four years than we have done in the previous 20."
A graduate of the Saul Alinsky school, Obama can smell the defeatism in the Republican Party. And he knows how to treat supplicants begging for a fig leaf to cover the nakedness of their capitulation.
But why are the Republicans surrendering their "no amnesty" stand, which has been party policy since America rallied to the GOP's opposition to amnesty in 2007, when a national grass-roots uprising routed McCain, Teddy Kennedy, Hillary Clinton and George W. Bush himself?
McCain fears the future. We got
John Derbyshire On Today’s Forgotten Men—The American White Working Class
The other day I mentioned former Wall Street Journal editorial-page editor Amity Shlaes in connection with her 1994 piece “Black Mischief” in the London Spectator. Ms. Shlaes has a new book coming out a week next Tuesday, a biography of Calvin Coolidge. I’ll be reviewing it here on VDARE.com.
Ms. Shlaes is probably best known for her 2009 libertarian-contrarian account of the Great Depression, The Forgotten Man. She borrowed her title from an 1883 essay by classical liberal William Graham Sumner. The Forgotten Man is the hapless middle- or working-class schmuck who ends up paying for the grand schemes of social improvement foisted on a nation by politicians, political entrepreneurs, ideologues, and do-gooders.
I liked the book well enough, but I liked the title even more. Sumner had identified an enduring truth about modern democratic society. There is at every time some group of persons, in some kind of pickle—“some man or group of men whose case appeals to the sympathies and the imagination” (Sumner)—on whom politicians and the media shine the benevolent light of their countenances, vowing to take measures to relieve that group of its troubles. And there is another group of persons, barely noticed or mentioned, and including no members at all of the light-shining classes, who will be stuck with the price of that relief, to their great disadvantage. Those are the Forgotten Men.
This came to mind as I was reading Wednesday’s New York Post. Although a sensibly conservative paper on many important topics—law-enforcement, public finances, fracking, the “human rights” rackets, the evil of public-sector unions—the NYP is clueless on immigration. In Wednesday’s issue, it is editorializing about “bringing in from the cold the 11 million illegals already here and instituting a guest-worker program.” [ Immigration: Fix it! January 30, 2013]Any regular VDARE.com reader can take an axe to these weary clichés: eleven million is surely an underestimate, we already have visa categories for every conceivable type of guest worker, etc.
It was, however, not the NYP’s editorial pages that got me thinking about the Forgotten Man, but the news pages. It covered Barack Obama’s speech in Las Vegas, as of course it should have done; but it decorated its coverage with three “case studies” to illustrate the problem the President claimed to be addressing. [Obama’s immigration ‘campaign’, By Geoff Earle, January 30, 2013]
- Case Study #1: Martha Guolotuna, owner of an autobody shop (apparently a clean one) in the borough of Queens, who “departed Quito, Ecuador, for a new life in the United States 18 years ago.”
- Case Study #2: Yenny Quispe, occupation not given, who “has been in America for 10 years after fleeing Peru with her mother and brother to escape her abusive father.”
- Case Study #3: Tania Gordillo, apparently unemployed, who “came to the United States in 1995 from Ecuador and learned what it’s like to be undocumented.”
The main impression these thumbnail “case studies” give is a whiny sense
Three Threats That Should Provoke Total Opposition To Amnesty
The new rush to enact another illegal immigration amnesty, now like the triple threat man in sports playing on the other team, mounts a three-pronged attack on Americans’ rights, jobs and their very quality of life.
What are those three threats? Of course, you can easily list many more than three. But let’s pose these for starters.
One Small Victory For America: Carroll County Adopts Official English!
American patriots are currently deluged with bad news but here’s one bit of good news you almost certainly didn’t hear:
The all-Republican Board of County Commissioners voted unanimously Thursday in Westminster to adopt an ordinance making English the official language of the county government.
[Carroll County adopts official English ordinance , WTOP.com. January 24, 2013]
The struggle for official English in Carroll County MD is a microcosm of the US generally, in terms of the issue itself, the forces it unleashed and (not least) the propaganda role of the Main Stream Media. We can only hope that its success will be repeated across the country.
The Board of County Commissioners of Carroll County held a public hearing on the proposed ordinance on December 11, 2012. We gathered in room 003 of the county office building in Westminster, Maryland.
The prospect of Official English brought the Treason Lobby activists out of their holes. It was standing room only. I was positioned at the front.
But Christian Alexandersen (email him) of the Carroll County Times was spinning for diversity, downplaying and diluting the meeting, which he described as “dozens of men and women of different colors and from different backgrounds”. [English-only ordinance hotly debated at public hearing, December 12, 2012]
Photos of the event reveal just the opposite: a room of about a hundred attendees mirroring the ethnic make-up Carroll County—overwhelmingly white, with 3 or 4 black females, two or three Asians and a few Latinos.
“Different backgrounds”? Not in the modern sense of the word. There were liberal progressive from Westminster and surrounding townships, and conservative whites from the suburbs and rural areas—but almost all whites of German, Polish and Italian descent.
Many proudly discussed their ancestral ties to the county, which extended for several generations.
The Carroll County Times’ Andersen described the hearing as contentious, with a “majority opposing the proposal.” In reality, attendees were about evenly divided with perhaps a slight edge to the opponents of the ordinance, judging by applause. The Left did its usual job of mobilizing and turning out activists. However several pro-ordinance advocates received enthusiastic responses from nearly half of the attendees. Several veterans, including a Korean War Vet, spoke out in favor of the ordinance.
Anderson’s selective quotes followed the usual pattern: opponents seemingly forward looking, inclusive, empathetic:
“Often times, older immigrants have a tough time learning a new language and are very busy supporting their families, [Matilde Vallejos] said. All immigrants, Vallejos said, want to learn English…”
And
“Everyone already knows that the business of Carroll County is done in English, so proposing an ordinance designating English as the official language is pointless, according to Noah Patton, a student at McDaniel College.”
Supporters backward, divisive, cold-hearted, bigoted, discriminatory:
“Despite getting a doctorate degree and becoming a Fulbright Scholar,
Bipartisan Amnesty Gang Throws Law-Abiders Under the Bus
President Obama and the bipartisan Gang of Eight in Washington who want to create a "pathway to citizenship" for millions of illegal aliens have sent a message loud and clear to those who follow the rules: You're chumps!
Have you patiently waited for months and years for the State Department and Department of Homeland Security to slog through your application? You're chumps!
Have you paid thousands of dollars in travel, legal and medical fees to abide by the thicket of entry, employment, health and processing regulations? You're chumps!
Have you studied for your naturalization test, taken the oath of allegiance to heart, embraced our time-tested principle of the rule of law, and demonstrated that you will be a financially independent, productive citizen? You're chumps!
Unrepentant amnesty peddlers on both sides of the aisle admit their plan is all about votes and power. Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain continues his futile chase for the Hispanic bloc. Illinois Democratic Rep. Luis Gutierrez is openly salivating at the prospect of millions of new illegal aliens -- future Democratic Party dependents of the Nanny State— who could be eligible for Obamacare and a plethora of other government benefits despite clear prohibitions against them.
These cynical pols insist that the rest of law-abiding Americans and law-abiding permanent residents must support Washington's push to "do something" because "11 million people are living in the shadows."
To which I say: So? There are 23 million Americans out of work. Why aren't they Washington's top priority anymore? Didn't both parties once pledge that j-o-b-s for unemployed and underemployed Americans was Job No. 1? Why is the very first major legislative push of 2013 another mass amnesty/voter drive/entitlement expansion?
If Washington is really concerned about people "living in the shadows," how about prioritizing the jaw-dropping backlog of 500,000-plus fugitive deportee cases. These are more than a half-million illegal aliens who have been apprehended, who had their day in immigration court, who have been ordered to leave the country, and who were then released and absconded into the ether. Poof!
After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, pols pretended to get serious about
