Torture Bad Enough—But Bush AG Pick Gonzales Also Useless On Immigration, Quotas
Despite Alberto Gonzales`s
dismaying performance before Senators last week,
when he repeatedly refused to recant his earlier
assertion that the President has the unilateral right to
set aside Congress` laws against torture, it appears the
fix is in. Gonzales will become the head of the
Dept. of Justice (?!) and, as we are incessantly
reminded, the first Hispanic Attorney General.
It`s also widely assumed that Bush
will later
nominate Gonzales for the Supreme Court.
The likelihood of
Gonzales being confirmed stems in part from the Bush
administration`s readiness to play the
Johnnie Cochran-style
race card. Republicans have increasingly taken to
slandering as
racist anybody who criticizes a minority Bush
appointee. And, of course, Gonzales would indeed be the
first Hispanic etc. etc.
Yet, what we haven`t heard is much
evidence that Hispanics particularly want to be
represented by a national embarrassment like Gonzales.
Would you?
The best you can say for Gonzales
is that he`s a tool. He`s a classic minion whose career
over the
last decade has consisted of concocting legal
rationalizations for whatever George W. Bush wants to
do.
What Bush wants to do is why
VDARE.COM has its own questions for Gonzales—which the
Senate appears unlikely to ask. Gonzales has been an
enforcer in Bush`s campaign to flood the country with
immigrants, legal and illegal, and re-engineer it with
racial quotas.
Thus the Bush Administration failed
to do what it would take to get
Miguel Estrada, a
principled conservative opposed to
affirmative action, confirmed to the federal bench.
But Gonzales, who has repeatedly defended
ethnic preferences, is a much higher priority.
Gonzales
saved racial quotas in the 2003 University of
Michigan cases Grutter and Gratz by
gelding the anti-affirmative action briefs written
by Ted Olson—the truly tragic figure in this
Administration.
As
Howard Sutherland, VDARE.COM`s legal expert, wrote:
"According to
Robert Novak and others, Olson`s original drafts did
argue against any consideration of race, rejecting the
current shibboleth that government has a “compelling
interest” in the racial composition of student bodies.
But between Olson and Bush stood White House counsel,
former Texas Supreme Court Justice and certified
Bushbuddy Alberto Gonzales. Gonzales
supports affirmative action and
quotas. He revised the briefs to laud diversity and
emphasize government`s compelling interest in achieving
it, excising any call to eliminate preferences other
than explicit quotas. Olson apparently never got to make
his case to the president–who apparently agrees with
Gonzales anyway, in as far as he thinks about it at
all."
Gonzales thus delivered a massive
hint to Justice Sandra Day O`Connor that she should
craft her Bakke-style pseudo-compromise
preserving racial preferences. At VDARE.COM, we call the
incoherent result the
“Michigan Mess.”
Moreover, Gonzales is so pro-illegal
immigration that in his Senate testimony last week he
used what I`ve called the "ultimate
euphemism"—that illegal aliens are "lawful
citizens."
That`s not a slip of the tongue.
Gonzales has a relentless prejudice in favor of
authoritarian lawlessness, which is why the President
wants to make him the nation`s chief law enforcement
officer. Here, for instance, are his
semi-coherent thoughts from last Thursday`s hearing
on enforcing the immigration laws:
Gonzales: "There is no requirement, of course, upon
state and locals to enforce federal immigration laws. It
is purely voluntary. In fact, of course, some states
have prohibitions
[against?].
They couldn`t, even if they wanted to.
[They couldn`t
what?] In some cases, the department, as I
understand it, has entered into with state and local
departments in terms of memorandums of understandings in
order to enforce this
[?].
I certainly am sensitive to the
notion that some
local law enforcement people don`t want to exercise
this authority. Well, we`re not saying that they have
to. If they want to they can assist in fighting the war
on terror, that`s what this opinion allows us to do.
Personally I would worry about a policy that permits
someone, a
local law enforcement official, to use this
authority somehow as a club to harass uuhh they might be
unlawful aliens but otherwise lawful
citizens. [Emphasis
added…!!] That would be troubling.
That would be troubling to the President."
The National Council of La Raza
(i.e., "The Race") has saluted Gonzales as a
fellow-traveler in
mestizo supremacist circles. According to
WorldNetDaily (November
24, 2004):
"Alberto Gonzales served with distinction on the board
of directors of one of NCLR`s oldest and most respected
affiliates, the Association for the Advancement of
Mexican Americans in Houston, Texas," [Janet Murguia,
NCLR executive director and chief operating officer]
said. "Moreover, during his tenure as White House
counsel, he has been one of the most accessible members
of the White House staff to NCLR and other Hispanic
organizations." [NCLR
Press Release]
There`s no doubt that if a white,
or even an African-American, nominee for Attorney
General was
linked to a group that called itself "The
Race," he would be asked to distance himself
from it.
The white American establishment,
however, is condescendingly unaware of the very
existence of the concept of mestizo supremacism—even
though that has been the
official ideology of the
Mexican government since 1928.
There is also the detail that
Gonzales is flamingly inept. He recently vetted and
endorsed the now-withdrawn nomination of the
gangsterish Bernie Kerik to be Secretary of Homeland
Security. But, Bush
never fires anybody for incompetence, just for
independence. And that`s the single sin you can be sure
Gonzales won`t commit.
And don`t believe the NRO
crowd that only anti-American liberal wimps worry about
little things like torture and tearing up the Geneva
conventions. FBI
G-men and military officers are also aghast at what
Gonzales has done. Twelve high-ranking retired admirals
and generals, including former Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff
John Shalikashvili, have criticized Gonzales in an
almost-unprecedented
open letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee.
After World War I,
Winston Churchill forlornly reflected:
"When
all was over, torture and cannibalism were the only two
expedients that the civilized, scientific, Christian
States had been able to deny themselves: and these were
of doubtful utility."
I never thought I`d be nostalgic
for the First World War. But the rapidity with which the
Bush Administration,
egged on by Gonzales, turned during their
dramatically less desperate wars to
torturing Afghan and
Iraqi prisoners (70-90 percent of whom were arrested
by
mistake) makes the Great War look like a moral
Golden Age.
One of the best things that
happened to George H.W. Bush`s administration was the
Senate`s 1989 rejection of the new President`s
nomination of their hard-drinking colleague
John Tower as Secretary of Defense.
The senior Bush then put forward
Dick Cheney, who proved as rational and capable during
the First Gulf War as he showed himself
hysterical and untrustworthy during the run-up to
the Second.
Similarly, the junior Bush escaped
serious damage when the atrocious Kerik`s nomination
collapsed quickly before the
ex-bodyguard became a long-term blot upon the
Cabinet.
Republican Senators should do their
President a major favor and reject his unqualified legal
lackey before Gonzales brings additional shame on the
Administration and the country.
But, beyond that, they absolutely
must reject him because his nomination is part of Bush`s
extraordinary attempt to abolish America through mass
immigration and replace it with some
Tex-Mex oligarchic paradise.
[Steve Sailer [email
him] is founder of the Human Biodiversity Institute and
movie critic for
The American Conservative.
His website
www.iSteve.blogspot.com features his daily
blog.]


