A Young Illinois Reader Writes On First Principles In Resisting Immigration
10/05/2014
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Re: James Kirkpatrick's blog post Rural Virginians Protest Attempt to Give Their Community Away to Illegals

From: A Young Illinois Reader [Send Him Mail]

James Kirkpatrick's post about the resistance of Lawrenceville, VA residents to the kiddie Reconquista is heartening, but it paradoxically underscores one of the principal reasons why conservatives in public life are so feckless: they keep conceding important points of principle to their opponents.

For one thing, conservative officials do not seem to appreciate the insidious quality of the Left's endless exhortations about "the children." Consider the bases stolen by people like Ms. Hardiman when they lecture about public obligations to (other people's) children.

“No one should block someone’s housing opportunity based on race or national origin,” said Helen O’Beirne Hardiman, [Email her] the fair housing director for HOME. “It’s unfair, and it’s completely illegal for government officials to step in to a private deal and say we don’t want Central American children coming to this community.” [Scuttled illegal immigrant housing site in Va. accuses HHS, neighbors of discrimination, by Stephen Dinan and S.A. Miller, Washington Times, September 28, 2014]
The Left assumes:
  • that the moral agency of a minor is completely independent of that of the family, nation, and community to which he is born. This assumption is contrary to intuition, tradition, and elementary biology.
  • that, accordingly, the children of relatively fecund and dysfunctional populations have the moral right to colonize other nations, and that those other nations have the moral obligation to accommodate them.
  • that, correspondingly, the children of one's own family, community, or nation must not be privileged in one's thoughts or actions, despite the natural and healthy human impulse to do just that.
  • that all children are material "blank states" as well as moral ones. Thus, it is unacceptable to statistically infer that a population of characteristically Central American children will grow up to be a population of characteristically Central American adults.
In other words, each new generation of "the children" presents Marxists (Cultural or otherwise) with the chance to project upon it a new and unsullied stage of progressive History.

Fortunately, the example of Lawrenceville shows that Americans still know when they're being sold a bill of goods. How much more effective would this grassroots opposition be if conservative leaders were to articulate the first principles behind it instead of quietly abetting the bullies?

See previous letters from this reader.

James Fulford writes; I know what the reader means. However, the point of the attack by activist group  Housing Opportunities Made Equal (HOME) of Virginia and the defense by Lawrenceville officials are predicated on the same reality—under the Fair Housing Act of 1968 , resistance on first principles may be considered illegal by government inquisitors.  See Agency Will Stop Treating Political Speech as Fair-Housing Violation, By Walter Olson, Cato.org, May 25, 2010.

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