1.
The World Cup Final yesterday was a legalistic nightmare in which the refs gave yellow cards for every hard tackle, ruining the flow of the game. The Spanish team capitalized on the refs' gullibility and began falling and claiming their knees were hurt. It became a competition of thespian exaggeration. Late in the second half, the Spanish convinced the refs to give a red card to a Dutch player. At that point, down to ten men, the Dutch team collapsed, the Spanish scored, and the game was over, 1-0.
2. Also yesterday a man named Gregory Dwyer came from Concordia College to our church to preach. He spoke on the Good Samaritan and argued that the Good Samaritan had it right because he didn't limit his liability to his own specific group, or to any sum, but went all-out to help a stranger. We are supposed to do the same, he said.
The parables of Jesus are baffling to me, and I don't like the way they are interpreted, or perhaps I don't like Jesus' notions. We are finite, and yet he is infinite. He is God. We are human. Now it's true that he became human, but does that mean that we (conversely) can become God? Just because God is both, does that mean that we are both? If God is finite in the person of Jesus, are we infinite in that we share in the Godhead? Does that also mean that our authority is equivalent to that of God (who speaks in first person in the OT), or to that of Christ and the apostles, or that laypeople are suddenly the equivalent of pastors?
It is obvious to me that although there is a side of us that is infinite, we are in fact finite. At least, that is, our resources are finite. Our lifespan is finite.
If we were to go all-out to help every broken stranger on the side of every road, we would go broke, and our children would die.
3.
Gregory Dwyer suggested that just the same, we should be like the Good Samaritan.
4.
Is this possible?
5.
Is this impossible?
6.
After church, Dwyer spoke again, but this time about the college for which he works. Concordia College is one of ten surviving Missouri Synod Lutheran Colleges. It is the only one in the northeast, and the only one in the New York City area. It is about a half hour north of Manhattan in an area where a small house might have an annual tax of $40,000. Dwyer said that he himself can't afford to live in that area, but has to commute in from Connecticut. The college has 800 students. They typically leave the college with debts of about $50,000 (an undergrad B.A.). There are about ten pre-seminary students: the rest are trying to find a high-paying job (presumably).
It used to be that seminary students got a free ride, our own pastor said, through the two big Missouri seminaries (St. Louis and Fort Wayne). He himself got through with a total debt assumption of $500.
Meanwhile, our pastor learned Greek and Hebrew, and learned to preach. All to the good, but the synod is now in straitened circumstances, as are many of the churches. Attendance is down, as is the financial situation.
Dwyer mentioned that a pastor may have a debt of $50,000 and get called to a rural church in Illinois where the annual income would be $20,000. Therefore, the pastor would be on WIC, and other kinds of state help, just to feed his children.
(The ELCA also has some 40 colleges, but they are no longer in any sense Lutheran, although they do receive money from their synods. Muhlenberg College in Allentown, for instance, is technically Lutheran, but has only 1 or 2 Lutheran faculty out of a faculty of 108. Its students are mostly wealthy and Jewish. Students do not have to take any classes in Lutheranism. Still, they get a half million dollars a year from the synod. Wagner College on Staten Island is still nominally Lutheran and you see a cross here and there on the campus. They, too, receive synodic money, but they are an entirely secular campus -- neither students nor faculty are Lutheran, and there are no Lutheran core classes required for matriculation.)
6b. Concordia has a large percentage of Lutheran heritage students (not all Germans), and the rest are mostly Roman Catholic. The faculty is also composed of these two groupings. Students have to take Lutheran theology classes even if they are majoring in business in order to graduate. It looks like an excellent college, and one that I didn't know much about. If I was to choose a college today, I would certainly look closely at Concordia. It's in a good location (they have a thriving film school, apparently), and has the right ethics, or at least some ethics. A school should give you something wholesome.
7.
Gregory Dwyer of Concordia is a full-fledged pastor, with a Master's Degree in Divinity. He said he didn't agree with what seminarians taught him with regard to the division between Law and Gospel. He decided that the limitation of liability (justification) that Lutherans allow themselves (the two kingdoms notion) wasn't demanding enough, and that we have to ask ourselves to assume grace for every neighbor. He cited the notorious last passage in James, which Luther virtually banned. Dwyer mentioned "people" only in this equation of universal generosity. That is, we are responsible for every human being with whom we come into contact, but not animals or insects. Is this theologically sound? Probably. Is it fiscally sound? Not. Is it ecologically sound? (Who cares!)
8.
Dwyer also said that Missouri Synod seminaries will not allow anyone to enter their school if they have a debt accumulation that is too large. They make you go to work first because they don't want to send out pastors who are insolvent. If the seminary is fiscally responsible, why should they ask individual families who belong to the synod to be irresponsible? Something didn't add up (but perhaps I misunderstood something).
9.
We have a seminary student that was once a member of our congregation that we are asked to help. That's fine. But we also have our own children, and car payments, and house payments, and must be responsible for our retirement, and tiny things like insurance.
10.
Jesus is often a bit irresponsible. He challenges the authorities in Jerusalem and gets himself killed. St. Paul and most of the apostles do the same. The only survivor is John (he's the only apostle who isn't martyred). I like John. When I read him, he seems to be thinking for himself. God gave us freedom of inquiry, and Luther said this was a good thing, and Lutheran colleges should promote this (even if the Marxist and crypto-Marxist ones don't).
11.
Luther understood economics. I like Luther. He understood that the Pope was bankrupting Germany and Germans in order to throw toga parties. He was against this. He got the German princes to sign on to his revolution, which in essence, saved the church from being a cash cow for the Pope. Luther understood economics and he understood the devilish Pope.
12.
When people waive economics, it doesn't mean that economics goes away. When Obama says that we will accept invaders from Mexico, it means that the people of Arizona will pay. Obama doesn't care. He's not in Arizona, and doesn't have to pay. He's hoping to cash in on the votes of the growing Hispanic community. That's all Obama cares about: cashing in. Fortunately, he can't add. There are more legal residents of the US, and they are going to vote him out. His approval rating is 44% and declining daily.
13.
The ten commandments are pretty good because they define and delimit the economics of what we're supposed to do, and how we're supposed to behave. Secularist scoffers laugh and say, well, they talk about slaves, and how you're not supposed to poke their eyes out. Call that relevant today? But if you have a business and your workers get you mad, you can't go crazy on them. If you are running a 7/11 in 2010, you have to make sure the employees aren't stealing Slurpees, but you also can't knock them around or poke their eyes out. At least not here in the US. In many countries you can. In this one, you can't. So I'd call the ruling relevant and contemporaneously so.
14.
We need a set of rules that allows us to play ball (and work) together. The rules shouldn't wreck the game, as they did in yesterday's World Cup, where the police are all over you all day. The police should be barely visible, and rarely enter into any particular transaction, but it should be felt that they are there if you need them. In Mexico, they apparently aren't, which is why their citizens come here, even if they aren't willing to abide by any rules regarding how they got here.
15.
But we do need clear rules. The rules allow for a free exchange of ideas, but there has to be limitations. There has to be clarity. There has to be some understanding of our limitations, and the rules can't expect us to be God or saints, or even demand that we be Good Samaritans in the sense that the G. Samaritan was redefined yesterday by Pastor Dwyer. God is the Good Samaritan. All of us understand that the universe is a spectacular blessing, and that being born into it is something that no one can ever deserve. And yet, our place in it remains limited, according to sound Lutheran doctrine. Not only is our authority limited (we have to obey laws), but our contributions are limited (we are not God, and didn't invent this universe -- it's His).
16.
We can be expected to take care of our own families. People who leave their families should pay child support. The law demands this. The law cannot demand that I empty my bank account for every shiftless zombie pretending to have a sick leg on the side of the road.
17.
For every no-goodnik who illegally enters the country, who kidnaps my children, demanding ransom, the police should repay them with a bullet to the head.
18.
The president should know this.
19.
We need rules. The rules have to be clear and yet flexible. They should help us play the game, but not overburden the game.
20.
I have had a policy of trying to write every other day at LS. The rest of the summer I'm going to write less, or at least less punctiliously. I need to swim a bit more with the kids, and do other things. I want to read more in economic theory and in law, but I also need to think about time as money, and spend it more wisely. Just because some nuts want to say that we don't need to think about these things, or that they will take care of it, don't bother to look into the laws we are passing, doesn't mean that they will go away. We need in fact to think more, not less, and try to be as precise as possible, lest we give away our shirts and pants, and walk nude on the road to Jericho, so that the people who are pretending to be hurt on the side of the road can steal our things, steal our livelihood, pretending to be victims, like the Spanish yesterday in the World Cup. There ought to be a conscience that doesn't allow people to do such things as fake a leg injury in order to get a free kick. But not everyone has a conscience. Therefore, there must be rules and laws to protect us from the many around us without a conscience or without any true regard for the spirit of the law: especially those who prey on our conscience.
21.
Luther understood this, which is why he banned indulgences as a way of getting into heaven. Don't "misunderestimate" Luther. As Lutherans, we have to listen to Jesus and also to the law of the Old Testament. But as Lutherans, we get to listen through Luther, to the ways in which he interpreted those ancient rulings, and to the almost crazy (and venal) way in which the Catholics and others have sometimes made sense of the Christ's paradoxical ethical pronouncements. Watch out for the way the Marxists, the crypto-Marxists, and the others reinterpret things. If they just want your money, and are willing to put a wolfish design on your income while presenting a sheepish face, split, as Luther did.
22.
I haven't reached 95, but I should shut up.
Monday, July 12, 2010
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59 comments:
#17--"For every no-goodnik who illegally enters the counters, who kidnaps my children...police should repay with a bullet..." Let me get this straight--you are putting every illegal entrant into this country into the category of someone who is "kidnapping your children" and "should be repayed..."? I hope that's not what you mean. If you do not mean this, accept my sincere apology for thinking you might be so depraved as to mean this. If you do mean this, it has (sometimes) been nice to know to you.
In Arizona, it is increasingly the case that kidnappings are being carried out. It is the kidnapping capital of America, as the drug cartels are now spilling over into Arizona, apparently, and using their muscle not only against Mexican-Americans (who are getting the worst of it, and who are at least as likely to be against illegals as all other legal Americans) but against anyone else who happens to live there.
I think there is some potential slippage in the phraseology because it isn't clear who is who and what is what in terms of the illegals. So many are clandestine.
It's an enormous problem, and one that Obama should bother to help sort out, even if I think he can't do much about the uncapped oil well that will affect the grandchildren of our grandchildren.
I don't think illegals should be shot in the head, but they should be rounded up, and sorted out.
It's a situation that is at least as bad as the situation in the Gulf.
I have no idea why neither Bush nor Obama are taking it on, unless it's because they want the Hispanic vote.
But the Hispanics who are here legally by and large want the situation clarified themselves.
It's perhaps that the employers of illegals are profiting from the situation, and don't want it sorted out.
But it's undermining the entire economy, and destroying quality of life in Arizona and throughout the west.
Governors all over the west, even Democratic ones, think Obama is insane to try to ban the new law.
After all, he's doing absolutely nothing but sitting on his thumbs.
At any rate, it's not always been that nice to know you, either, Stephen. You jump to abrasive conclusions, are always reluctant to think clearly.
Well then, my pre-emptive apology applies.
I may sometimes "jump to abrasive conclusions" based on statements of yours that are unclear, indeed very harsh conclusions, to be sure (for one thing because sometimes I don't know just what to expect from someone who has generalized that compassion, as in supporting legislation that will help other people, but not oneself or one's own family, is "selfish"--that's really topsy turvy though g-d knows sometimes supposed compassion can be a twisted thing); but I think it's very weird for you to say I'm "always reluctant to think clearly" (emphasis mine). This from the person who made the statement about compassion, I think in the context of gay marriage and why straights would support it.
If you want this to be a less abrasive arena, you wouldn't casually label Rachel Maddow "Madcow". (And you wouldn't ever invoke the phenomenon of "Holocaust Denial" anywhere near the matter of people not agreeing with you about what is happening in this country, as you once did). But let's stick with the matter of Rachel M., because that's simpler and less upsetting. She is a serious person--rather far to the left--who tries to base what she says on facts and logic. She might be respected for that from the right (as she sometimes is), as I respect people like George Will and Charles Krauthammer and Kathleen Parker--at the same time as I thoroughly thoroughly despise the talk radio righties.
I didn't know about the Arizona kidnapping situation; and it is a true problem, as some cursory googling informed me.
Mexicans have more of a right to Arizona than European or American Jews had to Israel.
Kirby:
Blissett's lame claim that Mexicans have a "right" to Arizona does suggest some analogies between Mexico and the Palestinian territories, though: they're both violent, corrupt, gang-ridden hell-holes dependent on foreign subsidies.
America is a sovereign nation. The idea that the government of Mexico, or its proxies residing in this country, should dictate our immigration policy, is absurd.
There are a number of reasons why we need to control illegal immigration, and none of them is racist.
"Immigration reform" is nothing but amnesty, and continuing to accept millions more economic refugees. Mexicans don't have a "right" to repatriate the American Southwest, any more than Americans have a "right" to return to Europe and claim their birthright there. It's a crazy argument. Mass movement of refugees is a terrifying phenomenon, which shouldn't be encouraged.
What Arizona is trying to do is get a handle on controlling the flow and presence of illegals, and the Obama Administration is trying to prevent them, because it wants the Hispanic vote, and wants to position itself as being in favor of unbridled immigration.
Rule One: Secure the border. Rule Two: Enforce our residence and immigration laws.
The immigration rights lobbies will kick and scream and beat their heads against the wall, but this is what Americans have said they want, in poll after poll after poll.
The scofflaws who line our streets, loitering for a pick-up day job should be rounded up and sent in vans back to the border to be dropped off. They're only here because they know they're being tolerated.
Meanwhile, the Republicans have flip-flopped on this issue. When Bush II was in office, he tried for "immigration reform" himself and was booed down. Conservatives took the side of the Mexicans, and made all the usual claims about their being "good for the economy" and "deserving of our compassion" and all that crap. Now that Obama has done another Bush turn, they've turned around and now resist amnesty. Both sides play the issue for everything it will yield in political hay.
Meanwhile, American are suffering 10% official unemployment, and we continue to let in more "cheap labor" from Mexico and Asia--it's disgusting!
Luther,
The Catholic countries in general are somewhat illegitimate compared to the one Jewish country. Mexico is a mess, and is hemorrhaging citizens. They come here and are almost completely illiterate, with no sense of humor or law (they are linked).
They are not as badly off as people coming from Marxist or Islamic countries (who share in that they have zero freedom of inquiry, and don't know anything about themselves).
If we gave Texas and Arizona and New Mexico back to Mexico (even though it was won fair and square through conquest and the Gadsden Purchase), the Mexicans would just have to walk further to get out of their land blighted by the weak conscience of the Catholic church (Well, I don't know what's wrong with Catholicism exactly, but Mafia men don't seem to have any problems being hitmen and Catholics simultaneously -- suffice it to say that Marxists and Islamics share in that, but no Lutherans would find themselves killing people willy nilly for profit and then going to church!).
The Gaza Strip (not much like the Sunset Strip) is a mess, and I only know some of the broad outlines of the problem. It's a 50-mile long strip that was set aside to house displaced Palestinians (and other nomadic groups) that had to get out of the newly formed Israel, which the British had set up for the Jews under the Balfour Declaration.
None of the other Arabic countries around would take any of the Palestinians, so they are still in refugee camps due to the lack of largesse of their supposed neighbors.
Meanwhile, they don't have many ways to appeal.
Jews have comedians (lots of them) and this wins hearts and minds much more than tanks and bullets.
There aren't any major Palestinian (or Islamic) comics.
This means they can't win hearts and minds.
Meanwhile, it would be impossible to prepare them because humor requires freedom of inquiry and the ability to say things that are outrageous, and yet true.
You can't do that in Islamic or Marxist societies. Try that in North Korea, or in Myanmar, and see where it lands you.
Again, the Catholics are somewhat better off. Mexico gave us George Lopez, for instance. He's a minor comic, but the way he stretches his face is enough to win my heart.
It's a kind of mindless comedy, but that can be great fun.
Mexico also has wonderful travelling circuses. Last night in Delhi we had a charming Mexican acrobat in the Kelly Miller circus. He could throw hats in the air loosely describing semi-circles within the Big Top, delighting hundreds with his agility and grace. He shot pingpong balls out of his mouth fifty feet in the air and caught them with his mouth before shooting them back up.
This kind of thing goes a long way at Lutheran Surrealism.
Mexico, like many Catholic countries, suffers from a weak individual conscience in its citizens, and also from a disordered sense of law (I don't quite understand this), but they are salvageable.
Jews are if anything at least as good as Lutherans (Lutherans are natural comedians, and have a strong sense of law and order).
Legitimacy is difficult to pin down, but I believe it is underwritten with humor as well as grace. And the Mexicans do have that.
They are just missing the law and order bit and they would be just fine on their side of the border.
We won the southwest fair and square with successful conquest, as well as the Gadsden Purchase.
All around the world there are refugees, generally from lawless Marxist and Islamic countries.
Mexico is a nominally Catholic country but it also has a long history of Marxist oppression.
This kills the sense of humor and the freedom of inquiry that give people their dignity.
Stephen, I can't believe anyone watched Madcow with anything but disbelief. I think she's a rightwing plant to make the left look ridiculous. Teeth Doberman (I think we are permitted a touch of humor with regard to such a person) and his bowtie is another rightwing plant. He must be!!
At any rate, show me where those two are taken seriously by conservatives and I will be surprised.
They are trenchant, and humorless, and savagely biased: almost like caricatures of the leftist ideologue that goes through the process of thinking with blinkers and a hatchet.
Not unlike me, perhaps! but who takes me seriously?
I thought more about the fundraising aspects of religion.
Religious life can't be just about your soul. It also needs institutions. And institutions require money.
Greenbacks.
So anyone going around has to raise the money in some way.
Luther resented that.
But the Catholic church has proved surprisingly hardy.
If we want to compete with them, we have to pony up.
This is complicated, and I have to think more about the issues involved.
James de Later and Curtis Faville added comments before mine that I don't think should be missed.
I'm having trouble with the blogger comments system, for some reason. So save any comments before posting them, so you can post them again in case they get eaten.
Good blog entry.
If this Dwyer character really believes as you say, he should be sent back to school. That is some of the worst exegesis of a parable I have ever seen, and misses Jesus' point entirely. With exegesis like that, he should leave Concordia and go over to ELCA---they make the Bible say whatever they want, so he'd fit right in.
Grace and Peace
Randy
I was told by one member of the congregation that I had "got it all wrong," Randy, so it's quite possible that I have goofed up what he thought.
I can do that, like everyone else.
If he did say what I say he said, then is my reading of the Good Samaritan more accurate, to your thinking?
I think everyone turns the Bible into a sock puppet to some degree, and make it say what we want.
I'm probably no different.
Moreover, think about yourself as having the task of getting money for the denomination, or for your college. James is pretty handy.
Luther denounced it when he was paying in, but I'll bet he rethought that when he was in charge of things and needed money.
Institutions can't live on saved souls. They need moolah, and James' notion of "faith without works is dead" is bound to bring it in, once you've stepped on the conscious of a congregation.
Someone has to squeeze congregations, or maybe no one would give, especially if you're a Lutheran and live on the notion of "faith alone," as being enough to justify the sinner.
Faith alone certainly won't pay the bills.
If you put yourself in the shoes of a fund raiser, it's hard not to see the efficacy of James.
If someone doesn't do the job, the congregations and the church colleges will die.
I think we should still try to see the beauty in what everyone is doing. I think I was too hard on the guy. His spiel was fairly effective.
I am stingy, and it got to me.
But I hated it.
the thing is you never get a strict accounting of what money goes where. Not that I think the whole thing should be a glass pipeline, but where does the money come from, and how many middle men are there, and so on?
Our congregation is new to Missouri. the other congregation never sent us anyone (ELCA), but we were fully aware of how they were massaging Bible texts and changing wording (all the pronouns for God and the Son were changed to gender neutral in one hymn book to satisfy a feminist cabal).
Missouri is a lot more theologically intact.
I do want their institutions to survive.
Kirby,
I honestly don't understand how we interpreted Pr. Dwyer's message so differently. I loved his sermon, and did not at all see "money" (or, as you, I believe, hint, socialism) running through it. To me, the point he made was that while all of us want to limit our definition of "neighbor" (not THAT guy...I don't like/know/agree with him, don't have to show HIM kindness), it is simply not in the spirit of Christianity to do that. Isn't that the message of the parable -- isn't that why it's so important that the SAMARITAN is the only one to show compassion?
Nor do I think he, in any way, suggested that we need to go "all out" with our resources. I think that's exactly why he said (later on -- not in her sermon) that the seminaries do not want to take on a student who's already burdened by tremendous debt -- the reality that such a person is first called to feed and care for his family. The church, it seems to me, rightly realizes that, and to ask a man who might earn $25,000 a year to manage a family and as well as a tremendous debt is unethical.
Having said this, it was, after all, "Mission Fest Sunday," the one Sunday a year when the invited guest is with us for the express purpose of presenting a giving opportunity. Perhaps you have not been present for any previous mission fest, but it's always a Sunday in July. The guest tells the congregation about a project that we as a congregation might sponsor. We've had all sorts of people come -- and yes, we always did that -- including every year we were in the ELCA. Recently, the Immanuel church board voted to commit $1,000 in the upcoming fiscal year for a seminarian's education and designated a recipient. Dwyer was with us on Sunday for the express purpose of telling us about the need that today's seminarian's face, and hopefully encouraging us to give! I think he did that, and did it well, but he did it in his speech after church. To me, his sermon, while certainly not unrelated in spirit, was not part of the appeal to pocketbook; it was a call to examine our understanding of the command to love neighbor.
Andrea, this is incredibly helpful.
I still wonder who the Good Samaritan is.
I thought it was Jesus, not me.
It could be a stranger.
It's just not clear to me who this guy is.
That determines how I'm supposed to react to it, right?
I am grateful to the kindness of strangers, and do try to be kind, but not to the degree that the GS is: picking up a busted guy off the street and putting him up in a hotel and paying for medical bills is beyond my budget.
Your giving of the context for the Sunday visit helps me a lot.
I was unnecessarily alarmed.
Check out Revfiskj commments on the parable on YouTube. I think they're "spot-on."
A parable has only one primary meaning or focus that it's trying to prove. The point Jesus was trying to make to the lawyer was that he could not "justify himself." We need to be careful with secondary points to parables or you can come up with some really strange theology.
The lawyer was trying to say, "Well, I love my neighbors, so I'm going to heaven" and Jesus was saying, "No, you really don't, so you're not." :)
Grace and Peace,
Randy
Randy, I see myself as a pink-belt Christian.
All tips appreciated.
Andrea's neat intervention was also very helpful. I do tend to think that everything is socialist. Whenever I see people knocking down a door or if they lose their keys, I just think:
They are crypto-socialists.
Not everything of course belongs within that designation.
But most things do, it seems.
Alas, Kirby, you're right. Today most things do. But not this one, I'm willing to bet.
I still have trouble with the commandment, or the new commandment, as Jesus puts it, in John 13:34: that we love one another as we love ourselves.
First off, other people aren't the same as us.
I might wish to be loved by being left alone, so that I could eat my cereal in peace, while going through the funnies in the local paper.
Now if I were to leave someone else alone with their cereal while reading the paper, they might wish instead that I would cut strawberries to put on the cereal, and then talk with them a bit about the editorial.
So we have to remember that no two people are alike, or equal, in all respects.
Next, some people are profoundly lazy, and might want us to do their laundry for them. They wouldn't do our laundry, but they might want us to do theirs.
Should I do it?
Should I give money to someone who won't work?
Is that love?
Or is it some kind of crummy complicity with their laziness?
I guess Pastor Dwyer is off the hook, as Andrea says he was saying something completely different from what I was saying he was saying, and that it all made perfect sense, because that's what he was SUPPOSED TO BE TALKING ABOUT, and so I should have shut up (I feel boiling guilt about the amount I put in the pot each week as it is, but can't give any more, or else there are budgetary tensions, and the bank starts to charge bounced fees), so anyone who steps on that even a trace causes my guilt to overwhelm me.
Now I see he wasn't doing that on purpose.
I've been up for three nights staring at the ceiling thinking about this.
Luther did, I think, cut out the notion that we have to treat non-Christians as we treat Christians when he said we don't have to turn the other cheek, but can instead go to war.
this means, I think, that we need not send money to the Palestinians, for instance (the ELCA loves to send money to the Palestinians, who in turn use it to make bombs to hurt the Israelis).
The golden rule can turn into some kind of icky communism where equality militates against every other value, and the economy stagnates, and resentments fester, and so on.
I prefer simple self-interest and the invisible hand.
But this is a key problem in contemporary life: the hijacking of the golden rule by communists.
.
Immigration
Immigration now the topic of discussion,
the uninvited millions moving in,
a burden on our culture and our nation,
filling hospitals and schools and jails.
They come in droves across our borders
into our land, disregard our laws,
even claiming the right to this invasion,
take advantage where our system fails.
They say they should be welcomed and forgiven,
telling all it’s but the simple result of need
and desperation and, after all, it was God Almighty’s own decision, and death, of course,
should come to he who our Holy claim
to this land defies.
Somewhere the ghost of an old Chief chuckles,
nods in recognition,
then cries.
Copyright 2008 – HARDWOOD-77 Poems, Gary B. Fitzgerald
The immigration issue is evidence that capitalism without regulations - or without regulations that are enforced - ends up in economic degradation and the dehumanization of the individual.
Entire industries rely on 'cheap' illegal labor, to the detriment of both our general economy and the welfare of citizens of the U.S. and of Mexico. These jobs, too, are not exportable - you can't have someone from India picking fruit in California. You can't have the Chinese building houses here on American soil, or being nannies to children. These are jobs that if not given to illegals Would be filled by Americans, the salaries would just have to go up. Companies, however, don't want to have to treat these workers like humans (which is what our law requires), because the higher wages would possibly hurt the profit margin.
It is an entrenched system that would require actual action from one side or the other to change - the Democrats say they want to humanize the illegal immigrants, most of whom are well-meaning, family-supporting laborers...And the Republicans say they want to keep the illegals out, because they took our jobs!
The Democrats will win on this issue, because they actually believe, at least a little bit, in their stated position.
The Republicans don't actually want to deprive corporations of cheap labor (that would cut into their profit margins). This disconnect between the party's stated position and its actual desires will keep the Repubs from having any sort of realistic platform to enact.
The Republicans like things just the way they are... They had all three branches of gvmt. in their control for 6 years and didn't do diddly-squat.
The immigration issue is evidence that capitalism without regulations - or without regulations that are enforced - ends up in economic degradation and the dehumanization of the individual.
Entire industries rely on 'cheap' illegal labor, to the detriment of both our general economy and the welfare of citizens of the U.S. and of Mexico. These jobs, too, are not exportable - you can't have someone from India picking fruit in California. You can't have the Chinese building houses here on American soil, or being nannies to children. These are jobs that if not given to illegals Would be filled by Americans, the pay would just have to go up. Companies, however, don't want to have to treat these workers like humans (which is what our law requires), because the higher wages/workers' rights would possibly hurt the profit margin.
It is an entrenched system that would require actual action from one side or the other to change - the Democrats say they want to humanize the illegal immigrants, most of whom are well-meaning, family-supporting laborers...And the Republicans say they want to keep the illegals out, because they took our jobs!
The Democrats will win on this issue, because they actually believe, at least a little bit, in their stated position.
The Republicans don't actually want to deprive corporations of cheap labor (that would cut into their profit margins). This disconnect between the party's stated position and its actual desires will keep the Repubs from having any sort of realistic platform to enact.
The Republicans like things just the way they are... They had all three branches of gvmt. in their control for 6 years and didn't do diddly-squat.
I hate to admit this, but I think Brett is dead right with regard to the Republicans and immigration.
Bush was a bust.
Had he wanted to achieve something he could have done it. I think both parties want the Hispanic vote so badly they will let them walk over the rest of us and over each other, killing, kidnapping, and undercutting the law, just so that corporations and rich people can get cheap labor.
It's sick, and there's no remedy in sight.
Arizona's Brewer seems to be the only one with any sense in the whole matter, and she only because her citizens are getting killed and kidnapped by the cartels.
P.S. don't forget to vote in the poetry contest! Today is I think the day to vote (Bastille Day) and the polls close at midnight tonight.
any contributor or commentator can vote, including JH should he wish to reconvene with us, or let his vote be counted (we'll continue to consider him an honorary life member of LS even if he has had about enough of my Catholic bashing -- after all -- he once won one of our contests which means he will always be one of us whether he likes it or not!).
Thanks Kirby!
And I didn't mean to suggest that the Democrat's motives were pure -
Just that their stated position and what they view as good for their electoral chances are aligned.
So they can say that they're for amnesty because of their ideals, when really it's because they want the votes.
It's a bit of a happy coincidence that their professed principals and what's politically pragmatic are aligned for 'em.
Brett, your simplistic views on the illegal immigration problem aren't very convincing.
Capitalism "without regulations" is an obvious straw man claim, and it's more accurate to to say that illegal immigrants violate federal laws, not just "regulations." Nor do I think most businesses intentionally hire illegals. Nor do most conservatives believe cheap illegal labour should trump first, the law, which when compromised, second, also compromises our national sovereignty and security as well as, third, unfairly burdens our social, medical, educational, law enforcement and prison resources in some states to the breaking point. And fourth, illegals do take jobs away from citizens or legal immigrants, as has been mentioned.
Your claim that Republicans in general don't want immigration laws enforced is likewise simplistic, for many do; many conservatives opposed President Bush's failures to enforce the law more rigorously and to encourage Congress to pass a compromise bill including some form of amnesty.
I have to agree with most of what Curtis Faville said earlier and well on this question, though I don't think his view correct that most Republican conservatives agreed with the various "reform" views pushed by amnesty advocates. Many clearly supported both border enforcement and penalties for businesses knowingly employing and exploiting illegals.
That the Obama administration chooses not to take serious steps to secure the borders (and completely ignore "sanctuary cities'" officials' stated intentions to flout federal immigration law) all the while wasting precious time and resources in opposing Arizona's attempt (by a law perfectly conformable with federal law) to secure its state borders is simply perverse. The Dems may indeed get something through Congress on immigration by their now well-worn methods of bribery, deceit and parliamentary tricks, but, as with other unpopular measures they've passed, they may have a heavy price to pay for it in the upcoming Congressional elections.
Lastly, my annual exhortations on Bastille Day:
Vive la Bastille!
Vivent le roi et la reine de France!
Vive la France royaliste!
Brett, your simplistic views on the illegal immigration problem aren't very convincing.
Capitalism "without regulations" is an obvious straw man claim, and it's more accurate to to say that illegal immigrants violate federal laws, not just "regulations." Nor do I think most businesses intentionally hire illegals. Nor do most conservatives believe cheap illegal labour should trump first, the law, which when compromised, second, also compromises our national sovereignty and security as well as, third, unfairly burdens our social, medical, educational, law enforcement and prison resources in some states to the breaking point. And fourth, illegals do take jobs away from citizens or legal immigrants, as has been mentioned.
Your claim that Republicans in general don't want immigration laws enforced is likewise simplistic, for many do; many conservatives opposed President Bush's failures to enforce the law more rigorously and to encourage Congress to pass a compromise bill including some form of amnesty.
I have to agree with most of what Curtis Faville said earlier and well on this question, though I don't think his view correct that most Republican conservatives agreed with the various "reform" views pushed by amnesty advocates. Many clearly supported both border enforcement and penalties for businesses knowingly employing and exploiting illegals.
That the Obama administration chooses not to take serious steps to secure the borders (and completely ignore "sanctuary cities'" officials' stated intentions to flout federal immigration law) all the while wasting precious time and resources in opposing Arizona's attempt (by a law perfectly conformable with federal law) to secure its state borders is simply perverse. The Dems may indeed get something through Congress on immigration by their now well-worn methods of bribery, deceit and parliamentary tricks, but, as with other unpopular measures they've passed, they may have a heavy price to pay for it in the upcoming Congressional elections.
Lastly, my annual exhortations on Bastille Day:
Vive la Bastille!
Vivent le roi et la reine de France!
Vive la France royaliste!
Kirby,
You doubted whether it's true that any conservatives respect Rachel Maddow. Perhaps I shouldn't have put it in the plural re/ conservativeS; I just knew, and know, about about this Fox Business Reporter, Josh Friedman, calling her MSNBC's "Voice of Reason".
http://www.foxbusiness.com/story/markets/industries/media/rachel-maddow-msnbc-voice-reason/
She really stood out for me amongst the others at that sad venture in Liberal radio--what was it called, oh yes, Air America,-- from whence she was plucked for MSNBC. I think you're right about Olbermann, he's a silly attack dog.
But I see, even if I cld speak with the logic and the information of Rachel M., plus the tongue of angels and a fair amount of love, you would not be very impressed.
Good grief! Lutheran ministers make only $20,000/yr? Rural areas only, or large cities too?
Maybe they should all become Presbyterian. We pay our senior pastor $150,000/yr.
My church could hire 3 or 4 Lutherans and still give them a pay raise. I'm going to suggest that at the next Session meeting.
WW
Wendy, this was defined as a "first call" to a "rural church" is what I think I heard.
I might have been dreaming. I appear to have misheard much that went on last Sunday.
I hope if this pastor ever googles his name and finds this, he won't be too offended. I google all the time and love to find offensive descriptions of me, but he may not enjoy it as much.
I just hope he'll forgive my dumb reaction to his sermon, which Andrea Campbell was good enough to straighten out for me.
She's one of the peacemakers that always makes everything better in her wake.
I'm afraid I can't claim as much.
But yes, I think I heard 20 grand for a first call church.
The use of illegals is a way for businesses to get around regulations by hiring cheap labor for jobs that have to be done on American soil.
I think I used the word 'republicans' more than 'conservatives,' and I was more specifically meaning the 'Republican Party.' There may be a few outlying politicians who are actually serious about their supposed views on illegal immigration, but in reality the party on a national level wants to leave it alone.
Bush at least wanted to change the status quo, but for most of the party the status quo is a go!
Lots of businesses use illegals as a matter of course, knowing full well that they are illegal. Maybe it comes from bein' the Texan that I am, but this is so blatantly obvious that I'm surprised you would think to think otherwise.
The Republicans, while perhaps spouting that they want to do things about illegal immigration, have nevertheless never taken serious steps to punish companies for hiring illegal aliens.
They, of course, tend to want to look the other way when it comes to corporations and businesses, but prosecute the individuals...this falls in line with the Republican Party's basic tendency (not espoused as such, but seen through their actions) to act as though the freedoms of businesses are more important than the freedoms of individuals. And even then, they're bigger pansies than they puff themselves up to be...
You can say things about what conservatives believe, Jacques, but the actions (or lack of actions) of the Republican party are otherwise...
Perhaps you disagree with this apathy of the party that says it's conservative. I'm cool with that.
All I'm saying is that on this issue, it just so happens that what the Democrats think is good for them politically lines up with their 'principled' viewpoint.
Which means at some point that stance will be enacted, since they actually want it to be.
The Republicans, on a national level, don't want the fallout of standing behind their ideas, and so they'll never be serious about supporting their talking points with action.
Brett:
What you have to say about the respective parties' disingenuousness is perfectly apt, but it doesn't address the problem(s).
Latino illegal immigration has become so successful, that the racial balance of the whole country is rapidly shifting. In California and the Southwest, whole semi-legal constituencies are sprouting up, whose political power and influence over public policy is growing exponentially. The agenda of this new "diaspora" movement is quite simply the Mexicanization of the entire American Southest and West. Like Mexican political culture, it believes in bribery and leverage and ignoring the rule of law whenever it suits. Like the radical African American Left, they want "repatriation" and reparations and quotas and set-asides, and they want them along racial lines. They want to do away with all immigration control, open the borders, and vacate the benefits of citizenship. They feel America "owes" them, and they're here to collect. They've systematically taken over the media, setting up Spanish language radio and television stations and channels, and demanding "latino" programming and public information programs on the "straight" media. Public service and official business is now routinely offered in Spanish, and our school systems are now also routinely expected to accommodate "English"-challenged student bodies, and even to offer classes in "Mexican history" and (astonishingly) anti-American Latino political indoctrination courses.
What this boils down to--in its simplest form--is an invasion, insidious at times, blatant at others.
Anyone who questions the movement is branded as racist, nativist, and held up for scorn. Those who want to secure our borders are "selfish" "fear-mongering" "lunatic fringe". Those who want to enforce our immigration and residency laws are "brutal" "terrorists".
In every major city, there are networks of support, safe-houses, free legal aid, social services--all racially aligned--which are designed to facilitate the flow of illegals, and their "melting into" the American fabric.
No one talks about this stuff because they're afraid. Both Democrats and Republicans are intimidated by the implication of an increasingly influential "Latino" power base; so neither one talks seriously about enforcing laws, or drawing a line in the sand. Everyone knows that an amnesty would do NOTHING to curb the flow, and would only accelerate it. But no one comes out openly and says this, because it's political "suicide." All we hear is the call for "reform"--but "reform" is a code-word for amnesty, not solutions.
In my community, Mexican scab labor has devastated the local trades. Unscrupulous "contractors" in construction--plumbing, roofing, landscaping, painting, brick-laying, dry-walling, fencing, foundation, electrical--milk this shadow labor market, openly flaunting employment regulations. It goes on in plain view of the entire community, and neither the local constabulary, nor the Federal Immigration service, pays them any heed. These scabs are untrained, unlicensed, and they undercut the wage scale. Their "employers" operate surreptitiously, dealing mostly in cash. The workers can't speak English, and are mostly unsupervised. Their work is shoddy, and they have no investment in their product.
For those who are unfamiliar with the problems which Mexican illegal immigration creates, it all must seem like someone else's exaggeration, but be assured, it's very real. If you live in Boston, or Minneapolis or Seattle, you may feel insulated, but here in California, it's a different story.
Part II
What this boils down to--in its simplest form--is an invasion, insidious at times, blatant at others.
Anyone who questions the movement is branded as racist, nativist, and held up for scorn. Those who want to secure our borders are "selfish" "fear-mongering" "lunatic fringe". Those who want to enforce our immigration and residency laws are "brutal" "terrorists".
In every major city, there are networks of support, safe-houses, free legal aid, social services--all racially aligned--which are designed to facilitate the flow of illegals, and their "melting into" the American fabric.
No one talks about this stuff because they're afraid. Both Democrats and Republicans are intimidated by the implication of an increasingly influential "Latino" power base; so neither one talks seriously about enforcing laws, or drawing a line in the sand. Everyone knows that an amnesty would do NOTHING to curb the flow, and would only accelerate it. But no one comes out openly and says this, because it's political "suicide." All we hear is the call for "reform"--but "reform" is a code-word for amnesty, not solutions.
In my community, Mexican scab labor has devastated the local trades. Unscrupulous "contractors" in construction--plumbing, roofing, landscaping, painting, brick-laying, dry-walling, fencing, foundation, electrical--milk this shadow labor market, openly flaunting employment regulations. It goes on in plain view of the entire community, and neither the local constabulary, nor the Federal Immigration service, pays them any heed. These scabs are untrained, unlicensed, and they undercut the wage scale. Their "employers" operate surreptitiously, dealing mostly in cash. The workers can't speak English, and are mostly unsupervised. Their work is shoddy, and they have no investment in their product.
For those who are unfamiliar with the problems which Mexican illegal immigration creates, it all must seem like someone else's exaggeration, but be assured, it's very real. If you live in Boston, or Minneapolis or Seattle, you may feel insulated, but here in California, it's a different story.
Part III
In my community, Mexican scab labor has devastated the local trades. Unscrupulous "contractors" in construction--plumbing, roofing, landscaping, painting, brick-laying, dry-walling, fencing, foundation, electrical--milk this shadow labor market, openly flaunting employment regulations. It goes on in plain view of the entire community, and neither the local constabulary, nor the Federal Immigration service, pays them any heed. These scabs are untrained, unlicensed, and they undercut the wage scale. Their "employers" operate surreptitiously, dealing mostly in cash. The workers can't speak English, and are mostly unsupervised. Their work is shoddy, and they have no investment in their product.
For those who are unfamiliar with the problems which Mexican illegal immigration creates, it all must seem like someone else's exaggeration, but be assured, it's very real. If you live in Boston, or Minneapolis or Seattle, you may feel insulated, but here in California, it's a different story.
You are correct, Curtis, though never did I post that I was trying to supply a solution for the problem...
We are in a mess - a mess that has been created by decades of being overly lax about illegal immigration... The left at least has some sort of consistency to their viewpoint, since they can get all hogwashy and wishywashy about compassion and multiculturalism.
The right has simply dropped the ball, preferring to protect the rights of businesses to have cheap labor over actually enforcing the rule of law.
What we have now is a situation in which we have families with illegal parents and legal children, and being that family is the most important thing in the universe, it offends the conscience (and would be logistically rather impractical) to deport the parents to leave their kids behind. It would also hurt businesses, which rely heavily on cheap illegal labor.
So what's the solution? Some sort of amnesty, so that these people can become part of our legal system, and in that amnesty there being pushes toward a) paying fines and b) Americanization.
Learning English should be a requirement for becoming a legal citizen.
Because the situation is that we have millions upon millions of illegals in this country. We have three options, as I see it:
a) leave things as they are.
b) hunt down and deport illegals.
c) provide conditional amnesty.
C) seems to me to be the best, if still ungood, solution. B) would cost a lot of money, might spark a mini-revolution, would separate families and dry up the labor force...and let's face it - it's never going to happen.
So the Republicans babbles about B, so that they can say they don't believe in C, knowing well that they may just get what they want - A.
Brett,
I think it is Fox News that drove the awareness on the illegal immigration issue.
Which is to say that it was off the radar until the clamor they made.
but the issue has also gotten worse, because the problem is getting worse. With the Mexican army going toe to toe with the drug cartels, many of the cartel members are moving into the US, and bringing their peculiar violence with them. It's an actual war in Mexico, and we are something like Laos during the Vietnam War -- it's getting too hot for the Mexican drug gangs, so many of them are coming here. Plus, they are targeting Mexican-Americans, because they speak the same language, and have a similar culture. But shots are being fired at other americans, too. So the situation is heating up and changing.
Brewer is not using the issue, and she's Republican.
I think many Americans are changing their notions of this issue.
It's something that is morphing, and has enormous pressures on it being driven by increasingly high levels of violence.
It is also a cultural war, as Curtis points out.
There are many different levels to it.
I think your three choices good-cop bad-cop the situation to make us choose three.
I think we just have to choose principles, which means that all illegals must get out.
We also need a wall, and we need to start putting employers in prison who use these people. the situation has gotten out of hand and is far too serious for anybody to just wink at it.
We also know that al Qaeda has infiltrated Mexico, and is going to attempt to get a nuclear device across the border and into Tucson.
The whole thing is incredibly dangerous.
Obama is an airhead.
Most of the telejournalists on the left are about thirty years behind the situation, and aren't really responding to contemporary conditions. They are just clueless.
The FoxNews guys are responding to contemporary conditions which is why the whole nation is tuning in.
The left owns the universities and their students voted overwhelming for Obama in the last election. But the youth got screwed by Obamacare, and are going to change their spots in the next election -- not entirely, but if even ObamaGirl is now waking up, it means that a whole generation is starting to smell the coffee.
Obama is a brilliant politician, though. He knows how to make false promises, and how to lie without even a hint of any kind of conscience to hold him back.
Some will be fooled by this, again, and again.
But I think a great number will wake up.
That said, the right needs someone with charisma and a brain, and at least some decent looks, to rally the conservative vote in the next election. I don't see any rightie just now who would have the charisma, brains, and character that Reagan, for instance, had.
Palin has looks and guts, but no real strategical ability.
Romney is wooden, and is frightened when she's dealing with sociopathic leftist news anchors.
McCain is ugly and over the hill.
Huckabee's too short.
the left has enormous numbers of people like Jesse Jackson who want to continue the politics of race, because they live on those divisions. Anyone who goes after the illegals is going to have to deal with that kind of thing, and it won't be pleasurable.
The best the right has just now is Huckabee. His Christian vocabulary will go a long way toward mobilizing a massive constituency, and yet remaining within ethical norms.
Plus, he's funny. Never underestimate humor. It tips every election.
Our best humorist is Huckabee. Unless someone else emerges who has this ability to make people laugh (it depends on creating trust, PLUS seeing into a situation with tremendous insight and concision), I hope the voters next time around choose Huckabee for the Republicans.
He will make mincemeat out of Obama, but on the other hand he's very short, and Obama is a beautifully made man, and he has a very canny instinct for what the voters want, and for promising to give it to them.
He's smooth as satin.
Brett:
I think the solution must be an isolationist one.
We can't simply assume responsibility for all of Mexico's problems. We don't have the means, and we don't have any obligation to do so, despite what apologists keep saying.
The world is vastly overpopulated, and consuming resource at a murderous rate. Clearly, there's no momentum in a pan-universal manner, to coordinate any effort to control these runaway trends. Every nation is in it for itself. In the West, we have to get over this "white man's burden" notion that we're responsible for other people's disasters. Charity must begin at home. Before you can put the oxygen mask on the child, you have to put it on yourself first.
We are no longer a "rich" nation. We're somewhere in the middle now. We've kidded ourselves with loans and borrowing into thinking we still have a proud standard of living, but look around. Everyone is working double-time, and the leisure of the 1950's and 1960's is a memory.
We need to close our borders and severely restrict all immigration--perhaps to 10% of its current levels. We need to tighten out belts, and invest in domestic employment. Keep capital from flowing away. Reward entrepreneurial enterprise HERE, not overseas. Seize manufacturing opportunities, and stop pretending that everyone needs a master's degree.
As far as illegals already here, get every one of them documented, and then make every single one of them learn English, and make every single one of them choose: Mexican citizenship, or American. No more "family unification".
If a manufacturing corporation can't succeed on legal labor, let it close. If it isn't viable functioning within our system, it shouldn't exist anyway. If the price of "cheap" goods rises, so be it.
Put immediate currency and tariff restrictions on the Chinese and Indians, until they agree to open their markets to us. If they don't like it, then let them try to sell their stuff to each other. That'll be interesting.
Curtis, your thinking is absolutely sound!
What worries me is that if we all keep talking with each other long enough there will no longer be anything to talk about, as there will be substantial agreement.
Does Curtis agree with a wall surmounted by barbed wire, machine-gun emplacements, and helicopter drones, as well as guard dogs, and land mines?
Just thought I would up the ante.
Mexico is so desperate (as are ALL of the former Spanish colonies) that their citizens will do anything to get into the English speaking world.
Except now they insist on dragging their language with them, which is about as useless here as a sombrero.
And of course now they want the Hispanic studies deal so that they can continue to make the rotten lousy mistakes of their rotten lousy culture.
If we allow this to happen it will be like allowing blight to spread through our own garden.
So Curtis is for amnesty!
I'm good with that.
You have a very liberal view of trade agreements as well, though I think you take things a bit too far there. I'm a bit more of a corporatist/globalist than you are...
Curtis seems to be for amnesty, it's true.
I think it sets a very poor precedent, and adds 20 million lawbreakers to our population, which is terrifying.
By definition, these are already scofflaws.
There is something the matter with Catholicism. It is profoundly immoral, and it breeds a profoundly immoral understanding of how to behave. I am not sure why this happens.
There should be no Christians in the Mafia. But within Catholicism, they are one and the same. Italy is completely overrun with Mafia.
Gangs and cartels operate throughout the Latin American World.
You simply can't ask them to becmoe moral, and to be on the up and up. Their criminality will just go underground.
We could, instead of building a wall, simply have some kind of national identity card, and employers who employ without a full and competent check would get a million dollar fine or ten years in prison.
But I'm sure the cartels would immediately start supplying such cards, and their vast networks would infiltrate government offices through Affirmative Action, and build a kind of Acorn movement that grew inside the bureaucracy, to scuttle anything like that, and make it worthless.
It has to be an all-out effort -- the wall, no amnesty, a card, and anything else we can think of to get them out.
Anything less than a fully fledged war will not accomplish anything, but may even create new "business" endeavors for the cartels and gangs.
We're dealing with an entire society that has gone rotten and has no moral life whatsoever, and no compunctions about breaking any law whatsoever.
We need a president who will go after the Mexicans and their mafias the way the Kennedys went after the Italian mob in the 1960s.
Obama, being from Chicago, is basically a believer in the same kind of racket politics the cartels believe in. He sees no difference between what they're doing, and what he helped ACORN to do.
So I don't think we'll get any help from that quarter. In fact, he'll use the law to undo the legitimate law.
We definitely require the restoration of law and order. But we can't get that from someone who is a scofflaw, or a scofflawyer.
Kirby - it does not add 20 million lawbreakers to our population.
They are already here. It brings them into the fold in terms of being citizens, which means that they and their employers will have to be subject to the good protestant culture and laws that have led to America's success, and they'd have to pay a fine.
Otherwise, they simply exist here, without officially living here, and so are more free to create their own huge subculture without being assimilated into the superior American way of life.
It will create a distinction between those who are breaking the law because they place more importance on their families than on state authorities, and those who are breaking the law because they place more value on their own power and wealth than on obeying state authorities.
Right now, you have one mass of 20 million lawbreakers, and this lack of distinction makes dealing with the problem much more difficult.
Amnesty is about making illegals pay a fine and learn English to go to the 'back of the line' of the immigration process.
Right now, our options are either this, deportation, or status-quo. Deportation is both impractical and undesirable. Status Quo sucks. Amnesty seems pretty good, no?
Brett, why is deportation undesirable?
It would be messy, but I think it would be the most desirable outcome.
Mexicans deport Guatemalans and El Salvadorans.
Mexico is a hyocritical country.
Our president is a wimp.
I have a theory that I haven't wrapped into a nutshell which says that the party that is out of power is likely to be four or five times more angry than the party in power, and to find everything the in-power party does to be massively reprehensible because every gain they make is twice as far for the out-of-party power to make up, and in some cases, losses can't be made up.
Obama's appointment of two gender-benders to the Supreme Court, for instance, can never be overturned or repealed.
The loss of the last Protestant Justice is probably a done thing, which means the final link to the Founders, and to the beginning of the nation's judicial history has been sundered, as we float off into the never-never land of the crypto-communists.
Once in power, the party in-power meanwhile wants kindness all around in discourse, and wants civility, and all that.
the party out-of-power on the other hand can barely contain itself, and is filled with bilious contempt, which it requires all of their discipline to conceal.
To formulate this into a law of political symmetry, what would you say, or has someone already said it?
Also, the party out-of power is much more likely to vote in the follow-up election, and to landslide the other party.
Come November, that will probably be the case.
Because the in-power party has become complaisant from having things their own way, they are taken by surprise, and in turn become furious, as they see their own agenda slipping away, and the enemy team taking the football that much further from their own goals.
They began to seethe, and curse, spit on their hands, and get going again.
It's probably all to the good, as long as we don't start actually shooting one another.
That's bad.
Shooting one another is quite common in the rest of the world.
It's very rare here, comparatively, is it not?
Mexico lost a governor a couple months ago.
Haiti regularly assassinates its presidents and disappears political rivals.
In N. Korea even a hint of dissent can mean life imprisonment.
So far at least we haven't turned to guns and bombs as our electoral aids. That's good, I think.
The last candidate to get whacked was Bobby Kennedy in 1968.
Actually, i have to take back the Bobby Kennedy as the latest candidate to be shot. Wasn't it George Wallace, popped in 1972, by Arthur Bremer? Bremer's autobiography (he had wanted to shoot Nixon, but Nixon was too well-guarded)) inspired the film Taxi Driver.
There are lots of reasons mass deportation is a bad idea.
The food in the South would get much worse.
Our lawns would be more expensive and less well-manicured, thus losing our sense of order, which would eventually lead to a breakdown in law (the little details add up, don'tya know).
Businesses would shut down, instead of just having to adjust prices a lil' bit because their workers were getting a tad more money.
We would spend billions (trillions?) of dollars we don't have on the identification, arrest, and transportation of illegals.
Mexicans work hard, and so if they were given amnesty there'd be more of them in government jobs, and so we'd be much more efficient with our tax dollars.
Amnesty is a money-maker, deportation a money-loser.
The images of a bunch of white folk rounding up a bunch of brown folk like cattle and sending them off would be bad PR for the U.S.A.
Oh, and children would die.
Deportation will make more money, and conserve more money in the long run. First off, where there is an absence of workers, people will step up. Lawn mowing and jobs like that should be the jobs of teenagers trying to pay for college.
A certain number of people will always die, and I don't think we have to care about the children of the Congo or the children of N. Korea. We have a limited and finite economy, and must remain within our budget.
One of the real problems of the left is that they think the only law that matters is the one regarding love in the Sermon on the Mount.
Actually all the laws are still on the books. Unless we get back to the laws and realize too that there are strict limits to altruism (the government should not be altruistic, it should be left up to individuals).
Every time the government steps in, it destroys the economy for all others who could do the job.
I think the police and the border guards are probably all colors, both genders, so it's not fair to say they are all white.
We could employ more dark-skinned border guards, darker than the illegals, if that would do it for you.
It would be a kind of redistribution, too, maybe ACORN could be redeployed on the border, which would please our president, as well.
I never said that all border guards were white.
Why do you think I said that?
There would, however, be both real images, and the mental image, of a bunch of white people rounding up and deporting a bunch of brown people.
Including the screaming children.
Just sayin' it's bad PR.
You saying that it's a money-maker seems to make no sense...
Tell me again how spending billions to round them up and send them off while keeping them from paying legitimate taxes + 5000 in fines would save us money?
The jobs that illegals do are often full-time and take place during the hours when teenagers are in school...and they require a work-ethic and skillset that our teenagers lack.
Deportation is the solution of someone who does not understand Two Kingdoms...it means taking this world to be something it's not, and believing that something impractical can be possible because there's an ideal behind it.
You've been gettin' too Calvinisty lately, Kirby.
Targeting employers would mean instantaneous success. But no one wants that.
I still think this can be done by going after CEOs. First offense would be a thirty million dollar fine. The second offense would be death.
I'm pretty sure CEOs would make it a top priority that no illegals would be hired if those were the odds.
Of course they would surround themselves with a phalanx of lawyers, and try to pack the courts with their men and women to get them off.
But still, I think that if you made the penalty very steep and targeted those who gain by undermining American workers (it's very similar to outsourcing our economy, after all), then I think we could get a handle on this phenomenon, like slipping the cap on BP's Deep Horizon.
It's just that BO doesn't care enough to kick someone in the butt.
If he did, this would be done by now.
"It's just that ALL POLITICIANS DON'T care enough to kick someone in the butt."
FTFY
Brewer has tried to close the border, and to reimpose law and order. But Obama is now going to sue the state.
This makes no sense.
The health of any state depends on its lawfulness.
The people spilling over from Mexico are living in a failed state. Most of the former Spanish colonies are failed states compared to the former colonies of England (Canada, US, Australia, New Zealand, etc.).
I know the left thinks we have responsibility for everyone on earth, and that they should be like our children. But we are not responsible for them, and they are just crazy people without a trace of Protestant lawfulness. We have to keep them out, or else allow Mexican conditions (sheer hell) into America.
We need to send Protestant missionaires into Catholic and especially Spanish-speaking lands, and tell them about law and order.
We need to send our missionaries into Catholic monasteries and churches all over the world. They are deely unhealthy places that are growing new kinds of ugliness.
They need to hear about the Reformation, and about the ten commandments, including their positive dimension that Calvin and Luther emphasized.
Talk about a straw man...
The controversial law "would require police officers to question the immigration status of suspects stopped for another offense if there's a "reasonable suspicion" they are in the country illegally."
This is not equivalent with "Brewer has tried to close the border, and to reimpose law and order."
Immigration reform (such as the kind that Bush supported) actually Does bring about steps to close off the border and bring law and order.
This is a separate issue from the problems with Arizona's law: it puts immigration in the hands of state officials, which to my understanding is unconstitutional (y'all can help me out, either by supporting or denying this claim, if you know more about it than I do), and it legalizes as a matter of course racial profiling.
This is a different beast altogether.
If the law were that anyone stopped for any offense should be questioned about their immigration status...well, at least that wouldn't be inherently racist.
The law as it stands is... The question is about individual liberty, and whether or not law-abiding citizens of Hispanic background should be treated differently because of their culture and skin color.
In the world of the academy in which I have lived for thirty years white males are guilty of anything and everything, and all others are innocent by virtue of their race and gender (and sometimes, sexual orientation).
This is now the law of the land.
Holder won't go after the Black Panthers, because they are black.
Illegal immigrants are innocent by virtue of their skin color.
More and more, this is spreading out from my bizarre profession to the rest of America, and is about the become law.
This is what Sotomayor was referring to when she said that she was a wise Latina.
It's now on the Supreme Court.
Kirby. What you just said isn't true...it's not their skin-color that makes it 'okay' for them to be here, it's the vested interest that companies have in abusing their services for monetary gain.
Duh. It's been that way forever.
Woody Guthrie wrote 'Deportees.' And he's been dead for over 40 years.
YOU, Kirby, see everything through race, gender, and class - more than anyone else who chimes in on this blog, that's for sure.
You also didn't address any of my comments, but instead changed subject, because you know you were strawmanning it.
The world does not revolve around you and your little cadres of feckless profs.
If it did, things would be much different - gun laws, for instance, would have become more strict, not less strict, under the current administration.
One person using the phrase 'wise latina' does not a conspiracy make.
What law out there is going to say that white males are guilty of everything?
wtf are you talking about?
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