Just a reminder to all those who try to profess they say they know what history will record at the moment something happens:

In 1967, when Governor Reagan and Senator Robert Kennedy debated a group of international college students, interesting things were said…

It sure seems to have taken a long time for a historian to remind us of this.

While not a total revelation — it was caught by a few early Reagan biographers — there was an event that occurred 40 years ago this month that has gone underreported and certainly unappreciated. The event concerns not only Reagan’s political life but that of an equally well-known rising star of the time: Robert F. Kennedy. It should be a permanent part of our mental history of Reagan’s rise, if not a permanent video exhibit at the Reagan Library and Museum.

On May 15, 1967, there was a fascinating debate between California’s new Republican governor, Ronald Reagan, and New York’s new Democratic senator, Robert F. Kennedy. The subject: the Vietnam War. The debate was titled “The Image of America and the Youth of the World,” and was billed by CBS as a “Town Meeting of the World.”
[…]

And, that wasn’t exactly what Governor Reagan said in 1967, but he did say the wall should be removed.

H/T: Chapomatic

Said xformed @ 3:53 pm Comments (0) | Permalink   

This article in the New York Times got my blood boiling and my heart pumping today.

There is a new book out that answers a riddle the elites have been asking for 7 years now. Why did the American people elect George Bush President?

Answer? They’re as dumb as posts and irrational to boot:

Now Bryan Caplan, an economist at George Mason University, has attracted notice for raising a pointed question: Do voters have any idea what they are doing? In his provocative new book, “The Myth of the Rational Voter: Why Democracies Choose Bad Policies,” Caplan argues that “voters are worse than ignorant; they are, in a word, irrational — and vote accordingly.” Caplan’s complaint is not that special-interest groups might subvert the will of the people, or that government might ignore the will of the people. He objects to the will of the people itself.

In defending democracy, theorists of public choice sometimes invoke what they call “the miracle of aggregation.” It might seem obvious that few voters fully understand the intricacies of, say, single-payer universal health care. (I certainly don’t.) But imagine, Caplan writes, that just 1 percent of voters are fully informed and the other 99 percent are so ignorant that they vote at random. In a campaign between two candidates, one of whom has an excellent health care plan and the other a horrible plan, the candidates evenly split the ignorant voters’ ballots. Since all the well-informed voters opt for the candidate with the good health care plan, she wins. Thus, even in a democracy composed almost exclusively of the ignorant, we achieve first-rate health care.

The hitch, as Caplan points out, is that this miracle of aggregation works only if the errors are random. When that’s the case, the thousands of ill-informed votes in favor of the bad health plan are canceled out by thousands of equally ignorant votes in favor of the good plan. But Caplan argues that in the real world, voters make systematic mistakes about economic policy — and probably other policy issues too.

Caplan’s idiotic notions regarding the irrationality and ignorance of voters is so far off the mark as to why people vote the way they do it is beyond belief. The elites ensconced in ivory towers in academia don’t have a clue about people like you and me. We may as well be from another planet as far as their understanding as to what motivates us to vote for one candidate or another. Trying to qualify our reasons is an exercise in brainless futility.

Voting is the ultimate exercise of personal freedom. To social scientists trying to examine the reasons for why people make the political choices they do, it becomes necessary to ignore the competing interests and yearnings of the voter and settle on seeing this tug of war between altruism and selfishness as “irrationality.”

People want to vote for the “right” candidate. They are as earnest in their “ignorance” in choosing the best person for the job as any lickspittle professor with advanced degrees up the wazoo. But they are moved in mysterious ways - likability of the candidate, thematic presentations of a candidate’s program, and always fear of the consequences of voting for the other guy.

And so far, the American electorate has done pretty well. In the nuclear age, when the choice of President could literally have meant life and death, the people have chosen like, well…college professors with advanced degrees out of the wazoo. A Truman as opposed to an isolationist Dewey. An Eisenhower twice as opposed to a cerebral and statist Stevenson. A Kennedy as opposed to a Nixon. (Picture Nixon during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Would a young Nixon have backed down so expertly?) Perhaps the Johnson-Goldwater race was more about a martyred President so chalk that one up to irrationality. But Nixon - putting aside his dark proclivities - in ‘68 was the answer to lawlessness in the streets and the Viet Nam quagmire while Humphrey promised more of the same - disaster.

Carter/Ford was a toss up - the people lost. Carter/Reagan was a no brainer. Ditto Reagan/Mondale. Ditto Dukakis/Bush. I would even say that Clinton circa 1992 was a better choice than a fatally damaged Bush who broke his promise not to raise taxes. And were the American people really going to elect Bob Dole President?

This brings us to 2000 and the idea that the American people made a mistake:

Of all the people who deserve some blame for the debacle in Iraq, don’t forget the American public. Today, about two-thirds of Americans oppose the war. But back in March 2003, when United States troops stormed into Iraq, nearly three out of four Americans supported the invasion. Doves say that the public was suckered into war by a deceitful White House, and hawks say that the press has since led the public to lose its nerve — but the two sides implicitly agree that the public has been dangerously unsure, or easily propagandized, or ignorant.

In 2003, Bush had the credibility to lay out a case for war that the public found logical and thus supported. It is not the voter’s fault that Bush and his Administration mucked it up. And if you’re trying to blame the voters for electing Bush in the first place, one might want to ask what the alternative was.

Al Gore was part of an Administration that virtually enabled al-Qaeda to attack America whenever it chose. It is difficult to know what Gore would have done after 9/11 but I think it more than possible that he would have lobbed a few cruise missiles at Afghanistan trying to take out Bin Laden and gone the United Nations route.; sanctions, resolutions, and words of solidarity couched in the usual apologetic tones of “So sorry we can’t do anymore.” Regime change would have been off the table. And Bin Laden would not only have been free and on the loose, but hugely emboldened and the biggest hero in the Arab world since Saladin.

No Iraq War but instead of hiding in a cave somewhere, Bin Laden would still be operating openly. To be fair, it’s pretty clear that if a Gore Administration listened to people like Richard Clark, a serious effort would have gotten underway to attack the terrorist group financially and via law enforcement by rolling up their cells. But smashing their infrastructure and destroying their safe haven in Afghanistan would probably not have occurred.

Would we have been better off? No one knows which makes this whole idea of voter irrationality an elitist fantasy. People like Caplan prefer to see their carefully thought out political choices as superior to the emotional, inspired, and intrinsically personal choice made by the rest of us.

There may be another reason Caplan sees the rest of us as idiots. Ann Althouse:

I’m picking up a bit of the old: if only people thought clearly, they’d agree with me. I’m never surprised when a professor discovers that democracy is defective because Americans aren’t more left-wing. But unlike Althaus, Caplan thinks voters are incompetent because they aren’t libertarian enough.

Voters are moved by so many different stimuli that it is silly to think that because they don’t agree with you that there is something wrong with them. I believe it shows the professor’s ignorance of not only politics, but human behavior as well to expect voters to make choices based on his “learned” criteria. People choose a candidate for many reasons - some good, some bad. But given the track record of the American voter over 219 years, they get it right a helluva more than they get it wrong.

Said Rick Moran @ 5:53 am Comments (3) | Permalink   

An Israeli pilot of an F-15 found himself in a mid-air collision and lived to tell the tale. Not only that, but his plane, minus the right wing was landed by this fellow who tells his story, and walked away from a perfect landing.

Said GM @ 5:10 pm Comments (0) | Permalink   

Recently a couple of blogs that I read started to highlight a project that the EU runs called Galileo.

I had covered this myself last year as I have an interest in all things outdoors, computing and space so when it involves GPS I am in my element.

The Soviet Air Force shot down a Korean Airlines flight it claimed had violated its airspace.  A 747 was shot out of the sky with subsequent evidence showing that the aircraft remained relatively intact as it spiralled to its death for 20 minutes.  There was confusion as to how the aircraft could have strayed and if it did not then how the Soviets could be mistaken.  Following the outrage the Great Ronald Reagan announced to the world that the US taxpayer was going to put the military GPS system onto the open airwaves, free to use, to allow everyone to be able to fix their positions.

Over 20 years on the system is much used and loved by everyone.  Whether you use it like myself and enjoy a simple climb in the hills and a logbook of your journey or you enjoy an impersonation of Mr T in your vehicle telling you that he pities the fool who don’t turn left at the next junction GPS is an indispensable part of modern life.  And on behalf of all UK subjects we would like to thank our cousins over the pond in gifting this system to us.  It is very kind of you and we appreciate it.

However it is a US system and to my great European Overlords this is instantly bad.  It also lacks the fundamental element of lack of ready exploitability for tax purposes.

GPS does not work too well in built up areas.  How do we know this?  We tried putting a GPS receiver on electronic ankle tags for criminals released before the end of their sentence.  The system transmitted back its location to a monitoring station.  Unfortunately they could rarely get a lock on a satellite in the sink estate highrises that the socialism has abandoned the under class to in this country.  Net result?  The criminal element could wander around within their blocks victimising those unfortunate enough to be housed in close proximity to these animals.

This is quite a problem for our masters.  You see, they want to not only charge us an annual tax on each vehicle we own but also charge us for the roads we use.  But GPS cannot penetrate urban areas to fix vehicles and track usage.  Something else is needed.

In addition to this there is also the great lie of “selective deniability”.  This is the EU myth that the US will shut down the GPS system to civilian use in “times of emergency”.  Of course the subtext is that the Great Satan has control of this system and if the glorious EU valiantly stands up to the Globalisation Cartel of Chimpy McBusHitler then the US will simply turn off our toys and Sat Nav.

And then there is the grand Military Integration Project that the EU is working on.

First is SD.  It will never happen.  Why?  Well President Pervert announced in the ‘90’s that it will never be used again.  And did he do this as some unilateral gesture of good will?  No, he did it because the DoD wanted in law a commitment that the US Executive Branch would never try to get all American troops killed in a war zone.

Ask any troop commander in the US army to turn out his fighting order and in amongst all that green kit will be a civilian hand held GPS receiver.  Military GPS is large and expensive and usually only fitted to cruise missiles.  The deliberately hobbled civvy band GPS is more than adequate for an infantryman to navigate across the Iraqi desert in formation with other troops.  If a President used SD he would be stranding his own troops and the DoD knew this and got Clinton to set a precedence for its use.

Indeed this point was illustrated during the Iranian Navy crisis where a British helicopter flew over the position of the ship and one crew member took a picture of his GPS unit to prove the co-ordinates.  It was a Garmin eTrex Venture.

But would the US use SD just for continental Europe if they had a falling out?  No.  Because the United States would just not be that childish.  Yes I could see the EU doing it against the US but not really the other way around.

Then we have the integrationist project.  Blair has used his 10 years in office to transform the British Armed Forces into an outfit compatible with other European arms.  We have fighting formations closer to the continental model now and we use more EU kit (although the use of Italian 4×4 motors in place of UK or US models has contributed to British deaths in Bosnia, Afghanistan and Iraq but I suppose our political leaders think it is a price worth paying).  And part of that further integration will be the use of the Galileo positioning system in all our kit.  Most likely to the exclusion of other systems so no GPS.  As someone said yesterday closer integration with the Belgian Navy would be nice but I would prefer to have the US watching our backs.

But the three things that really stick in my throat about this vanity project are these.

First the Chinese have bailed the EU out on some funding in return for the promise of being allowed to mass produce civvy receivers for Galileo, cutting out British firms who hoped to make their fortunes on this system.  This ignores the fact that the Chinese have their own project in the offing that (thanks to typical EU over-runs and cockups) will go live before Galileo.

Second is that the US taxpayer pays for GPS and we in Europe get it for free.  The EU model will make us all pay and some of us pay twice.

The EU tax payer is already funding it to the tune of anywhere between 6bn and 20bn Euros ($8bn - $27bn US) and then for the accurate system (the civvy band will be similar to the GPS in that it will be inaccurate and free) companies will have to pay a licence.  Not bad you think but I guarantee you that if it ever gets off the ground (literally) then the EU will demand that all aircraft flying in EU airspace will have to use Galileo and pay the fee for it.  American air fares will carry the cost of licensing technology from the EU that the US lead in innovation anyway, and that is not very fair.

Third and perhaps the most dangerous is just how open the commercial, accurate system is.

Civvy GPS cannot be used to make a smart missile.  The non-military system is hobbled so that it has an inbuilt inaccuracy, an update rate ineffective for high-speed navigation and an equipment interface that prevents the really jucy information being taken out of units onto computers and analysed (see the Garmin eTrex API for more information).

The commercial Galileo system will allow for all of these “inadequacies” (I prefer to call them “designed shortcomings”) to be rectified.  The commercial system will be protected by encryption to ensure that only licensed users can access it.  Problem?

US DoD analysts have already broken the encryption algorithm used and were scathing about it when it happened.  The EU have left this system wide open.

In their rush to develop more hi-tech ways to extract higher taxation from EU citizens the Union is developing a tool for global Jihad that has the added bonus of making the US pay for it in a roundabout fashion.

The only saving grace is the Airbus project.  Even with firm orders from several airlines that would blow Boeing out of the skys the EU subsidies aircraft builder cannot get the plane delivered because of industrial relation problems and the usual European attitude to hard work and meeting deadlines.

Airbus have firm orders but cannot figure out what to do, lets face it Galileo (still in a concept stage) has an uphill struggle.  But if it brings in more tax I guess it will take top priority!

Said RfS @ 7:00 am Comments (2) | Permalink   

Said DJ @ 6:37 am Comments (1) | Permalink   

As far as MSM (and, thus, most of the world) are concerned, Jack Idema remains an ‘American inmate, […] who was arrested in July 2004 and convicted of running a private prison in Kabul.’ What Big Media routinely fail to point out, however, is that Jack and his team were found Not Guilty on all charges when their case went to appeal over two years ago. Since then, Jack has been held, illegally, at the behest of the US State Department and sections of the Afghan administration under President Karzai.

Over the last few weeks, of course, the US State Department’s involvement in Jack’s imprisonment has been coming under intense scrutiny from Judge Emmet G. Sullivan in the US. This has caused the State Department to issue a series of increasingly bizarre reasons for their inability to produce Jack in Judge Sullivan’s courtroom. (Two of their odder claims have been: ‘Jack has been released, but refuses to leave prison’ and ‘Jack has been ordered deported, but refuses to collect his passport from the Embassy’.)

Today, it seems, the pressure for Jack’s release has also started to build in Afghanistan, with the release of an audio intercept in which Judge Noor, who is the Chief Religious Judge of the NDS Appeals Court in Kabal, talks about Jack’s innocence:

This conversation happened back in May 2005, shortly after Jack and his men were found not guilty on appeal. Courtesy of Cao’s Blog, here are the highlights of what Judge Noor had to say about Jack’s case:

• “All men are completely innocent of all charges…”
• “They are completely innocent…they did nothing wrong…”
• “Jack and his men were oppressed by the foreign hand…the foreigners…the American Embassy did this”
• “I will keep fighting every day to release Jack and his men…”
• “we know Jack and his men are innocent”
• “the foreigners and the press are the problem telling lies”
• “I swear to God I am repeatedly saying Jack Is innocent…It is clear from me like the Sun…”

It is, perhaps, easy to bristle when Judge Noor uses language like ‘the foreigners … are the problem’, but, in this case, he really does have cause for grievance. It can’t be exactly pleasant, as a high-ranking Judge, to discover that when you order the release of prisoner, the US State Department can simply step in and overturn your ruling.

So that’s one thing. Another is the fact that both the State Department and Karzai government continue to insist that Jack Idema is being held on the say-so of the very legal system which ordered his release over two years ago. It’s small wonder, then, that Judge Noor sounds so irate.

[The above clip, from the movie Shakur Shaitan is used with kind permission from the attorneys, CTG, HaftShir Films and 5 Lions Films.]

Said RottyPup @ 9:12 pm Comments (0) | Permalink   

Things have slowed down here at Wide Awakes, so I am hoping a dose of humor will spur discussion. Where arte the liberals I used to debate?

Posting before Sunday because I will be out of town and away from computers.

    Subject: The ‘06 Darwin Awards
   Yes, it’s that magical time of the year again when the Darwin
Awards are bestowed, honoring the least evolved among us.   Here then, are the glorious winners:
1. When his 38-caliber revolver failed to fire at his intended victim during a hold-up in Long Beach, California, would-be robber James Elliot did something that can only inspire wonder He peered down the barrel and tried the trigger again. This time it worked…..
And now, the honorable mentions:
2. The chef at a hotel in Switzerland lost a finger in a meat-cutting machine and, after a little shopping around, submitted a claim to his insurance company.  The company expecting negligence sent out one of its men to have a look for himself. He tried the machine and he also lost a finger.The chef’s claim was approved.
3. A man who shoveled snow for an hour to clear a space for his car during a blizzard in Chicago returned with his vehicle to find a woman had taken the space. Understandably, he shot her.
4. After stopping for drinks at an illegal bar, a Zimbabwean bus driver found that the 20 mental patients he was supposed to be transporting from Harare to Bulawayo had escaped. Not wanting to admit his incompetence, the driver went to a nearby bus stop and offered everyone waiting there a free ride. He then delivered the passengers to the mental hospital, telling the staff that the patients were very excitable and prone to bizarre fantasies.The deception wasn’t discovered for 3 days.
5. An American teenager was in the hospital recovering from serious head wounds received from an oncoming train. When asked how he received the injuries, the lad told police that he was simply trying to see how close he could get his head to a moving train before he was hit.
6. A man walked into a Louisiana Circle-K, put a $20 bill on the counter, and asked for change. When the clerk opened the cash drawer, the man pulled a gun and asked for all the cash in the register, which the clerk promptly provided. The man took the cash from the clerk and fled, leaving the $20 bill on the counter. The total amount of cash he got from the drawer…$15.(If someone points a gun at you and gives you money, is a crimecommitted?)
7. Seems an Arkansas guy wanted some beer pretty badly. He decided that he’d just throw a cinderblock through a liquor store window, grab some booze, and run. So he lifted the cinderblock and heaved it over his head at the window. The cinderblock bounced back and hit the would-be thief on the head, knocking him unconscious. The liquor store window was made of Plexiglas. The whole event was caught on videotape.
8. As a female shopper exited a New York convenience store, a man grabbed her purse and ran. The clerk called 911 immediately, and the woman was able to give them a detailed description of the snatcher. Within minutes, the police apprehended the snatcher.  They put him in the car and drove back to the store.  The thief was then taken out of the car and told to stand there for a positive ID. To which he replied, “Yes, officer, that’s her. That’s the lady I stole the purse from.”
9. The Ann Arbor News crime column reported that a man walked into a Burger King in Ypsilanti, Michigan, at 5 a.m., flashed a gun, and demanded cash. The clerk turned him down because he said he couldn’t open the cash register without a food order. When the man ordered onion rings, the clerk said they weren’t available for breakfast. The man, frustrated, walked away.
  ******A 5-STAR STUPIDITY AWARD WINNER*****
10. When a man attempted to siphon gasoline from a motor home parked on a Seattle street, he got much more than he bargained for. Police arrived at the scene to find a very sick man curled up next to a motor home near spilled sewage. A police spokesman said that the man admitted to trying to steal gasoline and plugged his siphon hose into the motor home’s sewage tank by mistake. The owner of the vehicle declined to press charges, saying that it was the best laugh he’d ever had.

Said Richard Nixon @ 4:16 pm Comments (1) | Permalink   

Said Ogre @ 6:14 am Comments (0) | Permalink   

We have been asked to believe that having the AC turned up too high, having to listen Christina Aguilera, underinflated balls in the rec room, etc. qualify as torture because Americans have allegedly inflicted these atrocities to acquire information to protect ourselves from future 9/11s. When no minor inconveniences can be found to blow out of proportion, the media is happy to propagate lies and pass them off as psychological torture, as when Newsweek set off riots by announcing that Club Gitmo attendants were flushing Korans down toilets.

Formerly responsible human rights organizations like Shamnesty International pretend that Americans are at the forefront when it comes to human rights violations. We even have prominent Democrat Senator Dick Durbin comparing our troops to the thugs of Stalin, Hitler, and Pol Pot.

Pretty soon we’re going to forget what the word “torture” actually means. Unfortunately, the same al-Qaeda on whose behalf our media and liberal politicians relentlessly propagandize is still there to remind us.

The Smoking Gun has gotten hold of some drawings recovered from an al-Qaeda safe house in Iraq, depicting their own alternatives to playing Christina Aguilera. Those American troops who so remind Senator Durbin of communists and Nazis also seized torture implements including electric drills, whips, wire cutters, pliers, handcuffs, etc. At one al-Qaeda torture chamber, which very possibly did not even have a rec room so the victims could unwind, Coalition forces found some poor guy hanging from the ceiling by a chain.

Here are a couple of the drawings:

   

Some of the recovered torture implements:

A guy Michael Moore’s “Minutemen” kidnapped and tortured:

Kind of places some rogue low-level Army reservist putting a pair of panties on a terrorist’s head into perspective, doesn’t it?

It also helps reminds us of the nature of the enemy to whom Democrats insist we abandon democratic Iraq — an enemy that only a fool wouldn’t realize will follow us home.

On a tip from Nanc. Cross-posted at Moonbattery.

Said Van Helsing @ 3:53 pm Comments (1) | Permalink   

The ACLU has picked the wrong fight this time. God Bless The American Legion, ADF and especially those Greatest Americans whose memory these two organizations have come out strong to defend.

ArrMatey at Court Zero covers an absurd result of ACLU litigation against the harmless Mojave Cross: The Forbidden Mojave Desert Cross

See more here at Stop the ACLU.

American Legion and ADF to ACLU, FFRF, AU, American Atheists and friends: Step away from the war memorials

About time someone goes on offense.

CNS News: Christians, Veterans Team Up to Protect Religious Memorials

The nation’s largest veterans’ service organization is teaming up with two Christian legal groups in an effort aimed at protecting Christian-themed war memorials from lawsuits that would remove them from public property.

The American Legion is asking its members to contribute to a catalog of war memorials that feature crosses and other religious symbols. The group will monitor its database of memorials and will notify the Alliance Defense Fund and the Liberty Legal Institute of any attempts by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and similar groups to challenge their constitutionality.

The effort stems from recent attempts by the ACLU to have crosses removed from memorials in Mt. Soledad, Calif., and in the Mojave Desert.

On the ACLU’s Docket of Depravity, these attacks are second in loathesomeness only to the ACLU’s vigorous defense of child molesters who want to hang out in parks to fantasize about toddlers, child porn consumers and child-rape how-to guide authors. Thanks to the Legion and ADF for drawing the line in the sand.

Thanks also to Annie Laurie Gaylor who unwittingly affirms the importance of the joint project by admitting that she is all too ready to bulldoze any veterans’ memorial that happen to “offend” her:

” I would not jump into the fray until we see what happens with these other cases [Mt. Soledad and Mojave Desert],” Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, said, adding that “the ACLU might feel the same way: Let’s wait and see.”

A spokesman for the ACLU did not respond to requests for comment Friday. [Glib Note: Shocking!]

“There isn’t a way to address all of them,” Gaylor told Cybercast News Service. “You have to take these violations one case at a time, and we are facing a very hostile Supreme Court.

“If it wasn’t the current court, I would have no concern that this could possibly be upheld,” she said, “but with this new court, we don’t know how they’re behaving, but they seem to be behaving very badly on separation of church and state.”

Gaylor called the land-transfer attempts to protect the two crosses “despicable” and criticized Congress for getting involved in local cases.

“They have gone out of their way in Congress getting into the act. It’s just been a very sobering education about the lack of understanding of separation of church and state and the willingness to be manipulative and to try to subvert the First Amendment.”

She said war memorials that feature religious symbols are offensive and unconstitutional because “it isn’t the business of our secular government to have any opinion … on religion, much less plant crosses on the highest point in any city and put it as part of a government park.”

If there was “a way to address them all,” I’m sure she’d buy the wrecking ball and dismantle every memorial that carries any religious symbol. Echos of the Taliban demolishing those millennium-old Buddhist statues…

No one is dishonored or “excluded” (and no one’s “rights” have been violated) when fallen American heroes are remembered by a cross or a Bible verse or a Star of David or whatever religious symbol those who dedicate the monument choose to include. The ultimate sacrifice and the men themselves are dishonored by the radical secularists who have no love or understanding of the US Constitution (I’d say a large proportion of them despise this country) and who campaign through the courts to erase even small remembrances of the bravest citizens who died for the very freedoms these extremists abuse.

Thanks to Glib Fortuna. 

Said Cao @ 4:25 am Comments (3) | Permalink   

Here’s the letter I sent to my Senator, Lindsey Graham, when he was pushing the McCain Kennedy Immigration Bill last year. The letter is an executive summary of my research into immigration, assimilation and acculturation:

 

 

Dear Senator Graham:  

I’ve heard your defense of the McCain-Kennedy Immigration Bill on multiple news programs and talk shows . I am sorry that I cannot share with you any enthusiasm for this legislation which fails to address a host of issues which have recently become vital to our national security and national unity.

President Vicente Fox of Mexico spoke at the Cancun Summit and described Mexican immigration as a “human rights” issue. That may be true. Mexico is consistently violating the human rights of the mostly illiterate, indigenous peoples that are actively being “encouraged” to leave Mexico and go to the United States.

In “Reframing Mexican Migration As a Multi-Ethnic Process“, Jonathan Fox of the University of California, Santa Cruz describes Mexico’s abandonment of rural agricultural programs and the effort to shift the indigineous populations of Indian ethnicity either to Mexican cities or the United States. The United Nations Committee on Elimination of Racial Discrimination concluded it’s most recent session in March by condemning Mexico for using forced sterilizations against these same peoples.

What we are witnessing is a sanitized version of Soviet-style collectivization and ethnic cleansing. Mexico is dumping into the United States an underclass of what Mexican elites view as undesireables. The bonus for Mexico is that they will no longer be a drain on Mexico’s social services, nor will they agitate for change in the corrupt Mexican system that leaves that nation unable to offer these poorest of the poor much hope for their future.

Meanwhile, the bill you support in the Senate indulges in a fantasy of transforming this growing underclass of illegal aliens by assimilation. That might have worked decades ago when we had a public school system that promoted the idea of an American identity. But as you are no doubt aware, the multicultural crowd is in charge of public education today.

Mark Krikorian, Executive Director of the Center for Immigration Studies in a 1997 piece titled “Will Americanization Work in America?” describes a study by Sociologist Ruben Rumbaut which surveyed students in San Diego who are children of immigrants or who immigrated themselves at a very young age:

In terms of ethnic self-identification, the change was dramatic. Three years of high school caused these students to see themselves as significantly less American; there was a 50 percent drop in the proportion (already small) of those who considered themselves simply “American,” a 30 percent drop in the proportion of those considering themselves hyphenated Americans, and a 52 percent increase in the proportion of those describing themselves exclusively by national origin.

Furthermore, there is a profound reluctance by many immigrants towards assimilation or learning English. In 1998, the Washington Post ran a series of articles on the immigration problem. The third article in that series “Immigrants Shunning Idea of Assimilation” reports the experience of Maria Jacinto, who became a U.S. citizen, but like other members of her family living in Omaha, Nebraska she does not speak English, nor considers herself an American: “I think I’m still a Mexican,” she says. “When my skin turns white and my hair turns blonde, then I’ll be an American.”

The McCain-Kennedy bill, and your public support for it place a high value on these immigrants learning English. Yet come down to Southern Beaufort County sometime. I’ll take you to visit neighborhoods where these aliens can live their entire lives without using English. And many do not want to learn, or are not capable of learning.

What will you do when the time for these folks to assimilate has come and gone? Will we round up every single one who cannot speak our language? You know the answer to that as well as I do. The McCain-Kennedy Bill will have legitimized a new underclass of mostly illiterate foreigners living in this country unable to speak our language and with absolutely no allegiance to our history or ideals.

The time for half-measures is past. As President Bush has requested, we need a truly comprehensive bill on immigration that solves the security and cultural problem, not just the employment problem for meat processing plants and landscape companies.

After your stalwart support of Justice Alito during his confirmation hearings, I was prepared to forgive you for joining the anti-constitutional “gang of 14.” However, your failure to recognize the national security and cultural cultural issues that are of such great concern to the citizens of our state makes me wonder about your commitment to represent South Carolina values in the United States Senate.

An update to this letter might underscore how the current legislation walks further away from the fantasy that illegal immigrants want to, or will be assimilated into the American way of life. The new “Z” visa will allow current illegals to stay as long as they renew the visa with NO requirement for learning English or taking the path towards citizenship. 

The dangers of an unacculturated underclass segretated from society by language and culture can not be overstated.Does anyone really think the latest immigration bill is an improvement?What is so very wrong with assuring secure borders FIRST?

Said Mike's America @ 10:42 pm Comments (1) | Permalink   

Want to see what’s really in (one of) the “compromise” immigration bills? Here’s the cliffnotes version..

Said Ogre @ 6:57 am Comments (0) | Permalink   

See more here.

Said Cao @ 4:45 am Comments (0) | Permalink   

Said Cao @ 1:39 pm Comments (0) | Permalink   

Said Richard Nixon @ 8:29 am Comments (0) | Permalink