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Mi Casa es Su Casa
In Latin America and the southwestern U.S., a frequent greeting of welcoming hosts is mi casa es su casa, meaning "my house is yours," conveying the sense of total hospitality. Considering the outsized impact illegal immigrants from south of the border appear to be playing in the current housing foreclosure crisis, that saying has never been more appropriate than now. Our house is theirs and our guests are stealing our silverware. |
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Contributed by Russ Vaughn on May 17, 2008 at 12:20 AM in Remember the Alamo, Russ Vaughn | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack |
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Dancing on Your Crank
I have been a reader of Ruben Navarette for years and although I infrequently disagreed with him, my disagreements were usually based on the difference in our years, with me feeling that a few more years of living would mellow this talented young writer’s perspective. I’m sorry to say, that has not been the case. Today I opened my newspaper at the lunch table and selected Ruben’s column as my first read. Bad choice: I almost choked on my sandwich as I read a diatribe I would expect of Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton. Guess what, folks? This Anglo Irishman who has spent most of his life living with, working with, socializing with Hispanics and other ethnic minorities, was amazed to discover that according to Ruben Navarrette, I am a racist. That’s right, Ruben has joined the leagues of race-baiters who, when confronted with a political loss, resort to the last refuge of scoundrels like Jackson and Sharpton. Suddenly everyone who doesn’t see the world in their terms is a racist. So, I’m a racist because I didn’t agree with Ruben on the immigration bill. I was one of those who saw this legislative band-aid as a something-to-please-everyone piece of legislative trash that would do absolutely nothing to actually deal with the problem of illegal immigration on our southern borders. But no, it’s not possible to Ruben that I’m an intelligent, reasoning citizen who actually wants to see our congress develop a truly effective remedy for this problem. Nope, I’m a racist, just ask Reuben Navarrette. Ruben, my boy, at the risk of sounding politically incorrect and ethnically insensitive, you just did the Mexican Hat Dance on your crank. Perhaps, since you seem to be so sensitive about the Mexican label, I should say flamenco. Same difference, young man, its still a well-trampled and thoroughly flat crank or perhaps I should say you have ground your grosero in the dirt, hmmm? Russ Vaughn *** Webmaster's addendum: Some people just can't stop dancing. |
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Contributed by Russ Vaughn on July 31, 2007 at 11:32 AM in Remember the Alamo, Russ Vaughn | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack |
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N.Z. Bear Makes Monkeys of the MSM
Glenn Reynolds has earned a hearty "Thank you" from the public in this post , in which he links to a remarkable achievement by N.Z. Bear. The latter has broken out the monstrous draft immigration bill--over 300 pages--in a form that makes it readily available to any citizen who has access to the internet. He provides a table of contents, listing topics by subsections, complete with links to every subsection and to individual pages. The beauty of it is that the right-hand sidebar has space for comments. The visitor can read existing comments and append commentary ad lib. At the present writing, one sees only a handful of comments, led off by a link to a scathing example from Mickey Kaus. That must change, and swiftly. Let your imagination run wild for a moment. The Senate Majority Leader wants to ram the bill through in the absence of any serious debate. It is unlikely that other senators will let him get away with that. If not, the public has an unparalleled opportunity--and a unique challenge--to be heard. Picture it: a few days into the debate, the blogosphere dumps on every senator's desk a copy of N.Z. Bear's version, marked up by us The Great Unwashed, acting as a committee of the whole, and bearing hundreds or possibly thousands of heartfelt critiques. The Bear's achievement in making this possible is unprecedented, even world-changing. We must buckle down to it, citizens. It's a patriotic duty. First, go here, to benefit from N.Z. Bear's guidance on how to get the most from his effort. Then, go there to read the bill and mark it up. Absent that effort on our part, we'll have only ourselves to blame when the D.C. sausage factory serves up a rotten, stinking mess. |
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Contributed by 72nd TCS on May 21, 2007 at 02:57 AM in Current Affairs, G W Bush, John "72nd TCS" Werntz, John McCain, Remember the Alamo, Unclear on the concept | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack |
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Contributed by Russ Vaughn on May 18, 2007 at 11:53 AM in Poetry, Remember the Alamo, Russ Vaughn | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack |
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Man the Barricades!
H/T FR An event occurred earlier this month that nearly fell through the cracks.
So the U.S. was invaded by an armed group, this group did as it pleased, the NG withdrew. *** [-- I accidentally added something to this post that I intended to put here, then caught my mistake and moved it -- Bill Faith --] |
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Contributed by Zero Ponsdorf on January 20, 2007 at 11:56 AM in Current Affairs, Remember the Alamo, Whitewash/Blackwash, Zero Ponsdorf | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack |
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National Guard confronted by uniformed Mexican force?
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Contributed by Bill Faith on January 9, 2007 at 11:36 AM in Bill Faith, Remember the Alamo | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack |
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Further thoughts on Mercenaries
Thanks to a friend, I have been able to read the entire Boston Globe article linked in Zero Ponsdorf's Mercenaries? Now I am even more disturbed. I see this development as an intersection of our military problem and also of the illegal immigration threat, the confluence of two threats to our national identity and existence. I should not have been surprised that this is being advocated by Thomas Donnelly of the (supposedly) Conservative, American Enterprise Institute, Michael O’Hanlon of Brookings, and Max Boot of the CFR. ( I find that none of them has any real military experience. Donnelly was a civilian editor of Armed Forces Journal, Boot a Wall Street Journal reporter, and O’Hanlon a Peace Corps member.) Though I have not taken any polls, I suspect that the idea is also wildly popular with the other self-styled "National Greatness Conservatives", such as Bill Kristol, Vin Weber, Jack Kemp, and perhaps even George Will. These are the same people who want an army which they can use to impose at bayonet-point their vision of Democracy across the globe, and their vision of the Globe on America. They also seem to be enthusiasts for the so-called SPP initiative, the North American Union and the abolition of border controls or limits on immigration. To these folks America is not a country; it is an idea. A very abstract idea. And if the actual people are hesitant to swallow this idea, then, in the words of the Stalinist playwright Berthod Brecht, maybe we should elect a different people. We are a "credal nation", defined not by our language, our culture, our history, holidays, or any thing else save an "idea". And they wish to proceed credal to the metal. Their idea is based on a fragment of the second sentence of the Declaration of Independence, lifted out of context, though not an actual part of out Constitution or laws, cemented to the words of an immigrant poet Emma Lazarus, which were not given any official status either. For them America is a global boarding house, with as few social rules as possible, where the actions of the tenants are not to be judged, so long as they bend their knee to global equality, and personal interchangeability, and do not interfere with production. The people are valued not as individuals, or even as distinct groups - Vietnamese-Americans, or Hillbillies, or Scandie farmers, or Black Jazz singers, Cowboys, or anything else; just as economic production-consumption units. This is ominous. When Jack Kemp described the United States as the world’s first credal nation, he was dead wrong, as evidenced by the recurring fundamental disagreements culminating in a civil war, and the many years of reconstruction and continued disagreement afterward. We became (if at all) a credal nation only during the 1920s-1930s, under the influence of Carl Sandburg’s mythologized Lincoln, and FDR’s politicking. The first nation created explicitly on the basis of an abstract idea, a creed, was the Soviet Union, created at the beginning of the 1920s as the world’s First Proletarian Nation. And this suggests the fundamental problem with credal nations. A Frenchman or Italian may be a Communist or a Social Democrat, or a Conservative, a Christian or Atheist, and still remain a Frenchman or Italian. An individual may immigrate, and become a citizen of France, but to become a Frenchman requires maybe a generation or two of acculturation and assimilation. The same for other nations defined by ethnicity or culture. But in a credal nation, if you disavow the creed, you disavow the nation. Lenin solved this problem in Russia by eliminating all those who would not, or could not, be proletarian Marxists. Though American dissenters are not yet shot (except Vickie Weaver and David Koresh), they are often harassed. A major reason is that the US Armed Forces still retain a tie to the American people, even if it is becoming attenuated. American soldiers may feel alienated from the assorted anti-military protesters and the civilians who do not serve, but they still recognize their brothers and cousins and neighbors. At the very least they can exchange understandable curses. They do not shoot fellow Americans; the brief exception at Kent State in 1970 occurred under exceptional circumstances where semi-trained National Guardsmen felt themselves threatened by a mob. Here is where the utility of a foreign-based military comes into play. Their loyalty is not to the people, or the flag, or to anybody but the officer who commands and feeds them, and to their fellow mercenary comrades. The old Soviet Union used to use ethnic minorities in the internal troops units of the MVD and KGB, always assigned to some other distant and not very congenial region. Resentful Uzbek boys from Central Asia would have no hesitation if ordered to crack some Russian heads in Moscow or Bryansk. Georgians might not mind shooting Latvians or Estonians, who might in turn be willing to suppress Central Asians and Far Easterners, etc.. What would happen if, some time in the future, President Obama were to order a battalion of Mexicans to search and disarm a Korean neighborhood in southern California using whatever force was necessary? Or maybe if he sent in a battalion of troops recruited from Pakistan to restore order in Chicago or St. Paul? There is no doubt the troops would perform enthusiastically, probably with all the vigor they would exercise back home. No fear of them restraining themselves out of community ties. At the same time, large numbers of linguistically diverse troops formed a different problem for the Soviet Army, and would for us as well. There were about a hundred different languages in the draft pool of the old Soviet Union, and even though many of these draftees ended up in the labor battalions, still many more found their way to the Ground Forces. I heard an American colonel once comment "I would not, as a company commander, be encouraged to learn that two thirds of my company could understand the language of command." This led to problems even during World War II, which became increasingly worse throughout the rest of Soviet postwar experience. Anyone who thinks this would be no problem for the United States is clearly beyond responsible thought. A language requirement to enlist? Don’t make me laugh. Certainly not if we’re going to raise the sort of large numbers these "experts" are talking about, nor if we’re going to raise them overseas. Do you really think you’re going to enlist a battalion’s worth of West European English-speakers to fight our wars? Get Serious. The overseas enlistees will come from Somalia, from Yemen, from Pakistan and Algeria, and many other hellholes of the Fourth World. And they will not be the healthy, educated, and intelligent recruits the Army thinks it will be getting. The educated elites from these countries will get to America on Student Visas and vanish into the unpoliced crowds of American cities; no need for them to enlist. The semi-literate campesinos from Central America will seem the pick of the catch. And why should many more of them volunteer to enlist in order to gain citizenship the hard way when they will be allowed to cross an open border and fade into the urban landscape. So long as there is no credible control on our borders or our immigration enforcement, there will be no motivation for foreigners to enlist. And just think what the ACLU will say once it discovers that the overseas recruiting offices are rejecting Somalis disproportionately for poor health and literacy. That will be discrimination. We will find ourselves enlisting the dregs of the Fourth World, healing them and educating them, maybe even teaching them to wear shoes, all on the time of their army contract, and giving them citizenship after discharging them, probably just about the time they complete their modernization training. Very quickly, we will find it necessary to attenuate the process, probably by abandoning attempts at language training, in favor of ethnic units. We will have Urdu battalions and Kikuyu battalions, and Arabic and Hmoob units, and God knows what else. And these units will not conform to American disciplinary and performance standards either. The Army will be transformed into a global social uplift program. Trying to recruit enlistees from other major powers runs a serious risk of causing diplomatic incidents or worse. After all countries such as Germany, Denmark, Poland and Russia probably would resent our syphoning off their potential military strength. Some countries, such as Russia might construe it as a "hostile act", and in other countries, such as Poland or Czechia, or South Korea, it would only diminish the strength of countries we are committed to defending. Further, what will happen if, and when we find ourselves engaged in a war against a country which has become a major source of our troops? Might that not test the loyalties of our mercenaries? Might it not impede the further supply of such mercenaries? Britain never sent its Gurkhas to invade Nepal. And in the case of some countries, significant numbers, or even any of their nationals in our armed forces could prove a deadly security risk. Do we want a battalion of Pasdaran in our army? Or maybe North Koreans? One of the most frequent arguments I have heard against reinstituting the draft is that our professional NCOs and officers do not have the time or desire to nurse and train reluctant American conscripts. The time spent on training and acculturating these foreign volunteers will be far, far worse. And they will be capable of only the meanest cannon-fodder sorts of assignment. Even (or especially) contemporary infantry duties may be beyond them. If and when these totally alien ethnic units are finally committed to action, the American public is likely to prove totally indifferent to whatever casualties they suffer. "The Kikuyu Battalion lost 90% strength last week? So what." This may be attractive to short-sighted policy makers, able to wage war on the political cheap. But it will have consequences. The mercenary units will prove totally indifferent to our interests in return. The survivors who eventually gain US citizenship are likely to be cynical and ungrateful. and hardly acculturated into American society, or able to adjust. But then, that is not really an issue is it? Not if you consider homo sapiens to be only fungible consumption-production units. And that seems to give away much of this game. It is not really about strengthening the US military, but about commandeering the US military as another way to end-run our own national sovereignty. Though the flag may be American, the Army will no longer be American in any meaningful sense. For a while the professional officers may be drawn from an elite class of Americans, though before long, we will find that these non-American American soldiers have risen through the ranks and are holding command positions. Milton Friedman commented on the incompatibility of open immigration with a modern welfare state. When the German immigrants evoked by Max Boot left the Union Armies after 1865, they either got productive civilian jobs, returned to Germany, or fell into failure. They did not swell a welfare empire. (We may also ponder whether the experience of being invaded and suppressed by foreign-speaking mercenaries may have added to the Southern embitterment of the post-civil war era. Mr. Boot may also want to consider the Irish troops in the context of the New York City draft riots and anti-Negro pogrom; I hope that is not among the precedents he would have us emulate because they are precedents.) Under the mercenary plan, any minimally trained survivor could go directly from the military to the dole, but with a knowledge of brute force and a sense of entitlement. Can anyone else see a problem? Mr. O’Hanlon invokes the ethnic participation of Germans and British fighting side-by-side with the colonists. Sorry, but those Germans were colonists, particularly from Pennsylvania, and maybe some Hessian mercenaries who deserted; and doesn't that raise questions about mercenaries? And the British?...well up to July 4, 1776, most of the other colonists were British, by definition. Except for the leaders like von Steuben, Kosciusko, Pulaski and such, the common soldiers were not brought over as Colonist mercenaries. Those leaders, particularly the Poles, and Hungarians, were professional soldiers who had ended on the losing side of rebellions against Russia or Austro-Hungary, and had to find employment far beyond the reach of retribution. And on occasion Washington is quoted has having given the order on several important occasions "Let none but Americans be placed on sentry duty tonight..." Nor were the many European immigrants who served in the American Army during the Indian Wars, were not brought over specifically for the purpose of enlisting, nor did they enlist in groups. Likewise, today’s Americans of Ukrainian or Honduran origin are not at issue either. Such people are the glory of our country and our military, serving out of pride and devotion to their new homeland, and a reproach to those native-born Americans too self-precious to serve. But they were not recruited as foreigners or overseas, nor do they serve as foreigners. The recruitment of foreign mercenaries overseas is something entirely different, and that is what alarms me. An ethnic battalion of Ukrainians is entirely different from 600 individual Ukrainians, all conversant in English, and dispersed throughout a 700,000 man army. The Filipino Scouts recruited by the United States were recruited only for service in the Philippines. At the time the Philippines was in a colonial relationship. None were sent to fight in Europe, or even anywhere else in the Pacific Theater. The Filipino mess staff serving with the US Navy are a special and traditional case. Likewise, the Swiss Guard, who may arrive from all over Europe, but also are armed with halberds and have not gone to war in memory. While we are on the subject of invoking prior experience of mercenary recruitment, we ought not forget the sad experience of the Western Roman Empire, who suffered greatly from their mistake in ceding their legionary duties to Germanic barbarians who opened the way for invading Goths. Nor should we forget the advice of Machiavelli who warned so strongly on the unreliability and risk of mercenary troops. They will flee in battle, or desert to an enemy who buys them with higher pay. or they may turn upon their supposed employer and wreak havoc on the employing state. If there is a problem with our military being overcommitted, and I agree this seems likely, there would be other, saner responses. First of all, we might reduce our commitments to less critical areas. Certainly ten years after Bill Clinton said we would be in Bosnia for only a single year, it is time to go home. Likewise, in both Germany and South Korea, our continuing presence is of debatable importance, seemingly of most importance to the local merchants who still despise us. Much more importantly, we might choose to discontinue all "peace-keeping" and "nation-building" operations and to affirm the doctrine that the US military is not for nation building but for nation destroying, and will be deployed accordingly. In conjunction with this latter perspective, we might reconsider our doctrine to include fighting with less concern for collateral enemy casualties, and more with concern for US operational effectiveness. If we replace the kid gloves with knuckle dusters, we might find we have enough troops to service our revised task list. -Rurik |
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Contributed by George Mellinger on December 28, 2006 at 01:35 PM in Caring about our troops, Current Affairs, George Mellinger, Remember the Alamo, The American Warrior, Zero Ponsdorf | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack |
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Illegal Aliens Kill 25 Americans Daily
Just doing the jobs Americans won't do. Hat tip: Ian Schwartz |
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Contributed by Bill Faith on November 29, 2006 at 10:36 PM in Bill Faith, Remember the Alamo | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack |
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Contributed by Russ Vaughn on September 9, 2006 at 05:17 PM in 9/11, Best of Old War Dogs, Islamism Delenda Est, Remember the Alamo, Russ Vaughn | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack |
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Missing: Citizenship Reform Act
Today's memorandum from Henry Mark Holzer:
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Contributed by Bill Faith on September 4, 2006 at 05:07 PM in Bill Faith, Remember the Alamo | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack |
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Andres Manuel Lopez Obrad-Gore
Okay, its time for us to recognize that al-Gore's piteous and treasonable whining in Forida 2000 was not as bad as it could have been. For stealing an election after the votes have been counted you really need Mexican expertise. Just another of those jobs only a Mexican can do. Wizbang has the whole burrito here. And George Bush and the Wall Street Journal want to integrate 110 million of those anarchic thugs into our system through a North American Union? After the Democrats have shown their penchant for stuffing the ballot boxes and trying to reverse the outcome of elections after the fact? No intelligent life here Scotty bean me up. -Rurik [Webmaster's note] See also:
*** Russ Vaughn tried to leave this comment but ran into some sort of technical glitch:
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Contributed by George Mellinger on September 2, 2006 at 09:56 AM in Bill Faith, George Mellinger, Remember the Alamo | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack |
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Contributed by George Mellinger on August 31, 2006 at 11:14 PM in Dem Dumbness, George Mellinger, Remember the Alamo | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack |
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Homeland defense, anyone?
Read the whole thing here. What part of "...enemies, foreign and domestic..." is so hard to understand? A tip of the helmet to High Tory -Rurik |
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Contributed by George Mellinger on August 31, 2006 at 10:33 AM in George Mellinger, Remember the Alamo | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack |
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E L Core interviews Diana Irey
Go read the whole thing, by all means, but I want call attention to this particular passage:
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Contributed by Bill Faith on August 29, 2006 at 08:49 PM in Bill Faith, Diana Irey, Politics, Remember the Alamo | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack |
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Frankie Cee's Sunday Immigration Rant
In my email:
*** I posted an excerpt from and a link to this post at Love America First. |
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Contributed by Bill Faith on August 27, 2006 at 02:13 PM in Bill Faith, Islamism Delenda Est, Remember the Alamo | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack |
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Contributed by Bill Faith on August 26, 2006 at 07:47 PM in Bill Faith, Remember the Alamo | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack |
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A Hispanic response to J. Almendariz left the following comment on my Latinos AGAINST Illegal Immigration post at Small Town Veteran. It's too important to just let it languish there where no one will see it.
*** Don't miss the latest Beltway Traffic Jam. |
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Contributed by Bill Faith on August 22, 2006 at 10:57 AM in Bill Faith, Remember the Alamo | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack |
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Karl Bossi: What Would Our Forefathers Do?
Karl's at Lake Tahoe doing his blogging and emailing from a coffee shop with a WiFi hotspot, which limits our troubleshooting on any technical problems he runs into. For some reason, possibly just a temporary hiccup (I'm hoping), TypePad wouldn't let him post this himself.
Don't miss the ad for Karl's book on our sidebar. *** Linking to the latest Beltway Traffic Jam |
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Contributed by Bill Faith on August 16, 2006 at 12:01 PM in Best of Old War Dogs, Bill Faith, Current Affairs, Islamism Delenda Est, Karl Bossi, Remember the Alamo | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBack |
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Tony Blankley: Pat Buchanan's 'State of Emergency'
(Click "Continue reading" to access an Amazon button and buy your own copy of the subject book.) |
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Contributed by Bill Faith on August 16, 2006 at 02:23 AM in Bill Faith, Books, Current Affairs, Islamism Delenda Est, Remember the Alamo | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack |
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It's all local - a 'cold' Civil War?
"All politics are local" is a semi-famous quote attributed to Tip O'neill. It turns out that Jihad has a local twist as well. H/T Don Surber and others, including our own Bill Faith. Investigators: Pair with passenger info, phones linked to terror
As it happens I have a passing familiarity with the Washington County jail although I think it's been rebuilt since.
And I was born and raised in Parkersburg, but the point of my post is not to bore you with tales of my youth. We are faced with an enemy that lives among us and is invisible save one small detail that we can't acknowledge - and in this case they're Muslim! For years I've entertained the notion that a civil war between the liberal/left/communist/socialist and the rest of us was a distinct possibility, but, in fact, the ground work is being laid for what might be called a 'cold' civil war on two fronts. In an earlier post here I cited an article that mentioned some of the methods and tactics involved. Let me re-post this bit for emphasis:
In past 'hot' wars these elements have been set aside as needed (not always wisely), but the current environment will simply not permit these tools to be used to any beneficial extent. So where does that leave us? It leaves us facing a reverse of the 'old' cold war in many ways. Similar to the collapse of the USSR the United States is apt to collapse because we can't take the steps needed to protect ourselves and, seemingly, maintain the illusion that our political system will survive anything. Of course, the 'cold' civil war analogy can be easily extended to illegal immigration. The only real question, if we continue with this 'head in the sand' view, is whether we will be speaking Spanish or Arabic first. Neither threat will subside unless we stop them, and with the exception of folks like that small town deputy and a few others here and there - we don't seem willing to try. With hardly a shot fired we're losing this 'cold' civil war, instead of a wall coming down the borders are! Instead of monitoring those who clearly present a threat they're coming to a small town near YOU! |
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Contributed by Zero Ponsdorf on August 10, 2006 at 04:55 PM in Current Affairs, Islamism Delenda Est, Remember the Alamo, Zero Ponsdorf | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack |
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Can’t Midwesterners Care About Immigration Too?
Chris Lawrence at OTB:
I live in a little Southern Illinois town of under 5,000 people and hell yes people around here have a right, and good cause, to be concerned about illegal immigration. When I can't even go to the local Wal-Mart without running into people who don't speak English and are almost certainly driving the streets of our little town without a license or insurance that makes it my problem, not just a border thing. I want them gone. |
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Contributed by Bill Faith on August 7, 2006 at 02:34 AM in Bill Faith, Remember the Alamo | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack |
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More Racism From The Left
Ed Morrissey:
Michelle has more here. *** |
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Contributed by Bill Faith on August 4, 2006 at 06:34 PM in Bill Faith, Dem Dumbness, Politics, Remember the Alamo | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack |
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Senate votes to fund the fence
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Contributed by Bill Faith on August 3, 2006 at 04:14 PM in Bill Faith, Remember the Alamo | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack |
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Its the Culture, Stupid!
A "Best of Old War Dogs" featured post. The webmaster is using a bogus timestamp to keep this post near the top of the blog for a while. Please scroll down for newer posts. This item was originally posted 2006.07.31.15:43. It’s the culture, Stupid! (With never an apology to James Carville) About two weeks ago, one of our dogs posted a comment seeming to endorse the concept of a Border Economic Zone Development Alliance. I let it pass at the time but want to revisit that now as an excuse for a rant. The idea seems to be that everyone would win if we can help Mexico to develop its own economy so they could become prosperous without having to invade el norte. I agree that sounds fine. And there is still a pure corner of my cynical heart that delights in the thought of happy middle class Mexican families vacationing at Puerto Vallarta and Cancun. Sadly I believe that is just the poisoned frosting on a poisoned cake. It will not lead to greater prosperity for middle class Mexicans, let alone the uneducated masses, just for a few Mexican millionaires and billionaires who control the government. The borders will be abolished and even greater numbers of Mexican peasants will swarm northward. The only losers will be the coyotes whose people-smuggling trade will be obsoleted, and they will be able to turn to smuggling drugs, now made easier by lack of border controls. Oh, and the American people will lose because of ever greater numbers of no-longer-illegal aliens. This brings us to the heart of the problem. Its not really that the immigration is illegal. If technical illegality was the core issue George Bush and The Wall Street Journal would be correct; just as with Prohibition, you cure the illegality by legalization. Or like gambling, or prostitution, or pornography, or cocaine and heroin, or..... Wait a second, sometimes the problem may be in the thing itself., what the philosophers call mala in se. This is the problem with Latino immigration. I am only one of many millions in this country who just does not want hordes of Mexicans (and other Central Americans) swarming across every nook and cranny of America, whether they are legal or not. And it is made far worse because the Mexicans coming to America are not those nice, educated families sitting poolside in Cancun. They are the dregs and failures of Mexican society. They are the people who did not finish even Mexican high school, and may be semi-literate even in Spanish. Latino students are far more likely than other students to drop out of school. This is not because schools fail to teach them in their native Spanish; it is a factor of a culture which does not highly value formal education. We hear ceaseless paeans to the "warm, loving, family values of the Mexicans. Loving perhaps, but not necessarily family values; their rate of illegitimate births is double that of White Anglos. Their rate of serious crime is also sharply higher, and southern California is overrun with Latino gangs. MS-13 is notorious for their callous brutality. In any town you can recognize certain characteristics of Latino neighborhoods. They are not clean or well-kept. Litter tends to accumulate. In houses and apartments, large numbers of people are packed into spaces never contemplated by zoning ordinances. Lots of LOUD radios! Kids tend to run unsupervised and grow up feral. Aggressive and swaggering young men, gang-bangers. Lots of liquor stores, VCR rentals, check-cashing services, but few book shops. They do not reach out to other groups, not the Anglo majority, which they despise, but neither to any of the other minority groups, also despised. They remain insular and ignorant. It is the barrio, with the barrio culture that everyone knows, but has been reluctant to mention, for fear of being called names. This is not just the result of being the "newest immigrant wave". We have had Latino immigrants for generations. And Vietnamese and immigrants from India do not seem to have the same depth and breadth of problems. It is the culture. It is not race. Most certainly it is not race, the Hispanics who were absorbed by the USA during the 1850s, or who trekked here earlier in the twentieth century in small numbers and dispersed amongst us have proven that Hispanic genes can learn English, absorb America culture and assimilate. During WWII the third-ranking US navy fighter ace a Latino-American, though it seems no quota foolishness was ever invoked about the non-issue. Alone, or in small groups, Latinos adjust. It is only when they remain in their barrios, maintaining contact with their old homeland, bringing that old homeland with them, that they remain barbarians. But Hispanic culture? It is a failed culture. Much as is Arabic culture. And this is not completely coincidence, since Hispanic culture, through Spain, was strongly influenced by seven centuries of Muslim colonialism. In Latin America, this culture was further influenced by interaction with native cultures, such as the Aztec, which added their own special characteristics. Already some of you are harumphing that I cannot judge another culture. Yes I can. And no, not all cultures are equally worthy. Cultural relativism can scam its magic only by allowing every culture to validate itself by its own internal values and standards. By using that self-validating technique, you could prove that Nazi Germany was a superior society if judged by Nazi values, and Stalinism was a smashing success at meeting Stalinist goals. And everyone who does not validate your own paranoia is obviously part of the conspiracy against you. You judge any society on the basis of its scientific, artistic, and cultural developments which other societies found worthy of importing and adopting. Western classical music is such an example, and we are even able to find that within the Western tradition, that Germany, Italy and Russia have proven more successful than France, England, and Spain - let alone America. But American Jazz and pop music have been our baarely challenged forte. China seems to have produced no music appreciable to any other culture (I’d rather face waterboarding than Chinese opera.), but Japanese music seems generally enjoyable if inadequately distributed. And yes, you may also judge a society by some notably evil feature, such as the Aztec sacrifices. Thus we may recognize the Nazis for the autobahn and Volkswagen, for devising really stylish uniforms and dramatic architecture, for music and Heidegger and Heisenberg, but still condemn them overall as the inventors of modern scientific genocide and Xyclon-B. So societies may be judged, and the fact is that Spain has given us almost nothing for centuries Spain was brilliant for a couple centuries after the expulsion of the Moors, but after about 1650, almost nothing A Couple of painters, a couple of writers. Flamenco guitar. Even Cervantes is known for a single book, seldom any more read outside Spanish language classes. Spanish science and technology? Stop laughing and keep reading. The record of Latin American contributions is even poorer. And this despite the fact that the first university in the western hemisphere was founded in Veracruz not Harvard. Mexico’s greatest artist specialized in murals, of style resembling political posters or comic books, and heavily influenced by his radical politics. Latin American art usually seems to manifest itself as graffiti. Music? A few Latinos play a decent classic guitar. Otherwise, they failed to break into the American Rock tradition, though that cannot be blamed completely on the language, since "nobody listens to the lyrics anyway". Literature? Philosophy? The Hard Sciences? Oh heck, let’s be sporting and add the soft sciences too. Nadanadanada. Recently the have been a few humanistic scholars worth heeding, Carlos Montaner, Hernando de Soto and Carlos Rangel, and a couple others who have critiqued Latino society. But they tend to be Venezuelan, Colombian, Peruvian, not Mexican or Central American. Cuisine? I have great admiration for true Spanish cuisine, but Mexican cuisine is vastly overrated, formed around rice, beans, peppers, tortillas, and salsa. All of the preceding arranged into minor variations, all resembling each other. Salsa is always the same, even with a little bit of extra heat added. And of course the ubiquitous taco. Mexican food has none of the complexity, variation, and variety of any of the East or South Asian cuisines, which I will always choose when I want highly spiced (almost always). As for south American cuisine, well that never seems to get to North America. Politically? Mexico deserves both scorn and a minor touch of credit for a change that could happen. The PRI took power in Mexico at roughly the same time as the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia, but kept its one-party rule intact for a decade longer. For all his other shortcomings, The Foxy One deserves credit for having broken the PRI. But problems remain, a systematically corrupt police and civil service, and elected officials completely set apart from the citizens. Corruption, thy name is Mexico! And with it comes a Mexican populace which has a weakly developed civic culture a complete complaisance about corruption, and petty lawlessness, a willingness to submit, to evade, and to partake. Laws don’t matter, and if the policeman sees, bribe him. And here is where the real problem shows itself, the Mexican traditional disregard for the law. Sure, in Mexico where all the cops are corrupt and most of the other bureaucrats and regulators as well, this makes sense. But it is not our way. And importing such an attitude that you can bribe your way through any problem is a guarantee of disruption. The future great superhighway corridor will become a bribe farm. Mexicans will no longer need to bribe their way past an Immigration office, but he will bribe everywhere else - Drivers’ license. Truck license, safety inspections, security inspections for terrorists and bombs, and any and everything else. Bribe, bribe, bribe. Mexican officials operating in this country will behave as if they were at home, demanding bribes and gifts of Americans whom they encounter. And very soon, American officials and citizens will find themselves sucked in and corrupted as they find the new habit cannot be opposed, so we might as well join it. Then there will be the increased presence of Latino gangs operating with even greater impunity. Corrupt American politicians will learn to exploit Mexican voters in all our districts, and before long, within five to ten years, America will have assimilated to all the worst of Mexican political and legal practices. -Rurik |
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Contributed by George Mellinger on August 3, 2006 at 01:30 PM in Best of Old War Dogs, George Mellinger, Remember the Alamo | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack |
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CQ: "Getting Serious On Employer Enforcement?"
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Contributed by Bill Faith on August 1, 2006 at 06:24 AM in Bill Faith, Remember the Alamo | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack |
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Family values run amok
Steve Sailor is surprised that the LA Times has printed an article portraying the realities of ilegal immigration. In his reivew Mr. Sailor gives us many of the facts himself...
Read this for a glimpse of what we are preparing to do to our country as we indulge political sappy feelings. This is what happens when polticicians get it into their heads that Third World peasants are nothing but The Brady Bunch dubbed for Spanish. -Rurik |
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Contributed by George Mellinger on July 31, 2006 at 04:53 PM in George Mellinger, Remember the Alamo | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack |
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Two to piss you off
I wouldn't know where to start to excerpt or paraphrase either of these. Just go read 'em: H/T: Bob Park, www.veteransforsecureborders.us I sure am glad we won that war with Mexico, aren't you? I mean, like, think of what could have happened if we'd lost! |
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Contributed by Bill Faith on July 30, 2006 at 04:44 PM in Bill Faith, Remember the Alamo | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack |
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Thomas Sowell: More Amnesty Fraud
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Contributed by Bill Faith on July 26, 2006 at 07:17 AM in Bill Faith, Remember the Alamo | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack |
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More on the Minutemen’s Money Problems
On the same topic, Shannon (N5KOU) McGauley left this comment on my earlier related post:
Linda replied:
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Contributed by Bill Faith on July 25, 2006 at 06:32 PM in Bill Faith, Remember the Alamo | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack |
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Contributed by Zero Ponsdorf on July 25, 2006 at 05:48 PM in Current Affairs, Remember the Alamo, Zero Ponsdorf | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack |
