The goal of this blog is to help you hold your own in political discussions--especially when the other guy's fighting dirty. Some dirty tricks are obvious, others are subtle. But even when they're blatant it can be hard to know what to say. I'll help. I lean Democrat myself, but I'm as against Democrats using underhanded tactics as I am against Republicans doing so. Fair is fair, and this blog aims to help anyone who shares this belief.
Mexico's president Felipe Calderon has denounced the state of Arizona in an address to Congress. And he advised America to get a grip on its demand for drugs, because it's harming Mexico by providing a ready market for Mexican drug gangs.
OK, fine. Now it's time for President Obama to address the Mexican congress in a spirit of reciprocity. And in that address he can denounce Mexico's Catholic Church for its part in Mexico's population explosion, the cause of so much unwanted immigration of Mexicans to our country.
He can follow up by demanding that Mexico adopt China's One Child policy, along with providing abortion on demand, no questions asked, to anyone who wants one.
Washington Post columnist (and reliably doctrinaire leftist) Katherine Vanden Heuvel wrote a column titled "The Nation Glares at Arizona." Basically she took Arizona's immorality as a given, and devoted herself to tactical issues.
Heuvel allowed any number of frothing Tea Party comments to be entered, as you'll see if you click on the link--but she censored out mine, which was considerably less frothy. Here it is--see what you think:
Katherine Vanden Heuvel’s arguments against the Arizona law are as follows:
1. 22 years ago Arizona’s Republican governor rescinded observation of Martin Luther King Day. He also defended calling Black kids “pickaninnies.”
2. Several other cites and/or states outside Arizona have declared boycotts of Arizona.
3. The Arizona law is “culturally insensitive (or openly racist).”
Let’s examine each:
1. This is supposed to “prove” that all of Arizona’s Republican legislators are racists, have always been racists, and always will be racists, because of some things one of them did 22 years ago.
Arguments like this are symptomatic of the isolation of ideologues from those with opposing views. It appears that VDH simply has never had to defend her ideas against anyone who doesn’t already agree with her.
And even if Arizona’s current legislature turned out to be racist, that isn’t an argument against this law—only against trusting the motives of its creators. But the logic and factual basis for a law don’t depend on the motives of its crafters—they depend on the logic and factual basis of the law itself.
Attacking the character of your opponent is a common dirty trick—Republican campaigns use this as a matter of course; but don’t be fooled—Demos do too, as VDH demonstrates here.
Debaters call this the ad hominem attack.
2. Boycotts: How is this a moral argument? From a leftist point of view, would boycotts of “sanctuary” cities justify opposing illegal immigration? Of course not. Therefore it’s simply a declaration of power: Surrender, Arizona. Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.
3. “culturally insensitive.” This is a Medieval syllogism. Illegal immigration is nonwhite. Anyone who opposes anything that nonwhites want is racist. Therefore resistance to illegal immigration is racist.
But as with #2, this is never applied the other way. For example, I know about white racists—as the descendant of what Southerners would call White Trash, most of my paternal line qualified.
Though to be fair to them, they did say that when the last of them to live in slave times was ordered to beat a slave, he’s take him behind the barn and beat the ground with a stick while the slave yelped. So for the time that ancestor was a good guy.
But since then I did a stint of teaching in ghetto schools, and that’s when I met such bigoted racists that they put my folks to shame.
Likewise, I find that people like Van Den Heuvel have zero respect for Anglo American culture. Every other culture on Earth (well, if it’s nonwhite), sure. You bet. But Anglo culture? It is to be destroyed as quickly as possible.
I always thought claims like this exaggerated the truth—nobody could hate their own society like this. But over the past four years I’ve read so many statements gloating over the coming destruction of Anglo America by a rising tide of nonwhite reproduction that I’ve come to realize sometimes even knuckle-dragging Southern whites aren’t totally lying.
Of course there’s the claim that it’s impossible to be insensitive to the group in power—as in only whites are racist. Everyone else is just defending themselves against the monstrous evil that is white folk.
But when I’ve been the only white person in the room—and I have on more than one occasion—then who’s in power? Or walking down the street in the part of town where the main street is named Martin Luther King Blvd.? Does an elderly white person in such a situation feel in power then?
I’ve traveled in 17 countries. My circle of friends includes people from half a dozen nations. But my parent culture is Anglo American, and I like it, I want to come home to it, and I don’t want to see it destroyed—and I find all the comments in this thread that accuse anyone who objects of being a racist, automatically—well, that’s truly “culturally insensitive.”
These aren’t one way streets—and everyone should apply to themselves the principles they expect others to uphold. Van Den Heuvel does not.
The London & Los Angeles metro areas both have about 13 million residents. Over the past 70 years London has gotten a lot more multicultural, with the white English-descended majority progressively leavened by people of many nationalities, races & ethnicities. Surely British foodies rejoice at this.
Now imagine if, over the past 70 years, so many people had come from just one demographic slice of one foreign country that today, half of London was, say, Spanish.
But not doctors/lawyers/art history professors/engineers. Just unskilled laborers with less than a secondary education.
And say that this group speaks little or no English, & now doesn’t need to, because with half the city Spanish-speaking, with store signs in Spanish & shopkeepers who also speak Spanish, with many TV & radio stations broadcasting only in Spanish—including the most popular one in London; with ballots in Spanish & official signs in Spanish, & a city government that rushes to accommodate Spanish-speakers in every way imaginable.
Add that in this scenario the Spanish government has told these Spaniards that the UK is historically a part of Spain, so those who are here in London illegally…aren’t.
So they parade through town in vast numbers—hundreds of thousands on occasion—waving Spanish flags & demanding their rights; even telling fellow Londoners that on every October 12 (Spain’s National Day), only the Spanish flag is to be shown—displaying the Union Jack in London on that day would be “disrespecting” Londonia’s Spaniards [something like this just happened here in California].
Moreover, suppose these Spaniards reproduce at four times the rate of other Brits, & demographers project that Spaniards will become a majority of voters in southern England in a few decades.
Now suppose the Economist’s editors then chime in & demand that Brits accept all this with a smile—that the movement of all these Spaniards into London metro is as inevitable as plate tectonics; that the displacement of modern multicultural Britain by large monolithic Spain barrios is also inevitable, & virtuous, really. To object would be racist, & so one may safely ignore the complaints of anyone so churlish as to prefer their own varied culture to the monolithic one that’s displacing it.
Would the Economist make such cavalier assumptions and recommendations to we who live in the Southwest if this scenario were playing out in England?
In 1940, 0.5% of Americans could claim Latino heritage. Now it’s 14% & growing rapidly. But this underestimates the situation greatly, because that migration is concentrated across the American Southwest. Here in California, it’s growing so fast that by 2050 a majority of voters will people who describe themselves as Mexicans.
I challenge any Brit who claims to love his country to say he’d be happy with England becoming transformed like this—particularly when that domination is in the hands of another country’s least educated, least skilled, & least cultured cohort.
Nor do they love the country they’ve invaded. They say we’re the illegals here in the Southwest, so if we don’t like illegals we should go.
This Economist editorial treats Americans’ complaints about all this with equal contempt, as if our distress & our arguments aren’t even worth discussing—only what is to be done with such knuckle-dragging yobs as us.
Does anyone at the Economist know what’s been going on in Mexico over the last century? Its population has exploded--from 13.1 million in 1900 to 20 million in 1940 to 111 million today, plus perhaps 12 million more illegals here.
This is America’s fault how? They did this themselves, and no we don’t need their unskilled labor. Today one out of five American unskilled laborers (many of them Black or Latino) is unemployed. What kind of job magnet is that? We need skilled immigrants.
And as for the 12 million illegals—the Economist believes we’re morally & practically obligated to give them legal residence. As if “we” lured there here. We assuredly did not. Union-busting corporatists did, with government collusion, against the will of the American people.
Ronald Reagan tried amnesty in 1986. It triggered a tidal wave of new illegal immigration.
What we do need is a universal biometric ID database, enabling us to actually know who’s here, & to make it impossible for trespassers to make a living here or access social services here. Then many will self-deport.
And Arizona's law--which simply applies federal immigration law at the state level--is a start.
Right wingers claim illegals amount to barbarians at the gates, terrorizing Americans with violent crime. Left wingers claim they're just honest "undocumented workers" who wouldn't harm a flea.
Where's the truth?
I just fact-checked relevant competing claims about Arizona crime rates with www.factcheck.org and www.politifact.com, two of the best sources for nonpartisan, thoroughly researched fact-checking.
It looks at though there hasn't been an big overall increase in violent crime in Arizona during the period of greatly increased illegal immigration.
BUT--this is based on reported violent crime; it doesn't separate out crime committed by illegals; and it doesn't include non-street crime, such as Social Security identity theft that may not show up until you apply for Social Security--and then could require years to start getting payments because the SSA can't tell who's who.
AND these state conceal a crucial fact beyond the fact that they don't tell you what part of crime illegals do.
This is the fact that every single crime committed by illegals wouldn't have been committed if illegals weren't in the country.
And the stats conceal crime locations. Traditionally you find high crime areas in poverty pockets ridden with high concentrations of unemployed people--especially young men--lots of drug dealing, prostitution, illegal gambling etc. Middle class people can and do avoid such areas.
But crime associated with illegals also occurs all along the border, often far from the poverty pockets. It occurs in drop houses in middle class neighborhoods. Their migration routes can take them through normal residential neighborhoods.
And because they're illegals, they tend to under-report crime even when they're the victims, or witnesses to the crimes.
Also, because they're illegals, they're more likely to be off the grid--hence harder to catch. Some borracho runs his car into yours and flees. The license plate is stolen. The car was bought for cash and isn't linked to the guy. That crime is less likely to be solved.
Moreover, crime stats don't account for ranchers who can't safely leave their homes at night and whose property get trashed and burglarized. Littering isn't a violent crime, nor is being menacing to your children.
From all this I conclude that whatever the crime rate caused by illegals, 100% of it is unacceptable and could be avoided if we had proper control of who's in this country. I also conclude that the impact of crime done by people off the grid has a disproportionate negative effect on society. And I further conclude that nonviolent crime by illegals may not show up for decades, and often has a more adverse affect on middle class society than crime localized in urban slums.
Finally, their presence here, competing with unskilled American laborers of all races and ethnicities, providing scab labor that helps amoral employers bust unions and drive down wages for everyone, stuffing schools with kids who are way behind American kids even without taking language into account, using ERs for primary care, having citizen children who immediately go on welfare, all burden society beyond the tip of the iceberg represented by violent crime.
Yesterday's Washington Post published an article responding the Arizona's "get tough on illegals" law, written by an immigration expert named Diane Meissner,m titled "5 Myths About Immigration." Her list:
1. Immigrants take jobs from American workers. 2. Immigration is at an all-time high, and most new immigrants came illegally.
3. Today's immigrants are not integrating into American life like past waves did. 4. Cracking down on illegal border crossings will make us safer.
5. Immigration reform cannot happen in an election year.
She rebuts all of these, of course.
Here's what I had to say about it--which I hopes helps readers deal with friends who argue their side with propaganda instead of respectful dialog:
This article advocates amnesty for illegal immigrants, but because it does so with propaganda instead of reasonable arguments. Her chosen tack is the typical Don Rumsfeld press conference, where he asks the questions, answers his own questions, and thus maintains total control.
Right off the bat, she titles her piece “5 myths about immigration.” Yet this is a response to the debate about ILLEGAL immigration. So her first piece of propaganda is conflating legal with illegal immigrations, which pushes the propagandists’ own myth that all amnesty opponents hate all immigrants, and thus are knuckle-dragging xenophobes.
Hello, 95% of illegal immigration opponents are fine with LEGAL immigration.
This disrespectful approach is carried through with her first “myth:” where she refutes the claim almost nobody makes: that “immigrants take jobs from American workers.” Most reasonable people agree that immigrants with extraordinary skills contribute to America. The issue is whether we need more unskilled laborers when unemployment for American unskilled laborers—many of them Black and Hispanic—is pushing 20%.
Meissner concedes that low-skilled immigrants do drive down wages, but then pegs it at an absurd 1%--probably by conflating, again, legal with illegal labor. Because illegals, considered separately, drive down wages 5-25%, depending on job and locale. And that’s why Meissner’s little sleight of hand lumps them together with legals.
She them compounds her sins with pure Babbitry—claiming that endless growth from endless immigration will lift all boats..endlessly. News flash: every nation—even ours--only has so much arable land and drinkable water. And America’s population has QUADRUPLED since 1900. Now the strain is showing. Our infrastructure is crumbling. We’ve used technology to feed more and more people, and the price is coming due.
All that empty space you see flying coast to coast is waterless land. Irrigation takes water from one place it’s needed and moves it somewhere else, often producing salinization where it’s taken to and desolation where it’s taken from via the law of unintended consequences.
Overpumping is causing many porous aquifers to collapse—permanently, as in forever. Overdependence on agricultural chemicals (from fertilizers to pesticides) has polluted waterways (and created dead zone plumes extending 150 miles into the Gulf), as well as exhausting the soil and breeding superbugs
.
Plus the aging of our population is in part due to the postwar baby boom, an unnatural demographic distortion which will pass.
Her second “myth” is equally disingenuous: that immigration’s at an all-time high and mostly illegal. She says it was higher in 1890 as a percentage of the population—but it’s higher now in total numbers. And while this humongous recession has dampened illegal immigration, there are still many millions here. Meissner says they total “approximately 10.8 million,” but everybody’s guessing until we adopt a universal biometric ID system. Could be less, could be 20 million. Nobody knows. So she’s indulging in false precision, even with “approximately” tacked on.
Most importantly, she’s dissembling about the concentration of illegal immigration in the Southwest, whereas previous waves were less localized. She also notes the large number of legal Mexican immigrants, simultaneously ignoring how many of them came directly from previous amnesties of illegals, and from the fact that “family reunification” brought even more Mexicans here who had nothing to contribute to our economy.
Next she demolishes the “myth” that today’s immigrants aren’t assimilating like past waves did by claiming that it was claimed before, of others, and that the only thing holding them back now is our unwillingness to grant all the illegals amnesty.
However, the fact that something was said before and proven untrue doesn’t automatically make it so now. Nor does full enrollment in adult ed ESL classes mean the vast bulk are learning English. Meissner’s ignoring the simple fact that a Mexican in America can get by with little or no English, because they’ve set up a complete parallel society, from stores to TV stations to hearing “Empuje numero uno para Español” if you phone any government agency or large business, and even ballots (courtesy of multiculturalism run amok). Live here in the Southwest and you’ll see how it is.
Then she claims that all we need to do to secure the border from criminal aliens is grant visas “to meet the economy’s demand for workers” so the border patrol can focus on the real bad guys. Thus she perpetuates her own myth that illegals are coming here to meet an insatiable American job magnet.
Well, here are some statistics she, um, forgot: Mexico’s population exploded eightfold from 1900 to now, from 13.1 million to 111 million people—vastly more than Mexico can feed and employ.
This is not our fault—and until or unless our 20% unskilled labor unemployment rate vanishes, the only job magnet is amoral employers looking for cheap scab labor and Mexico’s ruling elites using us as a dumping ground for their excess campesinos.
Today's New York Times features a rant by their Supreme Court reporter (and Pulitzer Prize winner) Linda Greenhouse, titled "Breathing while undocumented," about--surprise--Arizona's new get tough on illegal immigrants law. Here's my response:
However you feel about illegal immigration, you should object to Linda Greenhouse trying to sway you with propaganda instead of persuasion. For example:
1. She calls Arizona a “police state,” thus equating it with the regimes of Burma, North Korea, & Iran. This isn’t just hyperbole—it’s a grotesque insult to the political prisoners of real police states, trivializing their plight by the comparison.
2. She equates Arizona’s proof of legal residency requirement with the Soviet Union’s rigid internal passport system. But we all have to show valid ID all the time—to buy something with a check or credit card, if a cop asks for it, if we’re carded in a bar or a liquor store. And when you travel abroad you have to show your passport in a variety of circumstances, pretty much daily.
Soviet internal passports were part of a system that decreed where legal citizens could live or even travel. Arizona places no such controls on legal residents, so it isn’t comparable--and again belittles those who suffered under totalitarian oppression.
3. She redefines illegal aliens as “undocumented” people. Iillegal alien” is the term you see in all legal documents. Ot clearly denotes their illegal status—which in this country is a misdemeanor--a crime. Not a felony, but a crime nonetheless. Redefining them as “undocumented” is a legal fiction that purposely obscures their status as petty criminals, & equates their status with yours if you’d lost your driver’s license & a cop stopped you & asked for your ID. In that instance you’d be “undocumented.” Otherwise it’s a legally meaningless term.
Suppose Linda Greenhouse took a vacation, came home & discovered me living in her home. She orders me out. I say “Why? I’m just undocumented.” Think she’d call the cops & have me arrested?
Not one country on Earth has laws allowing you to enter their country on the excuse that you’re “undocumented.” Why do Leftists want America to be the sole exception?
Besides, the term implies that these people just dropped out of the sky. But these people are—every single one of them—citizens of another country. A country they were born in, mostly with documents from that country. So they aren’t “undocumented” at all.
Calling them undocumented is a framing device—a way to tilt the conversational playing field in your favor. Instead of arguing that they have a right to be here, leftists like Greenhouse use words like this to slip the assumption in without bothering to make a case for it. To be fair, right wingers do the same thing (“activist judges” comes to mind) all the time.
It’s yet another example of how ideologues have more respect for their ideas than for you as an individual; they believe sliming you is justified by their noble ends, forgetting how ex-Communist Emma Goldman observed that “the means reveal the ends.”
4. She claims that it is illegal to treat an illegal alien as if they’re illegal, in the name of civil liberties, calling it “a new crime of breathing while undocumented.” Um, a trespasser is a trespasser as long as they’re trespassing. Actually, legally they’re still guilty of the crime of trespass even if they leave where they trespassed—just as you’re guilty of speeding even if you slow down later.
Of course what she’s implying with that cutesy turn of phrase is that Arizona cops will stop anyone who looks Mexican & lock ‘em up if they can’t prove they belong here. That is illegal, but it’s not what the law actually says, & it’s not what Arizona police departments say they’ll do.
Which is to look for people who look like they’re smuggling or being smuggled. Like a Ford Econoline van stuffed with 20 ragged men, women & children, along with backpacks & milk jugs full of water. Or a file of 50 such people in the middle of the desert, half a mile north of the border. Or a residential house with 50 such people camped out inside it.
Now if they look Mexican and/or don’t speak English, that’s another clue. But mainly it’s situational—which is what cops do if they’re trying to do their job & stop crime.
5. She calls this an “anti-immigrant spasm.” Here she conflates legal & illegal immigration. Again, no argument supporting that assumption, making it a classic dirty trick.
6. She refers to a 1975 Texas law as “a law to deprive undocumented immigrant children of a free public education.” But you could as easily call it “a law to require citizens of other countries not here legally to obtain social services—including educational ones—from their own country.” Here again, Goodman’s language presumes that illegals dropped out of the sky, absolving their own countries of any responsibility for them.
Finally, she never mentions that the primary reason Mexicans come here illegally is Mexican overpopulation (from 13.1 million in 1900 to 111 million to day, an eightfold increase). Leftists avoid this fact because it’s not America’s fault…so it can’t be true.
What Mexico needs isn’t an American overpopulation escape valve—it needs China’s one child law.
The Washington Post printed an editorial denouncing Arizona's just-signed illegal immigrant law, titled “Arizona's shameful 'immigration' bill.”
The writer, A.J. Dionne, is one of the Post's mainstay left-of-center columnists and a practising Catholic. The Post published hundreds and hundreds of comments, including many foaming-at-the-mouth denunciations of Arizona's government, and many others by Tea Party types--but it censored out my comment.
However, you can read it here, and see what the Post believes violates its editorial standards (and maybe let me in on the secret, since I can't figure out what led them to delete this):
The closest thing to a valid objection to this law is that it’s discriminatory, because it employs profiling.
That’s fine with me. It just applies statistical probability to real-life practical situations. But it is a good thing for our society to be—and to be seen--as color-blind.
So here’s how to achieve it: deploy a universal biometric ID database. This is doable today, & other rich countries are starting to implement one. It doesn’t even require a card you’d have to keep on you.
For example, Fujitsu has been selling palm readers for years. We all have a unique pattern of veins in our palms. This reads it. You can’t fake it, you can’t alter it, & you can’t erase it (short of cutting off your hand).
So—we implement universal biometric ID. Then, whenever you interact with a government agency—cops, hospital, school, whatever—or an employer—you just hold your hand over a reader for a second. If you’re in this country legitimately, cool. If you aren’t but need emergency medical help, we’ll help—then deport you. If you have legal American children, you can choose to take them with you or send them into the foster care system. Your choice.
After someone’s deported, make illegal re-entry a felony. The readers are small & easy to link to the database using wifi, so every cop car can have one.
Of course all this presumes that you believe in countries & borders & stuff—and that this still-majority- white country has a right to exist, & has a right to decide who gets to come here. And that it’s worth offending pro-illegal-immigration-Latinos to do so.
1. Countries & borders: Every single rich country has many, many millions of people from poor countries trying to move there.
Shallow people look at the situation & say “Oh those poor deserving nonwhite people! Let us take them in.”
It never seems to occur to them to figure out why they want to come here. Honestly it’s a form of chauvinism—assuming that we’re so wonderful everyone’s dying to be us—that our “job magnet” trumps their entire culture.
But most people like their own people & culture. They only want to come here because they’re starving. And why are they starving? Because there are too many of them.
The world’s population has QUADRUPLED since 1900. Today the human race is growing at the rate of 140 more people every single minute. It’s even faster in the poor countries, because rich country natives mainly have small families (except for Catholics & some other religious groups).
Take Mexico. Please. Mexico had just 20 million people in 1940. That number QUINTUPLED in just 60 years. Mexico can’t remotely employ that many people. Or feed them, for that matter.
And here’s the kicker: we didn’t do that to them. They did it to themselves, under the domination of a primitive religion (which, by sheer coincidence, A.J. Dionne shares)—a religion that forbids any form of contraception, & which insists that even a 10 year old child raped by her stepdad carry the fetus to term (this is a current case in the state of Quintana Roo in Mexico; you can find many other such cases in Latin America).
Another case: Haiti. Its population zoomed from 3 million in 1950 to 12 million (including Haitian expats) in 2010—quadrupling in 60 years.
So—in what bizarre world are we morally obligated to take in such countries’ overpopulation that we had no part in producing?
Only if you don’t believe in countries. We’re just one big world. Of course the people of every single other country believe they’re countries. And if you’re in another country & wind up in a jail there, are you gonna call the UN? Or your church? Not likely. You’ll call the American consulate. And if that’s true for you, then you do believe in countries in general & ours in particular, & anything you say to the contrary is what’s known in philosophical circles as hypocrisy.
2. Does America in particular have a right to exist? First, let’s clear up the myth of Mexicans being the original inhabitants of the Southwest. Um, it was the Hopi, Navaho & other Amerindian tribes. I’d love to see a Mexican make this “it’s ours really” argument in front of a bunch of Amerinds.
Plus most Mexicans are mestizos—part Spaniard, part Indio. So part of most Mexicans has to go back to Spain. I don’t know whether it’s technically feasible to put someone in a blender & separate out one set of DNA from the other.
And I’m 3/32 Cherokee—so some of me gets to stay. Yay.
But face it: every country on Earth is squatting on top of someone else’s earlier territory, except for the highlands of Kenya where humanity originated (thus every American is actually an African American BTW).
3. And who has a “right” to come here? No one. Who should come? Folks with skills we need with clean criminal & medical records. But given the unemployment rate of American unskilled laborers—peasants need not apply.
BTW Latinos comprised 0.5% of America in 1940. Now they’re 14%. Who voted for that?
