Category Archives: Immigration

Governance, Immigration, Responsibility, Trump

(Word)holes, Redux

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Many people worthy of trust and respect are seriously upset about the president’s crudeness.  He reportedly asked why “we” should allow people from various so-called “shithole” countries to immigrate to the United States?  For all of its crudeness, offensiveness and vulgarity, it is a very good question – one we should not be afraid to ask.

Well, the circumstance of the comment and the comment itself are both fairly straightforward, even simple.  But the inherent permutations and nuances are profound, sad, and instructive. This requires some parsing and mapping of the “splatter” that has emanated from the splat of a single word into the miasma of politics, hate, government, and the “American Dream… not to mention social media and hate.  Didn’t I already mention “hate?”  We shouldn’t overlook hate as a driver in modern… umm, modern ahhh, well… modern everything: media, news, broadcasting, ‘friend’ships, dialogue, religion, holidays, commerce, advertising, movies, philosophy and casual rumination.  Facebook, too.  Sad.

So, first observation is that every person who has talked about, proclaimed about or even thought about the description of many countries as “shitholes,” could in a few minutes, list a dozen or two dozen countries that fit the description!  Let’s change the term to “backward countries” and each could list three dozen.  What does it mean to make the identification?

It means, generally, that those countries have truly crappy politics.  Our politics are pretty crappy, too, granted, but, as Churchill observed, democracy is the worst form of government ever tried… except for all the others.  Corollary to that gem is this: The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.

Even those who could construct a list of “backward” countries probably cannot describe what is “wrong” with their politics – the system of leaders, laws and lies that govern their populations.  Typically, under the blanket of crappy politics, the economics of these countries are also pretty crappy… sorry, “backward.”  The result is extreme stratification, poor education, low skill levels, limited industrialization and little imagination.  Simultaneously, the BELIEFS of their citizens are likely to be very different from those of the majority of ours.

Changing beliefs is the primal tool for the weakening and subjugation of peoples.

One might reply that “America is the melting pot” and go on to predict that “we” will “make” those unfortunate immigrants “better” and therefore more like ourselves.  Seems like hubris.  This attitude sounds magnanimous and sympathetic but it was never true.  If there is an American myth, that’s it.  We have functioned fairly well as a “salad bowl,” but never as a melting pot.  Americans of every origin and kind learned to live and thrive together, yet they were never forced to change who they were, beyond learning and following our constitution and laws.  But there were very distinct differences about when America “worked” and how things are, now, when so many consider our country and institutions to be “broken.”  The key is a grand misunderstanding of what is “The American Dream.”

The real and enduring “American Dream” can be stated only thus: That all kinds of people can come together in FREEDOM, respective of one another, respective of law and reason, free to follow God as each sees fit, and responsible to themselves and others for the consequences of their actions.  This sentence summarizes the U. S. Constitution’s connection to individuals.  Not connection to groups, cliques, whether religious, emotional or political, but to individuals, much the way that Jesus described individual responsibility to the laws of God.  “America” represents the boundless opportunity offered to every individual to perfect him or her self: the pursuit of happiness.  And no less, or more.

This is not how many view the “American Dream” or “America,” itself, today.  Socialist thought perceives control of individuals as the high point of governance, the exact opposite of the teachings of Christ or of the values and purpose behind the founding of the United States.  To accomplish complete control – and different kinds of socialists have tried many ways to do so – it is essential to place people into groups, or “identities” for whom certain laws will apply, whether to control that group or apply to another group or to all others(!) in order to control THEM.  There is no clearer example than brown-skinned people as an over-group, and African-Americans, as the driving sub-group, and descendants of slaves, the most exalted of the “drivers.”  Barring descent from slaves, having marched in Selma or having stood near Martin Luther King, Jr., suffices.

As with the growth of federal welfare programs, the epithet of “racist” has become almost standard within the belief structure of many black or brown-skinned residents of the U. S.  The charge of “racist” works to control the “other group” of essentially all “Whites,” including modifying their language and actions.  This has yielded political power to the modern kind of socialists: American liberals.  This, in part, explains the immediate descent to charges of racism emanating from one participant of the immigration meeting during which the president spoke so crudely.  But, it doesn’t make it true.

Welfare, itself, is a gigantic difference, since the 1960’s, from when earlier waves of immigrants reached our shores.  Those from Ireland, for example, came to take care of themselves and their families, as did Italians, Poles, Portugese, Norwegians, Swedes, Finns and Germans, Russians, Albanians, Greeks, Turks, Syrians, Lebanese and Egyptians and many others.  Did they come perfectly?  No.  We didn’t send ships or planes to bring them here more quickly, either.  They were strong and self-selected to endure the sacrifice of leaving everything behind to start anew.  This is no longer so.

Immigrants in recent decades have been encouraged and assisted for purposes of “diversity,” the opposite of e pluribus unum.  Immigrants , today, receive fundamental – and generously comforting – public support, benefits, even cash, yet are not required to meet ANY tests applied to earlier generations.  They need not learn English, they need not become citizens (refugees, asylees) they need not assimilate.  Indeed, they need not even follow laws, often being released for offenses that citizens pay dearly for committing.  One might observe that their beliefs are not those of the “American Dream,” but of taking advantage of our official guilts and sympathies… or of selling drugs, or worse.

We are stretching our capacities to accommodate immigrants, including illegal entrants, even to the point of breaking our own laws, local and federal, to make them comfortable.  Yes, we are an “immigrant” nation, by past definition – most assuredly not by the current one.  I am glad someone with authority and sensibility is asking, “Why should we welcome immigrants from the (backward) countries of the world?”  What we have been doing of late is certainly not in the national interest, which is the primary business of a president, one hopes, although it may fulfill the interests of political partisans and of those who wish America to not exist as we know it.  Ask that question again, Mr. President, louder.

A second observation instructs that the president cannot, ever, trust in the confidence or even honesty of anyone from Congress or the “press” and damned few from the executive branch.  Trump failed to take note of the many lessons of the past year and more, when he posed the question everyone in the room, except Mr. Durbin possibly, a mendacious Democrat of proven, documented unreliability, was thinking and should be thinking: Why should we welcome immigrants who are unlikely to contribute to our economy or standards of living, and whose beliefs are antithetical to the fundaments of the U. S. Constitution or of the “American Dream.”

The ridiculous process of “hating” the president (and others) for so many things of which most of us are also guilty, and so readily accusing him of racism, transphobia, Islamophobia or a dozen other awful constructs, is corrosive and intensely destructive of our “unum” for which millions have bled and died, sacrificed and struggled.  If we are seeking perfection in or from our elected leaders we are fools.  They need, like John Kennedy, only to be pure enough to set a course that is pro-American.  The conversations never disclosed, that the Kennedys had then, or that brother Ted ever had, or by ANY other president, would curl our earlobes.  The profanity and privately voiced prejudices of EVERY president, have been, until recently, kept out of the news because their disclosure would have been so destructively irresponsible.  What we didn’t know didn’t hurt us; had we known all of it we’d have been damaged and history made far different.

News outlets of every kind hope to make history by ripping away confidentiality, no matter the damage.  Their hatreds justify the damage… for shame.  Do we think – do I think – that Trump will become perfect in order to avoid that damage?  Hardly.  When I pray about him it is to cause some intercession that will abridge the worst of his impulsive communication.  It is not that he will disappear, leaving leadership to others.  I have no love for him, but no hatred.  I grasp his attitudes, and even share some, not, I hope, the worst of them.  But then, I try to live on purpose and not in comparison, as does he, I suspect.

The Lord works in mysterious ways.  For all of his flaws I believe Trump is on stage exactly when needed by this country.  I want him to succeed where his direction and intention is right and best – or at least better – than where we were heading prior, God willing.

 

 

Immigration, Responsibility

Let me in, Wheeeouu!

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The city and courts of San Francisco have made ever so much clearer how mentally dispossessed they are, of any semblance of America, and Americanism, and of Decency.  And, of Justice, Prudence dictates.

Jose Ines Garcia Zarate is not – was not – an immigrant.  Señor Garcia Zarate is and was an illegal entrant into the nation and into political subdivisions of the United States of America.  To be an immigrant, or to immigrate into a new country implies legality of action.  It implies that said immigrant has a valid place to be in his or her new country, that he or she intends to “settle” therein and, therefore, to live there legally, perhaps to gain citizenship.  It is for the furtherance and fulfillment of such implications that a nation would institute immigration laws; and it would be to prevent the obverse of the aforementioned implications that those same laws would be enforced.

Nations have a clear, hitherto well-understood obligation to define and enforce the laws that define their borders whether on land or water or, as is now the case, at airports.  Indeed, such enforcement is the first and most fundamental contract of citizenship – even of legal residence – that obligates any nation… else its nation-hood is false.

Amazingly, there have developed numerous pockets of citizens, some of them elected by their peers to represent the highest qualities of citizenship, thereby qualifying them to hold office in various levels of government, all of whom disbelieve these obligations of nation-hood.  Each of those elected has sworn to uphold the Constitution of the United States of America, meaning ONLY of the United States of America.  They may swear to uphold the constitution of one of the United States, but that cannot, by law, presume to deny the supremacy of the U.S. Constitution.

The existence of the nation known as the United States of America, whose laws are defined by the Constitution, carries the clear obligation to establish and enforce laws governing both borders and immigration, citizenship and residency, incarceration and deportation.  There is no LEGAL space in those constructs where officials of any State or subdivision thereof, having been sworn to office, can elect to not be bound by the laws of the United States, feelings notwithstanding.

Any individual citizen or legal resident who were to take it upon himself or herself to knowingly fail to follow the laws of any town, city, county, State or of the United States nation, becomes a criminal upon such failing; further, the status of being sworn to office can in no way change the criminality of failing to live by or uphold any of the laws of the land… at any level.  Any municipal or State official who not only knowingly but publicly fails to follow or uphold the laws he or she SWORE to uphold upon assuming office, is a damned liar, not to mention an unethical pig whose word is less than slop.

Worse, it could be said, such an official is traitorous.  He or she could be said, given the conditions outlined above, to be consorting with and harboring, known federal criminals, wanted on one or more charges.  These actions betray an extraordinary mental twist, one that ought to deny that official his or her office, federal, state or local.

In fact and logic there is NO official obligation to either provide for or protect any illegal entrant, beyond basic humane treatment during the process of returning said illegal entrant to his or her point of origin as may best be determined.  Collectively, this nation has no more obligation than that, as well.

Illegal entrants, by virtue of presence, alone, have no Constitutional protections, which is to say, no “Bill of Rights” under the Constitution of the United States.  No crime committed by an illegal entrant deserves free public defense in court, nor does it deserve any form of “plea” bargain or appeal of verdict.  Illegal entrants are not entitled to jury trial, “Miranda” rights or specific protections from search of their persons or property.  Technically, they may be charged and held without benefit of a Grand Jury indictment.  They have no Constitutional protection against double-jeopardy, nor any specific right to free speech, assembly or redress of grievances.  They are not citizens or even legal residents.

That Constitutional rights are afforded illegal entrants is a failure of enforcement of the very Constitution in which those rights are enumerated.  It is a failure to uphold the rights of citizens.   To treat so-called “illegals” like citizens is, itself, a crime.  Such confusion of our governing obligations is a reflection of the ascendancy of emotion to a level above that of law – law that lately is applied more strictly to citizens than to illegal entrants.  It appears to have infected judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys and is corrosive to the rule of law and to the Fourteenth Amendment among others.

Some political subdivisions want to allow illegal entrants to vote, a right won by the blood of hundreds of thousands of American citizens.  There being absolutely NO legal basis for Constitutional protection of illegal-entrant non-citizens, one must dig very deep to find a justification for doing so, along with the affording of comforts like welfare, medical care and public education.  Is there an agenda, political or economic, that is furthered or fulfilled by harboring illegal entrants?  While such does nothing to change the illegality of failures at federal, state and local levels, especially by sworn officials, the discovery of said agenda might provide a reason to understand the public willingness to break laws on behalf of illegal entrants.

We are told by otherwise rational officials, including congressmen and women and senators, that illegal entrants pay taxes.  For this we should be grateful, we are told, because the ILLEGAL contributions illegal-entrant laborers make toward Social Security (on stolen or fabricated identities), will benefit our retirees.  No mention is made of the crimes involved, especially when illegal entrants collect Social Security payments on stolen Social Security numbers.

We are assured by sworn officials that many illegal entrants entered our nation illegally for very “good” reasons, such as “to work” and to “make a better life” for themselves or their families.  No mention is made of the livelihoods that are stolen or devalued of United States citizens, the only people to whom said sworn officials have any obligation under law, whatsoever.

We are told that law-breaking officials are in favor of deporting illegal entrants who are charged with “serious” crimes, for which stance they seek public approval.  However, this hollow pronouncement overlooks or obscures the arrogation by such officials of a role to determine on their own judgment, without benefit of law or process, which crimes are serious and which are to be ignored.  There is no amount of tax to be collected that justifies the insertion of personal opinion by ANY official as to which crimes committed by ANYONE, much less an illegal – therefore known-criminal – alien, deserve adjudication and which do not.

Indeed, the arrogation of this role, inserted between criminal and civil codes and those charged under law with their enforcement, is itself a crime, made worse by its belying of officials’ sworn statement to uphold “the laws.”

These same have told us that the fears of illegal entrants concerning deportation do, or may, prevent the solving of crimes known to them, since they will fail to speak to police officers given those “fears.”  This is presented as some sort of justification for their (officials’) criminal distortion of enforcement actions by the insertion of their personal judgments as noted above.  This argument is specious and obfuscatory, since illegal entrants OUGHT to be fearful of deportation.

And so, we come back to the matter of Kate Steinle’s illicit death.  A California jury, ostensibly ignorant of immigration issues surrounding señor Garcia Zarate, agreed on the crime of possession of a firearm by a felon.  The lies contained in Garcia Zarate’s initial statements did not sway their rejection of even an involuntary manslaughter charge.  They may have been strictly – very strictly – correct in the particular, and peculiar, circumstances of Miss Steinle’s death, but the shooting was a crime resulting from crimes committed by elected officials in San Francisco.  The killing of Steinle was not “an accident.”

Ultimately, the arguments of the open-borders enthusiasts are summed up as follows: You’ve been stupid about immigration for decades so you can’t stop being stupid, now – it’s not fair.

Culture, Immigration

POLITICAL WRONGNESS

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Political correctness is suddenly exposing itself to be political wrongness, although one must wonder how many acts of Islamic terrorism must occur to finally reach the tipping point.  Those who prefer to see only groups, rather than individuals, in matters of political power, are unable to see THE group that threatens western civilization when Islam is the motivating inspiration for wanton murder.  Strange, that.

The same who perceive groups as being either Oppressors or Oppressed, tend, irrationally, to declare Islamists as Oppressed and not to be misunderstood or judged too quickly.  Indeed, they seem to enjoy contortion for apology’s sake lest “all” Muslims be judged as Oppressors and not just the brutal savages who committed the most recent murders.  And for them the SECOND reaction is to enumerate the unemployment  statistics in the savages’ most recent neighborhood of residence.

The FIRST is to overcome their personal disappointment that the murders were not committed by a white, Anglo-Saxon Christian.  After all, they reason, WE don’t give a (euphemism for turd) for the words of our own religious background, surely it can’t be that there are people in the world of 2017 who still do?  No, honestly!

What most don’t realize is that we are still fighting the philosophies of Hitler, and that the Second World War is lingering on.  The NAZIs expended great effort, money and propaganda to inflame the Arabs in the Middle East, particularly in Egypt and in the Levant, succeeding beyond their wildest imagination.  While Arabs had little use for non-Muslim Hitler, they loved the idea of killing infidels and racial (Islamic) purity, readily translated into blaming Jews for virtually everything they didn’t like.  The Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt and the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin el-Husseini, were “radicalized” through hatred, intentionally, by the Germans starting in the mid 1930’s, and they’ve never looked forward.

Anti-semitism and the whole made-up “Palestinian” oppression/occupation, were part and parcel of the NAZI plan to keep the southern front active and problematic for the English, in particular, during the War.  And that whirlwind of hatred has only gained strength since.  What a wonderful heritage.  We freely welcome people who have been taught since grade school that Jews mix human (Muslim) blood into their matzos, and expect to turn them into tolerant “Westerners,” or, more stupidly, to expect them to negotiate with us infidels for lasting peace in Israel and Palestine.  John Kerry is convinced of this outlook.

Still, like it or not, there are just two – only two – paths for current events to follow: One is to gradually subsume Western philosophies and become Muslim-dominated theocracies in the grand tradition of Iran; Two is to make a practical, life-affirming decision to disallow Muslim infiltration of Western democracies.  This would include gently or forcibly expatriating Muslims who actively disavow our laws and government (and Constitution) and who preach Jihad in their mosques.

Of course the “civil rights” of every CITIZEN who is harmed or inconvenienced by this new policy will be a concern, and the wailing will precede those actions, continue through them and persist for years afterward.  Suits will be brought but terrorist acts will dwindle to nearly nothing.  Law books will decry the act that made Islamist exclusion the law of the land: “A religious test!” they’ll say.  “Unconstitutional!” they’ll scream.  And so it will appear.

Constitutions, bodies of law and related jurisprudence are brought forth among peoples for but a handful of purposes: 1) Common defense against outsiders; 2) Civil protections of private property; 3) Common, social protections of the individual right to happiness.  There is no way to construe the Constitution as an instrument of the destruction – quickly or slowly – of our own nation and of the protections of our people secured by it.  To argue otherwise is to espouse treason, in fact.  What is the logic?

The World will keep spinning if the United States becomes virtually Muslim-free over, say 10 years, and Muslim-majority nations will continue on their own destinies when slightly more majority.  It is not required by either logic or the Constitution that any number of enemies of the people or of the nationhood of the United States, must be allowed residence here.  The alternative to such clarity is to argue for the acceptable number of enemies so invited.  Prudence dictates that there is no acceptable number.

It is time for Muslims and Muslim nations to be discomfited in this war.  If “the West” and this nation most especially cannot grasp the reality of the enemy within and without, then there is no point in its -or our own –  survival.  And, if such is the case, then perhaps another path, THREE, is available: We could allow Islam and Shar’ia law to triumph, while hoping that believers in all that Islamic mumbo-jumbo jihadists have been spouting, and the words of the Quran, itself, are not taken all that seriously.  Surely they won’t ban bacon.

 

Immigration

TOLERANCE, LOGICALLY

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There is definitely a logic to modern immigration non-policies and protests. One could be justified in his or her puzzlement as to why criminals might be valued above the law abiding, even by “official” agencies of domestic law-enforcement. Some logic is shouted from the streets, some we’ll have to impute, but there is a logical platform underpinning apparent disconnectedness of immigrant “advocates.”

There would be MORE logic if every advocate were a non-citizen. Being allowed to gain new comforts and benefits that are not available in one’s own country is, logically, something to strive for. Like everyone else – every single member of the human race – people who sneak into a better country or economy are CAPITALISTS! That is, each will gain as much as possible for as little effort as possible. Once gained, the “possessions” one has are reason, of themselves, to defend one’s ownership thereof. That is, “possession” is 99/100ths of the “law” (of possession). Are we going in circles, here?

Well, yes. But there is a certain logic for the possessing individuals. What about “Sanctuary” logic? Heated protesters and their elected officials make a case for “fear avoidance.” That is, people who have snuck into the United States are, in theory, subject to legal sanctions for having broken Federal laws, and they “fear” being found and found-out. Their friends and families, legal residents and non-legal, and the self-recognized and self-created “agencies” that earn their livings working to connect non-legal residents to various welfare benefits, ESL classes and, unfortunately, contrived documentation – like drivers licenses – are on the front lines demanding “justice” for their fellow humans, laws be damned.

Municipal officials claim that these “fearful” non-legal residents won’t report crimes they have knowledge of if they are so fearful of being found-out and forced to go home to their own country. Nothing is said about reporting crimes of other non-legal residents who will likely escape prosecution simply because of their illegal status! MOST countries are NOT as pleasant to live in as is the U. S. Numbers of less-nicely-living people exceed 3 BILLION. How many are entitled to the largesse and safety of the United States? Logically, I mean.

Well, immigrant activists say, there shouldn’t be artificial borders; the World belongs to all of us. There may be logic behind that statement, but there are some sort of borders that come under the definition of human rights, aren’t there? Are strangers, or aliens, entitled to other individuals’ personal property? Even non-legal residents would object to a family of unknown, unrelated strangers moving into their homes and taking their income, wealth, food and personal space. That sounds logical.

There is a perverse sort of logic, not stated but accepted in practice, that stealing from the United States nation isn’t really stealing, like, from another person… I mean, honestly. There are a lot of U. S. citizens that believe the same foul thing! Still, illegal entrants are stealing forms of wealth that belong to U. S. citizens, and these include, in most cases, direct food, education, medical, housing and others kinds of costly aid that our new “residents” have not earned, paid-for, or deserve in any way except emotionally.

A new logic then is brought to bear: refugee status… and asylum. The U. S. since the end of WW-II has codified processes for EM-igrants: forced to leave their homes because of war. These are they who emigrate for essentially non-elective reasons; émigrés from Cambodia and Viet-Nam are excellent examples. The United States, responsible for much of the immediate destruction of Viet-Nam, Laos and Cambodia, helped tens of thousands of émigrés from Southeast Asia come to the U. S. and resettle in somewhat concentrated neighborhoods, mostly in cities or proximate suburbs.

What happened? Within a year or two our new residents had positive impacts on their local economies. Apartment sharers would combine for one car so that the adults could get to work; extended female family-members watched children for one another. Kids learned English without bi-lingual crutches and within a decade we had a host of “new Americans” whose cultural communities and religious philosophies were NOT purposefully antithetical to our Constitution and our Judeo-Christian legal system. One need look only at their children and grandchildren as they give valedictory and salutatory speeches.

There were both logical and charitable reasons to encourage and accept Southeast Asian immigrants. There is only an emotional justification for accepting large numbers of Muslim refugees. We want to believe that the wonderfulness of U. S. society will cause all degrees of Muslims to become more secular, less fundamental about Islam and to live like their new neighbors. For a nation premised on religious “freedom,” depending upon a softening of religious fervor seems oxymoronic – if not moronic.

Islam teaches dominance over, or death for, infidels. The prime infidels are Jews and Christians. I can see a problem. CAIR describes Islam and the Quran as mostly faith, sweetness and light. They bend over to reference Abraham, David, Jesus and Mary as if we are all brothers in belief and tradition. But history teaches otherwise.

Most, I mean in the order of a billion and more Muslims, will never take up arms against their neighbors, behead a nun in Africa or a reporter in Pakistan. Most don’t spend their days in hatred. On the other hand, they won’t fight too hard against their real faith-brothers who do. Islam, by credo, intends to replace all other belief structures because God commands it; Mohammed said so. “Religious freedom” is anathema to the Quran as are all forms of secular governance and lifestyles. And Muslims mean to carry out the dictates of the Quran.
Well, I can respect their adherence to their faith – I’m an American. Live and let live. But, I’m also conservative. I believe in the Ten Commandments and the teachings of Jesus Christ and the lessons of personal responsibility that the Bible, and our Declaration of Independence and Constitution embody. What ye sow, so shall ye reap… so MUST ye reap.

Christianity has undergone significant reformation not because of what the New Testament says, but because of abuses by the Catholic Church, politically, financially, powerfully. Little by little, sometimes ‘bigly,’ the Church has shifted while the basis of Christianity has not. Yet, make no mistake, Western civilization is dependent upon the success and survival… and integrity, of the Catholic Church. Fortunately, its self-destructiveness seems to be lessening.

“America” became what it did because of Mosaic and Christic principles. It also has failed in many areas because of human failing to follow those and our own laws. In the past hundred years, or so, we have found ways to talk ourselves OUT OF our Judeo-Christian principles by cleverly playing our own words against them… against ourselves. Legalized abortion is a clear example; separation of church and state is another.

We’ve given up our right to exercise judgment, and become afraid to exercise or even honor Christianity. Muslims have never relinquished Islam – every jot and tittle of it. In our amorphous philosophies we invite Muslims to live among us as if they, too, will become amorphous in their philosophies, yet, in our legalistic anti-Christian wasteland, we can’t even TALK about threats to our culture and heritage. The only sin left is intolerance.

So we tolerate, tolerate, tolerate until we’ve become able to argue for automatic citizenship for illegal entrants. Breaking laws and standing, publicly – even by elected officials – against their enforcement, is celebrated. A majority of states elected a president who battles to restore the rule of law and our Constitution, whose wife has the courage to say a prayer in public, and thousands protest in the streets. God save us.

Immigration, Terrorism

Who’s in charge here?

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President Trump’s recent travails over his immigration restriction order call up the question of what the role of the U. S. federal government is, perhaps in contrast to the roles of other governments. “Federal” is in quotes because many people don’t understand the difference between a federal government and a national one.

Further, many don’t grasp the unique role of the United States – and our government – in the world, since, say, the Spanish-American War. That was a funny, lop-sided war about which little is taught in public schools, anymore. In fact, it was so short-lived and had so few veterans that one might wonder what the fuss was all about, anyway.

“Remember the Maine!” Ever hear that? If you’ve gone to Arlington National Cemetery you’ve seen the Memorial to Maine’s 260 dead sailors. The destruction and sinking of the Maine may or may not have had anything to do with the Spanish, but it caused the decision to solve the Cuba problem, and the Spanish problem, once and for all.

In the end we temporarily took over Cuba (dominating it until Batista was dislodged by Castro), Puerto Rico, the Philippines and Guam; Teddy Roosevelt enhanced his resumé, changing presidential history, and the U. S. became a more involved Pacific power. MacArthur was forced out of the Philippines by the Japanese only to commit to returning, and Guam played a key role against the Japanese, as well. U. S. relations with South and Central American nations became even more strained and domineering, causing difficulties that persist to this day. So, not so inconsequential, after all.

America’s role on this multi-national planet has been gigantic since then, through two World Wars, the rise and demise of Communism in the Soviet Union, and astounding control and profiteering from the global banking/monetary system. Petro-dollars. There are many who think we should tuck our tail and let some other nation do the heavy lifting for a while… we’ve got our own problems to deal with.

Careful thought should reveal that that is the worst path for us to follow. On the other hand, we have learned, painfully, that we can’t impose our form of government on other nations, and we should not. If you’re looking for things that are not constitutional, that is a big one, Prudence counsels.

But after we tried having the several new states contribute to the operations of a “central” government under the Articles of Confederation, we put our minds to the task of creating something new on Earth: a Constitutional Republic, with separated powers and democratically elected representatives and even a democratically elected chief executive – a president not of the Congress, but of the united STATES. It has been quite a ride since then.

By adopting our phenomenal Constitution, “we the people” relinquished a carefully measured portion of our inalienable rights as sovereign citizens, whose rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness came not from the government, but from God, or, if you please, the order of the Universe that resulted in sentient human beings, whatever that is.

At the same time we created for ourselves an exceptional class of humans who are citizens of the United States with certain rights and responsibilities, while we remain citizens of the several States with additional rights and responsibilities. WE, as citizens of the States, FORMED and granted power to, for limited things – big things, but constrained – the new, FEDERAL government. People have their inalienable rights, States have their rights and the Federal government has its rights and “enumerated” powers to facilitate our individual pursuits of happiness, protect our union of states from foreign and domestic dangers, and, to impose some uniformity of laws and economics, including federal taxation and tariffs, and to maintain an army, a navy and a court system.

States could no longer conduct their own diplomacy with foreign governments or have different policies of immigration or of citizenship – those are Federal, logically, and all matters of citizenship or denial of citizenship, with all of the rights and powers that attach to U. S. citizenship, are the business of the Federal authority and of the Federal courts. Disputes between States or between States and the Federal government, are also the province of Federal courts, including appeals to the Supreme Court. And here we may soon be.

The two forces at conflict in the U. S. since the Civil War are Constitutional liberty and extra-Constitutional socialism. Originally, people and States were free to work, create, gain or lose within the law, and take responsibility for gaining or losing; alternatively they needed collective, or socialized sharing of life’s ups and downs to the point of being “free” from hardship and responsibility under the law. One path is strengthening, the other weakening of the social order and of individuals, and weakening of the States, themselves.

President Trump, as he promised, issued an appropriate Executive Order in accordance with the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), 8 U.S.C. 1101 et seq., and section 301 of title 3, United States Code, restricting entrance to the United States of persons not otherwise legally entitled to enter or re-enter (poorly executed on the ground, but legal and justified, nonetheless) from 7 failed countries that cannot “vet” their residents – no, their occupants – sufficiently to ascertain whether they are who they claim to be or what their record is. From these 7 countries have come, since 9-11, some 72 bad actors who have committed terrorist acts in the United States.

There is no way, practically speaking, to know whether more are on their way; Mr. Trump took an appropriate, Federal step.

Two states sued on the basis that the abrupt interruption of travel impinged on the smooth function of their state governments, particularly of their State Universities, and a federal judge ruled that they had standing to sue. They further charged that Trump’s intention was to ban Muslims, for which they claimed unconstitutionality, as well as “unconstitutional” interruptions on the free travel of their residents, not necessarily of their citizens.

The judge went so far as to cite Trump’s campaign statements about banning Muslims temporarily as a basis for construing an unconstitutional intent – INTENT! – that made the need for a Temporary Restraining Order an emergency.

And here we are. Without precedent, and, let’s hope, without creating a precedent. A federal court has ruled that temporary inconvenience for a State’s internal functions may be sufficient to interrupt lawful measures for the purpose of national security. This is new territory. The creative interference with valid federal duties that restive state’s Attorneys General might devise, is limitless. Federal judges should have sense enough to reject these efforts to politicize our security.

Clearly Prudence doesn’t direct the President, but she strongly advises that the new U. S. Attorney General defend this case in the supreme Court so that there is no precedent created for left-leaning judges to take non-judicial steps to interfere with the executive branch, UN-constitutionally.

Immigration

Immigration, Emigration, Love the nation

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Immigration is a decidedly misunderstood aspect of nationhood. Our Constitution nowhere mentions border protection. At the time of its creation and adoption, everyone was intimately aware of and concerned with frontiers, borders, defense and protecting the existence of our new nation.

Border integrity was so obviously the business of the new government that no one needed reminding. Besides, it was pretty difficult for an individual to get here and hard for him to cause widespread mayhem or murder. Women didn’t do such things in the old days.

And there was still a frontier and unlimited space, or so it seemed. From our side the frontier was where WE were the invaders, which served as a form of border defense in its own way. Manifest destiny.

But border control is inherent to the obligations of government, indeed, primary to them. Without it government becomes simply a facilitator in the demise of it’s ostensible permanence.

Americans have grown up in a dream world. Thanks to instant worldwide communications and the lingering lessons of the 1960’s, Gen-X’ers and Millennials perceive themselves as “citizens of the world,” and borders as inconveniences. To many, the advantages of the United States belong to the world and to everyone who wishes to share the “American Dream.” And he or she has an ill-defined “right” to those advantages, especially if he or she has had a tough life, is poor, and not white… and not a Christian.

As Americans have drifted away from less-than perfect churches, and enjoyed relative peace and fattening prosperity, their children have been taught that religion has no place in their education, and, besides, it imposes restrictions on the wonderful new forms of fun that the “American Dream” has produced. Who are we to withhold this great place to live from non-citizens? How cruel to enforce our own laws.

But, despite our lax mores, the majority of states elected a very different kind of leader in Donald Trump. There is trepidation to be sure, in the early going, but we’re getting what he promised. There is no way – NO way – to reverse the course of national dissipation that outrageous immigration, purposeful lack of border control, and fascination with socialism and communism have wrought, without breaking a lot of eggs… or snowflakes.

Trump, or someone quite like him, was inevitable following the descent into the regulatory, bureaucratic, non-representative state that has eroded the Constitution and the real freedoms enshrined therein. A second mendacious socialist was too much for the heart and soul of the United States. As Ross Perot once stated, 24 years earlier, it was “…time to pick up the broom and go clean out the barn.”

Well, it took us a generation, but we finally hired someone to do so, except he’s “draining the swamp,” which might be better.

Illegal and un-vetted immigration was Trump’s key theme for a year and a half. Daily there are dozens of incidents in which illegal entrants have broken laws as simple as drunk-driving and as complex as home invasion and rape. Sometimes as simple as vehicular homicide or as complex as drug distribution. Sometimes as simple as working under-the-table, or as complex as gang-banging, mayhem and rioting. Sometimes as simple as terrorism with rapid-fire weapons or as complex as terrorism with bombs… or passenger jets.

What is our obligation to illegal entrants, or to false asylum-seekers or to false refugees? Do they have Constitutional rights? How is that possible? When did the Constitution start applying to non-citizens?
What obligations do we have to our legal citizens? Well, everything the Constitution ostensibly guarantees, including the Bill of Rights, which did not create rights, but clearly enumerated them as rights the government we formed henceforth was obligated – is obligated – to PROTECT. Nowhere is the government given license to spread its responsibilities across the peoples of the entire globe – including trying to change their governments.

Our obligation ends at civil, humane treatment of non-citizens, including humane deportation if they are inside our borders illegally. Hell, we even treat them humanely if they commit serious crimes. Since even wealthy drug dealers are “indigent” when caught, we provide attorneys for one and all, EVEN TO FIGHT DEPORTATION when our total responsibility to the citizens of the United States is prompt, humane deportation of them!

The U. S. is not perfect and has been less so in the past, and MORE SO at other times in our past. On balance, we’ve done more good than bad and jump first and fastest to aid anyone who asks when disaster strikes. Our philosophies and the IDEAS that formed this nation are better than those underpinning most countries. That’s not bragging, it’s just so.

They are the reason our growth and wealth have led the world, and why, frankly, so many have come here and try to come here, now. Like no other nation, the United States invites people from every other nation to come here – legally – in order to become Americans. It’s a unique process. Americans, for our part, welcome both visitors and newly-minted citizens. One need not be of the exact same race and origin as those already here, he or she need only share the ideas of America: personal freedom and responsibility, religious freedom and tolerance; honest dealing, respect for law and earning one’s own way.

Those who wail about “illegals” as though they were not only entitled to steal across our borders but are deserving of Constitutional rights as amended and applied for citizens to this day, are deeply confused as to the nature of nationhood, specifically, the nationhood of the United States. These are the same who refuse to acknowledge any goodness in the hearts of patriots of this country, now or in the past, and who, if charged with the task of education, nearly refuse to teach its founding, its ideas or the documents and philosophies that underlay them. For shame.

And so, there is no justice in denying free entrance to all who choose to take our bounty and who, if properly different from U. S. citizens, can help remove the blot of America.

The alternative to erasing the time and impact of Americana is controlling immigration, indeed, limiting it, so that those who come do so to assimilate and share the ideas and ideals of our exceptional nation. All may become Americans, one nation under God.

“OMG, can you say that?”

Immigration

Immigration Fundamentals

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illegal_alien_minors_come_to_us_on-trains_2The administrations of the last 3 presidents, possibly last 7 presidents – basically every presidency during which Edward M. Kennedy was a senator and declared “socialist,” has failed to varying degrees in terms of securing the borders of this nation. None has failed to the extent of the Obama administration. The misfeasance of Homeland Security, Interior, Department of Justice and the Department of State, since 2009, is mind-boggling.

If you aren’t sure what boggling is when applied to minds, try to imagine growing up in a nation of fifty states, each of which knows its own borders and limits. Overlaying these states is a single, external border – a construct of national identity that stands for the PRIMARY covenant the federal government has with the citizens of all 50 states – and with the states, themselves. That covenant is to defend the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Inherent in that defense is the inviolability of our national border… by definition.

Some might consider that this is a problem for “border” states, but, since the inception of air travel, every state that has an airport is a “border” state. By secretively shuttling illegal entrants all over the country, the Obama traitors have driven this point home to every state.

Inherent in that inviolability is control of who can cross that border – anywhere – whether entering or exiting. Put another way, one could say that failure to control the border at any point, in either direction, is the same as having no border. More seriously, conscious or intentional failure to control the border would be abrogation of the most fundamental contract the federal government has with every citizen. It is the clearest expression of treason, by definition. Those whose office requires swearing to defend the Constitution of the United States, cannot support that document – that covenant between U. S. citizens and the federal government they and their respective states created – and fail to respect and defend the collective border with other nations.

The past several years have been an organized travesty. Thousands – tens of thousands – of “children” up to ages of 35 or more, have been welcomed at the border, loosely organized and delivered to their illegal-entrant cousins or supposed guardians – all self-declared – in dozens of cities across the country. It is a pattern totally indefensible, except by those who adopt a strange, growing way of thinking.

These are they who believe that the United States is less legitimate than other nations for a number of reasons. One is that it was founded and formed by Christians. Christianity has two failings in their eyes: 1) It imposes moral values upon non-believers, who perceive themselves as free of moral judgments since they are not Christians; and, 2) It is a religion of White people, some of whom owned slaves 150 years ago. Since slavery, or “racism” is ineradicable, even if invisible, nothing those old dead white people believed, including the principles of America’s founding, and the Constitution, in particular, is legitimate or worth defending. These mental errors justify open borders in their minds. One of these dopes is now president. God save us.

Prudence Leadbetter