Friday, June 9. 2006
We hate to be a cut-and-paste blog, but this is too good.  Quote from Lileks at NNS: You're an enlightened world citizen. Your T-shirt says "9/11 was an inside job." You're pretty sure we're living in a fascist state, that President Bush taps the Dixie Chicks' phones, Christian abortion clinic bombers outnumber jihadis, and the war on "terror" is a distraction from the real threats: carbon emissions and Pat Robertson. Then you learn that 17 people were arrested in a terrorist bomb plot. How do you process the information? Let's take it step by step.
Gosh, that's horrible, you think. But no -- that's what they WANT you to feel. Recall the prime directive: Question Authority (unless he's a college professor). The plotters must have been impoverished olive farmers radicalized by the removal of Saddam Hussein. Why, if someone came in and toppled your president, you'd go to their country and ... well, you'd thank them. Unless they did it for the wrong reasons! Then you'd blow something up. Like an SUV dealership. At night. Anyway, you understand; you care a lot about Iraqis these days. You think about Iraq more than China, to be honest, but it's not as if you'll scrape off your "Free Tibet" bumper sticker -- unless it's to make room for "Free Darfur." Or "Hands Off Darfur," depending.
Wait a minute: The "terrorists" were Canadian? You can understand someone blowing up trains in Spain and London. They sent troops to an illegal war cooked up by neocons who want to kill brown people for Exxon and Jesus, or something. You can understand, reluctantly, blowing up teens in an Israeli pizza parlor, because the Jews took the West Bank from the sovereign, ancient nation of Palestine. (How can a liberal socialist country behave so poorly? The world is full of mysteries.) But Canada? Isn't Michael Moore from Canada? You can get medical marijuana from married gay doctors in Canada, and no one has guns. You console yourself: Maybe they were really planning to attack the U.S.
Take a minute and read the rest.
For 100 years, New Jersey was a promised land for middle class New Yorkers, fleeing New York taxes and pursuing the American dream of a little cottage with a yard. What went wrong? Now it is a state with net outflow of population and business, decaying, dangerous cities, state and property taxes which crush the middle class, routine corruption, unions which seem to have more power than both the government and the voters, and Tony Soprano. Malanga at City Journal gives the whole history. An excellent history of The Garden State, which typifies the "blue state blues".
Wednesday, June 7. 2006
Another piece which dropped in over the transom while I was sleeping at my desk at my do-nothing job. No idea where it came from - a little birdie:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: AMERICANS WITH NO ABILITIES ACT (AWNAA) - A CONGRESSIONAL ACT. WASHINGTON, DC (AP). Congress is considering sweeping legislation, which provides new benefits for many Americans. AWNAA is being hailed as a major legislation by advocates of the millions of Americans who lack any real skills, ambition, common sense, reliability, or the ability to work effectively with others.
"They can't help it, because they were born this way" said Senate sponsor Barbara Boxer (D-Moon). "Roughly 50 percent of Americans do not possess the competence and drive necessary to carve out a meaningful role for themselves in society," said Boxer. "We can no longer stand by and allow People of Inability to be ridiculed and passed over. With this legislation, employers will no longer be able to grant special favors to a small group of workers, simply because they do a better job, or have some idea of what they are doing." Boxer concluded "This crisis must be addressed immediately, before millions are harmed or killed. It will be worse than Katrina if we do not act now. And think of their children!"
The President pointed to the success of the US Postal Service, which has a long and proud policy of providing opportunity without regard to performance. Approximately 74% of postal employees lack job skills, making this agency the single largest US employer of Persons of Inability. Politics is higher, at 99%, but the numbers are fewer. Government in general has an excellent record of hiring Persons of Inability (73%). Private sector industries with good records of nondiscrimination against the inept include retail sales (72%), the airline industry (68%),and home improvement "warehouse" stores (65%). Under the Americans With No Abilities Act, more than 25 million "middleman" positions will be created, with important-sounding titles but little real responsibility, thus providing an illusory sense of purpose and performance for POI and PLWF (Persons of Ineptness, and Persons Living With Fecklessness).
Mandatory non-performance-based raises and promotions will be given, to guarantee upward mobility for even the most unremarkable employees. The legislation provides substantial tax breaks to corporations which maintain a significant level of Persons of Inability in middle positions, and gives a tax credit to small and medium businesses that agree to hire one clueless worker for every two talented hires. In addition, POIs and PLWFs will be added to the group of "protected classes" in all US legislation, automatically, permitting lawsuits for discrimination, thus putting them on an equal legal footing with PLWDs (People Living with With Disabilities), PRCs (People of Rainbow Colors), PFSCWDUACs (People From Strange Countries Who Don't Understand American Culture), PLWRWRs (People Living with Rare, Wierd Religions), and PWAATNs (People Who Aren't All That Normal) and PWWFCs (People Who Wear Funny Clothes), and , last but not least, the PWWFCSOTECPOAYCTWTAHONs, (People Who Wear Funny Clothes So Only Their Eyes Can Peek Out And You Can't Tell If They Are Hot, Or Not).
Finally, the AWNA Act contains tough new measures to make it more difficult to discriminate against the Nonabled, banning discriminatory interview questions such as "Do you have any goals for the future?" or "Do you have any skills or experience which relate to this job?" or "Yo wo doona nuka nookie won?" (Australian aborigine for "How good is your linear algebra?", a phrase with which most B and C-level college admissions officers are well acquainted.)
"As a Nonabled person, I can't be expected to keep up with people who have something going for them," said Mary Lou Gertz, who lost her position as a lug-nut twister at the GM plant in Flint, MI due to her lack of notable job skills. "This new law should really help people like me who are victims of PLWF." With the passage of this bill, Gertz and millions of other untalented citizens can finally see a light at the end of the tunnel of many generations of discrimination.
Human rights and civil rights activists praised the Act, and encouraged its passage. "This will break down one of the last walls of discrimination in American," said Jesse Jackson. "Judging people just on the basis of performance is Un-American and cruel. We must consider other essential factors, such as skin color." Hillary Clinton, running for re-election, (D-Uranus) had this to say: "I think this advances the cause of fairness in employment. We can't all be Bill Clintons, after all, but we all need and deserve something to do besides baking cookies and watching the soaps. And think of the children."
Said Senator Ted Kennedy, "It is our duty as lawmakers to provide each and every American citizen, regardless of his or her adequacy, with some sort of space to take up in this great nation. This Act is for your kids, and especially for my own kids, and all of the next generation of Kennedy kids - and thus for the future of America. Together, we can build a great nation which respects fecklessness, ineptness, and victims of POI and PLWF - a truly inclusive nation that we can finally all be proud of."
College sports teams will be exempt from AWNAA, if enacted by Congress, thanks to an amendment offered by Sen. Joe Lieberman (D R- whatever- CT), Senator of the proud home of the Huskies (few, if any, of whom ever lived in CT). Harvard University science departments, on the other hand, have embraced and adopted the AWNAA concept whole-heartedly, to their credit, setting new standards for institutions of higher learning. Editor's note: We have been informed that this is a re-working, by us, aka a "plagiaristicalistical" adaptation, of an antique piece originally published at the esteemable and essential Onion, America's Finest News Source. When good bits come in, we cannot always determine what their provenance is, partly because we have jobs! Thanks to another alert reader. We try to be honest thieves but sometimes, as Paulie Walnuts would say, "things fall off trucks," and land in our front yard. So we bring them home to Maggie's. We "improved" this one by 50%, but the core of the recipe is from The Onion.
Tuesday, June 6. 2006
 The Fjordman is back at Gates of Vienna, with a piece on the dangers of the EU. Is the EU an imperialist scheme to remove power from the people of Europe? One would tend to think so. A quote:
Booker and North calls the European Union “a slow-motion coup d’état: the most spectacular coup d’état in history,” designed to gradually and carefully sideline the democratic process and subdue the older nation states of Europe without saying so in public.
Read the entire excellent review of the long, sneaky history of the EU idea. Image: Stolen from the piece at G of V, above.
If a Dem were in office, and going to war against Jihad, he would be called the "Franklin Roosevelt" of our generation. Dr. Bliss, of Maggie's Farm
Monday, June 5. 2006
 I noticed the comments, especially on other blogs, related to our post a week ago by Capt. Gilmore, who offered us a follow-up note on his original letter, which we have since posted there. We do not know the Captain, but I see no reason to doubt him.
The desire, on the part of many, to deny that his letter was true seemed odd to me, until I realized that it must represent the desire to deny that 9-11 actually happened and was a Jihadist attack - or who would care? It did happen, and it was a Jihadist attack. How many others have there been over the past 15 years? Plenty. Why desire not to believe it? Because if you believe it, you have to do something about it. Much more comfortable to imagine that the attacks in London, and the attack on the Cole, and the first WTC attack, and all the others, were performed by an evil Bush-Israeli conspiracy for some dark but as yet-uncoded purpose. But, wait a minute - Bush wasn't Pres during most of them, was he? Well, maybe Bush and Clinton were in on it together...along with the rest of the government. Sure...that makes perfect sense: When Clinton was Pres, he probably said "George, I'll take a pass on killing these suckers, if you promise you will get them, after I rig your election, so you will get the credit and I will get...more Monica." Trying to think like a paranoid is exhausting. We try to be sane, but if the blogosphere is a loony bin, I want out. If I had the time today, I would go into this more deeply, but I cannot. But when I look at this thing on AOL News today - vote and check the numbers - one truly has to wonder about the irrationality, conspiracy cranks, and wierd distrust that is going around. It is Bedlam. Maybe it's caused by fluoridation? (joke) Sometimes I feel like adding comments, such as "Have you taken your medicine today?" However, I resist that impulse, since it would not lead to any civil exchange. One last thought: If a Dem were in office right now, and going to war against Jihad, he would be the "Franklin Roosevelt" of our generation. No doubt. 'Nuf said. Editor's Note: More on this sad subject - "Whack Jobs Convene" - at Atlas.
As our readers know, we ain't got no truck with multiculturalism. We believe that Western, Judeo-Christian, small "L" liberal democratic societies offer the greatest chance for human dignity and f reedom, to date, in the history of the world. We hate anything that interferes with those things. Rick at RWNH says here exactly what we believe at Maggie's - except he says it better. A quote from his piece on the arrest of Moslem terrorists in Canada over the weekend: If we are fortunate enough to survive listening to some of the better angels of our nature that demand obeisance to an ideology of moral relativism, it will be because there will always be enough of us who refuse to play the diversity games so beloved of that segment of our population that sees strength in dividing us. The game has one simple rule; all societies, and by extension, all religions, creeds, races, ethnicities, and cultures are, at bottom, equal. It would be one thing to believe all were equally bad. That, at least, would represent the cynics view of mankind and hence, a realistic appraisal of the capability for evil in our fellow man. But no. This multi-cultural madness posits the notion that we are all equally good (well, except white, Anglo-Saxon, Christian males), and that evil is a social construct manufactured by the ruling class to keep the black, brown, and yellow man in their place. If allowed to succeed, the people who are teaching this view to our children in schools and creating mass cultural touchstones in film and television that push this concept will create the perfectly diverse society – the multi-cultural Nirvana found in the grave where everyone will be finally and completely equal.
Image, etc: Who says "dignity never been photographed"? Photo by The Dylanologist. We have the extremely rare piano version of Dylan's Dignity here: dignitypianoversion.mp3 - quick download.
Friday, June 2. 2006
From the NY Post's review of Big Al's movie: Gore claims, with pie-chart-in-the-sky dreaminess, that unspecified measures can reduce emissions to 1970 levels. He assesses the tradeoff between the economy and the environment with the kind of buffoonery you'd expect in a Marxist comic book, displaying a cartoon of a scale with Earth on one side and bars of gold on the other. "OK, on one side we have gold bars," he says. "Mmm, mmm, don't they look good!" Why doesn't he get specific and replace the "gold bar" side of the scale with, say, a $50,000 tax on SUVs? The ensuing destruction of the car business would hurt blue-collar workers, not the rich. What if global warming continued unabated? Gore's faith-based pessimism would lead him to call for even more taxes. People are skeptical about global warming because it builds up to the same chorus as every other lefty hymn: more taxes, more hypocritical scolding (the film is the brainchild of Larry David's wife, Laurie, part of the community of people who drive a Prius to the private plane) and especially more America-bashing. Gore says that America, alone, is the problem. Taking us to China, he ignores the filth spewed into the air by its coal-fired cities. He does not meet with bronchitic citizens who wear surgical masks outdoors and pause to hawk up brown gunk every few minutes. Instead, he tells us America is lagging behind. "China," he says, "is on the cutting edge" of environmentalism. Nonsense. Gore is a dangerous evangelist for whom all roads lead to his sole, holy revelation. Remember how his son was injured in a car accident, the story he told at the 1992 convention? He's still telling it, and what was once touching has become exploitative. This time, the accident's meaning is that he wondered whether the Earth would still be there for his son.
Read the whole thing.
 Let me place the Al Gore quote in context, from a brief interview about his movie at Grist Magazine:
Interviewer: There's a lot of debate right now over the best way to communicate about global warming and get people motivated. Do you scare people or give them hope? What's the right mix?
Gore: I think the answer to that depends on where your audience's head is. In the United States of America, unfortunately we still live in a bubble of unreality. And the Category 5 denial is an enormous obstacle to any discussion of solutions. Nobody is interested in solutions if they don't think there's a problem. Given that starting point, I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentations on how dangerous it is, as a predicate for opening up the audience to listen to what the solutions are, and how hopeful it is that we are going to solve this crisis.
Over time that mix will change. As the country comes to more accept the reality of the crisis, there's going to be much more receptivity to a full-blown discussion of the solutions.
How much would you bet that his "solution" would entail government control of the American economy? A "Five-Year Plan," perhaps? Over 100 readers have complained, on my original post this week, that his statement conveys no dishonest intent. In my book, half-truths and distortions in a documentary intended to inform and influence, if not frighten, is dishonest, cynically manipulative, condescending to the point of contemptuousness and, in the end, self-defeating. It is self-defeating because you lose your credibility, and become a common crank. People aren't dumb, except when they want to be. The fact is that anyone can cherry pick data on any subject: the economy, the weather, the dangerousness of ladders, the dangerousness of Coca Cola - and create an instant "crisis." But such "discussions" are not in good faith - they are the ordinary tricks of disputation - "lawyerly", in the worst sense. Are half-truths lies? You decide for yourself. For me, they are. My opinion after this whole Al Gore storm this week on the blog: This issue is not about science; it's about politics or, as Al Gore puts it, it's a "spiritual issue." Hence the emotion. For more quotes from the Global Warming Big Lie squad, see continuation page below - these statements will bother you, even if Big Al does not:
Continue reading "Paul Revere, Chicken Little, or Fear-Mongering Politico?"
Wednesday, May 31. 2006
Whew. I have been thoroughly farked. I have never had one of my pieces "farked" before (see my post prior to this one), but I have also never been subjected to so much rage in my life, as in the abundant comments. "Wingnut"? Me? They would never call me that, if they were lucky enough to meet me. 172 comments! It wasn't even a piece about global warming - just a piece about how the human conscience works. What's the big fuss? Is Al Gore a sacred cow?... or a Sacred Bull? And then does his BS not stink? This is not war, dear gentle readers. What especially bothered me is that essentially all of the over-heated comments missed the entire point of the post. Perhaps I should have used the example of "Bush lied so we can get all of this nice cheap oil?" But I have no comparable confession from Bush, nor do I see all of the cheap oil. Yes, that photo is me, at Cape Cod last summer. Surfer's Beach (White Crest Beach), where the strong and manly hands of the waves will firmly, steadily and relentlessly disrobe a lady of both her upper and her lower bathing garments, if she is not careful, and unveil the glory of her secret delights. By the way, if I misread Gore's intent, I will say so. I am not convinced, but I am a Mass General doctor with a Harvard MD. Not a lawyer, but not stupid either: I do not parse - I just read, like a normal person. I can't help it if I am attractive - God made me this way, to be a good breeder, and I like it. Image: Copyright Harvard Medical School Faculty Facebook
Saturday, May 27. 2006
This is a somewhat re-worked piece from earlier in the week: We have always asserted on Maggie's Farm that the Left has fascist impulses, which is the main reason we fear them. Many of us have been there - in our liberal youths - and done that, so we know what it's like to imagine that one knows how to run a utopian world. We believe that the Left wishes to control everything and anything they can -from the food we eat, to the games we play, to the cars we buy, to the guns we shoot, to the medical care we seek, to the stores we use, to where we enjoy tobacco, to the ways we participate in politics - in their illusion of wisdom and their will for power. I believe that this is why they can seem so strangely sympathetic towards, and apologists for, dictators like Stalin, Fidel, Chavez, Saddam, Hamas, etc. No Pasaran takes a look at the "progressive" adoration of Chavez. The concept of the "dictatorship of the proletariat" persists, but, as it has always been, that becomes the dictatorship of thugs and the power-mad. Plato's philosopher-king doesn't work in real life. When I see people from liberal democratic societies kissing the feet of socialist dictators - feudal kings, in effect - it gives me a chill, and gives anyone a chill for whom individual freedom - the free choice which confers dignity, and the consequences of our choices which confer humility as often as they confer joy and glory - is the holy grail. I know I am preaching, but I fear the tendency in the human species to be willing to sell one's birthright for a bowl of lentils or a bottle of snake oil. But more than that, I fear the lentil salesman. Life was meant to be difficult and to stretch our neurons and muscles and spirit to the fullest as we seek our path through the dark woodlands and deserts of life, guided by whatever star or stars we chose. And still, we will fail in many ways. "Fail, and grow. Succeed, and stagnate." I said that. Which leads to the subject of Risk. The freedom to take risks is one of the fine things about free capitalist societies, and you could make a case that people are compensated, in part, by the amount of risk they are willing or able to shoulder in their work (military, cops, miners, and firemen excluded - those are government jobs, so they don't count). Risk and responsibility go hand-in-hand. As a newspaper reporter, I have minimal responsibility other than covering my local assignments glibly, and, if I screw up, no-one really cares. But a whole world of work is open to me, if and when I decide to jump into the cold water and make a change. Freedom to fail - a very fine thing indeed. But it hurts. Part of being American is a willingness to sustain the hurts without running to Mommy Government for a kleenex. (Americans run to trial lawyers instead - which is almost as much of a culturally-subversive trend.) I guess I have little more to add to what The Beatles say in Revolution and what Dylan says in My Back Pages. (excerpt): A self-ordained professor's tongue
Too serious to fool
Spouted out that liberty
Is just equality in school
"Equality," I spoke the word
As if a wedding vow.
Ah, but I was so much older then,
I'm younger than that now.
In a soldier's stance, I aimed my hand
At the mongrel dogs who teach
Fearing not that I'd become my enemy
In the instant that I preach
My pathway led by confusion boats
Mutiny from stern to bow.
Ah, but I was so much older then,
I'm younger than that now. (Ignore that continuation page below - I can't make it go away)
Continue reading "The News Junkie Lets it All Hang Out"
Friday, May 26. 2006
 As regular Maggie's readers know, Roger Scruton is in our pantheon of essayists, right up there with Dalrymple. From his recent piece on John Stuart Mill (a very smart guy but perhaps lacking in wisdom and life experience - but I detest retrospective judgements, especially when performed by intellectual inferiors like me) whose thinking evolved from utilitarianism to liberty to socialism:
Mill's defense of liberty, which was enunciated with great force and seeming clarity, soon followed the path taken by his defense of utilitarianism, and died the death of a thousand qualifications. "On Liberty" sees individual freedom as the aim of government, whose business is to reconcile one person's freedom with his neighbor's. "The Principles of Political Economy" by contrast, while pretending to be a popular exposition of Adam Smith, accords extensive powers of social engineering to the state, and develops a socialist vision of the economy, with a constitutional role for trade unions, and extensive provisions for social security and welfare. The book is, in fact, a concealed socialist tract. While "On Liberty" belongs to the 18th-century tradition that we know as classical liberalism, "Principles" is an example of liberalism in its more modern sense. Mill's hostility to privilege, to landed property, and to inheritance of property had implications which he seemed unwilling or unable to work out. His argument that all property should be confiscated by the state on death, and redistributed according to its own greater wisdom, has the implication that the state, rather than the family, is to be treated as the basic unit of society--the true arbiter of our destiny, and the thing to which everything is owed. The argument makes all property a temporary lease from the state, and also ensures that the state is the greatest spender, and the one least bound by the sense of responsibility to heirs and neighbors. It is, in short, a recipe for the disaster that we have seen in the communist and socialist systems, and it is a sign of Mill's failure of imagination that, unlike Smith, he did not foresee the likely results of his favored policies.
Yes - in other words, a return to Feudalism. And ah, that pesky Law of Unintended Consequences. Here's the whole piece at Opinion Journal. Mill's thinking on various subjects seems as alive today, as ever. Here is a brief synopsis of his life.
Thursday, May 25. 2006
Peter Wehner in the WSJ on May 23: Iraqis can participate in three historic elections, pass the most liberal constitution in the Arab world, and form a unity government despite terrorist attacks and provocations. Yet for some critics of the president, these are minor matters. Like swallows to Capistrano, they keep returning to the same allegations -- the president misled the country in order to justify the Iraq war; his administration pressured intelligence agencies to bias their judgments; Saddam Hussein turned out to be no threat since he didn't possess weapons of mass destruction; and helping democracy take root in the Middle East was a postwar rationalization. The problem with these charges is that they are false and can be shown to be so -- and yet people continue to believe, and spread, them. Let me examine each in turn:
Read the rest of his essential piece here. Despite its accuracy, the article will be largely ignored, because the erroneous talking points have been repeated so many times that it seems too late for correction - and the White House hasn't done a good job refuting them.
VDH on Our Brave New World of Immigration: In the dark of these rural spring mornings, I see full vans of Mexican laborers speeding by my farmhouse on their way to the western side of California's San Joaquin Valley to do the backbreaking work of weeding cotton, thinning tree fruit and picking strawberries. In the other direction, even earlier morning crews drive into town - industrious roofers, cement layers and framers heading to a nearby new housing tract. While most of us are still asleep, thousands of these hardworking young men and women in the American Southwest rise with the sun to provide the sort of unmatched labor at the sort of wages that their eager employers insist they cannot find among citizens. But just when one thinks that illegal immigration is an efficient win-win way of providing excellent workers to needy businesses, there are also daily warnings that there is something terribly wrong with a system predicated on a cynical violation of the law.
His entire piece at RCP here.
Wednesday, May 24. 2006
Bill Clinton's comments on Iraq, Dec. 16, 1998 (entire speech on continuation page). It began thus: CLINTON: Good evening. Earlier today, I ordered America's armed forces to strike military and security targets in Iraq. They are joined by British forces. Their mission is to attack Iraq's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs and its military capacity to threaten its neighbors. Their purpose is to protect the national interest of the United States, and indeed the interests of people throughout the Middle East and around the world. Saddam Hussein must not be allowed to threaten his neighbors or the world with nuclear arms, poison gas or biological weapons. I want to explain why I have decided, with the unanimous recommendation of my national security team, to use force in Iraq; why we have acted now; and what we aim to accomplish. Six weeks ago, Saddam Hussein announced that he would no longer cooperate with the United Nations weapons inspectors called UNSCOM. They are highly professional experts from dozens of countries. Their job is to oversee the elimination of Iraq's capability to retain, create and use weapons of mass destruction, and to verify that Iraq does not attempt to rebuild that capability. The inspectors undertook this mission first 7.5 years ago at the end of the Gulf War when Iraq agreed to declare and destroy its arsenal as a condition of the ceasefire. The international community had good reason to set this requirement. Other countries possess weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles. With Saddam, there is one big difference: He has used them. Not once, but repeatedly. Unleashing chemical weapons against Iranian troops during a decade-long war. Not only against soldiers, but against civilians, firing Scud missiles at the citizens of Israel, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Iran. And not only against a foreign enemy, but even against his own people, gassing Kurdish civilians in Northern Iraq. The international community had little doubt then, and I have no doubt today, that left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will use these terrible weapons again.
Continue reading "A trip down memory lane: Bill Clinton on Iraq"
 Pinkerton has written at TCS today about nationalism vs. universalism. His piece, which is excellent, left out the one bit that is most important to me: in a no-border, one world universalist dream, who runs it?
Isn't "universalism" a giant empire, in effect? Who runs it, and what do I have to say about how they run it? What is right for me in CT just might not be right for Mohammed in Somalia, or Moishe in Israel, or Swen in Sweden. Already, in the mini- and already-failed experiment of the EU, distant bureaucrats put out edicts faster than Democrats hand out street money in Newark. The leftist universalist dream is a totalitarian nightmare. Any one-world dream would be a nightmare of oppression, and then a nightmare of local rebellion - Star Wars. People are tribal and the best governments are the most local, where people have some control over their destiny according to their own ideas, for better or worse. I'm a State's Rights person, too. Give me flawed, messy, non-utopian ideas, any time. Pinkerton points out that Einstein was famous for deriding nationalism, but, without nationalism, where would he have fled from the Nazis? From the beginning of Pinkerton's piece: Here's a question: Why do Roger Cardinal Mahony of Los Angeles, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and The Wall Street Journal editorial page have such similar views on immigration? The answer is that all four of the above -- Mahony, CAIR, the ACLU, and the Journal -- have chosen universalism over nationalism.
Yeah, read the whole thing. Good stuff.
Immigration and the conspiracy against American workers. It is always cheaper to import cheap labor than to mechanize, but do not imagine that all of this cheap labor will come from Mexico. It's already coming from Asia, too. An open-ended guest worker program will flood this country, solely for the benefit of businesses who understandably do not want to pay any more than they need to. VDARE goes into the subject at length. Labor has become a global commodity, as Marx surmised. We have always asserted on Maggie's Farm that the Left has fascist impulses, which is our main reason to fear them. We have been there and done that, so we know. We believe that they wish to control everything and anything they can, in their illusion of wisdom and their will for power, which is why they can seem so strangely sympathetic to dictators like Stalin, Fidel, Chavez, Saddam, Hamas, etc. No Pasaran takes a look at the "progressive" adoration of Chavez. It gives me a chill, and gives anyone a chill for whom individual freedom - the free choice which confers dignity, and the consequences of our choices which confer humility as often as they confer joy and glory - is the holy grail. I know I am preaching, but I fear the tendency in the human species to be willing to sell one's birthright for a bowl of lentils or a bottle of snake oil. But more than that, I fear the lentil salesman. Life was meant to be difficult and to stretch our neurons and muscles and spirit to the fullest as we seek our path through the dark woodlands and deserts of life, guided by whatever star or stars we chose. And still, we will fail in many ways. "Fail, and grow. Succeed, and stagnate." I said that. I guess I have little more to add to what The Beatles say in Revolution and what Dylan says in My Back Pages.
Friday, May 19. 2006
 This an excerpt from a piece at Classical Values:(my bold print)
From Evan Coyne Maloney (link via Pajamas Media) I have found a perfect example of real life imitating satire, quoted verbatim from the Seattle public school system's Definitions of Racism: Cultural Racism:
Those aspects of society that overtly and covertly attribute value and normality to white people and Whiteness, and devalue, stereotype, and label people of color as “other”, different, less than, or render them invisible. Examples of these norms include defining white skin tones as nude or flesh colored, having a future time orientation, emphasizing individualism as opposed to a more collective ideology, defining one form of English as standard, and identifying only Whites as great writers or composers. It would be downright hilarious if it wasn't the official definition of racism at a taxpayer-financed public school.
Yeah, that darn white future time orientation. Who needs it, anyway? It is just so white bread. I always felt worrying about tomorrow was just a waste of time, but I didn't realize that it was because I am white. May I safely assume that if I "think brown" that I don't have to do my homework? Hey - the gummint will take care of me, right? Or my girlfriends or my Momma? Somebody? And may I say that I am deeply offended by this stereotyping of whites. My white girlfriend is never on time. Maybe she is "brown" under her skin? Mr. Free Market had this: "Is there a word in Italian for manana?" "Yes there is, but it doesn't have quite the same sense of urgency." But Italians aren't "brown," are they? Or are they? Maybe the Sicillians are a little bit brown, being so close to Africa...and the Neapolitans somewhat less so...What gives? Is this a black thing, or a brown thing, or a Mediterranean thing? No wrist watches? No sundials? I guess I just don't get it, and I never will. I am so sick of this BS. Can't we just take people as individuals? Woops - wrong - I guess that's not the "collective ideology." My apologies to Mao's sacred corpse: for a moment there, I must have imagined that I was a person and not a minor fragment of a collective. Shame on me - as usual...but it's not my fault - my nasty skin color did it to me, and my skin doesn't "think collective". Skin pigmentation determines your thoughts - I must never forget that important, simple fact. From now on, I will let my skin do my thinking for me. C'mon skin - think hard and deep and true! And, by the way, Roll over, Beethoven.
Thursday, May 18. 2006
Polipundit took the trouble to check on Mel Martinez' campaign platform on immigration. Guess what? Martinez deleted that item from his website, but PP found it cached! You can't fool Mother Internets. Woops. And today, the Senate decides that illegals should have retroactive Social Security, even if they used fake SS numbers. Michelle. Huh? Are these guys nuts?...or are they buying votes? Methinks the latter. Plus she has info on NC permitting illegals to vote. What a country...if it is a country anymore.
Wednesday, May 17. 2006
They say that when you owe a bank $100,000, the banker controls you, but when you owe a bank $100,000,000, you control the bankers. That's my analogy for illegal immigration: The government does fine with the acceptable trickle of welcome legal immigrants, but the hurricane of illegals makes them collapse.
Tuesday, May 16. 2006
Bush Offers Unilateral Surrender To Mexico; Vincente Fox To Assume Executive Powers What can I say about last night's speech that hasn't already been said by VFR, Michelle Malkin, or any number of sources...just check out this incredible collection of linked commentary from throughout the blogosphere at Hot Air, virtually all of it negative. Even the New York Times shakes its head in amazement at the fact that it seemed to please no one - not conservatives, who no longer trust Bush, not Democrats, who likewise cannot bring themselves to accept the fact that Bush might be sincere about amnesty (no matter how overwhelming the evidence), nor, apparently, even illegal aliens themselves. The only positive response I saw, apart from those of die-hard Bush apologists, was from the Mexican government - a bad, bad sign indeed. The lies and distortions were too many to note in full, from the insistence that anyone would ever have to leave the country to apply for a green card (contradicted directly by the bill's language, and even by Bush himself just two weeks ago here), to the avoidance of any mention of the truly massive increase in legal immigration under the bill, or the halfhearted deployment of National Guardsmen who will not even have the power to apprehend illegals - an announcement that Lou Dobbs correctly pointed out last night is hardly worthy of central billing in a major address, were it not born purely of political calculation. To avoid closing on too down a note, this is pretty hilarious. Also, for any statistics geeks out there, or really for anyone concerned about the incredible numbers inside the Senate bill, the Heritage Foundation has this amazing study which is a must-read.
 Bush does indeed want to be the First Hispanic President, just as Clinton was referred to as the First Black President.
And Bush is a stubborn guy, if nothing else. Once he makes his mind up, he stays with it. So, besides throwing a few bones to the enforcement-oriented majority of the country, he is sticking with his plan. And plenty of smart guys are with him on this, like Tony Snow and Kristol and others. I do not see their position as pure political calculation, but maybe as secondarily so, because all of these Mexican kids born in the US will be able to vote in just a few years. No, I believe that Bush and others believe it is the right thing to do - the virtual amnesty and all that. At Maggie's Farm we believe in managed, controlled immigration. We are not "a nation of immigrants" - we are a nation descended from immigrants, with, until recently, a small percentage of immigrants. An experiment such as Bush and the Senate propose - a Katrina-force flood of immigration into a settled and reasonably assimilated country - has rarely occcurred in history without force of arms. This is our country, and we do not want to be the guinea pig. If that is "nativist," then fine. Every nation is and must be nativist to a degree, if they value their culture and traditions and their approach to life. I doubt that any citizen would welcome 100 million new immigrant citizens in 20 years. We need to bear in mind that much of the world's population would rather be in the US than where they are, and it's much easier to move than to fix your own country. If someone wants to come to the US, my message is to imitate the US where you live. Linknzona has an analysis of the details of the speech, along with a bit of a rant: Something is seriously wrong. President Bush seems hell bent on putting the interests of Mexico ahead of the interests of the US; he seems hell bent on rewarding criminals at the expense of legal immigrants and US citizens; he seems hell bent on doing anything and everything to further the interests of Mexico and its millions of illegal immigrants; and he seems devoted to this cause beyond all reasoning and understanding.
He also adds this info - everyone needs to be heard, regardless of how they feel: Here is a site where you can email Repub Senators as they consider immigration legislations.
Here is the White House Site, where you can contact the President.
And here is a site where you can register and send free fax messages to all members of Congress and the White House. It is an excellent, personalized, and free site.
Image shamelessly emigrated from here.
Monday, May 15. 2006
It requires Tequila, Dos X, extra worms, plus lime, salt, 
etc. Gateway. It could be the only way to survive Bush's
speech. Why are those things necessary? Because the Pres will propose all of the wrong things. Quote from Michelle's update (quote is from Paul): Paul Mirengoff: "...the Hagel-Martinez legislation would lead to a rapid and fundamental transformation of the social, economic, and political nature of our society. This fact needs to be brought into the open and discussed -- something the bill's supporters seem reluctant to do."
That is for certain, if the 100 million number is accurate. One more comment from NRO (h/t, Driscoll): A political-junkie friend who I can always count on to find the political silver lining if there is one just said to me: "Tonight could be the first fully televised political suicide in history. I don't even want to watch."
I hope Bob did not copyright "wackademia," 
because Maggie's Farm is going to appropriate the
term via eminent domain. Many Boston College profs etc are protesting the selection of Condy Rice as graduation speaker. Why? Because she works in the interests of the USA. While this is clearly political, it is completely bizarre as a rationale, since that is what she is paid to do. I understand where they are coming from - an anti-American, internationalist place in their dreams. But they are so far from the reality of life...they really need some reality therapy. Perhaps 9-11 wasn't sufficient to convince them that there is evil out in the world, and not just in themselves and their evil, evil country. A quote from Adyanthaya's piece on the subject at RCP: The authors of this letter, Theology Department Chair Kenneth Himes and theology professor David Hollenbach, seem to be arguing that any high U.S. official is unfit for a Boston College honorary degree. For what President, Vice President, or Secretary of State would not maintain that “U.S. foreign policy should be based on U.S. national interest”? Himes and Hollenbach betray their anti-American bias by assuming that the U.S national interest is somehow less concerned with “the common good of the entire human family” than is the “international community” interest.
Here's the contradiction: the US government is too evil and too powerful, but it should be the government of the world? Theologians need to stick to their knitting - God is a big enough job for them, or anybody. And the US Government needs to focus on protecting and defending the US - that's a big enough job for anybody, too.
On the day of Bush's speech, Tancredo offers his well-known views at Human Events. A quote: Americans are not in a mood to negotiate the matter of “regularization” for 12 million to 20 million illegal aliens -- and Newt Gingrich has pointed out the amnesty would ultimately legalize up to 36 million -- until they see we have in fact achieved secure borders. Once that is done, once our laws are being enforced, then we can begin to discuss the problem of how to deal with the millions of illegal aliens already living here.
Read it all.
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