It just keeps getting better and better:
Lawmakers who want to extend health coverage to illegal immigrants will not block the passage of the final health care reform bill so long as the White House offers a substantive promise to start pushing comprehensive immigration legislation this year.
Democrats who want a comprehensive bill that reforms immigration law but also offers a pathway to citizenship have threatened to vote against health care if illegals aren’t included in the new system, making immigration one of the sticking points as Democratic leaders negotiate the final details.
Democratic leadership aides believe that a firm White House promise of a comprehensive immigration bill will be enough to quell any House dissent.
These folks are so deeply out of touch with tax paying middle America that they simply don’t get – or don’t care – how antagonizing this confluence of identity politics and pocket book plundering is. I’m sympathetic to the economic migrants, I really am. I’ve been places where no one should have to exist, watched people try to eke out a miserable existence on the pickings left over from the trash of their wealthier countrymen. And they largely do work that US-born citizens would shun – or at least, they would have done back when double digit unemployment had not become routine.
But their very presence here is evidence of a federal crime, and here we are with the federal government promising to incentivize that criminal behavior on the backs of the productive class of citizens who were either born here or immigrated legally.
What a goat rope.
Any parallels here?
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”
OldT6Flyer,
I particularly like this passage from that revolutionary document you quoted (emphasis mine)
“…But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security…”
I like some of the commentary showing the mindset of the time:
And, from a more contemporary source:
“Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victim may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated, but those who torment us for our own good
will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” — C.S. Lewis
Would that they’d post your quotes in every high school of our nation!
“You can either take your hand out of my pocket or have it snapped off. Choose.”
That is because most of them have spent their adult life being coddled by some political machine. Look at the Big Three from CA – Queen Nancy, DiFi, and Babs. All products of the San Franciso Burton Machine, all quite wealthy, all have spent almost all of their adult lives wrapped up in leftist cause politics.
There was a time when the Democratic Party did support the middle class and the individual. But for the past 30 years or so, has been nothing but an advocacy program for fringe left causes, caring about groups but not individuals.
Sadly, these people ARE in touch with the people I grew up around and went to high school and college with in LA. And probably most of the other major cities. The leftist indoctrination in the schools has gone very far and seemingly unnoticed, at least in the regard that no one really seems willing to do anything about it on the right and in the center. The left is playing strategy, and winning the culture, while the right plays tactics and occasionally wins a pyrrhic victory at the ballot box.
If the government is going to be heavily involved in education we need to get away from the Deweyian-Freireian “learning to learn” and “pedagogy of the oppressed” paradigm in primary through college education and get back to at least a western civilization focused, curriculum-based education. E. D. Hirsch Jr, himself a Democrat but no leftist, lays out the kind of education suitable for a republic that can establish itself in the minds of generation after generation. Once people stop believing in the Constitution (largely because they don’t know its history and why it was created) it ceases to have any meaning, as would seem to be the case now, tragically. As Reagan said, tyranny is always one generation away. My generation has been the least well educated and most indoctrinated in some time, and I fear what happens when the people I went to school with start voting in larger numbers. For them Obama is their ideal, and for stupid little meaningless multi-cultural reasons such as the fact that his middle name IS Hussein . . .
There you have it in a nutshell – “major cities.” People out of touch with the history and culture of our Republic. And who then, when challenged by moderates and conservatives on things scream “racist” or “mysogynist” or “homophobe.” And this puts the moderates and conservatives on the defensive trying to justify their stances. No one wants to be seen as intolerant, even when they know that there are some things that should not be tolerated, but unable to voice their objections without sounding like a loon.
We need to take control of the language of the debate. Not “gun rights” but “civil rights” or “constitutional rights.” Not “separation of church and state” but “free exercise.” (you are free to believe or not, your choice, please allow me the same freedom to follow my beliefs). Once we get some rational language back, things will fall into place.
Joe
Absolutely. Know I’ve said it before but it is no coincidence (and no joke) that Noam Chomsky is a linguist and Saul Alinsky spends a lot of ink and effort on language.
Frank Luntz might just be the light at the end of the tunnel for common sense on this one, but he alone is not enough
These folks are so deeply out of touch with tax paying middle America that they simply don’t get – or don’t care – how antagonizing this confluence of identity politics and pocket book plundering is. I’m sympathetic to the economic migrants, I really am. I’ve been places where no one should have to exist, watched people try to eke out a miserable existence on the pickings left over from the trash of their wealthier countrymen.
Hang out on leftist blogs for a while and what you’ll find is that “these folks” believe that the reason why there is such a vast disparity between the rich and the poor in the areas that the economic migrants come from is U.S. foreign policy. In other words, they think it’s our fault that Mexico and other such countries are the way they are and that justice therefore demands that we admit anyone from there that want to come.
And they largely do work that US-born citizens would shun – or at least, they would have done back when double digit unemployment had not become routine.
Whenever someone tells me “They do jobs Americans won’t do”, I tell them “You forgot to complete the sentence. They do jobs Americans won’t do for what the companies who hire them want to pay.” Raise the pay and Americans will do the job. If you have to raise the pay so high that customers won’t pay the price to have the job done, then I guess we don’t need the job done.
Think about it. You’ve got people washing dishes for minimum wage. One person can wash a lot of dishes. How much will you have to raise the price in a restaurant if you have to pay the dishwashers an extra few bucks an hour? And if it costs twice as much to keep your corporate HQ’s front lawn pristine, maybe you should just let the grass grow. Funny how the left always decries the evil corporations short-changing the working man but abandon that stance when it comes to admitting illegal aliens into the country.
And probably most of the other major cities.
Cities – and there are more people living in cities than not in this country now – have what I suspect is a majority of people who are dependent on the government. I define “dependent on the government” as both people who are dependent on welfare or other payments from the government AND people who get a paycheck from the government. People dependent on the government will vote for policies wherein the government will take money from people who are not dependent on the government and give it to them. At least in States with big cities, such people I believe now outnumber people who are not dependent onthe government.
RonF
I’m not exactly sure why (although I have my intuitions) but cities are liberal and countrysides are conservative. If the right wants to remain relevant they need to figure out a conservative message that works for the people who live in cities. I think Europe’s being more progressive than us has a lot to do with them being even more urbanized. But we’re getting there.
These are trends and from history probably natural impulses, but I don’t think they are deterministic impulses. I’m pretty sure Houston, Dallas, Ft. Worth as examples are still relatively conservative.
The suburbs of Dallas are conservative if to the north or west of city center. The south and east – not so much. Wanna guess where the majority of the illegals live or those strung out on the welfare narcotic?
You mean all the illegals aren’t out ice-skating at the Galleria?
No just car-jacking the SUVs as they leave the parking lot….
He who proposes to rob Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the whole-hearted support of Paul.
“…But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security…”
Juvat – that is my favorite quote from the Declaration. It is what our founding fathers fought and died for. And what our government is doing to us now is what they fought against all those years ago.
Was cut off a talk radio show here in Santa Cruz the other day. I simply called the host a disciple of Alinsky et al as he ridiculed me for mentioning some of things in this thread.
Made me feel good.
√6, 9, 12, and 3. We’re surrounded.
These arrogant bastards in the Congress and White House aren’t out of touch- they are elitist prigs and don’t care what the people really think- power and the radical left agenda are what it is all about.
Illegal immigration = tens of millions of Democrat votes purchased with Republican tax money.
“In the carboniferous epoch, we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing the selected Peter, to pay the collective Paul…” RK