On 4 November 1979, when I was 14 years old, a whole bunch of angry Iranian students seized control of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran for the next 444 days (i.e., until 20 January 1980) held hostage 52 citizens of the U.S. Those citizens were held hostage, though technically (being an embassy) on American soil, in Iran.

On Monay, 1 May 2006, we shall, apparently, be held hostage again, here on our own soil this time. If all goes according to the plans of organizers, so many latinos will walk off their jobs and refuse to shop or otherwise patronize business (there are even calls to shut down entire U.S. cities) that America will be brought to her economic knees Edward James Olmos says this will teach us all a lesson. As a consequence, their demands regarding immigration reform shall be met without delay. (Mexican lawmakers have issued a declaration of support for Monday’s boycott, which angers me because of what Mexico would do if a similar stunt were attempted in their country.)

And of all this to live in a country which is a terrible as the Center for American Progress says it is. But I digress.

Now, typically, when one walks off the job one no longer has a job. As I was driving into work this morning I heard an interview with a Chipotle executive. Chipotle has assured its workers that if they walk off the job on Monday they will still have jobs on Tuesday. In fact, restaurant managers have asked employees that if they are planning not to show up for work on Monday they let management know so that staffing arrangements can be made. In other words, “If you’re planning to sodomize me can you let me know in advance?”

Hey, Chipotle! How much is your country worth, you buggers!!!

You can ask both my wife and my mother: all this has taken me off the fence. I have been, inwardly, very friendly to immigrants from the south, legal or illegal, until recently (like when I learned of Los Zetas conducting ops here on our soil). No more. Come here and then try to take me hostage? It may less even than a token, but I celebrated my last Cinco de Mayo last year. Hell, Mexico wouldn’t have had a Cinco de Mayo to celebrate in the first place if not for the help of a country they now want to bring to its knees. (Our history with Mexico is not entirely one of “stealing land” from them. Once our Civil War was over, we began supplying Mexicans with weapons and ammunition, with which, by1867, they finally defeated their French invaders. Invaders. How ironic.)

So what do we do? Normally, I don’t do “movements”: I don’t like fads. But my family and I will be engaging in Super Shop Monday (or whatever it’s called; I heard Laura Ingraham talk about it). Everything we normally do at the weekend, both shopping, eating out, going to movies and so forth, we shall be doing on Monday. Now on one hand that will be fine; businesses should do fine. But service may be lousy. I don’t care. Hell, I’ll serve myself, bag my own groceries, whatever. And I’m xerascaping my yard (just bought a new house). Not that there was ever a worry there. I’m not afraid of tools and machines. Here’s my attitude: I’d rather have lousy service than to be held hostage in my own country, by people who tell me they demand to be exempt from our laws or else.

Oh. One more thing.

ATTENTION WELFARE RECIPIENTS AND LAZY BUMS: WE HAVE NOW REACHED THE POINT AT WHICH GETTING UP OFF YOUR BUTTS AND WORKING A JOB IS TANTAMOUNT TO DEFENDING YOUR COUNTRY. SO, GET UP, GO GET A JOB AND DEFEND YOUR COUNTRY!!!

HOOAH!!!

A tribute to the proud history of Aztlan!!!

In salute of the once-industrious French...

Okay. Now, I’ve heard everything, at least for today.  I’m sure that I just heard Nancy Pelosi say there is a causal relationship between the high prices we’re paying at the pump and the fact that we have two oilmen in the White House.  As fun as it might be two debate Pelosi on the subject of causality, it is more fun to think about another aspect of her logic.  Consider this statement, which I found at her website:

“With skyrocketing gas prices, it is clear that the American people can no longer afford the Republican Rubber Stamp Congress and its failure to stand up to Republican big oil and gas company cronies. Americans this week are paying $2.91 a gallon on average for regular gasoline – 33 cents higher than last month, and double the price than when President Bush first came to office.”

Republican big oil and gas cronies.  One would think that if these oil bastards—I mean, barons—were cronies of the present administration, they would actually be lowering gas prices.  Really.  With friends like these, President Bush wouldn’t need Democrats. For enemies.  If I were an oilman in the White House, and I wanted my party to look good, I’d be talking my oil buddies into driving the price down, not up.
If we’re going to look at causal relations, madam, perhaps we ought to look into whether these oil bastards—barons— are, in reality, Democrats.  Surely there is a causal relationship between the high gas prices and the President’s low approval ratings?
Causal relationship.  Silly woman.  I know a tanker with a 31 GT score who is a better philosopher than you.  What’s the cause of that?

A lot of people who aren’t on some type of welfare like to think that they don’t buy into an entitlement mentality.  Until they get to the fuel pump, at which time they realize that, while they may not be entitled to live off of me, they are entitled to a guaranteed price at the pump.  And they blame the oil companies for depriving them of that to which they are—apparently—entitled.

Pissed off about the price you’re paying at the pump?  Hey, stop blaming me.  Oil companies don’t set the price.  Oil traders set the price; oil companies, like Exxon/Mobile, are little more than middlemen.  And if you don’t know the difference, then you may not know enough to be pissed off at anyone, much less the oil companies.  (And not paying an oil executive $400 million to retire isn’t going to affect your price at the pump.)

But even behind the oil traders is another menace—a phantom menace.  Like the wussie-looking Senator Palpatine, they go round with these long faces wondering, just like us, what can be done about all this.  And, also like him, they work behind the scenes creating the very problem they assure us they are working on—for us.  William Anderson can tell you who’s to blame.  And of course, it’s the people who tell us they intend to get to the bottom of it all:

“[A]lmost all of the anger from consumers — if editorial cartoons are an indication of the direction of the rage — is pointed toward oil companies and their executives. On the other hand, members of Congress, which created this current crisis, are calling for the near-destruction of oil companies, imprisonment of executives, as well as a whole new set of taxes that would further reduce available fuel supplies — all in the name, of course, of lowering gasoline prices.

We cannot put these things into the category of bad policies made by well-meaning people. Instead, we are seeing the attempted destruction of one of the most vital industries in our country to be carried out by incompetent, venal tyrants who have no intention of telling the truth — and we have a cynical media acting as the mouthpiece.

There is a way out of this mess — reinstitute free markets in gasoline and oil — but Congress and the President of the United States, not to mention those who are politically connected, have no intention of permitting the markets to work.”

Now, you may be wondering why I’m telling you to stop blaming me.  It’s simple.  I am big oil: I have a diversified portfolio which includes oil stock.  And I won’t be altering my portfolio any time soon.  Write your congress-person and senator.  Tell them to stop screwing around with the market in an effort to make themselves look important.  If supply and demand were the only two elements at work, your price at the pump would be much lower.  If governments would reduce their take on a gallon of gas sold, your price at the pump would be lower still.  (Or are we going to buy into the anti-democratic-republican notion that there is no such thing as tax gouging?)

Yes, I know the oil companies make billions in profit.  That’s why we are supposed to hate them.  But profit is a measure of what a business makes over and above its costs.  The relevant figure is a percetage, not a dollar amount.  Of what figure, we ought to be asking ourselves, are those billions in profit a percentage?  It does no good to talk about billions in profits if those billions amount to .25% in profit.  I wouldn’t urinate on a fire for a man who would into business with the hope of making a mere .25% in profit.

Finally, no matter what you might think about who’s to blame, repeat this to yourself as many times as necessary until you finally get it:  “I am not entitled to low-cost fuel.”

Or anything else for that matter.

…but we’re taking it all with us.

All right.  You win.  You think this land (i.e., California, Arizona, New Mexico) was stolen from you.  You want us to leave.  Never mind that—among other issues involved in how we ended up with that land—we purchased that land for a total of 25$ million dollars in two land deals (i.e., [1] The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo which concluded a war that you lost, so that we could just have taken the land instead of shelling out $15 million; and [2] The Gadsden Purchase which cost us $10 million).  In todays dollars that amount would be  about $554,457,077.76—almost twice Mexico’s 2005  public debt (which I have calculated to be about somewhere in the neighborhood of $420 million dollars; but I’m willing to stand corrected).  By the way, no one is certain exactly what your politicians did with the money we paid them.

Also, we are not sure who you are.  Are you Native Americans?  And by “us” are we talking about descendants of European invaders?  If so, when you say that you want us to leave, do you also want us to leave Mexico also?  We have fellow Europeans (i.e., “criollos”) in Mexico.  Do you want them to leave also?  I mean, they too are thieves.  (And Spaniards comprise only 10 percent of your population and own just about everything. [My source for that comment is Terrence Haverlock, who teaches Geopolitics at the U.S. Air Force Academy, Mike Rosen Show, 3d hour, KOA-AM, Denver, Colorado, 25 April 2006.]  No wonder they want you to come up here!)

Some of us are not too sure where we should go back to.  Should I go back to Spain, Scotland, Norway, England?  Those of us who are half-breeds—where should we go?  Perhaps I am just latino enough to be permitted to remain.  Can my non-latino wife remain?  What about our children?

Finally, we don’t understand your claim to this land.  Given that you are coming here from Mexico and claiming this land as yours, you must be claiming that this land rightly belongs to Mexico.  But Mexico’s claim on this land was inherited from Spain.  The people who lived in the area now known as Mexico had no claims to this land before the Spaniards arrived.  Mexico acquired a claim to this land by conquest (i.e., by defeating Spain in a war for independence).  We also acquired a claim to this land by conquest (i.e., by defeating Mexico in a war).  (Some conquest.  The conqueror pays the conquored for the privilege of taking the territory he has won.  That’s just like a white guy, isn’t it?)  If it is wrong for us to have this land by conquest, then it must be so for you as well.  (Why didn’t you give it back to Spain?  They had it before you did.)  So we don’t think you have a claim to this land.  It belonged to others even before it belonged to Mexico or Spain.  I am not sure which country’s flag should be flying here.  But I know this: if the U.S. flag shouldn’t be flying here, neither should Mexico’s.

But never mind all that now.  You want us to leave.  Let’s say we do just that.

We leave.  You get your land back.

And just to be fair, we should leave it as close to the way we found it as we possibly can.  I mean, really, if you want your land back, you must want it in the condition it was in before we took it.  After all, you had a different kind of culture, a different kind of life.  Surely, you want that life back.  And you can’t have that life if we leave all our stuff here.

So, we will take everything with us.  There were no paved roads here before we got here.  So,  since you obviously want to live the way you did before we got here and started building stuff—like paved roads, we will remove those pesky roads for you.  The automobile too.  All those houses in Beverly Hills?  Gone.  Movie production companies?  Gone.  Recording labels?  Gone.  Radio and television stations?  Gone.  Sea World and Disney World?  Gone.  Power plants, skyscrapers, ports and military installations?  Gone.  Airports and railroad stations?  Gone (including the planes and the trains).  Bridges?  Gone (I mean, as long as we’re undoing the roads, right?).  Schools?  Gone (including universities, well the public ones anyway).  Wineries?  Gone.  All those tech companies?  Gone.  Everything that we brought with us, we will take with us when we leave.  It’s only the right thing to do, right?  Leaving it the way you had it set up before we took it all from you?  We shall return it to its pristine condition—the way you were living on it before we tore it all up.

I know that you will want to say that actually we should leave it to you the way it now is because you did all the real work of building it.  (Of course, that would not have happened but for our money, which we obviously had before we got here.)  But think of what you’re saying:  we made you tear up your land.  It just wouldn’t be fair for us to leave it the way we screwed it all up.  It’s okay.  We don’t mind cleaning it all up when we leave.

It’s the right thing to do.

We all know how Mexico thinks we should treat illegal immigrants, or at least illegal immigrants coming in from Central and South America.  But it is interesting to take note of how Mexico treats illegals coming in from its south.  While Mexico complains about our threat to make being here illegally a crime, this is precisely what Mexico has done.  Being in Mexico illegally is a felony.  Someone who commits a felony is called a felon; a felon is a criminal.  So, while illegals here object to being called criminals for being here; Mexico has no hesitation to do just that.  Do these illegals (and not all illegals are Mexicans) know that Mexico does what they object to us doing?

It makes you wonder (doesn’t it?) why illegals in Mexico don’t protest Mexico’s treatment of them.  Do you think we shall see illegal Guatemalan immigrants marching and waving the flag of Guatemala on Mexican soil?  I don’t think so: they know what Mexico will do to them.  Actually, Mexico (in the sense of any element of the government, federal, state or local) probably won’t have to lift a finger; the citizens on the street will deal with a Guatemala-flag-waving-illegal-protesting-immigrant!  And it won’t be pretty.

So why aren’t they afraid to wave their flag here?  It is because they have been emboldened by organizations like La Raza and others who feed them the line of garbage that this is their country after all, and the Mexican flag ought to be waving over it.  And also, they are likely convinced that we, unlike Mexico, are a nation of feminized sissies who won’t do anything about it because we are too afraid of them.  But I covered that briefly in a previous post.

Here is an article—Colin Nickerson (Boston Globe Staff), "A lesson in immigration:
Guest worker experiments transformed Europe," 19 April 2006—to which Laura Ingraham links on her website.  It outlines problems that Germany, France and the Netherlands are having with the “guest worker” programs.  No matter what proponents may say, such a program is not a good idea.

Look, assimilation is a must.  Through the process of assimilation immigrants’ descendants become, well, native.  They eventually, unless multiculturalists are successful, adopt the culture of their new country.  This also means adopting the cultural motif.  And here in the Undocumented States of America, that motif is Judeo-Christian.  But never mind that for now.

Many people understand the problem and the importance of assimilation.  But Robert J. Samuelson has a good article,  "Conspiracy Against Assimilation" which was in the Washington Post yesterday (20 April 2006).  This is what the first paragraph says:

It's all about assimilation -- or it should be. One of America's glories is that it has assimilated many waves of immigrants. Outsiders have become insiders. But it hasn't been easy. Every new group has struggled: Germans, Irish, Jews and Italians. All have encountered economic hardship, prejudice and discrimination. The story of U.S. immigration is often ugly. If today's wave of immigration does not end in assimilation, it will be a failure. By this standard, I think the major contending sides in the present bitter debate are leading us astray. Their proposals, if adopted, would frustrate assimilation.

I wish I could have written that article.  If only I had the time; but work must intrude upon pleasure, at least these days.

The bottom line is this.  We already have a guest worker program, indeed it’s more properly called “an uninvited guest” worker program.  But having any kind of guest worker program is just inconsistent with our national priciples.  Guests, as such, will be definition always be outsiders.  Guests never become part of the family, even when you tell them to make themselves at home.  For example, guests residing in your house when you die aren’t entitled to an inheritance.  And any guest who insisted on being included in the will would be seen as morally bankrupt, doubly so if he were an uninvited guest.  Right?

You may recall that I cited an article by Mark Krikorian, previously.  Well, I received this e-mail announcement concerning illegal immigration, specifically on the question of whether we can actually get them out of our country.

[FYI: A new cost analysis of a strategy of attrition of the illegal population through immigration law enforcement. -- Mark Krikorian] ATTRITION THROUGH ENFORCEMENT Government's Own Data Show Point to a Cost-Effective Strategy Contact: Jessica Vaughan, (202) 466-8185 WASHINGTON (April 2006) -- Proponents of mass legalization of the illegal alien population often justify this radical step by suggesting that the only alternative – a broad campaign to remove illegal aliens by force – is unworkable. One study fancifully suggested that the cost of such a deportation strategy would be $206 billion over the next five years. But mass forced removal is not the only alternative to mass legalization. A third way is to seek attrition of the illegal population through law enforcement, encouraging illegal aliens to give up and leave of their own accord. A new analysis from the Center for Immigration Studies uses a variety of federal government data to demonstrate that such a strategy of attrition, combined with a stronger border security effort such as the administration's Secure Border Initiative (SBI), can significantly reduce the size of the illegal alien population at a reasonable cost. The report, by CIS Senior Policy Analyst Jessica Vaughan, finds that, according to the government's own cost estimates, an attrition strategy could cut the illegal population by nearly half in five years, with an additional investment of less than $2 billion, or $400 million per year – an increase of less than 1 percent of the President's 2007 budget request for the Department of Homeland Security ($42.7 billion). The report, ''Attrition Through Enforcement: A Cost-Effective Strategy to Shrink the Illegal Population,'' is on line at http://www.cis.org/articles/2006/back406.html and includes the following additional findings: * Elements of an attrition strategy would include: mandatory workplace verification of immigration status; measures to curb misuse of Social Security and IRS identification numbers; partnerships with state and local law enforcement officials; expanded entry-exit recording under US-VISIT; increased non-criminal removals; and state and local laws to discourage illegal settlement. * An attrition strategy could reduce the illegal population by as many as 1.5 million illegal aliens each year. Currently, only about 183,000 illegal aliens per year depart without the intervention of immigration officials, according to DHS statistics. * Persuading illegals to leave of their own accord works faster and is cheaper than a borders-only approach to immigration law enforcement. For example, under the controversial NSEERS program launched after 9/11, DHS removed roughly 1,500 illegally-resident Pakistanis; over the same time period, in response to the registration requirements, about 15,000 illegal Pakistani immigrants left the country on their own. * Requiring employers to verify the status of workers could deny jobs to about three million illegal workers in three years, affecting at least one-third of the illegal population. This measure is a central feature of H.R. 4437, the enforcement measure passed by the House of Representatives in December, and is estimated to cost just over $400 million over five years. * The Internal Revenue Service knows the name, address, and place of employment of millions of illegal aliens, and issues hundreds of millions of dollars in tax refunds and tax credits to illegal aliens. Changing the laws to provide for information-sharing would help boost immigration law enforcement at minimal cost. * US-VISIT border registration program is a critical tool in curbing illegal immigration. Screening must be expanded to include Mexicans and Canadians, and DHS must move forward to deploy an exit-recording system. These steps should be a prerequisite to adding or expanding any visa program. * Less than 10 percent of the investigative resources of the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) are devoted to fraud, workplace violations, and overstayers. DHS could double non-criminal removals at a cost of roughly $120 million per year, balancing a ''broken windows'' approach with its current triage approach to interior enforcement. * Laws enacted by the state governments of Florida and New York to prevent illegal immigrants from obtaining driver's licenses have induced more illegal aliens to leave than have federal enforcement efforts against certain illegal populations in those states, and have come at virtually no cost to the federal government. # # # To unsubscribe from this list, send a message to center@cis.org with REMOVE in the subject line. ---------------------------------------- Center for Immigration Studies 1522 K St. NW, Suite 820 Washington, DC 20005 (202) 466-8185 / fax: (202) 466-8076 center@cis.org / www.cis.org ----------------------------------------

So there I was. Listening to the Michael Medved show yesterday.  Only Michael wasn’t there.  The substitute host, whose name I cannot now recall, asked for legal immigrants to call him up and talk about the proposed legislation.

One of these callers really ticked me off.  He boldly admitted that one of the reasons he came here (legally) was precisely to help bring about the state of affairs we face.  He went on to say, among other things, that Americans don’t have the stomach or the backbone to defend our borders, and he is happy to this all going on.  In short, his coming here was, as far as I’m concerned, an act of war in his mind.

This guest host assured him that Americans don’t respond well to threats.  That may be so.  But we know that the reason these illegals come here the way they do must be because they think that we do, in fact, lack the backbone to do something about it.  Think about it: if they thought that we’d actually do something about it, would they protest in our streets, waving the flag of the nation to which their loyalties so abviously belong?   As we used to say when I was a kid:  You don’t toy with someone whom you think can do something about it.  Think about: whose space got invaded when you were in school?  The wimp’s, right?  You don’t mess with the 800 pound gorilla.  Illegals just are not afraid to be here illegally.

And so far, Congress seems to me to be confirming this guy’s conviction that we do lack the required backbone.

I agree whole-heartedly with this guest host’s assertion that the Undocumented States of America will be in a border war with Mexico inside a handful of years.

On the same topic, Denver station KAO-AM interviewed several of the students who protested yesterday.  (You can read the Denver Post story here.)   One of them, a high school student named Juan told interviewers that he was protesting because, “We are not criminals and we need to have our rights too, because we are people.”  Now that’s logic.  He is entitled to the rights of citizens recognized by our Constitution simply because he’s a human being.  Well heck, on that logic, who isn’t entitled to be treated like a legal citizen of the US?  Fine. Let’s not wait for them to come here.  Let’s just declare all of the earth’s inhabitants to be US citizens, with all the rights and privileges (but none of the  responsibilities) thereunto appertaining!  Now, we can go do something about the ethnic cleansing in the Sudan, right?  And no one needs to ask anymore where we get off being the world’s police force.  As far as I’m concerned our role (as Juan would have) as the world’s sugar daddy gives us the role as world’s police force.  It’s the Golden Rule:  The one dispensing the gold makes—and enforces—the rules.  (One begins to understand why teenagers aren’t allowed to vote, despite being able to shoot and kill people, and have babies.  As Aristotle pointed out (in his Nicomachean Ethics), they just are not mature enough to engage in philosophical, and hence, policy discussions.  And given that adolescense in the Undocumented States of America doesn’t effectively end until around age twenty-five, maybe we should adjust the voting age accordingly.  But of course we’d have to rely upon those younger than 25 to go along with that.

Previously, while criticizing the French, I made mention of the lower value placed on child-raising.  I made the claim that


[A]assuming secularism makes a genuine offer, a commitment to all that you can have and be, here and now tends to make you a bit self-centered and very much inclined to make peace under whatever terms are offered you as long as your own personal peace and affluence are promised and protected.  The fewer children you have, the more for you.


I don’t like to make claims like that without presenting at least a scintilla of evidence.  So right on cue, MSN.com helps me out.  Here's an article, by M. P. Dunleavey ("Kids: Bad investments, big returns," MSN Money Central. Cited 12 April 2006.) that discusses the cost, to parents, of having children.

Here are a few quotes illustrating my point:


While the benefits of marriage, in terms of health, longevity, resistance to depression and even greater wealth, have been demonstrated repeatedly, the effect of children on your quality of life or well-being isn't so clear.  A study of 13,017 adults published last month in the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, found that parents experience significantly higher levels of depression than nonparents.  And in a now-famous study published in the journal Science, in 2004, when researchers asked 909 women in Texas to record the events of a single day and rate how much they enjoyed various activities, spending time with their kids didn't even crack the top five, which were: sex, socializing, relaxing, praying or meditating and eating.


That’s a bit negative.  Here a positive:

Derry-Williams has made it his specialty to keep up with research in the field of economics and happiness. "In the short term, if you look at the dollar value you lose, it can be substantial -- but at the same time, it's like an ongoing, lifelong investment in happiness," he says.

But whether anything said in the article is positive or negative, as you read it, ask yourself one question.  What’s the focus?  The answer is, of course: the Self of the person contemplating child-raising.  On one hand we have the costs—to the Self.  When we get to talking about the benefits, we are talking about the benefits to the Self.  Note the quote from Derry-Williams, above.  He talks about a “lifelong investment in happiness.”  Isn’t that wonderful?  But note that he’s talking about the parent’s happiness—here and now.

Happiness.  Here.  Now.  That’s what I said that secularism promises.  Children optional—depending upon how happy you calculate they can make you.  (Dunleavy writes another article, "Cost of being a stay-at-home-mom: $1 million," which, like the article I’m presently discussing, has its ups and downs but shares the same focus: the cost to the Self of parenthood.)

This raises the question about my own feelings on the matter.  And the truth is that when I was a secularist I had no interest in having children; neither did I have an interest in marriage.  For one thing, I knew I would have a problem with the whole parental authority thing.  When I was a kid and became an atheist, I also became—of course—an evolutionist.  One problem I always had with my parents was their—to my mind—silly conviction that their decision to spawn me gave them authority over me.  I never could see how they got authority over me just by copulating.  How can an accident of birth have such a ridiculous significance?  (What about the “consent of the governed”?)  Also, I wasn’t sure how committed I should be to be to the continuation of the human race.  If the race continued, it could, and no doubt would, do so just as well without my “output” as with it.  And to whatever extent I did believe that the human race should continue, I thought test-tube babies were the best way to go, the way of the future; so it didn’t matter at all.

Back to my point, then, about the French.  They, like the articles I’ve cited here, are secular in outlook.  The people they are relying upon to populate their country are not secular in outlook.  Like me (a Christian—a Reformed Catholic, to be specific) they believe that the purpose of a human being is to glorify God and that one of the ways that one does so is by having children.  After all, according to the Christian faith, humans are the image of God; multiplying that image on the face of the earth is a good thing.  And it requires selflessness, which is a form of courage. And courage is something which many of the French seem to lack—at least from this far away.

Laura Ingraham links to this article by Mark Krikorian, “Not Just Mexicans: Guest-workers open doors to a whole new world.” (National Review Online. 11 April 2006.) It’s an insightful article. Here’s a quote from it:

[O]nce foreign workers no longer have to sneak in, and are instead shipped here by labor-recruitment companies, Mexico’s advantage disappears. Cheap airfares and easy communications guarantee that employers will start looking farther afield for workers even cheaper and more compliant that Mexicans.Mexico’s per capita income, in purchasing-power terms, is nearly $10,000 a year — putting it near the top of the developing world.

Egypt, on the other hand, is home to nearly 80 million people who make less than half the average Mexican. India and Indonesia together have 1.3 billion people with one-third the average Mexican’s income. And Pakistan and Bangladesh together have more than 300 million people with less than one-quarter the average Mexican’s income.

And how much of Iraq’s working-age population would leap at the chance to get out, regardless of the wages offered?

That’s a lot of “willing workers” who will work cheaper than Mexicans.

Yup. He’s right. It’s the dirty little secret that our politicians don’t want to share with our benevolent invaders (after all they are doing us a whole lot of favors by building our houses and highways, scrubbing our toilets and picking our vegetables): “[There are] a lot of ‘willing workers’ who will work cheaper than Mexicans.”

Or maybe it’s not a secret. Maybe those boneheads just haven’t thought that far ahead. After all, the problem Krikorian writes about won’t arise until well after the next election.

I was just listening to the news on the radio. The mayor of Los Angeles wants to remind America that this country was built on the backs of immigrants. I hate that line of garbage, for implicit within it is the proposition that some body of non-immigrants made some other body, the immigrants, do all the work. As we all know, there is no one here who is not an immigrant; by which I mean to include those who are the descendants of immigrants.

In addition to making—wilfully, I suspect—the same mistake that Tony Snow and others have made (that is, missing the point) by speaking of immigration per se as opposed to illegal immigration, Villarigosa makes another mistake. Villarigosa speaks of this country. A country is, among other things, a geographical entity; as a geographical entity, a country has borders. For all practical purposes, Villarigosa seems to want this country to continue without borders. Which is as much as to say that he wishes this country not to continue. (It’s about semantics and logical implications. Being a poltician, Villarigosa probably spends some time thinking about rhetorical flourish, but not a whole lot about logical implications, apparently.)

You can have doctors without borders. But you can’t have countries without borders. After all, countries are defined by their borders; doctors are defined by their medical credentials.

Besides, if there were countries without borders, what would we could call them?

Hmmmm. Welcome to the Undocumented States of America. No rules. Just rights.

Came across this gem by Mark Steyn on Friday.  It’s a good article.  From his last paragraph:

Recounting the Muslim march on France 1,300 years ago, Gibbon writes:

"The decline of the French monarchy invited the attack of these insatiate fanatics. The descendants of Clovis had lost the inheritance of his martial and ferocious spirit; and their misfortune or demerit has affixed the epithet of lazy to the last kings of the Merovingian race. They ascended the throne without power, and sunk into the grave without a name. . . . The vineyards of Gascony and the city of Bordeaux were possessed by the sovereign of Damascus and Samarcand; and the south of France, from the mouth of the Garonne to that of the Rhone, assumed the manners and religion of Arabia."  (Links added.)

Hmmm.  “Religion of Arabia.”  Wonder who Gibbon was writing about.

I’m in a playful mood, so let’s update Gibbon:

"The decline of the French monarchy and all subsequent republics has invited the attack of these insatiable Islamofascist fanatics. The descendants of the Franks long ago lost that original warrior spirit that once made them a world empire; and this has resulted in their being written off as weak, whimpy, whiny, and whipped—in short, wussies.  (What American, except for Liberals, doesn’t think of “French” as synonymous with “sissy”?)  Gutless wonders, they stand as they do because those whom they are tempted to disregard as barbarians have bailed them out of two world wars.  This, no doubt their last, Republic will end without even so much as a whimper when it is replaced by a new Sultanate.  Their youth will no doubt accept the rule and religion of Arabia as long as those rulers will promise not to allow their employers to fire them or extend the work week to longer than 30 hours." – Philologous Lector

(Now, pardon me while I rant a bit.)

Sadly, I doubt the French will see a Charles Martel rise to their defense.  But one good thing may come out the death of France.  There are those who will tell us that the goal of Muslim conquest is a phantasm.  As we watch France die, we’ll see whether or not this is true.  If the Republic of France is not replaced in a few decades by an Islamic Sultanate then we will know that it is true.  But if so?  On my view, for whatever it’s worth, France is already dead; the French just haven’t accepted it.  Yet.

And it’s sad because the solution to their dissolution is (pardon me for being graphic) right between their legs, literally and figuratively.  The French can regain much of what they have lost if they will do three things: (1) embrace the orthodox Christian faith of their forebears; (2) copulate like rabbits and raise families (as opposed to fornicating like porn stars and discarding the results); and (3) actually work hard for a living.

The second two are obvious enough I suppose, but why would I recommend the first?  Because Islam is a faith system and, for all that I oppose about it, it demands strength of will of its adherents.  What ails France right now is its secularism; and I mean secularism as a faith system, not in the simple sense of an approach to the relation of church and state.  What secularism promises is the only life one gets here and now.  It may sound like a whole lot, but it isn’t.  And those people than whom secularists think they are smarter see that secularism offers them nothing, even less than nothing, less than a handful of pebbles.  Enter post-modernism.

But assuming secularism makes a genuine offer, a commitment to all that you can have and be, here and now tends to make you a bit self-centered and very much inclined to make peace under whatever terms are offered you as long as your own personal peace and affluence are promised and protected.  The fewer children you have, the more for you.  And once child-raising is out of the picture there isn’t much reason to bother about marriage.  Loyalties shift, the primary loyalty being not to one’s nation but to one’s self.  A nation is in many respects an extended family whose members, by and large, bear allegiance to one another; when marriage and family decline, a nation degenerates into a collection of selves that begins to feed on itself, thus losing the ability to provide for its continued existence.  France’s continued existence depends upon reproduction.

This is why France will not continue as a Republic.  Presently, France must depend upon foreign nationals to populate her, because her own people have effectively achieved zero population growth.  Zero.  Null. No population growth means zero population life.   France is dead.  Those who are populating France, both by immigration and procreation, are, by virtue of being Muslims, a network of families with its own allegiances—a nation within a nation.  And that nation within a nation is a Muslim nation; and that nation’s allegiances, though in some respects similar, are not identical with the (secular) allegiances of the nation currently calling itself France.

Of course, what the French probably tell themselves is that all this is just proof of their tolerance and open-mindedness.  We have overcome the narrow allegiance to nation and state and have embraced all humanity, they might say.  To me, that sounds like what a cuckolded husband would say in response to his wife’s constant and repeated infidelities, instead of just confessing that he hasn’t got the stones to satisfy his wife—or to cut her loose if she won’t toe the fidelity line.

As any man knows: You’ve got to have—and know how to use— the right tool for the job.

Within just moments after I sent my previous post, a caller to Mike Rosen's show informed him and his guest that her daughter had been sent home just for wearing a T-shirt which has “U.S. Marines” written on it.  Why?  Because such a shirt makes a political statement.

Following up on my previous post, I just heard a caller to Laura Ingraham's show make this point:  Once the illegal immigrants are given permanent resident status or citizenship, they are going to want better jobs.  They will be (even if only for practical purposes) Americans; therefore they will no longer want to do those jobs-that-Americans-won’t-do.  

Who is going to do those jobs then?

This caller, by the way, is a naturalized U.S. citizen who immigrated from Senegal.

In other news and speaking again of  flags:

By the laws of the state in which I live, every person has the right to display the US flag, to include wearing the flag on his person.  This state recognizes that this first amendment right extends to students at school.  Two public schools have taken it upon themselves to prohibit students from doing so.  Despite the fact that they have been informed that they are breaking the law, these two schools are digging in.  (Did I neglect to mention that the schools are breaking the laws?)  Students are being sent home for even wearing clothing in the colors red, white and blue.  There will more than likely be court action necessary to “motivate” the schools to obey the law.

But, when you think about it.  If Mexicans and other South Americans don’t have to obey our immigration laws, why should we expect anyone—even, or perhaps, especially, citizens—to obey any law?  Lawlessness begets lawlessness.

Still thinking about illegal immigration, one of the arguments that I hear and have to take issue with is the one which asserts that these illegals don’t take jobs from Americans because they do jobs that Americans won’t do.  I keep trying to figure out which jobs these may be.  But it doesn’t really matter.  The simple fact is that illegal immigrants aren’t here to satisfy our needs; they are not here to do us any favors.  They are here because they cannot find work in their home country (you know, the country whose flag they fly while demanding that we give them certain rights).  And the jobs they do are not jobs that Americans won’t do, but jobs that Americans don’t have to do, for various reasons.

I’ll deal with the easiest reason first.  Many of these jobs are jobs that Americans don’t have to do because they have options other than work.  First, they can get themselves on welfare, for various reasons, excuses, whatever.  Second, they can live well by engaging in illegal activites like drug trafficking.

On the other hand, we have those Americans who don’t do these jobs-that-Americans-won’t-do because they have other work options.  Let’s take me.  (Like most humans, I am one of my favorite subjects.  Unlike most humans, I freely admit it.) Some of the jobs-that-Americans-won’t-do are in the building trades and food service, in both of which I have worked.

When I was a kid, I did some construction work; I didn’t like it.  Not because it was beneath me, but because it just didn’t interest me.  I had other options, so I took them.  And I have more options now than I did back then.  So, instead of constructing a building, I could design one.  If that building that I designed were a church, I could—this is no joke—pastor it (that is, if a had a calling in that direction, which I don’t).  If that building were part of a school, I could teach in it (but for the fact that I don’t have a teaching certificate; never went for it, don’t care to, but the point is I could).  If that building were a college lecture hall, I could lecture in it.  If that building were a restaurant—again, no joke—I could manage it.

I do not do those jobs-that-Americans-won’t-do not because I am too good for them; I am not.  Besides, I have done many of them.  No, the reason I do not do those jobs, is that my present socio-economic status gives me other options; and I have taken those options, just like these illegals would if they were in my shoes.  I don’t do those jobs because I don’t want the pay cut involved; and neither would illegal immigrants if they were in my shoes.

And this is not true because of some mystical substance called White Privilege.  I wouldn’t know White Privilege if it jumped out of the ground and bit me in my buttocks.  For one thing, although I am so fair complected as to pass for white, thanks to a lot of interracial marriage on my mother’s side, I have always identified more with my hispanic background, than with my Norwegian and Scotish; after all, Spanish was my first language.  On every occasion possible I have found a way to make clear to people around me that I am hispanic.  So anyone willing to grant me White Privilege would hardly have been disposed to grant me that after I identified myself as being of hispanic background.  Moreover, my hispanic father rose to a rather high—and I do mean high—rank in federal service (which federal service I won’t identify of course; everything about me is classified—bit it wasn’t the Postal Service!).  For another thing, talk of White Privilege is ad hominem; and as such, it can falsify no proposition whatsoever.

I can imagine that if my dead ancestors from both streams of my heritage could see me and my siblings and cousins they would look at us and at each other and say,  “Who could ever think that our descendents could have such opportunities?”  My siblings and cousins are some of the first in our families’ histories to have graduate level educations, to own our own homes before retirement, and to be able to say, “No, I won’t take that job because I can’t afford the pay cut.”  And that is something that very few—if any—of our ancestors could ever have said.

Jobs that Americans won’t do?  Creo que no.  (I don’t think so.)  Jobs we don’t have to  do—because we have other, higher-paying, options.

But isn’t all that just another way of saying that, in fact, these are jobs that we won’t do?  Sure.  But two things need to be said about that.  First, the assertion that These are jobs that Americans won’t do seems to imply that these are jobs that Americans think that they are too good to, but Mexicans are not.  My point is that, while there may be those Americans who feel that way—probably liberals, society’s Guardians (in the Platonic sense), the greatest reason “we” aren’t doing those jobs is because “we” don’t need to in order to make a living.  Second, there are Americans who would do those jobs if there were not effectively being paid not to work.  If they were truly in the same (jobless, welfare-less) conditions as illegals, we would probably be surprised at the sort of jobs Americans will do.  Both of which are just two ways of restating my argument: these are jobs that, for whatever reasons, Americans don’t have to do because they have other options.