The endearing image of Chuck Norris on a hoverboat in the Everglades, shooting it out with the Russian terrorists, has never left me. Patrick Swayze and Charlie Sheen kicked ass when the Reds and the Cubans teamed up and nuked most of the major targets in America. Bittersweet, though, when the Russian gunship mows down C. Thomas Howell and the movie ends with Jed Eckert carrying his dead brother to the frozen playground. Cold war terrorism was a big theme for post adolescents like myself in the mid 80's. I used to lose sleep to dreams of Jason Robards' slowly melting face. But that was then, and this is now.
Now Americans don't fear any kind of conventional invasion of our shores. In fact they don't seem to fear any kind of invasion; but we have already been violated. They've been throwing this figure of 12 million around the past couple of weeks, but who counted? I would figure it at a much higher number than that. We're holding a half a million in our prison system. I forget how much it costs to house an inmate but it's something on par with what I clear in a year of full-time toiling for our local government. Who are these people? They're largely Mexican and other South American Hispanic peoples who cross on our southern border. They come here to pick strawberries, work construction, operate the car wash, congest emergency rooms, overrun public schools, and provide authentic cuisine (not in that order). Mostly uneducated, mostly unskilled, and mostly hardworking and friendly, these folks have spun themselves into a pretty good niche in our society. It's a good enough niche that they feel entitled to certain rights that have never been granted to non-citizens, at least not officially. The pols are arguing right now about how to make it official.
While I'm not happy with the immigration issue and how our elected officials have dealt with it since the last major legislation in the mid 80's, it's not even the river of thousands of Hispanic people that flows into California, Arizona, and Texas every day that truly worries me. It's the small trickle of men that look like them that has me on the edge of my seat. You know who I'm talking about: the real bad guys. It's the chink in our armor that will allow these Mexican look-alikes representing the medievalists to carry out another 9/11. They are here right now plotting to kill you and your family. I don't care what Mike Bloomberg has to say about it, I'm freaking worried. Why shouldn't I be? There's no wall, there's noone watching, and they're free to come over here and set up camp like a bunch of squatters under the overpass.
How can we, in the midst of a war, not have our borders secured to protect against these people who would kill you and your family at the mall? It befuddles me. We're literally begging for it to happen again until we do something about it. Build the wall. No amnesty. Identify as many of them as we can and process them. Fill the labor void with our teenagers. I worked when I was 15, why can't that annoying kid next door who just rides around the parking lot on his skateboard irritating my dog get a job? The legislation needs to stop talking amnesty and start talking about stiffer penalties for employers who hire illegal immigrants. The Patriot Act can help us identify the bad elements of this mess, but first we need to stanch the flow at the source. Recognize that the real threat of illegal immigration is about the flow of Islamic fundamentalists into our country and use that issue to attempt to correct the problem of the millions of undocumented workers who just want to come here to provide a better life for their families.
31 comments:
Congratulations.. I have never heard an argument to strengthen immigration laws based on the fact that Mexicans look like Arabs..?
Did you pick strawberries sun up to sun down when you were 15?
Let them toil in poverty drinking their own raw sewage, we do not want them over here doing work none of us want because terrorists might be secretly amongst them.
I can not think of a more absurd fear fueled stand. Are you required to cary license to peddle such stupidity?
I'm here to fill your mental void with all of the things you've never heard or thought about. And you've got it backwards... it's that the medievalists can pretty easily look like Mexicans. I carry my license to peddle the word in my wallet. It says "Social Security" and has a number on it. There's 12 million plus out there in the good ole US and A who don't have one, but folks like you want to give them a bigger platform than folks like me.
So you know what all terrorists look like do you?
You fear no legal visitors and legal immigrants, only illegal ones?
You would rather have a police state requiring so many others to give up so many constitutional rights just so you could feel "safe" (not actually be safe mind you, only feel "safe")?
As Ben Franklin once said "Those who would give up an essential liberty for a moment's security deserve neither liberty nor security"
You may deserve none of these liberties, but you will continue to have them as long as we "liberals" preserve our constitution from the current onslaught by idiotic conservatives like you who use fear as a means of supporting erosion of the very rights that make our wonderful country so unique.
I never professed that I knew what all terrorists look like. Adam Gadahn the American Al-Qaeda looks like the guy at the video store. I'm just saying that profiling is in order now more than ever. I don't want a police state, but in the midst of a war I am willing to give up some rights to help our side protect us and win the thing, Franklin be damned. It's your defeatist attitude, nameless poster, that defines the liberal side of the issue. Your essential right to grapes at $1.99 a pound is in jeopardy and until you people put the pantsuit in office to tuck, run, and allow the sectarian violence to escalate there's not much you can do about it.
There is no "war" that can be won or lost on conventional (read military") terms. It is no different in terms of "war" than the "war" on drugs and even you must understand what a failure that has been.
What we are experiencing is a religious and philosophical difference that has existed for centuries and will exist for centuries to come as long as we and any other cultures allow religion to dominate our politics.
If religion could be eliminated on all sides, we would find that world peace would finally become an attainable goal.
Closing our borders will not only not protect our interests abroad, and it will also not assist to reduce the rhetoric that fuels this great divide in our world, it real terms it will not make us any safer.
It would be much like the current TSA requirements create the appearance of safety without achieving any tangible improvement in our safety as we travel.
If you support a military answer to this current "problem", then you necessarily support annihilation of all that disagree with our religion and will not submit to our dominion, because that is the only military “solution” that has any chance of success.
The answer to creating one world (which is ultimately necessary to save our earth) will never exist in military muscle, even though I can accept military muscle as necessary in today’s world.
The key is not using that military muscle to try to impose philosophical concepts on others but only to maintain some semblance of order while other longer term solutions (and by that I mean generations down the road) can be achieved by enlightenment of our species allowing us to eliminate our ego-centric religious ways.
I appreciate your comments on religion; I've recently finished the newest Dawkins book and will read Hitchens' latest when I get a chance. You pick up on points that appear in both of those works. As an avowed atheist I do believe that religion poisons our politics; I also think it poisons the politics of our biggest enemies to a greater extent. You can't call American politicians generally religiosuly fundamentalist... but organizations like Al Qaeda and the Taliban, and indeed many Middle Eastern nations, infuse their doctrines with religion, and this I believe greatly contributes to many of the problems and conflicts we see today.
I believe that American politics is indeed religiously fundamentalist.
A recent poll on presidential politics showed that while over 90% of the population would vote for a female, or an African American, and something like 75% would vote for a many times divorced candidate, the lowest performing category was an Atheist and only 44% would vote for an Atheist.
Only one current member of Congress has admitted he is an Atheist (Pete Stark from the SF Bay Area)
It remains the death knell of any politician to admit no belief in a supreme being.
Heck more than 50% of the US believes in creationism which any reasonably informed third grader can tell you is a complete crock.
I am not convinced that religion is not still the single MOST important characteristic in American politics today.
That continues to scare me.
MCConfrontation is correct.
What is not understood about the meaning of 'illegal'
When we say, Americans, we mean not just white faced people, but all legal Americans, including wonderful Mexican families.
Let us talk financial reasoning.
A Mexican girl is my manager and a dear friend. She is paid $11 hr for certain work, and then $15 when she cooks. That is, when I make more money, she makes more.
Sadly the impact of ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS impacts all Americans, and all Mexicans that are American citizens.
1. I am at an unfair disadvantage because I follow the rules. I do not hire illegals. Employers who do, pay dirt wages, do not pay payroll taxes, nor workers comp. Their illegal workers benefit because in turn they don't pay income taxes and send a lot of the money out of the country.
2. I am at an unfair disadvantage, because my competitor who hires illegals, then has a greater profit margin.
3. My worker is penalized because she is legal so she pays her taxes.
4. Sadly, as a result, I can no longer be competitive. My worker can't find work over $7.00, because many employers do not pay more than the lowest illegal wages.
WE ARE WATCHING OUR SYSTEM COLLAPSE. Go back to Economics 101.
WAKE UP AMERICANS.
Allowing anything ILLEGAL to persist is penalizing all of us suckers who are following the law and benefiting those who disregard the law.
I think it is sick to try and make this into a racial war. That is baloney. America is and has always meant minorities.
And if a person thinks farther they will understand why the health care system is broken. We that follow the law can not afford to pay for all the free medical care for every illegal.
Simply put, there are too taking free rides, and not enough of us left to provide the free ride.
The terrorists ARE here. And they ARE scary. They ARE plotting to destroy our country and shredding our Constitution and our Democracy.
We even know where these REALLY BAD guys live...I don't understand why we haven't picked them up and thrown them in jail yet.
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.
Call Homeland Security and remove these terrorists...now.
Anon 6:53 if I understand your main point, it is that exploitation of illegals is a problem.
Agreed and that has less to do with the fact that these humans are not here legally than it does with the fact that other horrible humans choose to exploit their situation.
If you leave your camera in an unlocked car and it is stolen do you blame the camera for being so available or the thief for reaching in the car to steal it?
Your point is accurate but your focus on the source of the problem is all wrong
As far as health care goes, the only reason undocumented workers use the health care system the way they do is because we as a society have chosen to criminalize their status forcing them to fly under the radar. We create this issue ourselves and we an just as easily "uncreate" it.
Also recent studies have shown that the impact on our health care system is nowhere near as significant as we are led to believe by those who promote fear of this immigration.
Cookie Jill on the other hand places the focus where it truly belongs.
Cookie Jill and anon 8:53 are right. Too much focus is put on the millions of undocumented Hispanic peoples and not enough on the real immigration problem, which is that in the most dangerous times for Americans we are leaving open the back door for the bad guys to sneak in and kill us in our sleep. Why can't we focus on that more significant threat and use it as an impetus to reform the whole thing? It's not about the 12 million Mexicans, it's about the 1200 medievalists.
Uummm McC, did you actually read Cookie Jill's comments?
I don't think you got her point as to exactly who the scary criminals actually are.
Oh no I think you're right! I actually missed the sarcasm there, I can't believe it. And I was so happy this morning to think that there was actually someone out there in the minority with me! My one-man war against SB County libs continues...
So Cookie Jill, what makes the President a terrorist. Please put it into words for us all to read.
George W. Bush - World Leading Terrorist!
Terrorism is the unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives. - US Federal Bureau of Investigation
Read the sentence carefully. You didn’t hear it on any corporate media newscast since 9/11. It’s the official US FBI definition of terrorism. In its official definition, the FBI does not limit terrorism to stateless individuals or groups. In its official definition, the FBI does not suggest that terrorism cannot be perpetrated by the leader of a nation state. But even more amazing is that the official FBI definition of terrorism describes exactly what George Bush did in the aftermath of the attacks of 9/11!
APPLYING THE DEFINITION
*
George W. Bush, in his unprovoked attack against the sovereign nation of Iraq, openly violated the UN Charter, to which the US is a signatory. The Charter's core principles contained in Article 2(4) and Article 51 prohibit one nation from attacking another except in self-defense or with the authority of the U.N. In effect, George Bush launched an unlawful use of force against persons and property.
*
The invasion launched by George W. Bush was heralded by the most frightening and powerful use of force and military violence in recent history. His Shock and Awe bombardment of Baghdad was designed to intimidate and coerce the government as well as the civilian population of that nation to change its existing leadership. That, in itself, was a political objective.
*
The purpose of the invasion and ensuing occupation of Iraq was to replace the existing dictatorship with an American-backed form of democracy that would not permit the emergence of a government headed by the majority Shia religious leadership. These motives were unquestionably political and social.
So, what part of the FBI definition of “terrorism” do the voters of the United States not understand? And what acts of terrorism as defined by the FBI do the voters of the United States not recognize? Is there any doubt at all that the Bush administration committed acts of terrorism when it unlawfully used force and violence against the nation of Iraq to intimidate and coerce its government and the civilian population, in furtherance of the Bush/PNAC political and social objectives.
Therefore, by any definition, if George W. Bush is guilty of terrorism, he can accurately be identified as a TERRORIST. And if he is truly a terrorist, it is only fitting that George W. Bush be scrutinized in terms of his success in that capacity. What is his standing among the other murderous terrorist activity in the world today? Is it possible that George W. Bush actually has claim to being the very BEST at something during his reign in office?
Hey Joe, see what kind of kooks I have to deal with out here? They're mentally ill.
Anonymous, I didn't ask you, but thank you for the answer. What was unlawful about the US or as you put it, George Bush, invading Iraq?
Lemme guess: the poster will refer again to the rules set forth by the United Nations, the most useless and corrupt multi-national entity to ever exist. Of course they will NOT refer to the 17 UN resolutions to which Saddam refused to respond.
Lets see, you don't support the UN, yet the only possible (yet remote) lawful reason for invasion of Iraq rests with those UN sanctions?
Also what is our legal authority to unilaterally enforce those sanctions again?
YOU say the only possible lawful reason for the invasion of Iraq rests with UN sanctions. I say we had to remove him from power lest he collaborate with Al Qaeda types, much like Mahmoud Ahmadenijad is doing right now. To answer your imminent question, yes, he needs to go too.
1. There was no evidence that he ever did or even ever would so collaborate with "Al Qaeda" types
2. There was no tangible threat to the US or its legitimate interests that would even remotely justify our invasion under international law
Ultimately unless you intend to murder every Muslim, how do you intend to prevent any perceived threat to your "safety"?
anon 5:28... on your first point: wrong. One report had senior al-qaeda getting "medical treatment" in Baghdad prior to the invasion. Saddam had as much contempt for America that the al-qaeda folks have, and given the opportunity to aid those people I believe he would have, even if he had not to that point. I believe that there was a threat to Israeli interests (our ALLIES remember) since the first day that Saddam came to power. I also believe he posed a threat to us through his possible interaction with what now constitutes the insurgency. If he did not deserve to be deposed, or if he wasn't such a bad guy, would the Iraqis have merely deposed him, or would they execute him? He was a criminal and due to his lack of cooperation with said "international law" makershe needed to be removed. On top of it all, America needed to remove him.
anon 5:33... I believe the best way to protect the safety of the American people is to do what we're doing. Fight the bad guys where they are. Keep the Patriot Act alive, and utilize it. On top of these actions I feel we should close the borders. Deport the illegal immigrants in our prisons (unless they have suspected ties to terrorists, then we hold them). Keep fighting the good fight, and if we must, take down Aquavelvajad for his involvement in supporting the insurgency with weaponry. This is a war, and we cannot afford to pussyfoot around. We cannot afford to adopt the defeatist attitudes of the liberals in our country or we'll be looking at another 9/11 very soon.
I need to be sure this is your support for the invasion of Iraq McC. Medical care to one person and your “belief” (based upon what I don’t know) that Saddam might have done something in the future gave us the right to invade Iraq? Are you smoking dope here? Using that standard, any country in the world could probably be legally justified in invading the US. Then you bring up the “lack of cooperation with international law” which might provide the UN a legal basis but not the US. Furthermore, if that is adequate, we need to promptly invade several other countries (that unfortunately don’t have as much oil). If you have ANY real legal support for our invasion of Iraq, you need to provide it because this is just not sufficient.
Your next post goes so much further it is scary. You propose that we close our borders, deport anyone you don’t like, suspend habeas corpus, fight those you designate as “bad guys” and generally not only erode our constitutional rights, but also eliminate any of those philosophical differences that actually make us a great country, all under the guise of making you feel safer.
So sorry McC, I simply cannot continue this discussion any longer because you have thrown out all pretense of reason and rationality.
My support for Operation Iraqi Freedom, the deposing of Saddam Hussein, and the democratization of Iraq, rests squarely on the belief I hold that America will do the right thing, that my President will do the right thing. It rests with my support of my President, his cabinet, our intelligence services, and our military. The legality of it, poster with no name, lies in the myriad politicians who voted to give the President the power to execute this plan of action. These include politicians you may have voted for sir/madam.
And to say that I believe the U.S. should "deport anyone (I) don't like," well that's just silly. I am for, however, deporting illegal immigrants that have committed crimes here and are spending time in our penal institutions. I believe these people should have been deported INSTEAD of jailed here in the U.S.
Check out this ABC news story and the comments that follow. One of the posters said they "heard they're disguising themselves as Mexicans" to get into the country. I am not alone in this theory.
http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/06/exclusive_suici.html
One "hears" and reads a lot of things that have no basis in fact and that are often repeated only to cause fear within the population.
The announcement today of the "teams" of suicide bombers now preparing to "go to the USA" is a great example of that sort of fear-mongering
Now that I understand your myopic support for the president whose administration has done more than any administration since our country was created, to destroy our constitutional freedoms than any other, I finally do understand your point of view.
You choose not to think for yourself and that is a very foolish and dangerous thing to do.
The Thinking Problem
It started out innocently enough. I began to think at parties now and then -- just to loosen up. Inevitably, though, one thought led to another, and soon I was more than just a social thinker.
I began to think alone -- "to relax," I told myself -- but I knew it wasn't true. Thinking became more and more important to me, and finally I was thinking all the time.
That was when things began to sour at home. One evening I had turned off the TV and asked my wife about the meaning of life. She spent that night at her mother's.
I began to think on the job. I knew that thinking and employment don't mix, but I couldn't stop myself.
I began to avoid friends at lunchtime so I could read Thoreau and Kafka. I would return to the office dizzied and confused, asking, "What is it exactly we are doing here?"
One day the boss called me in. He said, "Listen, I like you, and it hurts me to say this, but your thinking has become a real problem. If you don't stop thinking on the job, you'll have to find another job."
This gave me a lot to think about. I came home early after my conversation with the boss. "Honey," I confess, "I've been thinking..."
"I know you've been thinking," she said, "and I want a divorce!"
"But Honey, surely it's not that serious. "
"It is serious," she said, and her lower lip began to aquiver. "You think as much as college professors, and college professors don't make any money, so if you keep on thinking, we won't have any money!"
"That's a faulty syllogism," I said impatiently. She exploded in tears of rage and frustration, but I was in no mood to deal with the emotional drama. "I'm going to the library," I snarled as I stomped out the door.
I headed for the library, in the mood for some Nietzsche. I roared into the parking lot with NPR on the radio and ran up to the big glass doors. They didn't open. The library was closed.
To this day, I believe that a Higher Power was looking out for me that night. Leaning on the unfeeling glass, whimpering for Zarathustra, a poster caught my eye, "Friend, is heavy thinking ruining your life?" it asked.
You probably recognize that line. It comes from the standard Thinkers Anonymous poster, which is why I am what I am today: a recovering thinker.
I never miss a TA meeting. At each meeting we watch a non-educational video; last week it was Porky's, the week before, it was Animal House.
Then we share experiences about how we avoided thinking since the last meeting. I still have my job, and things are a lot better at home. Life just seemed... easier, somehow, as soon as I stopped thinking.
I think the road to recovery is nearly complete for me.
Today I made the final step. I registered to vote as a Republican.
That was way too long an essay for that weak payoff!!! Are you trying to infer that I don't think about what I post on this blog? I mean, it does come pretty easy to me, but there is some effort involved...
The last line was a "throw-away".
The substance was what preceded it.
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