Immigration – Page 8 – Maverick Philosopher

Trump’s Real Sin? He Speaks Taboo Truths

Why the bipartisan preening outrage over the President's craphole comment? Roger Kimball:

Everyone, near enough, knows that he was telling a home truth. It was outrageous not because he said something crude that was untrue. Quite the contrary: it was outrageous precisely because it was true but intolerable to progressive sensitivities.

In other words, the potency of taboo is still strong in our superficially rational culture. There are some things—quite a few, actually, and the list keeps growing—about which one cannot speak the truth or, in many cases, even raise as a subject for discussion without violating the unspoken pact of liberal sanctimoniousness.

Andrew Klavan:

Nothing scandalizes a leftist like the truth. Point out that women and men are different, that black Americans commit a disproportionate amount of violent crime, that most terrorist acts are committed by Muslims, and the Left leaps to its collective feet in openmouthed shock, like Margaret Dumont after a Groucho Marx wisecrack. This is racism! This is sexism! This is some sort of phobia! I’m shocked, shocked to find facts being spoken in polite company!

No one is really shocked, of course. This is simply a form of bullying. The Left has co-opted our good manners and our good will in order to silence our opposition to their bad policies. The idea is to make it seem impolite and immoral to mention the obvious.

The bullying is highly effective and very dangerous. In England, in the city of Rotherham, at least 1,400 non-Muslim girls, some as young as 11, were brutally raped by Muslim immigrants over a period of years in the 2000s. Police and other officials worked to keep the facts hidden because, according to multiple reports, they were afraid of being called racist. Think about that: police officers did not want to seem racist, so they stood by and let their city’s children be raped.

[ . . .]

Here in the states, the First Amendment has so far allowed old-fashioned American loudmouths to fight the system whenever they could find ways around our monolithic corporate media. But the Empire of Lies is quick to strike back. Google/YouTube now stands charged by multiple accusers of singling out conservative voices for censorship, “fact-checking,” and demonetization. Hidden-camera videos released by Project Veritas this week show Twitter employees conspiring to “shadow ban” conservatives on their system. On campus, intelligent conservative speakers of good will like Ben Shapiro, Charles Murray, and Cristina Hoff-Somers have faced violent protests meant to shut them up.

No person of importance on the right seeks to silence anyone on the left. The Left, on the other hand, is broadly committed to ostracizing, blacklisting, and even criminalizing right-wing speech.

[. . .]

Let’s state the obvious. Some countries are shitholes. To claim that this is racist is racist. They are not shitholes because of the color of the populace but because of bad ideas, corrupt governance, false religion, and broken culture. Further, most of the problems in these countries are generated at the top. Plenty of rank-and-file immigrants from such ruined venues ultimately make good Americans—witness those who came from 1840s potato-famine Ireland, a shithole if ever there was one! It takes caution and skill to separate the good from the bad.

For these very reasons, absurd immigration procedures like chain migration, lotteries, and unvetted entries are deeply destructive. They can lead to the sort of poor choices that create a Rotherham. Trump’s suggestions—to vet immigrants for pro-American ideas and skills that will help our country—are smart and reasonable and would clearly make the system better if implemented.

So, when it comes to the Great Shithole Controversy of 2018, my feeling is: I do not care, not even a little. I’m sorry that it takes someone like Trump to break the spell of silence the Left is forever weaving around us. I wish a man like Ronald Reagan would come along and accomplish the same thing with more wit and grace. But that was another culture. History deals the cards it deals; we just play them. Trump is what we’ve got.

For all the bad language, for all the loose talk, I would rather hear a man speak as a man without fear of the Nurse Ratcheds in the press and the academy than have him neutered and gagged by a system of good manners that has been misused as a form of oppression. Better impoliteness than silence. Better crudeness than lies.

We have seen the effect of uncontrolled immigration on Europe. It is very, very bad. The fact is: some countries are shitholes. I don’t want this to become one of them.

Immigration and the Obstructionist Congressional Crapweasels

Here:

A great deal of the justified anger of the immigration patriot community is that we are told again and again by the media and politicians that we’re not allowed to care that say, the average El Salvadoran immigrant may be three times more likely as the average Norwegian immigrant or four times more likely than the average Indian immigrant to be on welfare, supported by the U.S. taxpayer.

We’re outraged like Donald Trump was when he saw the truly offensive deal conjured up by Senators Graham, Flake and Gardner in conjunction with Democratic leaders that would give mass amnesty (far beyond DACA) in exchange for a pitiful charade of border security. He’s outraged that these senators would betray GOP voters and interests when, even in his weaker moments, he’s always declared (as he tweeted last night) that building a wall, moving to merit-based immigration, and ending the visa lottery and chain migration are mandatory components for the amnesty deal for DACA. The scandal here isn’t Trump’s predictably profane tongue—it’s that Senators Graham, Flake and Gardner would dare to show him this s***hole of an amnesty deal, in blatant defiance of the core issue positions that led the GOP to 100 year-high legislative majorities, and expect him to bless it.

Lindsey, Jeff, and Cory—you’re fired.

Read it all.

Trump Speaks the Truth and Snowflakes Melt

Here:

Is there any question Haiti is a s***hole? Who’s offended by that? If it wasn’t a s***hole it wouldn’t be one of the most prominent recipients of American charity aid on Planet Earth. And it isn’t like this country has ignored Haiti — we’ve been trying to lift it out of s***hole status for more than a century, with absolutely no result whatever. In 1910, President William Howard Taft granted Haiti a large loan in hopes that Haiti could pay off its staggering international debt and therefore achieve a larger measure of independence from Europe. The result? Haiti defaulted and U.S. tax dollars were poured into a bottomless pit.

[. . .]

The open-borders crowd doesn’t want to talk about that, though, and it wants to call you racist if you’re opposed to a deluge of immigrants from the worst places on earth. That’s why Trump’s “s***holes” objection is big news rather than the fact there are so-called political leaders who can’t agree to reorient our immigration policy toward taking people who can successfully assimilate here.

Between the two, the crude man who tells the truth and looks out for his own citizens is preferable to the genteel man who sells us out for cheap labor or ballot-box fuel for a political machine. If Trump is the former, so be it.

Exactly right. The career politician is concerned primarily about his career and the power, perquisites, and pelf it provides. Despite what he says, the typical Republican is not primarily concerned about the welfare of the country. So he talks and talks, but never gets anything done, as if politics is endless gentlemanly discourse and nothing more. Well, talk is cheap and it allows the evasion of hard decisions.

Relevant is the following quotation from Carl Schmitt, Political Theology: Four Chapters on the Concept of Sovereignty, tr. George Schwab, University of Chicago Press, 1985:

According to Donoso Cortés, it was characteristic of bourgeois liberalism not to decide in this battle but to begin a discussion. He straightforwardly defined the bourgeoisie as a “discussing class,” una clasa discutidora. It has thus been sentenced. This definition contains the class characteristic of wanting to evade the decision. A class that shifts all political activity onto the plane of conversation in the press and in parliament is no match for social conflict. (59)

Trump is rude, crude, devoid of gravitas, self-absorbed, and given to exaggeration. He has orange hair. A statement he once made suggests that he is tolerant of pussy-grabbing. But so what given that he understands and threatens to act upon the following:

1) There is no right to immigrate.

2) Immigration must be to the benefit of the host country.

3) There is a distinction between legal and illegal immigration, and the latter must be severely curtailed if it cannot be stopped entirely.

4) Potential immigrants must share the values of the host country and respect its culture.

5) Potential immigrants must be assimilable and willing to assimilate.

6) With respect to immigration to the USA, preference ought to be given to potential immigrants from Ireland and Norway, say, rather than from Haiti, say.

No Democrat really believes (as opposed to insincerely giving verbal assent to) all or even most of the above, and few Republicans would be willing to act upon these propositions.

This is why Trump is our last chance. If he caves, then it's all over.

More on Immigration as the Central Issue of Our Time

Just over the transom from a U. K. reader:

With respect to this post, I agree with much of Douglas Murray's book as well; in fact the only parts I could argue with are his somewhat lenient stance on various English Defence League type people (not his belief in their legal right to state their position though). But the great problem with European immigration is the importation of absolutely regressive thinking, even amongst the true victims of war in Syria and Afghanistan (the 'idiot' Liberals wrongly associate contingent victimhood with innate virtue, never realising that the problem of increased rape and harassment by immigrants is precisely due to the mainstream attitudes all but the educated among their number hold – contempt for women etc).

You're quite right. European 'progressives,' having been enstupidated by political correctness, don't understand that the 'regressives' from Muslim lands do not share their values and have no intention of assimilating, and that it is cultural suicide to let them flood in. (See here.) These leftists also make the typical 'progressive' mistake of thinking that great virtue attaches to being an underdog, a victim, poor, etc. You will have noticed that leftists have a knee-jerk tendency to take the side of the loser and the underdog even when the underdog owes his status to his own bad behavior and foolishness.

Of course we should help those who are in dire straits due to no fault of their own. But aid must be rendered in an intelligent fashion, and never at the expense of the country rendering aid. The principle must be: Country First! Trump's America First! is just a special case of this. For the Germans, Germany First! And so on. The prudent and reasonable look to the welfare of their own first, and only thereafter to that of others.

But I don't see a strong parallel with the argument against mainly (as I understand it) Mexican / Central American immigration to the U.S. Among those immigrants are certainly criminals and gangs (some quite well known escapees from Latin American guerilla wars, narco-wars etc), but not, generally speaking religious ideologues or people with culturally inbuilt regressive values, just the normal regressiveness of the uneducated individual from a Western society.

I grant you that there are differences which weaken the parallel. Better to be invaded by Catholics than by Muslims. Islam is a toxic political ideology inimical to Western values. Contemporary Catholicism, despite its infestation by leftist termites, is much less of a threat politically. But it is still a threat because Hispanic immigrants, legal and illegal, will most of them end up voting for the hard-Left Democrat Party. Here, by the way, is the reason why the obstructionist Dems so viciously and vociferously oppose Trump's immigration reforms: their long-term strategy is to win demographically. Illegal aliens from the south are for them undocumented Democrats. This is also why they oppose photo ID at polling places. They want to make the polling places safe for voter fraud. Good leftists that they are, they hold the end to justify the shabby means. ('Good' in the preceding sentence functions as an attributive, not a predicative adjective, in Peter Geach's terminology.)

Looking from the outside, and as a frequent visitor to the U.S., my impression is that most Trump voters take more issue with two things: a) being left out of the economic picture no matter how hard they work; their enemy seems to be corporations, Wall Street, and / or big government (Bernie Sanders popularity on the left would seem to be evidence that this is felt across the spectrum of political allegiance); and b) the identity / victim politics of the modern Left, which only cares about LGBT etc as political entities, not normal people, or even 'workers' (the original victim category of Marx).

I can't see the 'experiment in self-destruction' of the UK being repeated in the US; it looks like a different experiment in self-destruction to me – more to do with abrogation of the responsibilities of government to the private sphere, and eventual failure of democracy combined with a self-absorbed intellectual Leftist politics that no longer cares about the mainstream.

I would be interested to see on your blog a more detailed exploration of these 'failed experiments' as you see them unfolding; how Europe and the US correlate and how they differ. Are different sets of civilisational principles at stake in each place?

'Failed experiments' doesn't seem to be quite the phrase. In Europe and the U.K., the experiments in self-destruction seem to be succeeding. Sharia courts? No-go zones? Places in England where an Englishman must fear to tread? I will have to do more research to be able comment on how the U. K. and U. S. cases differ. But I don't think the two experiments in self-destruction are very different. In both cases a mindless immigration policy engineered by destructive global elitists.

The Defining Issue of the Day: Immigration into the West of Unassimilable Elements

From Robert W. Merry's review of The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam, Douglas Murray, Bloomsbury Continuum, 352 pages:

You should carefully study the whole piece. Here are some excerpts. Emphases added.

[. . .]

No, the defining issue of our day is mass immigration into the nations of Western heritage. This growing inflow threatens to remake those nations and overwhelm their cultural identity. This is the issue that played the largest role in getting Donald Trump elected. It drove Britain’s Brexit vote. It is roiling the European continent, mounting tensions inside the EU and driving a wedge between the elites of those nations and their general populations.

Indeed, the central battlefront in the immigration wars is Europe, which accepted a trickle of immigrants in the immediate postwar era due to labor shortages. But over the years the trickle became a stream, then a growing river, and finally a torrent—to the extent that ethnic Britons are now a minority in their own capital city, refugee flows into Germany went from 48,589 in 2010 to 1.5 million in 2015, and Italy, a key entry point, received at one point an average of 6,500 new arrivals a day.

[. . .]

A key point of the book, reinforced through anecdote and abundant documentation, is that Muslim immigrants have not assimilated into their European host countries to any meaningful extent. Indeed, there is a growing feeling among many of the new arrivals that these aren’t host countries at all but merely lands ripe for Islam’s inexorable expansion. An 18-year-old Syrian refugee to Germany, Aras Bacho, writing in Der Freitag and the Huffington Post Deutschland, reflected this attitude when he said German migrants were “fed up” with “angry” Germans—described as “unemployed racists”—who “insult and agitate.” He added, “We refugees…do not want to live in the same country with you. You can, and I think you should, leave Germany. Germany does not fit you, why do you live here?….Look for a new home.”

Consider also the significance of this fact: By 2015 more British Muslims were fighting for ISIS than for the British armed forces. There was nothing hidden about the resolve of many European Muslims to retain their own culture while overwhelming the European one. At a rally in Cologne in 2008, then-Turkish prime minister (later president) Recep Tayyip Erdogan told a crowd of 20,000 Turks living in Germany, Belgium, France, and the Netherlands that assimilation in Europe would constitute “a crime against humanity.” He added, “I understand very well that you are against assimilation. One cannot expect you to assimilate.” Yet he admonished the five million Turks living in Europe to pursue political influence through democratic means in order to wield a “constitutional element” in transforming the continent.

Reading Murray’s book, one gets an understanding of why he characterizes Europe’s demise as “strange.” The continent’s embrace of its own cultural death is indeed historically aberrational. Civilizations normally fight for the preservation of their cultures, unite to expel invaders, revere their identities and the fundamental elements of their heritage. But the West today is engaged in an extensive and progressive extravagance of civilizational self-abnegation. Murray calls this the “tyranny of guilt” and identifies it as a “pathology.” The concept of historical guilt, he writes, means that hereditary stains of guilt can be passed down through generations—much as Europeans themselves for generations held Jews responsible for the killing of Christ. Eventually this was seen as repugnant, and the Pope himself in 1965 formally lifted the historical burden.

[. . .]

America lags behind Europe in the magnitude of its immigration problem. But, with an estimated 11 million illegals in country and the same prevailing elite sensibility dominating our discourse, the United States eventually will hit a similar crisis point unless current trends are altered or reversed. It’s worth noting that the percentage of Americans born outside the country has approached a historical high of 14 percent—similar to what it was in the 1920s, the last time the country curtailed both the numbers of immigrants and the nations from which they were allowed to come. That may be what’s brewing here today with the election of Trump.

Exactly right. Stupid 'liberals' are still in shock over Trump's election and still cannot understand how he could have won. The main factor responsible for his election is easy to understand. We decent Americans who love our country and stand for the rule of law are sick of illegal immigration and are very reasonably opposed to the legal immigration of those who do not accept our values.

Those who oppose Trump's immigration proposals are either destructive leftist scum or else pollyannish bleeding-hearts who do not understand the issues. The lines are clearly drawn and the battle is on for the soul of America. 2018 should prove to be very interesting indeed.

We are lucky in that we are not Europe or the U. K. We can learn from their experiment in self-destruction. We have a little time, and with Trump in the saddle, a fighting chance.

But will learn? And will we fight? Some of you have children and grandchildren. Do you care at all what country they will inherit?

The Melting Pot

The famous pot can work but only if the ingredients placed in it are meltable and blendable. A wise immigration policy cannot be all-inclusive. That used to be understood.

Every Day . . .

. . . throw something away. That is one of my self-admonitions. A truly radical approach to de-cluttering, however, is Swedish Death Cleaning.

Curiously, I came across the just embedded hyperlink while doing a search on the question whether Swedes have a death wish, given their foolishly warm embrace of Muslim immigrants.

This embrace makes Swedish Death Cleaning all the more advisable for Swedes, especially for Jewish Swedes who are having a hard time of it, especially given the invasion of Muslims who for some strange reason are not instantly accepting the ultra-liberal attitudes of their hosts.

Of Coulter and Kant, Screwed Pooches, and Milked He Goats

Ann Coulter:

Everyone who screwed the pooch on this one better realize fast: All that matters is immigration. It's all that matters to the country, and it's all that matters for winning elections.

She's right: read what she has to say.

What caught my eye, however, was the expression 'screw the pooch.' I now send you to Slate for an explanation of its meaning, thereby proving that that site is good for something.

The irrepressible Coulter also avails herself of the expression, 'milk a he-goat':

We'll have to watch helplessly as "establishment Republicans" fight "anti-establishment Republicans" over the right to milk a he-goat. Both sides will lose, and Democrats will sweep Congress and destroy our country.

Now that's a very old expression; I first encountered it in Kant in a particularly delightful form at A 58 = B 83 of his Critique of Pure Reason:

To know what questions may reasonably be asked is already a great and necessary proof of sagacity and insight. For if the question is absurd in itself and demands unnecessary answers, then, besides the embarrassment of the one who proposes it, it also has the disadvantage of misleading the incautious listener into absurd answers, and presenting the ridiculous sight (as the ancients said) of one man milking a he-goat while the other holds a sieve underneath.

The true Kant aficionado will of course know that Kant invoked this simile already in his pre-Critical period in his 1770 Latin Inaugural Dissertation, De mundi sensibilis atque intelligibilis forma et principiis. See, for the Latin, Daniel S. Robinson, "Kant and Demonax–A Footnote to the History of Philosophy," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research Vol. 10, No. 3 (Mar., 1950), pp. 374-379.

Below, Professor Robinson misspells Norman Kemp Smith's name. In an age of literary irresponsibility we need more pedants like me. Or maybe not.

Once More on Immigration and the Retromingent Left

One point that needs to be made over and over in the teeth of retromingent leftist incomprehension is that immigration is justified only if it benefits the host country. Donald Trump understands this; Hillary and her ilk do not.

This is another reason why his defeat of Hillary is cause for jubilation among those who can think straight. It is also a large part of the explanation why Trump won the 2016 election and why it is an excellent bet that he will win again in 2020, assuming that the Wirtschaftswunder he has ignited continues.

No doubt it is good for Muslims that they be allowed to flood into Germany; but what the Germans need to ask is whether there is any net benefit to them of this in-flooding. And the same for every country.

The guiding idea here is Country First. America First is just a special case. A good government looks first to the welfare of its own citizens, just as good parents look first to the welfare of their own children.*

Good governors also understand that one cannot force the integration of worldviews in collision. Sharia and the West do not mix.

This is not 'racist' and for two reasons. First, Islam is a religion and its adherents, Muslims, do not constitute a race. Second, even if Muslims did constitute a race, there is nothing 'racist' in any plausible sense of the term about recognizing that comity presupposes commonality.

Far from being 'racist,' what I am urging is just common sense, a commodity in short supply among lefties whom I call retromingents because of their tendency to micturate on the past and its wisdom.

These 'progressives' are transgressive of tradition, and to that extent regressive.

To say it again: there is no right to immigrate. Correlatively, there is no obligation on the part of any country to accept immigrants.

On the growth of Europe's Muslim population, see here.

_________________

*To ward off any misunderstanding of the analogy: I am not suggesting that government stands to citizens as parents to children.

Illegal Immigration and the Misuse of Scripture

At the website of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, we read:

Why is the Catholic Church involved in the immigration issue? There are several reasons the Catholic Church is involved in the immigration debate. The Old and New Testaments, as well as the encyclicals of the Popes, form the basis for the Church's position. In Gospel of Matthew, Jesus calls upon us to "welcome the stranger,for what you do to the least of my brethren, you do unto me. " (Mt. 25-35, 40).

There is a deep mistake being made here, and we should try to understand what it is. The mistake is to confuse the private and public spheres and the different moralities pertaining to each.

The problem of confusing private and public morality is well understood by Hannah Arendt ("Truth and Politics" in Between Past and Future, Penguin, 1968, p. 245):

The disastrous consequences for any community that began in all earnest to follow ethical precepts derived from man in the singular — be they Socratic or Platonic or Christian — have been frequently pointed out. Long before Machiavelli recommended protecting the political realm against the undiluted principles of the Christian faith (those who refuse to resist evil permit the wicked "to do as much evil as they please"), Aristotle warned against giving philosophers any say in political matters. (Men who for professional reasons must be so unconcerned with "what is good for themselves" cannot very well be trusted with what is good for others, and least of all with the "common good," the down-to-earth interests of the community.) [Arendt cites Nicomachean Ethics, Book VI, and in particular 1140b9 and 1141b4.]

There is a tension between man qua philosopher/Christian and man qua citizen. As a philosopher/Christian, I am concerned with my soul, with its integrity, purity, salvation. I take very seriously indeed the Socratic "Better to suffer wrong than to do it" and the Christian "Resist not the evildoer." But as a citizen I must be concerned not only with my own well-being but also with the public welfare. This is true a fortiori of public officials and people in a position to influence public opinion, people like Catholic bishops. So, as Arendt points out, the Socratic and Christian admonitions are not applicable in the public sphere.

A Catholic bishop, therefore, who is pro illegal immigration on the strength of the "welcome the stranger" passage demonstrates a failure to understand the simple point that Arendt underscores.

What is applicable to me in the singular, as this existing individual concerned with the welfare of his immortal soul over that of his perishable body, is not applicable to me as citizen. As a citizen, I cannot "welcome the stranger" who violates the laws of my country, a stranger who may be a terrorist or a drug-smuggler or a human-trafficker or a carrier of a deadly disease or a person who has no respect for the traditions of the country he invades; I cannot aid and abet his law-breaking. I must be concerned with public order and the very conditions that make the philosophical and Christian life possible in the first place. If I were to aid and abet the stranger's lawbreaking, I would not be "rendering unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's."

Indeed, the Caesar verse provides a scriptural basis for Church-State separation and indirectly exposes the fallacy of the Catholic bishops who cannot comprehend the simple distinctions I have tried to set forth.

A Struggle for the Soul of America

The acquittal in San Francisco of an illegal alien of all homicide charges throws into unusually sharp relief the difference between the destructive leftists who seek a "fundamental transformation" of the United States and the patriots who defend the country as she was founded to be. Heather MacDonald:

Advocates for illegal immigrants are unrepentant after yesterday’s shocking acquittal on all homicide charges of an illegal-alien confessed killer. The advocates are defending the sanctuary policies that had set in motion the 2015 killing in San Francisco; they have also doubled down on their opposition to any deportation of illegal aliens, criminal or otherwise. If ever there were a clarifying moment regarding what is at stake in the battle for the immigration rule of law, this is it.

Jose Ines Garcia Zarate was a poster boy not just for the folly of sanctuary policies but also for the mass low-skilled Hispanic immigration that has transformed California. A barely literate drug dealer from Mexico with a second-grade education, no English, and a penchant for criminal aliases, Garcia Zarate had been deported five times by federal immigration authorities following convictions for various crimes.

[. . .]

Donald Trump turned the Steinle case into a powerful rallying cry for immigration enforcement during his presidential run. The illegal-alien lobby, by contrast, denied that San Francisco’s sanctuary policy had anything to do with the killing. California even strengthened its status as an immigration scofflaw after the Steinle homicide. This October, Governor Jerry Brown signed SB 54, the California Values Act, which turns the entire state into an immigration-enforcement-free haven for all but the most heinous illegal-alien criminals. (Brown has been assiduously silent on the Garcia Zarate acquittal.) San Francisco imperceptibly tweaked its local sanctuary policy following the killing; today, it would again release Garcia Zarate if asked under the same conditions to hold him for ICE custody.

According to Garcia Zarate’s attorneys and other illegal-alien advocates, the only blame in this case belongs to Donald Trump and anyone who wants to enforce the immigration laws. “From day one, this case was used as a means to foment hate, to foment division and to foment a program of mass deportation,” public defender Francisco Ugarte said. Ugarte manages the immigration unit at the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office, where he advises criminal illegal aliens on how to avoid deportation for their crimes. “Nothing about Mr. Garcia Zarate’s ethnicity, nothing about his immigration status, nothing about the fact that he is born in Mexico had any relevance as to what happened on July 1, 2015,” Ugarte said. Actually, the case is almost exclusively about immigration policy; had this country had the ability to protect its borders and deport illegal alien criminals, Garcia Zarate would not have been sunning himself on the Embarcadero on July 1, 2015, but would have been back in Mexico.

There you have it. Which side are you on?

Will you tell me that we need to 'come together,' and 'drop the labels,' and 'find common ground'? There is no common ground here. Either you stand for national sovereignty and the rule of law, or you don't. Either you distinguish between legal and illegal immigration or you don't. Either you stand for the defunding of 'sanctuary' jurisdictions or you don't, leaving aside the denialist lie that there are no such jurisdictions!

By the way, this denialism shows just how corrupt so many on the Left are. Unable to defend the indefensible, they deny that it exists!

A correspondent takes a less-than-sanguine view of what's coming:

At this point I believe that a shooting civil war in this country is inevitable; a government that fails in its first duty to protect its citizens is no longer legitimate, and the Left will not leave except it is forced out.

On second thought, this is a sanguine view in a root sense of the word: bloody. No reasonable person could want full-on civil war and the destruction of civil order. Everyone should calmly reflect on just how horrible that would be. But if it comes to that we will know whom to blame.

I don't expect it to come to that. But I expect increasing violence. The wise hope for the best but prepare for the worst. The prudent are taking precautions and coming to realize that 'lead' is also a precious metal . . . .

UPDATE (12/3)

Hi Bill,

Just read your item on the shocking verdict in SF. I would call it "incomprehensible" – as Steve Sailer points out, the jury had a range of options that should in any rational world have resulted in a homicide finding – but it is all too comprehensible if we see this trial not as a search for truth and justice, but as a skirmish in a rapidly warming "cold civil war".

I noted this passage in your post:

"No reasonable person could want full-on civil war and the destruction of civil order. Everyone should calmly reflect on just how horrible that would be."

I couldn't agree more. There is a terrible eagerness among the younger firebrands of both Left and Right to "cry havoc", and the calm reflection you ask for is very little in evidence. War may come – and when it does we will, as you say, know whom to blame – but when it does it will be awful.

I wrote a post of my own about this almost exactly two years ago; it's here, if you'd be interested.

Best as always,

Malcolm

Inconvenient Truths about Migration

Required reading. Yes, kiddies, this will be on the final. Conclusion:

It seems to me that anyone who thinks about such matters is bound to agree with Goodhart that citizenship, for most people, is something they are born into. Values are grown from a specific history and geography. If the make-up of a community is changed too fast, it cuts people adrift from their own history, rendering them rootless. Liberals’ anxiety not to appear racist hides these truths from them. An explosion of what is now called populism is the inevitable result.

The policy conclusion to be drawn is banal, but worth restating. A people’s tolerance for change and adaptation should not be strained beyond its limits, different though these will be in different countries. Specifically, immigration should not be pressed too far, because it will be sure to ignite hostility. Politicians who fail to “control the borders” do not deserve their people’s trust.

It's true: liberals are terribly anxious about being pegged as racists and this anxiety blinds them. But there is nothing racist about insisting on the rule of law and the defense of the borders.

Besides, illegal immigrants do not constitute a race of people. Liberals are not stupid, so they must know this, right?

"But Trump's wall is nonetheless racist since the vast majority of illegal immigrants are Hispanic."

Not so. Granted, most of the illegal entrants are Hispanic, but what sane conservatives oppose is not the race or ethnicity of illegal immigrants but the illegality of their mode of entry. Suppose, per impossibile, that England were directly to our south. We would oppose their illegal entry as well.

One good thing about Mexicans, however, is that their cuisine is vastly superior to anything the English have on offer.

Control of the borders is a constitutionally-mandated function of the Federal government. As I said, liberals are not stupid; so they do have the capacity to grasp that when politicians fail to uphold the Constitution, decent law-abiding citizens won't like it. This is perhaps the main reason Hillary was handed her walking papers.

"But isn't the Great Wall of Trump hateful?"

Well, is it hateful when you lock your doors at night, screen applicants to your company, supervise with whom your children associate?

Securing one's domicile is not an expression of hatred of the Other, but an expression of love of one's family.

Sanctuary City Denialism

There are those who attempt to downplay the depth of our social and political disagreements. But no honest and intelligent observer can fail to note just how deep they go.

One sort of disagreement is over the attributes of an object admitted to exist. That's bad enough. Worse still are those disagreements over the very existence of the object. And perhaps the worst form of denialism or eliminativism is the form in which the object denied manifestly exists.

For example, it is manifestly the case that there are beliefs and desires. But there is a species of loon in the philosophy of mind who, unable to make sense of these intentional states, denies their existence.

In the political sphere we have a tribal Hispanic such as Francisco Hernandez who denies the very existence of sanctuary jurisdictions. He does not admit their existence and defend them, which would be slightly respectable. The mendacious bastard denies their very existence. See for yourself. The brilliant Mark Steyn sits in for Tucker Carlson. Camarota refutes Hernandez.

Is it not obvious that politics is war? There are very nice people who say we need to come together, drop the labels, and have 'conversations.' Their hearts are in the right place, but where are their heads?

Or to change the metaphor: what planet do they live on? Uranus?

Come together? On what common ground?

Have a conversation? What's to discuss? Should we have a conversation about the validity of arithmetic? (I'm not talking about the foundations of arithmetic, or the Peano axioms, or anything like that, but about the arithmetic you learned or should have learned in grade school.)

Mayor of Albany Lies on Tucker Carlson Show

Kathy Sheehan, mayor of Albany, New York, while defending sanctuary cities, told an egregious lie on Tucker Carlson's show tonight (11/16) when she said that 'undocumented' (her word) workers were not in the U. S. illegally. Although Carlson eventually called her on it, he failed to clarify the distinction that Sheehan was mendaciously and confusedly exploiting.

Is Illegal Immigration a Crime?

It is. Illegal immigrants are subject to criminal penalties. While improper entry is a crime, unlawful presence is not a crime. One can be unlawfully present in the U. S. without having entered improperly, and thus without having committed a crime.

If a foreign national enters the country on a valid travel or work visa, but overstays his visa, failing to exit before the expiration date, then he is in violation of federal immigration law. But this comes under the civil code, not the criminal code. Such a person is subject to civil penalties such as deportation.

So there are two main ways for an alien to be illegal. He can be illegal in virtue of violating the criminal code or illegal in virtue of violating the civil code.

Those who oppose strict enforcement of national borders show their contempt for the rule of law and their willingness to tolerate criminal behavior, not just illegal behavior.

This is very serious business especially when the criminally illegal aliens are also criminal in the manner of MS-13 gang members.

Sheehan may well have her heart in the right place as so many benighted liberals do. She came across to me as a nice Irish Catholic girl out to make the world a better place. Being of the female persuasion, she probably thinks of government maternally. If so, this tendency might help explain why she has trouble with such simple distinctions as the one I drew above.