Category Archives: IMMIGRATION

Rand Paul’s Goofy ‘Case’ For Amnesty

IMMIGRATION, Labor, libertarianism, Reason, Republicans, Ron Paul

Not so long ago I wondered whether Rand Paul was “Action Hero, Or Political Performance Artist?” “Like most Americans,” the column ventured, “I like an action hero. I am just incapable of telling whether Rand Paul is such a hero, or whether he is no more than a political performance artist.”

Soon a determination will be possible. A picture is emerging of a deft political player.

Rand’s dad, Ron Paul, called for an “End [to] Illegal Immigration”:

A nation without borders is no nation at all. After decades of misguided policies America has now become a free-for-all. Our leaders betrayed the middle class which is forced to compete with welfare-receiving illegal immigrants who will work for almost anything, just because the standards in their home countries are even lower.
If these policies are not reversed, the future is grim. A poor, dependent and divided population is much easier to rule than a nation of self-confident individuals who can make a living on their own and who share the traditions and values that this country was founded upon.

The Center for Immigration Studies paints “A Bleak Picture” of high “unemployment and non-work” among “American citizens, especially less-educated citizens (those with no more than a high school education). The less-educated are the most likely to compete with illegal immigrants,” say the Center’s scholars.

Rand Paul, however, has joined the Gang of Eight (Gof8), in whose states the plight of low-skilled Americans is especially dire. Now Rand is on the offensive, defending against allegations from Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh:

In an appearance on Fox News Channel’s “America Live” on Thursday, Kentucky Republican Sen. Paul told host Bill Hemmer that Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh are wrong to criticize him for working to provide legal status to illegal immigrants.

Rand Paul’s apparently goof-proof “case” for amnesty appears to be that “de facto amnesty” must give way to amnesty de jure—that given the reality on the ground, legislators must take action to turn it into a legal reality.

UPDATED: Ann Coulter Becomes A Single-Issue Voter (Is Sally-Come-Lately To Mass Immigration Vexation)

Aesthetics, Ann Coulter, Conservatism, IMMIGRATION, Intellectualism, Republicans

Ann Coulter is late to blossom politically (otherwise she’s very pretty). At CPAC 2013, Ms. Coulter announced that she’s become “a single-issue voter against amnesty” (and has finally crossed the crappy Chris Christie off her list of candidates).

Having avoided the immigration vexation until recently, here are Coulter’s welcome remarks:

“What public policy will harm average Americans, drive up unemployment, change America permanently in negative way, and is supported by businessmen who will never vote for a Republican anyway?

Amnesty for illegal aliens.

Half of the elected Republicans support it, most conservative talk radio and TV hosts support it: You want the Republican establishment? That’s the Republican establishment.

There are many negative consequences to amnesty. The one that I think ought to concern this crowd is: If amnesty goes forward, America becomes California and no Republican will ever win a national election [IM: that goes for libertarian candidates too].

As it is, the state that gave us Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan will never elect another Republican.

I can see why Democrats would want amnesty, but why are Marco Rubio and the endless Bushes supporting it? [IM: that should be obvious.]

We cannot get the votes of a dependent society without changing our principles…”

[SNIP]

(Such an attractive woman is Ann Coulter; if wish she’d buy some high-end, decent clothes.)

UPDATE (3/17): A SALLY-COME-LATELY TO MASS IMMIGRATION. Read the text above (http://barelyablog.com/ann-coulter-becomes-a-single-issue-voter/), where I transcribed Ann Coulter’s immigration comments. Are they really “brilliant”? To hail these as “brilliant,” as some conservatives are, is a testament to intellectual malaise.

The definition of “brilliant” is: “Marked by unusual and impressive intellectual acuteness.”

To describe as “brilliant” Ann Coulter’s second-hand, belated realization about the US’ “IMMOLATION BY IMMIGRATION,” first chronicled by Peter Brimelow (note the date on my hyperlinked column), is to say all there is to say about the misuse of language and the dumbing down of discourse.

A Sally-come-lately to the issue of mass immigration is Ann Coulter. Look through her column archive; it’s all, for the most, “Liberals this, liberals that.”

The most you can say is this: 1) Coulter’s delivery is brilliant—but then she’s super bright, and has had practice as one of the monopolists of the ossified conservative movement. 2) She is perhaps the most powerful ally the immigration patriot movement (Peter Brimelow’s coinage) could hope to recruit.

CPAC Sheds A Heavy Weight; Gains Light-Weights Galore

Bush, Conservatism, IMMIGRATION, Intellectualism, John McCain, Neoconservatism

As was mentioned a few posts back, Chris Christie will be conspicuous by his absence from this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference, which will commence on March 14.

New Jersey’s popular Republican governor is getting his comeuppance. He campaigned for the Democrat Barack Obama throughout October of 2012. Now the governor has not been invited to partake at CPAC. “He’s not … conservative,” offered Al Cardenas, who is chairman of the American Conservative Union that sponsors CPAC.

CPAC has hosted countless unconservative members of the establishment, one of them was the Republican’s presidential nominee for 2008, John McCain.

As part of the unholy McCain-Kennedy-Specter trinity, McCain worked to legalize 20 million illegal immigrants. He blessed George W. Bush’s deficit spending and obscene stimulus package. By National Review’s count, McCain voted for higher taxes 50 time. And like any good liberal, he disparaged Mitt Romney for making it in the private sector.

The Conservative Political Action Conference would be acting less incongruously were they to blackball dough ball Christie for being the consummate backstabbing, slimy, opportunistic politician. Republicans who are not conservative are the norm.

For example, Jeb Bush. This year brother Bush will be a featured speaker at CPAC. Bush junior is hardly much of a conservative. Jeb Bush’s new book, “Immigration Wars: Forging an American Solution,” advocates further liberalization of US immigration policy. However, so liberal has the GOP become on immigration, since November 2012, that Bush’s book is being rejected as too hawkish.

Fear not. Substituting, at CPAC, for the absence of one heavy weight governor—and the reference is not to Christie’s intellect—are plenty lightweights. See for yourself.

Derek Turner’s ‘Sea Changes’

Britain, English, Ilana Mercer, IMMIGRATION, Literature

“Well-written, meticulously researched and thought-out, Sea Changes, Derek Turner’s first novel, succeeds mightily in bringing to life the prototypical players in the Western tragedy that is mass migration. The reader becomes intimately au fait with the many, oft-unwitting actors in this doomed stand-off: small-town conservative folks vs. progressive city slickers; salt-of-the-earth countrymen against smug, self-satisfied left-liberals. Ever present are the ruthless traffickers in human misery: both media and smugglers. Like it or not, the dice are loaded. In this epic battle, the scrappy scofflaws and their stakeholders triumph; the locals lose.”—ILANA MERCER, Author, Into the Cannibal’s Pot: Lessons for America from Post-Apartheid South Africa, Columnist, WND & RT

I don’t read novels, other than Anita Brookner’s achingly beautiful studies in solitude. Brookner is brilliant. (And no, there is not a feminist bone in her body; she writes about the impact of a vanishing Britain on the already lonely individual.) When Vladimir Nabokov, Patrick White and Isaac Bashevis Singer stopped writing—on account of shuffling off this mortal coil—I stopped reading novels. Almost everything written by today’s writers is stream-of-consciousness nonsense. (A careful guardian of the English language Tom Wolfe is not.)

If time allows, I may explore V.S. Naipaul; I like the way his mind works. But so long as Toynbee’s A Study of History (abridged) and Murray’s Human Accomplishment lie on my bed unfinished (and so many others languish in my library unread), Naipaul will have to wait.

Nevertheless, I not only read Derek Turner’s Sea Changes, I provided advance praise for the book. It’s that good. Read it.