Updated: Breakthrough in Iraq?

Bush, Iraq

For what it’s worth, a government of national unity has been formed in Iraq. For the “reality based community,” what should matter are not such staged, symbolic events, but the stable, grinding reality on the ground—life is now permanently precarious for all Iraqis.

Times reports that:

More than five months have passed since 12 million Iraqis braved insurgent threats to vote for a new parliament in last December’s general election… In that time… An estimated 3,743 civilians, 942 security forces and 323 coalition soldiers have been killed, and tit-for-tat sectarian killings by rampant militias have brought Iraq to the verge of civil war.

The vote took place in the Green Zone, the only quasi-safe place in that country. That puts paid to the lie that we can now split.

Bush Answers Kennedy's Calling

Bush, Democrats, Republicans

…all immigration policy by definition amounts to top-down, statist, central planning. But the least invasive policy is one that respects a nation’s historical and cultural complexion and the property rights of its taxpayers. Bush’s batch of soon-to-be amnestied illegal aliens are voracious tax consumers, who will cost more in social services than they pay in taxes over a lifetime. By contrast, immigrants who arrived between 1870 and 1920, during the Great Migration, although poor, did not constitute a burden, because the Welfare State as we know it did not exist.
Moreover, what Bush in his dotage termed “the great American tradition of the melting pot” is no more. In previous decades, immigrants assimilated. In the spirit of the times, they are now encouraged to acculturate to the politics of petulance. As a result, too many seem to harbor a vestigial resentment toward the host society and to cling to an almost-militant distinctiveness.
Clearly, unfettered immigration and the interventionist state, as Ludwig von Mises noted, cannot coexist.

The excerpt is from my new WorldNetDaily.com column, “Bush Answers Kennedy’s Calling.”

Bush Answers Kennedy’s Calling

Bush, Democrats, Republicans

…all immigration policy by definition amounts to top-down, statist, central planning. But the least invasive policy is one that respects a nation’s historical and cultural complexion and the property rights of its taxpayers. Bush’s batch of soon-to-be amnestied illegal aliens are voracious tax consumers, who will cost more in social services than they pay in taxes over a lifetime. By contrast, immigrants who arrived between 1870 and 1920, during the Great Migration, although poor, did not constitute a burden, because the Welfare State as we know it did not exist.
Moreover, what Bush in his dotage termed “the great American tradition of the melting pot” is no more. In previous decades, immigrants assimilated. In the spirit of the times, they are now encouraged to acculturate to the politics of petulance. As a result, too many seem to harbor a vestigial resentment toward the host society and to cling to an almost-militant distinctiveness.
Clearly, unfettered immigration and the interventionist state, as Ludwig von Mises noted, cannot coexist.

The excerpt is from my new WorldNetDaily.com column, “Bush Answers Kennedy’s Calling.”

Immigration Infarct

America, Bush, IMMIGRATION

Bush’s immigration infarct was studded with his trademark non sequiturs:

We are a nation of immigrants; therefore we must uphold that “tradition,” he puled. And “to secure our border, we must create a temporary worker program.” In both assertions, the second proposition doesn’t follow from the first—even if America is indeed a nation of immigrants, it doesn’t follow that it has to remain so. Similarly, it is quite possible to seal the border without creating a guest worker program (with its attendant bureaucracy).

One of the many moral infelicities Bush has committed on the matter of immigration is to have decided that the longer an illegal alien has been in the U.S., and thus violated its laws, the shorter his road to citizenship. Another was to praise these plucky folks for heroically forging documents and lying to employers about their status in the country.

Sanctimonious admonitions were in no short supply—but were directed at … the American people. They were told to “conduct this debate on immigration in a reasoned and respectful tone.” “We must always remember,” said The Man Who Pulverized Iraq, “that real lives will be affected by our debates and decisions.”

Since Those Jobs The American People Aren’t Doing were also mentioned, I, in turn, wish to refer the POTUS to a report by researcher Edwin S. Rubenstein, according to which illegals make up only 13 percent of hotel industry workers, 11 percent of restaurant and food service workers, and 10 percent of construction workers.

Will the president pray tell who the other mystery workers are?