(Click title above)
Immigration, Fickle Fractals, and Voting:
Ideologues tend, too conveniently and undemocratically, to pretend the settling of major issues, such as immigration, when all that has occurred is a temporizing, fickle sweep of strange alliances, relatable in variations of the Arab adage, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
In practice, our election system tends to winnow our choice for President down to only two candidates. Essentially, each candidate tries to inspire in each sub-electoral a coalition of supporting voters among various sub-interests that will total more than 50%. Thus, temporary promises and compromises become unavoidable.
It may be, for example, that 70 to 80% of all voters want national boundaries enforced. Yet, other issues, such as national defense or fundamental economics may come to weigh more. And, business owners may become fearful of rising labor costs. New workers and citizens may become fearful of hardships for relatives needing to immigrate. Thus, a coalition of managers and workers may organize or emerge to prefer temporizing on enforcing the border.
Apart from the immigration issue, managers may prefer a business friendly candidate (conservative), while workers may prefer a government assistance candidate (liberal). Neither of their candidates would wish to alienate a coalition interested in the easy immigration of relatives and cheap labor.
Thus, even when 70 or 80% of the electorate may consider enforcement of the border to be of considerable long term importance, fickle exigencies for getting elected may force candidates to temporize. However, such temporary aligning of fickle interests is hardly support for arguing that immigration control is not important or that the issue has been resolved in favor of open borders.
Danger: Temporizing on enforcing the border may soon push us to a catastrophic tipping point. Successful American culture tends to be founded on individual initiative, freedom, and responsibility. Mexican culture tends to be founded on loyalty to family and wishes for governmental assistance. Tipping the American demographic would alter the American dynamic, perhaps catastrophically.
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See http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/immigration-the-forgotten-issue-of-election-08/2/:
“… a candid acknowledgment of the candidates’ positions, each of them would have to confront an integral part of his base. McCain would have to slug it out with anti-amnesty conservatives while Obama would have to finally stand up to organized labor in defense of a guest worker plan, which labor leaders believe would hurt U.S. workers by subjecting them to something they loathe: competition.”
….
The conventional thinking is that the left-leaning Obama is certain to propose an amnesty for illegal immigrants and that McCain is just as certain not to because his conservative base won’t let him. But, throughout this election, conventional thinking has been wrong, and this is just another instance of where that’s true.
If elected, it’s likely that the hyper-ambitious Obama will spend much of his first term choosing his battles very carefully and trying to avoid legislative fistfights with Congress that threaten the prospects for a second term. Already, Obama has warned that he won’t get around to immigration reform in the critical first 100 days of his administration. And, given how Washington works — or rather, doesn’t work in even-numbered years — that probably means it won’t happen in the first term.
On the other hand, McCain told me in a recent telephone interview that, if elected, he is committed to getting a comprehensive immigration reform package together in the first 100 days.
“The whole issue of comprehensive immigration reform will be among my highest priorities,” he said. “Because we have to address this issue. . . . Republicans and Democrats have to sit down together and work together and get this thing done. We tried that before, and now we have to ensure people that we will do it a way that will ensure border security.”
A lot of Latino Democrats are betting that, if Barack Obama is elected, they’ll get comprehensive immigration reform. They’re just as sure that, if John McCain is elected, the status quo will be preserved.
I’ve got a hunch that they have it upside down.
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Immigration Bottom Line: Everyone wishing to preserve the essential American dynamic must bring effective pressure to bear, regardless of which candidate is elected!
4 comments:
Unless Conservatives, Republicans, and Libertarians unite to enforce the border, the American dynamic based on individual freedom, responsibility, and initiative will surely perish.
Snakes Among Conservatives:
To be anything, a thing needs to have defining features. For example, “America” is a country of boundaries that are physical, political, moral, and aspirational. “Conservatives,” wishing to conserve America, defend borders, restrict in-comers to legal immigrants, extol an informed electorate, promote family values, and fight for individual liberty. International “Socialists,” wishing to see America torn to bits and fed to ravening primatives, defend no borders, advocate “rights” to cross borders, whip up, mislead, and indoctrinate electorates, cede responsibility for rearing children to the State, and seek the security of mobs of protesters.
So, many Conservatives, out of sense of human morality: oppose blanket amnesty for invaders; detest the enabling of voter fraud; want State’s to decide how to regulate abortions; defend the authority of parents; and do not seek to undermine efforts to conduct the nation’s defense.
Faux Conservatives (what are they “conserving,” apart from self-delusion of elitism?), while denigrating homage to any basis for morality as “oogedy boogedy,” mock such concerns and values, even going so far as to argue, illogically (albeit in cutesy language), that Conservatives reduce their electoral power by actually standing for such things.
And so, this last election cycle, we ran a “Republican” who actually acceded to most arguments of faux conservatives. Problem: Democrats already own the monopoly on voters who lack moral values (i.e., unwillingness to defend partially born babies, unwillingness to defend borders, willingness to gather in groups in order to expropriate the production of others).
A Republican cannot defeat a Democrat by trying to out-do the trashing of moral values. (Well, duh!)
Modern Democrats (and faux conservatives) spend little time discussing moral values, except to ridicule values of Conservatives. Values of Democrats are not moral, but selfish. Yet, Orwellian Democrats take taxing others in order to vote for handouts for themselves as “unselfish.” Remarkable! Democrats: give less to charities; want government to take from workers to redistribute to layabouts; want or claim “rights” and entitlements to free health care, free college education, and free equality in income (i.e., “free lunch”). When Conservatives advocate the contrary, faux conservatives (spineless snakes) spit poison in our eyes and complain of splitting and losing the base.
But nothing could be more fork-tongued. One does not defeat the free-lunch crowd by joining them. One defeats them by joining with the non-free-lunch crowd. Ayn Rand may have been a one trick pony, but at least she knew that much.
Comment by In Feds We Trust, at http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2008/12/public_works_investment_hasnt.html:
Surely, we have some infrastructure that is failing, which we would do well to repair or replace. In that sense, such job creating work would seem to make sense.
The problem is, except for projects for which there is public outcry, the prioritizing of repairs tends to be haphazard and left to the sausage making skills of those politicians who are up to their earmarks in bed with lobbyists and corrupt to their cores about using the public treasury to create a perpetual class of dependent voters.
So, why do the Feds take so much money away from Locals, who likely have a more down to earth feel for what they really need? Why must we have government that is so big and distant as to guarantee its fall into gross corruption?
Comment from http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2008/12/how_to_steal_a_senate_seat.html:
"Franken has asked that rejected absentee ballots be looked at for every county in Minnesota. Some counties are dragging their feet. What you say is not true.
In all cases there will be Democratic and Republican poll watchers present. Ballots are not going to be counted in a back room by the Democratic central committee."
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Questions that may be answered in the course of time:
1) Absent oversight, were the counties looking at rejected absentee ballots primarily Blue, and were the counties dragging their feet primarily Red?
2) If so, what are the statistical odds of that, if all things are on the up and up?
3) Among counties that do recount, what is the pattern for finding more Democrat than Republican votes?
4) What are the statistical odds of that?
Until the data is in, judgment must be reserved.
But, failing to be suspicious, given the shenanigans this far, nationwide, by Democrats and their enablers, would be foolish.
The answers may tell us a lot about whether Minnosota is as clean a Blue State as some wish to suggest.
BTW -- It is hardly remarkable that a Republican in a Blue State would not himself wish to raise a ruckus about his State's fundamental fairness or lack thereof. Come on!
No doubt, Minnesota is noted for political entertainment (professional wrestler; comedian; next?). As to cleanliness of elections, we shall see.
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John Emerson ("Dlanor, the courts are there to clarify the law, and that's being done. That kind of thing happens all the time -- in business, in politics, in criminal proceedings, in civil proceedings. It's called the rule of law. That's how out country works. ")
Well, I have practiced law quite long enough to have somewhat less faith in courts than you apparently do. But, then, why not? He (modern Democrats) who sells out to the gold-meisters and is willing to spend to any ends makes the rules. He who owns the judges makes the laws. He whose world view is trumped and financed by faux-socialist ideology can hire judges to interpret and make law howsoever he pleases. Because, in service of sociopaths and secular-true-believers, our Constitution, after all, consists of "just words."
For those (Leftists and Blue Staters) who are unwilling to accept the representative process of our Republican system of checks and balances, mere law is hardly even a speed bump. To preserve Constitutional government, we need an electorate experienced and educated enough to appreciate its importance. Alas, our modern electorate, especially in Blue States, seems mainly just to want to spread a faux-socialist entitlement-pie. And to sponsor entitlement-judges as willing assistants.
Anyone with even a trace of "sniffing talent" knows the difference between rational debate and Leftist-student and Code-Pink shouters. For them, courts are not there to "clarify law," but to provide shopped stooges to put lipstick on political payoffs for those who brought them to the dance. As you say, "That kind of thing happens all the time" (especially in Blue States).
BTW -- The concern of opponents of Franken supporters is that the recounting will be selectively limited to those counties that are left-leaning. Do Minnesota Democrats have enough of a history of fairness to put them above suspicion? When it comes to illegally registering and recruiting multiple votes from the easily bought homeless, illegals, dead people, and pets, which party is most often in the news (even MSM)? Which Democratic star is associated with teaching fine points for training community organizers, like Acorn?
Given Dems' history, whenever there is a recount, I place a high burden on them, to show that we are not being treated to more Acorn-like fraud. I would feel better were Minnesota to put itself above suspicion, rather than be forced to do so, by requiring Coleman to "clarify law" in a Blue State before Blue Judges. Simply put, your notion of Democratic "fairness" seems a bit too Crocadile'ian to be comforting.
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