Friday, June 15, 2007

Who Is Bigoted on Immigration?

Victor Davis Hanson, a senior fellow and historian at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University:

Congressional supporters of the present legislation are themselves often engaging in politics of the most cynical kind. Rare "bipartisan" cooperation on the bill, which brought Sen. Trent Lott (R-Mississippi) to the side of Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Massachusetts) is hardly statesmanship or a sudden outbreak of civic virtue. Rather, it is a new public face to the old alliance between profit-minded employers (and those who represent their interests) and demographically obsessed liberal and ethnic activists.

The former want assurances that there will be millions of immigrants available to work at wages that Americans will not -- with the ensuing medical, housing, schooling and legal costs subsidized by the taxpayer. The latter can't wait for more constituents in need of group representation who, it is hoped, will someday support them at the polls.

Most cynical of all, however, are the moralistic pundits, academics and journalists who deplore the "nativism" of Americans they consider to be less-educated yokels. Yet their own jobs of writing, commenting, reporting and teaching are rarely threatened by cheaper illegal workers.

Few of these well-paid and highly educated people live in communities altered by huge influxes of illegal aliens. In general, such elites don't use emergency rooms in the inner cities and rural counties overcrowded by illegal aliens. They don't drive on country roads frequented by those without licenses, registration and insurance. And their children don't struggle with school curricula altered to the needs of students who speak only Spanish ...
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Hula Girls


Thursday, June 14, 2007

NEW PODCAST: Precognitive Dissonance

It's not the grief. I grieve still, but am not distraught. Therefore, I am still able to laugh, still interested in the world, still care about others, and still enjoy a summer morning, with its gentle promise, as well as the glories of the blazing sunset, with its own promise of what tomorrow might be. I grieve, yet I live. And yet, despite this sense of affirmation, I find myself unable to write. I know it will come again. I feel it will come again, with every keystroke as I write this, I feel the words, an entire universe of words, near at hand. But, not yet. And not from lack of energy. I have plenty of energy. Nor from lack of thought, but rather, from an excess. In other words, there's too much thought to set down easily in words, or quickly, and to attempt to do so would only interfere with thought, rather than enable or enhance it.

I have had to recognize that I've gone through a life-changing event, not the first I've experienced in my time, but definitely one of the more profound, and I have to recognize, too, that it is too early to know who I am now, or will become when this period of transition is past. Therefore, I cannot write, at least not now. But the time will come soon, I feel it. The time will come soon when I will know myself again and can write.

In the meantime, I find it easier to talk. Last week, I talked with my friends SMiles Lewis and Craig York on their show "Precognitive Dissonance." That show is now archived and can be downloaded HERE.

That's all for now. I'll be back, soon. Stay tuned ...