This is the climate in which we coastal conservative infiltrators live on a day-to-day basis. We have to be careful with the books we read in the cafe, the topics we bring up at the cocktail party and the jokes we crack at the office. The fear stems from the intolerance of liberals, who are incapable of functioning in a world consisting of anyone but those who think. speak and act the same as them. And frankly, I do not know how much longer I can be tolerant of such intolerance.

Perhaps it is my jaded view having lived in New York and New Jersey my whole life, but I have started to come to the conclusion that our mindsets are so antithetical that we are simply unable to co-exist in any meaningful way.

For liberals believe that we are our brother’s keeper — that by the power of decree some people should be able to reach into the pockets of others to provide for themselves. Liberals believe that certain people in society should be able to make decisions for others for their own good. Liberals believe that wealth created in the private sector is a mere byproduct of greed and graft. Liberals believe that all religions and visions of morality are equal. Liberals see every issue in terms of egalitarianism, race and class.

I find such a world view abhorrent.  It pits some people against others by design. It is based on envy, arrogance and the imposition of force. It robs man of his individualism, his humanity and his soul.

Barack Obama represents this worldview in its most extreme form, albeit buttoned up and with a soothing smoker’s voice to hide its revolutionary nature in relation to this country’s bedrock principles. It leads to supporting terrorists in the Muslim Brotherhood taking over Egypt; it leads to giving the nuclear secrets of our allies to the Russian thug government; it leads to the crushing of our economy, and the demonization of its most crucial constituents.

Given that the natural end to the socialist society is one of mass poverty, constant threat of attack and overall demoralization, without any notion of morality or justice, (but rather with their perversion), I find it quite difficult to not hold this personally against all of the useful idiots — friends and foes alike who support this kind of world.

How in good faith can we love our neighbors who seek to plunder us, knowingly or unknowingly threatening our safety and whose policies are going to make the lives of our children far more crass? How can we feel sympathy or compassion for someone who supports Islam in word or deed when its whole history has been marked with bloodshed, debauchery and hatred — and its adherents continue their conquest today. How can we support people that wish to suppress our speech and our G-d-given rights?

Politics is supposed to be a separate sphere from our personal lives. But increasingly, the politics of the left encroaches on every aspect of our personage. This is what happens in a collectivist society, where so many of our countrymen have been duped into parroting, believing in and legislating based on effectively Marxist principles. Increasingly, I wonder what is to become of the irreconcilable differences between us and them. I can no longer give their hatred and contempt for us my sanction.

What I would like to emphasize is that so-called “investment” is not just a problem because it represents more spending.  There is a fundamental problem with all government spending, and this is that it represents other people spending your money for you.  Anecdotally, it is akin to the way a teenager drives a car he buys versus one bequeathed to him by his parents.  Believe me, I know.

And like the reckless teen, the politician will rarely have the interest of those who entrust him with the fruits of labor at heart.  In the case of the taxpayer, while you want to be happy, healthy and prosperous, all but the most principled politicians solely want to be re-elected.  Re-election requires buying votes.  When politicians “invest” in various projects, even if they are the savviest capitalists, caring for nothing more than seeing the best return on the taxpayer’s capital possible, their spending could at the very best represent a diversion of resources.  Almost universally, the result is certain parties getting payoffs, and you and I getting plundered.

Government spending will always be suboptimal to the extent that while you labor for your income and choose to spend it out of your own volition and for the things that you, the individual value, directing businesses to provide the goods you want in the quantities you require, the government spends for the collective — amorphous masses of voters who will never see that the X months of the year that they must work to pay the government goes toward things like rebuilding the Gaza strip or paying the salary of the son of a politician in his cushy, unionized job.

The individual takes responsibility for what he spends because he earns it.  The politician has no such responsibility, and his incentives in spending are often diametrically opposed to yours.  But to the groups he spends on, the politician’s charitable investment is invaluable.

To the extent that we delegate to the government the power to spend money on our behalf, within the strictures of a Constitution properly understood, I propose a simple standard for evaluating the merit of public benevolence.  Does federal spending benefit one group at the expense of another?  If yes, then you cannot in good faith accept such a taking.

This principle may seem removed from reality today.  Spending is out of all proportion to anything our forefathers could have imagined.  Sure they had debt and currency crises, but they did not share a behemoth welfare state, nor did they ever shift such massive private burdens onto the back of the public.  But I believe that there will come a time when this system will reset, and we will have a choice between a centrally planned banana republic and a capitalist system made up of responsible individuals who seek to produce, live in peace and maintain the most limited government possible because there will be no alternative.  But if we can’t start to have these fundamental conversations now, how will we ever have a cogent message after the state implodes.

Most important, one must recognize that it is not just that government spending is economically harmful.  Except in the narrow areas circumscribed in the Constitution, it is immoral.  It represents your neighbor reaching into your pocket and taking money from you, with legitimization simply because a politician plays the middle man.

Perhaps we can all take solace in the fact that regardless of what happens during the next 10 or 20 years, there will truly be economic and social justice.  Those who have driven us to this point will pay a price for their tyrannical will to dictate our lives, as their grand experiment fails as it has always and wherever it has been tried.  So let us not fret.  With knowledge that what has to happen will inevitably happen, let us stride ever more confidently and arm ourselves with truth because it will set us free.

Democrats and Republicans shake their heads and wonder, how could our President pursue such divisive and unpopular policies?  What is the rationale for this President’s decisions?  Is he incompetent?  Is he naive?

The answer is none of the above.

I have said before and I will say again, Barack Obama does not share the values of Americans.  His vision is completely anathema to an America based on individualism, private property rights and Judeo-Christian morality.

When one argues that Barack Obama is merely mistaken in his economic program, they completely discount the notion that he knows exactly what he is doing and that he has been 100% successful in achieving his policies and their intended ends, means and ends that any objective viewer would realize were insane.  After all, an economy is nothing more than the collection of mutually beneficial voluntary exchanges of labor and the fruits of labor.  Anything that impedes one’s labor, or the trading of its fruits is necessarily bad for the economy.  Hence, almost everything a government does to try to stimulate an economy, impeding the natural spontaneous harmony of such a system necessarily postpones any recovery.

We were in major trouble with unsustainable public and private debt prior to this President, coupled with a completely insolvent financial system, a destined to fail monetary system and numerous stagnant businesses sucking up economic resources.  A real financial restructuring would have taken significant time, and even the most “fiscally conservative” President and Congress would not have been able to move enough roadblocks out of the way to make this recovery painless or quick.  I question whether or not anything could change the direction of the economy in the long run, save for a collapse that would force us to let the free market work and liquidate the welfare state.  But this President ensures that there will not even be a chance for recovery for many many years, regardless of who the next President is.

And it is all by design.

If you are Barack Obama, your plans are working perfectly.  You are driving the economy into the ground, fueling turmoil in the Middle East, weakening our nuclear defenses and supporting the enemies of civilization, and you are lining the pockets of your constituency and pushing us towards such great crises that a society already addicted to government may be forced to its knees wrongfully begging for an even greater paternal one.  If you doubt my argument that the American people are still not awake enough to cause any meaningful change, consider that for all the talk of a backlash against this government, if you look at the Republicans that will take over Congress, almost none of them them would truly be willing to do the things necessary to make our government solvent, break the chains off of our private sector and defend us against our enemies and their abetters, starting with calling them by name, not a tactic like terrorism.

This brings us to Barack Obama’s stance on the Ground Zero mosque.  Months ago I argued that Islam is not a religion in the traditional sense.  I argued that as Islam is a theo-political system, it should not deserve the same Constitutional protections as other religions with a strictly spiritual component.  In effect, to support Islam in this country would be to support a political system incompatible with ours, and intolerant of our pluralistic Judeo-Christian society.  To support Islamic institutions would be to weaken America’s freedom, not strengthen it.  And this is because Islam and America cannot coexist because America is a threat to the Ummah; us infidels would have to be converted by the sword or forced to live as second-class citizens under Islamic law, like Spaniards once did in Cordoba.  Hence the Cordoba Initiative.

Yet Barack Obama consistently sides with Muslims; makes it a point to bow down to Muslims at every turn and has since the start of his Presidency and throughout his public life.  He also studied in the madrass as a child, has had the backing of major players in the Muslim community during his academic and political career and attended Reverend Wright’s church which parrots the same narrative as Imams worldwide.  His true colors showed when he made the Ground Zero mosque a national issue by supporting it.  Howard Dean has gone on record as questioning what Barack Obama could have been thinking politically.  Of course he found it to be a political disaster, lest he should care about its destructiveness on principle.

Barack Obama had to know the firestorm he would create, but he did not care.  He could not help himself when it came to something he truly believed in, jumping to say something unpopular to the American people but instinctive for him.  Just like he did not care about creating fertile soil for economic growth, just like he does not care in my opinion about defending American lives as reflected by his policies.  And when he speaks and says inflammatory things that make political pundits shake their heads in wonder, it is because he is showing who he is, and where his passions lie.  This President is a principled politician, but he supports principles that are crushing the American people.  He is a third world man who gives a second rate speech and believes in the First Amendment as a suicide pact.

This is the most destructive President since FDR, and that it is intentionally so makes it all the more demoralizing.  Until more people realize this, we won’t even have a fighting chance.  We are going to be poorer, weaker and less likely to ever rekindle the flame of freedom in this nation, and I fear that our differences with our political opposition will prove irreconcilable.

Liberals, progressives, socialists, statists, communists — all enemies of civilization argue all issues on the basis of moral relativism, one odious derivation of which is multiculturalism.  There are many arguments for why such principles are wrong.  But perhaps the most obvious problem with moral relativism and its counterparts is that from which moral relativism springs: the idea that there is no objective truth.

If there is no objective truth as the Sophists argue, then how can the statement that there is no objective truth be true?  If nothing is true, then how can the assumption be made that it is true that there is no such thing that is truly inherently good or inherently bad, or that it is true that there is no culture that is truly better than any other culture?  To argue in favor of moral relativism or multiculturalism requires a belief that there is objective truth; this is a conundrum that Leftists cannot argue away.

Since all Leftism stems from a fallacious premise, all of its aspects must be fallacious.  If only anyone would think it through, perhaps we could right this ship.

A patriotic and prescient reader, Doug W forwarded me the below timely piece that he wrote as a student at 22 (the same age as me) in 1985, and recently revised:

Declaration of Independence – 2.0

Monday, June 14th, 2010

When in the Course of Human Events, it becomes necessary for Individuals to Reorganize the Political Bonds which have connected them with their national government and to assume among the Powers of the Earth, the separate and Superior Station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the Revitalization.

We hold these Truths to be Self-Evident, that All People are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain Unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty of the Spirit & Mind, Ownership of One’s Own Productive Efforts, Freedom from Intrusive governments, Economic Freedom of Choice, and the Pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these Rights, governments are instituted among Individuals, deriving their Just Powers from the True & Informed Consent of the Governed, that whenever ANY form of government becomes DESTRUCTIVE to these Ends, it is the Right of the People to Alter or to Abolish it, and to institute New Government, laying its Foundations on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such form, as to them shall seem MOST likely to effect their Individual Liberty, Economic Freedom & Security, Physical Safety and Spiritual Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for Light and Transient causes; and accordingly all Experience has shown, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, While Evils (like government encroachment into the private affairs of individuals & businesses and embarrassingly poor government administrative, operational and financial performance) are sufferable, than to Right themselves by Abolishing the forms of government to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of Government Abuses of Power, Usurpations of Individual FREEDOMS, Increasing Financial Extractions, Regulatory Suffocation, and Bureaucratic Ineffectiveness, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under Absolute Economic, Social, and thus Political DESPOTISM, It is their RIGHT, it is their DUTY to thoughtfully identify select and install truly Honorable Classically Liberal  guards for Their Future Economic, Individual (and thus Societal) Security, and Ecosystem Preservation.

Such has been the patient Sufferance of the People of the United States; and such is now the necessity which constrains us to Restore Our Former Systems of Government. The History of Congresses & Presidents – 1933 to the Present – is a History of repeated Federal Government Expansions, Excesses and Ineptitudes, all having in Direct Result the establishment of Oppressive Economic Control over the People of the United States. To Prove this, let FACTS be submitted to a candid WORLD.

MEMBERS of CONGRESS and PRESIDENTS (1933 to the Present):

-Have, with the best of intentions (and sometimes without), continually tried to Artificially manipulate the Economy of the United States. This manipulation – designed for the purposes of bringing about improved living standards, greater societal cohesiveness, and Domestic Tranquility – Resulted in: an unjustifiably High Level of Taxation, a Schizophrenically Paradoxical and Complicated Tax Code, Astronomically High Levels of Bankruptcy Threatening Government Debt, Increased Risk of Government Debt Monetization Induced INFLATION, Increasing Levels of Government Intrusion into the Lives of Our Citizens, Greater Amounts of Suspicion, Antagonism and resentment between members of different Socio-Economic Groups, and – MOST IMPORTANTLY – a Stagnation of Our Natural Socio-Economic Interaction. All this has been done by Federal Officials who have no stated or inferred CONSTITUTIONAL Authority to operate the Federal Government in such a fashion and who lack sufficient understanding of THE ECONOMIC LAWS OF THE UNIVERSE. These Financial & Economic WEAKNESSES have left Our Union exposed to all the Dangers of Hollow Propagandistic Slogans and Economic, Psychological and Societal Convulsions.

-They have created a situation which has subjected Us to a form of government alien to: the Ideals, Intentions, and Goals that formed Our DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE; fueled the Fires of Our AMERICAN REVOLUTION, and are the very Essence of Our Nation’s Birth;

-They have diluted the strength & meaning of Our CONSTITUTION by passing thousands of obscure and complicated pieces of legislation; thus effectively abolishing Our Most Valuable LAWS, and altering fundamentally the form of Our Government from the WISE Designs of the Original Architects of the Government of the United States;

-They have unjustly declared themselves invested with the Power to legislate for Us in All cases whatsoever. Congress with its Inglorious Plethora of committees and sub-committees AND the Executive Branch with its unchecked executive orders, innumerable departments, agencies, commissions, councils, services and offices, work together to actively “HELP” the People of the United States Live THEIR LIVES; the result of this Ungodly collaboration has been an unprecedented proliferation of laws, regulations, and taxes, which have combined to make it Mathematically Certain that even the most Honest Individuals, businesses and local governments amongst Us will break a good number of Federal Dictates;

-They have created a Multitude of new government agencies, commissions and departments and sent hither swarms of faceless distant bureaucrats to Harass Us and TAX OUT OUR SUBSTANCE.  Our alleged representatives have told Us that We must make do with Less Money because they WANT – without genuinely attempting to adapt the government to less revenue – MORE OF OUR MONEY; We are expected to accept – in a Slave-like Fashion – the unspoken fact that WE THE PEOPLE of the United States serve one purpose relative to the Federal Government – TO PAY, Unquestioningly and Involuntarily, for the Services Provide to, the Aggravation Inflicted on, and the Economic Instability Forced upon Us by the Federal Government;

-They have – by using Socio-Economically Divisive Rhetoric, Simplistic and Vague Campaign Slogans and Speeches, Confusing & Equally Meaningless Statistics and by placing party politics and political gamesmanship ABOVE Our Nation’s True Current and Future Needs – incited the development of Factional Divisiveness with Our Society;

-They have created Oceans of DEBT which threaten to Drown the Happiness of Future Generations of Americans and with this DEBT, they have backed themselves into a Financial and Political corner – from which the only logical long-term escape -given their past Taxing, Financial, & Operational Performance Record- will be Higher Tax Extractions & Inflationary Debt Monetization. This monetization will bring forth a Tidal Wave of Inflation; and this Inflation will result in an Unrestrained Destruction of our Wealth and paralyzing distortions of economic activity. Paper Money will – as it has in Our PAST – “Pollute the Equity of Our Laws, Turn them into Engines of Oppression, Corrupt the JUSTICE of Our Public Administration, Destroy the Fortunes of the Millions who have Confidence in it, Enervate the Trade, Husbandry, and Manufacturers of Our Country, and Will Go Far to DESTROY the MORALITY of OUR PEOPLE;”

-And they have – in general – behaved in a manner totally Unworthy of Solemnly Sworn Stewards of a GREAT & FREE ECONOMIC POWER.

This Documentable pattern of Knowingly & Wantonly Shattering the American Dreams of Individual Economic Self Determination and National Prosperity, for reasons of personal political ambition, financial greed, foolishness, and/or weakness of will power, CANNOT BE JUSTIFIED. And for their parts in this Historically Criminal Act, Members of Congress and Presidents – whether active participants or passive acquiescers – WILL NOT BE FORGIVEN by the People of the United States or by the Posterity of the World.

In every stage of these increasing Economic & Regulatory Oppressions, we have PETITIONED FOR REDRESS in the most humble terms; Our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated Injury and Restrictions. A Federal Government, whose Character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is Unfit to Protect and Govern a FREE PEOPLE.

We, the Citizens of the United States of America, Appealing to the Supreme Judge of the World for the Rectitude of Our Intentions, wish to peacefully restore the Limited, Focused and Just scope of the federal government and reestablish national solvency. We further request our state and local representatives to assist us with  the realignment the Federal Government of the UNITED STATES in accordance with the Precepts contained within Our Original DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE, Preamble Objectives & Laws contained within Our Original CONSTITUTION, and Principles of Sound FINANCIAL and OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT.  Thus  Establishing Financial, Economic, and Environmental Conditions conducive to allowing our Citizens to Achieve the Lives they dream of based on their own inspiration, abilities, and determination.  And for the support of this declaration, with a firm Reliance on the Protection of Devine Providence, We mutually pledge to each other Out Time, Abilities, Full Effort, and Our Sacred Honor.

This is a revised version of part of a college economics paper on the socially disruptive dangers of a central Government-Gone-Wild in a distant potential future (which seems to be Our Present) America. I wrote this on the night of September 16th, 1985 as a way of venting my frustration with the fact that the U.S. Senate was raising the Federal Debt Limit to $2 TRILLION ($2,000,000,000,000.00). At the ripe old age of 22, I thought this event was a disaster (joke was on me). I haven’t read this in almost 20 years. Given our current economic and political situation, I think its content holds up pretty well. I hope you enjoyed it.  By the way, the Federal Debt Limit is being RAISED to $14.3 TRILLION ($14,300,000,000,000.00); That’s $47666.67 for Each American, all 300,000,000 of us. Plus we as a Nation have a ZERO PERCENT SAVINGS RATE and We (America) are borrowing 1.5 TRILLION a Year ($1,500,000,000,000.00 Per Year or $4,109,589,000.00 per day or $171,232,000.000 Per Hour or $2,853,881.30 Per Minute) From CHINA, O.P.E.C. Countries, RUSSIA, and everyone else we can hit up to finance our spending binge. PLUS, the U.S. Government has “OFF-BUDGET / IMPLICIT LIABILITIES of $54.3 TRILLION ($54,300,000,000,000.00) see GAO-08-241CG – that’s another $174,450.98 Per Person. NOW, Add that to your credit cards, car loans and mortgages and do you really think we’ll ever see a Social Security check that’s actually worth anything?

This document is (was) designed to be a late-20th Century reflection of the precepts contained within the original UNITED STATES DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE. It is intended to provoke constructive thought among members of the general population, the academic community, the business community, the U.S. Congress, the Judicial Branch and the Executive Branch. It IS NOT meant to be considered a policy statement of ANY individual or group(s) of individuals.

All I might add to Doug’s piece are that the tensions spoken to are as old as the Republic itself, starting with the debate between Jefferson and Hamilton on the size, scope and purpose of government.  Moreover, it touches on the age-old battle between the state and sovereign man.  The first major expansion of US governmental power in my view was not in 1933 but during Lincoln’s Presidency.

In addition, blame must be laid at the feet of the citizenry as well.  We have condoned government tyranny for any number of reasons.  We have elected these representatives, and most importantly allowed socialist ideas to defeat capitalist, individualist and moral ones.  The politicians reflect the people, and while I would not want to besmirch our people, we are all at fault for where we stand today.  True, man is flawed, and ultimately his institutions will reflect this fact, but the loss of a once great nation largely over the last century was no fait accompli.

Mr. Krauthammer:

I appreciate your calling out of Obama, Holder & Co. on their disingenuousness (to put it politely) with regard to Islam.  It is not only hugely destructive to fail to recognize our enemies, but also shows complicity when this administration poo poos the theo-political ideology of Islam.

While I laud your effort to shed light on this topic, I do take issue with some of your assertions regarding Islam, and wanted to get some clarification on it.

You say in your most recent article:

“Holder’s avoidance of the obvious continues the absurd and embarrassing refusal of the Obama administration to acknowledge who out there is trying to kill Americans and why. In fact, it has banned from its official vocabulary the terms jihadist, Islamist and Islamic terrorism.

Instead, President Obama’s National Security Strategy insists on calling the enemy — how else do you define those seeking your destruction? — “a loose network of violent extremists.” But this is utterly meaningless. This is not an anger-management therapy group gone rogue. These are people professing a powerful ideology rooted in a radical interpretation of Islam, in whose name they propagandize, proselytize, terrorize and kill.”
What radical interpretation of Islam is it exactly to which you are referring?

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyep Erdogan was quite honest when he said said with regard to “moderate Islam” that ‘These descriptions are very ugly, it is offensive and an insult to our religion. There is no moderate or immoderate Islam. Islam is Islam and that’s it.”

Surely you know that Muslims have been partaking in violent jihad for 1400 years.

But I would imagine as well you are familiar with the Koranic concepts of taqiyya and abrogation — the former the Islamic principle that it is ok to lie and deceive in order to advance Islam and the latter that the violent verses revealed chronologically later by Allah supplant his earlier peaceful words.

Moreover, Islam itself means submission.  Nonbelievers must either convert, be killed by the sword or live as dhimmis, second-class oppressed citizens forced to pay a tax and essentially banned from their cultural and spiritual practices.

If by so-called “fundamentalism,” you mean to say that portions of Muslims literally use the Koran as justification to commit violent acts of jihad in the cause of world Islamic supremacy, then I will grant that this term is proper.  However, what about all of the peaceful Muslims that work to advance dhimmitude and the imposition of Sharia Law and ultimately Muslim domination more subtly, for example by chilling criticism of Islam through bodies like CAIR and ISNA, or by forcing Western society to create separate facilities and make other cultural accommodations specifically for Muslims?  What about all of the peaceful Muslims that give money to mosques and Muslim foundations that produce terrorists and support terrorist states and leaders who work to deceive us when it comes to Islam through taqiyya?  What about all of the peaceful Muslims who believe in everything the Koran says, including the parts about the imposition of worldwide Sharia Law and Muslim dominance, and work however they can to bring this about, but don’t kill people to carry out this cause?

Whether Muslims are peaceful or not is not the important thing however, nor does it matter how one interprets the Koran.  What matters are the fundamental tenets of the religion, most importantly that its end is a world united under Islamic law and subservient to Allah, and that the means to this end can take peaceful and/or violent forms depending on their efficacy.  Is there any other way to interpret what the Koran says?  Certainly if you read the works of scholars far more knowledgeable about the topic than I such as Robert Spencer, Stephen Coughlin, Ibn Warraq and any other of a number of apostates, it would seem that there are not.  There are certainly peaceful Muslims, but a religion that is not only intolerant of other religions but seeks to supplant other religions cannot be a peaceful one itself.

I submit that Islam is a theo-political ideology which directs its followers to work towards its end goal of world Islamic domination, and no matter how you interpret it, it is incompatible with Western Civilization.  Failure to recognize the danger of the ideology itself, not various interpretations of it, is in my view suicidal.

Andrew Mellon

Joyous commentary from the prodigious pessimist Mr. Derbyshire:

Immigration 101. Look: Here’s the immigration issue in a nutshell. Let X be the number of people we — we, the people, as expressed through our democratic procedures — are willing to accept for settlement in this and the next few years. That’s X: the number of people we are willing to give settlement visas to. Now let Y be the number of people, from among the seven billion currently alive on this planet, who wish to come and settle here. Y want to come settle; we’re willing to take in X.

Let’s assume that Y is greater than X — which, in the case of the U.S.A., it certainly is, by a couple of orders of magnitude. The two questions our immigration policy has to answer are, one, what is the value of X? and two, assuming X is greater than zero, how do we select the smaller number, X, from the larger number, Y? That’s it. That’s all there is to immigration policy in the large. The rest is details and fine-tuning. That’s legal immigration, of course. Illegal immigration is a law-enforcement issue. Illegal residents just have to be identified and deported. Fuel up those half million school buses!

There is actually a case for deciding that X, the number of people we should accept for settlement, is zero. Do you actually feel that the U.S.A. is under-populated right now? Maybe I’m swayed somewhat on this — I have to drive the Long Island Expressway. We don’t have to accept anyone for settlement if we don’t want to. The nation belongs to us, its citizens. And certainly when unemployment is at ten percent, the case for zero immigration looks pretty good. Why would we take in new people for settlement when our own citizens can’t find work?

If we collectively decide that we do want to take in immigrants, even in a recession, then discussion moves to the second of my two questions: How do we select the smaller number, X, from the larger number, Y? Say the number of people wishing to come settle in the U.S.A., worldwide, is a hundred million a year — one in seventy of the world’s population. I should think that is likely an under-estimate, but let’s suppose. And let’s further suppose that we have decided to let in a million a year for settlement. How do we pick the million from the hundred million? How do we decide who’s the lucky one, and who are the unlucky ninety-nine?

I’d guess that most Americans, if you asked them this question, would favor some kind of points system. So many points for education and work skills, so many for English fluency, so many for demonstrated talents in art, sport, or music; then negative points taken off for anything suggesting a burden on our public fisc — health problems, criminal record, old age, number of dependents, and so on.

There you are: I just worked out a rational immigration system. Do you think this is anything at all like what Barack Obama has in mind when he talks about “comprehensive immigration reform”? [Laughter]

Once you decide to let people settle in your country, everything else is a matter of human capital, which does matter. The president even said so in his speech — all those tributes to immigrant entrepreneurs and scientists. This is the hardest point for politicians to talk about honestly, though, since our current state ideology pretends that everyone is an Einstein — that people and nations don’t differ at all in their human capital. This is idiotic of course, and nobody really believes it. The Institute of Advanced Study isn’t going to hire me to do nuclear physics research. For some reason, though, we’ve all decided that we should pretend to believe it.

Consider the city of Maywood, California, which Radio Derb reported on last week. This is the city that laid off all its employees, disbanded its police and fire departments, and so on, because insurance companies wouldn’t write the city any policies. Why not? Because the city was hopelessly corrupt and mis-managed. Maywood is 96 percent Hispanic. This being southern California, that means Mexican. Do you think, does even Barack Obama think, that Maywood would be in the trouble it’s in if it was 96 percent Indian software engineers, 96 percent Scottish Presbyterians, 96 percent Jewish Russians, or 96 percent Chinese entrepreneurs? Human capital matters. It matters. If you pretend it doesn’t matter, you end up with … well, Maywood.

I also like how he dispels the whole “nation of immigrants” thing:

“Nation of immigrants”? No we’re not. The original settlers were just moving from one part of British or Dutch territory to another part. That’s not immigration. If there had been no further inflows whatsoever since the founding of the Republic, natural increase alone would have given the U.S.A. a population almost half what it actually was by 1992, the date that demographer Campbell Gibson carried out the computation. So “nation of immigrants” is at best a half truth — kind of an insulting one for the other half of America, the ones who would have been here anyway.

Furthermore, immigration has always been a stop and go affair. For the quarter-century of the Napoleonic Wars, immigration into America practically ceased. It didn’t really pick up until the 1840s. It peaked in the early 1850s, then dropped off during the Civil War. It picked up in the early 1880s, leading into the Great Wave that ended in the 1920s. Then there was a great lull until the late 1960s, a forty-year lull with very low levels.

If you pick out particular regions, the “nation of immigrants” cliché looks even sillier. New England had almost no incoming population for two hundred years, from the 1640s to the 1840s. “Nation of immigrants”? Pah! Lots of us are immigrants, and even more of us have parents or grandparents who are immigrants, but that doesn’t make us a nation of immigrants; it only makes us a nation with immigrants.

And Barack Obama’s assertion that, quote: “We’ve always defined ourselves as a nation of immigrants,” is just false. No we haven’t. The phrase “nation of immigrants” was thought up by John F. Kennedy in 1958. To my knowledge, nobody in the previous 180 years of the republic’s existence ever uttered that phrase. It certainly wasn’t commonplace. Funny use of the word “always” there, Mr. President.

He also skewers Obama and Holder as the whiney racists that they are.  With liberty and justice for some.

Black Panther case. Well knock me down with a feather! It turns out that Eric Holder’s Justice Department doesn’t think that civil rights and voting rights laws should be enforced on behalf of white people. Civil rights and voting rights are only for black people. That’s according to J. Christian Adams, the former Justice Department attorney who quit his job to protest the administration’s handling of the voter intimidation case in Philadephia, where Black Panthers in full dress uniform and carrying nightsticks stood at the entrance to a polling place snarling at white voters.

For goodness’ sake, is anyone surprised at this? Barack Obama and Eric Holder are leftist black Americans with enormous chips on their shoulders about race. Obama’s autobiography is full of racial whining. It’s even there in the title: “A story of race and inheritance.” Obama simply couldn’t forgive all those pleasant, middle-class white people he grew up amongst for giving him such a pleasant, middle-class upbringing and education. Same with Holder, who grew up in New York City of the 1950s and 1960s, a city run by white liberals like Robert Wagner and John Lindsay, determined to give smart black kids every possible break in life. Hence Eric Holder’s career: Stuyvesant High School, Columbia University, and easy access to plum lawyering jobs. These guys hate white America for being so damn nice to them.

Human nature’s a funny thing. When black Americans really were cruelly oppressed they produced moral giants like Frederick Douglass and Booker T. Washington. Once the cruelty ended and America at large started bending over backwards to make amends for it, we began turning out spiteful, whining creeps like Obama and Holder.

We’ll put up with them, of course. We feel we have to. It all comes under the heading of the Slavery Tax, which the U.S.A. will be paying for ever.

Now, moving beyond these vagaries, note the poster in the below picture of Obama and Medvedev:

What was the purpose of “one of the most influential of German Expressionist films and…one of the greatest horror movies of all time,” The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari?  Wikipedia says:

Writers Hans Janowitz and Carl Mayer met each other in Berlin soon after World War I. The two men considered the new film medium as a new type of artistic expression – visual storytelling that necessitated collaboration between writers and painters, cameramen, actors, directors. They felt that film was the ideal medium through which to both call attention to the emerging pacifism in postwar Germany and exhibit radical anti-bourgeois art.^[1]

Coincidence?

I’m only about 75% joking around here.

I don’t want you to go home depressed. I want you to go home happy. You deserve to be happy. You look like normal people. The process of demoralization, which takes 20 years, has taken place only in part. Andropov, a year ago when he was still half alive, talking to the Kremlin assembly, said, “We (meaning communists) are entering the final stage of the battle for minds and hearts of the people.” He was not talking about invasion of El Salvador. No, he was talking about this process I just described. You have five more years, according to Andropov. Presuming that you are demoralized, which I don’t believe because you are still alive, and Andropov is dead. So is Chernenko.

What to do about this crazy situation. Believe me, the solution is ridiculously simple.

[...]

Just for the sake of experiment, listen to Schuman. It costs you nothing. My solution is simple. You don’t want to be demoralized. Stay moral. See how simple? Stay moral. What does this imply? Exactly what CAUSA is telling you. Exactly what many millions of sensible Americans who belong to a multiplicity of conservative and religious groups are telling you on TV and radio. These stations grow like mushrooms. Stay moral…

And so that they [the youth] will grow up realizing that their right to live, to be free and pursue happiness, is not given by the state or federal government. It is given by God. You have to implant in the minds of your children, before it is too late, that yours is the best system.

[...]

Suppose you believe Andropov and are demoralized. Suppose we are really entering the final stage of your life, destabilization, five more years. Even then there is a solution. And again, this solution has nothing to do with more nuclear warheads. This solution is so primitive and so simple that nobody wants to listen to me, in the establishment. It is very simple, peaceful, nonviolent and very beneficial: stop aiding your enemy.

[...]

And if we are talking specifically about media like that, already I gave you the solution. Start your own media. If you read such monsters as The New York Times, or The Washington Post, or The Los Angeles Times, if you watch the garbage coming through the three major TV networks, just for curiosity’s sake, please subscribe to conservative literature. If you watch The Phil Donahue Show, just for curiosity watch Pat Robertson or Jimmy Swaggart, or Jerry Falwell; there are many others.

If you read The Los Angeles Times, read The Washington Times for a change. You will see the difference. That’s all I have to say to you. Please do it fast. Because if you pooh-pooh your system, you will follow the destiny of the Vietnamese, Cambodians, Nicaraguans, Zimbabweans and Ethiopians. And yours will be the last country.

Why am I shouting? Why am I so emotional? I am sick and tired of defecting! And believe me, if you destroy your system, you will have no place to defect to. Because your country is the last hope for mankind’s survival, freedom and justice.

President Barack Obama in his commencement address to the graduating class of 2010 at the University of Michigan:

Today’s twenty-four/seven echo chamber amplifies the most inflammatory soundbites louder and faster than ever before. It has also, however, given us unprecedented choice. Whereas most Americans used to get their news from the same three networks over dinner or a few influential papers on Sunday morning, we now have the option to get our information from any number of blogs or websites or cable news shows. And this can have both a good and bad development for our democracy.

For if we choose only to expose ourselves to opinions and viewpoints that are in line with our own, studies suggest that we will become more polarized, more set in our ways. That will only reinforce and even deepen the political divides in this country. But if we choose to actively seek out information that challenges our assumptions and our beliefs, perhaps we can begin to understand where the people who disagree with us are coming from.

Now this requires us to agree on a certain set of facts to debate from; that is why we need a vibrant and thriving news business that is separate from opinion makers and talking heads. That’s why we need an educated citizenry that uses hard evidence and not just assertion. As Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously said, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.”

Still, if you’re somebody who only reads the editorial page of The New York Times, try glancing at the page of The Wall Street Journal once in awhile. If you’re a fan of Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh, try reading a few columns on the Huffington Post website. It may make your blood boil; your mind may not be changed. But the practice of listening to opposing views is essential for effective citizenship. It’s essential for our democracy.

Leaving aside Bezmenov’s emphasis on the religious right as the antidote to socialism, which I think should be broadened more properly as Judeo-Christian morality (and with it an emphasis on justice and freedom), the irony herein is striking.

Candor from Jon Voigt in the Washington Times:

Dear President Obama:

You will be the first American president that lied to the Jewish people, and the American people as well, when you said that you would defend Israel, the only Democratic state in the Middle East, against all their enemies. You have done just the opposite. You have propagandized Israel, until they look like they are everyone’s enemy – and it has resonated throughout the world. You are putting Israel in harm’s way, and you have promoted anti-Semitism throughout the world.

You have brought this to a people who have given the world the Ten Commandments and most laws we live by today. The Jewish people have given the world our greatest scientist and philosophers, and the cures for many diseases, and now you play a very dangerous game so you can look like a true martyr to what you see and say are the underdogs. But the underdogs you defend are murderers and criminals and want Israel eradicated.

You have brought to Arizona a civil war, once again defending the criminals and illegals, creating a meltdown for good, loyal, law-abiding citizens. Your destruction of this country may never be remedied, and we may never recover. I pray to God you stop, and I hope the people in this great country realize your agenda is not for the betterment of mankind, but for the betterment of your politics.

With heartfelt and deep concern for America and Israel,

Jon Voight