As a follow up to our discussion over what should be the conservative / classical liberal strategy with regard to illegal immigration (in particular, how best to influence the national debate and so give whatever political party we back the rhetorical cover to address the issue), allow me to offer additional material to fuel what I hope will be an ongoing discussion. Again, from Mark Levin’s Liberty and Tyranny:
The Pew Hispanic Center estimates that 9 percent of the population of Mexico was living in the United States in 2004. Fifty-seven percent of all illegal immigrants are Mexican. Another 24 percent are from other Latin American countries. Fifty-five percent of all Mexicans in the United States are here illegally. By 2050, Hispanics will be between 29 percent and 32 percent of the nation’s population.
[…]
The Manhattan Institute’s Heather Mac Donald points to another problem with the mass Hispanic migration to the United States — the “fertility surge” among unwed Hispanic women, particularly teenage girls. “Hispanic women have the highest unmarried birthrate in the country — over three times that of whites and Asians, and nearly one and a half times that of black women.” Moreover, “the rate of childbirth for Mexican teenagers, who come from by far the largest and fastest-growing immigration population, greatly outstrips every other group.
[…]
The enormity of migration to the United States also discourages the use of English and encourages the establishment of ethnic enclaves. The 2007 Census Bureau’s American Community Survey found that more than 55 million individuals in the United States speak a language other than English at home. Of these people, more than 34 million speak Spanish at home. More than 16 million of the Spanish-speaking individuals speak English “less than very well.” Furthermore, in 2000, 43 percent of Hispanics lived in neighborhoods with Hispanic majorities, up from 39 percent in 1990.
Of course, the administrative state has prospered hugely from the immigration anarchy the Statist has unleashed. The Heritage Foundation’s Robert Rector writes that “historically, Hispanics in America have had a very high level of welfare use…[In recent years], Hispanics were almost three times more likely to receive welfare than non-Hispanic whites. Putting together the greater probability of receiving welfare with the greater cost of welfare per family means that, on average, Hispanic families received four times more welfare per family than white non-Hispanics … Welfare use can also be measured by immigration status. In general, immigrant households are abut 50 percent more likely to use welfare than native-born households. Immigrants with less education are more likely to use welfare.
In 2008, a Manhattan Institute study, “Measuring Immigrant Assimilation in the United States,” found that the current level of assimilation of all recent immigrant groups is lower than at any time during the first great migration early in the twentieth century. While some ethnic groups assimilated better than others, and for different reasons, Mexicans were the least assimilated overall and were assimilating at the slowest rate. […]
[…]
[…] rather than Americanize aliens and use public and private institutions to inculcate them with the virtues of American culture, language, mores, history, traditions, and customs, the Statist is cultivating cultural relativism in which the cultures from which the aliens fled are given equal accord with the American culture. But all cultures are not equal, as evidenced, in part, by the alien fleeing his own country for the American culture and the American citizen staying put. It is normal and healthy for ethnic groups to celebrate their diverse heritages […]. But neither the heritage nor home language of the individual has ever competed with the American culture for dominance. The history of immigration in the United States up to now has been of assimilation.
To interject here, let me first say that “culture,” the way Levin seems to be using it, is tied to a kind of civic history, and is accorded a permanence — or, at least, a precedence — that, ontologically, may not exist in the way he seems to believe. That is to say, if culture is but a set of beliefs and practices, then once the beliefs and practices change, the culture has changed. So it follows that the American culture, given that it now favors the statist’s immigration agenda, is one of multiculturalism and balkinization — or, if you prefer, the ethnic “quilt” preferred by diversiphiles over and above the “melting pot” model that used to represent American “culture”, but that no longer does so.
What Levin wants is to change the culture once again — to model US culture on a previous incarnation of that culture, one that he (rightly) notes is more in keeping with the originalist intent of those who founded the country. The distinction may seem a minor one, but it is worth pointing out: “culture” is fluid; and it is therefore best addressed by correctives in law designed to influence the direction of “culture.” Here, what Levin is going for is an appeal to a past culture as a model for a future culture he hopes to see embraced. Which is precisely the kind of example I offered in response to Nishi’s arguments about “cultural evolution” moving only in one direction: it is true, but not in the sense she seems to think. Because here, were Levin to get his wish, we’d have a new culture in the United States with respect to our approach to immigration and assimilation; but at the same time, that new culture would be a reprise of the attitudes and laws the formed a prior culture. Meaning we will have moved back by moving forward — or moved forward by moving back.
Back to Levin:
In his 1796 Farewell Address to the nation, George Washington explained it this way:
Citizens, either by birth or choice, of a common country, that country has the right to concentrate your affections. The name of American, which belongs to you, in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of Patriotism, more than any appellation derived from local discriminations.
For more than two centuries, individuals with diverse backgrounds have come together to form a national “melting pot” and harmonious society sustained by the allegiance to the country and its founding principles. But today’s open-ended mass migration, coupled with the destructive influences of biculturalism, multiculturalism, bilingualism, multilingualism, dual citizenship, and affirmative action, have combined to form the building blocks of a different kind of society — where aliens are taught to hold tightly to their former cultures and languages, balkinization grows, antagonism and conflict are aroused, and victimhood is claimed at perceived slights. If a nation does not show and teach respect for its own identity, principles, and institutions, that corrosive attitude is conveyed to the rest of the world, including newly arriving aliens. And if this is unchecked, the nation will ultimately cease to exist.
Dr. Samuel P. Huntington, who served as chairman of Harvard’s Government Department and its Academy for International and Areas Studies, observed that “the persistent inflow of Hispanic immigrants threatens to divide the United States into two peoples, two cultures, two languages… The United States ignores this challenge at its peril.” He argued that “Mexican immigration differs from past immigration and most other contemporary immigration due to a combination of six factors: contiguity, scale, illegality, regional concentration [in the Southwest], persistence, and historical presence.” The consequences, he believe, are stark: “Demographically, socially, and culturally, the reconquista [re-conquest] of the Southwest of the United States by Mexican immigrants is well underway.”
What Huntington notes as a concern, people like our Nishi celebrate: the change in demographics will bring about a permanent “progressive” client state in which balkinized minority groups, even as they grow to be a majority, will vote in their “economic self-interest” — which is to say, they will vote to “legally” grant themselves the wealth of others by supporting a political ideology that thrives on power in exchange for privileges to those who elect them. And so long as those who elect them can maintain a majority, their power will be safely entrenched. Hence the desire to cultivate new votes by bringing in unskilled labor and creating a population explosion among groups that are more amenable to identity politicking than to assimilation and competition, to the very founding principles of this country.
Of course, this gambit is not fullproof. As I noted elsewhere recently, in addition to the individual outliers who refuse to cede power to the officially-sanctioned identity group narrative, once these minority groups capture the majority, voting in their own “economic self-interests” may not include providing set-asides for the new minority groups. Which is why, looking ahead, you’ll see many left-leaning academics hard at work re-inscribing “minority” as a racial or ethnic identity, not one that appeals to actual numbers. It becomes about perceived power — and given that no other ethnicity beside non-Hispanic white can ever been seen as the privileged power class, the demographic majority will always be “minorities,” and non-Hispanic whites, regardless of their electoral impotence, will always be cast as “the powerful,” and so the “majority.”
All the more reason why every effort must be made to defeat leftwing attempts to control language in a way that “meaning” is only what the consensus says it is. Because it is not difficult to look ahead and see that what the “majority of reasonable people” believe something to mean will be based entirely on their own self-interests in maintaining their dual majority “minority” status.
Levin:
American immigration policy also has the perverse effect of upholding the dysfunctional status quo in Mexico. Johns Hopkins University professor Steve H. Hanke argues that Mexico’s labor policies mirror those of communist Yugoslavia under Marshal Tito. “Rather than modernize the economy, Mexico’s politicos have embraced a Tito-inspired strategy: When incapable of fostering productive jobs, export the labor force. As a result, over 27 percent of Mexico’s labor force [was] working in the US [in 2006] and these workers are sending home $20 billion in remittances. That equals one-third of the total wage earnings in the formal sector of the Mexican economy and 10% of Mexico’s exports.
Happyfeet has made the argument that foregrounding illegal immigration is a danger for “Team R,” because such a foregrounding will be used by the press and Democrats to highlight the nativist fringe and all the “shrieky” conservatives who are likely to put off moderate voters — and thus insure further electoral success for progressives (and therefore strengthen their move through liberal fascism into soft-socialism). And in one sense he is absolutely correct: this is precisely how the left will attempt to frame debate on immigration reform, which some progressives are hoping to push to the forefront of the agenda (despite the current economic crisis). As a corrective, happy has suggested that illegal immigration only be mentioned in the context of fiscal responsibility and unsustainability, with the actual illegal immigrants left out of the conversation entirely — which makes (a certain perverse and, in a way, decidedly illiberal) sense, were the right given fair consideration by the mainstream press.
But they won’t be — and taking that fact into consideration almost certainly has to alter the calculus: how, then, to pitch the country’s economic woes in the face of a progressive push toward immigration reform without actually addressing illegal immigration? And more importantly, is such a tactic, if conservatives / classical liberals can pull it off, even prudent?
Because if Levin is correct, and the statistics he cites are representative of future trends, it may be that in the future, those who are serious about actual immigration reform will simply not have the political power to affect change, precisely because they have allowed the influx of unassimilated aliens to take over the electoral majority.
Discuss.
Of course, it’s about artificially inflating the power base in order to retain/obtain more power. What I find amazing is that those who favor what amounts to an “open borders” immigration policy, fail to acknowledge that these poor, uneducated immigrants will be toiling away, generating ever increasing FICA tax revenues to support all the new social spending. Indeed, I’ve heard many (progressive) people advocate in influx of immigrants as the way out of our financial mess, while providing more income for “social justice,” as well. Evidently, balancing our lifestyle choices on the backs of poor, brown people is OK, provided it’s the Progs who are in charge.
Regards.
There’s another problem here, which is the assumption that groupthink permeates all members of identity groups and that they’ll behave in a way stereotypically characteristic of such groups. But then, along comes a Marco Rubio, to name just one example. And nishi’s reply to such objective evidence that rebuts that assumption?
“Coconut!”
Which leads me to believe that she’s been bonked on the head by a few.
Along the same lines, no matter their color or ethnic group, people know shit from shinola when they’re soaking in it.
” let me first say that “culture,” the way Levin seems to be using it, is tied to a kind of civic history, and is accorded a permanence — or, at least, a precedence — that, ontologically, may not exist in the way he seems to believe. That is to say, if culture is but a set of beliefs and practices, then once the beliefs and practices change, the culture has changed. ”
wow…that guy Levin is a retard. Evo Theory of Culture 101– a population is not shaped by culture as much as culture evolves to fill the population needs.
Once women and blacks got the vote, the White Patriarchy model of social cohesion began degrading.
Conservatives needed to offer an alternative social cohesion model…..they couldn’t…..so an emergent social model arose.
That model is social justice.
Sukks to be you, but you brought it on your bigselves.
;)
hehe…..i liked Teabagger Wheel of Fortune the best.
Hey Pablow, I SAID that is what my latino friends call him.
im a white grrl.
<3
“…To ignore race is to be more racist than to acknowledge race. I call it neo-racism.”
Then Evo Theory of Culture 101 is retarded. Because it doesn’t account for checks that are placed on such untrammeled desires as “population needs” (which, be honest, is just a more palatable phrasing of “tyranny of the majority”) — like laws or foundational principles (codified in the NON-LIVING Constitution) — which are also part of the culture. To say that a population is not shaped by the laws that inscribe a culture is rather ridiculous. Which is why I thought I’d lay it out for you like I just have.
You can thank me later.
And then Keid A can thank me once he gets your permission.
Minority of what? Majority of what? Is there some unified thing that these modifiers pretend to dissect? Damned thing, whatever it was, has got lost.
The population?
Naturally. I’d meant to note that somewhere in the post. I’ll go back and make it more explicit.
…by way of dismissal. Your argument, not mine, lunatic. As for your “friends”, given that the term indicates a set of people who have some sort of attraction to you, they can be safely dismissed.
Having a conversation with nishi frequently reminds me of this.
When I out of nowhere shout “BINGO!”, you’ll now know why.
Coconuts! And Uncle Toms and the like. Because of the evolution. Throwback evolution, I guess you could call it.
The population, ha, like we know what that is. The census just blew through town, now everybody knows something. Or doesn’t. One minute, it’s 30 million uninsured. The next, 50 million. What’s twenty million people more or less between friends?
Nope, I had more in mind a nation unified as to purpose. Fat chance of finding that critter again.
Bzzzt! Jeff is wrong again.
This is the same problem Breitbat and Co. run up against.
You can’t “take culture back”.
Its not a war…..it is an evolutionary event like glaciation or the extinction event at the K-T boundary.
Culture is a reflection of society, not the other way around.
All conservatism can do is put drags on cultural evolution in the form of laws as long as they can scrape up a majority….it cannot reverse either cultural evolution or system entropy….the tendancy towards increasing complexity in this example.
No. How things actually worked started changing. The model was just the model, and it became less and less faithful to how things actually worked.
So it’s not that any huge cultural distinctions got invalidated, as much as new distinctions were created and a new balance evolved.
YSWIDT?
Possibly not. But you don’t just give up on your values, unless you’re you.
Justice? The morality component has gone missing from virtually every one of these exercises, nuggie. What I think you prefer is base competition over who can gussy the thing up in the finest terms so as to make it palatable.
It’s not a surprise that you’d abuse the notion of justice as thoroughly as you just abused it’s meaning. SO ask yourself if this is just:
Try defining the word before bandying it about like you habitually do, mistakenly it with the action of a mob.
Indeed.
So be proud.
Riffing on the values thing, the inclusion of women and blacks in the voting population was really more of a bringing of values as expressed in the Constitution by those hulking dumbass hayseed founders to fruition than anything else.
The Founders were hypocrites, and it took a good chunk of a century for that to start repairing itself. It’s not a new culture, it’s more the old culture beginning to gel at last.
So: the notion that the old culture has been scrapped couldn’t be more wrong.
Shorter: You fail.
Oh yes Nishi, we CAN take culture back. You just won’t necessarily like or survive the ways we do it…
Anyone up for convincing Kate that Shakers are the coolest of the cool? I mean, they’re too cool to event want to reproduce themselves. That’s like evolution in high gear!
It’s like the griefer doesn’t even pretend to read what’s written here.
Compare: “You can’t “take culture back” [incidentally, who is being quoted?]: Nishi’s answer to her own reading of what I wrote.
What I actually wrote: “Because here, were Levin to get his wish, we’d have a new culture in the United States with respect to our approach to immigration and assimilation; but at the same time, that new culture would be a reprise of the attitudes and laws the formed a prior culture. Meaning we will have moved back by moving forward — or moved forward by moving back.”
There is no “taking back” involved. There is creating new as a reprise of something we think worked in the past.
Nishi’s understanding of how culture works is as superficial as her understanding of the demographics as a function of some sort of historical dialectic.
That model is social justice
Kate Mengele … why the modifier “social” on the word “Justice”? Either something is justified via evidence or it is not.
Why the insistance that equality of OUTCOME is a form of “justice” when all evidence points to the means of achieving such “justice” are perniciously unjust?
And please…to say that giving us women the “vote” inevitably leads to a dark age of looter culture is particularly insulting.
In any discussion the loudest emotional appeals come from those most insistent that they are acting as the rational the rational party.
“Nope, I had more in mind a nation unified as to purpose. Fat chance of finding that critter again.”
Well we can thank the po-mo multiculturalists for that one for sure. You know, the people that “celebrate” the fact that America, as they see it, has finally transformed from a “melting pot” into a “patchwork quilt”; and believe that such a divisive model is better than an overriding cultural norm, what used to be called “the American way”, becuase it purports to revel in the absolute moral authority of the “diversity” of said model.
For them, “American way” = the eeeeeevvolll white Patriarchy!; regardless of the actual diversity inherent in the provincialism of the separate states. And, “states rights” as articulated by the tenets of our Constitutional republic is just a euphamism for institutionalized RAAAAAAACISM!.
The whole “divide and conquer” political strategy inherent in the far-left’s doctrine of multi-culturalism, and make no mistake it was never really a philosophy nor idea but part of a larger political strategy to incrementally overthrow the system from within, has reached an absurd tipping point though (evdidenced by the hand wringing over “white privilege” in Darleens post from yesterday) that will ultimately destroy the cohesiveness, vis-a-vis foreign aggression or political meddling, that has been classically one of the strengths of our union; and a cultural element that has baffled friend and foe alike for over 200 years.
Oh, and incidentally, Nishi, putting a drag on “cultural evolution” — or tyranny of the majority — is the idea this country is founded on.
So yes, it can be done by an agreement to live under the foundational document. There is nothing inevitable about the way you view evolution. What you call “a drag,” others have termed a social contract.
Culture in US Constitution = ?
That critter is the Constitution, provided we don’t allow it to “live” just so we can go about murdering it day in and day out.
If Nishi wants to evolve and slip the bonds of teh left tailers, there’s always Ceti Alpha V.
Being in the Southwest (Texas), the influx of hispanic immigration is all about economics. Members of a hispanic family cross the border, find whatever work they can, and then send all the money back to the rest of the family in Mexico. It’s a transfer of wealth going on because Mexico is so economically bad. The ones who do stay, find that America has more opportunities for them – this is where we run into problems because they are proud of their cultural heritage and don’t want to join the melting pot culture. Thus we have a system divided for “press 1 for english, press 2 for spanish”. Americans find this irritating. The division implies a “more equal than another” and that’s definitely not American.
The whole thing about “Immigration Reform” is simple. The Dems have lost their lock on power, even in areas that used to be secure. They want it back. Therefore, they are in the process of firing the electorate, and hiring another.
Good luck, Black Identity block, hope you have fun at the back of the Dem bus…
Again…
I linked u to the bourgie conservatives Jeff.
The consensus there is conservatism has become closed-minded, partly because of losing any semblance of empiricism.
I think your crits of Levin are valid………but neither the river of time or the river of evolution flow backwards.
You are talking about devolution, not evolution.
That only happens in nature when the gene pool…..or meme pool if you will……becomes so restricted that deleterious recessives are exposed through inbreeding.
Exactly what is happening to white christian conservative memetics.
lawl.
It’s funny to hear Beck bitching out the “German non-sense” imported into American Universities as the source of “Teh Evil” Progressivism, then listen to him turn around 30 seconds later spouting Values this and Values that and Kulture this and Kulture that. Hilarious.
sdferr —
Bringing up that there is no culture mentioned in the Constitution does nothing to further any of these discussions. Culture as a thing — the way we view that thing today — wouldn’t appear in the document that is responsible for forming “it.”
I’ve noted that culture is fluid. That it doesn’t exist the way Levin uses it, but that the distinction, ultimately, doesn’t much matter in terms of what the desire is to use “it” as a structuring device. If the word bothers you so much, find a suitable category replacement.
Waves of immigration were greated with scorn that they would destroy the country, Irish, Italian, Jews, Polish, etc., etc. But all those ethnic groups were assimilated into the society, often in a generation or two.
But the current wave of illegal immigration from South and Central America is different, it that it does not promote assimilation at all. It is worse than simply open borders, because it keeps the immgrants in a quasi legal state. Of course they are not assimilated, they are modern Chinese coolies. Unlike the 18th Century Chinese, they also stay in large numbers without being assimilated. That is the problem here.
But eet ees wafer-thin!
The earlier waves of immigrants were also dispersed across the continent. Most stereotypically to big city enclaves, but enclaves that were none the less surrounded by a broader society. Immigrants were also faced with a starker reality when they chose to avoid assimilation.
“an agreement to live under the foundational document.”
Lawl…..do you think the Founders and Framers couldn’t have made the Constitution immutable if they had wanted to?
They made it flexible and robust.
They certainly could have SAID white male protestant citizens.
They didnt say that for a reason.
By your own description, this simply doesn’t follow. First of all, there is no empirical connection between biological evolution and “cultural” evolution. The latter is but a (poorly conceived) analogue of the former. It is terribly contrived.
And of course, even were we to take the comparison seriously — or (heaven forbid) grant it scientific clout — the idea that evolutionary corrections don’t take place is just plain silly, as is the idea that, say, a certain kind of adaptation that was at one point contextually disfavored wouldn’t ultimately become evolutionarily favored because of changes to the surrounding context.
Again, your understanding is remarkably superficial. And it follows that your arguments take on just that shape.
I guess you haven’t been paying attention to interpretation theory.
A shame, because you pretend to read what I write here.
There is another factor that Dr. Huntington from Harvard failed to recognize or even consider, one that separates modern immigrant influx, both legal and illegal, from all of the preceeding waves; that is access to the public assistance trough.
In the past, immigrants came to America for a variety of reasons such as personal Freedom, economic and social opportunities they personally could have never had in the home country, or maybe just so their children could have a better life, etc. Today though, even the most meager public assistance allows many immigrants, especially from central and south America, to live in a style they could have never hoped to in their home country. Given the cultural predilictions that Dicentra has mentioned in the prior thread, it is not unreasonable to belive that US taxpayers as a whole are essentially paying folks to come here and enjoy a better life on every else’s nickel than they could have ever had by the fruits of their efforts “back home”.
This factor, as well as the Tito-esque export of labor that was mentioned, is as much a driver as anything else in immigration, both legal and illegal, today.
So regardless of your personal disposition, you are in part funding immigrants in a way that never happened to any of our antecedants.
Enjoy!
You’ve linked to a piece you wrote entitled There’s no such thing as “race”. Take my view of culture as a thing in much the same sense as that.
The only reason I point out that the Constitution has no word culture in it is merely to point to there having been no such term for the writers (the early ones, anyhow) to have used. In an ontological sense, it wasn’t, at the time. It hadn’t been invented yet. So in consequence, political thought moved along a different line, with bizarre concepts like justice, liberty, property, natural right and such more operative or prominent in the minds of political thinkers. That’s all.
But…but…I thought the model was broken? The Constitution is, arguably, the model.
That’s the sense I used in this piece.
So why get caught up on that with respect to today’s discussion?
Could it not be argued that, the first two paragraphs of the Declaration of Independence are, in effect, a statement on culture?
I’m always stuck with our contemporary difficulty thinking of our political order in the manner in which it was thought by the so called framers, is all. We often too easily introduce, unreflectively, I think (though I wouldn’t attribute that particular failing to yourself) political terms of a newer coinage that in themselves obscure rather than enlighten our understanding of the issues and understandings the framers had in mind, particularly where it comes to deciding on universally held principles or conditions of human nature. It’s a hang up I have, and not necessarily a useful one at that, I know.
Already done for gender. Women, the “majority” minority.
“They certainly could have SAID white male protestant citizens”
Except, you see, they didn’t because they believed that no markers could elevate one citizen over another by birthright alone, as opposed to the systems from whence they came originally in old Europe.
And before you say it, yes, they allowed slavery; it was a can kicked down the road in the composing the document in the interest of getting the compact passed. Think of it as a conbinatio of Obama’s executive order regarding federal funds and abortion combined with the contrived CBO estimates for the 10 year cost of Obamacare; both measures gave political cover to a number of groups to vote for something they otherwise would not have.
And name me a western nation, or an Islamic one, where ordinary women enhoyed either sufferage or even equal rights under law at the end of the 18th century.
Why are you lefties so willing to either directly incorrectly cite or otherwise misrepresent matters of history and fact? Do you think no one knows otherwise? Or that it can’t be checked?
Not everyone relies on Wikipedia for the “progressive approved meta-narrative cliff-notes” version of everything…
nishi’s comments remind me of nothing more than when a child takes an adult object and pretends it’s a simpler toy to fit into their worldview. She takes the remote control and pushes it around the floor pretending it’s a truck. She takes Daddy’s wallet and makes it a ramp.
Vroom, vroom, crash, siren noises, “I’m bored, why isn’t there something to do?”
Go outside and play, nishi.
*** waves at griefer ***
I tend to think that while the Framers were rather high minded, they were also not unrealistic. They understood how they had come to be where they were. That they had displaced the former occupants of the colonies was not seen so much a question of what was just or fair, but ultimately as matter of what was inevitable given the disparities that existed between the aboriginal states and any number of potential interlopers. I think they also knew that this dynamic, having played out many times before them in known history, could easily repeat itself.
The question then becomes, should the the unassimilated rise to the point that they become the dominant power will they even choose to retain the mechanisms of electoral power as they have been consituted? A question which would seem to answer itself.
An unfair framing of the issue, to suggest a handful of examples, might be: which is ontologically more suspect: human being or culture? Justice or culture? Fork or culture? Habit or culture? nishi or culture (heh, that’s a trick question)?
I keed.
Jeff….the Founders and Framers were ELITES…..they were geniuses and polymaths, they were natural aristoi.
If they had wanted to restrict citizenship to white protestant landholders, they certainly could have…….FOREVAH.
Jefferson wanted to abolish slavery in the constitution….South Carolina refused to be part of the Union if that was in there.
Jefferson wanted church and state separated.
That Jefferson quote you guys use about tyranny?
Try context.
“The clergy…believe that any portion of power confided to me [as
President] will be exerted in opposition to their schemes. And
they believe rightly: for I have sworn upon the altar of God,
eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of
man. But this is all they have to fear from me: and enough, too,
in their opinion.” –Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Rush, 1800.
“destructive influences of biculturalism, multiculturalism, bilingualism, multilingualism, dual citizenship, and affirmative action,”
What kind of mindset thinks that “bilingualism” and “multilingualism” a “destructive influence”? A pretty narrow one. I can understand that there are arguments for the others, though I disagree with them. But as for “bilingualism” and “multilingualism” that I can’t even fathom.
ThomasD, in their Revolutionary War period I can readily imagine them being told [in re “they were also not unrealistic”], are you fuckers nuts? We’re going to defeat the British Navy and Army? What asylum have you escaped?
there is no empirical connection between biological evolution and “cultural” evolution
lawl……of course there is.
cognitive psychology, cognitive anthropology, SBH (social brain hypothesis), evolution of language, evolution of religion, EGT (evolutionary theory of games), sociobiology, evo theory of Cooperation, genetic drift, cheater detection……
i could go on.
;)
From an email I sent to sdferr several days ago.
From Wiki,
“Culture (from the Latin cultura stemming from colere, meaning “to cultivate”) is a term that has different meanings. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of “culture” in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions. “
Slippery isn’t it. I saw a definition somewhere that it is everything about humans that can’t be attributed to genetics. Now that is broad.
From True Blue vs. Deep Red:The Ideas that Move American Politics by James W. Ceaser
“If one probes Progressivism’s pragmatist philosophers a little bit on the exact meaning of progress, it turns out they were reluctant to articulate a definite standard, for fear that it would attach them to some kind of permanent hierarchy. Many followed John Dewey in his linguistic maneuver of shifting from progress to “growth,” a term that appeared more open or neutral about ends. (When pressed once to define what growth meant, Dewey is reported to have answered “growth means growing.”)”
To culture is to grow, funny that.
I think he means institutionally enforced bilinguilism and multilinguilism sdferr. In fact, I’m pretty sure of that since he also talks about the other forces that aid immigrants, legal or otherwise, in actively avoiding assimilation.
So humans have “evolved” biologically” say in the past 10,000 years or so?
How did Dixie Carter get through 70 years without getting to play Dagny Taggart somewhere?
Now that’s an injustice. RIP Dixie from an unabashed fan.
I don’t think they ever thought it possible to defeat the British army, much less their navy. No, they knew the British had no great affinity for the colonies, nor were they looking at relocating to the colonies, just sucking the wealth out of them. So it was simply a matter of proving yourself more trouble than your worth.
Had the British been more cognisant of the greater prospects in the new world we’d have lost for sure.
Oh, and BINGO!
“I think he means institutionally enforced bilinguilism and multilinguilism sdferr.”
Wha? I’m guessing you meant to answer meya upthread?
Remember, nishi now thinks all these things (to the max!) because of the stem cell debate. Hard left apparently. Across the board. Because of the stem cell debate.
Hmmm.
*** waves at griefer ***
To end illegal immigration, legal immigration needs to be reformed so that it does not take ten years to gain citizenship.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100410/ap_on_re_us/us_hero_citizen
One year – tops.
“So humans have “evolved” biologically” say in the past 10,000 years or so?”
Damn tootin’. Take for instance the survivors of the Black Death and their influence on their progeny’s immune systems. Likewise with any large infective kill-off, I’d guess.
You could. So could I, with the same effect. Watch:
fork, weather, sponge baths, reincarnation, the designated hitter, hosiery, moth balls, monkfish.
Now. What does my list have in common with yours?
The nishibot somehow imagines that her Jefferson quote would be widely disagreed with, here.
I’m guessing she doesn’t understand it, or us, or both.
I’m donating some apostrophes in case she finds need of them: ””””””””””””””””””””””””””””””
OH! ME! OH! (about a minute in)
sdferr,
Indeed I was, and have no idea why I put your name in instead.
A thousand pardons Bro, I guess another pot of coffee would be in order here…
Two very important things not seen in recent immigration from Mexico – when Irish/German/Italian left their shores they knew there was no going back. An ocean separated them pretty much permanently from their homeland. They also knew that “becoming American” was why they left and though they may have gathered in familial enclaves THAT was because those enclaves were there to support them through their assimilation into America. There was NO “welfare” or “entitlements”, no taxpayer provided ESL classes. Immigration was open because an immigrant was expected to come here and contribute not steal.
When immigrants can walk back and forth between their country and the place they come to – not to assimilate but exploit – it is a whole different dynamic.
Kate hangs with racists – ie the “coconut” remark. And I’ll lay bets they are Cholos, NOT Latinos from say, Guatemala or Cuba.
To put the above in perspective: “there is no empirical connection between biological evolution and “cultural” evolution” has been answered thus: of course there is: the empirical connection between biological evolution and cultural evolution is proven by, eg., “evolution of language, evolution of religion,” etc.
Yeah, I know. I can’t figure it either.
Humans have probably physiologically evolved over the past 10,000 years (in terms of disease resistance, etc.), and if you listen to Jared Diamond a lot of that is due to animal husbandry, but has human nature changed all that much? Culturally sure. It has gotten better. More people are better off in Western Culture by far than ever in human history–with the Anglosphere being the best of all. But human nature? Read the classics and human nature is pretty much the same as it always was.
geoffb
yup.
Darleen is why I used the Chinese coolie example for Mexican immigration. The Chinese were generally not allowed to assimilate or stay, they could work for a few years and then had to leave. The same thing is accomplished when we turn a blind eye to illegal labor now.
I think we should disarm the progressive movement by rendering their “words” useless. Vain creatures, Progressives. They trade in denial and contradictions, and they know it. Reveal the contradictions, then use mass ridicule to beat down the brush they hide in.
First, let’s deconstruct the word, “hispanic.” Why would a proud Mayan ever associate under the banner of a whiny, European, has-been nation. Especially one that beared its rear to Moors, Celts, Romans and the like so readily o’er its long history. That should be enough to give most Mexican muchachos pause.
And along the same lines, the Puerto Rican black women whose ancestors where brought to the West Indies to slave for Spaniards would shrug-off the label “Hispanica” if the mainstream media ripped and tore at Spain’s name with the same daily “Anti-Colonial,” “anti-Racism” tirades that the Anglo-Saxon nations’ reputations are regularly subjected to. Yes, Australia had its Rabbit Fences, but, didn’t Spanish soldiers give Indians cholera-tainted blankets or something? Was Cortez Mother Theresa? Turn the spotlight on the conduct of the Spaniards (and the French, too) throughout the period following the conquista and you’ll notice that the monopoly “white Anglos” appear to hold on post-colonial guilt is like “Global Warming,” entirely faked.
I’m agreed. We need to be strategical. And I believe that, in order to disarm the Left’s linguistic turns we’ll need to adopt a few of them, and shove them back in the Left’s faces. It’s not hard to do.
Kate also keeps regurgitating the specious “culture progresses” meme with attendent sniggering that somehow things will always get better …
never once considering “cultural evolution” historically has encompassed brutal invasions of barbarians (sometimes from without the society, sometimes from within) that collapses whole civilizations with massive loss of life, law, technology, art, literature, etc.
But her blind spot may be caused by her standing in the midst of, and championing, the new barbarism.
OT: Cool animation.
#59: Geoffb.
So far as I know, humans haven’t evolved further or again because there is no natural pressure to evolve. Humans are the most successful large mammals on earth and can be found in every climate area.
Nishi is a real cultural throwback – a social Darwinist – taking the theory of natural selection outside of the narrow bounds of biology and extrapolating it to a construct (which is not natural) such as a society.
She keeps using a word ‘evolution’ in a manner it was never meant to be used. The better word is ‘change’. Societies change, culture changes, but change does not go in any one inevitable direction. The theory on inevitableness of a certain direction of change sounds more akin to the writings of Karl Marx than Charles Darwin. IIRC, Darwin never postulated that a certain change was inevitable, just that in reponse to the natural environment organisms change in response or perish. If an organism is well-suited to its environment then there is no pressure to change.
And societies and cultures are not organisms, they are constructs, and as constructs they will change if the members of that society or culture agree (in whatever matter – activly, or passively agreeing with the decisions of others, or forced) to change.
how, then, to pitch the country’s economic woes in the face of a progressive push toward immigration reform without actually addressing illegal immigration? And more importantly, is such a tactic, if conservatives / classical liberals can pull it off, even prudent?
Well, the MSM actually did not win the “healthcare” debate, nor is/will it win the “Teaparty” debate. Other failures will follow. Smearing and an appeal to Utopian Fantasies are not working like they used to, contrary to the antiquated and regressively retro, “Progressive”-Commie playbook. So I don’t see any problem with continuing to speak about issues factually and logically, as per Classical Liberalism and the conditions for Freedom, Liberty, Rights, capitalist productivity, and the basic good and creativity of Human Nature as expressed and framed by the Constitution.
It’s the Progressive Nishi’s of the country who are in fact the evolutionary throwbacks and at risk subrational hominid form amongst us, not the Classical Liberals. Reality and true progress is on our side.
Jeff…is language a part of culture? is religion?
You know I believe in the biological basis of behavior.
I also believe in free will….via quantum uncertainty.
The biological basis of consciousness, religion, social networking, language, demographics, evo theory of cooperation, evo theory of culture……you deny this?
That is all Science……white christian conservatism rejects science.
The Third Culture is far more deadly to conservatism than demographics.
Brockman–
great video bh.
Unbelievable. So what is biology based on, nuggie? Whatever it is, kindly connect it to “I also believe in free will….via quantum uncertainty.”
You’re groping around in the dark, attired in all the apparatus you can carry and still wear a blindfold.
Culture is jargon, and of the worst sort. Product of Freud, Marx, and modernism? You bet.
Yes. So?
No. So?
To say there is a biological basis to the formation of a thing that eventually gets called “culture” is simply to say there is a biological basis to the formation of those who form the thing: in this case, humans.
What it is NOT is to say that because there is a biological basis to the people who formed it, the thing formed is itself biological. One can talk about the “evolution” of rocking chairs or designer jeans, but virtually no one believes those things are biologically determined and flowing in only one direction.
Or else we never would have witnessed a return of the skinny jeans or the bell bottom.
Darleen, since you are sole reason i no longer can contribute to this website, i think you should be still.
Your repulsive cartoon was what Jeff’s professor objected to, not Jeff and I arguing on evo theory of culture.
And your vile defense of the chattel slavery of women and children and the patriarchy daddie-rapists of YFZ is another reason you disgust me.
sod off, grandma.
What we have in our enlightened western nations is a preponderance of “mistletoe people” feeding on the host organism (the productive ones who work and pay into the system).Mistletoe can kill a great oak. But mistletoe is easy to defeat, as it has no strength of its own. Its strength derives from the host tree. As soon as the host tree dies, the mistletoes dies as well.
“Or else we never would have witnessed a return of the skinny jeans or the bell bottom.”
BUT!
they aren’t the same skinny jeans or the same bellbottoms.
there is always something new.
the biological advantage of trends.
A mind is a terrible thing to waste.
Just as the “culture” Levin wishes to see would be “new,” even if it resembled the original in nearly every way. There’s always something new, even if it’s only the context in which the new replica is placed.
Glad to see we agree. I knew you’d come around.
CHECKMATE!
bh
wow… awesome video (reminiscent of Disney’s Donald in Mathematic Land – “golden rectangles”)
“Geometry is one and eternal shining in the mind of God.”~~Kepler
Darleen, since you are sole reason i no longer can contribute to this website, i think you should be still.
Let me put this in the childish terms that you might understand, Kate.
Make me, liar.
Oh Kate
I’ve REPRODUCED. More than a utero-phobe like you ever will.
Sod off, genetic-deadender.
“Glad to see we agree.”
of course we do….my argument all along has been that white christian conservatism needs to evolve a new social cohesion paradigm to replace White Patriarchy…one that appeals to non-whites and teh XX.
How is Levin’s approach going to solve the problem of appealing to new demographics with an anti-immigration message which will be interpreted as racist and nativist by both the media, the college-educated, youth and actual REAL black and brown voters?
Oh, snap, baybee! Good one, Darleen.
Outlaw!
nishi,
It sounds to me like you’re invoking the whole connivance of the “gaia principle” to societies and their cultures.
Like Jeff said, just because they are comprised of living beings, with all of the concomitant behavior variables, that the over-arching social systems that are comprised of those same beings are somehow alive-independant of the beings themselves.
Oh and attempting to apply terms from quantum mechanics to social science phenomena don’t make you more “Spock-like” somehow; indeed, to those of us familiar with them you appear actually more inane…
And you can call that the Poseur certainty principle, becuse when you bandy about inapplicable terms, it makes me all the more sure that you’re a scientific poseur…
btw, that is happyfeets argument too, i think.
what do you add to the conservative “message” to make it “new”?
So far as I know, humans haven’t evolved further or again because there is no natural pressure to evolve.
I disagree. There’s always evolutionary pressure. Look what America has done partially as a result of a certain kind of people with a certain mindset possessing and emphasizing the power of individual rationality, including the Scientific Method, over groupist thinking and structures.
What I think has happened is that America-type thinking has produced a gigantic ecological niche for the proliferation of subforms/relative parasites, precisely because of its success. Being inferior hominids, the Progressives sense their dependency upon us and also fear us in a classically bigoted way simply because that’s the only way they can think. Hence their assault on us. They think we want to do to them what they want to do to us. That’s essentially the only way they know, and it makes them susceptible to becoming useful idiots for the more crass and grandiose controllists amongst them – such as the doctrinaire Communists.
But whatever the mechanism, there’s no doubt that Progressivism/Communism is an inferior Form when it comes to consideration of Human potential.
I cannot read Kate Mengele’s posts, but from the quotes I’ve seen of her contributions, she has yet to have an understanding of, well, just about anything she rambles on about here. She is usually wrong, but never in doubt.
cranky-d….
may i point out…..that i am not exactly post-menopausal?
Like Darleen is, and soon Sarah Palin will be.
;)
well it’s also grounded in the idea that among the problems facing this inept suicidal wholly dysfunctional dirty socialist little country, illegal immigration is #71
oops *#72* I mean
my argument all along has been …
If you’ve been arguing anything “all along” the sheer atrociousness of your writing has obscured it.
Vote for what exactly, nuggie? And why?
Comment by Nishi the Kingslayer on 4/11 @ 1:20 pm #
Nevermind.
…While not allowing that that “new social cohesion paradigm” could be a reinvigoration of an older paradigm made temporally new.
That’s the question we’re asking — how best to relay the message? Which is not the same as ignoring that it needs relaying.
Become like Taco. Or the Stray Cats.
“How is Levin’s approach going to solve the problem of appealing to new demographics with an anti-immigration message which will be interpreted as racist and nativist by both
the mediatheir propaganda arm, thecollege-educatedsuccessfully indoctrinated useful idiots,youthinexperienced and low information voters, and actual REALblack and brown votersbought and paid for by ther peoples money constituencies?There nishi, FTFY
As soon as humans could use tools to adapt their environment to themselves, the pressure to evolve was greatly reduced. Clothing, weapons, agriculture, and medicine are but a few of the ways we have reduced that pressure. I think that the result is that the variance in the phenotype is probably greater now than ever before, but I would not call that evolution, as evolution tends to remove most variances from the gene pool, since most variances will not be improvements.
actual REAL black and brown voters
Hmmm….”real”….as in Nishi and her racist Cholos dismiss Marc Rubio as a “REAL” brown person.
It’s kind of cute when the griefer pretends she has a point beyond griefing.
Sorry J.Trashman – Let me get more specific – in what way have humans biologically evolved? Disease resistance, perhaps. Everything else – such as the scientific method – is a construct, an artificial thing. It has nothing to do with natural selection, or Darwin (from which all of these social-evolution theories tied on to as the basis for their theories).
The scientific method is just a change, and it isn’t a permanent change because it is a construct, and will exist so long as it does. If a society ceases to value it (for whatever reason) it will go away form that society.
A bit more of G. Washington’s address:
and also Team R abdicated the immigration debate when it didn’t build a wall after 9/11… how duh was that? Well, no what we need to do is magic Boeing poles!
And now Team R wants to kick the couch cause of the immigrants… that’s not leaderness that’s just petulance…
The only thing we should really be arguing is smaller government and fiscal conservatism. This means that entitlements must be cut. Illegal immigration can be shown to be a huge drain on entitlements, and that has to be curtailed. However, I would argue for lower entitlement spending overall, and probably not make illegal immigration the main point of my argument.
The fact that illegal immigration is continuously conflated with legal immigration is difficult to overcome. “Immigration reform” sounds like you want to keep everyone out, which is not the case, but the media again wins this war of narratives.
We really do need to get the language back, and the only way will be constant vigilance from the right side of the aisle. I’m not sure many of them are up to that task.
Evolve or die out, Nishi. We won’t be your slaves.
Comment by happyfeet on 4/11 @ 1:32 pm
[facepalm] good lord hf start thinking with your big head
I agree or in the words of a super-genius, yup.
and furthermore also there’s no more certain way for Team R to communicate that it doesn’t have its eye on the ball with respect to the most pressing challenges facing our little country than to get all wee weed up about the illegal immigrants.
well I think what’s hard to overcome is that immigration legal or illegal is conflated with brown people, and that is the noose our trusty Team R is too too too inept to slip
#108 cranky-d:
That is it. We evolved to the point that we can adapt successfully to our natural environment, no matter the environment. Hence, natural selection – per Darwin – isn’t occurring.
Humans are too successful, and the successful do not have to adapt via natural selection. Outside of a radical change in the environment, if you want to see the man of two hundred years (or whatever span) hence, look in the mirror.
“…appealing to new demographics with an anti-immigration message…”
Well nishi, you almost slipped that one by me. But it’s not an ant-immigration message, but an anti-illegal immigration message; and the two are neither the same nor even related.
As I’ve said for some time, the argument is one of costs and entitlement.
Historically, Immigrants-illegal or otherwise-have stayed with family to get established, or took advantage of homesteading incentives offered by states. But these days, they simply belly up to the public entitlement trough upon arrival-a situation exacerbated by Obamacare’s passage.
We can not afford the entitlement costs as a society, nor afford the macro-economic effects of lower wages in the lower and middle ends of the wage scale as well as exacerbated unemployment. While we need immigration to occur, it must be higly restricted to have the least negative effects on our society.
We simply can’t afford it; and that’s neither racist nor anti-immigrant; it’s pro America…
All Team R has to do with tie ALL immigration with ObamaCare everytime amnesty is raised.
Hey guys, look at what adding 30 million American citizens to “healthcare” is doing to our economy then DOUBLE it immediately with “Immigration reform!” How cool is that…you’re grandmother gets a list of euthanasia centers so we treat every 20 something that refuses to contribute a dime to their own healthcare! Woohoo!
Read the conclusion of my “no such thing as race” piece linked herein. I came to the same conclusion, without ever having read this address. Nice company.
Yeah. Because having never done something once commits you to the mistake in perpetuity. Evolution being one way and all.
I can see why you side with nishi on this. And also why you’re ridiculously and embarrassingly wrong.
I think the cultural adaptation what’s needed is trust. And between Team R and Team Dirty Socialist, it’s Team Dirty Socialist what you can trust to press a Team Dirty Socialist agenda. Team R you can trust to pee on its leg.
Similar, and yet different.
The statistical truth is ugly. So let’s figure a benign way to lie so that people will like us.
It’s not about governance, after all. It’s about popularity. And not giving offense.
It’s about popularity. And not giving offense
Giving up your lunch money so the bully will only twist your arm rather then dumping you in the trash can
no Jeff, Team R is not commited to a mistake… Team R is committed to Palin Romney Pawlenty Meghan’s coward daddy and fish sticks for dinner.
There’s every appearance that Team R approaches immigration not with Levinesque sincerity but as a gambit, as a lens through which to project a vision of America… and Team R couldn’t project a vision if it owned Cinemark for fuck’s sake.
And a “tell” as betwixt actual adherents to the principle and pretend adherents: whether they take to themselves
Would Obama, for instance, even think to do this? British exceptionalism, Greek exceptionalism?
How exactly is immigration reform going to be bad for Team R politically? Even if they say or do everything wrong?
Unemployment in a few swingstates.
Public sentiment.
Jesus hf. Do you ever get tired of finding new ways to say the exact same thing over and over?
Haps – if you want to remove illegal immigration from the equation, then legal immigration needs to be changed to make it easier to legally immigrate.
And make other places places people want to stay in.
What team are you a part of, happy? Are you committed to Palin Romney Pawlenty, etc.?
Team R is only committed to that outcome so long as the people in it are committed to that outcome. Which, I’ve pointed out on a number of occasions, you are at least partially responsibly for ensuring, given that those who fall outside those parameters tend to get labeled as “shrieky” by you — enough so that it worries Team R into running “maverick” centrist “pragmatic” conservatives. Who like to lose more slowly, but still don’t mind losing all that much.
nishi I dismiss out of hand. She’s just a silly griefer.
‘feets though, I’ve considered that argument. One, I don’t think we can avoid the issue if the Dems bring it up. Two, with high unemployment, a bad economy and decisive public opinion polls, Team R could throw hand grenades at each other and the Dems would still be the big losers.
Well that’s great bh… let’s whip up public sentiment on immigration during an economic death tsunami.
That’s noble and wise.
No.
It’s not really.
It’s unserious.
America with perfectly modulated immigration is every bit as doomedy doomedy doomed as it is with the status quo. And there’s much much much more to say from a demographic/economic perspective that more people will be better for America in the long run, even messikin ones.
But this isn’t about economics. This is about white people losing control of their little country and being unable to do shit about it so they want to bite down on the tooth cause it feels so good.
This is about white people losing control of their little country and being unable to do shit about it so they want to bite down on the tooth cause it feels so good.
oh fuck you.
I am on Team Ostentatious Ennui, Mr. Jeff.
I’ve been around the world and I I I
I can’t find my baby.
I am fully in favor of OPEN BORDERS as long as welfare is DISMANTLED first. No minimum wage. No food stamps. No welfare.
Immigrants come here and contribute DAY ONE and are supported by voluntary family/friends/church/charity.
But this isn’t about economics. This is about white people losing control of their little country and being unable to do shit about it so they want to bite down on the tooth cause it feels so good.
Find me a serious person who wouldn’t trade every last Messikin illegal for an equal amount of Indians and I’ll buy your idiotic theory.
One, I don’t advocate that. Two, I don’t have any choice in regards to what other people do.
I would talk about fiscal responsibility all day long. Then some at night. But, I don’t run the world. Obama has the executive and the Dems have the legislative. They’re bringing it up. I have no say in the matter.
Abe
I think hf took this post as a recommendation of the class.
Jesus hf. Do you ever get tired of finding new ways to say the exact same thing over and over?
I can’t believe in my head that it is not an understood thing that Team R needs to iterate and iterate over and over that they are concerned about the financial sustainability of our poor little country especially after what the dirty socialists done on it. Over and over and over and over and not hey by the way the illegal immigrants sure is pesky don’t you think? I was down at the Super K the other day me and my wife – we were there to get a new barbecue brush cause darn new lab we got come up on me last Sunday and dad blamed if I didn’t knock that brush smack dab in the fire – and you wouldn’t believe all the cars with the Mexico plates, it was something else I tell ya.
I am fully in favor of OPEN BORDERS as long as welfare is DISMANTLED first. No minimum wage. No food stamps. No welfare.
Immigrants come here and contribute DAY ONE and are supported by voluntary family/friends/church/charity.
that’s a neat idea
I’m just saying, in the horse race sense, the Dems couldn’t pick a worse time to try something already unpopular.
No, you are actually on Team Ostentatious Angst-n-Panic. I’m just reading between the lines, here. Team Demagogue, really.
And when Florida’s Cubans vote for him en masse? Coconuts.
“This is about white people losing control of their little country and being unable to do shit about it so they want to bite down on the tooth cause it feels so good.”
happyfeet,
This is essentially the same as saying that all white folks are racists, unconscious or otherwise. you’re white, are you racist? If not, why assume that other people are. There are probably going to be a lot of people offended by this…
A large percentage of immigrants, illegal or otherwise, are living off of the welfare state. The left has already increased the percentage of the public who don’t pay income taxes to 47%. Surely you can see that amnesty would push that toward a plurality of potential voters.
Certainly with the success of the planned parenthood movements and the scare mongering of “the population bomb” types, we do need immigrants; if we are going to keep the entitlement system as it is. But that’s not so certain either really.
Because the ad nauseam iteration of that sentiment is important in and of itself. And, furthermore, effective.
Not.
that’s a neat idea
That’s what it was like 150 years ago.
Back in the day, we called that idea America.
No Slart I am a post-America American.
Join me.
Jeez we said for so many many moons what would happen if.
“If” has happened, losers.
Your little country is not your little country anymore.
You losted it.
His opponent is brown on the outside and white on the inside.
So, not sure what the differentiating factor is. Maybe something in the politics. That might be important.
Join you in what? WTF is a “post-Americ American”?
Sorry Mr. Reed but immigration is just muck in which Team R wallers in lieu of governing.
I don’t want to hear Team R burble about immigration in 2010 or 2012. The pansies need to remember how to have an agenda and act like it and not just react to dirty socialist pokings and proddings.
But I see little sign that the party what exalts Sarah Palin is anywhere close to being able to do that.
I can’t believe in my head that it is not an understood thing that Team R needs to iterate and iterate over and over that they are concerned about the financial sustainability of our poor little country especially after what the dirty socialists done on it.
Because the left – and by extension the media – doesn’t interpret THAT sentiment as being racially charged and anti immigrant. Not at all.
To encapsulate: it’s important to fight and angst and chant things over and over again, because we already lost.
Pablo
The “Latinos” I know here in SoCal come from all over … and let me tell you that the ones from other-than-Mexico are highly resentful of Mexican political activists trying to bully them into the “Brown political” demographic. One friend, her mother is from Peru, said she caught all kinds of racist grief from the Cholos and Cholas in her highschool for not joining them against the Gringos (“race traitor” was the least of the slurs used against her).
I still want to know what “the media, the college-educated, youth and actual REAL black and brown voters” vote for and why. Seems to me that if the GOP crafts a carefully message to appeal to this demographic we’d only need the obarkycrats to go all classically liberal in order to help them perform this switcheroo. Liberal would be liberal again and like that.
Otherwise everybody’s gonna be on the same side and that does kind of call into play the subject of, well, principles. Or was nuggie just wanting to run a party on the popularity platform? Bread and circuses are popular.
Let’s ignore the problem, including all the statistics listed in the post, and maybe it’ll go away.
Instead, let’s talk about fiscal responsibility. Because it’s not like there’s any crossover — and besides, you white people are just pissed that the good brown people are taking over your country.
And helping turn it into a dirty socialist country that you losted. Which is bad — except for the them taking over part. Which is good. Because they are good.
…
You’re all over the place. You argue like Nuke LaLoosh fucks.
Mr. Slart we said we would have lost if the following things happened.
They happened.
The only way now to win is not to play.
Everyone shut up and let Dick do his thing. Lindsay will approve, so just let it go already.
I’m very disappointed in you Americans.
It’s sunny. I’m gonna go become a brown person.
Then I can wear those FUBU pants I got from Ross a few years ago without knowing they were racial shorts.
I don’t want to hear Team R burble about immigration in 2010 or 2012.
Cuz like they are to duck and ignore or even just give in to Social Democrats rush to amnesty.
Yeah, that’s the ticket.
When did you start fellating Lindsey Graham, hf?
“Sorry Mr. Reed but immigration is just muck in which Team R wallers in lieu of governing.”
But it’s the Democrats that are poised to bring it up hf, discounting, of course, Princess Lindsay. Obama promised it to Latinos during his campaign; but the press made sure that it didn’t get widespread play. They knew it was the kiss of death in terms of public opinion after Bush tried it, and I guarantee it’s no better now.
How can it be avoided if the Democrats are bringing it up?
Perhaps you should find a better country.
So the Republicans acquiesce to a leftist takeover of the United States by a Mexican dominated wave of immigration, then they might as well start a movement by those same Mexicans to declare a war of imperial conquest on their former native land, a new new Mexican American War, to be fought in the name of the salvation of Mexico. Huzzahs! We can bring poor benighted Mexico the same socialist utopia we’re constructing here in the good ol’ US of A, only better because more Mexicans.
I’m not pro-Graham I think it’s gay for him to engage on this issue… my point is that Tribe Malkin is every bit as gay…
we have a little country circling the drain problem, not an immigration problem, and if Team R doesn’t recognize that then they are not a vehicle of our little country’s redemption
Perhaps you should find a better country.
Purity!
How can it be avoided if the Democrats are bringing it up?
I already said how. Mr. Reed. Ask Mr. Froman how many times.
A discussion about the illegal immigrants makes a delightful segue to a spirited discussion of fiscal sustainability.
Thanks for not playing!
‘cept it looks to me like you’re still playing. Can’t you quit us?
If illegal immigration had anything to do with fiscal responsibility, we might have something to go on. But alas, we should just shut up and let Dick and Lindsay have their way, and think of London.
Who’s gonna gag that Malkin person?
— he said, ignoring that the two are perhaps quite intricately connected.
How do we fix the problem, happy, if we aren’t allowed to address some of its major institutional causes?
And if we can’t — if it’s already game over — then what’s the point of talking about it, and who cares who gets elected going forward?
Join me.
Pass.
If illegal immigration had anything to do with fiscal responsibility, we might have something to go on.
That’s just not trying.
No, I was just thinking someplace not so doomed would be more to your liking. If you’re going to surrender ground, you really have to think about a new place to stand.
But I thought you had given up on trying.
I am getting conflicting messages from you, hf.
Yeah, that was easy as hell because it’s so bloody obvious. And you don’t seem to be trying either, so whatevs.
Republican message: we need to be more fiscally responsible.
Public reply: how?
Republican message: We shall spend less money.
Public reply: on what?
Republican message: Oh, don’t worry. Not on anything you voters care about. Just that other stuff.
Public reply: What other stuff?
Republican message: NO ABORTIONS!
Arguing fiscal sustainability amounts to calling Mexican illegals parasites in the blink of an eye, hf. Are you new to how the left and the media operate in our little country? Thank heavens you market trinkets and not political messages.
I am starting to suspect hf likes nishi because they are kindred griefer-spirits.
illegal immigration isn’t an economically bad thing at all but for the costs, Mr. Jeff… as Darleen knows.
It’s just incomprehensible that Team R has deluded itself into thinking it is a party what has the finesse to engage on immigration on terms that are not ones of foregrounding fiscal responsibility. No. It is finesseless.
Once more into the hatey breach I guess.
From Pablo’s link:
“More than 1,100 people jammed a union hall on Chicago’s near West Side Saturday, demanding changes in immigration laws that will provide ways for those already in the U.S. illegally to become citizens.
Repeated chants of “Si se puede” — Spanish for “Yes we can” — punctuated the 90-minute rally at Teamster City, 1645 W. Jackson Blvd.
Teamsters Local 705 Recording Secretary Juan Campos told the crowd that President Obama won the immigrant vote in 2008 by saying he was an immigrant’s son, and promising an easier path to citizenship.”
Anyone surprised it was a union hall? That wants a rack of new dues-paying suckers to help rebuild the pension funds they’ve squandered to put Democrats in office?
And there it is happyfeet, as I said, Obama promised amnesty during campaign 2008. But the legacy media made sure it was quashed as much as possible, or it would have made it harder to pull him across the finish line…
It’s part of Obama’s “destroy America” agenda. What are we supposed to do? Pretend it’s not happening? Pass it, so as not to piss anyone off?
‘Cuz like Abe said, the mere mention of the need for fiscal austerity will be portrayed as anti-Obama and anti-poor, ergo, RAAAAAAAAACIST!. So if you’re damned if you do, and damned if you don’t, then what should you actually do?
It’s part of Obama’s “destroy America” agenda. What are we supposed to do? Pretend it’s not happening? Pass it, so as not to piss anyone off?
I already said what to do.
hf has evidently forgotten completely about rule-of-law, and similar irrelevancies.
You had me at It’s just incomprehensible.
Huh?
Oh, yeah. Good call.
An American wants to lecture me on rule of law?
Jesus that’s rich.
“A discussion about the illegal immigrants makes a delightful segue to a spirited discussion of fiscal sustainability.”
I agree with this strategy for the debate, and was advocating it in the last thread, but when the roll call is made, what then?
Throughout the whole healthcare reform non-debate, the Dems argued their case by anecdote: everyone was victimized by a lack of “health insurance,” and the Dems had endless tragic cases to prove it. It was insulting and ridiculous, but it worked to conflate health care with health insurance. (After all, no one should have to use her deceased sister’s dentures.)
So, turn the tactic back on them. Why not argue by anecdote? My stepfather fled Hungary in the late 50’s and came here to gain a better life. He didn’t speak English or have a job, but he learned English and got a job. He started his own business after a few years, and contributed to his community. In the early 90’s, he wanted to bring his nephew and his nephew’s wife here to work in his business. He had a place for them to live, a job for which his nephew was well qualified, and a community which would support these new aspirants.
Over many months, the paperwork and documentation flew, and the attorneys made money. The Congressman was contacted to no avail. Ultimately, the nephew was not approved for a work visa, apparently because he didn’t fit the quota. And so, no legal immigration for you, sucker.
Couldn’t the R team point this out to the “fairness and social justice” team? Hammer it home that they have now decided that playing by the rules is for fools?
well when roll call time comes you vote as expected by your constituents… but for reals Bob, this debate is an opportunity… not a blood sport with America’s soul as the prize
get on message, stay on message
cross your fingers
Yes Jean talking up the virtuous white immigrants is just the sort of inflection what will polish Team R like a shiny little diamond.
No, I don’t. Because you’re a griefer, and it would just lead to more griefing.
bosh I am a griefer…
but that I am grieving the inexorable decline of a beautiful little country what held such promise
Just lie back and enjoy it, hf.
Mr. Slart I didn’t pledge allegiance to the flag of the united dirty socialist states of America and it’s unlikely I’ll ever act like it I think.
Whatever happened to Outlaw?
Outlaw is concerned about the illegal immigrationings I guess.
They takes our jobs.
No, I think it’s more like they don’t pay taxes but put freeload off our governmental largesse.
But strawman some more, hf. It’s what a griefer does.
but. not put.
I’d give hf credit for being a serious thinker if he couched his economic point in striking at the internal inconsistencies of leftism. Something we don’t do nearly enough of. I mean as stupid as a sustainability argument is with regards to solving the message problem he complains about, there is the obvious matter of amnesty most directly harming the poor. How does the left reconcile their ownership of “advocating for the poor” with a desire to flood the market with unskilled labor competing directly for permanent employment? They simply can’t. Not without bringing nakedly political nature of shamnesty into sharp relief.
No, I think it’s more like they don’t pay taxes but put freeload off our governmental largesse.
so would you say it’s largely an issue of fiscal responsibility Mr. Slart?
welcome to Team happyfeet!
It’s not so much whether he’s a serious thinker or not, really, as much as it is that he gives little evidence one way or the other.
And, really, if his best critique of Malkin is that she’s “shrieky”, well, I have to go with unserious.
Foreground. The encouragement of illegal immigration is racist and anti-worker. It is racist because it hurts Mexicans and African-Americans and helps white business owners. It hurts Mexicans in Mexico as a large segment of the honest, hard-working people have left the country, leaving the weak at the mercy of the corrupt. It hurts Mexicans in the US as they are in the shadows, vulnerable to exploitation. It hurts African-Americans as the door to the middle class, entry-level construction jobs (which lead to carpenter, electrician, plumber, developer, integration) is denied them by a labor force willing to work for 3rd world wages. It hurts American workers trying to organize into unions and depresses all workers’ wages at the lower end of the copensation scale.
Illegal immigration is a violation of our social contract; it is not about race.
I’m saying the only way to win is not to play Mr. Froman. Change the subject.
For a hapless Team R what is of late given to embracing unimaginably white whitenesses like Romney and Palin to think itself capable of debating immigration without leaving a lasting impression of hatey hatey hateyness is so blissfully self-aware I want to smoke some.
crap…
*un*self-aware I mean
And when have I ever said hey look at me I’m a serious thinker?
I knows what I knows is all.
No, I’d say that it’s primarily about rule of law. If you want to feed and clothe the poor illegal immigrants and school their children and allow them to not pay taxes, all well and good if that’s legal and if you’ve budgeted for that.
Not saying I’d like that, but look: if you want to open up the immigration doors, fine. In that event we have more folks paying taxes. At least, at that point we’re ahead of where we are now.
OTOH if you’re NOT going to change the law, you need to enforce the law. Having laws on the books that you’re not enforcing is materially different from not having the law, because people will exhibit avoidance behaviors like having employees working illegally and off the books.
Where have I indicated any disagreement with any of that whatsoever, Slarticus? But that I wouldn’t say it’s primarily about the rule of law.
Team R has no record of note at all with respect to enforcing immigration law.
I am not basing any of my own, personal convictions on what Team R does or does not do, hf.
Team R is the magic Boeing pole party.
Merge Jean and motionview and what do you have? A damn fine start. JG?
Not surprisingly, the sum there also simply makes sense. It even hews to reality. Bonus.
So?
And when have I ever said hey look at me I’m a serious thinker?
True. Just the hey look at me part is evident most days. But I only threw out that comment because you sniff around good points but when anyone tries to refine them or have you flesh them out you get distracted by a giant flying bunny and then go back to sniffing.
Also, both of my grandfathers brought their tiny Dutch dreams to the US a hundred years ago to become cabinetmakers. Not herding cattle to die young and impoverished appealed to them. I don’t herd cattle still, absolutely no offense to the inhabitants of great expanses of this little country. And I am no more than a cabinetmaker in the scheme of things.
So yeah, the dream of liberty is still the thing.
So why isn’t this enough? I fear the answer is because greed exists as national policy.
“…embracing unimaginably white whitenesses…”
Speak for yourself, paleface, or, you know, check yourself!
Look, I don’t care for Romney, and I know you don’t care for Palin; there are a lot of people like us. 2012 is a couple of years away, so instead of arguing over these folks and their electibility, let’s just stick to the Roadmap for Americas future.
http://www.roadmap.republicans.budget.house.gov/
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703808904575025080017959478.html
And take the debates as they come along. Shape them anyway you want, but they are going to occur; the Democrats need it. Especially considering how many people they wee-weed up ramming Obamacare down our throats…
Confrontation is nearly impossible to shy away from and win, you’ve got to take your best shot. And I assure you, when you begin to talk about fiscal responsibility, far-left-progressives will cower in abject horror and shout you down for talking in CODE WORDS! and being a RAAAAAAAACIST! anyway.
So either way it’s coming down the pike. Just look at Mehgan’s daddy. The press proclaimed him the bi-partisan salt of the earth; until he won the nomination. Then, in the blonk of an eye, he became a knuckle-dragging, misogynistic, running-dog-capitalist, bittter, clinging, h8tey racist.
Say the wrong thing and it will happen to any of us; you too!
ooops
blonk = blink
Yes. You’re following an established path, happy. You’ve read here for a long time. You know what I think and why I think it. But we disagree on this issue, so naturally, that makes me a sneaky racist. Talking in code words. Next you’ll be asking me to remove all traces of you from my site, because associating with me is ugly. You and SEK can commiserate.
What happened to OUTLAW? Well, as I recall, OUTLAW was ABOUT telling the truth, speaking like adults, and pushing the PC bullshit right back into the faces of those trying to silence you using those tactics.
OUTLAW, it turned out, was aimed at you.
My concern with illegal immigration is tied to the insustainability of the kind of client state we’re using it to form. And by “we’re”, I mean the people you supposedly always rail against.
You want to stop encroaching socialism; but you don’t want to talk about the things that help make it manifest for fear of putting off the very people that will help make it manifest.
That is, you want it stopped, but magically. By stomping your feet and making Sarah Palin and Michelle Malkin shut up already.
And I assure you, when you begin to talk about fiscal responsibility, far-left-progressives will cower in abject horror and shout you down for talking in CODE WORDS! and being a RAAAAAAAACIST! anyway.
This is true but the deficit is what it is. That’s a mighty bulwark I think against chargings of bad faith.
So how does your immigration plan impact the deficit, dirty socialists?
If they say it’s not about the deficit and especially if they say it on tape, then that my friend, is a glimmer of hope.
Mr. Jeff the for reals distance between our p.o.v. thingies is vanishingly small I think.
I invoke Outlaw only inasmuch as I don’t think it’s very Outlaw to answer an obviously strategic dirty socialist appeal for an election-year debate about immigration with a response to the effect that such a debate sounds like a splendid idea.
I can see that: without my sneaky racism and my refusal to ignore problems because they can be used against us, we’re two peas in a pod.
I never said you were racist I said it’s inevitable that the Malkinesque shriekyness what will accompany a debate on immigration will redound to the burnishment of Team R’s racist patina.
Which is what I did, naturally. BRING IT ON, I fairly shouted!
inevitable like pancakes on Sunday morning
Whaa? so Mr. two consecutive immigration posts is not welcoming a debate on the immigrations?
Naturally. And the whole tying the OUTLAW thing to fear that the brown ones will take our jobs, or that whites are just pissed because we’re losing the country to them — that that’s the real motivation behind anti-illegal immigration discussions? Just a happy coincidence.
Happyfeet, a troll? I can’t believe my lying eyes! My blog-crush for happy is overed from what his ramblings are. If not overed, then definitely truncated. No more peach pie for Happy, I think.
Bob Reed, RE your quote @ 182, Mr. Campos (inconvenient name) is conflating “immigrants” with “citizens” directly, and with “legal” immigrants generally. Losted to him is, there are two kinds of immigrants, legal and illegal, AND, if “immigrants'” votes are attracted to calls to ease their paths to “citizenship,” then they are admitting that they are not citizens yet, and that they do not legally get to vote.
See the circular trap he crafts for his susceptible audience? Ever wonder what kind of “immigrant” falls for this stuff? Only a La Raza political activist,or an unschooled teenager could fail to notice this deliberate ploy. Too bad, it looks like the unions are run by unread teenagers these days.
(Here, I’d point out to Mr. Castro that his union-campus has its own membership rites, like mandatory dues and attendance requirements – much like the US’s citizenship ones, and ask him, why doesn’t our nation’s campus-requirements, like legal citizenship rites and verifiable voting franchises, matter as much as his parochial campus’ ones do? For instance, why does his campus’ recruitment goals supersede America’s campus’ electoral integrity? But he won’t answer, cuz In the “battle of the campuses,” tip-offs to the Left’s anti-American racketeering are not greeted kindly.)
Jean @188, You’re right. For every one of the Left’s victims, there are thousands of American stories about success in the face of adversity. Let’s get them out there, overwhelmingly. Make MSNBC choke on them!
So long as Obama’s media can paint every day in America as another day to bemoan something terrible elsewhere in the world that we surely caused, unchallenged, then the misery drain what Happyfeet says is sucking the US down is gonna keep getting closer.
Behold protein wisdom, official blog for Team R!
Anything discussed here will be part of team R’s official platform. Don’t even try talking them out of it. Because they fucking worship me.
From now on, this blog will not post anything that doesn’t stick to a Team-R approved talking point. As marketed by happy. By way of Nishi’s complaints about Team R.
Too bad I’m not on the left. I could make those changes and have this place declared a university.
I am not a troll. I have conviction.
Mr. Jeff I think a debate on the immigrationings at this juncture is unwise.
Do you think it is wise?
Happyfeet claims to hate the NEW Socialisty US, but wants to keep importing the people who will help the Dems create the New Socialisty US.
Dichotomy, thy name is happyfeet…
mr. steveaz shame on you head!
If you don’t think when your little country is swallered up into the dirty socialist maw and doomed to a humiliating and oppressive penury that a change in commenting inflection is warranted then.. then… I don’t know who you are anymore.
Shhh. Stop saying that word. People might be listening to what we say.
I hate the new US to where I want to kick her in her balls Mr. Dragon and bring the bitch to her dirty socialist knees.
I am the mostest seditious staunch conservative one!
I think being caught off guard about how to respond to it is the really wise way forward. Team R would win mostly if they just answered questions with “I like to watch.”
What purpose do you think a change in commenting inflection serves when the interpretation remains the same? An interpretation you seem to share, by the way, assuming all your comments do in fact pour out of the same brain like object.
well I have a Plan Mr. Jeff… which you have dismissed.
But it is a Plan.
I installed Net Nanny on my computer the other day, and it’s flagging PW as a gambling site. Could be some meta-themes to be mined from that…
#188 Jean:
And that is why legal immigration needs to be adressed before illeagal immigration can.
No Mr. Froman, our little country, she is lost to us, and yammering on with her demise unremarked upon is Bad Commenting I think.
It’s just so awful.
I have no idea what that means, hf. That is, aside from being indistinguishable from something you might post during innumerable discussions about a variety of things.
Comment by happyfeet on 4/11 @ 2:13
fail
sod off, grandma
;)
Yes. As far as I can tell, that conviction encompasses not being too shrieky except for when Pam Tebow and her retarded shoulda-been-aborted son are even more shrieky during a 30-second Superbowl spot.
And trying to outshrieky the Democrats regarding how racist Team R is.
And of course there’s a commitment to playing nice and not being too alienatey unless the ones what are being alienated are the dirty socialists.
Whom we should try not to piss off, but let’s call a spade a spade.
oh. him needs a little nose or something
An interruption:
I don’t think it does any harm just once in a while to acknowledge that the whole country isn’t in flames, that there are other people in the country besides politicians, entertainers, and criminals.
This Charles Kuralt quote brought to you by a doggone gorgeous Sunday afternoon, hereabouts.
Why do you always want to talk about the Tebow hoochie, Slarticus?
her fifteen is up
Simple hf, as I said before, the Dems are concerned that their current electorate is…unreliable, so they’re in the process of firing it and hiring another one. Seems to me that they are going to kick their current blocs aside or to the back of the bus. If that is the case, why shouldn’t we oppose heartily this blatant attempt at cooking the demographic books in the Left’s favor with any and all resources at our disposal?
It doesn’t matter if they complain that we are all racisty, they ALREADY THINK THAT…
Absolutely untrue. See, eg., 178.
Your fantasy about “segueing” back to fiscal responsibility with no follow-up required doesn’t answer the how — particularly when it ignores the hypothetical in the prompt about the left pressing the issue.
Oh. You don’t want to talk about her?
I can’t tell you how relieved I am. Because we heard about her nonstop for forever, it seemed. If Hell is custom-made, mine will have happyfeet ceaselessly blathering on about what an evil cunt Pam Tebow is, when he’s not talking about that stupid hillbilly slut Palin.
All of which is mighty alienatey, I think.
That legal immigration needs to be addressed before illegal immigration is is why I agree with the gist of ‘feet’s assertion that it’s already too late. Jeff argues that a message must be crafted. Isn’t it a question of resolve based on odds more than a question of message based on resolve?
Is the thing salvageable? Or, what am I missing?
if you have to oppose the inclusion of people based on the votings associated with their ethnicity as a group you’re not arguing from a classically liberal place I don’t think Mr. Dragon… you’ve already lost. This is nishi’s demographic argument.
Far better to make the discussion about what our little country can and cannot afford.
illegal immigration isn’t an economically bad thing at all but for the costs, Mr. Jeff… as Darleen knows
Jaysus H Keerist, hf, it isn’t just about the money for fuck’s sake I just wrote a whole post on principles.
Do you know what happens if you don’t abate graffiti right away and consistently? You allow the area to deteriorate as good people move out. Ditto broken windows. Looking the other way while illegals commit crime, gut wages, destroy law-abiding businesses, collect welfare while sending cash back to their home country, refuse to learn English … all of THAT destroys the country as surely as the dirty socialists that pander to them in order to increase their demographics. Illegals are America’s Arab-Palistinians – disposible cannon fodder for Social Democrats to destroy American non-leftist ideology as Islamist states use Arab-Pals to destroy the Jewish State.
#244: haps.
And that is why no one takes you seriously. You call socially conservative women the worst insults, you wish to have the Republican party go all fiscal conservative, but you want to keep in place all of the social liberal changes that have made fiscal conservativism impossible.
If you would cease calling any socially conservative woman whores, or hootchies, or prostitutes, or sluts – you might be able to convince others to your thinking.
But being an utter dumb-ass shit-for-brains you can’t do that, so you go with the crudest insults you can find, you cock-sucking ass-licking mother-fucker.*
*Those insults were intended to let you know how your comments are read, haps. Now go ask your favorite eungenist out for lunch, and if you are lucky she will let you hold her hand – after you pay the bill.
okey dokey Darleen please see #249
I will leave it to someone else to tackle the illegals are palestinians thing.
Jeez.
You want you can can have a do-over.
if you have to oppose the inclusion of people based on the votings associated with their ethnicity as a group
Who is arguing that, hf? Why are you insisting on channeling the Left’s mendouchiest racecard meme?
The question of illegal immigration was kicked down the road and thus lost back in the Reagan years. The question of legal immigration was addressed–by increasing it–in the Clinton years. Some critics said that Clinton was opening the floodgates to create thousands of “instant Democrats”.
there’s a gourmet chili place in Encino I’ve been wanting to try, Mikey
oh. Also I think you are making a caricature of my position.
Darleen Mr. Dragon was arguing just that.
That illegals are inherently dirty socialists so we can’t let them in out club.
I think that’s not a very good classically liberal argument.
oh. Also I think you are making a caricature of my position.
Love ya, but you do that all on your own.
the injunction to get our classical liberalness on is in the post and I think it is a goodly injunction
*our* club is what that should have been
My point is happy, that if you identify as a conservative, Republican or not, you are ALREADY a racist if white, or Uncle Tom if black, or coconut if hispanic. You already have the mark of the beast, according to the high muckety mucks of R.I.P. (racial identity politics). It doesn’t MATTER after outing yourself WHAT you say, it will always be racisty, even if couched in nothing but economic terms. So why bother trying to avoid the charge and allow them to play their game with the system?
I don’t agree with that wholeheartedly Mr. Dragon.
I think it would be difficult to paint for example Mr. Ryan with the same racist brush what so loverly textures Sarah Palin.
She’s doomed to the brushings straight out of the gate is what I mean to say.
This has been tried before, and the attempt(s) caromed off of hap’s consciousness like a stone skipping on a pond, except without the eventually-sinking-in part.
Look hf
150 years ago immigration was fairly open. You got here you worked your ass off, you contributed, you learned the language and you were supported VOLUNTARILY by family who came before. Indeed, in many situations someone had to promise the government to be your sponsor.
AND you didn’t vote until you became a LEGAL citizen. (which involved learning the language, taking citizenship classes, taking an oath … or joining and honorably serving in the US military).
Why in the hell should there be voting ballots in California in SEVEN languages?
racist brush what so loverly textures Sarah Palin.
What has Palin ever said that was racist, hf?
You really are deranged about her.
we are so far away from that Darleen, but it was neat how it used to be
Happy, I live in an area 90%+ Mexican. The difference between a 1st generation Mexican American and a 3rd generation by voting patterns is that the 1st Gen is a socially CONSERVATIVE, church attending, Catholic Democrat, the 3rd Gen is a socially LIBERAL NON-church attending, Catholic Democrat. There are occasional outliers, mostly College Libertarians and Objectivists, more rarely Conservatives, but they are mostly doing so to scandalize their liberal politically active parents.
Why are you so eager to import more Dem base voters? For the next 50-100 years Dem base voters?
it’s a brush that the dirty socialists and the media use to texture her Darleen…
it’s not controversial to say that this is so…
it’s what they do
get our classical liberalness
“Our”??? Hf, you wouldn’t know CL if it crawled up your ass and pretended to be Nishi’s strap-on.
Ryan is a Republican, and so ALREADY a racist. He just hasn’t gained enough stature as a Lefty Media target to bother with them advancing the Narrative to slime him. When he gets more traction, he’ll have not only the same brush tarring him, they’ll pour the whole bucket of tar over his head. What then?
it’s what they do
so how does that translate into Ryan being immune? Or any non-leftist?
I am not eager to import more Dem base voters Mr. Dragon. But telling brown ones that we fear their numbers cause of we think they are inherently dirty socialist is not a Winning Message in a little country with our demographics.
Ryan is wonky and earnest in a way that belies racisms I think Darleen
Someone should tell hf that Palin’s little hoochies are minorities. Because of the Eskimo cock.
Eskimo cock?
really?
Well, then try it from a social justice angle. What is remotely fair about allowing unfettered access to our country to ONE countries economic refugees, and a country that is undeniably hostile to ours as well, when we could let people from other countries full of poor brown people? Tons of Filipinos would LOVE the chance that Mexicans are demanding from us, for one example.
we are so far away from that Darleen
but you see, hf, you CANNOT have any sort of open borders or amnesty or “immigration reform” coupled with the current welfare state. It is impossible. And your attempt to dismiss any person’s legitimate concern over how illegal aliens exploit and cause harm AND solutions to decrease the number of illegal aliens (ie employer sanctions) as “racism” is giving in to the Left’s strategy.
Ryan is wonky and earnest in a way that belies racisms
Worked well for Miguel Estrada and Bobby Jindal, didn’t it?
Mr. Dragon my point is more that it’s better to argue from the perspective of costs so as to message a theme of fiscal responsibility so that any Team R electoral success is conjoined to a mandate of fiscal responsibility.
Or do you trust Team R to govern in a fiscally responsible way cause of that’s what it says on Sarah Palin’s facebook page?
And Ryan doesn’t have Estrada’s and Jindal’s melanin advantage either…
Bobby Jindal performs exorcisms, Darleen.
Cause the devil gets all up inside people.
No, I DON’T trust them to govern in a fiscally responsible way, I expect to watch them like a hawk, and cashier any who don’t toe the fiscally responsible line. Better that than the DEMS making unfunded mandates even more unfundy by importing all sorts of new recipients…
So Mr. Dragon my point is more that it’s better if we make Team R own a fiscally responsible message wherever possible. Plus it’s just good politics when speaking to the electorate of a little country is a fiscally special needs child.
*what* is a fiscally special needs child I mean
Sarah Palin holds no public office, hf. I know this is hard to remember, so try and tattoo it on the inside of your eyelids.
Sarah Palin reminders me of this hoochie, Slart
Why does their color have anything to do with it? It’s the low-skill, low-education, here-illegally and so destined to be a drain on resources thing that should resonate with the legal people of all hues whose resources are being drained.
I just don’t think it works that way Mr. Jeff even if it should.
I just don’t think it works that way Mr. Jeff even if it should
The only way to fight rape is just to give in.
hf,
I like you, but as far as you liking Ryan. Soon the Left will turn on their opposition
researchsmear machine and you will feel/think about Ryan as you do now about others from the past.Late to this thread, but could nishi be any more of an idiot?
Jimmy Carter says he sees malaise, well then we all see malaise? Is that how it’s supposed to work? I sure hope to hell not.
No, we say: fuck you Jimmy Carter, get out of our way and we’ll be getting back to work now. Amscray puny peanut farmer.
Same deal with Barry Obama. Get out of our face you piggish greedy little manikin Barry, go back to your hellhole in Chicago and take your fascisti wife with you. We’ll do better without you. We’ve got stuff to do, building and drilling, discovering and inventing, ridding our Congress of assholes and firing lay-abouts from our bureaucracy.
Now move.
Furthermore, why is it that we must vet our candidates according to how “racisty” the left thinks they are. Here’s a newsflash: the liberal fascists consider all conservatives to be racists, religious fanatics, crazy, etc. I say: bugger what they think and let’s choose candidates based upon our principles and opinions, not theirs.
Tune in tomorrow, Mike. I’d say she can be even more idiotic yet.
You know, this post and subsequent comments have me thinking I’ve been a bit too simplistic in my thinking on this matter. I’m curious now. As this fight is coming, what would everyone consider the proper (as in true) and effective message? (I know ‘feets’ opinion, avoid it or frame it entirely as a fiscal issue.)
Would it go something like this?
1. Rule of law. Change the relevant laws or enforce them.
2. Assimilation. We need it. Melting pot.
3. Reform the welfare state, at least in this regard, before doing anything else. We can’t pay for the entitlement spending and we need to be collecting taxes from them regardless.
Is that pretty much what people are thinking? I’d like to see a very strong push for easing and streamlining legal immigration from around the world but I don’t know if the majority of others are on board with that being high up in the bullet points.
You people in Indiana have a positive duty to rid the Senate of that Richard Lugar menace don’t forget, right after you find an actual conservative with whom to replace that Bayh idiot you sent. Middle America indeed. Show us.
Damn. That says just how far we’ve fallen.
Probably it’ll take another gun to the head kind of situation to teach us how to do that stuff again. We used to take pride in that stuff; sea to shining sea and amber waves kind of pride. Now it’s the mark of something really bad. I said something there that will label me an ignorant by half the voter base and all of nuggie’s brainpan’s contents.
And we’re gonna argue with that other than to assert that as it’s own virtue? How do you convert that many that-jacked-up minds, folks? Isn’t that the question?
smilers never lose and frowners never win
Indiana is kind of a 50-50 state, so they’re always going to be electing folks like Lugar and Bayh.
Not that they’re in any way equal. Lugar’s actually a really smart guy.
I’ve been building things most of my natural life. On my job-sites, if any worker didn’t know for himself what to do next without having to be told, and be visibly seen to be getting on with it, they were gone, not to be welcomed back. Do you know how to do your job, we’d ask? Then get to it. We’re building something here and it ain’t fucking rocket science. Either contribute or get gone.
Tune in tomorrow, Mike. I’d say she can be even more idiotic yet.
No doubt – nishi is like the Chuck Yeager of doltish griefers, always pushing the envelope.
Jeez…where to even start with a steaming pile like this?
Well, first, here’s why I don’t get that nishi is given even a second of serious consideration, beyond her use as an anvil against which to beat your point.
See, she makes stupid assertions like that, then tries to baffle you with bullshit. bh makes the historically accurate, well documented observation that nishi is a self described “griefer”. To engage her, other than with the understanding that her agenda is not honest dialog, will just cause you grief.
Hf is unstable. To run on a platform other than a comprehensive embrace of everything Constitutional is blinkering over substance.
The United States foundations of individual sovereignty and rule of law must provide a cohesive answer to all the countries problems; no voting “present” allowed.
Either we believe in our founding principles and documents, or we don’t. To declare the war lost is cowardly. To cede further ground unwise.
Okay, smiling, optimistic.
And 1938. Good times here we come.
I certainly prefer that attitude over “game over, man”.
Damn, how did I miss this happening?
Michael Yon:
the war is lost lee whether it’s Team R or Team DS America is all about decline management now
is happyfeet allapundit?
geoff I think you are wrong about my fealty to Mr. Ryan
cause of it’s not about winning anymore; there is no hope of saving this doomed little country
but Paul Ryan is the railing to which I will cling as our little ship begins its fatal plunge into the icy waters I think
Ya know Nishi, maybe you could share some of this white male patriarchy stuff that people who are Christian and people who are conservative are agitating about? {I ask because away from Obama, you’d be hard-pressed to find a whiter group of white people raised and educated in heavily white areas and institutions than the majority of the Democratic senior leadership…Im not even gonna get into the people who helped get Obama elected–the money-men, the party-throwers, the marketers…..]
Back to WPP: What is it? who is doing it? how does it hurt you, how does it help Bob Reed? Does a Jew like Jeff benefit?
Do you receive tax credits for talking about evolution in everything? If not, please explain how evolution gets applied to basic political power questions like what we’re talking about?
You, sir, are a drama queen.
very well then Mr. Slarticus… you can play the stoic, bravely watching it all unravel, the perversion of our little country proceeding apace, and there is Slarticus, unflinching and unmoved
and me I will explain that it’s awful that it is so
unbearably tragic
deal?
It’s okay to despair. To try to get everyone else to join you in surrender? Not helpful.
Btw, ‘feets, belated thanks for the branding advice in regards to repetition. It’s working pretty extremely well on the griefing griefer nishi.
Fatal, even. So why even bother with the drama? We’re all gonna die anyway, right?
Best to relax and have a cocktail, given that the end is so inevitable.
“pretty extremely”? I type/talk like a dropped-on-the-head person.
And if it’s truly unbearably tragic, well, there are ways around that too.
I never said surrender Mr. G… you just kind of run with that idea just cause I say how we’re doomed.
It’s still hugely important what the epitaph says I think.
And I should very much like the epitaph to say that Team R planted its flag on a hill of fiscal responsibility.
And bravely fought the dirty socialists until they were all of them overwhelmed by a churning sea of debt and dissolution.
But that that for a time there was a little country what honored the individual and treasured freedom and we’ll like as not see its like again. And the idea of that little country shall be like the sole shining remnant of the box of evils what were unleashed by a man named Barack Obama at the dawn of the twenty-first century.
That will have to be enough.
oh. I forgot the ellipses thinger between that and that
That’d be cool if there was anyone around to read it that cared. But they’ll all likely be doing a victory dance, while gnawing on our shattered bones.
Well. It sounds as if they’ll get theirs in the end, anyway. But then no one will be around to read that epitaph, damnit.
But there won’t be anyone around to care about that, so: Quixotic, a lot.
This team r team d stuff is a pile of shit. These are Americans we’re talking about here, not a bunch of fucking euro-pansies. Goddamn it man. We’re going to run these fuckers right out of the Capital city and that will be an end to it.
I’m infected by mood.
HF
I think this is what you are looking for.
Go get a dose of the clap then, that’ll snap you out of it.
oh. You’re opposed to say, “Mood? What has mood to do with it? You fight when the necessity arises — no matter the mood! Mood’s a thing for cattle or making love or playing the baliset. It’s not for fighting.”
link
I’d rather say “everything’s gonna be all right, rockabye.”
And repeat as necessary.
Dune-ist.
Wow, newrouter. The SEIU sounds pretty staunch, I have to say.
“a reinvigoration of an older paradigm made temporally new.”
No, Jeff, impossible. You should read Campbell on the destruction of the social cohesion model of white patriarchy.
It depended on……segregated boarding houses for men and women, severe social shunning for illegitimate children, unwed mothers, and divorcees.
Only the heads of families worked and were providers.
White males.
When women’s suffrage and civil rights for blacks were instantiated by the government of the people, the definition of family changed.
Now women could work and buy property, blacks became competitive heads of families in the workforce.
There is no way back to Levin’s model without a totalitarian government enforcing social doctrine as law…..think stoning adulterers.
That is what you are asking for.
You always become what you most despise.
look what happened to me.
<3
http://www.breitbart.tv/seiu-executive-vp-white-union-members-are-so-f-rabidly-racist/comment-page-2/#comment-4815061
I just thought: todays unions are the successors to the KKK, the terrorist arm of the Domocrat party.
Not impossible. Happens all the time. As you admitted, in our discussion of bell bottoms.
I don’t need to read anyone to tell me how it works. I can see and think for myself.
Well, that, or properly interpreting the Constitution, writing legislation that corrects bad legislation, etc.
Tomato, tomah-to…
There is no “Levin’s model”. There’s the US Constitution and political history, and there’s every other piece of shit political system that’s been attempted in history and been found wanting.
See, we didn’t even have to wait until tomorrow, Mike.
Everybody wave at the griefer.
Nishi isn’t even aware of her limitations. I blame feminism.
I blame paragraph breaks.
paragraph breaks are patriarchal tyranny. Get with evolution, man.
Now women could work and buy property, blacks became competitive heads of families in the workforce
There is all sorts of historical wrong with that … under English common law, single women could own property, make contracts and had standing in a court of law to sue. That came to the new World and while a nascent United States followed ECL and included women giving up their property rights when they married, that started to change community by community early on. By the mid-late 1800’s married women equaled single women in property rights, including the right to sue their own husbands.
And black men allowed to provide and be the head of their families? Come on, Kate…it was LBJ’s Great Society that ushered in the destruction of the black family. Maybe you should look at stats concerning unwed and single motherhood among American blacks.
The very conviction of principle. It’s almost like Allstate around there, isn’t it?
Read America in Black and White by the Thernstroms. SEK hates it, as do the rest of his ilk. He’ll tell you that if he finds time, he’ll point out its failings. Finds it flawed and hatey.
Because it’s a thorough statistical analysis and not a tract on social justice driven by assertion and bald leftist ideology.
The worst kind of offensive. It’s factual.
Maybe one day science will give us a car fueled entirely by pure nishi blatherings.
Maybe one day science will give us a car fueled entirely by pure nishi blatherings.
Well, we already got a couple commenters…
that is a fanciful idea about the car but entirely unrealistic
Btw, before the stem cell debate, nishi wasn’t aware that blacks and women could vote? She wasn’t aware of all these things that she now repeats time and time again in the comments here?
I don’t know, if I pulled a 180 like that I’d worry about a brain lesion or the onset of some genetic neurological condition. Doesn’t that worry you griefer?
How the Left’s racecard kills.
Mr. bh.
I find it interesting that Jeff is speaking to a society founded on the Constitution, while nishi is saying nuh-uh, teh patriarchy is busted.
It’s almost as if English were a third language for her. Or fourth.
Slart I think her language is fanciful.
It could work. Imagine it: a brighter future powered entirely by assertion monkeys. I’m calling GE tomorrow. They have the green technology and Keith Olbermann.
Don’t you find yourself wondering “What the hell are we doing debating these morons over questions of the US Constitution in deference to stupidities like the Zeropeans have put together?” It’s like someone suggesting we build the roof up in the air first, then assemble the partitions beneath it and after that, get right on that foundation. So much better, they’ll tell us.
I’d say it’s more like debating the Constitution with the guy knocking off the 7-11 but that makes me a RACIST!™, sdferr.
Although I thought the idea mentioned the other night to deepen and widen the Rio Grande was just stellar.
Maybe we could just divert the Colorado?
That’s something team R should get behind.
Jeff, I’m busy reading important stuff for school….I am not going to read that.
It doesn’t matter if you convince me and feets, or your bigselves even, that you aren’t racists……you need to convince the electorate.
So far you fail.
If you could reimage yourselves as tolerant, that would solve a lot of your demographic problems.
Youth and the college-educated wont vote for racists…..minorities wont vote for racists.
You are all screamin’…..I AM NOT A RACIST…..so what?
You need to convince the electorate, not me an feets.
It doesn’t matter if you are racists or not…..it is the PERCEPTION of racism.
You say its just a fringe, and the dems are the racists…..but no one believes you.
The media loves crazies….so they are the face of the tea party….crazies sell.
How do you undo that?
And SNL is gearing up the Palin parody machine again…..the return of Tina Fey.
If you don’t want people to laff at you, take off the clown shoes.
Now THAT is a great quip.
Not that there haven’t been others. But, ZING!
I mean, I had no idea that a return to rule of law implied a return to white patriarchy.
Not that we ever left white patriarchy, some might say.
Blind pig, acorn, some assembly…
widening and deepening doesn’t make it more wet plus that’s an unprecedented lot of work for Americans to do with respect to a border
surely we can just buy some magic poles
Nishi’s understanding of history is about on par with her grammatical skills.
Sure. And it doesn’t matter whether you really do live in the LHS of the IQ distribution, it’s the perception that you do that matters.
And SNL is gearing up the Palin parody machine again
Cuz like she’s a nobody, utterly harmless, can’t draw a crowd or nuthin.
Damn but does Sarah scare the shit out of eugenic-fascist dictator-wannabes like Kate Mengele.
I don’t know for certain, but I think I hardly ever talk about racism as regards myself, and not much in respect of the society either, since by and large, race is a null set. What would be the point?
Hey Nishi
You have a link where women were not allowed to own property prior to getting the vote?
You know, that evidence thing to back up your assertions?
Oh wait…”evidence”, like Rule of Law, is just a tool of People of Pallor Patriarchy.
surely we can just buy some magic poles
Yep, glowing ones.
That way when the buses pull up on this side of the fence the nice ICE man can point to the other side of the fence and say “just walk over to the lamppost.” In Spanish of course.
scare?
Sarah’s crowds are helpful to the dirty socialists I think.
I doubt they would be pleased were she to go away.
She’s the picture that says a 1000 anti-Team R words.
Sarah Palin is like kryptonite to leftist pseudo-intellectuals.
A Duncan Idaho comment by Patrick Stewart, in a film that really hasn’t received it’s due. It’s more about status then ethnicity feets, and we get all kinds, specially down here in S. Florida, Now the state
party charged about 2 million dollars to their credit cards, any wonder we lost Florida
That was Gurney.
Overdo it, and it becomes tired and nobody pays attention. That’s already starting to happen.
You start by looking at the demographics of the Tea Parties. Now think – all those who would otherwise be on “your” side now suddenly “racists” just because they recognize a (non-partisan) encroaching fiscal nightmare.
That probably does two things: pisses them off and opens their eyes to how readily the left uses the accusation.
On the right, the Freys and the Frums are increasingly shouted down by their own side for ceding power to the left; and in fact, when they find themselves supported in such arguments, it is generally by lawyers and progressives — the former formalists, the latter poststructuralists whose ideas about language re-commit them to the very formalism they ostensibly set out to distance themselves from.
And that should make the Freys and the lawyers on the right open their eyes.
Formidable grouping, that.
Possibly the least self-aware sentence ever typed on the internet. Bravissima!
Oh. And why isn’t ‘feets included in the perception of racism? He’s our staunchest conservative.
SNL is still on?
I remember when that was a hip show. Bill Murray was a member of the cast, I think.
That is exactly what animated #363.
If you are going to be called a racist now is about the best time to suffer that indignity.
SNL is about as hip as a pet rock.
I transcend.
Allahpundit sure is tuned into it. I guess that would make it hip, wouldn’t it?
He’s our staunchest conservative.
No, he’s our staunchest Team R’er.
“Comment by happyfeet on 4/11 @ 6:07 pm #
the war is lost lee whether it’s Team R or Team DS America is all about decline management now”
Well, curl up in the fetal position and wail if it gets you through the day. Maybe you’ll manage yourself into a cookie, trying to be popular. Though I gotta warn you, it didn’t work for McCain.
No, I’m with Chuck Heston; “Out of my cold, dead, hands…”
He’s dead now. =-(
Staunch? Meh. When you’re a true mofo, it’s rock-ribbed.
Heston walked with King way before it was cool.
Because Heston knew what was right, and refused to live in fear of being ‘misunderstood.’
And for the distaff side, rack-ribbed.
that wasn’t quite same as saying I was wrong lee
Not to be confused with Rock Ridge.
ribbed for lady liberty’s pleasure
That took me a second, sdferr.
seems like we’re muxing meataphors, or something or other
Heston walked with King way before it was cool.
Because Heston knew what was right, and refused to live in fear of being ‘misunderstood.’
Heston never changed. Just that what was right was subsumed by the nishi’s of the day with their “perceptions of
rightsocial justice.”oh btw, Kate Mengele,
How’s your efforts to shut me up working?
Totally off topic but the oddest thing happened to me today. I suddenly wondered what new scams and shenanigans Jake Shannon, the master of mesmerism, has gotten into lately.
Oh good lord.
Lemme guess bh?
He’s proposing to teach BJTex to play golf a al Hank Haney, only with the powers of his mind rather than that stuffy old tried and true range instruction stuff? Did I come close?
What ever it takes to make you not feel like the diseased Greek whore you are, buddy.
Personally, I can’t help but chuckle that German workers are paying Greek layabouts to sit on their asses.
How’s that super sweet European Union working out for you, Hans?
#389 Darleen
You can knock back a lot of ouzo with that kind of money.
Liberals in this country are laying the same kind of loving eyes on your retirement fund, too.
she’s very sensitive about that TSI
Anybody visit the Rape of Liberty thread today by the way? First day not, maybe?
“that wasn’t quite same as saying I was wrong lee”
yeah, there’s just some conclusions you will have to draw yourself.
It’s cool, the new minutemen (a totally new version of the culturally extinct original minute men of course) will need people to wash their cloths, same as before. You don’t have to be totally useless.
Just try and keep the bitching to a minimum, wouldja?
From the article Darleen linked to:
Can America go that low? With Obama, yes we can!
I shall endeavor.
can you even imagine year 8?
I broke into reporting covering crime in the late 80s and early 90s Bronx.
I have seen the effects of liberalism. You should have seen the body count. You have no idea. Show me that in Dallas Tx. or Salt Lake or any other place where the GOP has unfettered sway. There are real differences in the effects of the policies favored by both parties.
PS….Nishi: How indescribably hard has it been going thru life with your last name?
Comment by Abe Froman on 4/11 @ 1:47 pm
Jesus hf. Do you ever get tired of finding new ways to say the exact same thing over and over?
There it is!
Why do people here “like” the “griefer” known as “happyfeet”?
We are discussing a “proto-leftist-apologist” that obviously doesn’t understand punctuation, grammar, sentence structure,
and/or classic liberalism-and still thinks he’ll get into Kate “nishi” Mengele’s pants if only he sucks up enough by agreeing to some of her beliefs.
BTW, nobody gets real pussy on the internet…
OT: “Only a brave few acknowledge an entitlement crisis”*
It’s a conundrum?
Tell that to all the hookers on Craigslist.
The other would alter the calculation of benefits: Indexing them to inflation rather than wage increases would substantially reduce the system’s unfunded liabilities.
even better they could exclude government jobs from the calculation of wage increases… that would slow things down a bit.
Team Demagogue, really.
Meanwhile, Happyfeet still loves his gay-rapist Ken Jennings that approves of men fucking boys.
It makes you wonder…
Apparently better than Teh Won.
oh my
Tell that to all the hookers on Craigslist.
My mistake…
Nobody gets free pussy on teh intertubes.
More OT, Phil Mickelson won the Masters, and walked into a long embrace with his wife, who was diagnosed with breast cancer. What a great golf/marriage moment…
Yes, and when they inevitably made a stink about it, they’d only be drawing further attention to their high salaries and benefits. Win win.
And as Tiger found out, it’s the free sex that is the most expensive.
Oh, my…
For the grammatically challenged fag-lover.
here is a happy song for you Mr. Fletch
What an odd set of polling questions.
I mean, I was really hoping to find if the average voter’s views tracked more closely with the Tea Party, or, say, Pinball Machine Repairmen*. But they didn’t ask that question.
* Which I learned, and was promised a Good Paying Job with Steady Earnings… but it didn’t pan out. Stupid lying magazine advertisements. Shoulda learned my lesson after that Sea Monkey debacle…
Phil Mickelson won the Masters, and walked into a long embrace with his wife, who was diagnosed with breast cancer. What a great golf/marriage moment
That really was great.
Tiger finished 4th. Heh.
the extent to which Team R is concerned with halting illegal immigration is directly proportional to how out of power they are
true or false?
You could say the same thing about fiscal discipline. What’s your fucking point? That they’re whores just like the Democrats? Congratulations. Have a cookie.
ok so we’ll mark one for the true column
How is the intention of Obama and the congressional Dems to take up the issue properly laid at the feet of the Reps? This is like game theory where we pretend there is only one agent.
I think I’ll have a bowl of oatmeal.
How is the intention of Obama and the congressional Dems to take up the issue properly laid at the feet of the Reps? This is like game theory where we pretend there is only one agent.
Plus there’s that.
They took it up in 2005-2006, when they were on top of the world
Yeah, what was that guy’s name, the former Governor of Texas guy, pretending to be their leader back then? George somethingorother I think it was.
Close to 1100 comments between the two threads, and a couple of people still don’t seem to get the prompt, which bh reminds us of here. Glad most of you do.
The point of having this discussion — other than I thought it would be an interesting one to have — is that the whole notion of fiscal responsibility has to tie in with other issues that will doubtless be raised. Here, I think to raise the idea of fiscal responsibility, it makes sense to point out how part of what has become unsustainable is the resources we’re providing for non citizens — which will only speed up the exhaustion of resources for citizens. Worried about your social security benefits? Tough. It’s only fair the we turn a blind eye to people who enter illegally and pick lettuce, or wash dishes at TGI Fridays. Suck it up, people. This is what the people you continue to vote into office are agitating for. They’re throwing you over for a younger demographic. Trophy voters.
And guess what? You who rely on government largesse? You’ll be hardest hit when the benefit monies run out.
nicely put
Btw, Fletch, I’m pretty lax on rhetorical excesses but “fag-lover”? Even those most motivated by religious considerations would be considered “fag-lovers”. Not so big on the actual fagging, granted.
Myself, I mainly like the way they give me tips on proper weight-lifting form at the gym.
I like that pitch.
I think this is an obvious point. And don’t be surprised if a certain legal “younger demographic” who is economically disenfranchised doesn’t have something to say about the matter.
“And guess what? You who rely on government largesse? You’ll be hardest hit when the benefit monies run out.”
We are all going to be hard hit.
When the pre-inflation dollars run out. And when 12% unemployment is no longer unusual.
The good news? There will be less of those “evil” rich people, living on the back of the (formerly)working man.
Oh, we’re gonna get screechy about the brown people then. Way to go Team R.
I’m trying to perfect it to the point where if someone asks what I mean by non-citizens, I can say something like, “why all the ponies, of course!” — and in that way get the race hustlers off my fucking back.
PETA? I crap bigger than them.
Looks like the Democrats setting up their perimeter defense have misread the instructions on the Claymores, taking “front toward enemy” to mean, point that side back into the country at Republicans. Won’t work too well, they’ll learn.
No doubt. But some people have only what the government provides them.
I was watching a Kitchen Nightmares where the family who owned a floundering restaurant had their house taken. In Detroit.
Are they really still foreclosing? You’d think the banks would just let people pay what they can.
Me, I’d wait a week and then go and quietly move back in. I mean, aren’t there just oodles of empty places in that area?
Or better yet, make it squat central for illegals. Problem solved.
I think security concerns, given the violence in Mexico these days, is another solid reason to come out as a racist. umm, I mean come out in favor of controlling our borders and resources.
It’s funny nishi believes her culture is going to dominate, in a multicultural society.
I think it has something to do with repeated viewings of “Avitar”, if I remember correctly.
Heh, Lee, I think her crazy ass Avatar jag belongs in the nishi, known griefer, hall of fame.
It might already be, I don’t know.
But seriously, cynn. As a borderline progressive, what is your take on illegal immigration and how (if at all) to deal with it?
Just for background:
There are two things that might cause USA to pay much closer attention to its relations with Latin America in the future.
First. The imminent population crash in Europe and Russia. The postwar generations have nowhere near reproduced themselves, typically only 1.5 child per female. Consequently, as the baby boomers die off in the next couple of decades, and they haven’t had enough kids to replace their numbers, (and neither did their kids) the population will start to crash. So Western Civilization is likely to be increasingly a Western Hemisphere phenomenon going forward – rather than a trans-Atlantic phenomenon.
Secondly the likely rise of the Asian Superpowers. This means the old developed world, USA, Europe, Japan is likely to be increasingly under competitive pressure from China, India. But the more resources-focused countries of Latin America and the South generally, are likely to find lots of markets for their exports, if there is a continuing global resources boom as a result of billions in Asia transitioning to middle class lifestyles. A super global resources boom could be really beneficial to Latin America.
So I am projecting maybe by mid-century, there will be considerably less economic difference between Latin America and USA than today. And Europe will be much less important than today.
So I’m expecting USA will be far more Latin America focussed by mid century and beyond.
BH, well, it was no balloon fence, but then nishi is no monkyboy.
It’s sad when you compare unfavorably with monkyboy…
You, having modeled the planet (economically, demographically, socially) without significant error, have now projected it’s future 40 years into the future.
You are the smartest man who has ever lived. Congratulations.
Golf clap.
Want to know my predictions for 40 years out?
Our star will still exist. If you gave me some time I might be able to come up with a couple more.
You know bh, when you at the 20th century. It is amazing how much of the changes we see can be understood in terms of really slow changing long term trends like demographics and patterns of trade.
It’s not that unexpected things don’t happen, its just that even great historical events like WWII are only minor glitches on the broader flows.
minor glitches on the broader flows
It’s amazing after the fact. At the time, everyone was scratching their heads and talking out their asses about the celestial aether, the heavenly spheres and spontaneous generation.
I gotta admit, I’ve never heard WWII described as a 20th century minor glitch before.
Not me brother: I was talking ice soccer and ‘splodey stadia.
Right, and the Cold War was just a speedbump.
The egotism of fools. It’s as breathtaking as the night sky.
So vast. So empty.
Well bh, I make my living playing the trends. It’s what I do.
Keid, I have to disagree with you about the “long term demographics and minor glitches like WWII” statement.
WWI and WWII had a significant impact on the populations of Germany especially, but also France and Britain. All suffered a shortage of men as a result of the war losses. This led to less offspring in thise societies than otherwise would have occurred naturally. The same can be said for WWII, with Respect to Germany and the former Soviet union and the Japanese.
In Germany it led directly to a large influx and eventual Turkish underclass to replace the men. In Japan the effect was felt as well, but interestingly may have been offset, in terms of industrial output, by increasing automation and a greater role for women in the society. It’s well known that Japanese society has been suffering a net population decline for years, as well as an increasing average age.
In fact, due to Eugenist policies in China, they are headed towards a severe imbalance that is the opposite of those experienced by the aforementioned nations as a result of war. There will be an imbalance of men on the order of 30 to 50 million by 2020, if estimates are to be believed. Speculation on the effects of this range from increased prostitution to gratuitous warfare by the nation to get rid of the excess men. Even if these never came to pass, the shortage of women as breeding partners may have a far reaching effect on the chinese population in the middle and second halves of the 21st century.
Finally, demographic “flows” only occur when there is freedom of movement into and out of societies. While the Chinese may open up more if the realie a drastically declining birthrate, there will be little demographic flow unless it comes via military conquest.
Good luck with that.
I do the same and I’d never be so foolish as to hire someone such as yourself.
I’z gettin all misty eyed on the eve of our magnificent summity summit.
From the laughters, if you must know.
It is amazing how much of the changes we see can be understood in terms of really slow changing long term trends like demographics and patterns of trade.
Keid is right, here.
“The future belongs to those who show up for it.” — Mark Steyn, America Alone
Just wondering, Keid. How dos the burgeoning numbers in Europe of Islamic immigrants factor in? Because as the native populations die off, the immigrants fill the gap.
Which, that wouldn’t be a problem if it were mostly a matter of replacing one gene pool with another. For example, if the vast majority of European immigrants were from Kenya or India or the Philippines.
But the Muslims have become extra radicalized in Europe, especially the second and third generations, and Europe has done quite a bit to enable that, on the one hand with their multiculturalism and on the other with their hedonism and anti-religiosity. Gives the Muslims lots to work with as far as social cohesion to fight against the überinfidels.
Will the Muslims preserve the museums and cathedrals, do you think? Will they be responsible with the nukes?
Bob Reed. Look at the scale I’m looking at; continental.
Look at the timeframe, less than a single human lifetime.
Anything can happen, but mostly things on these scales follow long established trends with modest deviations that take a significant time to build up to the point where your forecasts are way off.
I would tell my colleagues about the crazy ass kid I just interviewed though. You’d be a legend, Keid A.
“So, he’s telling me about the year 2050…” That’s when we’d all share a nice laugh.
I don’t need to be hired by you bh. I play alone.
Dicentra, I have seen studies for UK that show muslims are secularising like the rest of the population. The radicals seem to be the remnant.
Say 50% of the population secularizes, the remainder are the more committed faction. It’s a self-selection effect as far as I can see.
I don’t believe the rate of immigration into Europe will be fast enough to halt the general decline.
Where causes create effects? Well, yeah.
But, try taking him to the horse track tomorrow and see if he’ll make you rich. Maybe he’ll even tell you who’ll win far, far into the future.
He is the world’s smartest man after all.
Shocker!
Pray tell, are you writing this email from your palatial estate bought with your ability to divine the future?
I could have used a genius like Keid A when I was being ass raped by the NASDAQ during the tech boom. Who knew companies with high burn rates and no profits would go kablooey?
I think nishi and Keid A should start a fund. Between the two of them they should be able to average at least 20% a year.
Are you saying you wouldn’t hire a super genius like Keid A, Abe?
He can see the distant fucking future. How can you possibly resist that?
Who needs George Gilder when Keid A is on the case?
Abe Froman,
Not me buddy. I saw the tech boom was a bubble. And I cashed out two years before the recent crash. Kicked myself for being too early.
This:
Then:
You can’t even tell when someone is being sarcastic. Have you factored this into your models?
Between nishi and Keid A this thread might just collapse on itself.
You don’t say.
Levin, audio grab from the B-Cast, addressing illegal immigration, the government and us. 3:48
No, actually, the thread was about the question of illegals and their unwarranted effect on language, political power, and other effects on the culture. Old Europe is a lost cause.
Blackhole thread.
Okay, later, folks.
Thanks for the laugh, Keid A.
In the long run, we are all dead.
or the medium-term run, really
“The countdown is on and nobody knows when,” actually.
Bob, the effect of WWI on Britain was worse than the numbers suggest. It was found that a large percentage of the urban underclass wasn’t physically fit to serve, which concentrated the casualties in precisely the better educated and productive members of society, not to mention the more patriotic and “British”. Numbers never tell the whole story.
Darleen, you are a creepy old pedobear hag.
You totally supported the YFZ patriarchy daddies PHYSICALLY raping 13 year olds, yet you posted a cartoon of Obama virtually raping lady liberty that caused Jeff’s professor to ask to be removed from association with this website.
Again, i can’t monetarily contribute to this website as long as you are posting on the front page.
I believe in free speech, but as long as you’re on the front page that is Jeff’s approval of your vile ravings.
Take it to the pub.
@@
I believe in free speech, but as long as you’re on the front page that is Jeff’s approval of your vile ravin
No you don’t.
Nishi≡∅
That’s really not enough. It’s time for a full blown boycott.
Bye, griefer!
s/can’t/won’t
No one is stopping you. But accuracy has never, ever been your strong suit.
I’m going to want a cite on this. I don’t have high hopes, though, because your reading comprehension is pretty dismal.
It’s as if some Handicapper General, in overestimation of your intellect, has hobbled your input and output capability to the point where you can’t interpret anything as intended, and you can’t make a point to save your life.
Shake off those bonds, nishi! Raise yourself up to average, at least.
By any reading of #476, it’s more of a question of integrity.
Again, i can’t monetarily contribute to this website as long as you are posting on the front page.
Then your monetary contribution will exactly equal your intellectual one.
<waves at the griefer across the internet>
You totally supported the YFZ patriarchy daddies PHYSICALLY raping 13 year olds
Was anyone ever convicted? IIRC, the accusations were just that, “accusations!” As usual, your narrative diverges from the TRUTH, another concept foreign to you.
Jeff, this blog has devolved into one of Sanchez’s closed information loops.
You have no empiricism.
Empirically speaking, you can’t read, and you can’t make a point that lands anywhere near the topic at hand.
Given those things, why should anyone listen to you?
who you calling loopy
My other blog is a Porsche.
Nishit would not know honest discourse, or the concept of truth, if it whacked her in the forehead with an ice dong.
hogcaller, your empiricism is limited to being dropped on your head as a child.
Comment by thorisa cheesedick on 4/12 @ 8:10 am
Kate Mengele lies. It is what she is as much as what she does.
This post is an example of a closed information loop, Slart.
Jeff told me he was “blackballed” by his old university because of me and SEK.
The empirical data is that his professor asked for his name to be removed from the website because of Darleen’s cartoon.
This is Jeff’s house, and Darleen is a frontpager.
That means he endorses her post, he is responsible in some degree for what she says here.
That is the empirical data.
All the debate here about race and immigration devolves to “the otherside is worse.”
Again, that is non-empirical.
Read TNC.
Your fringe is controlling your party, and shaping policy and candidates.
That is the empirical data.
400+ comments down, no one will read this, but I’m typing anyway. I don’t think a massive wave of immigration, illegal or not, from central and south America is going to fundamentally change the culture of the United States. When 2/3 of Ireland emigrated here in the 1840’s the “culture” of the US didn’t change. When the successive waves of Italians, Eastern Europeans, Germans etc came boppin’ over, did the language change? Sure did, but it’s still recognizable as English in some public schools. Will a massive influx of Spanish speakers have the same effect? Yup. Will a massive influx of nominal Roman Catholics have any effect whatsoever on the culture of the US? No, and I’ma tell you why.
People don’t come here from Mexico, Araby, Ireland, France, Africa, China, etc to live in China, Araby, Africa, or Mexico. They are here to create wealth. Some maybe more than others, but all of them want to earn what they can earn and keep what they don’t spend. They are not here to reconquer the southwest US for the government of Mexico, no matter what a few charlatans might have you believe. Remember, both sides of that argument make money for the proponents, either in book sales or donations, grants or appearance fees. That’s the reason people come to America.
“Your fringe is controlling your party, and shaping policy and candidates.
That is the empirical data.”
Right back atcha
Support for Repeal of Health Care Plan Up To 58%
actually Confederate History Month boy isn’t fringe at all he’s a genuine mainstream homopublican dumblefuck who coincidentally gave Sarah Palin the hand when she tried to jump on his train and Haley Barbour also thinks Confederate History Month is a gorgeously sexy idea
oh. and Haley Barbour is head of the Republican Governor’s Association is how that’s relevant
Jeff told me he was “blackballed” by his old university because of me and SEK.
link?
Lost, more proof of the non-empiricism of the right.
It is mathematically impossible to repeal HCR.
The leadership knows this is just magical thinking….they are just using HCR as a whip to lather up the low information base.
Carin it was a private email.
I’m not reproducing it.
Your fringe is controlling your party, and shaping policy and candidates.
That is the empirical data.
The media is controlling your perception.
LULZ
Well, then let me just say that I doubt your representation of that private email.
And your perception is controlled by FOX…..a decidedly non-empirical venue.
It doesn’t matter Carin….Jeff knows what he wrote me.
It is mathematically impossible to repeal HCR.
I believe that’s the meme to convince us not to try.
There have been some cases here of devolution into strange closed information loops which then project their emptiness back on all the world. Throwing grief at their own image in the mirror. Nullity is a sad thing.
Nishi≡∅
If it doesn’t matter, why did you bring it up HERE? You don’t bring argument from a private email, claim to represent it accurately, then beg off that it doesn’t mater.
That’s bs, and you (should) know it.
That’s rich, sneaky, sleazy, and quite telling.
Aw, we just need a couple of years of evolution, and it will be entirely possible. Say, February 2013 or so.
Don’t you be talking ’bout no math there, griefer. You don’t understand it and it don’t understand you.
lawl…..
bring it on Carin.
magical thinking at its most pure…..ignore the maths.
2/3 vote is needed for repeal in both chambers.
again, the empirical data is against you.
Nishi,
I sure wish you’d quit arbitrarily tossing about, and inserting, scientific terminology into your rants. Being able to inculcate buzzords in your blather doesn’t lend it extra credibility, in fact, it detracts from it, especially for those of us that recognize or are familiar with said terms.
Like when you tried to work “quantum uncertainty” in upthread…
Here’s some clarity on “empirical” for you: Empirical method is generally taken to mean the collection of data on which to base a theory or derive a conclusion in science.
But I get the distinct impression that all of your conclusions are based on preconcieved notions and ideas as well as banal talking points. Hardly any empiricism there…
it’s really hard to feel yet that 2012 will be some sort of Team R triumph…
not at the rate they’re going
Team R doesn’t have have their eye on the ball they have their eye on Palin Romney Pawlenty
“The leadership knows this is just magical thinking….they are just using HCR as a whip to lather up the low information base.”
That’s just silly. The leadership of what? The Republicans? Please. Did you pay attention to anything the congressional Republicans have done in the past few years?
Trust me, it ain’t the GOP leadership lathering us all up. The GOP leadership wants us all to be quiet.
well….i gotz stuff to do.
i’ll see you next weekend if im not banned.
lawl.
So how have we gotten back to Confederate history month happy?
amg Lost…..Rush and Palin and Beck are the leaders of the right….not GOP cyphers like Boehner and Cantor.
get a clue.
nishi brought it up it’s not my fault
here is what nishi linked about how Team R in its cleverness has decided to answer a black president with a new love for the Confederacy
jesus fuck we’re doomed, really
Thanks happy,
I don’t generally read the Atlantic-I don’t feel like giving Andrew Sullivan, or any of his partners, countable hits for the sitemeter. And, at the risk of being branded a racist somehow, I’ll just say that I don’t give much heft to the opinions of Ta-Nehisi Coates…
Hail Urkel!
no me neither with the heft-giving but it was an own goal
why????
and I bet this McDonnell dolt drives like a way better car than me on top of it
So what am I, chopped liver?
Oh, the rabid racists.
happyfeet,
Before you get all despair-ey so early in the day, do yourself a favor and read the links I put up at #211; especially the WSJ one.
I won’t hit all of the darkest-before-the-dawn cliches, but, as one who’s been in more than a few tight places and had more than one close shave, I’m here to tell you that the pendulum always swings back the other way…
Right now, it’s gone about as far to the left as it’s going. The public wont stand for it to move any further that way. And, more than half of Americans realize that the legacy media is all about progressive propaganda; and a much larger problem than the boogeyman of big money from bug corporations that we hear lefties palavering about.
http://tinyurl.com/yasehls
I mean, that should at least offer you a glimmer of hope!
wasn’t that the Paul Ryan one?
I read it but I wish it had been longer.
He gives me hope to carry on and fills my nights with song I think.
But the unrepealability haunts me, Bob.
amg Lost…..Rush and Palin and Beck are the leaders of the right….not GOP cyphers like Boehner and Cantor.
get a clue.
Maybe you should ask the right who the leaders of the right are instead of asking the left. You might, might just get a different answer. Rush and Beck aren’t running for anything. Palin isn’t either and none of them are picking the candidates.
I’ll give you a fr’instance. In my district, the GOP establishment is solidly behind a guy who has lost four out of five elections against the same opponent. The talkers want him out. Who’s going to win the argument?
Unrepealability seems like a higher hurdle than it is when a veto has to be overridden. But after Obama is out of office…
I gotta go for a few hours, I’ll check back later.
feets, you can watch this when you get home.
One more time….if you don’t want to be laffed at, take off the clown shoes.
Lost my Cookies, there is a difference between the traditional immigrants of the past and today’s illegals. As pointed out already, most illegals aren’t here to become Americans, and have no desire to assimilate even a little. There are probably as many Mexican flags flying in California as US flags.
The other difference is the numbers. Border Patrol stop something like 1.5 million illegals from crossing the border each year. Those are just the ones stopped.
nishit might be the most self-unaware pseudo-human I have ever encountered.
Nishi apparently decided to say empiricism a few dozen times today. Isn’t that cute?
*** waves at the griefer ***
Yeah, geez happyfeet, take off those clown shoes you’re wearing. They’re so unbecoming. heh
So? He’s allowed to say whatever he pleases. You wouldn’t want to suppress his speech, would you?
That is not data, it’s your conclusions.
You really need to learn more about this science thing. Used properly, it can accomplish a lot. Used improperly, though, it can result in the sort of rhetorical self-sharting you’re engaging in. Embarrassing, and not easily cleaned up.
All? Or just the cherries you’ve elected to pick?
Wasn’t it John Edwards, at one point a serious contender for President, who channeled the feelings of a fetus in the womb?
It’s kind of silly to suggest that we should all just abandon all of our principles and vote Democrat because they’re less endemically crackpotted than Republicans are, though. Didn’t you say something like that, earlier? Oh, yes: All the debate here about race and immigration devolves to “the otherside is worse.”. Indeedy.
Irony meter has snapped the needle off and performed several complete clockwise revolutions past the stop.
Oh, and: many of us are not Republicans. Only happyfeet, as far as I know, has stapled his soul to the Republican Party platform.
Here Darleen, im sure you will want to promote this.
It s right up your alley.
<3
If Rush and Beck are the leaders of the Republicans how did we wind up with McCain as a candidate?
sdferr there’s simply no way that the intelligence level inherent in “Confederate History Month” is of an order what hopefully whispers of an American Renaissance
it whispers of doom
Ahhhhhh … linking to the cesspool at balloonjuice will sure show everyone. What a silly little git-ette you are, nishit.
Legislation is unrepealable? Who knew?
Nice link, nishfong. Can’t wait to see Olberman wears his BusHilter mask when he
reportsrants about that one.If you really want to grief, you should quick find a link to Charles Johnson now. You can do it!
Eek! Clumsy American history! What will we do!
Aaaaaaaah.
[runs screaming from the room … but notes along the way he grew up in Virginia and hence, must be personally tainted]
I’m not at all sure what is to be done, Mr. sdferr.
I will think on it.
There is empirical evidence in this thread that nishit is a lying dishonest twit/twat.
Funny, I can’t hear the whispers. Probably because the intelligence level inherent in letting your enemy define who you are shrieks of doom like a motherfucking banshee with its dick in meat grinder.
perhaps we could save monies by cutting out the gift-wrapping for the shovels what we give the dirty socialists to beat us with
“Here Darleen, im sure you will want to promote this.”
Weird. Promoting something while imparting the desire to promote it on some one else.
I’ve heard of shenanigans like that before…now where was it I heard…?
And if you really think Confederate History Month is that outrageous an atrocity you apparently really do need to learn some Confederate History.
The dirty socialists have enough problems this November. All 435 seats in the House are up for grabs, and 36 in the Senate. They may just need their own shovels.
One thing might be refusing to allow griefers and the media to lead us by the nose to the slaughter-house. Maybe.
no B Moe it is Mr. McDonnell with his celebration of the Confederate legacy and Haley Barbour’s endorsement of McDonnell’s cowardly inability to stand up to the Raleigh Civil War Reenactors Club what we are letting define Team R for us…
It’s butt-stupid.
The Confederate History Month is, I agree, a stroke of profound idiocy.
You want to commemorate Civil War dead? Fine. You want to have a month in which we contemplate the actual history of that era? Well and good. A month in which we (or an entire state that does NOT contain me) celebrate the sweetness and light that was the Confederacy, though, is intrinsically a whitewashing of history.
The glories of the Confederacy have fuck all to do with extricating our little country from the iron grip of the sucking dirty socialist vortex what she helplessly circles and circle.
The ball, have you seen it?
*circle* I mean gots to go so late
oof
*circles* that should have been
haste makes mispellings
Aw, guess who are new BFF’s!
“He had me at Hegel.”
This means he endorses her right to express her opinion. He is responsible only insofar as he didn’t remove it — and why would he? It is her opinion, expressed in the way she felt it was best expressed.
Yeah, it’s a shame he wasted his own time and that of his audience in a chase off after a wild-goose of CK MacCleod’s making, huh? Oh well, no biggie.
Yeah, how awful that some million people had the opportunity to hear Ryan and Beck discussing progressivism and the threat therefrom. What a waste. He might as well just get off the air.
Ermmm..make that 9 million.
I went and read some CK MacCleod this morning, and am now wondering why I should give a flying fuck what that clown thinks.
“The glories of the Confederacy have fuck all to do with extricating our little country from the iron grip of the sucking dirty socialist vortex ”
I might be way out in left field here, but I think the glories of the Confederacy (such that there are) are that they stood up for the right of the different States to self determination. It’s my opinion that a too powerful Federal government is the source of 99% of our current situation.
I think the Confederacy Month is a dumb move also, but my objection is that it will just used to further demonize anyone who has the audacity to voice preference for a Constitutional, more decentralized governance.
As pointed out already, most illegals aren’t here to become Americans, and have no desire to assimilate even a little.
L. This argument can be made, and was made, about each wave of immigration. My wife’s grandfather never learned how to speak English, worked for a company that advertised only in Italian, lived in what can only be described ans an Italian ghetto and practically disowned her mother when she married a German. My father came here as an illegal, he married my mother who came here legally. They met in a completely homogeneous neighborhood. In that neighborhood, (where three of my siblings still live) there are more Irish flags than US flags, there is almost no ethnic mixing, and US law is (drinking age, minimum wage, building codes, car insurance) routinely ignored. None of my father’s family, or my mother’s family came here to be Americans. They came here to make money. They did though, eventually and through no fault of their own, become Americans. Very proud, Democrat voting, Americans. Except for my mother, who voted Perot and independence party. Go figure.
She’s on the front page, Jeff.
If you don’t endorse her put her back on the Pub.
I agree with your Professor.
sowwy.
;)
He should keep it up Pablo: the brand of the easily mislead will take that Beck guy very far, no doubt about it.
I haven’t even heard of Confederate History Month other than the couple dozen times you have brought it up.
Not once. I live right in the heart of Dixie and haven’t heard a word about it except you bringing it up every other post.
Confederate History Month isn’t the ball, its your half-senile old great-aunt up in the bleachers. I can’t help it if you look that way every time the pitcher points to her.
they stood up for the right of the different States to self determination in the matter of whether they could continue the practice of owning and abusing other human beings
Fixed!
Really, because what else was the states’ rights argument about?
That actually heartens me.
Who happens to be the governor of the state of Virginia. Which, it happens, is right across the river from Washington, DC. But, agreed; it should be ignored by the polity, lots of whom actually live in Virginia, as an aberration.
Nishit endorses the philosophy of Margaret Sanger. She lurvs her some genocide in the morning.
“it should be ignored by the polity”
Oops. Should be ignored by political establishment, is what I ought to have said.
sdferr, I take it you didn’t hear Ryan saying “I should have added more to that part, I was editing it for time, etc…”
But really, who wants to listen to a couple of white guys talking about stuff? What is this, talk radio?
The data in the post isn’t making an argument. It just is.
That said, I don’t think this Confederacy bit is all that much of a death knell.
It’s just a manifestation of Megan’s Law: The power in party is smug; the party out of power is insane.
Foreign trade. Banking. Slavery was the big straw, and granted it taints the whole mess, but there were a lot of little straws involved also.
Remember that history gets written by the winners.
I’m not sure, but I think I heard Beck utter “I was wrong” which, hey, good for him. He might even have admitted he hadn’t read Ryan’s entire speech, which again, good for him to say if so. But geez, it only takes about five minutes to read the whole thing, not to mention the utter opposition Ryan takes to progressivism is apparent in the first eight paragraphs, but hey, I’m sure Beck is really pressed for time.
Foreign trade. Banking.
Article 1 Section 8 explicitly gives the Federal government the right to regulate foreign trade. The banking issue wasn’t connected to the Confederacy; without slavery having been a bone of contention, no Confederacy would have resulted. Or so says I.
And, once more, the slavery issue arose because the Southern states wished to continue a practice (that had been in effect in the Northern states, there is no denying that) that explicitly denied several Constitutional protections to a goodly chunk of the population.
And then rewritten, later, by historians who have no interest in perpetuating the victory dance. We’re now, surely, at sufficient remove from the US Civil War that we can give some accounts due regard, no?
Anyway, I don’t wish to make the entire thread about this, just that I share some of hf’s feelings in this regard. And also that I do a much, much better job of explicating said feelings.
Yes. And most of them agree that it is a gross over-simplification to say the war was about nothing but slavery.
Slart you rock.
“Really, because what else was the states’ rights argument about?”
You need to remember; “whether they could continue the practice” is significant. Up to and including the time the 13 colonies were established, slavery was practiced by nearly all peoples and races. There were still white people being sold in Morocco 20 years after the American emancipation.
I think most everyone knew slavery was on it’s way out, and the south should have negotiated something that would set an agenda to phase out slavery, to avoid the crash of the economy freeing all the slaves overnight would cause. Maybe they did their best, I don’t know. I don’t claim to be a Civil War expert. I’m just musing.
Anyway, I think to the average rebel, slavery wasn’t really the issue, it was about the slick fancy men from DC telling them how to run their affairs.
Just to be clear, I’m glad the practice of slavery was halted (silly as it is to have to say it), and I point to Christianity and the Constitution as catalysts for it’s demise. I just object to the notion that slavery was the only issue in the civil war, especially to the majority of men actually fighting for the south, who never even hoped to own slaves.
I’ve read, to the contrary, that even though other rationale for war were assembled, war would not have happened if it hadn’t been for the slavery issue. It’s what got people reactivated. I mean: Jefferson Davis was a plantation owner. From Wikipedia (but from a more credible source):
Daniel Schafer, author of Thunder on the River: The Civil War in Northeast Florida, has collected quite a bit of evidence to support that it was, in fact, pretty much (effectively all) about slavery.
I have no trouble believing that. After all, no one likes to be told what to do, even if being told what to do means their life will not change at all. After all, most men who fought and died in the Confederate Army didn’t own slaves.
It’s the offense to identity that wounds, maybe.
But: look, at some point in time, you’ve got to be able to look back and say: holy crap, was that ever a bad pretext for war. Granting that Confederate Soldiers were brave and noble has nothing at all to do with acknowledging that, at this remove, the war was fought for reasons that are, by today’s standards at least, evil.
Yes: granted, slavery wasn’t widely recognized by everyone in this country as an evil. Hopefully by now, it has.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125737965&sc=fb&cc=fp
What was that about the happy goodness of the new culture the illegal immigrants are bringing with them??
Good idea! How about we call it Confederate History Month?
gone gone with the wind
there ain’t nobody lookin’ back again
When somebody starts quoting Alabama the thread is officially dead.
roll on momma like I asked you to do
The data in the post isn’t making an argument. It just is
Jeff, LBascom said this, “Lost my Cookies, there is a difference between the traditional immigrants of the past and today’s illegals. As pointed out already, most illegals aren’t here to become Americans, and have no desire to assimilate even a little. There are probably as many Mexican flags flying in California as US flags.”
I see that as an argument, because this has been said about every wave of immigrants since those first Virginians assimilated with the Croatoan.
The culture that provides the emigrant with greatest chance for success is the culture that the emigrant will assimilate into. It might take generations, but economic success and social status are the drivers behind assimilation. You don’t see a lot of illegals in Amish communities.
Look, happyfeet, the political rough-housing is just fun and games.
Giving somebody an Alabama ear worm is way out of bounds.
I know. We used to sing that at summer camp.
We had hand motions.
You still do.
So whaddaya thinks guins? Pens over Sens in five?
Because there’s much more to it than the Confederacy, that’s why. There was this other group of people called the Union, and then there was this huge group of people that the Confederacy owned.
LBascom: “I think most everyone knew slavery was on it’s way out, and the south should have negotiated something that would set an agenda to phase out slavery, to avoid the crash of the economy freeing all the slaves overnight would cause. Maybe they did their best, I don’t know. I don’t claim to be a Civil War expert. I’m just musing.”
Well, lets go beyond musing and into the realm of economics. Slavery is as much an economic system as anything else. It requires at least a sub-tropical environment to be sustainable as such, or else it doesn’t make sense. Industrialization / mechanization was already spelling the end of the peculiar institution.
Now, at the time of the War between the States, slaves were a major asset, partly because the importation of slaves, iirc, was illegal, while the holding and trading of slaves internally was not. Limited supply, no importation and high demand (relative to supply) made them very valuable assets.
That said, as mechanical devices were introduced, the value of slavery would have diminished — slavery works where the job is labor intense — picking and separating cotton. Once you have mechanical devices that obviate the need for that labor, say, a cotton gin, you don’t need as much labor. Likewise, if you look at the states in the Confederacy, it, slavery, had likely reached the geographic limits of economic viability. Timber cutting and mining are poor choices of employment for slaves — the temptation to misuse those tools as implements of manumission is just too great.
In short, slavery would have ended on its own accord… then again, were it not for the cadets at the Citadel firing off the first rounds at the mail-packet en route to Ft. Sumner, I suspect that things would not have gone quite so far aglee…