And that’s just coming from the right.
I don’t have much more to offer than Ace and Mr Carroll already put forward, except to say that one of the consequences of adopting the left’s tactics when it suits our purposes is that “our” purposes are not always uniform, and they’re not always even “ours,” broadly speaking.
So it isn’t shocking to me to see some on the right take lessons from the left and deploy certain rhetorical tactics when they feel put upon. In fact, looked at generally, that’s the very definition of pragmatism or realism — using whatever is at hand to win the argument (or force your opponent on the defensive, so that he gives up and cedes the argument, however reluctantly) and advance the policy.
What is shocking is that some on the right seem taken aback when the methodology is aimed at them.
One of the advantages of having core principles is that you always have firm ground on which to take your stand. And when you do, you won’t feel dirty for having done so.
(h/t geoff B)
From the right of the hard left, maybe.
People pushing the latest “gang of eight” don’t qualify as “the right” by my definition, nor is this anything new as conservatives and constitutionalists are always portrayed as the embarrassing crazies in the attic, except when they are portrayed as ungrateful crazies in the attic when they don’t vote hard enough for Republicans on Election day.
Unlike the slaves, they’re perfectly free to leave.
I have actually been saying almost the same thing for years. I think he’s right, it is akin to slavery. I actually had a pretty severe argument with a deacon at my church, who seems to think that as long as these people are poor and Catholic, you should have “compassion” for them. They should be encouraged to cross the boarder, any way they can, so that they can “work hard” and do “the jobs Americans won’t do”. I think, and I told him, that there is nothing compassionate about encouraging illegals to meet up with the coyotes on the boarder, who, by virtue of being engaged in criminal activity on both sides of the boarder, usually turn out to be rather unsavory characters. These coyotes will then take a huge risk and expect payment for said risk, and let’s face it, like with all human trafficking, the man gets paid on the front end and the back. The traffickers know where the illegals should live, who to call for work, and where to go on the other side. On our side, the “Mafia” (for want of a better word) owns the van or the truck, collects the rent on the motel room and finds the guy who can get paperwork. The guy who gets the paperwork wants to get paid, and has to buy the stolen SS# from somebody. Plus, there’s the stolen car ring, and the fake registration. The uninsured drivers, and the unreported rape. The underclass that won’t report crimes because they don’t speak language and are here illegally isn’t going to bark when I pay them $200 for a weeks work. In fact, if I wasn’t afraid of violence from the runners, I wouldn’t pay them at all. A permanent underclass is what amnesty will get you. And it’s not compassionate, it’s complicit. (Given my Church’s historical attitude toward slavery in the US I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I am, just a little.)
The only way for “immigration reform” to work is to beef up security on the boarder so that it is easier to jump through the immigration hoops than it is to jump the boarder. Make it tougher to skip on your visa than it is to renew. Make it easier to get a green card but harder to stay if you lose it. But understand this, the people here illegally would never have come here legally. It’s not that hard, and the people who actually want to stay here and be Americans will jump through the hoops, even if it means they have to leave and come back.
LMC, he’s saying that even being a legal permanent resident alien is akin to slavery if they don’t have “…full citizenship rights.”
I’m beginning to wonder whether electing Charlie Crist would have done less damage to the nation.
“And that’s just coming from the right.”
Which is over to my left…
Pablo QED’d that rhetorical ploy, didn’t he?
A cohort? Did the Marian reforms also apply to resident aliens? I thought for sure they’d still be organized into maniples.
it’s starting to look like Roobs and Meghan’s coward daddy didn’t take this assignment very seriously
Rubio and Toomey must have the same advisors.
Forget about communist infiltrators in the State Department and the Army, it’s the infiltrators in the RNC that I’m worried about.
I think he’s right, it is akin to slavery.
Slaves were dragged into this country against their will, forced to labor for someone else without receiving recompense, were legally considered the property of their owners, could be bought and sold like so much cattle, and were not allowed to escape their situation.
How is that anything like the Latinos? They come here voluntarily. They are paid for their labor. They’re nobody’s property. They cannot be bought and sold. They can leave the U.S. any time they want.
Slavery is not the correct term for illegal aliens.
On the subject, I think Rush’s amnesty in exchange for no voting rights for 25 years is a pretty good compromise.
Capite Censi would work though. Especially for Democrats.
proggtardia news
Pro-reform GOP Senate aide: Don’t blame our immigration system for the Tsarnaevs, blame “our society”
dicentra says April 22, 2013 at 2:40 pm
How is that anything like the Latinos? They come here voluntarily. They are paid for their labor. They’re nobody’s property. They cannot be bought and sold. They can leave the U.S. any time they want.
Don’t forget that most of them engage in identity fraud/theft as well.
amnesty in exchange for no voting rights
for 25 yearsFTFY.
Our feckless congress needs to be punished with No Voters To Pander To. They’ve been refusing to enforce the current laws and secure the border in hopes of getting them that huge Latino voting bloc.
Them what crossed illegally can get legal but not become voting citizens (most of them came here to work, not to become Americans, so what do they care?).
Illegal immigrants are not “undocumented.” They have fraudulent documents…
And most of them don’t think they’re doing anything particularly wrong: in Mexico, gaming the system IS the system. Mexicans have an unsavory reputation among the rest of Latinos as potty-mouthed, lying thieves. (I know quite a few who don’t fit this description, but all too many of them do…)
They also cheat wildly on their income taxes, such as trying to claim children they abandoned in Mexico along with their mother, as well as the kids they have with their current wives in the U.S. So yeah, they’re married in Mexico and here, technically bigamists, and hoping to get away with as much as they can.
The illegals continue to do illegal things after they get here, and not all of them are as benign as fake green cards.
+1
Our feckless congress needs to be punished with No Voters To Pander To. They’ve been refusing to enforce the current laws and secure the border in hopes of getting them that huge Latino voting bloc.
It isn’t just that, although it is that too. The Cheap-Labor-At-All-Costs Greedheads just want the labor and the consumers to sell to, societal and infrastructure consequences be damned. Read the Wall Street Journal editorial page for insight into that mindset, a combination of immigration romanticism and holier-than-thou finger pointing at anyone who points out the serious societal consequences, all the while masking the basic desire for cheap gardeners, maids, and hired hands.
The phony comparison with “slavery” by these people is revealing. These people have a relationship with their illegal alien help like Miss Scarlet had with her Mammy.
The WSJ Greedheads seem hell bent on proving Lenin correct: when the time comes to bring about socialism in the USA, they will have imported the underclass with which to do it.
a path to repatriation – sí, se puede
Why doesn’t anyone ever ask what can Mexico do to improve life for their citizens so they would want to stay there?
Too judgmental?
Curmudgeon, it’s about time the greedy ones are actually talking about this problem. Wrongly, of course, but it’s a start.
On a different board I have been going around and around about paying people under the table. The other voices are Lefter than Left and don’t see that the problem is greed and our confiscatory tax system working hand-in-glove to make sure that meaningful reform never ever happens. Their answers are amnesty and raising the minimum wage. For the Fairness.
Curmudgeon, it’s about time the greedy ones are actually talking about this problem. Wrongly, of course, but it’s a start.
Will all due respect, go back thru the WSJ editorial pages, for many *years*. Demonization of the border patriots and those of us with any modicum of sense on this issue is hardly new.
Some people, who ought to know better, are just all about the short-term bottom line.
Jeff noted this nearly six years ago. It’s sadly nothing new:
https://proteinwisdom.com/?p=9323
Thomas Sowell said it best in his column last week:
“Most laws are meant to stop people from doing something, and to penalize those who disregard those laws. More generally, laws are meant to protect the society from the law breakers.
But our immigration laws are different. Here the whole focus is on the “plight” of those who have broken the laws, and on what can be done to lift the stigma and ease the pressures they feel, so that they can “come out of the shadows” and “normalize” their lives.
***
Why are there immigration laws in the first place? For the benefit of the American people — not for the benefit of people in other countries who want to come here. But political and media elites treat the American people as if they are the problem …”
Whether or not being “undocumented” is akin to slavery misses the point entirely.
I blame the Treason Lobby (i.e., the open-borders crowd).
so that they can “come out of the shadows” and “normalize” their lives.
Sowell is, as ever spot on. But there is another dirty little secret: a good many illegal aliens LIKE to be in the shadows, and not just the blatantly criminal drug dealing and identity thieving ones ones either. Cash under the table. Roadside vendors selling fruit, clothing, wallets, watches, and other sundry items without worrying about quarterly sales tax forms, let alone income tax.
Heck, I often think I would like to be in the shadows too, off the government’s radar.
I think the best first step would be do take back the word immigration.
It doesn’t mean what a lot of people seem to think it means.
It’s amazing how many professional Republicans sound just like Democrats, isn’t it? Maybe that’s because these days Democrats sound like socialists of one variety or another.
Also, now that I’ve had time to think about it, that Rubio spokesmoron doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Or did we abolish resident alien status when I wasn’t looking?
And now, I have to go get my cardio workout in (again). Wasn’t it thoughtful of mother earth to snow all day so I could do that?
Heart attack snow too –the bitch.
Too judgmental?
Yes.
Plus, their government is far more corrupt and intransigent than ours. The citizens can’t do jack to make their government behave itself, and they never have been able to.
Some U.S. bidnesses went south of the border to offer to help the Mexican gubmint learn how to be business-friendly so that they could generate more wealth, and the gubmint told them to stick it.
Those who benefit from the current system in Mexico will NOT relinquish it for love or money. All you get is the switch-up between the “conservatives” (old money and the Church) and “liberals” (populist Marxists), such that even when you change parties, only the people out of power suffer, if at all.
Es el mismo circo con otros payasos, they say of the turnovers: Same circus, different clowns.
A Brazilian co-worker said that she used to idealistically hope to make positive change in her country, but then she went to Japan and saw how well things worked there, and she could see by contrast that Brazil was just too far gone for any populist movement to change things.
Either you set it up right the first time or you destroy the country utterly (as in WWII-level destruction) and rebuild from the ashes. I don’t recommend the latter because of the human misery quotient, and it’s too late for the former.
Everyone south of the border is and has been screwed utterly.
And soon we will be too, only worse, because we’ll wreck the cities when the WiFi goes out.
A Brazilian co-worker said that she used to idealistically hope to make positive change in her country, but then she went to Japan and saw how well things worked there, and she could see by contrast that Brazil was just too far gone for any populist movement to change things.
Does she happen to be of Japanese descent? There were some funny stories going ar0und about how the Japanese government imported latin americans of Japanese heritage to do gruntwork, thinking that just because they had Japanese blood they would fit right in. The results turned out otherwise.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dekasegi
levin just called miss lindsey a jag off
Did Rubio lie to Mark Levin?
She’s of Japanese heritage, yes.
VDH weighs in on the “slavery” charge.
Roobs should stop lying to people and, instead, make the very best most truthful case he can for his silly immigration scheme
I’d rather have months and months of truthful hearings than a few weeks where all I hear is Roobs lying out his mas authentico ass
that is my personal preference
forced to labor for someone else without receiving recompense … and were not allowed to escape their situation…
Actually, the first statement is not true at all, and the second is not entirely true.
Under the law, slaves were paid. According to a book (something like On Southern Slavery — it’s from 1855, written by an abolitionist named Nehemiah Smith), slaves received a daily wage in addition to a clothing allowance, room, and board. All combined, they were better paid and lived in better conditions than similarly-employed immigrant labor in the North. (Something quite shocking to Smith. He went on and on about the absence of slums and tenements in the South. I always wondered if he went back North and got started on tenement reform.)
Also, if a slave were injured, the owner was required to provide full medical care. If they were disabled, the owner was required to take care of them for the rest of their lives. When they got old, owners had to provide care and a pension. They could purchase their freedom (which was possible because, again, they were paid) — and they frequently chose not to because of the old-age care. They could also request to go to a different owner and, if they were abused, they could go to the local law and request to be released.
The rest of what you point out — the lack of freedom of movement, the broken families — were the true heartbreak of slavery. And not because they were bad externally (though they are). It was bad because it warped the souls of both slaves and slave owners in very bad ways.
What gets me is what Nehemiah Smith saw. Slavery isn’t bad because it’s a legal standing that restricts external rights. It is bad in its effect on the soul — and things we don’t call slavery (Mexican immigration now, welfare now, Irish and Eastern European immigration in the 1850s) are as soul-deforming and much the same flavor as “slavery.” But we’re morally superior because Slavery is All That Is Bad and we don’t do that here, do we?
I guess the shorter statement: slaves were actually treated better than the situations for illegals now. And I feel like the Rubios and McCains and Reids just really want some cut-rate slaves and that is creepy to the core.
it’s just sad cause we really need to work towards a resolution of this immigration stuff but roobs and meghan’s coward daddy have squandered the opportunity in favor of sleazy backroom deals and lies
I am having a real hard time buying that. Most illegals I know are planning to go back to Mexico and retire in a lot more comfort than the average Mexican.
The US should get more Saudi immigrants, then sprinkle their bodies around the stinking South Western deserts for the encouragement of the Mexicans stumbling across the border, is what my neighbor says. That wouldn’t be nice, says I. But possibly effective.
regular Saudis are probably ok the ones with jobs
but Saudi royal perverts do not add value
test’
but Saudi royal perverts do not add value
Food for dogs and birds, he says. Which, that’s a sort of value, apart from the barbaric warning sign he intended otherwise.
Nice rack.
sprinkle away then it sounds like one of the more worthy earth day projects really
Deport Lindsey Graham.
Well said.
Apologies/I WAS trying to embed a video
Obviously I failed
Mother was right
I miss her
Not enough to visit her but
she could cook it up
When it came to doing dangerous work, Irishmen were preferred. If you lost an Irishman, you weren’t out anything and you could just get another, whereas a slave represented an investment.
I’m not scared of marathons,buildings or trains
I’m scared of loving you
Rand Paul: Stop Debate on Immigration Bill
I remember being assigned Slaves Without Masters in college that made many similar arguments.
There’s an undercurrent of socialist class critique to much of this. In the short form it goes: we’re all slaves to the rich but at least slave owners cared more about owned rather than rented property.
I wasn’t particularly impressed.
“Wage slavery” was the catchphrase.
Whee! We’re going to South America[or whatever they called it]
oops..oh shit
“Wage slavery” was the catchphrase.
Yep. That was the phrase that was being tossed around in the conversation I started to recount upthread, bh. It’s like all the lefties are stuck in the 1920s.
Even worse, the 1850s.
Well, who gives a bleep what you think, since the restaurant bidness is the new plantation.
I bet you’ve already bought your seersucker suit and panama hat for the two weeks of summer you get in Wisconsin, oppressor.
And bh already made my serious point for me.
Don’t tell Sam Tannenhaus. He might have to confront his cognitive dissonance.
Well, donning my oppressive garb, Ernst, allow me to speak freely in the knowledge that the underclass are illiterate and so won’t learn the terrible flaw in our wage slavery.
To extract the most (blood? spirit? bodily essence?) profit from a line cook we train them to the highest possible level. Being a contractual matter, they then heartlessly turn around and demand higher wages/position or go elsewhere for greener pastures.
It’s a cruel world for the wage slaver. We hide our pain by buying them beers and wishing them the best of luck. This is merely a face-saving maneuver. We don’t mean it. We actually wish them only fair-to-middling luck.
Security first, boys. First stop the flooding, then tinker with the pipes, huh?
Well, bh, you know what makes wage slaves? That’s right: wages.
Meals and a bunkhouse and Sunday mornings off to go to Mass. It was good enough for Abuelo.
breaking news
Boston bomb suspect charged; religious motive seen
hah he’s guilty i knew it
no sweetie actually it was just the city
oh good the National Soros Radio propaganda sluts have examined the issue closely and have maded a decision
Boston Lockdown ‘Extraordinary’ But Prudent, Experts Say
If anybody needs me I’ll be over here beating my head against the wall…
“wage slave” what b.s., a free man can always walk away, he doesn’t have to ask anyone permission. It may have been rough for 19th and early 20th century immigrants but, I know less starved to death than under communism.
Is a wage slave what I am the 4 months of the year I am working for other people?
all his life beemoe had to fight
It’s probably a matter of degree rather than of kind, right? Certainly we’d all agree to paying a smallish sum together as we can not make worthwhile individual contributions to certain group affairs.
So, let’s see how it was considered over one hundred years ago:
Imagine paying for national defense (a thing hard to do individually) and then another fifteenth for all the rest. I doubt that would take four months of your year. And these numbers were used rhetorically to separate us (hard-scrabble, prudent) from them (monarchical, given to pomp and waste).
These are the grounds upon which the power to tax were agreed upon.
[My bold.]
Yeah, but that was like, a hundred years ago man!
levin just called miss lindsey a jag off
Heh.
JAG officer, jag-off, same diff…
Around when Vietnam attacked Wounded Knee if I recall correctly.
Actually the British royals more than pay for themselves and so pay for some of the 14/15s too.
Heh.
Well, if we’re linking that, we should link this as well because it’s such good fun.
– The Left has been biting its collective tongue on this Boston Bean Bomb affair, hoping to maximize the political benefit while avoiding narrative destruction as much as possible. So very tricky this time because of the damn Muslim connection. But they’re trying.
– They’re probably fuckeded.
OT:
A really excellent Ed Driscoll essay here. For that matter, he’s been on fire since the weekend.
A very interesting post on the players around the players in the marathon bombing. People got some ‘splaining to do.
This is the most stupid statement I’ve read in years, and that’s saying a lot.
Slaves were owned animals, and treated as such. During times when horse whips were in wide use. Trivializing slavery as you have (along with Rubio’s spokeshole) would be evil if it weren’t just so pig ignorant.