Mayberry, Aztlan

South changes and survives

We may not be Mayberry any more, but the sun keeps coming up every morning. Right here in the heart of the Confederacy. The South survived the change.

[...]
Now we're faced with another change -- a demographic shift of historic proportions.

I saw signs of this change years ago, when I took my son to the Outer Banks for our first North Carolina vacation. We stopped for gas in one of those classically Southern towns east of Rocky Mount, where tobacco plants hug the two-lane on the way to the beach. As I leaned against the car watching 99-cent gas fill the tank, I noticed a group of Latinos walking together across the street. Then I saw another group coming up a side street. Then a car of Latinos pulled up to the pump beside me.

"Toto," I said, "this doesn't look like North Carolina anymore."

Mind you, this was 1996. Which is to say that today's front-page stories about illegal immigration are documenting a change that has already taken place.

Bank of America's move to offer credit cards to folks without Social Security numbers isn't driven by a concern for social justice, or by some leftist plot to destroy this country. It's simply good business -- a practical move to deal with the reality on the ground.

Progress: Managing change

As a community, we can deny that reality. We can erect fences on the border, ban the reciting of the Pledge of Allegiance in Spanish, claim that illegal immigrants are taking over the country. This is throwing stones into the Catawba River to try to dam the flow.

That flow is a globalized economy. We like it when we can get our TVs cheap, when we can buy beer from around the world at Harris Teeter, when we send Valentine's Day flowers that come from South America. Most of us participate eagerly in that part of the change.

But that change, along with our Sony flat-screens and Bass Ale and long-stemmed roses, brings an evolving workforce. The question no longer is whether we stop that change or not. The question is how we will manage it. If we manage that change to benefit all North Carolinians, we'll call it progress.

So yeah, Mayberry is gone. Wishing for it to come back is wishing for Pillowtex to reopen. Is it the end of civilization?

Only if our response is uncivilized.''

The last sentence is very telling: opposing immigration is 'uncivilized' according to the writer, Mike Warner, who is apparently the self-appointed arbiter of such matters.

Mr. Warner, let me tell you what is 'uncivilized', since we are being openly judgmental here. (Hey, if you liberals who constantly denounce 'judgmentalism' can indulge in it, then so can I, without apology. Conservatives are vilified for making judgments, while liberals do so with impunity. So I'll take advantage of being labeled judgmental, and judge you, Mike, and all apologists for wide-open borders and willy-nilly change.)

'Uncivilized'? What I call 'uncivilized', first of all, involves masses of people invading a neighboring country in a stealthy, sneaky manner. Uncivilized means not only sneaking into another country like a common thief, then brazenly demanding things: loudly demanding the right to stay, in defiance of the laws of the land and of that land's rightful occupants. That's uncivilized. Uncivilized is demanding all the benefits which accrue to the rightful citizens and taxpayers of that country you have invaded and squatted in. Uncivilized is lying, stealing others' identities, defrauding with those stolen identities. Uncivilized is availing oneself of 'free' medical care in emergency rooms to the extent of bankrupting hundreds of hospitals in border states. Uncivilized is driving drunk, in defiance of more laws, and killing many Americans, injuring and maiming many others. Uncivilized is committing many crimes of violence in the country you have illegally entered. Uncivilized is making your hosts speak your language, while refusing to learn theirs. Uncivilized is spreading many exotic (and unnecessary, because preventable by civilized hygiene) diseases in the country you are illegally occupying. Uncivilized is loudly demanding your 'rights' from the very people you denounce and disdain.

I could continue, but I think I ought to point out some civilized attributes with which to contrast the uncivilized ones. Civilized peoples (and societies) do not passively allow far-reaching changes to overthrow what they have so carefully and diligently built and defended for centuries. Only uncivilized societies are passive and resigned to sitting inert and letting change wash over them. Warner and other liberals counsel passivity and resignation.

Such qualities are not historically characteristic of the West. In fact, what has set the West apart from the non-Western nations is that they/we are actors rather than acted upon, historically. The non-Western countries in many cases had an attitude of passivity, and were thus transformed without their active participation. There is a Hindu saying that it is easier to straighten out the crooked tail of a dog than to change the world. Often Eastern religions counseled this kind of resignation, whereas the people of the West set about trying to improve things. This is not to say that every effort at improvement was successful; sometimes Westerners overreached and sometimes there were unintended consequences. But whatever their shortcomings, Western peoples saw themselves as actors, not as passive pawns in somebody else's game. Now, modern liberals preach the inevitability of certain trends, like the all-powerful Globalization, and the implication is always that it is a force of nature; it is predestined, and to resist it is foolish and backward. Of course, with this magic Globalization comes mass movement of peoples; we can't expect to remain isolated, can we? After all, it's just one big global village, and We Are All One People. Who are we to fight the unstoppable forces of Nature, which demands that all barriers be dropped? Who are we to fight the tide of mass immigration? After all, the wretched of the earth are entitled to their fair share of our prosperity. So we cannot stop this tide, any more than King Canute could order the waves to retreat. So say the liberals among us.

As I've said before, when people pronounce the inevitability of the transformation of our country, they are telling us that we are really no more than insignificant ants in this far-reaching scenario, which is beyond our control. We are in essence the rape victim, being told to 'lie back and enjoy it, if you can't stop it.' And further, Warner does not just say that the change is inevitable, but that it is already an accomplished fact. So there. Give in and give up, is the message.
Interestingly, here is somebody else who believes in the inevitability of mass immigration:

Mr Gaddafi told ministers gathered for a conference on migration from Africa to the EU that resisting migration "is like rowing against the stream".
[...]He told the delegates in Tripoli that migration had complex historical and social roots and was a force of nature that could not easily be ignored.''

Hmm. He even uses similar metaphors: 'rowing against the stream' vs. 'throwing stones in the Catawba River to try to dam the flow.'

Regardless of who is saying it, this is a message meant to discourage action, and to encourage resignation.

How is this message of helplessness and hopelessness, this gospel of submission, consistent with all our deepest beliefs as Americans? Our traditional beliefs include the sovereignty of the people, the right of the majority to determine the fate of our nation. And yet we are supposed to meekly accept that we no longer have a say in the fate of our country, or its future? That we no longer have any right to say who enters our country, our national home, and who is allowed to stay here?

Mike Warner, and all others like him, are solidly outside the American tradition. He is preaching that America is no longer a Republic in which we, the People, are sovereign. He is saying that millions of Mexicans, El Salvadoreans, and whoever crosses our border in the dead of night, has more of a vote, more of a voice, than we do. He is saying that they, the immigrants, alone can determine the makeup of our country. They self-select, and we don't even have a veto, the right to say, no; you cannot enter or stay here. Even our 'government' has not exercised the right to keep the illegals out, giving them, the invaders, the final say in who is allowed here.

In effect, Warner is saying 'hey, it isn't your country anymore, so get used to the changes, because you can't do a thing about it.'

A more anti-American message could scarcely be conceived.

Civilized people do not submit readily to chaos, which is what our open borders and our promiscuous immigration policy amount to. Chaos and anarchy cannot stand in a civilized country. No; the 'civilized' response is to assume control of our country and our future as a people, by enforcing our laws, and reasserting our rights.
Civilized people would not welcome millions of people from one of the most chaotic, crime-ridden, corrupt parts of the world, to enter and stay.

The 'uncivilized' response is actually the response that our government is offering now; our government is passive and inert in the face of an invasion, and history has shown us what happens when change is allowed to run unchecked, out-of-control. Only an effete, decadent society responds as our present government is doing.
Shades of ancient Rome before the fall; the analogy has been made many times, and with justification.

Warner in his article gives some details about his family history, indicating that he is a non-Southerner, and a Catholic. Between the lines, I very much sense that he is not friendly to traditional Southern culture, probably from a religious viewpoint, as he makes reference to the small numbers of Catholics in the old South. He seems to glory in the changes to the traditional South. I would wager that he identifies more strongly with the immigrants because they share his religion. And being a Yankee, I think he is just as glad to see the traditional South, which he likens to the fictitious Mayberry, disappear. The traditional South was too Anglo-Celtic, too Protestant, too homogeneous, for people like Warner. So the new Hispanicized South (which will really be the North of Latin America, not the Southern U.S.) suits him just fine.

As a liberal, he probably puts immigrants on a pedestal as being humble, colorful, authentic people, noble savages of a sort, far superior to the redneck old stock people.

And why is it almost always a certainty that descendants of later-wave immigrants identify with immigrants more than they do with old-stock Americans? Maybe that should give us pause about the assimilability of some of the later immigrants, and maybe we should have been more exclusive in our policies, not less.

But the South is not Warner's to give away; he doesn't speak for the real people of the South. The South for a long time was the area least touched by immigration. For that reason, partly, a distinct and vigorous regional culture developed there, without the disrupting influences of mass influxes of immigrants. To me, the South represented the last of a strongly American way of life, and this is now undermined by the ravages of mass immigration.

Maybe Mike Warner is happy to bid farewell to Mayberry, and all it symbolizes. Mayberry, it's true, was a fictitious place, and it was never a completely faithful image of a small Southern town, but it did capture something that people across the country could relate to. It was emblematic of all that was good, decent, honest, and worth preserving about small-town America. And most of us, unlike the elitist liberals, are not happy to see Mayberry vanish, to be replaced by a polyglot, balkanized, crime-ridden America, where people neither know nor trust their neighbors. Robert Putnam's study showed how diversity fostered distrust. The homogeneity, the commonality that the liberals despise -- or fear, actually -- was the cement, the bond that held people together, just as in the fictitious Mayberry. If we throw away the common culture in favor of the false gods of diversity, we are losing the America we knew and loved, in favor of what? In favor of some yet-to-be revealed Babel, full of cheap, shoddy goods, strip malls, rising crime, and increasing division, along racial and ethnic lines as well as class lines. Warner and the immigration cheerleaders may get their anti-Mayberry, but the rest of us will have lost something that can never be restored.

...men of the West!

''By all that we hold dear on this earth, I bid you stand, men of the West!"
- Aragorn, in Return of the King

Via Democracy Frontline, a report on the speech given by the two leaders of the Vlaams Belang Party of Belgium to members of the Robert A. Taft Club in Arlington, VA.

Now the largest party in Belgium, the VB is one of the most successful European political parties battling for immigration restriction and local autonomy. Party spokesman Philip Dewinter and chairman Frank Vanhecke stressed to an enthusiastic audience that their struggle is America’s struggle, that they are fighting for the preservation of Western Civilization everywhere.
[...]Mr. Dewinter, who spoke first, immediately revealed his Confederate sympathies by saying how pleased he was to be speaking “on the good side of the Potomac River.” He opened with a salute to the “visionary” Patrick Buchanan, noting that the book Death of the West was a warning to all Western people. Europe, he said, is where the conflict is sharpest because the continent “is about to be taken over without a fight by people who are hostile to Western Civilization.” The newcomers are largely Muslim, with the effect that “Europe is gradually turning into Eurabia.”

Mr. Dewinter spoke of a serious demographic crisis, pointing out that average European lifetime fertility of 1.2 to 1.4 is far below the replacement rate of 2.2
[...]“We are living on a dying continent,” Mr. Dewinter warned, “but we are not dead yet.”
[...]Mr. Dewinter quoted Libya’s Muammar al-Gaddafi who, citing the highest estimate, predicted that “the 50 million Muslims in Europe will turn Europe Islamic in a few decades.” This is, indeed, the fate the VB works to prevent. “Islam is a primitive religion,” said Mr. Dewinter, that could “lead Europe back to the Dark Ages.”
[...]“We share the same Western civilization,” he said. “Join us in our struggle for Western survival!”
[...]Whenever anyone criticizes multiculturalism, he explained, its supporters point to the United States as a successful example. “Is multiculturalism working in America?” he asked with a smile. “No, no,” cried the audience.''

I second the audience's ''no, no.''
Small occurrences like these, which might seem insignificant to many people -- just two men, from a minority party in a small country, speaking to less than a hundred men in Virginia --- are significant to me; they are a sign that, even in the most dire circumstances, people are searching for solutions, and finding ways to take a stand against the 'dying of the light' in Europe. While people like Mark Steyn, whose mother is Belgian, are cracking jokes about the fall of Europe to the forces of Islam, these men, Dewinter and Vanhecke, are doing what they can toward the survival of their people and their way of life. And they are seeking to make common cause with other Western peoples, rightly recognizing that we are all in the same troubling situation. Some may counsel despair and passivity, some may preach resignation and cynicism and detachment, but these men are trying to do something about the situation. These are true 'men of the West.' Passivity, resignation, and submission are not part of the heritage of the Western peoples, at least not until this age of gathering darkness. I maintain that it isn't in our nature to give in and give up.

Mr. Vanhecke predicted his party will suffer further attacks from opponents who care nothing for democratic principles or the will of the people. “Freedom of speech is absolutely essential,” he said. “We ask US citizens to protest this lack of free speech in Europe.” If Americans do nothing, he warned, they too will be strangled by European-style totalitarianism. “We are fighting for the West,” he explained; “we are fighting for you.” He, too, brought the audience to its feet, with a ringing quotation from The Lord of the Rings: “Men of the West, stand and fight!”

The choice of the quote from The Lord of the Rings is an inspired (and obvious) one; that phrase, which was uttered by Aragorn, seems to be particularly fitting for our time, as does the whole scenario of Tolkien's LOTR cycle. The West in dire peril from the forces of Mordor, and the need for essentially home-loving, peaceful peoples to unite and stand against a relentless enemy. Tolkien may not have foreseen today's threat to the West, but his works were prophetic nonetheless.

If Dewinter and Vanhecke and the Vlaams Belang party can stand up against the Islamic onslaught, surely we in America can emulate their example, and we can speak up in support of them and others like them; we are all part of the same struggle, and we can draw inspiration from one another.

Weapons seized at the border?

There has been a story floating around about a huge weapons cache which was recently seized on the Texas-Mexico border. However, none of the Texas newspapers I checked seemed to have anything on it, not surprisingly. One of the few sources which mention it is Stratfor.com, but a subscription is required for access.
This blog, The Mex Files, has some details.
Pictures at this blog.


This is just another story that should be getting a lot of notice, but which is scarcely mentioned at all. How and why is this the case? Is there some kind of policy to ignore or play down these stories? Or is it just that it doesn't fit the MSM's liberal agenda on the border issue, which focuses on the plight of the Poor Immigrant?

Is this a case of more drug cartel violence, or is there something more to it than that? Absent any real coverage of this story, we can only speculate.

Giving away our inheritance

Martinez Says He's Not Backing Down On Immigration Reform

Sen. Mel Martinez told the Tampa Tribune editorial board today that he’ll continue pressing for immigration reform, despite the criticism his prominent role in the issue got him from the conservative wing of his own party.
[...]
Martinez said he put heavy penalties and requirements for earned citizenship in his bill last year, hoping to prevent the “amnesty” accusation. But now, he said, he realizes he can’t stop that accusation, so he’ll proceed regardless of the critics.

He even appeared to say he would put lighter penalties into his new version of the bill. But a spokesman later said that’s not what Martinez meant.

“Dealing with the 12 million [illegal immigrants] here, we all want to say it’s not with amnesty,” he said. “Unfortunately, we allowed those who would call amnesty anything other than deportation to sort of define amnesty.”

Realistically, he said, the country can’t deport all illegal immigrants here now, so the question is what requirements to impose to bring them to “a regularized status.”

In his previous bill, “We had so many penalties and what not on these people, by the way, and trying not to make it amnesty, and it still got called amnesty. So this time around I’m going to be a little lighter on the sentences and try to just say call it what you willl. We’ve got 12 million people, we’ve got a broken-down system, we’ve just got to find a way to come to some sensible outcome.”

And of course, in Martinez's universe, a 'sensible outcome' is citizenship for all.
Is anybody surprised by this? When Martinez was named as the choice for RNC head, we all knew this was part and parcel of the amnesty push. Putting a Hispanic face in that position was an important gesture to the 'Hispanic community.'


This article perpetuates the by-now urban legend that 44 per cent of Hispanics voted GOP in 2004:

The Republican share of the Latino vote fell from 44 percent in 2004 to 30 percent this year, according to FOX News exit polling data. With the Hispanic vote making up 8 percent of the electorate in 2006 compared to 5 percent in 1996, the largest and fastest growing ethnic minority in America will be essential to winning elections down the road, say Republicans looking to recover from this year's losses.

"We can do better, we need to do better," said Danny Diaz, a spokesman for the Republican National Committee.

“We believe that the party that captures and motivates and gets the Hispanic vote to turn out is going to be the party who wins the White House” in 2008, said Brent Wilkes, national executive director of the League of United Latin American Citizens, the nation’s largest and oldest Hispanic rights group.''

Steve Sailer debunked the '44 percent' myth, but that hasn't deterred the GOP from citing that phony figure again and again and again and again. As long as they can keep deluding the gullible GOP faithful into believing that Hispanics would be solid GOP voters, if only we cater to them, and pass the amnesty... And the dutiful media keep on repeating the falsehood of the 44 per cent, and speak of the GOP's need to 'win back' the precious Hispanic vote. Uh, you can only win back something you previously had, and neither the GOP nor George W. Bush ever had 44 percent of the Hispanic vote. And even if they did, (which they didn't) it would still mean that 56 percent of Hispanics did NOT vote GOP, doesn't it? But as long as they keep on exhuming that old lie, they can pretend that Hispanics are essential to the GOP's re-election and success. So on we go, with the amnesty juggernaut gaining speed.

But Martinez, Danny Diaz, and the rest of the Hispanic amnesty-pushers should be careful; they are weakening the argument put forth by the 'can't we all get along' crowd, who say 'Hispanic-Americans are just as angry about illegal immigration as the rest of us. They aren't in favor of amnesty.' Now this piece of propaganda was never persuasive to me; my own personal experience says otherwise. There might be the occasional Lupe Moreno who considers herself American first and foremost, but such pro-American Hispanics are the exception, it seems. For every Lupe Moreno, unfortunately there are many leftist Hispanics who call her and patriotic Hispanics like her 'coconuts' or 'racists. Speaking of those leftist Hispanics she said:

They've practically spit in my face. They called me a racist more than I can count. But you know what, it gets to the point where that word doesn't mean anything anymore. They are groups of hatred.''

How many elected Hispanics oppose illegal immigration and amnesty? Since supposedly most Hispanic-Americans oppose amnesty, it should be a piece of cake to name a few public figures of Hispanic ancestry who oppose it. Funny; I can't think of one, out of all the elected Hispanics, congressmen and women, mayors, governors, or whoever. Similarly with Hispanic pundits or journalists. Even those like Linda Chavez, who is half -Anglo, are pro-amnesty. Ditto Bill Richardson, the half-Anglo politician and seeming presidential wannabe, who is pro-amnesty.

Martinez's arguments are pretty hackneyed, such as 'we've got a broken-down system'. What a lame pretext for abolishing our borders. Our government deliberately refuses to control our borders, letting in millions of illegals, then says ''Woops! Oh look; our borders are broken, our system is broken! Guess we'd better abolish borders and give everybody citizenship, since obviously our system is broken and our borders are unenforceable.''
No; the solution is obviously to start enforcing our laws and protecting what is ours, instead of letting burglars and pilferers break in and run rampant, then recommending that we give away our prized possessions and heirlooms to the thieves 'because the locks are broken', and then give them the keys and the deed to the family homestead. But no; common sense won't prevail, with our current leadership; they are hellbent on not just giving away what our ancestors worked and fought and bled for, but giving it away to whoever can grab a piece of it, regardless of their merit , or their potential to appreciate it or make wise use of it.

And what kind of message is it when our elected officials say things like we 'can't' deport all those illegals who are here now (and by the way, Mel: there are way more than 12 million illegals here; we didn't all fall off the turnip truck, so don't insult our intelligence.) Any elected official who chants the 'we can't' mantra is a disgrace. America would never have come into existence if our forefathers had whined 'we can't' the way these weaselly politicians and party hacks do.

Martinez himself is an immigrant. So often we hear of how legal immigrants appreciate their citizenship, and don't support giving amnesty to those who cut in line and broke the laws to get here. But I just don't see much evidence of that.

There are and have been many worthy immigrants, among them my late lamented colleague, who blogged as 'Aussiegirl', and other patriotic immigrants like Balint Vazsonyi, the writer and concert pianist who truly understood and loved the American heritage and way of life. Vazsonyi and others like him understood that it was something of a privilege to be given residency here, and an even greater privilege to be granted citizenship. It's a truism that we seldom appreciate what we don't have to work for, or what does not cost us much in terms of effort or personal sacrifice. By giving American citizenship away to those who have proven their lack of regard for American laws and the American system, let alone for the American people, we are making it a thing of little value. Truly when we give citizenship away to virtually anybody who makes it across the finish line, we cheapen it immeasurably.

Broken borders, broken families

Lou Dobbs, on CNN, uses the phrase 'Broken Borders' in his reports on illegal immigration. It's an apt phrase, but it is not just the borders and our laws that are being broken, but families, as this Washington Times story relates:

Mexican wives want U.S. to return husbands

The women of Tecalpulco, Mexico, want the U.S. government to enforce its immigration laws because they want to force their husbands to come back home from working illegally in the United States.

They have created an English-language Web page where they identify themselves as the "wetback wives" and broadcast their pleas, both to their men and to the U.S. government.

"To the United States government -- close the border, send our men home to us, even if you must deport them (only treat them in a humane manner -- please do not hurt them)," it reads.

In poignant public messages to their husbands, the women talk about their children who feel abandoned, and worry that the men have forsaken their families for other women and for the American lifestyle.
[...]
Steven Camarota, research director for the Center for Immigration Studies, which backs less immigration and a crackdown on illegal aliens, said the women's stories show that the huge migration flow is "very disruptive to the lives of those other countries."

He said it also proves that the men aren't fleeing poverty.

"These women would not be asking their husbands to come back if they themselves were starving," he said. "It's really more of people wanting more, a better life. It's perfectly understandable. But that's different than these people fleeing such desperation there's no way you could enforce the law."
[emphasis mine]

and from NRO's Larry Kudlow :



A Troubling Immigration Development

This is an interesting and important angle on the whole immigration question.

These Mexican wives seem to be saying that family breakup is a bad idea, even though their husbands are sending extra money back home.

As a free trader, I favor the Bush comprehensive immigration reform plan, which includes better border security, temporary worker cards, and ultimately, a path to citizenship.

However, family breakup is very troubling for a social conservative like myself.

Frankly, the extent of this family breakup problem is new information to me. I find it troubling.''

Larry Kudlow's reaction to the article about the 'wetback wives' is odd; is he really so naive or out of touch that he never considered the family breakup aspect of the illegal invasion? Kudlow must live a rather sheltered life, which would not surprise me; urban media folks tend to move in rather limited circles. No doubt Kudlow sees illegal (and legal) immigrants everywhere in New York, but New York City has been a 'multicultural' third-worldized city for some time, so I suspect these exotic illegals are simply colorful wallpaper or background noise to him. But has he never noticed the fact that there is a distinctly larger number of males among the illegals? That women are not proportionately represented? Many of these illegals who come to 'El Norte' leave their wives and children behind, and a certain number of them are probably coming here with the intention of escaping bad marriages, or burdensome responsibilities; they can disappear here, assume a new identity (or several new identities, in many cases) and shed all their past ties and responsibilities.

Allan Wall has written about this phenomenon at VDare for some time.

Emigration to the United States has been in many ways absolutely devastating for family life in Mexico. (See my article “Is Emigration Good For Mexico?”) But you don’t hear much about this, because it doesn’t fit in with the rah-rah immigration stereotypes presented in the U.S. media.

But the devastation hasn’t been totally ignored by the Mexican media. One articulate Mexican woman who has spoken out on this subject is Adriana Cortés, the president of the Fundación Comunitaria de El Bajío (Community Foundation of The Bajío –a region of central Mexico). (Mujeres y familia, víctimas de la migración masculina, El Universal, May 19th, 2003)

According to Cortés: “One of the gravest problems confronting the population of the Bajío is migration, a social phenomenon that has left wives and grandmothers heading thousands of homes.”

She points out that emigration results in these women being forced to bear the burden of raising the children. The children lose their father figure, which in turn helps to create more poverty.

For Adriana Cortés, the best solution is not to keep promoting emigration more and more, but to generate prosperity in the local community in Mexico!''

Wall then quotes from the letters which VDare.com has received from wives of illegals, begging for their men to be sent back home where they are needed.

Edwin S. Rubenstein says in this same piece that

The Census Bureau reported in 2002 there were 438,000 Mexican males in the U.S. whose wives were absent, another 190,000 who were divorced, and 113,000 who were separated from their wives. If twelve percent are deadbeat dads, that amounts to some 90,000.''

Actually this family abandonment phenomenon is not really new; I've read that a lot of the male immigrants in the Ellis Island days (the late 19th-early 20th centuries) came here without their wives, who stayed behind in Eastern Europe, expecting to be sent a ticket to America by their husbands, but often the wife was abandoned, as the husband made a new life with another woman or women here in America. I am sure many families were broken up via immigration.

But I suspect there is a cultural element to this particular phenomenon; Hispanic men, coming from a culture which emphasizes 'machismo' and fertility, are polyamorous to a greater extent.

But I suppose if you are a neocon (or even a self-described 'social conservative' like Kudlow) who believes that Hispanics are 'family values' conservatives, you might just be 'shocked; shocked, I tell you' about these Hispanic men abandoning wife and family at home.

Illegal immigration, or indeed mass immigration of all kinds, legal or illegal, represents upheaval, disruption of normal family life and ties. It represents erosion of traditional values, as millions of people become semi-nomadic and rootless. Existing communities in the invaded countries (that's all of us in the Western world) have our lives disrupted by large and increasing numbers of newcomers with strange, incompatible, often hostile ways. Our neighborhoods are broken up; many people feel compelled to flee changing neighborhoods and towns in order to find a less chaotic, more familiar and comfortable environment. Mass immigration disrupts the lives of everyone involved.

Maybe Kudlow is really surprised by the news that illegal immigrant families are broken up, but he still stubbornly believes that immigration is a positive good. That's the true mark of an ideologue: the unwillingness to adjust one's beliefs based on reality and facts. The ideologue denies or reframes reality rather than adjusting his beliefs.

As for the oft-repeated claim that we cannot deport illegals because 'families would be torn apart', do the bleeding hearts who say this ever admit that the decision to tear families apart was made when the illegal took to the road heading North? If keeping the family together meant that much, they would never have made a choice to come here, especially illegally. And if, having come here and had a family here, illegally, should there be a necessity to go home, the whole family can stay together and leave as a family. Mexico deports people ruthlessly, yet they have the gall to demand that we not deport their illegal trespassers.

The cry 'but we can't break up families!' is often the rationale for legalizing everybody, allowing everybody to stay. But they can be together, with their extended families, back in their home countries. Of course, the liberal solution to that issue is the family reunification policy, under which grandma, grandpa, and so on can just come to America. Sisters, brothers, children, grandchildren, eventually, the whole extended family.

And why, while we're at it, is sending people home treated as an act of heartless cruelty? Sending people home, back to their place of origin, is not tantamount to imprisoning them, and it's not 'ethnic cleansing' as some idiots say, and it's certainly not 'genocide' as the most hysterical liberals imply. There is nothing inherently cruel about sending people back where they came from. They are not being sent back to a country in which their lives may be in danger, or where they are starving to death. There is no famine or mass hunger or starvation in Mexico. There is no mass persecution. Why do we so often accept the idea that the illegals 'have to' come here to 'feed their families' or to find work? This is just not true.

So let's not assist in breaking up families by encouraging illegal immigration. Mexico should show its supposed 'family values' by keeping its citizens at home, not shooing them here, to loot America.

Guard the Borders Blogburst 02/26/07

Sutton Withheld Exculpatory Evidence In Border Patrol Trial
By Darnell McGavock of Independent Conservative

As far as major finds in how badly the case of former US Border Patrol agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean was not only messed up, but intentionally tipped towards their conviction, legal experts say this is the biggest! The defense says that a document from the Department of Homeland Security confirms that two supervisors were on the scene the day an illegal immigrant drug smuggler claims he was shot in the butt. The defense is just finding out about this document, that US Attorney Johnny Sutton’s office had and did not reveal to them during the trial. This was all reported on CNN show Lou Dobbs Tonight last night. I’ve YouTubed the video and you can watch it below.



Why did Sutton’s office withhold exculpatory information?

Ramos and Compean said they never filed a report because supervisors were there. Sutton claimed otherwise in court. Their version of the story has now been verified and once again we see another obvious lie from the mouth of Johnny Sutton.

Jeffrey Toobin, CNN Senior Legal Analyst says this news is potentially major, as opposed to other news he does not feel is as impacting to changing the outcome of the case. Toobin says this moves things into a “new category” that may cause a new trial. Lou Dobbs says that Johnny Sutton “lied” when he said he had no choice but to offer immunity. And World Net Daily has found more information about illegal alien drug smuggler Osbaldo Aldrete-Davila still running dope into our country, after being given medical treatment at US taxpayer expense. This offense was gagged by the judge and the family of Ramos and Compean still refuse to even talk about it, for fear that Johnny Sutton will come after them.

We need and I mean NEED a full Congressional investigation of this entire case right now. We also need to know who in our government knew what, when and what orders they gave to Johnny Sutton and/or the judge. We need to know every single detail related to President George W. Bush involving this matter. It’s time to stop reading and start writing your congresspeople. We now have more than enough information to not simply be suspicious about this case, we know these men were setup!

Our choices in '08, and the state of our Republic

The Tom Tancredo File
Dimitri Vassilaros of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reports on Tancredo's candidacy:

If enough voters in the primaries want to stop the illegals' invasion, Rep. Tom Tancredo could be the Republican nominee. And then if enough voters on Election Day want a leader who will defend American sovereignty, well, the Colorado conservative just might win.

"Conservative" as in a lifetime rating of 99 by the American Conservative Union since he became a congressman in 1998. It's the organization's highest rating among announced presidential candidates.
[...]
Frank Newport, editor in chief of The Gallup Poll, notes Tancredo has no national name identification. "But a single issue can be a useful device to get name recognition. If it can propel someone to win the nomination is an open question."

Most Americans will support more border security, but more than 50 percent also want some sort of pathway to citizenship, he says.

"(Tancredo) has very little chance to secure the nomination because you have some big names in the primary," says pollster John Zogby, president and CEO of Zogby International. "It's hard to see a one-issue person succeeding against Rudy Giuliani or John McCain. On the other hand, there is a substantial number of conservatives telling us they're disappointed there are no real conservatives (in the race)."

First of all, I take isse with Newport's poll showing that 'more than 50 percent' of Americans want 'some sort of pathway to citizenship', in other words, amnesty, or 'earned citizenship' or whatever the euphemism du jour is. If the responses indicated that, I have to ask how exactly the questions were phrased; I suspect that the questions were framed in an ambiguous way, so that respondents did not understand that amnesty was the issue.

And secondly I disagree with Zogby, which is nothing new. I don't think that these pollsters are objective or bipartisan; I think their polls are often designed to elicit a given result.

I think there are plenty of others like me, who are completely turned off by the 'mainstream' candidates, such as the aforementioned Giuliani and McCain. Given a choice between whichever Democrat candidate and Giuliani or McCain, or any of the other 'mainstream' GOP choices, I would choose none of the above, voting third party or sitting out the election rather than voting for a 'lesser evil.' If that makes me derelict in my duties as a citizen, so be it; I voted with reluctance last time, and regretted my vote.

And if casting a ballot, reluctantly, for a candidate who does not even approximate my views, is the best our 'democratic republic' can offer me now, I question the health and prognosis of our system. We can't have a true representative republic while marginalizing the majority views as is the case now. Many of us think that we have no one representing our points of view in the halls of power. There are far too many disengaged, disaffected, disillusioned voters who see nothing and no one worth enthusiastically supporting, and this is not an acceptable state of affairs in our republic.

Of course I am sensing that the elites want to discourage people like me, traditional Americans, from voting or participating. Clearly they are pitching their wares to another customer base now; that's what the whole transforming of our country seems to be designed for. Create a new constituency, and buy their loyalty with special treatment and handouts. Voila: a new 'America', and a new and 'improved' docile populace.


Daniel Webster, in his speech at Concord, Massachusetts on July 4, 1808, said the following:

When we speak of preserving the Constitution, we mean not the paper on which it is written, but the spirit which dwells in it. Government may lose all of the real character, its genius, its temper, without losing its appearance.
Republicanism, unless you guard it, will creep out of its case of parchment, like a snake out of its skin. You may have a despotism under the name of a Republic.
You may look on a government, and see it possesses all the external modes of freedom, and yet finding nothing of the essence, the vitality, of freedom in it, just as you may contemplate an embalmed body, where art hath preserved proportion and form, amid nerves without action, and veins void of blood."

Thomas Jefferson said, in a letter to the citizens of Adams County, Pennsylvania, in 1808:

[Bear] always in mind that a nation ceases to be republican only when the will of the majority ceases to be the law."

In that sense, then, it appears that our nation has ceased to be republican. Our system may well be simply an empty shell, like that of Webster's metaphor. We still have the outward forms and procedures but the spirit, the essence has departed. Jefferson repeatedly stressed, in a number of places in his writings, the essential place of the will of the nation, specifically of the majority. Without the principle of the will of the people, a government is no longer republican. A government is legitimate only insofar as it embodies the will of the people, the consent of the governed.

Tom Tancredo and his run for the presidency are symbolic of the spurned majority, the will of the people which is being systematically shut out. The border and immigration issue is the most obvious symptom of this state of affairs. Nowhere is the sad situation made more clear than in the reality that our government is busily importing a new people, one which will be more amenable to its designs, than the current populace of the country.

With no suitable candidates, I think there will be an even greater disaffection among the most traditional citizens of this country, and how this will play out remains to be seen. It does seem as though the parties plan to offer as candidates only those who are on board with the mass immigration, open borders, global agenda; they mean to give us no other choices. Right-liberal or left-liberal, they will all carry out the current plan, which means that the transformation of our country via demographic changes and multiculturalism will proceed apace. Along with those dreary projects, we will be faced with a continuing terror threat, as Islam continues to go from strength to strength in our country, aided and abetted by the come-one-come-all policies of our government, and enabled by Political Correctness, which is slavishly followed by our politicians of both parties. Tom Tancredo is one of a mere handful who has bucked these trends, and for this reason, many of us place high hopes on his candidacy. Even though the odds are against him, at least he is bringing the border issue to the forefront, and is giving expression to a segment of the voting public which is often excluded.

Webster and Thomas Jefferson were prescient to anticipate what is happening in our day, with the spirit of our Constitution, and the substance of our republic, being gutted while we keep the mere outward forms. But the ballot and the trappings of representative government mean little when the choices are limited and the outcome guaranteed to serve the global agenda, no matter who is elected.

Rare common sense on the Religion of Peace

Dutch politician doubts Muslim ministers' loyalty

AMSTERDAM: The leader of a Dutch anti-immigration party will call for a vote of no-confidence in two Muslim government ministers next week, citing their dual nationality as the issue, a newspaper reported today.

Geert Wilders said in an interview with the Dutch daily NRC Handelsblad the appointment of Moroccan-born Ahmed Aboutaleb and Turkish-born Nebahat Albayrak as junior ministers was wrong because both could have loyalties towards countries other than the Netherlands.
[...]
In Saturday's interview, Wilders said: "I do not want to live in a country where some day six or seven members of cabinet could be Muslim," adding that Islamic laws were "barbaric", referring to four people who were beheaded in Saudi-Arabia this week.

"I want to encourage Muslims to leave the Netherlands voluntarily. The demographic development should become such, that the chance is small that we again have two Muslims in the cabinet." About 1 million Muslims live in the Netherlands out of a population of 16 million. ''

This article is a rarity in that it does not use terms like 'far-right' or 'extremist' in describing Wilders's party, the Party for Freedom (PVV) . But whatever they say, or don't say, Wilders is a brave man for speaking out as he has; I hope he sets an example to be followed by others. We don't have anyone remotely comparable to him in our political scene; even Virgil Goode, who has taken a lot of flak for his criticism of Islam, was slated recently to attend some kind of Moslem service in the name of 'outreach' or dialogue. But Wilders' call for Moslems to leave voluntarily was a brave act; I don't know that anybody will take him up on it; but it's a start.

And here is an unexpected op-ed piece from Investors Business Daily, which I recently linked to; they are showing uncommon common sense in this piece (H/T Lawrence Auster, View from the Right):



Profile Of A Terrorist

Global Jihad: A new Gallup poll finds that richer, better-educated Muslims are more likely to be radicalized. This explodes the myth of the poor, dumb terrorist.

Since 9/11, the politically correct elite have mau-maued Americans into thinking the terrorists have hijacked a peaceful religion out of ignorance and poverty. Or that they've been brainwashed by Osama bin Laden.

But Gallup found the opposite to hold true: The most radical among Muslims — those who support jihad — earn more and stay in school longer. These are the smart ones, not the rubes.
[...]Gallup merely backs with statistics what we already knew. Contrary to liberal dogma, education makes Muslims only more extreme, not more moderate. Education doesn't stop terrorism.

Inviting more Muslims to our shores in the hopes they'll embrace our culture and adopt our values also seems misguided.

Yet this is the logic behind the White House's deal to grant 21,000 student visas to young Saudi men over the next four years. It's been sold as a cultural exchange program.

But do we really want to educate thousands of Saudis on our campuses if education helps only to radicalize Muslims?

Gallup's survey of Muslims, the largest conducted, puts to rest theories that radicals attack us because they're poor and alienated from society. Or because they're dim and easily misled.

Radical Muslims have an education and an economic future, yet they still hate. They're literate enough to interpret their holy books, yet they still embrace jihad against infidels.

Perhaps the only sane course in this war is to separate the West from Islam.''
[emphasis mine]

Truly it is the only sane course, and the mark of how insane our world has become is that there are so few voices calling for the obvious course, which is, of course, separation.

This op-ed represents a kind of breakthrough, and coming from an unexpected source. I suppose I would expect a business-oriented media source to be more like the Wall Street Journal, with its cosmopolitan, libertarian, no-allegiance-but-to-the-almighty-dollar, Open Borders crusade. So, kudos to the IBD and their op-ed staff. I hope a few more intrepid voices who are not cowed by PC will speak up in the mainstream media. I truly hope this is the first of many voices speaking out for separationism. Spread the word.

What do we do about the unawakened? The deniers?

A few months back, one of my regulars here asked what we might do about the distressing situation facing our country. I don't pretend to have ready answers; this blog is an attempt to sound the alarm, and I hope, to provoke some thought and discussion, and to give expression to some thoughts which usually find no expression in our mass media. But I think beginning an open discussion of the situation is crucial, and I'm grateful there are a lot of discussions taking place in the blogosphere and in real life now. All of us can open discussions in our everyday life about these pressing issues, and I try to do so with those I encounter. Maybe by casting the seeds of ideas as broadly as possible, they may fall on ready soil. Or so I hope.

The majority of people in America, as in the rest of the Western countries, seems ambivalent at best and oblivious at worst to the vast changes taking place in our countries, and the very real threat to our way of life and our culture.
Unbelievably there are even those, despite 9/11 and 7/7, who maintain there is no problem, no crisis. The hardcore deniers are probably beyond help; if 9/11 didn't wake them up, they are comatose or braindead. But what of the rest of the people, who are vaguely aware, but not yet fully awake to the situation?

Occasionally the question is raised: can we who are cognizant of the danger to our culture and country, awaken those who are not yet aware of it, and more importantly, can they be persuaded to take part in any kind of counter-effort? Can we ''reach'' everybody, or are there some who will always "hug their chains"?

This leads to the larger question: is there an innate drive for freedom in human beings? We are certainly taught that there is, although I am not sure this is true. In an ideal world, which we certainly don't have, maybe all men would desire to be truly free. But I am not sure human beings are all equally predisposed to desire freedom, whether as individuals or as races. There seems to be an equally strong drive in human beings for security, and for some people this need leads them to prefer a 'nanny state' or a strong ruler who decides for them. Not all people or nations seem to have an equal drive for freedom. I think we in the West may have a greater innate need for autonomy and freedom than others; history seems to support that view, although it doesn't comport with the orthodoxy we are taught in this age of universalism and egalitarianism. But supposing there is an innate drive for freedom (in the western sense of the word); are all peoples, or all individuals, equally capable of it? Again, I would say the evidence of history says no.

Recently I've been involved in some discussions of whether or not we can "win people over" to our side in this effort to preserve our country and our way of life against the onslaught of mass immigration and multiculturalism. Of course ideally we would like to win over as many as we can, but I am increasingly convinced that it is not possible or realistic. Even a passing acquaintance with history indicates that in any given age, great changes, whether for good or ill, are effected by small numbers of people; almost never do the masses unite to bring about change, especially when the efforts needed involve risk, sacrifice, or great personal cost or effort. This seeming fact conflicts with our democratic ideal in which the majority should be represented in any movement to effect change. But even in our American Revolution, it has been widely accepted that a minority actively participated while another minority opposed it. The largest group of people sat it out, being actively involved on neither side. This, I think, is typical of the majority in any age, who are not concerned with great ideas or great ideals; this is not meant to disparage them; some people are best fitted to keep the everyday business running, and to tend to their immediate lives and families. This in itself is not to be deplored; we all have responsibilities to those around us, to work and family and community. So not everyone is in the thick of the great events in the life of a country. But the fact is, the majority of people are simply swept along by the strong currents of change in the wider world, and are content to be so. Many such people are "followers" who simply adapt and conform to the prevailing trends and winds of the times.

Any of us who lived through the 1960s and 70s saw vast changes take place in our society. The "old America" gave way in the space of less than a decade, and the momentum of that era continues to this day; in fact the counterculture is like a runaway train that we can scarcely slow down, let alone stop, decades later. The leftist counterculture which emerged in the late 60s has gone from strength to strength, succeeding beyond their wildest dreams, bringing us to our present chaotic world. The Clintons were the most prominent examples of the counterculture left, who had camouflaged themselves as mainstream politicians, and reached the pinnacle of power in the 1990s. But much of the change which began in the 1960s was not in the political realm, but in the personal sphere. The 1960s slogan, ''the personal is political'' has been borne out by the events which have transpired. The most far-reaching changes took place in the personal realm, having to do with society's mores.

It was striking, back in the late 60s - early70s, to see the "sexual revolution" transform America and the West.
That revolution had to do with more than people's private lives, changing our ideas about marriage, family, community, the role of women, the rearing of children, and society's stake in all of the above. It was startling to see how quickly people dropped the old taboos and mores, and became "non-judgmental" about behaviors which up until them had drawn strict opprobrium. For example, pregnancy outside marriage, which until the late 60s in most places was considered scandalous, was suddenly accepted more openly; the stigma all but disappeared, and quickly. Concomitantly, girls and women who gave birth out of wedlock suddenly began to keep their children rather than discreetly adopting them out. The results to society of that change were far-reaching, as adoption became much more difficult for childless married couples. Many more single mothers and their children suddenly existed, and often lived in relative poverty. There was a sudden epidemic of "latchkey children" going home to an empty dwelling while their mothers worked or went to school or even just socialized while their children were left unsupervised. Children being raised by daycare (or by televison and peers) became a problem. It's instructive to consider the far-reaching changes wrought by society's acceptance of the "new morality", the so-called morality of non-judgmentalism and acceptance of everything. The countercultural rationale for "personal liberation" was that "it's my life; it's my private business." But the truth is, the individual decisions people made affect society as a whole.

The readiness, even eagerness, with which many people dropped the old mores, especially regarding sexual behavior, was telling. This changing in the blink of an eye reveals that the "old morality" as Christian morality was disparagingly called, was not deeply held by most people. It was apparently only held together by the flimsiest of threads, that thread being the perceived popular opinion.

Many, if not most people, are not truly independent thinkers, and perhaps they don't have deeply held beliefs, but merely float along with popular opinion. They think and 'believe' what their peers, friends, colleagues, neighbors think. Increasingly, the liberal mass media shape popular opinion, and average people follow along. Many others take most of their cues from what their group of peers deems acceptable or popular. This is not just true of teens and others who are considered peer-group conformists, but it is true of people in many walks of life, especially in fields like the media and academia. But in fact most people find it very hard to buck popular opinion and peer pressure; fitting in with one's social set is important.

I think Political Correctness has held sway to the extent that it has because people are reluctant to break ranks, to break the social taboos, except in situations where they know they can do so without consequence, as when they are with others who are non-PC. Otherwise they tend to toe the line, even though they may not believe in the PC orthodoxies, but because of career or social concerns, they don't rock the boat. They go along to get along. The same situation prevailed with the old sexual mores: many people, human nature being what it is, were eager to cast off the strictures of the old (Christian) morality, but they did so only in secret, while paying lip service to the old morality. People were concerned to maintain a respectable public reputation, even while they no longer respected Christian morality. Now, in the post-60s era, all kinds of sexual behavior, even the most bizarre, is accepted without judgment by most people, while Political Correctness is the rigidly-enforced code that 'respectable' people must adhere to.

Given the right circumstances, more people tend to feel free to drop the pretenses and hypocrisies of PC and all the respectable liberal mores of today, but the majority wil only come along when they perceive it to be safe, when there is no price that must be paid for dissenting, only when the overwhelming majority seems ready to cast off the shackles. The majority will never lead, but only follow, and when there is no great price to be paid.

The leftists/liberals know this, and because they know this, they are zealous about controlling and shaping public opinion via the mass media, both the "news" media and the entertainment media. However, they can't completely control and censor all communication of ideas; there's always private, face-to-face interaction, and of course now the Internet, especially the blogosphere.

So can we or will we get the majority on our side? Probably not, given the tendency of most people to follow rather than lead, and to follow only when there is no cost to be paid for doing so. Most people will not, at least until they perceive it to be "safe", and until it's cost-free, shed the liberal ideas which are mostly hypocrisies now.
Just as in the old Eastern-bloc Communist regimes, people do not really, deeply believe the orthodoxies of the day. And just as in those regimes, there is probably only a small core of true believers, ideologues, maintaining the rickety structure of the regime, while the greater number simply go along to get along.

There are a few people who question the orthodoxies, the lies, and they are vaguely uneasy about the situation they perceive around us. In America, illegal immigration and our government's bizarre facilitation of it has stirred many otherwise uninvolved people. They may be open to persuasion because they are often disaffected and looking for answers.

But hoping that the majority will have a mass awakening or even come to awareness a few at a time is probably an unrealistic hope. The relative few who are aware will have to do the heavy lifting, as always in history. That's the way it happened during colonial days, and so it will be in our day.

With that in mind, is it realistic to try to 'win over' the majority, and to tailor the truth to mass taste? For example, to try to be as middle-of-the-road and nonoffensive as possible? I know there is a school of thought which says so, but I tend to disagree. I think the lukewarm and the Politically Correct would not be of much help in trying to salvage what is left of our Republic and of the West.

And I am not sure that some people can be reached, even if we had all the time in the world to win them over. Just notice the numbers of people who see absolutely no problem with the state of our country or the world; there are some people who are blase and sanguine to a pathological degree, and who will never, ever admit that there is a problem, even as our society crumbles around us. There are some of the rainbow utopia crowd that even in the aftermath of 9/11 and everything that has happened since then see nothing threatening about Islam or about large-scale mass immigration and hostile people marching in their streets. The human capacity for denial is absolutely staggering. There are some people of the blind loyalist type who will happily follow their chosen leaders off a cliff, or who will remain loyal to The Party no matter what. These people cannot be helped, if they don't come to their senses on their own.

I maintain that in any given age, even in ages which are far less propagandized and indoctrinated than ours, there are only a few independent thinkers; the majority, much as I would wish it to be otherwise, will bend with the wind, and follow the prevailing trends. It's always been thus. The problem, however, is not those passive, disengaged people, who exist in every age, it's the active obstructionists on the other side: the true liberal believers (in both parties) who will ally with the invaders and with harmful ideologies like 'open borders' and multiculturalism. These people are the ones who will pose the biggest problem for patriots. Is it possible to win them over? Somehow I doubt it. We can only hope that their devotion to their failed ideologies is weaker than our devotion to truth and to the ideals of this country.

The Islamic threat: paranoia or reality?

A commenter of mine took exception to my brief, passing reference to a spirit of resistance to Islamization in his country, the UK. Honestly, the blog entry was not about the UK as such, but merely referenced certain signs of resistance to Islam which I perceived. This caused offense to the reader, who commented on my 'paranoia and xenophobia' and scoffed at my rather emotional statement about Islam swallowing up the UK.

In my replies, I declared I was done with the debate, having said all I felt was worth saying. And my point in this entry is not to get yet another 'last word' in with my dissenting commenter, but to put some facts out there for any third parties who may have been reading the exchange of comments, and for any fence-sitters out there who are not persuaded that there is in fact an Islamic threat, involving much of the Western world.

My dissenting commenter cited the small percentage of Moslems in the UK, and denied that immigration was a threat.

It may be that Moslems are a relatively small percentage in the UK, but by the evidence of the stories I've linked and excerpted below, those few Moslems make a whole lot of waves, considering their small numbers, and they are making a lot of people jump at their command, so it seems:


16,000 say no to mosque

Sixteen thousand residents have put their name to a petition protesting against plans for a mosque and community centre in Dudley.

The dossier of signatures was delivered by Ukip Councillor Malcolm Davis to Dudley Council yesterday - the deadline day for objections.

Despite the overwhelming opposition to the project, the Express & Star revealed the £18 million scheme earmarked for land in Hall Street had been recommended for approval in “exceptional circumstances.”

Police protect girls forced to convert to Islam

Extremist Muslims who force vulnerable teenage girls to convert to Islam are being targeted by police, Met chief Sir Ian Blair has revealed.

Police are working with universities to clamp down on "aggressive conversions" during which girls are beaten up and forced to abandon university courses.

The Hindu Forum of Britain claims hundreds of mostly Sikh and Hindu girls have been intimidated by Muslim men who take them out on dates before terrorising them until they convert. ''

Muslim pupils 'need their own showers'

Muslim schoolchildren should be treated differently from other pupils, the country’s most prominent Islamic organisation has said.

They should have separate changing rooms for sports and swimming, single sex classes for sex education, prayer rooms and new rights to Islamic worship, and different uniform rules, the Muslim Council of Britain said. ''

Now, we might dismiss the above stories as being isolated and anomalous. But how do we dismiss things like this:


Many British Muslims Put Islam First

The recent homegrown plot in Britain to blow up transatlantic flights will intensify the fear that the country's 1.6 million Muslims are rejecting political tolerance and free speech for a violent, radicalized version of Islam. There is a real concern that British Muslims do pose a threat to that country and its traditional values. So how prevalent are such radical views among British Muslims?

Some answers are provided by the most comprehensive survey to date of Muslim opinion in Britain. The results from NOP Research, broadcast by Channel 4-TV on August 7, are startling.

Forty-five percent say 9/11 was a conspiracy by the American and Israeli governments. This figure is more than twice as high as those who say it was not a conspiracy. Tragically, almost one in four British Muslims believe that last year's 7/7 attacks on London were justified because of British support for the U.S.-led war on terror. ''

40% of young UK Muslims want sharia law

Young British Muslims are more likely than their elders to support sharia law and admire al-Qaida, but three-fifths of 16-to 24-year-olds say they have as much in common with non-Muslims as with Muslims, according to an opinion poll published on Monday.

According to Jonny Paul, writing in the online edition of The Jerusalem Post, the survey, entitled "Living Together Apart: British Muslims and the Paradox of Multiculturalism" and carried out by UK think tank Policy Exchange, found evidence that young Muslims held more fundamentalist beliefs on key social and political issues than those over age 55. ''

And from the blog of Islam expert and scholar Daniel Pipes

More Survey Research from a British Islamist Hell

Here is another page with extensive links on Islam in the UK and Ireland


And from the blatantly leftist Guardian

Revealed: preacher's messages of hate

An undercover investigation has revealed disturbing evidence of Islamic extremism at a number of Britain's leading mosques and Muslim institutions, including an organisation praised by the Prime Minister.

Secret video footage reveals Muslim preachers exhorting followers to prepare for jihad, to hit girls for not wearing the hijab, and to create a 'state within a state'. Many of the preachers are linked to the Wahhabi strain of Islam practised in Saudi Arabia, which funds a number of Britain's leading Islamic institutions.

Britain: dhimmitude and the dole

With quotes from an Evening Standard article:

Four young British Muslims in their twenties - a social worker, an IT specialist, a security guard and a financial adviser - occupy a table at a fast-food chicken restaurant in Luton. Perched on their plastic chairs, wolfing down their dinner, they seem just ordinary young men. Yet out of their mouths pour heated words of revolution.

"As far as I'm concerned, when they bomb London, the bigger the better," says Abdul Haq, the social worker. "I know it's going to happen because Sheikh bin Laden said so. Like Bali, like Turkey, like Madrid - I pray for it, I look forward to the day."

From the IslamThreat blog, a link to videos of hatemongering imams



From the (British) USS Neverdock blog: a series of links on appeasement of Moslems in Britain


Dhimmitude UK

Melanie Phillips reports on the 'Commission on British Muslims and Islamophobia'

Now this commission is calling for a law outlawing religious discrimination. The intention is clear — to make it illegal to tell the truth about Islamist extremism. For as the Muslim Council of Britain repeatedly informs us, it is Islamophobic even to refer to ‘Islamic’ violence. So it would presumably wish to make illegal, for example, the report in yesterday’s Sunday Times which chillingly informed us that, according to a Home Office analysis:

‘…there may be between 10,000 and 15,000 British Muslims who actively support Al-Qaeda or related terrorist groups. These numbers appear to draw on intelligence, opinion polls and a report that 10,000 Muslims attended a conference held by Hizb ut-Tahir, described by the Home Office as a structured extremist organisation, last year. Although less than 1% of the Muslim population, the sheer size of the actual pool of potential Al-Qaeda recruits - those who go to meetings to express their support - represents a stark warning about the extent of the threat.’

Now although this is only a fraction of the Muslim community, most of whom are entirely peaceful and law-abiding, 10-15,000 is a hell of a lot of people in this country to support a terrorist war of religious conquest against it and the rest of the west. It presents a danger the likes of which this country has never seen before and which it plainly hasn’t got the first idea how to confront. Yet according to Muir’s commission, it would appear that even to say such a thing is ‘Islamophobic’.

And while, as I have said, most Muslims would abhor such violence, it also remains the case that their community has done nothing to rid itself of the sources of the contagion. ''

Melanie Phillips is a mainstream writer who tends toward the neoconnish end of the spectrum; hardly a 'far-right' extremist. Yet she is articulating a degree of alarm. Is she xenophobic and paranoid?


And the very neoconnish Mark Steyn writes on the same general topic here:

Alas, the United Kingdom's descent into dhimmitude is beyond parody. Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council (Tory-controlled) has now announced that, following a complaint by a Muslim employee, all work pictures and knick-knacks of novelty pigs and "pig-related items" will be banned. Among the verboten items is one employee's box of tissues, because it features a representation of Winnie the Pooh and Piglet. And, as we know, Muslims regard pigs as "unclean", even an anthropomorphised cartoon pig wearing a scarf and a bright, colourful singlet.''

As usual, Steyn is writing in a flippant tone which may belie the serious subject here: the UK's 'descent into dhimmitude.'

I don't see how the evidence of the many links above can be dismissed. I don't see how any thinking person can deny that Islam is at the very least a serious problem for the UK and for all Western countries, because the exact same pattern is repeated in each and every Western country in which Islam has taken hold.

My irate commenter objected to my implying that there were British people who were 'xenophobic and paranoid' as he declared me to be.

Judging by the content of the many links above, I am inclined to think he may be right; the dissenting voices, which he deems, from on high, to be 'xenophobic and paranoid' are probably few and far between in the UK. It looks as though most of the citizens of the UK are fully on board with acquiescing to Islam. Perhaps I overestimated the extent to which the inconquerable spirit of Britain still survived. More fool me; I was hoping that there was still some healthy national spirit and desire to preserve the legacy of generations. Without that 'xenophobia' there isn't much chance of standing up to the militancy of Islam on the march, whether here, or in the UK or anywhere else.

Here are the words of some great Englishmen of the past on the subject of Islam:

Winston Churchill wrote in 1899,

“The religion of Islam above all others was founded upon the sword … Moreover it provides incentives to slaughter, and in three continents has produced fighting breeds of men – filled with a wild and merciless fanaticism”.

John Wesley wrote,

Ever since the religion of Islam appeared in the world, the espousers of it...have been as wolves and tigers to all other nations, rending and tearing all that fell into their merciless paws, and grinding them with their iron teeth; that numberless cities are raised from the foundation, and only their name remaining; that many countries, which were once as the garden of God, are now a desolate wilderness; and that so many once numerous and powerful nations are vanished from the earth! Such was, and is at this day, the rage, the fury, the revenge, of these destroyers of human kind".

Maybe that 'xenophobic and paranoid' spirit is gone from Britain now, replaced by the new religion of 'tolerance' and openness and multiculturalism.

I think it's time, actually, to deploy a newly-coined word for those who ardently defend 'diversity' and multiculturalism. 'Xenophiliac' is the word some of us have used; I like it. It's a counter to the wheezy old 'xenophobe' label, and I like that it seems reminiscent of words describing fetishes, unhealthy fixations. I personally find the craving for endless 'diversity' and otherness to be a strange kink in some people. And history is on my side, as few countries have gone a-whoring after strange flesh as our modern Western liberal countries are doing. It's a mania. It's odd. It has no precedent in history, unless it might be in the old Roman Empire wherein they allowed numbers of barbarians from all over the Empire and undermined themselves in the process. But what else could be expected from an effete and decadent culture?

So it appears that I may have been wrong to imply that there was still a spirit of resistance in the UK, or still any 'taint' of a healthy ethnic self-consciousness. Or it may be that the problem is the inability to recognize a threat as a threat. If no threat is recognized, no response to it can be mobilized. Openness and tolerance in a society are much as AIDS is to the physical body; with AIDS, the body ceases to recognize invading cells, and forms no resistance thereto. And in the West, many of us stubbornly refuse to recognize a threat.

Nothing can save England if she will not save herself. If we lose faith in ourselves, in our capacity to guide and govern,if we lose our will to live, then indeed our story is told." - Winston Churchill

This is true for us in America, too. As long as our programming in favor of 'tolerance' overrides our survival instinct, the odds are not in our favor. I am betting on the will of the American people to be strong enough to shake off the decades of liberal/leftist indoctrination. But as for the UK? I know my own country and my own people, but I don't claim a similar familiarity with Britain. So I have to defer to the judgment of others. If it's more important to the British people to prove themselves innocent of 'xenophobia' and 'paranoia' then so be it. At least as the country slides into full-blown sharia law and dhimmitude, which better heads than mine have predicted, then at least they can be proud of their lack of 'xenophobia.'

The Border Agents: justice and truth still elude us

Is anybody surprised?

Judge denies freedom plea by jailed ex-agents

A federal appeals court judge yesterday denied a motion by former U.S. Border Patrol agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean that they be released from prison pending appeals in their convictions for shooting a drug-smuggling suspect.
[...]
They sought release pending the outcome of their appeals, but the motion was denied by U.S. District Judge Fortunato Pedro "Pete" Benavides of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, sitting in Austin, Texas, who said the men "had not shown unique or unusual circumstances that justify their release based on an exceptional reason."

Judge Benavides granted a motion by Ramos that his appeal be sealed and ordered the government's response to both men's motions sealed. ''

And here, there are allegations that another Border Patrol officer, who was a friend of the drug smuggler Osbaldo Aldrete-Davila, was a double agent:

I believe Rene Sanchez acted as a 'double agent' in the Ramos-Compean case," Joe Loya, father of Ramos's wife Monica, told WND. "He was doing everything he could to protect his life-long friend, Osbaldo Aldrete-Davila, but at the same time he was working with Johnny Sutton to make sure Ramos and Compean were convicted."

Loya further charged that he had reason to believe "Rene Sanchez's actions make it look like he could have been in the drug business with Aldrete-Davila all along.'

But the possibility of ascertaining the truth of this whole matter, much less of obtaining justice, looks more remote all the time, as the system seems to thwart every effort made to determine what really happened, and why.



Doug Patton, in this piece at Human Events, argues for a Presidential pardon for Ramos and Compean:

Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean, two former border patrol agents, are now serving hard time in prison. If you are unfamiliar with these two men, you are getting far too much of your news from the mainstream media, which has virtually ignored their story. Ramos and Compean were on duty along the Rio Grande in Texas when a Mexican drug smuggler named Osbaldo Aldrete-Davila tried to flee back across the river into Mexico. Aldrete-Davila brandished what the agents thought was a gun. Ramos and Compean fired their firearms at the suspect, but when he continued to flee, they logically assumed he had not been injured.

Fast forward two weeks, and our tax dollars were being used to transport the drug smuggler back into the United States, where he was given full immunity to testify against Ramos and Compean -- for shooting him in the buttocks! They were tried and sentenced to 10 years each.

Subsequent information has shown that “evidence” brought against Ramos and Compean was fabricated by officials from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
[...]
So let’s review: Two border agents shoot a drug smuggler and end up serving time in federal prison. A bounty hunter brings a dangerous serial rapist to justice and gets extradited to face the hell of a Mexican prison. And Scooter Libby faces a possible sentence of 20 years in prison for leaking the name of a CIA employee whose name was already known, while Bill Clinton’s former security advisor, Sandy Berger, gets a slap on the wrist for stuffing Top Secret documents in his pants and stealing them from the National Archives.

Pardon these men immediately, Mr. President.''

Meanwhile, Ramos and Compean have their own song now. Michael Britton, a Southern California musician, has recorded a song he wrote about Ramos and Compean.

Michael Britton, who makes a living performing an acoustic one-man-band show, said he was inspired to act when he learned details of the case. Ramos and Compean were convicted and sentenced to 11 and 12 years in prison respectively after a drug smuggler they shot fleeing across the border was given immunity to testify against them.

"I'm upset that men like Ramos and Compean are sitting in federal prison simply for doing their jobs, while drug smugglers are allowed to go free and sue the Border Patrol for violating their 'civil rights,' he said.

You can hear the song here.



And last, this op-ed piece implies that many immigration-restrictionist conservatives are rallying behind Ramos and Compean not because they are truly thought to be innocent, but because of frustration and anger towards our government in its refusal (I started to say failure, but decided refusal was correct) to enforce our laws.

Could the movement around Ramos and Compean simply be a byproduct of the American people’s frustration toward their government? Are Americans capable of excusing the actions of these men to make a statement to an administration that seemingly cares more about Iraqi confidence in their government’s ability to protect and preserve Iraq, than the American people’s confidence in its own leadership to protect and preserve America?''

The writer of this op-ed makes the same unconvincing arguments which I have read and heard from the usual 'respectable Republicans'; his supporting evidence being the U.S. Attorney's Office transcripts.


The writer points out that the official version of the story contradicts the version given by Ramos and Compean and other skeptics of the administration's version. But as usual, the administration, and Johnny Sutton's office, must be right, and the opposition wrong. Obviously this op-ed writer has not chosen to read any of the voluminous evidence, which I and others have linked to previously, casting doubt on the 'official' version of events. Even if one believes that the agents are guilty as hell, which the op-ed writer apparently believes, the fact remains that Ramos and Compean seem to have been way more important than they seemed, since the government seems to have gone to extraordinary lengths to see that they were made an example of and punished to the full extent of the law and more. I invite anyone who doubts that to check the records concerning the prosecution and sentencing of Border Patrol agents accused of wrongdoing. There are a number of such cases, involving agents who colluded with human smugglers, illegal aliens, and drug lords, often for an extended period of time, flouting the laws of the land, the laws they are sworn to uphold, and who received milder treatment from our government, and lesser sentences. How does that work? How do the knee-jerk defenders of the administration account for that? Surely men who may have gone a little overboard in doing their job should not be punished as harshly as agents who knowingly broke our laws and colluded with drug lords and illegals. It should give people pause that men who are trying to uphold our laws and protect our borders are made an example of, while rogue agents, with a long pattern of corruption, are given lesser sentences. It shows the priorities of our administration. But the op-ed writer's argument, following the usual pattern, is thus:

Either the US Attorney General for the District of West Texas, 12 jurors, two additional border patrol agents, and one judge are heartlessly lying to “get” these two agents for some dark motive or agenda, or these cause groups are using this event to elicit donations and pull media attention back to the border. Media attention that was lost when the majority of the politicians who responded to their pressure lost their offices in the last election.''

This writer is either being disingenuous or he has obstinately refused to read the many reports which cast doubt on the administration's case. I am not going to repost all the links I've previously posted here on the subject, but there is plenty of evidence of irregularities in the government's case. That is not the same as saying, in the straw man argument above, that Johnny Sutton, a judge, 12 jurors, and various others all 'lied' in a plot serving 'some dark motive or agenda.' Various people involved may have lied for venal ends of their own, and it is hardly unknown for the government to deceive in the name of 'secrecy' or in the name of plain old CYA. The op-ed writer surely does not think that people in official positions are scrupulously honest at all times; they are as human as anyone else, and government officials can and do lie and obfuscate. Homeland Security officials admitted during recent Congressional hearings on the Ramos-Compean case, that they did in fact 'mislead' the Congressmen in previous statements, admitting that the evidence they claimed to have never in fact existed.

And the stories of overzealous prosecution of law enforcement officers like Gilmer Hernandez and David Sipe should confirm that there is a pattern to these kinds of incidents: the message seems to be that those who are zealous in going after drug smugglers and illegals are going to be made an example of. As to what the 'dark motive or agenda' is, I can only guess, as can the rest of us; we need to examine this pattern and determine where the orders are coming from.

But the need of some people to defend their anointed elected leaders, and to defend their Party, often trumps the desire to know the truth, or to seek justice. It must make life incredibly simple, when your only concern is the well-being of 'your' political party our 'your' guys in office.

The amnesty machine revs up

The massive amnesty push is under way again. They've regrouped after last year's setback and are gearing up.

First, we have this story:
Senator Clinton Aligns With Bush on Immigration
by Russell Berman

As Senator Clinton prepares to face off with many of her Democratic rivals today, she aligned herself directly with President Bush on the issue of immigration, using a campaign stop in South Florida to highlight a rare point of agreement with an administration that she criticizes at every turn.

Speaking to about 300 community leaders in an area with a large immigrant population, Mrs. Clinton staked out a centrist position on the hot-button topic, saying she supported a "pathway to legalization" for the nation's 11 million to 12 million estimated undocumented immigrants, but only if they waited in line and paid fines. She described her stance as "basically" what the president has proposed.

"I think, on this issue, the president is right," Mrs. Clinton said.
[...] Mrs. Clinton did not mention the fence issue yesterday. She has said she supports a wall "in certain areas," but she made clear that tougher enforcement of current immigration laws was a top priority. While she scoffed at the suggestion of deporting all illegal immigrants, she had strong words for those who break the law. "The ones who are criminals, let's deport them. If they're criminals, let's move them back to where they came from," Mrs. Clinton said, drawing applause from the crowd.''

And this one:
Senate illegals bill near complete

Senators and lobbyists are putting the final touches on a comprehensive immigration-reform bill that includes an easier citizenship path for illegal aliens and weaker enforcement provisions than were in the highly criticized legislation that the Senate approved last year.

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, the Massachusetts Democrat who ardently supports citizenship rights for illegals, will introduce the bill as early as next week, according to Senate sources knowledgeable about the negotiations. If the Senate Judiciary Committee can make quick work of the bill, it could be ready for floor action in April.

Mr. Kennedy drafted this year's bill with help from Sen. John McCain, Arizona Republican, and outside lobbyists. Mr. McCain and the outside groups share Mr. Kennedy's support for increased immigration and leniency for illegals already in the country.

Among the most active participants have been the Essential Worker Immigration Coalition (EWIC) and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Both groups support giving current illegals a path to citizenship and increasing the flow of foreign workers into the country.''

And on Lou Dobbs Tonight, this report:

LISA SYLVESTER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Senator Ted Kennedy and his staff have been quiet on the details of their new immigration proposal. It's by invitation only.

Even moderate Republicans like Senator Arlen Specter have not been offered a seat at the table. But the Chamber of Commerce and other special interests are having a hand in offering the legislation.

One Republican Hill staffer complained, "The Chamber has seen more than the senators when it comes to the actual writing on paper."

ROY BECK, NUMBERSUSA: Senator Kennedy has been inviting the stakeholders of this bill to come in. So that's the Chamber of Commerce. And it's the National Council of La Raza, and it's the immigration attorneys. Basically, the stakeholders are people who make money or gain power off of it. But how about the American people?

SYLVESTER: Kennedy's new bill will be introduced as early as next week. It may closely parallel legislation he offered last year with Senator John McCain. That was more generous to illegal aliens than anything that passed the House or Senate.

Under the previous proposal, all illegal aliens would be allowed to stay in the United States. After six years, they could pay a $1,000 fine and apply for a green card. A new guest worker program would be established, and most companies would not be required to check work eligibility of future workers.

If the new immigration plan reflects the old, it could put off swing lawmakers.

REP. BRIAN BILBRAY (R), CALIFORNIA: You're seeing Republican senators who had supported the concept before backing away off on this, because they went home in December and actually got an earful form their constituents. And you're seeing a lot of members of the Senate that had supported Kennedy before are not going to buy off on this now.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

Here, Mexico's ambassador says that his country is planning on launching its own lobbying campaign to pass a 'guestworker plan' or amnesty. So now we have foreign governments, big business, National Council of La Raza, and other profiteers, namely immigration attorneys, all arrayed against the American people.


Hillary Clinton, it's worth noting, declares herself to be in agreement with President Bush on the border issue; she too favors amnesty, although she may say the obligatory things about 'deporting the criminals' -- they all say this, and then in the next breath, declare the need for a 'path to legalization' or 'regularizing the otherwise law-abiding' and so on. Talk is dirt cheap. It's all duplicity. Amnesty is amnesty, and if Hillary or any of the rest of the pack of politicians really meant to deport the criminals, they would deport all illegals. But of course they don't mean it; the tough talk is meant to gull the easily-deceived party faithful.

So Hillary Clinton and George W. Bush are on the same page, as regards the border issue. That should (but won't) give pause to the party loyalists on both sides. As much as the Democrats hate President Bush, the Republicans despise Hillary Clinton, and yet it does not seem to trouble many of them that these two are now officially soulmates on the border question. How much more of an illustration do we need that the two parties are Tweedledee and Tweedledum, as has often been said? The Republicans may be marginally better than the Democrats on some issues, but in general they both toe the line, where borders and sovereignty are concerned.

The respectable Republicans, the country-club and Main Street types, who are slavishly PC in most instances, are proud of looking down on Tom Tancredo, with his unseemly 'nativism'. But they know, deep down, that the GOP needs to have at least a Tancredo or two, someone to buck the system and stand up for those inconvenient conservative principles, because it gives the Party cover. When some of us disgruntled voters threaten to jump ship, then they will cite the existence of Tancredo as proof that 'the Republicans are the only patriotic party' or some such pat phrases. But one swallow doth not a spring make. The GOP will have to rediscover some conservative principles (which I am not convinced they can or will do) in order to retain the loyalties of many fed-up conservatives. They cannot maintain their base by pointing at the Democrats and saying 'see how much worse they are?' The lesser of two evils is still evil.

And last, the open borders brigades are planning more protest marches, like those of last spring, that shocked many previously unaware citizens into activism. To this I say, 'bring it.' It may well galvanize those who haven't yet been provoked into awareness. The illegals and their allies may be overplaying their hand, at this point, and I say that's a good thing.