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So much is passing and ephemeral. Spiritual questions remain. I participated in an interesting discussion of sola scriptura over at Protestant Pontifications. Enjoy.

In response to a jobs-protection provision in a pending amnesty bill, Hispanic chauvinist Ruben Navarette writes:

Why should [as Rep. Luis Guittierez said] “no one born here in this country … ever lose an opportunity for gainful employment at the expense of someone not born here?” Remember, these aren’t illegal immigrants but legal immigrants coming on visas.

Why should U.S. citizens get a benefit not from education or hard work but from something they had nothing to do with — where they were born? If a job is available, U.S. workers should be free to compete for it, but not have it handed to them on a silver platter. Likewise, foreign workers who come here legally should have a shot at competing for that same job.

Of course, protectionists claim that the playing field isn’t level since foreign workers will often accept less money to do the same job, thus putting American workers at a disadvantage.

Tough.

Pro-immigration activists alternately talk about compassion while saying “tough” to Americans. The only unifying principle is the good of their tribe. Ruben is a Hispanic. He is not a loyal American. He has demonstrated this repeatedly in his writings, which are totally indifferent to the good of other Americans. It matters not where he was born; it’s clear he’s totally indifferent to the common good and can’t even think in such terms. This kind of talk would be intolerable among anyone but minorities.

I suppose if we enforced our laws against border-hopping, stopped fraudulent H1B Visa applications (which supposedly require a company first to hire an American), and generally leveraged US power for the benefit of American citizens, even at the expense low-skilled Mexican workers, “tough,” wouldn’t exactly fly with Ruben. That’s when we’re called to be “compassionate.” Ruben’s column is not a moral statement aiming at justice but a triumphalist one: we’re winning, you’re losing, and you people need to deal with it and stop complaining. “You” . . . Americans that is . . . must be sacrificed for the principles of globalism, for the “economy,” for all the bad things your ancestors did, and for the good of morally exquisite Third Worlders that are trying to make more money at our expense.

Allowing mass immigration is a policy choice. It’s a choice to underenforce the laws, and it’s a choice to let people in with visas. No company or family or individual would behave the way Navarette counsels when dealing with people they genuinely care about. No CEO would say, “Well we can give this business to our own in-house team and save some jobs and keep the money in house or we can save a nickel by sending it to a vendor.” There is a community of interest in a firm, and the firm’s management is supposed to look out for the good of the firm as a whole. This is obvious. No family would shrug its shoulders at a brother or sister or dad’s job loss due to the pressure of low-wage, low-skill competitors. A country is no different. It was obvious, until recently, that its leaders should look out for the good of its citizens.

There is no doubt that Navarette would not be fighting for mass immigration if it did not benefit his group to acquire greater numbers, greater cultural influence, and greater wealth at the expense of native-born Americans. We know this because leftists like him who now prattle about the virtues of globalism spent a good part of the middle 20th Century defending the mass exclusion of “neo-colonialists” (i.e., white Europeans) from places like India, Rhodesia, and Mexico. Leftists swooned with admiration as these countries built up nationalist economic orders, complete with protectionist state-owned monopolies like PEMEX. When will Navarette dare to speak out about this vital feature of Mexican political and economic life? Can anyone imagine Navarette telling South African blacks or Indian nationalists or Mexican protectionists “tough” when they defend their historically nationalist and anti-white policies?

Obama and his supporters are fond of blaming George Bush and the deficit spending of 2002-2008 on our  government’s various fiscal problems.  As Obama put it, “”Number one, we inherited a $1.3 trillion deficit. … That wasn’t me.”  This is that trademark Obama straight-talk we’ve come to expect. It’s a false alibi that has the additional demerit of making the President appear remarkably weak and incapable of leadership.

Bush truly did a lot of deficit spending, as much as four hundred billion per year in 2008.  But notice the chart above.  This spending was dwarfed by the total scale of government spending in any given year and the high receipts (i.e., taxes) raised compared to deficit spending.  Now look at 2009, year of Obama and the major stimulus coupled with the continuation of Bush’s half-spent TARP funds.  The budget appears to be half deficit spending.  And the deficit is an order of magnitude larger than it has been in previous years, nearly $2,000,000,000,000.  The government is not taking money in and spending like it always did, but instead is borrowing on a heroic scale to maintain an unrealistic scale of legacy spending and unworthy causes like propping up GM and financing broke state and municipal governments.

This level of spending is dangerous and unsustainable. Judging by Gold’s recent spike to $1,190/ounce, it appears people interested in maintaining their wealth are starting to realize what’s going on with out devalued currency.

I figured I’d change the blog a bit.  The old “theme” actually was a little hard to read at times, particularly as it italicized block quotes.  I’ve also noticed that this theme is more popular on super right wing blogs like Occidental Dissent or Guy White. I also changed the header image; Death of Marat is a great painting, but this version of the Rape of the Sabine Women seems to capture some of the chaos of our times and what it is I mean to speak clearly against.

I am also considering changing the subtitle.  While I am probably closest to the paleoconservatives and decidedly against the neoconservatives, there is some baggage with that term that I don’t like, not least the occasional flirtation with anti-Americanism and pacifism you see here and there.  I’m open to suggestions.  I thought perhaps Nationalist Observations or Nationalist Conservatism or something like that, but it has a tinny and unnatural sound, so I’m all ears readers.

I hope these changes are welcome and make the blog easier to read.

 

 

My cousin Peter Regan had a piece published in the NY Post condemning the ridiculous decision to try terrorists in NYC.   His father, and my uncle, Donnie Regan died on 9/11 in the service of the FDNY.  Peter was in the Marines at the time, took leave to assist in the search for survivors, served two tours in Iraq, and, after finishing his service (and a call up in the IRR!) followed in Donnie’s footsteps as a NYC Fireman.

He wrote, among other things, “I will never be convinced that these terrorists did not commit an act of war. And committing an act of war does not qualify these men to enjoy the rights and liberties of the citizens of this country, rights that so many have died to protect.”

I am proud of Jill and Peter and other 9/11 family members that are standing up to this administration and reminding them that there are public relations and moral consequences for their actions not just in Europe and the Middle East, but here at home too.

Gold hits $1,190/ounce. Got Stimulus?

Obama is about to jet off to Copenhagen to pledge to destroy the American economy. Isn’t it funny that he’s still buying this global warming nonsense, after a decade of cooling, and recent revelations that many top level scientists have been conspiring with one another to “cook the books” and create evidence of global warming where none exists.

We all should have known what a fraud this was a few years ago when “climate change” began to replace “global warming” as the preferred nomenclature.  Climate’s always changing, you see, so this allowed hot, cold, dry, rainy, and every other anomaly to prove that “something bad is afoot and it’s man-made!”

 

 

Apparently, it takes six months to decide to half-ass McChrystal’s plan and cut 6,000 troops?

Obama admires Abraham Lincoln and his decision to can various generals–including McClellan–for not being aggressive enough to win the Civil War.  But Obama, unlike Lincoln, is unpatriotic and a pacifist, dithers about whether victory is worth it, and changes his mind on core objectives–in effect, giving his generals a moving target. 

Plus Obama’s adding language to the plan about “off ramps” and what not.  So basically we’ll add 35,000 troops, a bit less than double what we have.  They’ll accomplish a little more, but nothing game changing.  Then we’ll find a reason to leave next June and will do so.  A few hundred more young Americans will die than would have otherwise, and this outcome all so Obama doesn’t look too weak in calling it quits sooner on this misguided nation-building effort.  This is hardly Lincolnesque . . .  more like Hamlet!

I think a deliberate withdrawal or even a limited war is not dishonorable, incidentally.  There are times to have flexible definitions of victory.  Think of something like the Korean War which ended in an armistice or the conventional victory of expelling Saddam Hussein from Kuwait in 1991. But if you think it’s truly a “war of necessity,” and you think the way to win is to build a functioning Afghan state (as Obama said in March), do it right or change that strategy.  Obama is keeping the strategy but under-resourcing it.   Further, with his “exit ramp” talk, Obama is basically admitting he’s looking for reason to call it quits.  It’s a far cry from the Gettysburg Address.  It’s more like a blueprint for our enemies and less committed allies to engineer an American exit.

I actually think Joe Biden’s proposal for a scaled down war using counter-terror operatives is the most sensible and conforms our operation to what the U.S. national interest is in the neighborhood.

Let me speak plainly.  I don’t think these illiterate savages deserve democracy or any U.S. efforts to help them.  I don’t think it’s in our interest, and the trade off is woefully imbalanced.  Afghans and Pakistanis and everyone else in the world just need to learn that if they help our enemies they’ll be punished en masse. For some reason, though, I don’t think Obama can make that kind of warning convincingly.  Sadly, neither could the liberal Republican, George W. Bush.  

This popular view of collective responsibility was what was most appealing about the Bush doctrine, i.e., you’re with us or you’re against us. But in eight years it’s morphed into “help our enemies and we’ll spend many years and many billions of dollars and many young American lives to drag you into the 21st Century.” 

Where’s General Pershing when you need him?!?

Apathy About 9/11

I was reading yet another editorial criticizing Eric Holder and the DOJ for their moronic decision to have civilian trials of KSM and other al Qaeda defendants and I was surprised and proud to learn that my cousin, Jill Regan, was there to deliver a petition against this horror:

A final observation: During the proceedings a young lady, dutifully attentive, sat with a stack of paper about 15 inches high on her lap. The papers contained names, single spaced, of some 100,000 people who signed a letter in opposition to this decision. This young woman, Jill Regan, lost her dad, Donald J. Regan, FDNY of the Bronx, who died trying to save others on 9/11. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R., Al.) asked that those names be entered into the record at the end of the session. It was agreed, but by that time the chairmen and most of the Democrats were already gone. I grieved for her—and for all of us—anew.

Hardcore leftists like Obama and Holder basically think that America brought 9/11 upon ourselves.  They think the worst thing about this event is that we “overdid it” in our response and thereby made Europeans and other foreigners mad at us.  So they rush to close GITMO, while they drag their feet on implementing their own stated Afghanistan strategy.  They feel little rage at the perpetrators and consider the various foreigners with unpronounceable names killed in our attempts at vengeance indistinguishable morally and emotionally from their fellow Americans.  They are at best  “citizens of the world” and should not be in charge of this nation.

I suspect that Eric Holder and company are putting KSM, Ramzi bin Alsheebh, and the other high level al Qaeda folks in federal court for a few reasons.  First, it’s a way of repudiating Bush’s controversial classification of high level al Qaeda people as an illegal military organization.  Second, it shows a naive faith in the justice system that does not address the real problems with ordinary civil trials for terrorists, i.e., the requirements of Miranda warnings for someone as high level as Osama bin Laden or the revelation of intelligence-gathering techniques as happened in the first World Trade Center trial of Ramzi Yousef.  Three, it shows someone who has not really thought through a controversial decision, which is a sign of a guy making decisions in an echo chamber.  Of course, this last bit is not that surprising.  Various high level DOJ folks spent much of the last eight years representing al Qaeda’s biggest dirtbags and getting them habeas review and other assorted offensive gestures, which rendered the benefits of the military tribunal system less robust than they would otherwise be.

I really don’t understand this way of thinking.  There are criminals, sometimes very bad people but also fellow citizens, and they deserve a robust defense.  They deserve this because they’re proxies for all of us potentially, who may wind up through mistake, bad luck, or the like an innocent person in the dock, criminally accused.  But al Qaeda detainees are foreigners, bad people, mass murderers, and delared enemies of the United States.   As enemies they’ve always been treated differently.  You don’t blow up the house of an accused criminal, but you do blow up an al Qaeda member’s house overseas, and you don’t worry too much about his wife and children who may be at home. It’s a different more flexible set of rules where the fears of domestic overreach have little application, not least because these are foreigners and enemies.  We’re not going to do this to fellow citizens.  There is little danger of any normal American being on the wrong end of this system.

Obama’s a lawyer, and this privileging of the domestic legal system over well-established principles of military justice is part and parcel of the broader contempt liberals have shown for the military since the Vietnam War, exemplified, not least, by their mass expulsion of ROTC from Ivy League campuses, and the mass desertion from military service by those who attend elite schools.

This is an atrocious and indefensible decision, and Holder’s defense of it shows the slipshod way that it was enacted and is now being defended.  Watching him squirm, however, gives me newfound respect for Lindsay Graham.

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