More ranting about amnesty

Heather Mac Donald, who is my new hero and will continue to be until she starts hyping Julie Annie for president again, has more to say on the amnesty bill:

To observe the sentimental fantasy and ruthless political calculation that fuels the Bush administration's immigration plans, one need only turn to Michael Gerson’s most recent Washington Post column. Former Bush speechwriter Gerson was a powerful voice in the White House, especially on the matter of injecting faith into policymaking; his May 25 column provides a window into how the administration deals with facts.

[. . .]

But Gerson’s column is flawed on another front as well: It recycles open-borders bromides that have nothing to do with the truth. In warning against a rejection of amnesty, Gerson states: “If the Republican Party cannot find ways to appeal to natural entrepreneurs, with strong family values, who are focused on education and social mobility, then the GOP is already dead.”

What planet is Gerson living on? Far from being “focused on education,” Hispanics have the highest drop-out rate in the country — 47 percent nationally, and far worse in heavily Hispanic areas. Schools in illegal-immigrant-saturated southern California spend enormous sums trying to persuade Latino students to stay in school and study, without avail. In the Los Angeles Unified School District, just 40 percent of Hispanics graduate, and those students who do finish school come out with abysmal skills. A controversial high school exit exam in California would require seniors to correctly answer just 51 percent of questions testing eighth-grade-level math and ninth-grade-level English in order to receive a diploma. Naturally, immigrant advocates have fiercely opposed this all-too-meager measure for school and student accountability. The California Research Bureau predicts that the exam will result in a Hispanic graduation rate of below 30 percent.

Behind Hispanic educational failure rate lies an apathy towards learning, as the Manhattan Institute’s Herman Badillo argues in One Nation, One Standard. Hostility towards academic achievement is higher among Hispanics than among blacks. Factor in gang involvement and teenage pregnancy, and the Hispanic drop-out rate looks almost inevitable. The Department of Homeland Security estimates that a whopping 15 percent to 20 percent of illegal immigrants may not qualify for the proposed amnesty because of their criminal records, according to the Wall Street Journal. Gerson’s claim of a culture “focused on education” is pure delusion.

Gerson’s hackneyed invocation of Hispanic “family values” is equally laughable. Nearly 50 percent of all Hispanic children are born out of wedlock, compared to 24 percent of white children and 15 percent of Asian children. Black out-of-wedlock births are higher — 68 percent — but the black population is not growing rapidly. And the fertility rate among unmarried Hispanic women is the highest in the country — over three times that of whites and Asians, and nearly one and a half times that of black women. The Hispanic teen-fertility rate also far outstrips other groups. Among Mexicans and Mexican-Americans, the teen birthrate is 93 births per every 1,000 girls, compared with 27 births for every 1,000 white girls, 17 births for every 1,000 Asian girls, and 65 births for every 1,000 black girls. As conservative policymakers such as Gerson should know, there is no better predictor of future social pathologies than out-of-wedlock childrearing.

Low levels of education and high levels of illegitimacy help explain why, contrary to Gerson’s myths, Hispanics are not showing the “social mobility” of other immigrant groups past and present, as Harvard’s George Borjas has documented and City Journal’s Steve Malanga has reported.

Gerson’s disregard for basic accuracy makes his Machiavellian view of the law all the more troubling. He claims that Republicans must do whatever it takes to capture a portion of the “fastest-growing segment of the electorate” (of course, what is growing fastest is the illegal population, who as of yet are not entitled to vote). “At one level,” writes Gerson, “any immigration debate concerns a raw political calculation: Who ends up with more voters?” Such “raw political calculations” clearly govern White House machinations, but here are some factors that influence less partisan observers of the immigration mess: respect for the rule of law and a desire to show fairness to foreigners who comply with our immigration policies. In the American heartland, it is illegal aliens’ disregard for U.S. immigration rules that most infuriates the public. Conservatives usually embrace the rule of law as a central component of their ideology — except, apparently, when the primacy of law interferes with more important objectives, such as getting elected. Had Democrats used Gerson’s political calculus in deciding whether to support civil rights in the 1960s, they would have held on to power in the South, to be sure, but at the cost of principle .

Pace Gerson, it is not nativism, but facts and principle that lie behind opposition to the Senate’s latest amnesty proposal. Playing the nativist (read: racism) card allows propagandists like Gerson to ignore both.

I have to disagree with one of Ms. Mac Donald's fundamental points. In the end it is about who gets elected. The fact is that the nation has already progressed so for toward the left side of the political spectrum that we are in danger of crossing the point of no return. At least the point of no peaceful return.

Nearly half the people in the country receive some kind of check from the government. For some it is a paycheck and we know that the public employee unions are among the most fanatical supporters of the Democrat Party and its socialist agenda. For some it is a Social Security check and seniors will vote for the party which they believe to be the most likely to protect that check. Some get welfare in its many forms and it is no secret who they support.

About the only groups of people on the public payroll who reliably vote Republican are police and active duty and retired military. And the cops are moving to the left inch by inch. There is a widespread mindset among law enforcement that they represent a special class of people who should have rights and privileges above and beyond what the average citizen processes. Which political party will people like that wind up in if given enough time?

As for the military, the 29 Palms Survey demonstrates that loyalty to the Constitution is much lower among younger officers than among the older ones. This means that the military is soon going to be led by men who would willingly serve as tools of repression.

The sad fact of human nature is that people will generally perceive their personal best interests to be aligned with who or whatever supplies them with their daily bread. The natural yearning of the human spirit is not freedom, as Rush Limbaugh endlessly asserts, but security. Convince the average man or woman that if they stick with you that they and their kids will always be well fed, clothed and housed and they will be your property as surely as if you had bought them at a slave auction. More even because they will be serving you voluntarily.

When more than half the people in the United States get their living from the government in one form or another freedom is dead. Not one word of the Constitution will be changed; it will simply be ignored or reinterpreted. If you doubt that can happen try this experiment. Walk into your local courthouse with an M-16 assault rifle slung over your shoulder and see what happens. The Second Amendment says you have every right to do this so see how impressed the deputies guarding the building are with your constitutional rights. See what the judge says at your trial. Appeal it all the way up to the Supreme Court and see what they say.

To paraphrase Buford Pusser if they can do this to one of your rights they can do the same damn thing to any of the others.

That is why I say it's all about who gets elected. If the left keeps winning we will very soon cross the point where the only thing that can salvage anything of the Founder's vision will be a military coup. And the door on having a military that would do the right thing once they have taken over may be closing (see the 29 Palms business).

It is vital that any legislation which includes amnesty in any form be killed. It is vital that any kind of open borders legislation be killed. America can not survive as a free and prosperous nation if we get millions of new voters who will see their self interest being served by more big activist government. We are going to have to realize that we are in a fight just as fierce, for stakes just as high as the Marines fighting their way up Mt. Suribachi or the soldiers landing on Utah Beach 63 years ago yesterday.

Politics is no longer a gentleman's game which can be laid aside at the end of the day and everybody go for drinks at the country club. It is now a knife fight in a sewer and the nation lives or dies on the outcome. The Democrats have already internalized this truth. Republicans had better catch up or our choices will be pressing one for Spanish and two for Farsi.