Politics: Break away from the usual "axis"!

Many of you know that I've long railed against the hoary-lobotomizing so-called "Left-Right Political Axis." Oh, sure, it's one thing to use it as a very rough marker. But anyone who assigns it actual, intellectual meaning is pretty much discredited from the git-go. Want an example?
This "study" of the political divide in America - supposedly thorough and insightful - only proves you can perpetuate a calamity, by asking the wrong questions. Focusing on race, identity politics, immigration and vague economic populism, the perpetrators of this mess never getting to any of the real reasons for today's inchoate rage.  

Just one question would have blown out every other factor, demarcating our cultural divide:

"Which 'elites' in American life do you blame and despise?"

Almost all Americans share a reflex called Suspicion of Authority (SoA), taught by every brave Hollywood underdog tale. Republicans fret about faceless-conniving bureaucracies and Democrats about faceless-conspiring corporations. In normal times, each side can grudgingly admit the other may have a point. But today's enemy elite fixations are more stark. 

Liberals know the U.S. is being taken over by a plutocrat oligarchy. Fox-watching conservatives save their true rage for -- not other races or immigrants -- but scientists, journalists, teachers, doctors, civil servants and every other type of expert-smartypants. Those smarmy-lecturing-patronizing elites are the enemy, and aristocrats can do no wrong.

This is the old underpinning of the US civil war, going back to 1778 when southern tories supported the King and when 1860s confederate soldiers marched for their plantation lords. Today's oligarchy knows their greatest obstacle is the millions of expert fact-users... and hence fact-users are now Enemy #1.

Racism is real and deadly! But it does not map as perfectly onto American conservatism as hatred of fact. (And note: facts tend to kill racism!) 

Alas, while Robert Heinlein predicted all this, more than half a century ago, democrats seem compelled to ignore the one factor that correlates perfectly. And bright-but-stupid 'studies' like this one fall into the same, tiresome trap.

See more on how desperately the right is fighting against facts.

== Danger! Danger! ==
The most important civil liberties advance of the 21st Century, so far, was when the Obama Administration joined multiple courts in declaring a citizen's right to record the police. I wrote about this 20 years ago in The Transparent Society (1997; see p.160) discussing how vital it is that we can exercise sousveillance at the level of the street, where power can most-directly affect us. I'm generally a moderate fellow, but we must be militant about our right and power to look back at authority, or else our revolution and renaissance and brief era of hope will end.

Only now:  "In a free speech ruling that contradicts six other federal circuit courts, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld a district court ruling that says Americans do not have a first amendment right to videotape the police, or any public official, in public."

News reports on this are scanty and some claim that this is only about making recordings inside a police station. Even if that's so, I'd claim a steep burden of proof falls on those who would restrict a citizen's right to record.

Sure enough, in a deep-red state, this principle is under attack. 

Only... I blame the good side's lawyers! They base their arguments for sousveillance on the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment and sometimes the Fifth... when it is in fact the under-appreciated SIXTH Amendment that most clearly protects the citizen against abuse by authority. That's the rule granting us the power to compel revelation of facts in our own defense, allowing our ultimate recourse...

...the Truth.

== Inspect your own assumptions ==

If you plan to have credibility - both with your opponents and in your own mind - you should grade and scale your political and social reactions. Yes, your opponent may be bad and wrong.  Indeed, today “he” (and I refer to the whole movement that engendered you-know-who) is very bad.  

Nevertheless, may I offer some impudent, off-axis and contrary suggestions?

First off, be able to question your own assumptions.  Here's a method I’ve provided, called the Questionnaire on Ideology. Take the test! You’ll learn plenty, especially about your own reflexes and underpinning values.

But coming back to our current civil war…

1) Keep in mind ways that things could be a lot worse than they are. (And hence why impeachment is a very bad idea.)  

2)  Don’t just oppose reflexively.  There are times when it’s appropriate to push back directly, as in Sumo wrestling. But many more when it’s best to look for a judo move. Let me repeat (ad nauseam?) one that I wish half a dozen democrat leaders would do, even if they have to hold their noses -- the Short Straw Gambit.
The current storm falling on Senator Diane Feinstein, because she counseled "patience" is a worrisome example of the "left" imitating the right's intemperate tantrums.

3) Win over your opponent’s wavering allies by proving that his caricatures about you are lies. For example, every single metric of U.S. national health - including those that conservatives should care about, like military readiness, entrepreneurship, employment, business startups and trends in deficit spending - all have had better outcomes across democratic administrations. Oh, and Berkeley protestors are not “typical of liberals” whatever Sean Hannity says. Deny them the comfort of their favorite stereotypes.  

4)  Look for concessions that make you look like the moderate reasonable one — before you wage total war on your crazy opponent’s unreasonableness.  For example (and you are not gonna like some of these):

- Build the damn wall.  There is nothing intrinsically evil about maintaining control over our national border. Clinton and Obama each doubled the border patrol and prioritized legal immigration over illegal. (Ponder why Republican factory and farm owners actually preferred the latter.)  As for the “wall”? Sure, Trump’s macho project is an exercise in phallic overcompensation! So? Then use it as a bargaining chip. Make an offer that he’ll leap at.

“Okay. We’ll pass a few billions to upgrade fences and maybe do a stretch of absurd “wall”… if you’ll amnesty the Dreamer Kids and do some bipartisan Obamacare fixes.”  

You don't think he'd leap at that? Prioritize!

- Voter ID. Sure, in principle, over time, we can envision everyone identifying themselves in order to vote. Don't make your opposition about that! Instead make it -- 

“You $%%#! GOP cheaters blatantly are using this "I.D." thing as an excuse as voter suppression.  But that would change if you red-staters finally allocate major funds for compliance assistance, to help the poor, divorced women, the elderly etc. actually get their ID straightened out. That would help them in dozens of ways, far beyond regularizing voter registration (which should be automatic, by the way.) Ideally, both sides would win-win.

"Of course that’s the last thing you cheaters want, as you deliberately close DMV offices in order to make getting ID harder. But if you do offer massive compliance assistance, we'll go along with gradually phasing in voter ID."

- Voter fraud. Donald Trump’s new 'electoral commission' is the most blatant gathering of thieving, lying cheaters seen in our lifetimes. But it can be turned against them: 

“We’ll cooperate in a full scale investigation to find your mythological “dead people voting”… if we get equal representation on this commission and it also goes after right wing cheats like rigged voting machines, purged voter rolls, gerrymandering and Tuesday-only voting.” 

Of course they'd refuse.  But the offer paints them in a corner and makes clear they are the electoral fraudsters.

== A suggested compromise sure to rouse your anger ==

- And now, a judo offer that will rile nearly all of you up and make you snarl at me!  It starts with this headline: “Trump pushes to sharply cut the number of legal immigrants and move U.S. to a 'merit-based' immigration system.” 

Let’s be clear, illegal immigration was always an absurd issue. Red Americans seem upset that our nation's demographics are changing, but undocumenteds aren’t doing that.  It is legal immigration that's been altering the face of America, and Democrats truly are responsible for that! Dems have always favored legal immigrants, who can join unions and eventually vote, over undocumenteds, who undercut union wages and cannot either vote or complain about bad work conditions.

To be clear, I am not objecting to America’s changing demographics, per se.  If the kids adopt our open-tolerant-diverse-rambunctious-hopeful-individualistic-scientific-pragmatic-ambitious-generous and fun-loving culture… did I mention culturally diverse?... then we (this civilization and humanity) win. It's the revolutionary, anti-feudal and pro-future meme that makes us different/memorable and worthy of forging tomorrow.

 We are a nation of immigrants.

But all liberal policies aren’t automatically correct in all ways, boys and girls. And you gain credibility when you’ll admit that maybe 5% or 10% were errors. In particular, many aspects of the legal immigration structure that Democrats put in place have been stupid and self-defeating. 

Like basing most of it on an endless web or ‘chain’ of family reunions. Re-uniting separated family members is right and proper for parents and children, and maybe in a few other cases. But I don’t agree when it comes to cousins, aunts, uncles and yes, most siblings. And before you lash out, will you please try to pause and consider just how evil and unfair this system has been?

Take Somalia. A country filled with people who want to come to America. Why should Joe be luckier than Fred, just because Joe has relatives in the U.S.? Joe is already luckier than Fred, because his U.S. relatives send him money and hire lawyers to help him with red tape. But Fred and his daughter Malia are just as deserving of luck!  What if Fred and Malia work harder? What if they strove more diligently for education or to build skills that have a ready market in America?

Is it awful to give some preference to immigrants who worked harder for it? Who will more likely be creative, productive and pay more taxes here? Taxes that will then let us increase our generosity in the world? That is what already happened! The rich nation of immigrants that was America after WWII was the engine that propelled the whole world upward. And yes, that means our criteria should be generous and non-racist and all that... but we can still have criteria.  And 'family reunions' are among the least generous and least morally supportable criteria imaginable. All that policy has ever done is declare: "if you are already luckier than everyone else in the homeland, then you get to stay luckier, as a matter of law."

The new Trump proposal "ends chain migration," Trump said, referring to the preference for uniting family members in the current immigration system. It would implement a points-based system for awarding lawful permanent residency, or green cards.

Dig it, pals. I despise that whole crew and you know how hard I have fought them! How hard I continue to fight them.

But we are better off rank ordering our priorities!  Let's make clear some things are non-negotiable and others… well… we’d talk about, if they ever send us adults to talk to?  That gives us credibility with the wavering adults who are right now pondering jumping off the GOP’s sinking ship.

And it is in those five or ten million residually-sapient American conservatives that our hope for victory will be found.

==  What are YOUR biases? (yes, you) ==

Time to draw attention back to my Questionnaire on Ideology.

Seriously, you are in no position to rant about our political landscape unless you know your place on it. And the stupid-lobotomizing so-called “left-right political axis” is not helpful. In fact, it does vastly more harm than good.

So go ahead. Take the quiz!  The Questionnaire on Ideology will cause you to ask yourself things you had taken for granted. Have the guts.

The Immigration Fury: one of many cliches you believe - that are “opposite to true”

Not far from where I live, demonstrators in Murrieta California have been blocking a facility designated to hold families and children who were recently intercepted attempting to cross illegally into the United States.  The demonstrators' chief effect -- (other than keeping kids on stifling busses for a few hours, till other centers came online) -- was to make a noisy statement about the recent flood of young border crossers. 

Fair enough. That border youth-surge apparently arose when commercial "coyote" crossing-traffickers discovered and publicized a glitch in the Bush era immigration law, treating children with more legal niceties than adults. The Obama Administration is scurrying to adjust and staunch the flood. But such details are not my reason for raising the topic, today. 

In fact --

-- the sound and fury over illegal immigration to the United States has put me in a rebellious and contrary frame of mind! I intend to upset everyone... from left to right... by pointing out that everything you believe about this issue is probably wrong. 

Indeed, what you believe -- about who is better at defending the U.S. border, and maybe a dozen other major issues -- may be diametrically opposite to true!

== Our previous example of an "opposite" ==

This contradiction re immigration (which I'll get to, in a moment) isn't the only one.  Amid an era in which "discourse" consists primarily of argument-by-facebook-jpegs, I got a lot of positive vibe for an elegantly clear graphic, a while back, showing that the U.S. budget deficit suffers a positive 2nd-Derivative (2D) — that accelerates toward skyrocketing debt — during almost every year of every Republican administration since Eisenhower. 

In sharp contrast — and contrary to every “truthy” slogan we’ve been taught — the 2D of federal deficit spending improves or decelerates during almost every year of every Democratic presidential term.

Why are our basic assumptions so perfectly opposite to actual fact? Both parties have "rhetoric constituencies" -- armies of reflexive voters who have no influence over actual legislation, but who must be told what they want to hear! Even if it is completely different than the effective agenda of the party's true rulers.

In the case of fiscal responsibility, this clash is obvious. Progressives, clutching a long laundry list of causes that need addressing right now, don't want to be told that borrowing must be handled judiciously and responsibly. So their party's record of actual fiscal prudery is something that Democratic leaders scarcely mention. And it is pretty obvious why GOP leaders want to talk loudly about balancing budgets, to distract Republican ground troops from their actual record, pouring deficit spending into the open mouths of the party's owners.

Or take another glaring example in today's news. The right's sudden attack upon the U.S. Export-Import Bank.  Mind you, as a Smithian libertarian, I actually dislike the institution, whose primary justification is that "every other country is doing it and we'll cripple ourselves, if we stop."  

Hm, well, I would make it a high priority to treaty-negotiate away the practice.  Still, how ironic that the tea-partiers are targeting an institution that (in fact) is completely self-financing! There is no "tax-waste" going on, at all. The underlying motive, then? That many of the exporting companies - like Boeing - tend to be technological and therefore Democratic-friendly.

== Back to immigration ==

But let's return to today's core topic. Our absurdly wrong cliches about immigration. Let me put it plain. 

Democratic presidents always beef up the U.S. Border Patrol and reduce illegal immigration, while GOP presidents almost always cripple the Border Patrol and open the floodgates of illegals. It is right there in the budgets and manpower figures, with one exception --

-- that G.W. Bush started down the usual GOP path, slashing Border Patrol funding during his first 6 months in office… but then had to increase it, prodigiously, after the traumas known as 9/11.

If you actually thought about it, you would understand why both parties’ actions regarding immigration run diametrically opposite to their reputations and rhetoric. Dems actually benefit from LEGAL immigration, which increases the potential numbers of loyal union members and eventual voters. Hence, in fact, democrats have always been softies about increasing the flow of fully sanctioned and documented immigrants. Again, it is legal immigration that democrats have always favored.

Unions do not want illegals undermining wages… which is something the top GOP masters do want. Again, just so your mind cannot evade the cognitive dissonance, dig it well: democratic presidents beef up the Border Patrol and are actually pretty fierce with deportations. This was true of Carter, Clinton and Obama. 

If you hate the ethnic changes taking place in America, fine, but go after the dems for legal immigration, which they did open wider, and stop obsessing on the much smaller illegal influx, which democrats actively combat and which your own party has relentlessly aided and abetted. 

(But if you are that kind of person, logic is wasted on you, anyway.)

Do you start to see the picture? How often what the parties do will run diametrically opposite to the malarkey they feed their rhetoric constituencies? And more the fool you are, for falling for it. 

Go listen to Weird Al sing "Everything you know is wrong." Acceptance is the beginning of the road to openminded recovery.

== Another "opposite" ==

More examples? The same cognitive dissonance between cliched expectation and reality can be found in “de-regulation of excessive government bureaucracy.”

Which party talks and talks and talks about that? About eliminating overly burdensome and competition-reducing rules and agencies? Which one wants to ease the burdens of over-regulation? You think you have that sussed?

 Ah, Republicans do talk about de-regulation, incessantly. But does the GOP ever do anything about it? Even during the many years (e.g. 2001 through 2009) when they held every lever of power -- executive, legislative and judicial?  Go on, name those great de-regulatory feats that came about during those years. Take your time and be thorough. We can wait right here till you get back....

(Be sure - while you're at-it - and ponder the half a trillion dollars in no-bid "emergency" contracts that the Bush-Cheney Administration signed with family-crony companies. Ah, the party that favors free-market competition.)

In fact: ironically, it was the democrats who disbanded the ICC (Interstate Commerce Commission) that Ayn Rand deemed the worst example of “captured” government, helping railroad moguls to collude and destroying market vigor. It was democrats who disbanded the horrid old Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) and restored airline competition. 

Democrats performed the single greatest act of de-regulatory unshackling in human history, when they unleashed the wild-open Internet upon the world, with almost no supervision or regulation at all! (It was Sen. Al Gore's bill that did that.)  Not to mention lesser events, like Obama opening U.S. space-launch services to competitive bidding. Or the largely-liberal-led efforts, in many blue states, to rein in - at long last - the horrifically insane regulatory madness called the War on Drugs.

In fact, Democrats did nearly all of the major U.S. deregulations of the last century... except in one industry.

Finance. Wall Street and banking. I will grant that Republicans have actually put their de-regulatory rhetoric into practice in that one sector. Not once but many times.  

Now, some critics have claimed that regulation of finance is desperately necessary to prevent collusion, cheating and massive raids on our economy. Adam Smith as much as said so. Indeed, rampage raids on our wallets -- with accompanying market collapse -- did happen right after every GOP-led slashing of supervision in securities and finance, especially in the 1920s, the 1980s and the mid-2000s. A cynic might conclude that's the goal! But let us at least admit that this is a counter-example to my assertion - that Republicans never actually de-regulate. Securities and finance: there is an industry where the GOP did follow up their rhetoric with action.

And let me further avow that democrats are also the fellows who eagerly rush to apply new regulations! For every time they slashed an agency or rule, they surely compensated by legislating two, somewhere else.  Liberals are like that. And sure that's one cliche truism that does have some validity. I do have a libertarian side and it squirms when I see progressives declaring a need for solutions! Then following that with a demand that each fix be... well... meddlesome.

Elsewhere I have attributed this frenzy of erecting - and demolishing - tweaks upon society to a matter of personality.  Democrats and liberals are not so much statists as they are manic, constantly having to do something about problems!  Yes there are problems. Still, the manic trait is at-best... grating.

Moreover, personality explains why Republicans grumble so much, but never actually do anything, leading the laziest and most useless Congresses in U.S. history.  They are the depressive side of our national bipolar disorder.

== Why does no one ever notice? ==

And so the question is raised… why do all the pundits and journalists and pols and online yammerers never even glance at any of these horridly opposite-to-true cliches?  

Again, the answer is simple. Rhetoric and symbolism always trump fact-based appraisal. 

Left wingers do not want to face the fact that democratic presidents are strong at the border and fiscally cautious, and sometimes retire obsolete programs. Tea Partiers would rather rail against illegal immigration -- a problem that their party leaders have always fostered, because it seems less racist and nasty to go after undocumented law-breakers than the much larger legal flood, which the democrats did set in motion!

We are slaves to cliches. And the news media is complicit.

Hidden factors in the rush to immigration reform

Lest there be any misunderstanding, I favor immigration reform, under the general outlines that have been proposed both by President Obama and the recent bipartisan committee in the US Senate.  After a shellacking at the polls, Republicans now seem ready to join in resolving an array of issues.  Still, I'm less interested in discussing this consensus than factors that the public may not know about.

Four years ago, I made this topic #11 of my "Twelve Suggestions for the New Administration." At the time, I pointed out a number of ironies in: Control the Borders. Then, in October 2011, I offered a detailed appraisal of the immigration debate: the place for you to go for facts and figures and depth that I am not presenting here. Today, we'll concisely get to the heart of it.

First off - Republicans have always talked tough about controlling U.S. borders and reducing illegal immigration. while democrats are known for bringing up compassion, amnesty and all of that, implying a gentler border stance.  In practice, when they take power, each party tends to act in ways diametrically opposite to its  polemical position.

In 1993, as one of his first acts upon entering office, Bill Clinton doubled the number of field agents in the Border Patrol. In sharp contrast, one of George W. Bush's first endeavors was to savagely undercut that service, citing "budget reasons." (In fact, he did this tellingly, lowering our guard before the attacks of 9/11.) What did Barack Obama do, after taking the oath in 2009?  Exactly the same as Bill Clinton. Across the entire first Obama Administration, border enforcement was pushed hard, almost equalling economic factors in accounting for a steep drop in illegal border crossings.

It all sounds counter-intuitive, of course. Why would the parties say one thing, for appearances, yet do the opposite? The reasons are simple. Democrats like legal immigration, which results in lots of new voters and new union workers, while illegals drain resources, get embroiled (normally against their will) into crime, undercut union labor and prevent domestic programs from achieving full effectiveness.

On the other hand, Republicans -- well, not your neighbors, but some influential people near the top of the party -- like access to pools of cheap, undocumented labor that won't talk back for exactly those same reasons. Only when border state citizens began getting riled did the GOP start offering tough words on immigration. And words, for the most part, is all they ever supplied during the long eras when they operated the entire government. Where it comes to border security, GOP presidents going back to Reagan counted on their partisans to pay attention only to words, never actions.

This is what I predicted, back in 2009: "I fully expect the same political factors to apply under Barack Obama. Watch for a serious attempt to increase cross-border trade and legal human contacts, but to crack down on illegal crossers and smuggling. This change of emphasis also happens to be a good idea for enhancing homeland security. And those who are offended by this illustrate that "liberal" and "leftist" really are different terms that apply to different sets of political passions that are only allied part of the time. We must not assume that the former have to always cater to the latter."

== The Panorama in early 2013 for Reform ==

So what are we seeing in the new proposals for Immigration Reform?  Most attention goes to the "path to legalized status and then citizenship" and left-right arguments over details, like how easy the path should be and how big should be the fines that undocumented folks pay for having broken our laws... on the way toward becoming welcomed neighbors and fellow nortamericanos. 

I am interested in all of that, but fairly content with the bipartisan consensus we see forming. Indeed, it is wondrous to once again view pragmatic argument and negotiation take place.  Perhaps congressfolk will acquire a taste for it.

Regarding border security, I cannot suppress a giggle over watching the GOP being forced to actually vote for the very measures they have long loudly screamed for - even though in practice they spent decades blocking improved border security with every trick they could muster.  This victory for the Democratic Party (and unions) won't be viewed that way by the press or public, but it has to be galling to the top lords of conservatism, who strove for so long to keep the U.S. border weak and porous.

What is missing, however, is much public attention to legal immigration.  I have always found this strange, since legal immigration has been vastly more responsible for the ethnic changes taking place in the United States across the last generation. While Red America has fulminated against undocumented entries, those with perfectly good documents constituted the main flood, in the greatest influx of new faces to America since the 1890s. Why has this not been raised much in arch-conservative circles? Perhaps because to do so would lay bare some of the deeply racist and intolerant attitudes that underly fear of a changing America.  (Again, see my 2011 article for a detailed appraisal of population trends and why the parts of the U.S. who are most angry over immigration ignore the kind that actually affects numbers.)

Now, at last, a few aspects of legal immigration are being discussed. Especially a long desired ability to keep some of the wonderful students who get post-graduate tech degrees here, then were kicked out when they asked to stay and put those skills to work in the U.S.. That lunacy may end, at last.  Likewise there might be more visas for the world's smartest people to come to the U.S. to do research or start businesses.

As I said in 2009: "Let there be no mistake, I am proud of America's heritage -- and present-day status -- as the world's leader (by far) in offering opportunities to hope-filled people from all over the globe. Diversity is our greatest strength and immigrants often give far more than they take. 

"Nevertheless, as a nation, we have a right to have immigration be orderly and legal, at a pace that doesn't overstrain services. So long as we continue to be generous and prudently open, overall, immigration can even be tuned to benefit America in directly tangible ways. For example, by restoring somewhat of a merit system, especially when it comes to skilled workers that our industries desperately need, or allowing some of the foreign graduate students who we have (expensively) trained to stay and add their brilliance to our stew. After all, half a million people is half a million people. There's no rule of honor or nature that says we can't look for some of them to enter as a win-win deal."

Sound prophetic, for something written in 2009?

== Where Obama gets it wrong ==

One area where I sharply disagree with President Obama is his proposal to increase the number of people who immigrate through family sponsorship.  That may make me sound callous and unsympathetic!  But please pause and ponder before you judge. Yes, by all means re-unite parents and minor children or minor siblings.  Beyond that though... you start a chain cascade in which the newly admitted uncle then brings a wife who brings her sister who brings her husband, whose brother... it becomes completely arbitrary, a chain of entitlement without end.

It isn't even fair in a humanitarian sense! Note that families here can already send home remittances, or provide other means of immigration help. So those relatives already have tons more luck than their neighbors in the village, back in Guiana or Togo or Timor. They are already benefiting more than other folks overseas who don't have cousins in the U.S.

What about those other people in the old countries, not lucky enough to already have US resident cousins? Don't they deserve a chance, too?  Shouldn't the millions of others get to roll the dice?  Must luck be kept limited to arbitrary family chains? Isn't that just another form of inherited privilege?

Frankly,  I see no reason why other traits should not factor in, like industriousness, eagerness, cleverness, or attributes that indicate a real possibility of leveraging sudden luck into enriching both the new and old countries.  Heck, I'd deem a worldwide essay contest, or art or performance competition, or para-olympics, to be far more fair. More likely to benefit both America and those competing, whose vigor would prove them truly American in spirit.  Indeed, so long as the numbers stay the same, who is anyone to call my proposed method of choosing less compassionate?

(Ponder it almost through a sci fi lens: an avidly watched television show, in which 10% of our immigration slots go to those who present world audiences with something - anything(!) - extraordinary or excellent. From juggling to a tear-jerking lamentation of poor luck, to an ethnic song or dance, to a poem that tears our hearts out, to acts of goodness that transformed their home villages. And that world audience votes! And the prize is something coveted... that ALL the finalists win, after all. A home in the Land of Opportunity. 

(What an underlying message! One that could not be conveyed by a trillion dollars of propaganda. After all, how bad can the Evil Empire be... if everyone wants to go there?)

America deserves plaudits for being the nation of fresh starts. It is a moral claim that can never be taken away from us. Together with Canada, we take in more than half of the world's immigrants and it has been our glory.

But we have to use some basis to choose among those wanting in, doing so in an orderly and rational way -- one that is both generous and in keeping with our own best interests. Always look for the positive sum.  The win-win...

==
See also: Political Idea Bomb: Re-jigger the Immigration Debate  

Cracks are appearing all over...

After that emotion-drenched (nay, bilious!) fury over the availability of pedagogically useful programming languages -- Why Johnny Can't Code -- (who’d have thunk that my little poke would provoke such a stunning storm of opinion and ...occasionally... outright rage!) -- I am glad to be switching back to a much calmer and more rational topic -- politics.

1) Cognitive Dissonance on the Border: Political assumptions are terrible things. You simply cannot shake them with facts. This week, the GOP controlled Congress is making great big drumbeats over IMMIGRATION and Border Control. Naturally, the gerrymander-radicalized House is more extreme than the Senate, demanding instant sealing of borders with surpertech walls and rounding up 12 million illegals for deportation. How conservative! How Republican! What outrageous Baloney!

What I find stunning is that nobody seems even interested in hurling the accusation of hypocrisy... even though hypocrisy is known to be one of the most devastatingly effective charges you can fling at a political opponent. To the best of my knowledge, I am the absolute only voice in media who has been relentlessly pointing out that:

(i) Bill Clinton doubled the number of active Border Patrol field agents as almost his first act in office, while

(ii) George W. Bush, upon becoming president, savagely cut the same agency!

Moreover, Bush KEPT on cutting till the border tsunami began bothering even his most loyal redstate supporters.

These facts are clear, stunningly blatant. Obvious. (Remember Operation Gatekeeper?)
Overwhelmingly powerful and potentially effective. So why does absolutely nobody ever mention them? I can only guess that cognitive dissonance prevents people from even allowing these datums into their minds. Even though the economic explanations are obvious. One supposes that liberals fear mentioning it lest they sound racist. Hence they do not use a bullet that would smite the enemy right between the eyes.

I despair.

See my article: Control the Borders.


2) there is much buzz over an article in Washington Monthly called Time For Us To Go: Conservatives on why the GOP should lose in 2006.

”With Republicans controlling Congress and the White House, conservatives these days ought to be happy, but most aren’t. They see expanding government, runaway spending, Middle East entanglements, and government corruption, and they wonder why, exactly, the country should be grateful for Republican dominance. Some accuse Bush and the Republicans today of not being true conservatives. Others see a grab bag of stated policies and wonder how they cohere. Everyone thinks something’s got to change.

“Now seven prominent conservatives dare to speak the unspeakable: They hope the Republicans lose in 2006. Well, let’s be diplomatic and say they’d prefer divided government—soon. (Perhaps that formulation will fool Dennis Hastert.) Of course, all of them wish for the long-term health of conservatism, and most are loyal to the GOP. What they also believe, however, is that even if a Speaker Pelosi looms in the wings, sometimes the best remedy for a party gone astray is to give it a session in the time-out chair.

Spread word. Refer your conservative friends to articles by Christopher Buckley, Bruce Bartlett, Joe Scarborough, William A. Niskanen, Bruce Fein, Jeffrey Hart and Richard A. Viguerie.

These defections do little good, one at a time. It is in groups like these, in shotgun blasts, that they give me hope for the soul and manhood of American Conservatism. Hope that some conservatives may actually have enough character to do what liberals did, during the Miracle of 1947.

To stand up. To put their nation and civilization first. Ahead of reflex dogma, graft and loyalty to monsters.


3) Teacher won't shave until bin Laden caught. EPHRATA, Washington (AP) -- After the September 11 terrorist attacks, Gary Weddle followed the news so closely he forgot to shave. After a week he decided not to shave until Osama bin Laden was caught or killed. Nor has Weddle, 46, who expected the al Qaeda leader to be caught within a month or so, trimmed his facial hair in the succeeding five years as he went from substitute teacher to science instructor at Ephrata Middle School. At the start of each school year he gives students a brief explanation of his beard, which stretches more than a foot and has started turning gray.


4) On Slate see: THERE ARE NO MORE TROOPS TO SEND TO IRAQ. By Daniel Benjamin and Michèle A. Flournoy. Things that I say for two, three years http://www.davidbrin.com/neocons.html finally make it into public awareness... and am I ever cited? Ever? Ah well, it’s good to see this finally mentioned.

”Earlier this week, in a Washington Post , William Kristol and Rich Lowry called on the Bush administration to send more troops to Iraq...It isn't clear that any conceivable increase in troops could stem the tide of sectarian violence, but it is, at least, a serious argument and a welcome counterpoint to the White House's incessant calls for staying a course that is leading to disaster.
The only problem with Kristol and Lowry's recommendation is that it is premised on an illusion: In fact, there are no more troops to send to Iraq.

“That is the unmistakable message of an Army briefing making the rounds in Washington. According to in-house assessments, fully two-thirds of the Army's operating force, both active and reserve, is now reporting in as "unready"—that is, they lack the equipment, people, or training they need to execute their assigned missions. Not a single one of the Army's Brigade Combat Teams—its core fighting units—currently in the United States is ready to deploy... etc.”

The only thing more mind-boggling than this treason is that the dems are LETTING them get away with saying “we’re safer”, when the GOP has overseen the steepest decline in US readiness in any of our lifetimes.

I am still going to fight like hell for the dems to retake Congress. (For the sake of civilization.) But if they don’t start taking seriously the plight of the US Officer Corps... and the sincere, dedicated women and men who serve under them... then who will?


5) Register voters. Now.


FINALLY.... if any of you did as asked, and subscribed to Baen’s UNIVERSE Magazine, you are no doubt by now thrilled by the prodigious amount of high quality SF you’ve found there! If you liked the hilarious and groaner-filled SF comedy I’ve been serializing there, I am recruiting a small number of horrific punsters to look over Part III. Just a few. If you’ve enjoyed the 1st two parts and have already had a few evil thoughts and awful twists, write to me. It may be your lucky day.

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