M. (no relation) Simon asks if someone’s been whispering in “The Hammer’s” ear.
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While it is true that Republicans (especially talk show folks) sometimes engage in attacking the character of their opponents (moreso when the Clinton administration was in fact filled with persons of bad character), this pales in response to the extreme accusations widely accepted by the press attacks on republicans by the left.
When someone says that Bush went into the war to give profit to “business buddies/backets/puppet string pullers/…,” that person is accusing Bush of being a mass murderer for profit. Same when the attacks are made, even more frequently, on Cheney. But the press merely prints these fascistic fabulations without comment on their gravity or extremism.
Does anyone remember the publicity given to the SR-71 “October surprise” accusations about Bush Senior.
The same kind of attacks occur against anyone questioning the left. Post to a leftist blog and see how many of the responses are ad hominem.
To the left, at least in public, there is no difference between a person’s public position and that person’s character. If the person is in favor of business, they must be doing it for personal profit. If they are against a welfare program, they must personally be mean spirited. If they *dare* to question the character of their opponent, even when justified (such as when Clinton was running in 1992), then *they* are intolerant.
Like so many things in the area of ideas in this country, the MSM has allowed the left to exceed by far in this vicious tactic.
I should have added… spend a while listening to “Air America” to hear this phenomenon in its full glory. Just don’t buy from their sponsors
You’re sure right about the tactic of impugning motives, John. It’s a backhanded compliment to conservative ideas, that the left invariably goes after the person who state them, rather than the ideas themselves. It’s rich soil, since if you dig deep enough, you’ll always find the carnal animal at the bottom, hungry for freedom from all constraint.
John:
I agree with you [did you hear how Dean says he wants to "use" Schaivo?]….. but there are people on the right that can also be obnoxious.
I dared to suggest to one such guy that maybe some Mexicans were coming to the US to work jobs, such as field work that Americans did not want and he told me to shove it up my ass.
I tried to tell him that we were on the same side and he would have none of it.
Then his buddies jumped me. By the time the argument was over I told them that people like them were the best friends the ACLU ever had.
They were vicious with me just for disagreeing with them and they were not liberals. So this kind of thing can work both ways.
People need to be more tolerant and work as hard at finding solutions as they do at making the other guy feel bad.
Howlin’ Howie and the DNC/MSM machine can jabber and drool ’til the cows come home and DeLay will stay where he is. He may tone it down for a bit but not much and not for long. He’ll still be there in ’07 and Tom Daschle will still be introducing his wife to new Congressmen.
Byron York does a good job of laying out the vapidity of the Dean/Moveon/Soros/Lewis/Bing strategy in his new book. The move against DeLay is illustrative of the lack of even tactical, let alone strategic, vision within the Democratic Party.
To me from several time zones away it looks like those people are copying the Palestinians in resorting to strident hysteria (for want of a better word) to get something to stick.
This seems similar to behaviour in a debate where if everything is cordial then a discussion takes place with everyone getting in his/her argument.
When it degenerates into hysterical lying and name calling it becomes very difficult to get in a word let alone rebut the error/lie/spin.
It has been cast!
Cynic:
I agree. When it gets to the point of name calling people just want to win the argument, not find solutions.
Terrye,
You’re completely right about how people with opposing points of view can be equally uncivil in their disagreement. But the worst of it these days is that, in our ‘town square’, rudeness on the part of one political party is justified and its rancor righteously amplified by the media, while incivilities committed by the other are widely denounced, often exaggerated and even imagined! At least it seems to me, a partisan with a dog in this fight–
This kind of infantile bed-wetting about the pernicious influence of “the Joooos” really gets under my skin. Aren’t we past this kind of thing yet?
Oh, wait a minute; this is a gratuitous slam aganst Delay and the Christian right? In that case, carry on.
As you all know, the original band of “neo-cons” were a group of New York Jewish intellectuals led by Irving Kristol and Gertrude Himmelfarb.
Himmelfarb has a recent article in the Weekly Standard exploring the impact of explicitly Christian and conservative thought on the early neo-cons.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/005/213jfgtq.asp?pg=2
“For that matter, liberalism itself is more a “tendency” than a set of ideas. Goethe had said there are no “liberal ideas,” only “liberal sentiments.” But sentiments, Trilling observed, naturally and imperceptibly become ideas, and those ideas find their way into the practical world. “Tout commence en mystique,” he quoted Charles PÈßµy, “et finit en politique”–everything begins in mysticism and ends in politics. Thus liberalism is no more a party of ideas than conservatism; indeed, without the corrective of conservatism, liberal ideas become “stale, habitual, and inert.” But the best corrective to liberalism is literature, because this is “the human activity that takes the fullest and most precise account of variousness, possibility, complexity, and difficulty.”
Read The Whole Thing, as they say.
When did liberals stop reading? More specifically, what are the odds that some of the self described neo-cons linked to from this site would, or could, read T.S. Eliot and respond with anything but a contemptuous “Jesus freak!”? (Or, more likely, a “Huh?”)
Is the phrase “New York Jewish intellectual” nowdays anything but an oxymoron?
Roger, discounting the possibility of namechange at Ellis Island (which is one reason I don’t identify with my True Name strongly enough to use it for blogging) you might want to look deeper into the possibility you are indeed related. M. Simon wears a hat for the same reason you do.
Mr. Simon (not Roger) writes:
“Do you suppose that some one has shown him the results of the current phase of the culture wars and it is not positive for the Republican Party?
He seems to have toned down his “they hate baby Jesus” rhetoric.”
Let’s see some of that culture war data, and some “they hate baby Jesus” quotes from leading Republican culture warriors.
Otherwise, I might think Mr.Moore’s post is a cheap smear.
Charlotte:
I would tend to agree but so far the people who have told me to shove it up my ass, piss off and shut yer yap were all voting for the same people. I just did not think that allowing armed civilians to shoot at unarmed nannies and lettuce pickers was going to help the situation.
There was no common ground whatsoever. I am a piece of s*** who does not believe in protecting my country. end of story and it seems there is nothing I can do or say short of forgive me you are right and I don’t deserve to live that is going to change any minds in that group. In fact right now a lot of the people with this mindset think Bush should be impreached because he is “kissing ass for that coc******* Vincente Fox”.
This is not to make excuses for the Democratic Underground crowd or anything of the sort. It is only to point out that folks like this do harm to both sides of the debate and I think sometimes we just kind of overlook them on the right and tell ourselves that the really scary people are on the other side. The really scary thing to me is that it is getting harder and harder to tell them apart.
Terrye
“I just did not think that allowing armed civilians to shoot at unarmed nannies and lettuce pickers was going to help the situation.”
Drifting off-topic here, but do you have any cites for when and where this is being “allowed”?
Again, you’re right about everyday people, Terrye, and good lord what company you keep!
I was addressing how the MSM seem to impugn the motives, rhetoric and actions of one party and celebrate the in-your-face rudeness and mean-spirited illogic on the other side. Btw, you and I probably agree about the Mexican immigration situation (and I’m glad I speak enough Spanish to communicate with some of our undocumented “guests”).
The Minutemen aren’t nut cases…they’re just getting tired of hollering for a little order around the border…and are trying to get some attention. They know it’s all symbolic, and will affect no numbers.
Border laxity is a BIG issue wrt to terrorism, but to excise illegal Mexican immigration from our economy just now would be like cutting out a cancer that has spread through 90% of the body. Would the patient survive?
ìTerri Schiavo is not brain-dead; she talks and she laughs, and she expresses happiness and discomfort. Ö It wonít take a miracle to help Terri Schiavo; it will only take the medical care and therapy that all patients deserve.î
TOM DELAY,
http://majorityleader.gov/News.asp?FormMode=Detail&ID=411
flenser:
I am not going to go through this again. really.
There was a discussion regarding the fact that civilians were armed and there had been a case where some people were threatened. I just said I thought the border issue was important and needed to be dealt with but I thought that most of the aliens were here to work and were not criminals. And I was afraid that someone would get hurt.
The response was that they were all criminals and so it should be alright to go after them with guns. I also meantioned that I thought most border guards were overworked and tried to do their jobs. And that it was not fair to criticize them when their job was so hard and the problem was an old one very complicated. I also do not think that law enforcement people, as a general rule want the help of armed civilians. I might as well have painted a bulls eye on me.
Things went down hill from there.
Like I said I really don’t appreciate being called names just because I disagree with someone.
I am not saying all the minute men are anything, I am saying that there are some blogs where a rational conversation on the subject is not possible.
Steve:
Oh please. I had to hear so many people say this woman was on life support, when she was not and say she was brain dead, when she was not that this issue of cherry picking is not very useful.
Besides to hear Howard Dean tell it using Terri Shiavo’s death is a fine and dandy thing for Democrats so maybe you had better give heed to that old cliche about rock throwing people living in glass houses.
Tom DeLay and Tom Harkin were on the same side of this sad case and the woman is dead so maybe it is time we stopped this.
charlotte:
I think they need to use the guest worker program Bush talked about but in order for it to work they do need to get the day to day situation more under control.
There are just so many levels. Sometimes the locals can detain them, sometimes not. I think that in CA they are finally letting local law enforcement detain people, but in some circumstances it has to be INS.
It kind of reminds me of the 911 situation where the right hand not only did not know what the left hand was doing, there were times when they were actually working against each other.
I think that some of the jobs might be picked up by Americans, but I tried to hire seasonal labor in agriculture back when I farmed and I ended up going with new equipment because I could not find a hay crew. no way no how. I got a used baler that made big round bales so that I did not have to continue to beg teenagers that might or might not show up to come work in the field.
Terrye,
In CA it’s kind of a local option sort of thing. Very, very few illegals are picked up by local cops just because they are illegals. They have to do something that’s illegal by state law or local ordinance before the local cops are interested – maybe. If the Minutemen become effective in AZ it just pushes the problem to CA, NM or TX. The political will is just not there for the buffoons of both parties to think of taking action.
Choosing between parties is always a lesser of two evils proposition and the actual truly principled elected officials in Washington have always been able to ride in a small elevator in ample comfort. “He’s never been caught stealing more than he can carry.” is the highest encomium that I would give to 95% of our elected officials – and you’ve never heard of the ones to whom I would give even that much.
Rick Ballard, Terrye ó The LAPD and Sheriff’s were under active orders from the city and county governments NOT to cooperate with INS. I believe that has recently changed, and for the San Diego sheriff and deputies as well.
Not in AZ, tho…once pasr t the INS crust, law enforcement does not look at them. Big local issue. Of course, the Minutemen are there in large part just to make those changes, to get all levels of law-enforcement into the effort.
Well they have to deal with the fact that not all the locals are against them being here. They do go to work for somebody.
But I think that when people hear ‘illegal’, they think that means they can be arrested just for being here, but there is some argument about that.
But there needs to be coordination and cooperation between the different agencies that is for sure.
I understand theat the Minute Men are trying to bring attention to the situation but a young man was arrested in AZ for holding some men at gunpoint about 100 miles from the border. They were at a rest stop. Now he is in trouble.
Hopefully he will get out of this without any real hassle, but whenever guns are involved it just ratchets the whole thing up.
I had a farmer friend here in Indiana that accosted a couple of young men on his place. He held them at gun point until the Sheriff got there. For awhile it looked like he might be in more trouble than them. But it worked out and I hope this situation does too. I am sure the guy thought he was doing the right thing, but he scared those people.
But having farmed, Terrye, you understand how helpful the seasonal crews coming thru can be, toward the matter of “staying in business”. I’m like you, I went to round bales, weathering outside and losing 20% of themselves, just out of disgust at wrestling square bales into a barn every year, as old man age crept into my bones.
If there’s evidence that DeLay has done anything illegal, please produce it. If the House decides that he’s violated its ethics, then by all means admonish or censure him. I would ask him to please take it down a notch or two. But like the man says, politics ain’t beanball, and politics is what Tom does best. He’s got the biggest set in the Republican caucus and I only wish there were one like him in the Senate.
Do you suppose that some one has shown him the results of the current phase of the culture wars and it is not positive for the Republican Party?
What “results” is he talking about?
Here’s a little ground truth from Arizona…
First, the minuteman project is a press event. Its purpose is to shame the government into acting. For a conservative event, it has been surprisingly successful. Based on my own experience last year, it takes a major and photogenic activity to break through the iron curtain of the MSM.
Lower level Border Patrol people have been routinely giving thumbs up or other signs of approval to the minutemen. This has been reported by both FOX News and a Phoenix talk station host who is “embedded” with the minutemen.
The person who held alleged illegals at gunpoint was in no way related to the minutemen and was in a different part of the state. This happens every ohce in a while and shouldn’t be conflated with the minuteman movement.
Somehow even Terrye missed the fact that the minutemen are FORBIDDEN from engaging illegals in any way. Even the guy who gave an illegal alien food and had his picture taken next to the guy with a T-shirt was asked to leave the program.
State lawmakers are now considering local measures against illegal immigration.
As for these people not being criminals, that is nonsense. No matter how much compassion you have, you must recognize that we cannot accomodate all the poor people who want to come here to work. We have immigration laws to ration immigration appropriately (as twisted by politics, of course).
I have spoken to a number of illegals who were supporting large families and even villages back home. But that doesn’t change the danger they represent today – they are overwhelming local health services, bringing in deadly diseases, destroying property and changing our culture. Worst of all, they are incentivising ruthless operators (coyotes) and opening the doors for terrorist infiltration.
We in the border states are particularly sensitive to this issue. For now, at least, I have no problem whatsoever with the minutemen and I was annoyed with Bush for calling them vigilantes. I hope the movement spreads.
John, what’s the status of Prop 200 (I think that’s right)? Has it been struck down by the courts yet?
Hmmmm.
Frankly I think the concept that America’s economy depends on illegal aliens is ficticious. While some segments of the economy may depend on it, not the entire economy nor a major portion of it. Much of the work done is low-skill labor and consequently low-value labor.
I think what people have to consider is the *cost* associated with illegal aliens. Illegal aliens currently make up 30+% of the federal prison population. They also make up a corresponding fraction of state prison populations. Since each federal prisoner costs tens of thousands of dollars a year, is this actually a net gain when compared to any economic benefits of illegal workers?
Then there are the additional costs, beyond that of crime victims, such has vastly greater Medicaid costs, greater burden on emergency services, greater burden on social services, greater burden on welfare and, possibly the most expensive of all, a greater burden on the educational system.
As the federal No Child Left Behind program shows, there is a vast disparity between mainstream English speaking students and minority *non-English* speaking students. Almost the entire point behind NCLB is to reduce this gap in performance by pushing additional funding to schools along with performance standards.
Yet who are these students that are taking up a disproportionate amount of time, energy, teachers and money? The children of illegal aliens. In New Jersey each student costs an average of $14,000 per student/ per year. How much of that money is going to teach American students and how much is being siphoned off to teach the children of illegal aliens?
Then there’s the whole issue of “diversity”. Isn’t it amazing that the child of an illegal alien, say from Mexico and thus a “hispanic”, will have a better chance of entering an Ivy League school than your kid?
The simple question is this:
If you could know the exact dollar amount illegal aliens were costing you. How high could the cost go before you’d say “NO!”? One estimate I saw placed the cost at about $1,400 per citizen/ per year. NOT per “taxpayer”, per “citizen”. That means if you’re married with two kids, your family counts as four “citizens”.
So much are you willing to pay?
Try hiring construction and landscaping crews without some Mexican labor. Even at a Home Depot contractors’ supply outlet, I saw Spanish-English construction phrase books for their employees. Also, Mexicans are pretty phenomenal at masonry work. There needs to be a way to secure our borders against terrorists and reduce costly illegal immigration while documenting those Mexicans who work hard and who bring some skills to various industries.
Yes, Mexicans can get entry papers even now, but it’s such an involved and protracted process that most don’t bother trying. And don’t try telling me they’re loads of American teens and grown men who are willing to do menial work, all day, every day. There are some, but looking around, I don’t even see kids cutting the grass or washing the family cars, anymore. Ay, caramba, what softies we’ve become! Too much TV and talk of everyone needing to get a college edjication. Too many onerous rules and taxes on small business. The trades are suffering for it and so is our culture at large.
Back on topic, DeLay said the right thing here. I hope more Republicans say the same and show respect to their opponents, but still fight for the right side of issues. Is there any hope that Dem pols, the majority of whom applauded Michael Moore, would follow suit?
Back off topic, Belmontclub has an interesting discussion going about European (and US) demographics, immigration and policy and the political/ economic consequences to come: Les Pied Noirs
Ed and Charlotte taken together just about frame the substantive issue (less the politics-driven stagecraft). What’s missing is a “Effects of Mexican Illegal Immigration” paper. Something concise, non-ideological, data-based, comprehensive, only-literary-where-needed (the heart argument could be shortened to SOL (Statue of Liberty)). Victor Davis Hanson’s MexiCali is great–for Cali, but other states don’t have insane State legislatures. Or, not AS insane, anyway. There’s something to be said for the WWII Bracero program–I take that on faith from Kinky Friedman, the next Governor of Texas (uh, maybe).
Roger:
The immigration issue is not being handled by either party and the bury your head in the sand attitude by both sides is tragic. Our farms do need immigrants and a guest worker program that protected the immigrants from abuse is needed. And we will always have immigration in this country and it is a wonderfull thing. But it has to be controlled. Since Mexico is our closest neighbor we we always have a large percentage of mexican immigrants and that is a good thing too.
The minutemen protest is symbolic and it is being done because neither party is willing to address the issue. I live in Orange County, California and the construction buisness is staffed with a huge percentage of illegal immigrants. This is not a job that ctizens refused to do. It used to be an industry that could be a lifetime job and produce a decent middle class. I do not blame the immigrants. If I was in their shoes I would do the exact same thing. Most of them want to work and provide for their family. The Sherrifs and police in LA County were not allowed to check on immigration status. Even if they knew that an immigrant was an illegal and if they suspected that they were in one of the many gangs that have sprung up in our state they couldn’t use that knowledge to deport them. By law. This is insanity.
This country was blessed by the immigration of nations from all over the world and it has been blessed by the introduction of that energy and strength. But our current system is a weird combination of a open border system and a closed border system. It is neither fish or fowl. This is terrible for our country and terrible for the immigrants. We need to set up a logical system that has defined limits and defined rights for the people we let in. For the farming industry a guest worker program that has specific standards of treatment so the immigrants are paid for their work and are given a minimum of humane treatment is required. We can set up a number for the immigrants that we let in and it does not have to be fixed in stone so that we can respond to the economic needs of the moment. The industry that can hire non citizens must be defined and the ones that can’t should be fined for braking the law. And we need to have some form of ID so that the current practice of buying a green card in the parks for 75 bucks and thus letting buisiness off the hook because the illegal has a forged document that is so easy to get and thus lets the boss off the hook because the worker presented an ID.
I am not a nativist, I live in a county that has a large immigrant population and the vast majority fit in well and bring a positive diversity, (a natural, not state enforced)that is great. But this system of having a law where we say you can’t come in, and you are breaking the law, but we will look the other way is bad for the country and bad for the immigrants.
Amen, Kevin P.