April 2006 – Page 2

If You Build It, They Won’t Come

Charles Krauthammer has a reputation for being one of the smartest political commentators around.

In a recent column, he argued the case that:

Every sensible immigration policy has two objectives: (1) to regain control of our borders so that it is we who decide who enters, and (2) to find a way to normalize and legalize the situation of the 11 million illegals among us.

He went on to argue that the way to achieve objective (1) is to build a wall, and the grounds on which he argued it–or part of the grounds–were interesting: It’s the compassionate solution.

GET THE STORY.

There are other ways to stop illegal immigrants from coming to this country, such as making their lives in this country so difficult that they won’t want to come here anymore, or slapping American citizens who employ them with harsh penalties that actually get enforced, but these would cause human suffering needlessly.

The most human solution, to this line of thought, is to simply build a barrier. No barrier is perfect, but if you make it hard enough to get past then most people won’t try and the tidal wave of illegal aliens coming into this country now will be slowed to a trickle.

And walls don’t hurt people. They don’t cause suffering.

Certainly, if people bang their heads against walls, that’ll hurt, and if the wall is too short and they try climbing it or knocking part of it down or burrowing under it they may hurt themselves, but that is dwarfed by the suffering that would be caused by the alternative ways of diminishing the flood of illegal aliens.

Unless one is committed to the idea that America should willingly absorb an unlimited number of illegal aliens (something Catholic teaching does not require) then it looks like the most merciful way to stem the tide is to simply build a wall (or series of walls, augmented by patrols).

At least it’s the most merciful means that America has within its power to do.

An even more merciful thing would be for the Mexican government to reform itself, end its corruption, stop encouraging illegal immigration to the United States, and open up its economy so that people in Mexico will have economic opportunities at home and won’t feel the need to flee their country.

Those are things that the American government can encourage the Mexican government to do, but they’re not within the American government’s power. It takes two to tango, as they say.

What is within the American government’s power is building a wall, and that is looking like the most merciful thing that we know we will be able to do.

A while back I read a statement issued by some Mexican bishops (not sure if it was the whole conference or not) that patronizingly said America should not build such a wall because, they said, such a wall would not work.

This, of course, was completely disingenuous.

They know that a wall would work, which is why they were advocating against it being built. It wouldn’t stop every single illegal alien from coming into the country, but it doesn’t have to. It only has to hold back the tsunami we’re currently experiencing.

If someone has a better proposal–that can be realistically achieved and isn’t just a pipe dream–for how to stop the flow of illegal immigrants, I’d love to hear it, but for now a wall is looking like the most practical, most merciful thing that I can think of.

If you’d like to make a proposal to address this problem, please do so. It needs to have three qualities:

1. It is more compassionate than building a wall (including more compassionate for Americans, meaning that it doesn’t required them to bear huge costs that are far larger than the cost of building and patrolling a wall).
2. It will actually work.
3. It is something that the U.S. has in its power to do (i.e., it doesn’t depend on what Mexico does, since their government has shown itself to be a bad faith partner in solving this problem).

Please argue why your proposal fits each of these criteria.

Whatever turns out to be the best way stop illegal immigration, we’ve go to do something that is effective. Regardless of what happens to the illegal aliens already in this country–whether they’re given amnesty or not (and I’m virtually certain that they will be)–we simply cannot continue taking ineffective measures at securing our borders, for it will only encourage more illegal immigration.

Frog At The Pump

In case you’ve just crawled out from under a rock — or in case you’ve been walking to work — gas prices have been soaring. I just filled my tank for $3.18/gallon. My theory for the rise in gas prices is that we’re being seeing the urban legend about cooking frogs played out at the gas pump: If you dump a frog in a pot of boiling water, he’ll jump right out. But if you put him in cool water and gradually raise the heat, you’ll have frog legs for dinner. In other words, at the gas pumps we’re being acclimated to being boiled.

GET THE STORY.

Motion For Fist Fight

Lawyers make a lot of bizarre motions in court (at least some of them do), but I don’t think I’ve ever seen one this bizarre before.

(Click to enlarge.)

READ THE WHOLE THING (AND THE RESPONSE BY THE OTHER SIDE)
(CHT: Southern Appeal)

Be sure to note the part where the part about having the lawyers drunk and stoned friends present so they don’t get beat up too bad.

Hammer Into Nail

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a freaky scary dude. He’s a true religious zealot who’s theology is likely to lead to world war if he gets his way.

I mean, liberals back in the 1980s often tried to portray Ronald Reagan–a mild Presbyterian–as if he were an apocalyptic visionary, but Ahmadinejad is the real deal!

He’s said and done things that suggest that he is a divine messenger who is preparing the way for the return of the Hidden Imam–Shi’ite Islam’s semi-Messianic child figure, who is believed to have been in hiding for the last thousand years but who will return in connection with an apocalyptic conflict.

The former executive editor of Iran’s largest daily newspaper (who now lives in Europe) has an interesting article spelling out Ahmadinejad’s religious vision and how it plays into the current Iranian nuclear situation.

EXCERPTS:

Last Monday [now the Monday before last], just before he announced that Iran had gatecrashed "the nuclear club", President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad disappeared for several hours. He was having a khalvat (tête-à-tête) with the Hidden Imam, the 12th and last of the imams of Shiism who went into "grand occultation" in 941.

According to Shia lore, the Imam is a messianic figure who, although in hiding, remains the true Sovereign of the World. In every generation, the Imam chooses 36 men, (and, for obvious reasons, no women) naming them the owtad or "nails", whose presence, hammered into mankind’s existence, prevents the universe from "falling off". Although the "nails" are not known to common mortals, it is, at times, possible to identify one thanks to his deeds. It is on that basis that some of Ahmad-inejad’s more passionate admirers insist that he is a "nail", a claim he has not discouraged. For example, he has claimed that last September, as he addressed the United Nations’ General Assembly in New York, the "Hidden Imam drenched the place in a sweet light".

Last year, it was after another khalvat that Ahmadinejad announced his intention to stand for president. Now, he boasts that the Imam gave him the presidency for a single task: provoking a "clash of civilisations" in which the Muslim world, led by Iran, takes on the "infidel" West, led by the United States, and defeats it in a slow but prolonged contest that, in military jargon, sounds like a low intensity, asymmetrical war.

According to this analysis, spelled out in commentaries by Ahmadinejad’s strategic guru, Hassan Abassi, known as the "Dr Kissinger of Islam", President George W Bush is an aberration, an exception to a rule under which all American presidents since Truman, when faced with serious setbacks abroad, have "run away". Iran’s current strategy, therefore, is to wait Bush out. And that, by "divine coincidence", corresponds to the time Iran needs to develop its nuclear arsenal, thus matching the only advantage that the infidel enjoys.

The author goes on to predict that Iran will feign just enough compliance with the U.N. to stave off a military attack for the next two years, so they can run out Bush’s term in office. Then, with a new, weaker-willed president in office, it’ll be full speed ahead.

We’ll have to see whether they pursue that strategy or whether they really are hell-bent-for-leather crazy on their nuclear program.

What the author doesn’t go into is something that we’ve brought up before here on the blog: Bush knows (or should know) that no matter what happens in Afghanistan and Iraq, if he leaves office without stopping Iran from getting the Bomb then his presidency will be viewed as a dismal failure. It doesn’t matter whether they get the Bomb after he leaves office or not. He will be viewed as someone who (like Clinton) allowed a horrible external threat to fester and grow due to his indecisive action. He’ll even be viewed as someone who hamstrung himself with a foolish venture into Iraq when the real threat was Iran.

It doesn’t matter whether that’s fair or not, that’s how it’ll be perceived.

So the question is: What will Bush do if the Iranian government tries a play-for-time strategy?

Will he drive the hammer into the nail?

Only time will tell. In the meanwhile,

GET THE STORY.

The Devil’s Advocate

If you thought the recent efforts to rehabilitate Judas with a so-called "Gospel of Judas" were strange, then take a look at this:

"A former Jesuit turned university professor has set himself an ambitious project: rehabilitating the devil.

"Henry Ansgar Kelly says Satan is the most maligned figure in history and has endured 17 centuries of unjustified character assassination.

"’For 1700 years Satan has been the enemy of God, whereas in the Bible he works for God, he’s his prime minister or attorney-general, in charge of policing the world,’ Professor Kelly said.

GET THE STORY.

God himself didn’t seem all that appreciative of his alleged "prime minister’s" efforts, as I recall:

"[The devil] was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies" (John 8:44).

Uh-Oh.

Mark Twain And The Book Of Mormon

During a trip out West, Mark Twain took along The Book of Mormon to while away the travel hours. He didn’t think much of its literary style, but he did find it useful as a cure for insomnia:

"All men have heard of the Mormon Bible, but few except the ‘elect’ have seen it, or, at least, taken the trouble to read it. I brought away a copy from Salt Lake. The book is a curiosity to me, it is such a pretentious affair, and yet so ‘slow,’ so sleepy; such an insipid mess of inspiration. It is chloroform in print. If Joseph Smith composed this book, the act was a miracle — keeping awake while he did it was, at any rate. If he, according to tradition, merely translated it from certain ancient and mysteriously-engraved plates of copper, which he declares he found under a stone, in an out-of-the-way locality, the work of translating was equally a miracle, for the same reason.

"The book seems to be merely a prosy detail of imaginary history, with the Old Testament for a model; followed by a tedious plagiarism of the New Testament. The author labored to give his words and phrases the quaint, old-fashioned sound and structure of our King James’s translation of the Scriptures; and the result is a mongrel — half modern glibness, and half ancient simplicity and gravity. The latter is awkward and constrained; the former natural, but grotesque by the contrast. Whenever he found his speech growing too modern — which was about every sentence or two — he ladled in a few such Scriptural phrases as ‘exceeding sore,’ ‘and it came to pass,’ etc., and made things satisfactory again. ‘And it came to pass’ was his pet. If he had left that out, his Bible would have been only a pamphlet."

GET THE STORY.

(Note: This link does not constitute an endorsement of the host site. Refer to JA.org’s Rules 6 and 7. Nod to Once Upon a Time… for the link.)

If you’re interested in reading the book in which the excerpted essay is found, CLICK HERE.

For more about Mark Twain, CLICK HERE. I especially liked the following quote attributed by Wikipedia to Twain:

"It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them."

How Abortion Dies

You’re looking at a picture of the death of abrtion (click to enlarge).

This is a map prepared by USA Today of what would happen in the immediate aftermath of The Evil Decision being overturned.

The light colored states (think: those on the Side of Light) would be expected based on their current laws to move to curb abortion sharply. Some even have trigger laws in place that would kick in as soon as The Evil Decision is overturned.

The dark colored states (think: those on the Dark Side) would move to protect it.

Those in the middle are well, in the middle.

But it’s still the beginning of the end for abortion. This is the lay of the land in the immediate aftermath of when we can drive a stake thorugh the heart of Roe.

But the map won’t stay this way forever.

The light states will get lighter. Because they will have fewer abortions, the Roe Effect will intensify and their populations will rise. They will therefore acquire more legal representatives and have more pro-life folks in them at the same time.

The states in the middle will also get lighter, because the Roe Effect will continue in them, and they may even pass some modest abortion curbing measures that would intensify the effect.

Eventually, the dark states will not be able to compete with a move to add an amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and one will get added, ending abortion in the United States. They also may get lighter due to cross-pollenation from the light states and because even in the heart of darkness the Roe Effect will continue to work.

Make no mistake: This battle will be messy, there will be advances and losses, and it will take decades.

But what you’re looking at is . . . the Beginning of the End for abortion.

Bring it on, baby! Bring it on!

GET THE STORY.

The Conservative Christian Environmentalist

Journalist and blogger Rod Dreher has a thoughtful article on how environmentalism and Christian conservatism are not mutually exclusive concepts.

"For too long, conservatives have ceded political efforts to care for creation to liberals. We Christian conservatives are finally recognizing that conservation is a matter of moral and spiritual integrity. And we’re learning that the challenge facing humankind from climate change dwarfs the narcissism of the usual left-right politics.

"Politics, however, is the primary way to address a challenge to the commons this massive — and politics won’t shift until our paradigm for thinking and talking about the environment does. The responsibility for that lies with open-minded and imaginative folks from both the liberal and conservative camps — men and women who care more about conserving the natural world and the human civilization dependent on it than they do about protecting their political purity and fundraising base.

"Bottom line: When people like me start to believe Earth Day is for us, too, the earth will move under Washington’s feet. But as long as cultural perceptions keep Earth Day a sectarian holiday for secular liberals, the pace of political change will be, alas, glacial."

GET THE STORY.