Facilitating the invasion

Sat Nav for Mexicans illegally entering US

Would-be illegal immigrants planning to cross the desert and enter the United States on foot are to be given hand-held satellite devices by the Mexican authorities to ensure they arrive safely.
Those who get lost or fall sick during the dangerous four-day crossing will be able to activate the device, to alert frontier police on both sides of the border.

The satellite tracking service will require would-be illegals to register their intentions before setting off - a paradoxical move, given that secrecy is necessary for success - but Mexican authorities are predicting that about 200,000 devices will be handed out when the project is launched formally in the coming year.

"Our intention is to save lives," said Jaime Obregon, the coordinator for the state commission for migrants in Puebla, the Mexican state which is behind the project. "There are lots of people looking to cross and we are working with the US authorities to make sure they do not die on the way." '
[...]
According to Mexican state migrant authorities, up to 75,000 attempt the crossing every month, of whom between 50,000 and 60,000 are caught by US border patrols and sent back.

The chance of success depends greatly on the knowledge of the guide, known as a "coyote" or "desert fox". They charge between $2,000 and $10,000 per person (£1,025-£5,100).
[...]A spokesman for US Customs and Border Protection said: "We do not have any information about the Mexican government providing satellite trackers to people, but we strongly discourage encouragement to people who are attempting to cross illegally into the US."

Web site will track migration patterns
from El Universal, Mexico

The government has launched a new web site tracking the hometowns of millions of Mexicans residing in the United States, the Foreign Relations Secretariat (SRE) said Saturday.

The site, which features maps of both countries, shows how Mexican migrants tend to settle in U.S. cities where residents from their home state or town have gone before them, the SRE said in a news release.

The SRE said the information, gathered by Mexican consulates in the United States, will help people to better understand Mexican migration.''

Both of the above stories are indicative of the fact that the mass Mexican invasion is not a random, spontaneous event, but is carried out with the aid and assistance of the Mexican government, certainly, and it appears, with the knowledge and approval of 'our' government. This is also another piece of supporting evidence for the move to unite all of North America in some unholy 'North American Union.' It seems more and more as if this is a fait accompli, and they are just waiting to formalize it, and looking for an optimum time to break the news to their citizens, or should I say 'subjects'. No doubt the deniers and scoffers who insist that there is no North American Union planned will refuse to admit that likelihood; either they are spin artists who are appointed to debunk the stories and thus try to calm people's misgivings, or they are simply indoctrinated true believers who honestly think that their favorite political party or leaders can do no wrong. Either way, anyone who continues to deny that there is a move afoot to unite North America is not willing to follow the truth wherever it leads, but choosing to wish away unpleasant or difficult facts.

But one wonders why these stories tend to be leaked out in dribs and drabs; is the idea to let us know what is going on a little at a time, so that we get used to it, like the proverbial frog in warm water which is gradually heated to a boil? And will the news we receive tend to make us resigned and fatalistic, accepting the loss of our country and culture as something we cannot avoid or resist?

The Year of Shutting Up?

A question for 2007
Diana West


Diana West, as I've said here before, is one of our most perceptive commentators when it comes to Islam. She doesn't have Steyn's laff-a-minute drollery, nor does she have the pedantic tendencies of many of the 'scholarly' pundits on Islam, but she does have clarity and the ability to cut through the nonsense and PC to the simple truth.

Taking a whack at prognostication at the end of 2005, it wasn't hard to imagine, as I did, that 2006 would be a rotten year for freedom of speech. Both inside the Islamic world and, more alarmingly, outside the Islamic world, Shariah laws prohibiting criticism of Islam were already working smoothly.
[...]I called 2006 "The Year of Speaking Dangerously," and that was before anyone likely imagined seeing "Behead Those Who Insult Islam" placards on jihadist display outside the Danish Embassy in London. What kind of year will 2007 be? What I fear most is that it will turn out to be "The Year of Shutting Up." As in: Why speak dangerously when you can simply not speak at all?
In fact, the Year of Shutting Up probably began back in September when Pope Benedict famously argued that the practice of forced conversion -- key to Islamic expansion over the centuries -- is inimical to both faith and reason. The eruption of anger among Muslims at such criticism was instantaneous and severe. Just shut up, the umma exclaimed. Basically, the pope did exactly that.'' [emphasis mine]

West goes on to laud the outspokenness of Congressman Virgil Goode, and takes his liberal critics to task.

Forgoing debate, however, Mr. Goode's critics have resorted to name-calling and platitudes about "tolerance," failing utterly to notice the gross intolerance of the Islamic tradition. Worst of all, their tactics seem designed to shut up Mr. Goode, and anyone else who might follow his bold example. Will they?
It's the question of 2007. ''

It is indeed, and we will see, as Islam continues its aggressions across the globe, utilizing every available means to advance the spread of Islamic rule, whether this will in fact be the 'Year of Shutting Up.'

I can say for certain that on this blog there will be no shutting up on the subject; I will keep on sounding the alarm even to the point of wearying my faithful readers, if God allows me to continue. And of course I do all I can in the 'real world', realizing that spreading awareness is something we can do in all areas of our lives. Sometimes it calls for a little more subtlety and tact, as we have to learn to tailor the message to the listener, and to their present level of understanding, but getting the word out is of the essence, even to the apolitical people we encounter. Such people, unfortunately, are legion. I do think that people are slowly awakening to the fact that there are louring clouds on the horizon, and that our survival, or our way of life at the very least, are at stake. There is a dim awareness dawning in our country, and I think in Europe, and Australia as well. I take this as a hopeful sign, because personally I need every sign of hope I can discern out there.

Diana West fears the civilized, Western world will 'shut up' and acquiesce to the aggressions of Islam. However, we have too many like Tony Blair, who are doing worse than shutting up; they seem to be announcing their submission and dhimmitude. What else can we make of Blair's little message to Moslems on their festival, Eid?

Eid al-Adha commemorates the devotion of the prophet Abraham. It is a time when Muslims around the world come together with friends and family. It’s also a time when Muslims focus on those who are less fortunate than themselves.

At this special time for our Muslim communities we can all reflect on the tremendous contribution of Muslims to our national life over many decades.

My best wishes to you and your family. Eid Mubarak.'

To be fair, he has been issuing statements like that for several years, as has our President, to the Mohammedan 'community'.
But as Islam becomes ever more overbearing and aggressive, these kinds of sycophantic statements become more unsettling. As these countries assert greater and greater claims in our Western countries, this kissing-up and appeasing becomes repugnant and outrageous to patriotic citizens of the West.

On the subject of Islam, Tiberge over at GalliaWatch
posts a link to this survey of American Moslems, citizens of the United States, and an opinion poll taken among them a few months ago. The results, as can be seen here, indicate some very unsettling (but not unpredictable) opinions among our 'assimilated, American' Moslems.

Scroll down for comments in the link above, and it's obvious that many Americans are still stuck on the idea that 'most Moslems are law-abiding, and we can't judge them all by a few,' and so on; we all know how it goes.

For many people, 2007 may well be the 'Year of Shutting Up' , or it may be the year of toeing the line and embracing dhimmitude, in word and in deed, as our 'leaders' seem quite prepared to do.

There is always some stubborn soul who will say, when they hear of Blair's kowtowing, 'he's just saying what he has to say; it's just soft-soap, it's diplomacy'. If you insist; but just think about that phrase: 'just saying what he has to say.' In a free country, can a political leader, a head of state, no longer speak the truth? Does he 'have to say' anything to placate or appease Moslems? If so, how free is he? Is he not in fact a dhimmi, a lackey, bought and paid for, if he 'has to' say anything? Any political leader who 'has to say' anything is not a leader, but a sock puppet, as far as I can see. In the 1950s, there were states in Eastern Europe which were spoken of as 'puppet regimes', with installed 'leaders' who simply did as they were bidden by the Soviet Union. Have we reached that stage in the proud, 'free West?' And it does not matter who he or she is; if they 'have to say' something to truckle to the Moslems, the Moslems are in charge. Plain and simple. If our leaders 'have to say' what they say, are they not already under the heel of Islam?

So will 2007 be the 'Year of Shutting Up' as Diana West asks, or the 'year of saying what your masters tell you to say or else?'

In a free country, every year should be a year of speaking the truth freely, boldly, with no fear of offending someone. As long as our speech is curtailed by such considerations, we are not truly free.

In many parts of the West, including Europe and Canada, free speech is limited severely by 'hate speech' laws, and people face prosecution and imprisonment for 'offending' protected groups. I hope 2007 will not be a year in which such Orwellian laws spread further, because without the right to speak freely and without fear we will be easy prey for conquest.

I hope 2007 will be a year in which we contemplate how precious free speech is, and how very fragile it is. And having considered the fragility and preciousness of it, may we use it to best advantage while we still may; our freedom of speech will only be preserved by using it and using it well, to speak the truth openly and to spread truth freely.
Long live freedom, true freedom of speech.

Is Iran weaker than we think?

Weaker than advertised

Victor Davis Hanson thinks the Iraq Study Group is foolish to recommend that our government have talks with Iran, the reason being, that according to him, Iran is weaker than believed, and Ahmedinejad is a paper tiger.

The world of publicity-hungry Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is not expanding, but shrinking. Despite his supposedly populist credentials, his support at home and abroad will only further weaken as long as the United States continues its steady, calm and quiet pressure on him.
In Iran's city council elections last week, moderate conservative and reformist candidates defeated Ahmadinejad's vehemently anti-American slate of allies. At a recent public meeting, angry Iranian students -- tired of theocratic lunacy and repression -- shouted down their president.

Hanson recommends instead that we shun or marginalize Ahmadinejad, since he is already discredited among his own people, and on the way out. Hanson thinks we should give him the 'Gaddafi treatment' and boycott Iran, or at least isolate the regime.

Hanson then invokes the spirit of Ronald Reagan, and suggests that we emulate Reagan, who 'reached out' to dissidents in the old Soviet Union, people like Anatoly 'Natan' Sharansky and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn; creative dissidents, people who could help us bring about needed change.

As usual, Hanson is reaching, and he is making rather ill-fitting analogies. The old Soviet Union, 'Evil Empire' that it was, was not equivalent to the Islamic world, or to Ahmedinejad's Iran. The Soviet Union, despite its totalitarian ideology, still had roots in Christendom, and the larger European culture, from which matrix we in America also come. And many people within the old Soviet Union did not believe in the ideology which was imposed on them; they obeyed the outward forms of it while no longer believing in what they were taught. The whole system was a crumbling facade, bound to fall of its own weight. While it may be that Ahmadinejad's regime is also a teetering edifice, (I don't claim to be an expert on Iran), the underlying influence of Islam is still the force that we must reckon with. While there seem to be secular dissidents in Iran, they are not all of a mind to discard the Islamic rule there, or to make common cause with the infidels.

It appears that while there are numbers of dissident groups in Iran, they represent disparate philosophies and political allegiances; they seem to be unified only in their opposition to the existing regime, while they disagree on many other things. There is little likeness to Soviet dissidents like Sharansky or Solzhenitsyn, who were Western in their beliefs and philosophical orientation.



And I don't share Hanson's pollyannaish belief that

The larger Middle East that surrounds Iran is in the throes of a messy, violent three-stage transition: from dictatorship to radicalism and chaos to constitutional government. Thugs and terrorists like Mr. Ahmadinejad ("We did not have a revolution in order to have democracy") want it to stop and return to the old world before September 11. ''

I somehow can't subscribe to this essentially liberal view: the idea that everybody has this innate yearning for 'freedom' and constitutional government. I don't buy that everybody has an 'inner American' just waiting to be freed. I also don't buy that the only problem in the Middle East is just a few bad guys who are keeping the good guys, the 'moderates' from emerging. It used to be said by the usual suspects that 'when Yasser Arafat is gone, then we can make peace with the Palestinians.' I heard that line countless times: 'Arafat is the problem; just wait till he is gone, then we will negotiate a peace.' Well, Arafat is long since pushing up daisies, and how much nearer are we to 'peace' in the Middle East? No; the 'bad guys' are not the problem, but merely the symptom.

I still believe that Joseph de Maistre was right in saying that people get the government they deserve. People who truly 'yearn for freedom' don't constantly produce dictators and tyrants, and bring them to power. Tyrants don't arise in a vacuum. The Islamic culture is one in which tyrants and authoritarian personalities thrive.

Hanson, like so many other pundits, seems to project what he wants to see on the Islamic world. For some reason, maybe because he was rather hawkish on the Iraq invasion, Hanson is held in reverence by mainstream Republicans, who see him as a great sage. His essentially liberal views are hailed by the neoconnish faithful, who refuse to believe that the Middle East may be impervious to our efforts to 'fix' it. So we go on spending more lives and more billions on the forlorn hope of establishing democracy in the Islamic world.

The neocons and the mainstream GOP faithful, who have bought into the neocon ideology, think that a naive optimism is obligatory for 'real conservatives', and they often cite Ronald Reagan and his optimistic approach. In that sense, I think the constant harking back to Reagan is misleading. Because the Berlin Wall fell, and the Eastern Communist bloc regimes toppled, the neocons insist that the same is bound to happen in the Islamic world. So, in the vain belief that the Islamic world is just full of Sharanskys and Solzhenitsyns, if we but reach out to them, we will be pulled farther into the turmoil of Islam. The hope of 'moderate Muslim' dissenters who will naturally ally themselves with us is a foolish one. But reality has never been the strong suit of the neocons.

Saddam Hussein's death

As the story of Saddam Hussein's execution by hanging is discussed across the Internet, there are extremes of emotion; as usual, the leftists are crying crocodile tears over the hanging of Saddam; they see him as a wronged victim, and the United States as the villain. On the opposite side of the emotional scale, we have the neocons, and the dittohead Republicans rejoicing and cheering Saddam's death, just as they were jubilant when Saddam was captured just over 3 years ago.

I find myself with no strong emotions on the event; I am disgusted by the lefties who defend Saddam or any other criminal, and I am not at all clear on why they sympathize so strongly with Saddam. He could hardly be classified as a fellow leftist, but because he is 'Other', from the Moslem world, they idealize him as a victim. And in their world, America is always evil, always wrong, and their fellow Americans invariably the enemy. They truly are people 'without a country' deracinated, disembodied people whose only feeling of affinity is with those who share their political delusions. I still maintain that many of them would take up arms against their fellow Americans in a heartbeat, such is the depth of their loathing.

Still, I can't say I feel elation at Saddam's death; as far as I can tell, he is fairly small potatoes in the larger scheme of things, and although his death is payment for the crimes he committed, I don't think it will have much effect on the situation in Iraq. I don't see his death as a 'milestone' in Iraq.
Apparently, Con Coughlin, writing in the Telegraph, does not think so, either:

Hanging Saddam won't bring peace to Iraq

This was a man whose maniacal policies -- whether launching unnecessary wars with Iran and Kuwait or the genocidal purges of his own people that were a perennial feature of Iraqi politics -- resulted in the deaths of up to one million people during the 35 years he dominated the nation.
[...]Even if support for Saddam is confined to his immediate family and criminal associates from Tikrit, there remains a substantial constituency among Iraq's disfranchised Sunni community who still fondly remember the hegemony they enjoyed over the country during his rule. The remnants of the old Ba'ath party, who have proved remarkably proficient at sustaining the vicious and unrelenting insurgency that has done so much to undermine the coalition's attempts to restore order to Iraq, have even gone so far as to threaten reprisals against those responsible for his demise.
[...]Removing Saddam from the scene might satisfy the Iraqi people's bloodlust, but it will have precious little bearing on the determination of rival Sunni and Shia Muslim groups to achieve their political goals through violence, rather than through the constitutional, democratic framework that the coalition has worked so hard to establish.

The best that can be hoped for from Saddam's demise is that it gives the Iraqi government the confidence to tackle and defeat the insurgency in a manner that has hitherto been lacking. Its failure to do so would have potentially disastrous consequences for both the future of Iraq and the region.''

Coughlin, at the conclusion, speaks of the possibility that, should the Iraqi government fail to quell the 'insurgency', civil war may be the result.

My problem with Coughlin's take is simply this: how bad does the situation in Iraq have to be before the label 'civil war' will be applied to the violence there? The neocons and the talk-radio fans have insisted that the situation there does not amount to a 'civil war', and that the term is only used by the 'Bush-bashers' and the lying MSM. So when will it cross the line and become a civil war? They keep raising the bar.

But I do agree with Coughlin that the removal of Saddam will not substantially change things.

The Iraqi 'insurgency' as it is euphemistically called, seems to have a life of its own, and is part of the wider turmoil which Islam is creating worldwide.

Will the execution of Saddam increase the violence against our troops in Iraq? I certainly hope it does not, but only time will tell. And how can we know for certain whether any increased violence or attacks are a retaliation for the execution, given the prevalence of the violence in Iraq?

And another concern for us in the West is the possibility of retaliation within our home countries. All along we have heard that 'we have to fight them in Iraq so we don't have to fight them here', and all the while, we are opening the gates to more and more Moslem immigrants. Doing so almost guarantees that we will have to fight them here, and indeed Islamic aggression is occurring here, in the sense that they are actively pursuing their agenda to Islamize our countries. The incidents I blogged about yesterday testify to an Islam that is on the march, pushing into Christendom as surely as in the days when our European ancestors had to drive them back at Tours or Lepanto or Vienna. Of course not all war involves bloodshed; the Islamic plan utilizes legal means and propaganda and deception, and ominously for us, they use our traditions of openness and hospitality against us. They use our institutions, our legal and legislative systems, in their war on the West.

Meanwhile many of us are lulled by the 'War on Terror' into the belief that because we are 'fighting them in Iraq' we are standing strong and resisting. Meanwhile, here in our country, we are welcoming Islam in, and giving them a foothold in our military, our government, our media. We are handing them the keys to our country.

Our efforts, if we are to survive and not fall under Islamic domination, must be refocused to defeating them domestically. The war in Iraq is, in a sense, a diversion.

Dictators and strongmen come and go, and although Saddam is now gone, how many other Islamic leaders, even more dangerous, still are at large? And why are our 'borders' still wide open?

Preach it, Tony

The picture on the left shows a follower of the Religion of Peace, holding his holy book, which, according to Tony Blair, is 'progressive', 'reforming', 'practical' . How can we have been so wrong, Tony, as to believe otherwise?

According to Blair:

To me, the most remarkable thing about the Koran is how progressive it is. I write with great humility as a member of another faith. As an outsider, the Koran strikes me as a reforming book, trying to return Judaism and Christianity to their origins, much as reformers attempted to do with the Christian church centuries later. The Koran is inclusive. It extols science and knowledge and abhors superstition. It is practical and far ahead of its time in attitudes toward marriage, women, and governance.'

Does this even require comment?

Not a couple of weeks ago, Blair made a speech in which he appeared to be repudiating multiculturalism, and denounced 'extremism' and 'fundamentalism', in an ambiguous turn of phrase, which could be interpreted as a warning to the 'extremists' (so-called) of the BNP, or the 'Islamists', those apocryphal bad guys who have 'hijacked' the religion of peace.

So much for Blair's supposed Damascene conversion away from multiculturalism. Well, maybe he's not really a multiculti anymore, but a full-blown Dhimmi. Only the unwary and the naive, I think, really bought the speech of a couple of weeks ago.

The other thing that has me shaking my head is that Blair is reputedly a Christian. I know that as a Christian, I am supposedly not to judge someone's spiritual state, but I have serious doubts as to whether a real believing Christian could believe the things he purports to believe. Christian belief does not leave room for submitting to Islam.

I can hardly believe that there are still 'conservatives' who think Blair is the modern-day Churchill, and our great ally. They tend to forget he is a leftist, his participation in the Iraq adventure notwithstanding. I suppose the fact that he is a leftist, through and through, explains it all.

And lest we get too complacent and think that only the Brits are succumbing to the dhimmi impulse, consider this story, in which

The American Transportation Security Administration has instructed airport security guards to be sensitive to more than 15,000 Muslims traveling to Saudi Arabia for the Hajj Muslim holiday.''

It seems that they guards have been subjected to 'sensitivity' courses teaching them that 'suspicious' Moslem passengers may simply be praying. What, like the Flying Imams?

And speaking of the 'Hajj' or the Mohammedan pilgrimage to Mecca, many Americans were blissfully unaware of what it was not so long ago; of course the multicultists think we were too insular and provincial and ethnocentric back then, and we have to be 'educated' about things like the Hajj, Jihad, suicide bombing, and all those enriching spiritual practices. So we get articles like this in our media.

Apparently our government means business about being 'sensitive' to Mohammedans, as this story indicates:

Strip-Searched Muslim Woman Gets Apology

-- from the Homeland Security Department.

And not to be outdone in 'sensitivity' by DHS and the Transportation 'Security' Administration, the Pentagon and our Armed Forces are doing their bit:

As US troops battle Islamic extremists abroad, the Pentagon and the armed forces are reaching out to Muslims at home.

An underlying goal is to interest more Muslims in the military, which needs officers and troops who can speak Arabic and other relevant languages and understand the culture of places like Iraq and Afghanistan. The effort is also part of a larger outreach. Pentagon officials say they are striving for mutual understanding with Muslims at home and abroad and to win their support for US war aims. Among the efforts to attract and retain Muslim cadets:

• West Point and the other service academies have opened Muslim prayer rooms, as have military installations.

• Imams serve full- and part-time as chaplains at the academies and some bases.

• Top non-Muslim officers and Pentagon officials have taken to celebrating religious events with Muslims overseas and here in the US.

"There is a message here, and that is that Muslims and the Islamic religion are totally compatible with Western values," says Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England in an interview.

All of this is very encouraging -- if you're a Mohammedan or a stone leftist who hates the West, and wants to see Christendom destroyed, by gradual means or by force.
It seems as if Tony Blair is not the only dhimmi in the West.

Immigration myths, again

I'm back.
I hoped to delay returning to blogging about the news cycle and the political stories for a while, but it's just too hard to ignore the many stories that are floating around, begging to be commented on. So many outrages, so little time.
The amnesty machine is shifting into high gear again, despite the will of the American people:


And has anybody seen the 'Tom Brokaw Reports' on NBC, on the immigration crisis?

I haven't watched it, for fear my head might explode, but I'd like to hear what others have to say about it, if any of my readers saw it.

And here, John Hawkins at Human Events, writes about immigration myths:

The Great Illegal Immigration Myth of '06

Since the election, you may have heard pro-amnesty Republicans or liberals saying something like this, "The 2006 election proves that being tough on illegal immigration doesn't work as a political issue. Look at J.D. Hayworth, John Hostettler, Randy Graf and Henry Bonilla. After that debacle, the GOP is surely going to cave on illegal immigration now."

Well, as someone who followed the election very closely and did a better job of calling winners and losers than almost all of the political pundits out there (My final predictions: five Senate seats lost and 22-29 seats in the House lost. Final numbers: six Senate seats lost and 30 House seats), I can tell you that being tough on illegal immigration didn't hurt the GOP in 2006

[...]But, what about the Hispanic vote? Didn't the GOP lose some Hispanic voters because of their illegal immigration stance? Yes, but the numbers related to illegal immigration were undoubtedly fairly small. Now, that's not what you'll hear from amnesty proponents. They'll point out that the percentage of Hispanics voting for the GOP dropped from 44% in 2004 to 30% in 2006. However, what they don't mention is that 44% was an all-time high for the Hispanic vote and that the support for the GOP dropped in almost every demographic group in 2006.'' [Emphasis mine]

Hawkins makes some good points; it is true that the pundits across the spectrum tended to spin the election results so as to make the election results seem like a repudiation of the anti-illegal immigration movement.
But the open-borders faction within the GOP (which seems to be the group in the driver's seat now) was just as guilty of this bit of spin as the Democrats and Dem-symps in the MSM.

And speaking of myths, I have to rebuke Mr. Hawkins on one point here: in the above-quoted paragraph, he repeats that Urban Myth beloved of the Open Borders crowd, claiming that the GOP had 44% of the Hispanic vote in 2004.

Will this myth never die? It has been debunked but it keeps being resurrected, like Dracula, no matter how many stakes have been driven into it.

But here goes, one more time: Steve Sailer rebuts that assertion here.

Bush Didn't Win 44% of Hispanic Vote - The Smoking Exit Poll

And here, Sailer refutes the persistent myth, created by the open-borders RNC crowd, that Hispanics are 'natural Republicans'.


And here, from Sailer's blog, in 2005:
Hispanic vote smaller than assumed


And as Michelle Malkin blogged on this right after the 2004 election,
Whither the Hispanic Vote?

And Michelle gets to the nub of the whole issue:

Why does all of this matter? Because both parties have been aggressively wooing the Hispanic vote. A surge in Hispanic support for Bush is sure to be interpreted as vindication of Bush's support for quasi-amnesty for illegal aliens.

However, the premise that undergirds that conclusion -- i.e., that Hispanics overwhelmingly oppose tough immigration enforcement--appears to be unwarranted. As long as we're looking at exit polls (flawed though they may be), check out the results for Initiative 200 in Arizona. According to CNN's web site, the anti-illegal immigration measure was supported by 47 percent(!) of Latino voters. And let's not forget that pandering to the pro-illegal immigration lobby alienates some white swing voters.'' [Emphasis mine]

Exactly.
I keep belaboring this issue whenever it comes up, because this ridiculous myth of the 'Republican Hispanics' keeps being dragged out to justify the GOP's pandering, and the amnesty-that-won't-die.
So now, George Bush and the open-borders shills in the Senate are resurrecting that amnesty-by-any-other-name, so here we go again.

As many times as I've posted some of the above links, citing Steve Sailer's refutation of the '44% of the Hispanic vote' myth, it never seems to make a dent; the story goes on and on and on, like the Energizer bunny. (Is the Energizer Bunny still at it? He may not be, for all I know.) In any case, it serves the purposes of the political classes to at least feign a belief in the 'conservative Hispanic' myth. There is every evidence that it is not true, and having grown up around Hispanic people, I can honestly say that whatever they were said to be, no one ever claimed they were political conservatives. Ever. It's only during the current administration that I ever heard this silly myth, but I believe Ronald Reagan may have been the first to promulgate it during the run-up to his own Amnesty push. In any case, he did court the Hispanic vote himself


Maybe there were some actual 'conservative' Hispanic voters in Reagan's era, or at least more assimilated, middle-of-the-road voters. But did they necessarily identify with the traditional culture and values and institutions and history of this country? From my own experience, I would say not necessarily. And today's Hispanic populations in America are not in any way traditionally conservative, for the most part. Even the most 'conservative' of the Hispanics, the Cuban-Americans, often put ethnicity above all, and don't identify with Anglo America. Mel Martinez, Bush's choice for RNC chairman, is the example that comes to mind. And lest anyone say he is an exception, I invite them to look up Hispanic congressmen's votes on immigration issues.
On the linked page, simply scroll down to see the rankings by grade letter. And notice, if you will, how many of the 'F' grades listed have Hispanic names, as well as the 'F-minus' grades. And go back to the 'A' grades: how many Hispanic names do you see? I see none. Zero, zip.

As long as this idea of the Hispanic vote as the Holy Grail for both parties is still being promoted, what hope is there that we can stop the amnesty/open borders juggernaut?


But try we must; our choice is between amnesty and America, as we have known it.
That choice is a no-brainer for patriots.

Vanishing American dialects

Here's a quiz that's been showing up around the blogosphere:

What American accent do you have?
I took the quiz and was told that I have a 'Midlands' accent, which is odd, because the 'Midlands' is one region I have spent very little time in. I found the test questions to be a little dubious, but it's an interesting quiz.

This quiz was more to the point, in my opinion:

Are You a Yankee or a Rebel?
My answer was: ''100% Dixie. Is General Lee your grandfather?''
At least that result makes more sense for me.


One of the aspects of 'vanishing America' that is noticeable these days is changing speech. In this age of mass, cheap travel and unprecedented mobility, along with the monolithic mass media, from whose grasp no one escapes these days, American English is changing rapidly everywhere.

The media and the constant change, the search for novelty and the 'coolness' factor are the biggest contributors to change in our language, what with all the slang and colloquial speech which is spread virally via the media.
The Internet may also contribute to the spread of slang and colloquialisms, with its own unique jargon (think of terms like 'Newbie', websurfing, 'blog', and all the shorthand terms and acronyms like 'LOL' and 'IMHO'. Of course text messaging and its crude abbreviations contribute to the dumbing down of our communication, and to a lesser extent, e-mail.

Still, TV, movies, and radio contribute the most to the homogenizing of our language, it seems.
For years, I've noticed that the younger generations, especially those who are 20-somethings now and younger, are speaking an increasingly neutral American dialect. It's particularly marked when you listen to the younger generations in the Southern states, compared to their parents and especially their grandparents. The young ones have almost no discernible accent, except for a few telltale pronunciations, but even they are hard to detect. Recently I caught part of one of the many 'reality shows' on TV which a young relative was watching. She mentioned that the show was filmed in the Texas town where she attended high school, which astounded me, since the participants spoke like Californians. Well, if you listened carefully, you could hear some faint hint of Southern intonations, but only if you listened very carefully could you detect it. I commented on this; I said, 'you'd never know they were from Texas.' After reflecting a moment, she said, 'Well, it's probably for the best, because when you travel outside the South, people make fun of your accent. They think Southerners are dumb.'

I know that my grandparents, too, spoke differently than my generation, although it was more a matter of their using old-fashioned expressions than of their pronouncing words differently. For instance, the old folks said things like 'right smart' to mean 'a great deal of', or 'a lot'. As in: 'we had right smart of rain last week.' Or they said things like, 'well, I swan!' to mean 'Well, I'll be...' or 'I swear.' I guess they, being devout Christians, thought that saying 'I swear' was actually swearing an oath, so they said 'swan' instead. I think, however, that this last phrase was used not only in the South, because I came across the phrase in a song called 'Well, I swan!', about a New England yokel.

Still it seems that the South was the most linguistically conservative of the various regions of the country, and preserved their distinct speech patterns longer than other regions. It seems that the vocabulary and the locutions of the South tended to preserve more of the archaic language of our English colonist ancestors. For instance, my older relatives used terms which I find in the King James Bible; phrases such as "light bread", meaning yeast bread rather than biscuits, or cornbread. And they spoke of eating "parched corn", which is also alluded to in the King James Bible; I gather it meant something like the American snack called 'Corn Nuts"; they carried it on journeys for a snack, apparently. The old folks also used words like 'aught' or 'naught' to mean 'zero' or 'nothing'; even my Dad used that term when he was helping me learn multiplication when I was a child.
Given that the South was the area that stayed the same demographically for the longest time, their habit of preserving old ways of speaking is not surprising.


Each region of the country, at one time, had a distinctive character and way of life, and distinctive origins. That uniqueness was manifested in the different ways of speaking and expressing ourselves. If we lose that very natural, organic diversity, which is genuine diversity, we will lose much of the color and variety of American life.
Travel has been one of my great pleasures since I was a child, and my family and I first drove across half the continent. I loved the ever-changing vistas as we traveled across the country and encountered something a little different in each state or each region. The place names reflected the variety, and each little town seemed to have its own character. The laconic, reserved, polite people we encountered in the Northwestern states seemed very different from the garrulous, open, people of the Southern states.. When we moved from Texas to Louisiana for a while, I was delighted to discover another world in the Cajun country of Southern Louisiana. While the people were American and recognizably Southern, they had a unique way of life, complete with their own cuisine and music, and a distinctive way of speaking English. Now I suspect that is diminishing, too, although I have not spent much time there in recent years. While I was there several years ago, I found that the people were as down-to-earth, full of humor and warmth as ever, there was a sense that things are changing there, too, since they are subject to the same homogenizing influences as the rest of America.

I don't know how the rest of the country is faring, as far as preserving their distinct dialect, but I think that the South is getting the worst of it. I am not sure why this is; it may be a combination of the unprecedented demographic shifts in the South, (which until a few decades ago, was mostly Anglo-Celtic by descent and culture) and the attacks specifically on Southern history and culture. As noted by Professor Delaney

Generally, the southern dialects of American English carry a lower prestige, at least among northerners who will assume that a person speaking a southern dialect is less intelligent and less educated than they are. Some educated southerners even feel this way and will "correct" their speech to meet northern standards.
[...]For this reason, schools try to rid children of the local dialects they learned from their family and friends in favor of a more prestigious one.'

I think this is a main factor in the diminishing of the Southern dialect among the young; in the Northwest, for example, which has also seen huge demographic changes, with migration from every region and many foreign countries, the Northwestern dialect (which might be called 'accentless' anyway) has changed little. The South seems to be changing the most. And I admit to being biased; my kin have been in the South for 400 years and my sentimental ties are to the South, without question. But it seems to me that the South is one of the most regionally distinctive areas of the country, with the most vivid and rich culture, and the potential erosion of that would mean a great loss to America.

America is still rich in real diversity: the organic diversity which developed naturally during the course of this country's growth and development. I am all in favor of preserving the time-honored differences between the various regions of America. America has always had a healthy diversity, and at the same time, a unity in our American allegiance. Long live our real diversity; I hope that our distinctive ways of speaking continue and that they don't become part of 'vanishing America.'

Christmas Day 2006

Wishing my readers and their loved ones a Blessed and Happy Christmas!

Peace on earth

Peace on earth, goodwill toward men

That often-heard phrase epitomizes the Christmas spirit. We sing those words in Christmas carols, and send cards to one another containing that phrase. Yet has any of us ever seen a time of ''peace on earth, goodwill toward men"? I remember no such time in my lifetime. As far back as I can recall, there have been "wars and rumors of wars," somewhere on the globe. I do remember hearing of Christmas cease-fires, during which the shooting stopped in the spirit of the Christmas holiday. But soon enough, the battle resumed after the Christmas season was past.
In my parents' lifetime, there was the conflagration of World War II, and my mother described to me the wild jubilation which followed the surrender of Germany and then Japan, and the Victory celebrations. I am sure that my parents hoped, if they did not completely believe, that peace would prevail, and that war would somehow cease, in a world weary of battle. Yet a mere few years later, our troops were in Korea. And now the Iraq war calls many Americans to the other side of the world, and our thoughts and good wishes are with them this Christmas.

Peace on earth is an ever-elusive dream, and becoming more so. Despite the occasional breaks in the conflicts, war, like poverty, is ever with us. And just as with poverty and want, we can ameliorate it but not will it into nonexistence. The deluded among us think that 'government' can banish these things, or that good intentions can bring peace and plenty to everyone. What was the phrase in that inane Lennon-Ono song: 'War is over, if you want it.' So if we all close our eyes, and wish really, really hard, and say 'no more war!' or maybe march in a big demo, demanding that war and poverty disappear, voila! No more war, no more want. But human nature in this fallen world being what it is, that cannot happen.

And even during the periods when there was no declared war in which America was involved, during the Cold War, for example, it could hardly be said that 'peace' prevailed, not with the ever-looming fear of nuclear war, and of the total devastation an all-out nuclear exchange would have wrought. So technically we were not at war with Russia or China, but neither did we have peace. Peace is more than just an absence of declared war.

And now, in this post-9/11 world, with our 'no borders' policy, the threat is closer to home, right in our midst.
These are not easy times in which we live.

And goodwill toward men is just as elusive as peace, with our nations divided internally along political, ethnic, racial, and class lines, and nations against other nations.

Still, despite the turmoil and the danger of today's world, we hold fast to the dream of 'peace on earth, goodwill toward men.' Maybe the fact that we do is a testament to the human need for hope, to the stubbornness of the ideals enshrined in our hearts. The realists among us know that we can never achieve peace by human means, given our human nature. But those of us who are Christians, who honor the Prince of Peace at this season of his birth, know that only He can establish peace, and that he will do so one day.


Until then we are to "occupy", as the Bible says; to hold the fort, so to speak. That is all we can reasonably do: to maintain our position here; to stand our ground. We can't achieve peace on earth by our human efforts but we
don't yield to the forces of darkness in this ever-darkening world.

Some of the scholars and pedants will insist that Jesus Christ was not born at this time of year, and they can cite reasons for their opinion. But there is symbolic meaning to celebrating the birth of Jesus at the winter solstice. At this time of year, at least in the Northern hemisphere, light has retreated; the days are at their shortest, and the sun's light is wan, without much warmth. Then at the time of greatest darkness is the coming of the 'Light of the World'.
Now, it seems as though the darkness is gathering throughout the world, and now is the time for light to reassert itself and break forth to challenge the darkness.
Christmas symbolizes all of that, and it's fitting that we celebrate it at the darkest time of the year.

So as we await the true coming of the Light and the retreat of darkness, we can do our part to spread the light and warmth in this present darkness. At Christmas we focus on our own little realm, of kin and hearth and home, and share the light and warmth within that little circle. It's a time for turning inward to our own little family fortress, and a time to look to the past, to old days and old ways, and also a time to see the future in our young ones. In so doing, our spiritual strength is replenished so that again, we can again enter the fray, with renewed strength.

Speaking for myself, I plan my own personal 'cease-fire' on this blog; I'm a little battle-weary, and more than a little disgusted with the present news cycle. After Christmas I may blog on non-political matters for a few days. Politics, after all, is 'warfare by any other means', and it's a time to ''cease from anger, and forsake wrath".

At so, at this time when we turn to happier and more comforting thoughts, I wish all of you a Happy and Joyous Christmas season.

'Make our enemies ridiculous...'

I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: 'O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.' And God granted it.''
Voltaire

It seems that God has made Congressman Virgil Goode's enemies -- our common enemies -- ridiculous:

Islamic Group Has Mastered Victimization Game, Critic Says
Randy Hall, CNSNews.com

The Republican lawmaker who sparked a storm with comments about Muslims and the need to tighten immigration laws is the latest target of an Islamic advocacy group's "victimization game," a political analyst said Thursday.

It's a game that the Council of American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), has "mastered," Daniel Pipes, a critic of the group and director of the Middle East Forum, told Cybercast News Service.

CAIR is calling on Rep. Virgil Goode (R-Va.) to apologize for writing in a letter to constituents that says, "we will have many more Muslims in the United States if we do not adopt" strict immigration policies.

Pipes said CAIR was "perpetually on the prowl for any incidence of anti-Muslim sentiment, real or imaginary, spontaneous or provoked, major or minor."

The organization's goal, he said, was "to make the United States like so many other countries - a place where Muslims, Islam and Islamism cannot be freely discussed."

"It is imperative for Americans to retain their freedom of speech about Islam -- as it exists in relation to other religions -- and resist these many demands for remorse."

CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper said Thursday the organization had "a long history of disagreement" with Pipes.'

Who could wish for a more ridiculous enemy than Doug 'Ibrahim' Hooper, and his merry band at CAIR?

But it gets more infuriating when we read that Congressman Goode is being threatened:

Goode won't retract letter critical of Ellison
Per this Associated Press article, which I cannot excerpt, Goode has been receiving some sort of threats. When asked if he had received death threats, he simply said 'no comment.'

The CAIR gang seem to include many home-grown Moslems, like Doug Hooper (aka 'Ibrahim') and Corey Saylor, who is quoted in some of the news stories. And of course, the catalyst for all this controversy, Congressman-elect Keith Ellison, is American-born, not an immigrant.

Virgil Goode is also being pilloried for his 'controversial' statement on immigration. He simply said that we need to limit immigration from Moslem countries in order to forestall the demographic aggression of Moslem immigration. Why should such a viewpoint be regarded as 'controversial', much less 'hateful'? It is the default American position, prior to 1965. Suddenly the traditional American norm is being all but criminalized, and if the CAIR thugs have their way, Goode and anyone who agrees with him will be subject to hate crime charges.

Immigration is a big part of the Islamic menace; were we not allowing mass immigration from many incompatible countries, we would not have our current situation, wherein traditional American views are being marginalized, proscribed, and condemned. Old-stock Americans are now perpetually on the defensive, and far too many of us have succumbed to the brainwashing, and have become apologetic and self-abasing, even identifying with our enemies rather than our own. How can this be a good thing in any country or culture?

As I check out the blogosphere's reaction to this story, I come across so many leftist blogs, condemning Congressman Goode and all others who think as he does. Friends, we have many home-grown 'Americans' who see us, traditional Americans, as much more the enemy than Islam, or any foreign group of people. Such is the power of leftist/liberal indoctrination. Sad to say, I truly believe that many of these people, if push came to shove, would gladly take up arms against their own fellow citizens. They would side with any enemy over us.

This is yet another deleterious side-effect of the balkanizing of our society, and the leftist manipulation of Americans, fomenting hatreds and divisions. Multiculturalism, along with mass immigration, divides us by the introduction of many disparate and often hostile groups, and secondary to that, it divides native-born Americans, old-stock Americans, against each other, as the liberals among us fiercely champion the interlopers.
What can be more perverse and unnatural than for people to side with strangers over their own?

Sadly there are many people in America now who would disagree angrily, people who think that they owe no allegiance or loyalty to their fellow Americans. By and large, these are leftist or liberal Americans, holding an elitist and morally superior attitude, who look down on other Americans as 'bigots' and 'rednecks' .

There are even self-described, professing 'Christians' who will angrily side with Moslems, as witness this blogger's comments (Warning: the 'F-bomb' is dropped in the linked blog post).



Wow. Imagine being so rabidly angry at Goode and one's fellow Americans, on behalf of Moslems.
This is proof that being a 'Christian' does not make one conservative or patriotic; for some people, their politics trump religious faith.

And here is another leftist, frothing about Goode.

Notice that it's conservatives who are the threat to America, not Moslems.

Divide and conquer: it's an age-old tactic, going back at least to the Romans. But it's being used to great advantage by the Left, and in turn, exploited by the Moslems, and in fact, by the Mexican invaders as well. They have shrewdly figured out that Americans are divided (thanks to decades of liberalism/leftism), with some addle-brained, self-hating Americans so full of vitriol against their own that they will betray their countrymen without a second thought. So both the Moslems and the Mexicans are playing us against each other: appealing to the leftists and liberals of all political parties, appealing to sentimentality and the victim culture, in order to pit us against each other. And it's working, to a distressing degree.

It's easy to laugh at the ridiculousness of the CAIR agitators and their liberal enablers, and the leftist bloggers with their disjointed, illogical rants, but the stakes are too high for us to laugh this off, and to trust that it will all just work out in the end.

There is a certain type of 'conservative', usually of the Ben Wattenberg or Sean Hannity type who breezily insist that 'liberalism is on the ropes; conservatism is winning'. I don't honestly know how it is possible to wake people like that up. They live in a dream world, just as much as the leftist utopians do; somehow, they believe that time is on our side, and that eventually everybody will see that liberalism is a failure, and we'll all live happily ever after in an all-Republican utopia. The same people, of course, are absolutely sanguine about mass immigration, insisting (in defiance of all the evidence) that Mexicans are natural conservatives, and will vote Republican, and that Moslems, too, are basically conservative. So just give them time: they will soon be as American as apple pie, and we will live in a Rainbow Republican America.

I am at a loss as to how to reach people like that; they are liberals at heart, despite their Republican loyalties, because they believe in utopian ideas, not grounded in any recognizable reality. You can show them evidence of all kinds; you can argue brilliantly and logically, until the cows come home. It doesn't matter. They know what they know what they know: 'We won the cold war; the left lost; conservatism is winning, America has always assimilated immigrants', and so on. Impervious to reality. Absolutely reality-proof.

They are simply the mirror-image of the left-liberals: the lefties, however, see America as the embodiment of all evil, deserving of destruction and defeat. Conflicting evidence is ignored, denied, dismissed, and sneered at. Reality does not intrude into their world. They want to believe the worst of America and Americans, and so they choose to disregard everything that does not fit their ideology. They are just as reality-immunized as the 'right-liberal' pollyannas.

On the one hand, the Moslems are aided by the left-liberals, who love anyone who hates America, and will join them in their dismantling of it. So they cheer mass immigration, multiculturalism, and 'diversity.' On the other hand, the Moslems are aided by the right-liberals, who are guided by their own pet myths and ideologies, about the Great American Assimilation Machine, which will make the enemies of America into good Republican voters in a generation or so.

And there is the small segment of sane Americans, who still hold to the traditional beliefs of our forefathers. Some Americans have not 'bowed the knee to Ba'al', the idol of multiculturalism and diversity and post-modernism. It's up to those few, who are willing to seek out the old paths and walk therein, to find the way back.

Virgil Goode, I hope, is one such American; let's hope and pray that he holds fast, and stands his ground, as I said the other day. We need leaders like him and the handful of others who are loyal to the real America, the traditional America.

And lest we get discouraged (as I am inclined to do at times) it's good to remember that in every generation, in every age, the majority do not make history. It is always only a few, a highly motivated and determined few, who make history, while the rest either follow, or stand by and watch.

As Samuel Adams once said,

'It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds.'

And those of us who want to save America are motivated by something much better than the malice, spite, envy, and bitterness which seems to animate the Left and their Moslem co-conspirators.

Junk news: harmful to your health

For years we've been plagued by the 'food nannies' scolding us about what we eat, and warning us away from junk food. Now it seems there are 'news nannies' telling us the blogosphere is bad for us.
I came across this link, from 2005, describing a study on news media.
Study Warns of Junk-News Diet

Internet blogs lead a trend toward a "journalism of assertion" that relies less on reporting than personal opinion, the Washington-based Project for Excellence in Journalism has reported.
Estimated readership of weblogs has increased 58% in six months. About 32 million Americans say they have obtained information from the online journals, best known as blogs. Tom Rosenstiel, director of the research project, which is affiliated to Columbia University, said that with the growth in Internet commentary, the culture of opinion journalism has expanded exponentially. Rather than taking the time to gather and scrutinise each piece of information -- the model for the mainstream media -- the report said some bloggers had a different philosophy: "Publish anything, especially points of view, and the reporting and verification will occur afterward in the response of fellow bloggers."

The piece concludes with a warning about news consumers 'consuming too little that can nourish citizens and too much that can bloat them.'

Junk news.
The Project for Excellence in Journalism claims to be nonpartisan, non-ideological, and non-political.
However the report quoted above seems very definitely to have an agenda, and an elitist one at that. The 'journalism community' is rather defensive these days, what with those pesky bloggers practicing unlicensed journalism all over the internet. There is so much criticism and obloquy directed at bloggers, questioning our 'right' to report or comment on the news. The complaint above is that bloggers don't 'scrutinize everything' but take a 'publish anything' approach. This complaint is laughable, considering the number of scandals involving dishonest journalists: invented sources, fictional stories passed off as true, fraud, 'fauxtography' as practiced by the big-time wire services, plagiarism
and equally egregious, the flagrant bias of the mainstream media.

So for this journalism group to slam bloggers is a severe case of the pot calling the kettle black.
And it might be helpful for the 'journalism community' to consider that bloggers are simply 'citizen journalists' who as citizens, exercising their First Amendment rights.

Many of us, too, are not in competition with the MSM so much as we are trying to keep them honest, or provide an alternative to the monolithic, narrow spectrum of views and information that is permitted in the 'controlled media.'
Ideally, the blogosphere could act as a corrective to the MSM, and provide real balance, unlike the purported attempt at being 'fair and balanced' on certain TV news channels.

Most bloggers, myself included, are commenting more than reporting. The idea is to pass along news stories and provide opinion and discussion of the news. Most of us, with some exceptions, are not out there gathering news. Some bloggers have provided first-hand accounts of big news events as they happened to be at ground zero of some major news story; an example would be bloggers who provided real-time accounts of Hurricane Katrina and the aftermath.

But the fact is, few of us find ourselves in the middle of earth-shattering news stories. So most bloggers are no threat to the professional news people. But I think we do present a threat to them in that they no longer have the field to themselves; the internet and the advent of the weblog present a forum for anyone with access to the internet to add another voice to the discussion. It is a truly democratic revolution in the dissemination of ideas as well as news.
And that's what the self-important 'journalism community' has got its panties in a bunch about. They want to sit on high and pontificate and tell the rest of us common folk what to think, and to delimit the discussion within the bounds they designate. They want to be the only gatekeepers of ideas and news. Richard Salant, who was a president of CBS News, said 'Our job is not to give people what they want, but what we decide they ought to have.'

Such is the mindset of Big Media. And we see that condescending 'we-know-best' attitude in the quote from the article above, referring to 'news consumers' consuming too much that doesn't nourish us but 'bloats' us.
So just as the Center for Science in the Public Interest , (the nanny-group that watches over our nutritional choices), the Project for Excellence in Journalism' is there to lecture us about 'junk news'.

I agree that there is such a thing as 'junk news', but unlike these journalism police, I don't think the blogosphere is the culprit; I see the MSM as the prime purveyors of 'junk news.' And the TV News channels and other sources like tabloid newspapers are to journalism what twinkies are to nutrition: empty calories.

Notice what has been taking up much of the time and discussion: the ridiculous and unseemly 'feud' between Rosie O'Donnell and Donald Trump. If the whole thing is not staged for publicity, which it may well be, it is a display of some very childish and trashy behavior on the part of both. Both parties obviously have more money than manners; they are proof that money doesn't buy class. And the news media should be embarrassed to devote so much time and space to their crass behavior. Still, the whole thing illustrates the disappearance of civilized behavior and standards in our society, so in that sense it may have some didactic value.

Another sleazy story which is dominating the news is the Duke 'rape-which-wasn't-a-rape' case. I've tried to keep my distance from that story because it is so unseemly, and the decisions made by Mike Nifong are so bizarre as to defy any analysis. I only know that it is because of the racial angle that this absurd and sordid case has been pursued this far, and has received so much media attention. Then you add the 'feminist' angle to the racial angle, and it's more political correctness running amok.

Personally I'm weary of all the 'junk news' served up my the 'junk news media', otherwise known as the 'journalism community' or the MSM. There is no nutritional value there, and it's just as unhealthy for our minds as a steady diet of junk food is for our bodies.

The blogosphere contains its share of empty calories, too, but at least it provides an alternative and real diversity of opinion. Just as we need a variety in our food choices, we need varied opinions and ideas and points-of-view to choose from, not the same-old-same-old from the junk news purveyors.

Comments issues

Just a heads-up, I am having problems with the comments not appearing; some of you who have left comments are not having them show up. On this thread in particular, several comments which appear on HaloScan don't show up here, notably comments by DP111 and 'dmitri' among others.

It may be an issue with 'New Blogger', (I've just made the switch in the last couple of days from 'old' Blogger) or it may be a HaloScan problem, since it has happened before.

Anyway to those of you who have left comments that don't show up, most likely, it's not because I deleted them, but just a technical issue. I hope to get it resolved.

Stand your ground, Congressman Goode

I do not subscribe to using the Koran in any way. The Muslim representative from Minnesota was elected by the voters of that district. And, if American citizens don't wake up and adopt the Virgil Goode position on immigration, there will likely be many more Muslims elected to office and demanding the use of the Koran."

Those are the words of Rep. Virgil Goode, of Virginia, and the occasion of the latest fit of feigned outrage from CAIR.

Goode was discussing the recent controversy over the use of the Koran for the upcoming swearing-in of Keith Ellison, the Congressman-elect from Minnesota.
Goode's remarks were written to a constituent back home who had expressed concerns about the use of the Koran in the swearing-in ceremony.

On CNN's 'Lou Dobbs Tonight', this story was covered in a report from Brian Todd. I found his reportage a little snide and biased, for example:

Brian Todd reports from Rocky Mount, Virginia -- Brian.

BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Kitty, Congressman Virgil Goode is pretty unrepentant at this hour.
[...]Now, Mr. Goode, as we said a moment ago, is not repentant at all. He said he is not going to apologize for that letter.

We pressed him at a news conference just a short time ago on whether he favors Mr. Ellison being able to use the Koran. He had danced around that. We pressed him on it.''

I notice that Brian Todd used the word 'unrepentant' in describing Goode. He could have used the word 'unapologetic,' since he notes that Goode has said he won't apologize, But he chose the word 'unrepentant'. Odd, I think, that Todd uses the language of religion here: one 'repents' of sin. And having repented, one begs forgiveness. Does Todd think that Goode's words and his subsequent lack of apologies are 'sinful'? Evidently so: repentance implies sin. And what is a supposedly objective reporter doing calling for repentance, or couching this situation in religious terms?

I've often said that Political Correctness is a quasi-religion, and that being 'bigoted' is now viewed as a worse transgression than almost any other, short of murder. Actually, I think murder is much easier for liberals to overlook or excuse than 'hate' or 'bigotry.' So now, when somebody makes a faux pas which violates the sacred precepts of PC, the sinner is required to repent, confess publicly, and seek forgiveness of the offended Victims, in this case 'the Muslim community'. Now each victim 'community' has its high priests who have the power to grant forgiveness and absolution, or to withhold it, depending on the sincerity of the confession and apology, or just depending on their whim. For an offense against the 'Muslim community', one has to seek the absolution from CAIR. And usually some amends have to be made: money must change hands in some cases, just as in the old days in the Catholic Church in which indulgences could be bought.

We've just seen this little kabuki dance happen with Michael Richards, in the aftermath of his outburst against the hecklers. He had to go to some lengths to redeem himself and cleanse himself of his 'sin'. And before that, it was the Mel Gibson scandal. In Gibson's case, too, amends had to be made and considerable humbling of the offender was required.

Mind you, I don't consider Virgil Goode in the same category as an entertainer who, in a moment of anger or inebriation, says something vulgar and rude. Not at all. I think Goode gave an honest answer to a constituent and I think his willingness to stick by his comments indicates integrity and character. I will be disappointed if he caves, as so many public figures have so readily done, at the first sign of complaint from the supposed 'victim'.
The backtracking by Pope Benedict in the wake of Moslem outrage at his comments about Islam was a big disappointment to many of us. We live in an age wherein many people presume some kind of right never to be offended, and an even greater right to rudely demand apologies, even when the 'offender' was not in the wrong.
Those who too readily offer apologies and truckle to the 'victim' are showing weakness which is usually exploited to the max.

I truly hope that Goode does not apologize, or qualify what he said, or in any way humble himself. He has a right, in America, to express his honest thoughts, and there is nothing 'Islamophobic' about expressing a desire to resist the inroads of Islam, and to preserve the existing character of this country.

And I applaud him especially for mentioning immigration in conjunction with the Islamic threat in America. How many politicians have the courage to do that? It's the third rail that nobody will touch.

Our electeds have got to get over their fear, if that's what it is, that causes them to avoid the issue of mass immigration, and to refuse to consider the possibility that Islam may have to be contained and immigration from Moslem countries restricted. Of course Goode has not said anything that definite, but he is on the right track.
If only there were more like him in public office.

Instead, there are a whole lot more like Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr. , D-New Jersey, politicians who feign outrage on behalf of their 'Muslim-American' constituents. Rep. Pascrell apparently feels no obligation to his non-Moslem constituents, who presumably must still outnumber the Mohammedans. Pascrell is the poster boy for the truckling, pandering politicians who sit in seats of power now.

Whether the Pascrells or the Goodes predominate will determine the future of America as we know it.

386 years ago...

On December 20,1620, the Pilgrims landed at the site now called Plymouth. However there seems to be some disagreement as to the actual date, with some sources listing December 18 and some December 20-21. And then, other pedantic types point out that there is no mention made of the legendary 'Plymouth Rock' until a century or more later. Be that as it may, this is as good a time as any to remember the Pilgrims' landing at Plymouth, and to honor their place in our history.
Friendly, non-PC accounts of the Pilgrims' journey and landing are scarce on the Internet as elsewhere, but here is one
which offers a respectful account of the Pilgrims' landing.

The Pilgrims' arrival in America is personally significant to me, because a number of my ancestors were English Puritan Separatists, or 'Pilgrims' who arrived in the 1620s - 1630s.
My ancestors were not on the Mayflower, however, but came later, many with Winthrop's fleet, which consisted of eleven ships which sailed from Yarmouth, England, and brought as many as 1000 colonists to America.

My ancestors, including Farringtons, Browns, Pembertons, Abbotts, Parkers, and many others who came as part of this wave, were not Mayflower Pilgrims, but those Mayflower settlers were the beginning for all of us who are part of the American old stock settlement in New England.

I have many more ancestors who came to Jamestown, and whose story follows a different trajectory, through the American South, but they shared origins in England with those of the New England colonists. Despite their religious differences, they were children of the same mother.

And so were all of us who call ourselves Americans; until the balkanizing influences of multiculturalism came into play, everybody in America identified with the early colonists and their experiences. Those who are not descended from them by blood were considered grafted into the American family tree. The Pilgrim Fathers belonged to all of us, at one time. Now, the Pilgrim Fathers are reviled as 'religious fanatics', racists, and committers of 'genocide' against the Indians. And some of our younger generations do not understand that it was not always so.

It's good to remember that now-lost era when we were more unified as a country, with an agreed-upon culture and heritage. 'How good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity.'

Respectable Republicans vs. Lou Dobbs

Rich Lowry correctly says in this piece that the 'conservatives', (by which he assuredly means 'mainstream conservatives', or the Bush-can-do-no-wrong, dittohead, junk-food conservatives), may have gone too far in their vendetta against the Mainstream Media.

The conservative campaign against the mainstream media has scored notable successes. It exposed Dan Rather's forged National Guard memo and jumped all over Newsweek's absurd report of a Koran-flushing incident at Guantanamo Bay. The mainstream media is biased, arrogant, prone to stultifying group-think and much more fallible than its exalted self-image allows it to admit. It also, however, can be right, and this is most confounding to conservatives.'

He is right; how many times have I participated in discussions on the big 'conservative' web forums where the junk-food cons were insistent that some given story was 'lies' because it was in the New York Times, or it was put out by the AP? This attitude, as Lowry says, led a lot, maybe most, 'conservatives' up a blind alley, wherein they refused to even consider that things in Iraq just might not be going too well.

Their flights of illogic were always along the lines of: 'the MSM want us to fail in Iraq, because they hate Bush and they hate war, so they are keeping all the good news in Iraq from us.' So, if the war seemed not to be going well, the hue and cry was 'they purposely tell us bad news and hide the good news.'

Sure, the 'old media' are biased; only the most deluded leftists deny that. But you can allow for the bias, and still decide, to some extent, what is true and what isn't, via common sense and a little discernment. But the dittoheads and GOP loyalists refused to believe what they did not want to believe, and so kept on blindly promoting what is now acknowledged to have been bad policy in Iraq. I have not been a regular listener of Rush Limbaugh in recent times, except for the occasional segment of a broadcast, but I suspect he cranks out the party line, and the 'junk-food-con' audience repeats his mantras.

Remember in the early days of the Iraq occupation, when the violence continued to escalate? We had the adminstration telling us that 'it's just a few dead-enders causing all the trouble.' And then Rumsfeld assured everybody that their increasing attacks were 'a sign of desperation.' It's proof that they're on their last legs, so we were told. And then we heard from the administration that it was 'outside agitators' causing all the mayhem; it seems there were terrorists, I mean, 'insurgents' streaming into Iraq from all over the Islamic world just to attack American forces. After all, the Iraqis, 'the Iraqi people', were on our side; they were grateful and happy we were there. If only those darned Syrians and Iranians and Palestinians would stop making trouble, all would be well.
And when anybody in the media dared to deviate from the script, the 'conservative' mainstream joined in to denounce them as 'Bush-haters', 'doomsayers who don't want democracy to succeed', and so on.
Woe to any conservative commenter on the big web-forums who dared to differ; such a commenter would be swarmed with ugly comments from fellow 'conservatives.' Those of us who didn't toe the party line learned fairly early on to keep our mouths shut if we wanted to avoid a cyber-tarring and feathering.
So the 'conservative' mainstream closed its eyes and ears to any criticism of the Iraq war, until the deterioration of the situation became impossible to ignore.

Most of the pessimistic warnings from the mainstream media have turned out to be right -- that the initial invasion would be the easy part, that seeming turning points (the capture of Saddam, the elections, the killing of Zarqawi) were illusory, that the country was dissolving into a civil war.

Partly because he felt it necessary to counteract the pessimism of the media, President Bush accentuated the positive for far too long. Bush allowed himself to be cornered by his media critics. They wanted him to admit mistakes, so for the longest time, he would admit none.'

As the old cliche goes, even a busted clock is right twice a day, and the old media, the dead tree media, the controlled media, are right once in a while. As much as I distrust them, I don't think they are making everything up out of whole cloth, as many of the 'see-no-evil' dittoheads insist.

The 'mainstream conservatives' who are mostly party-line Republicans, are too inclined to shoot the messenger if they don't like the message.



In this earlier piece by Rich Lowry, he takes on CNN's Lou Dobbs.'Apocalyptic centrism' is the cute little term Rich Lowry has coined expressly to sneer at Lou Dobbs. It seems that Dobbs is a favorite whipping boy of the NRO Cornerboys. Why? Because he is critical of their revered Leader? Or because, as Lowry indignantly mentions,

Dobbs once made a living at CNN hosting a show that flacked for corporate America. After leaving to try to cash in on the dot-com bubble just as it burst, he has returned to make a living at CNN hosting a show that trashes corporate America. (Full disclosure: I am a commentator for the rival Fox News Channel.)'

I get it: CNN bad, Fox News, good. Such is the thinking of the knee-jerk 'respectable Republicans' of Lowry's circle. And anybody who criticizes Corporate America is The Enemy.

I've done my share of defending capitalism in my time, but here's a clue: capitalism is not blameless in this current mess America is in. Capitalism without a conscience is capable of doing great damage. Capitalism is not an unqualified good; it really only works well when it is restrained by Christianity. In a society which is becoming increasingly amoral, in which traditional ideas of responsibility and morality are seen as passe and old-fashioned, capitalism will become increasingly conscienceless. We can see the perfect illustration of this in the open-borders stance of business: too many businesses feel no responsibility to employees or to the communities and indeed the countries in which they do business. Business, the corporate world, is in large part the machine driving the globalist juggernaut. The corporate world, with its insatiable desire for cheap labor and new 'markets' is greedy for more immigration and more offshoring and more outsourcing, all of which spell disaster to the average American. Unless you are one of the corporate elite, you do not benefit from globalism.

Saying this no doubt makes me an 'apocalyptic centrist', according to the Lowry school of thought. So be it, although I am not a 'centrist' but a traditional conservative. Lowry and his crowd are the centrists who merely masquerade as 'conservatives' and see themselves as the standard-bearers of 'conservatism' and as the gatekeepers, who decide who is 'conservative' and who is not. Obviously, people who rock the boat and question the respectable Republican order of things are outsiders, who are to be ridiculed, dismissed, and marginalized.

I can't speak for Lou Dobbs, but somehow I don't think the criticism and sneering from the Lowrys of the world will crush him. Personally, I would take it as a sure sign that I was on the right track.
Lowry dismisses Dobbs's case for a crisis in this one sparse paragraph:

Evidence of this imminent crisis is thin. Dobbs basically has to ignore the record stock market, an unemployment rate of 4.5 percent and the 20 years of growth since the early 1980s, interrupted by only two brief recessions. Dobbs is worried because the U.S. imports more than it exports and China sends a lot of its capital here, making us ''a debtor nation.'' But his alarmist case really relies on the tired stupidities of old-fashioned
protectionism. '

So all Rich has as a refutation of Dobbs is his flat statements about 'the record stock market', the 4.5% unemployment rate, and '20 years of growth.' That's not much of an argument. People who are out in the real world, which I suspect Lowry knows little about, know that a low unemployment rate can be deceiving. We all know about the 'hidden unemployment', people who are discouraged jobseekers, who aren't even counted in the statistics anymore. There is also the fact that many of those who are employed are underemployed; there are a number of people with degrees working at low-wage, no-benefit jobs. Many American jobs no longer provide benefits like sick leave, health insurance, vacation time, and so on. Many jobs are part-time, and people are working less than they would like. Many employers, in order to save a buck, have slashed benefits and wages. And of course the presence of millions of immigrants (legal and illegal) drives down wages. It's simply the law of supply and demand.

Lowry sneers at Dobbs' assertions about our being a 'debtor nation' without offering any refutation to what Dobbs says. He makes a halfhearted slur about 'tired stupidities of old-fashioned protectionism', but that is no argument. It's merely labelling and dismissing. He moreover implies that Dobbs is the only one who is troubled by our huge trade deficit, as if Dobbs had trumped up the issue for the sake of demagoguery. But this study cited here recounts the negatives of our trade deficit.

And I suppose Lowry thinks that calling protectionism 'old-fashioned' is enough refutation. He seems to take the view that 'everybody knows' protectionism is bad and 'free trade' is good, although this was not necessarily the conservative position in the past. It is essentially a libertarian position, and is one more evidence that many of those 'conservatives' in the GOP owe more of their thinking to libertarianism than they acknowledge. It's just the 'in' thing in their circles, part of the air that they breathe, but it is not necessarily conservative.

In fact, it's in great part because our government in the past practiced 'protectionism' that America once had the most enviable standard of living in the world, and we had many factory jobs which paid high wages, enabling our middle class to thrive. Dobbs acknowledges that in today's world of 'McJobs', there is a slippage of the American standard of living.

What is it about Lou Dobbs and Tom Tancredo which inspires so much animosity and outright hostility from the so-called 'conservatives'? Are they afraid that the 'right' may go off the Republican reservation, and refuse to conform to the Main Street Republican version of reality? Are they afraid that too many real conservatives will wake up and defect, leaving the old Republican Party as irrelevant and obsolete as the Whigs? They might well be worried. Some people are beginning to question the party line, and to see that the GOP is as disconnected from the American traditions as the Democrats.

Lowry shouldn't worry too much, though, about the 'junk-food cons' defecting over to the Dark Side, as he sees it, of Lou Dobbs' brand of populism. Last time I checked, over at the GOP faithful forums, they were lambasting Dobbs as a 'Bush-basher'. So Lowry and the rest of the GOP can rest easy; the party faithful will continue to quaff the party Kool-Aid for the time being, lulled by the Fox News neocon-men and the talk-radio pied-pipers.

And a Merry Christmas to you. too

Christopher Orlet, in this piece from the American Spectator, takes on the secularist assault on Christmas, as embodied in Tom Flynn, author of The Trouble With Christmas.

Christians, he claims, are attempting to redefine American life, and if they succeed America will be rendered all but unrecognizable. Worse, if the secularists are defeated, no one will be safe from Christmas carolers, Salvation Army bell ringers and Charlie Brown Christmas Specials. In a recent op-ed, Mr. Flynn equates the longing for the "bad old days" of Christmastime with Southern whites' pining for the days of lynchings and cross burnings. And Flynn is far from finished. Wishing someone a "Merry Christmas" may in fact constitute hate speech, equal in effect to cross burning:

[N]o Christian can wish a non-Christian "Merry Christmas" without the implied "Up yours" ringing in the hearer's ears. Addressed to non-Christians, "Merry Christmas" is now code for "All you non-Christians go to the back of the bus! This is a Christian country. We own the last two sheets of the calendar. We're number one! By the way, you're all going to hell." '

[...]Who would have thought that one little phrase, one little wish for happiness and peace on earth would cause such hard feelings, such belligerencies?

Flynn, who is evidently angling for the same sort of enduring notoriety as the fictional Ebenezer Scrooge and the Grinch, is right about one thing. There has been a Christian backlash, an inevitability after a systematic campaign to dilute the Christmas holiday. For years Christians have been made to feel guilty for or outright forbidden from saying Merry Christmas because somewhere, some one might feel offended or excluded.

While Flynn may be an extreme example of the anti-Christmas zealots, there seems to be a growing number of people who agree with him, judging by the complaints by petty individuals against any manifestation of Christmas. As the VDare War Against Christmas Competition has documented, there is an ongoing vendetta against Christmas, maybe simply because of its Christian origin or maybe also because it is perceived as a 'majority', (read: 'white') holiday, and above all, it's not 'inclusive.'

It's no accident that the same people who are carrying out this vendetta are usually part of the greater war on Western civilization, or on American tradition.

As Patrick Cleburne at VDare points out, too, there is not only a 'war on Christmas', but there is also a loud and vocal chorus insisting that there is no war on Christmas, and that anyone who complains about the non-existent war is just paranoid and imagining things.

One comes across 'conservatives' who insist that there is no war on Christmas; it's just the same as ever, they insist. I am not sure why these people want to deny the plain evidence of their senses; however these people are usually also secular 'conservatives', agnostics, atheists, or non-Christians who resent the religious side of the Christmas holiday. Often these people will snidely say that 'Christmas is a pagan holiday anyway; what do you Christians care about preserving it?' Or they say 'you Christians are always complaining about the commercializing of Christmas, so you should be glad to see it just be a Christian, church-centered holiday.'

Regardless of what these carping people say, Christmas is part of our American traditions, and like it or not, this country was founded by Christians, as a Christian country. But now, of course, we have enforced 'diversity', and we are compelled to accommodate to each and every religion or sect or cult that has set up shop in our country. The price of all this 'diversity' is that we are less free to openly practice the traditions we've always practiced. Diversity supposedly 'enriches' us, and it is our 'strength', we are told. Yet diversity means that we all are made to walk on eggshells, to curb our tongues, censor our own speech lest somebody be offended, and we are thus encouraged to stay among our own, rather than 'offend' or exclude somebody of another background. There is no way this atmosphere can be called 'enriched'. I would say we are impoverished by diversity, when we can no longer publicly celebrate as we used to, when certain words or symbols are disallowed in the public square.

Christmas is perceptibly disappearing from our public square. Just notice how few mentions of the word 'Christmas' there are on the front page of your local papers, during this Christmas season. I read many newspapers from around the country (and the English-speaking world) in the course of the day and I see fewer mentions of Christmas than ever. For example I just had the odd experience of reading an article about performances of Handel's Messiah, in which the word 'Christmas' never appeared. Strange. Christmas and the 'Messiah' go together. But not in the bizarre world of PC, I guess.

And notice that in the mall, or in various stores playing 'holiday' music, the only songs played are the non-religious ones. I don't know about the rest of you, but for me, I can only listen to so many versions of 'Winter Wonderland' and 'Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas'. The rest of the old songs seem to be forbidden, if they even remotely refer to Christian beliefs.

Some people still deny that there is a concerted effort to efface Christmas, at least in its Christian aspects, from our culture. But if it is not a concerted effort, then it's the most gigantic coincidence ever, with so many businesses deciding all at once to ban 'Merry Christmas' from their stores, to banish the Salvation Army bell ringers (although I know they have been allowed back, at least in some places), and to remove Nativity Scenes. And let's not forget the Postal Service removing the overt religious messages from their Christmas stamps. The ones I bought have only a blue snowflake on them.

Did everybody just get the same idea at the same time, by accident? I don't buy that.
Just as with all manifestations of Political Correctness, there is a coalescing of several different forces at work: the government with its 'diversity' and multiculturalism, and business pandering to minority demographics in quest of the almighty dollar, along with the militant secularist who just hate religion. Let me qualify that last one: militant secularists by and large don't hate religion in general, but specifically Christianity. I say that because I have never once heard of those people hassling Hindus, Sikhs, Moslems, or Wiccans for some public expression of their religions, but only Christians.

In fact, it's as though other religions are being encouraged to compete with Christmas, to offer their own holidays at the same time. The invented 'African' holiday, Kwanzaa, falls at the same time as Christmas, roughly. This is odd, considering it is supposedly a 'harvest festival' -- in winter?

And Hanukkah, the Jewish alternative to Christmas, does not even necessarily fall in December; it can fall earlier, in November. So I am not sure why the PC powers-that-be insist that we have to say 'Happy Holidays' so as to include holidays that may have long since come and gone when we are still preparing for Christmas. I think the existence of the other holidays is used as an excuse to purge all the Christmas references and to create one big multicultural 'holiday' hodgepodge in December.

I am not sure why the 'secular humanists' find Christmas so odious and so worthy of suppressing, when they are happy to give recognition to every religious observance of other religions, like the Moslem 'Eid' festival or the Hindu Diwali or whatever else. These supposedly secular people seem to have an allergy only to Christianity. Flynn, in particular, associates Christianity with 'whiteness' , and makes unflattering references to 'Southern whites' in his little diatribe. It fits the pattern: find somebody who is opposed to Christianity and they are also hostile towards the South. Considering that the South is often referred to as 'the Bible Belt' and it makes sense that they are full of animus towards Southron culture.

I'm resolved not to let this war on Christmas spoil my Christmas season. I'm determined to wish 'Merry Christmas' to one and all, even if they offer me a wishy-washy 'Happy holidays'. I'm not letting the secular Scrooges and the multiculti minions get me down.