TB and PC -- and the ACLU

The coverage of the story about Andrew Speaker, the man with drug-resistant TB who may have exposed many airline passengers to the disease, has been interesting, and sometimes full of inconsistencies by the 'experts' interviewed by the cable news channels. MSNBC, for example, devoted a lot of time to the story today, and seemed to take a concerned attitude, while on FOX News I noticed that several of the experts interviewed seemed to downplay any concerns, saying with a dismissive air that TB was 'hard to spread' and that most people should not worry. I see that ABC News Medical Editor quoted in the article linked above also takes the"what, me worry?" approach. Who to believe?

Here is a 2004 article from the Harvard Gazette which tells us that
Drug-resistant TB strains may spread easily

...Current strategies are based on the assumption that multidrug-resistant strains can safely be ignored because the changes that make them drug-resistant also make them less able to reproduce and spread.

Postdoctoral fellow Ted Cohen and Assistant Professor of Epidemiology Megan Murray say that assumption is in error. Studies have already shown that different types of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis exist and that some spread as easily as nondrug-resistant strains.

Using that information, Cohen and Murray developed a mathematical model that shows that even a small number of resistant strains that are fit from an evolutionary standpoint - meaning they can reproduce and spread well - will gradually make up a larger and larger percentage of tuberculosis cases until they present a major public health problem.''

And there is this related piece:
Airborne transmission worse than thought

The article says that researchers concluded that

...a better appreciation of aerosol-acquired infection is needed, especially in environments where ventilation systems in airplanes, apartment buildings, schools, and hospitals circulate and recirculate air that may at times contain infectious airborne aerosol-acquired diseases and viruses. They call for better measures to be taken toward sanitizing the air, through tools such as upper-room ultraviolet irradiation and through research that will help control the spread of airborne infection.''

And it's well-known that
TB seen in many aliens, study says

.

..Cases of tuberculosis, which plateaued in the U.S. after increasing 20 percent in the past two decades, mostly affects the lungs and is spread through airborne bacteria, often through a cough or sneeze. It is considered a global problem, carried in latent form by 2 billion people, or a third of the world's population, said JAMA editor Dr. Catherine De Angelis.

According to this article from 2005, the three states with the greatest number of TB cases are California, Texas, and New York. All of these states, obviously, have some of the largest numbers of immigrants also.

Patients with drug-resistant tuberculosis are four times more likely to die than patients with standard tuberculosis. Forty-nine of the California patients, or 14%, died from their drug-resistant infections, according to the study, published in the Tuesday issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association.''

The Center for Disease Control has a factsheet on Extensively Drug Resistant Tuberculosis (XDR TB) here:

Notice among the FAQs this question, and the answer:

Are immigrants putting the U.S. at increased risk for TB?

Persons applying to enter the U.S. with immigrant or refugee visas must complete a questionnaire about any symptoms of TB they may have and obtain a chest radiograph. If positive, the person submits sputum specimens for examination for TB bacteria. Persons identified as having infectious TB are not granted entry to the United States, until they have been treated.''

I find the answer coy and disingenuous. It does not directly answer the question posed, first of all. And the answer that is given is framed so as to offer reassurance that our government is on top of the problem, proactively screening would-be immigrants and eliminating those who have the disease, or at least insisting that they obtain treatment before they are admitted. But how much proof is required of visa applicants? Do those infected need repeat tests to prove they are cured? If they have a resistant type, and they fail to complete the full treatment, would they still be admitted? Is our inefficient immigration bureaucracy adequate to the task of ensuring that requirements are met?

And tellingly the CDC's answer cagily skirts the question of illegal immigration; we know we have about 1.3 million legal immigrants per year, or at least, so we are told, but how many illegals enter our country every year? Possibly twice that many, by some estimates, but the fact is, nobody knows for sure how many. And we know that NONE of them are screened for contagious diseases. But the CDC gives us a sly, lawyerly answer to the question about immigrants putting us at increased risk. The honest answer would have been a big, unqualified YES. But such an answer would not be politically correct, would it? So it is not just the disease called TB that is endangering us, but the mental and moral disease referred to as PC.

If only we could find a cure for that, we'd be halfway home.

Brenda Walker has an excellent piece dealing with the question of how PC affects our public health policy:

The X-Ray Files: How Political Correctness Is Destroying Effective Public Health Policy

One might think that political correctness would have no place in the more serious arenas of policy, such as public health, but that is not the case. An editorial in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune struck a blow for the say-no-evil variety of public debate, wherein the writer bemoaned the increasing number of Minnesota tuberculosis cases, of which four in five are immigrants. (While TB in the U.S. is on the decline overall, it is growing in states like Minnesota that have large immigrant populations.) Instead of a reasonable and responsible statement about improved screening to keep out persons with dangerous infectious diseases, the Star-Tribune went global, instead recommending only a worldwide effort against TB and saying that "cracking down on immigration is no answer." Evidently the writer has forgotten the history of Ellis Island, where all immigrants were given physical examinations precisely to prevent the entrance of disease-infected persons, with one to three percent of newcomers sent back to their home countries every year because of health concerns. Rejection of foreigners carrying infectious disease is part of our immigration tradition.
[...]
At the same time memories of tuberculosis wards were fading, lawyers enlarged the concept of bioethics and individual patient's rights.

[...]Still, the pendulum has been swinging away from public health requirements at the same time that the globalized economy has exploded with increased trade and immigration -- both of which mean foreign diseases, creatures and organisms are just a plane ride away.

In the last decades, some states diluted their communicable disease-reporting laws and made it more difficult to track infectious diseases. Worse, some public health officials have come to believe that they do not have the authority to restrict individual behavior in situations of danger to the community and have fallen back into a position of merely providing care.
[Note: In yesterday's presser at the CDC, the CDC's Director, Julie Gerberding, spoke about the policy of balancing the 'personal liberty' of people with communicable diseases against the need for public safety. I thought that concept a very PC one; it's not at all the approach that our commonsense ancestors were willing to risk. - VA]
[...]
At the same time, U.S. law prohibits the return of refugees when they have a credible fear of political persecution, even when they also have infectious diseases. In this case, the government has decided that refugee rights are more important than public health. This has serious implications, given a 1996 WHO report estimated that "as many as half the world's refugees may be infected with TB."
[...]
In addition, cultural beliefs about illness and immigrant lifestyles may make effective treatment difficult without Directly Observed Therapy (DOT). Somalis believe that TB is a curse and may be reluctant to admit their illness or seek treatment. Some illegals forego treatment because they believe they will be turned over to the INS for deportation. Migrant workers are harder to treat precisely because they are migrants. The World Health Organization warns that poorly managed tuberculosis programs threaten to make TB incurable.
[...]
A Washington Post story (3/3/00) contained the following remark from the chief of Maryland's Tuberculosis Control, Nancy Baruch: "My greatest fear is that there will be this terrific xenophobic response to anyone who is a quote-unquote refugee or immigrant. All that does is drive someone away from the help they need." One would expect the "greatest fear" of a person in a top public health position to be a sudden outbreak of disease or perhaps an act of bio-terrorism causing the deaths of thousands. But no, the worst horror is bad thoughts about immigrants.
[Note: So 'xenophobia' is considered to be much more of a threat than incurable, possibly fatal diseases. How did we as a society come to this? Better dead than xenophobic, apparently.]
[...]
An effective public health system for the United States should be the paramount concern, but we hear nothing from officials about the jeopardy posed by the current immigration chaos. The politically correct, say-no-evil philosophy of politicians and public health professionals is a dangerous denial. They must do better when the issue is life and death.''

So, the people charged with protecting the public's health and safety are incurably PC, and thus unable to carry out their duties adequately. It's not bad enough that we have to be concerned about XDR TB, Extensively Drug Resistant TB, we are up against "XRR PC": Extensively Reality-Resistant Political Correctness.

And as if on cue, here comes the ACLU, who can be counted on to take the wrong side of most issues, bringing a suit
against Maricopa County, Arizona: they say that Maricopa County violated the rights of a TB patient by quarantining him and ''treating him like a criminal.'' If they win the lawsuit, imagine the precedent set there: quarantining anyone would not be possible.

The man around whom the lawsuit centers also has drug-resistant TB and has refused to follow the treatment.
Is the public health and wellbeing to be endangered so that the irresponsible and the foolish can have their 'personal liberty' or their 'right' to spread disease?

But one small hopeful sign: I have heard some very irate comments about the irresponsibility of Andrew Speaker in exposing the public to his illness. I do believe this may cause some people to begin pondering the health risks that are increasing in our 'global village' open-borders world, and I think some may finally begin to realize that this kind of thing is being unleashed among us by our insane 'invite the world' policies, and ultimately our derelict government officials and politicians. This one airline passenger is simply one of many carrying the disease; the rest of the carriers are anonymous and scattered throughout our country.

Hope for America

I've often said that the best hope of this country is in the people, the real people of America.

Foehammer over at Foehammer's Anvil has a great post called Small Town USA vs. Sanctuary City, in which he reports on his recent experiences with a citizen of a liberal 'sanctuary city' and his contrasting experiences with small-town USA. The liberal 'sanctuary city' attitudes display little real knowledge of the realities of the world, while small-town Americans, contrary to the stereotype of small-town people as being insular and backward, have a much more savvy perspective, and consequently are better prepared to deal with the difficult realities facing America and the Western world. This tallies with my own observations in my experience living in both the liberal big cities and in the small-town environment. Paradoxically the small-towners are often much better informed about the wider world than the urban sophisticates.

The discussion thread following Foehammer's piece included a comment by Bill Strong, of Seymour, Indiana, who linked to his group's website
CHOICE - Coalition of Hoosiers for Order of Immigration Control and Enforcement
'Founded in 2006, "Because Americans have a CHOICE in immigration laws"

It looks like a very worthy effort and I wish that group all success; I think such citizens' groups, acting to preserve America, are a hopeful trend, one that seems to be taking hold in many places.

And the Patriot over at the People's Patriot blog writes about
One Way to Fight a Sanctuary City

The Patriot quotes an e-mail from a group called Connecticut Citizens for Immigration Control, which appears to be a grassroots citizens' group. The group sent a letter to the Mayor of New Haven in response to the city's plan to issue 'municipal ID cards' to illegals. This is a novel approach: invoke the RICO laws against sanctuary cities.

For Immediate Release
CTCIC Sends Warning Letter to DeStefano

CT Citizens for Immigration Control sent a warning letter to Mayor Tom DeStefano of New Haven. The letter asserts that an identification card for illegal aliens would be a criminal violation of U.S. Immigration Law by inducing illegal aliens to reside in the United States.

The letter says the mayor and city officials issuing an ID, plus any citizen or organizations accepting such an ID card, would be subject to fines and imprisonment.

In addition, the letter says that such an ID card and its acceptance would be criminal racketeering. Officials implementing an ID Card and citizens accepting it would be engaged in immigration racketeering would be subject to private law suits under RICO.

“Mayor DeStefano will be putting himself, the City Council and other New Haven residents in financial jeopardy by passing this bill,” says Mr. Streitz.

“If there is one person killed or injured by an illegal alien living in New Haven by homicide or vehicular accident, the mayor, the councilmen and anyone accepting this card would be personally liable,” says Mr. Streitz.

“The parents of a murdered child are not going to want to hear the Mayor’s praise of illegals,” says Mr. Streitz.”

Again, it is encouraging to see the signs that people around the country are organizing and acting.

From the website:

We need you, our country needs you. Without your participation, our families' future and the future of the United States and Connecticut will remain dire. Collectively, we can reverse this trend and put ourselves back on the road to making and keeping America the greatest country in the world.''

Amen to that; we all need to be reminded that there are lots of people out there who see what is happening, and who care greatly about our country and our way of life. No doubt there are good traditional Americans living in the big urban centers, but such places are often actively hostile towards traditional American culture and attitudes. Small-town and rural America is the best hope we have for salvaging our country, or what is left of it. The internet is a great advantage for us in that even those of us who might live in alienating urban environments can find a kind of cyber-community with others of like mind. So even for those who may be isolated among the liberal multicultis in a big city can reach out to other traditional and conservative Americans via the Internet. Knowing that there are more of us than we may realize is encouraging.

And for Americans to act in this fashion is in the best tradition of this country; from such citizen activism this country was made.

We can all do something, and working with other citizens wherever we are is a heartening thing.
I applaud the good people of CHOICE and CTCIC, and all others, whether as individuals or groups, are doing their part. We are all needed; there will not be a man on a white horse to save the day for us; it's up to us.

'Reader! Whoever thou art, remember this...'

Before this day is gone, I want to take a moment to remember Patrick Henry, who was born on this day in 1736, in Hanover Co., Virginia. Patrick Henry is known to most of us for his firebrand speeches during the pre-Revolutionary period; he is sometimes called 'the Voice of the Revolution.' During his lifetime he was a lawyer, a member of the House of Burgesses in Virginia, and later, the first governor of the state of Virginia, where he served five terms.

At the website of the Red Hill National Memorial, which commemorates Patrick Henry, this quote is prominently featured: "I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience. I know of no way of judging the future but by the past." It's a bit of wisdom that might well be heeded by those in power in our country now, but to our shame, Patrick Henry and all the great men of his generation are neglected and their memories dishonored by the 'leaders' of our time, as they not only work assiduously but frantically to erase the America which was shaped by men like Patrick Henry.

Henry's best known speech, from March 1775, just before armed clashes broke out between the British and the colonists, contains the immortal phrase, 'give me liberty, or give me death.'' :

The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms…Let it come. I repeat, Sir, Let it come…Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!´´

Another quote:

...Sir, we are not weak, if we make a proper use of the means which the God of nature hath placed in our power. Three millions of people, armed in the Holy cause of Liberty, and in such a country as that which we possess, are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us. Besides, sir, we shall not fight our battle alone. There is a just God who presides over the destinies of nations; and who will raise up friends to fight our battle for us. The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave...''

This article by Ryan McMaken at LewRockwell.com makes the case that Henry was something of a maverick and a dissenter among his revolutionary peers; he boycotted the Constitutional Convention of 1787 because he feared the consolidation of power and the eventual growth of an American empire.

If we admit this consolidated government, it will be because we like a great splendid one. Some way or other we must be a great and mighty empire; we must have an army, a navy, and a number of things: When the American spirit was in its youth, the language of America was different: Liberty, Sir, was then the primary object…But now, Sir, the American spirit, assisted by the ropes and chains of consolidation, is about to convert this country to a powerful and mighty empire."

Was he wrong? It seems as if his words were prophetic. But oddly, towards the end of his life, when he ran for the Virginia Legislature, he ran as a Federalist, to the dismay of his former supporters. Did he have a change of heart as to his former reservations about a strong federal government?

It's a little-known fact that Henry left a message for posterity, to be read after his death:

Near his last will, Patrick Henry left a small envelope sealed with wax. Inside was a single sheet of paper on which he had copied his Resolutions against the Stamp Act. On the back, Patrick Henry left a message that he knew could only be read after his death. It began with a short history of his Resolutions against the Stamp Act, which had “spread throughout America with astonishing Quickness.” As a result, the colonies were united in their “Resistance to British Taxation,” and won “the War which finally separated the two Countries and gave Independence to ours.”

Whether America’s independence “will prove a Blessing or a Curse,” Henry continued in his message to posterity, “will depend on the Use our people make of the Blessings which a gracious God hath bestowed on us. If they are wise, they will be great and happy. If they are of a contrary Character, they will be miserable. Righteousness alone can exalt them as a Nation. Reader! whoever thou art, remember this, and in thy Sphere, practice Virtue thyself, and encourage it in others. P. HENRY”

Blogs for BordersVideo Blogburst 05/29/07

From Jake Jacobsen at Freedom Folks:


In honor of the brave men and women who serve this country we traveled to a small Illinois town that was dedicating a veterans memorial this memorial day weekend....



Please keep the troops in your thoughts and prayers!

And please keep calling your congresscritter, we are winning this fight folks, all we need to do is keep up the pressure.

Technorati Tags: blogs for borders, memorial day, veterans, honoring the troops, small town America,

Experienced patriots needed

“The punishment suffered by the wise who refuse to take part in the government, is to live under the government of bad men.” - Plato

That quote from Plato comes to mind as I read this piece about the 'immigration issue.'
This op-ed piece from the Washington Times takes a very pessimistic tone in regard to the pending amnesty bill.
Immigration disaster looming

Judging by what took place in the first hours of the Senate immigration debate last week, critics are deluding themselves if they expect lawmakers to improve the bill when debate resumes after the Memorial Day recess. Most of the organized political pressure on the immigration issue is coming from open-borders advocates intent on enabling more illegals to obtain amnesty and bring their relatives to the United States, and from Washington elites on the left and the right who think anyone who doesn't share their permissive philosophy is backward and xenophobic. Unless the American people rise up en masse and tell their senators in no uncertain terms that they cannot accept amnesty, the Senate bill will easily pass and no one should be surprised if it passes with amendments making it even more harmful to taxpayers and detrimental to hometown safety and homeland security.

[...]Right now, the open-borders side is on the offensive, while border-security proponents face an uphill battle in the Senate.''

The op-ed writers are simply being realistic; there are highly organized, activist, well-funded groups pushing aggressively for the amnesty to be passed, and our side, the side of the American people, seems to consist mostly of individuals and a few immigration restrictionist lobbying groups. We are not evenly matched. The fact is, it is a David-and-Goliath situation, and we the people, though the majority, are little David, and the Senators and their open-borders partners are Goliath.

However, the fact is, despite the money and the activist pressure groups pushing mightily for amnesty, there are far more Americans who oppose it, and who want our borders closed and our laws enforced. We are the majority, despite the opinions of people like Linda Chavez, who in her recent Townhall piece, asserted that we 'nativists' are a tiny minority. No; we are the majority, and our American system is theoretically based on majority rule, and the will of the majority should always prevail, as Jefferson said. The amnesty forces, the open borders zealots, are the minority, despite the loudness of their voices and the depth of their pockets and their stranglehold on the media. They are the 'tiny minority' as of now. For their will to prevail over the will of the majority of the citizens of America is an injustice, and a usurpation of our rightful power. We have to remember that: we, the people, are the repositories of power in this country, and our elected officials govern with the consent of the governed. If they are acting as rogue officials, representing foreign interests and corporate interests, not the American people, they are violating the principles on which America was founded. The prospect of our country being transformed by millions of strangers is troubling enough, but the deeper issue is that our government, in taking the side of these aliens, has displaced the American people from their rightful position of power. This is deeply wrong; our Founding Fathers warned of this kind of thing.

Here is someone who understands this, and who may be on the right track in proposing a Constitutional Convention. He makes his case here:
Why 'we the people' need to assert our sovereignty, or risk losing it
by Frank Miele

In the France of Louis XIV, the king could say without a shred of irony, “L’etat, c’est moi! The state, it is I.”

In the years following the adoption of the U.S. Constitution, Americans could proudly say, “The state, it is we the people.”

But in this day and age, who exactly is invested with sovereignty in the United States of America? Is it “we the people”? And if so, why do we feel so disenfranchised, so alienated, so used?

[...]Or perhaps sovereignty today belongs to the Congress of the United States? Could our elected representatives have seized power from us, right under our noses, and left us none the wiser?
[...]...last week I proposed that the people of the United States, through their state legislatures, ought to take back the reins of power and ask for — no, demand! — a convention to propose amendments to the U.S. Constitution — in particular, an amendment that requires border enforcement and denies citizenship to anyone in this country illegally, including those who were born here because their parents were here illegally.

If you think it is going to happen any other way, you are mistaken. And if you think the Constitution should not be handled by “we the people” because it is too fragile and too delicate, then you missed the point of having a Constitution. We are a self-governing people. It is not “we the dead people” who have the power in this country; it is “we the living.”

[...]we should not be afraid to seize the power granted to us by our forbears and by God in order to revivify the words of Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence that “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the consent of the governed” and “That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government...”

[...]Thus, taking my cue from Jefferson, I am calling for a constitutional convention to quickly and once and for all establish the duty and necessity of the commander in chief acting to secure the borders of the country against foreign intrusions of any kind and establishing the authority of the Congress to regulate legal immigration but never to provide blanket amnesty of any kind for illegal residents of this country.

Such drastic action is necessary because it now becomes apparent that the people of the United States can no longer depend on the Congress of the United States to do our business. A constitutional convention may well be the only way to deprive the Senate of its plan to legitimize as many as 20 million illegal immigrants and change the face of America for all time.''

Please read the whole piece; Frank Miele is a rarity in the media these days: a real patriot who understands what is at stake.

I think we should do all we can, including keeping up the pressure on the politicians, but I believe Miele is right; Americans have become too disengaged, and too willing to be passive and assume that our politicians 'represent' us and our interests, when it's clear that most of them do not, at this point.

It may be that we need something as dramatic as a Constitutional convention; we Americans have to reconnect with our rightful role as the repositories of power in this country. We have to remind our forgetful politicians that they govern only by our consent, and that if we withdraw that consent, then they have lost their legitimacy to govern us.

Most of our Senators, judging by the crucial votes on the amnesty bill, have already broken their contract with us, their constituents, and have shown that they do not respect the will of the people. Something is needed to get their attention, and to remind them of their solemn responsibilities to us.

As Miele says at the conclusion of his piece,

Let’s take back our Constitution, and take back our country.'

"When once a republic is corrupted, there is no possibility of remedying any of the growing evils but by removing the corruption and restoring its lost principles; every other correction is either useless or a new evil."- Thomas Jefferson

"If ever time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin."
- Samuel Adams

Friends, those 'vain and aspiring men' sit in the halls of power now. Are there enough of us "experienced patriots to prevent the country's ruin?"

Memorial Day 2007

Memorial Day

The finest tribute we can pay
Unto our hero dead to-day,
Is not a rose wreath, white and red,
In memory of the blood they shed;
It is to stand beside each mound,
Each couch of consecrated ground,
And pledge ourselves as warriors true
Unto the work they died to do.

Into God's valleys where they lie
At rest, beneath the open sky,
Triumphant now o'er every foe,
As living tributes let us go.
No wreath of rose or immortelles
Or spoken word or tolling bells
Will do to-day, unless we give
Our pledge that liberty shall live.

Our hearts must be the roses red
We place above our hero dead;
To-day beside their graves we must
Renew allegiance to their trust;
Must bare our heads and humbly say
We hold the Flag as dear as they,
And stand, as once they stood, to die
To keep the Stars and Stripes on high.

The finest tribute we can pay
Unto our hero dead to-day
Is not of speech or roses red,
But living, throbbing hearts instead,
That shall renew the pledge they sealed
With death upon the battlefield:
That freedom's flag shall bear no stain
And free men wear no tyrant's chain.
- by Edgar A. Guest

In remembrance of, and in gratitude to, all those who have died serving our country.
And our thanks to all those in our armed forces today.

More Chinese roulette

One of the stories that is not getting anywhere near the coverage it should be receiving is the toxic Chinese import story. From my reader and fellow blogger known here as 'Call Me Mom' comes this World Net Daily story:

Is China trying to poison Americans and their pets?

(We might well wonder, considering the sheer number of toxins and harmful additives being found in many Chinese products exported to our country and many other countries):

WASHINGTON – While Americans are still recovering from a scandal over poison pet foods imported from China, FDA inspectors report tainted food imports intended for American humans are being rejected with increasing frequency because they are filthy, are contaminated with pesticides and tainted with carcinogens, bacteria and banned drugs.

Last month, like most months, China topped the list of countries whose products were refused by the FDA – and that list includes many countries, including Mexico and Canada, who export far more food products to the U.S. than China.

Some 257 refusals of Chinese products were recorded in April. By comparison, only 140 were from Mexico and only 23 from Canada.

Refused by the FDA in April because they were "filthy":

* salted bean curd cubes in brine with chili and sesame oil
* dried apple
* dried peach
* dried pear
* dried round bean curd
* dried mushroom
* olives
* frozen bay scallops
* frozen Pacific cod
* sardines
* frozen seafood mix
* fermented bean curd
[...]
China has also attempted to export hundreds of thousands of pounds of chickens and poultry products to the U.S., even though it is not yet certified to do so. Chinese exporters disguise the meat by labeling crates "dried lily flower" or "prune slices" or "vegetables."

Despite the deliberate deception, the U.S. government is about to certify the Chinese to export poultry legally. ''

That last paragraph should be disturbing: China wants to export poultry products, including chickens to us. Why on earth we would want to import chicken or other meat from the other side of the world, especially from a country which has a long and blemished record of selling tainted and filthy foods is beyond me.

This news story tells us about the Chinese record of overusing pesticides.
Pesticides next frontier in China food safety

BEIJING (Reuters) - China's farmers overuse pesticides, skip protective clothing and have at their fingertips an array of banned and counterfeit products, raising another area of concern in the country's fragile food chain.

Spraying chemicals on crops improperly or using products that may be fake or banned risks the health of China's hundreds of millions of farmers and could lead to unsafe levels of residues in fruits and vegetables, experts say.''

And then there are the toxic toothpaste and cough syrup problems:
China admits producing toxic toothpaste for kids

Panama and the Dominican Republic report tainted toothpaste imported from China containing diethylene glycol. Importing countries now demand transparency; Beijing pledges inquiries and greater controls. Toothpaste makers object that they have been making the same products for years without causing death.

China announced yesterday an “inquiry” into the origin of toothpaste containing potentially lethal poison exported to Central America. It also tried to reassure importing countries that Chinese products are safe. However, many buyers want Chinese companies and government agencies to show greater transparency and co-operation.

Chen Yaozu, general manager of Danyang Chengshi Household Chemical Co, said his company had exported to Panama toothpaste containing diethylene glycol, a chemical blamed for the deaths of more than 100 people in that country last year after it was mixed into cough syrup.''

There is also the issue of food that may be produced at home, but sent to Third World countries -- including China -- for processing, and such food may not be labeled as such.
British prawns go to China to be shelled

Supermarkets and food producers are taking their products on huge globetrotting journeys, despite pledging to cut their carbon emissions.

The Sunday Times has found that home-grown products are being transported thousands of miles overseas for processing before being put on sale back in Britain.

Scottish prawns are being hand-shelled in China, Atlantic haddock caught off Scotland is being prepared in Poland and Welsh cockles are being sent to Holland to be put in jars before going on sale in Britain.

Meanwhile, products grown overseas are taking circuitous routes to Britain. African-grown coffee is being packed 3,500 miles away in India, Canadian prawns are processed in Iceland, and Bolivian nuts are being packed in Italy.

While ethical consumers have long opted for organic and fair trade products, there is now an increasing focus on cutting “food miles”, which generate unnecessary carbon emissions, contributing to global warming. ''

Does this make the least bit of sense, to send shellfish and other seafood off to the other side of the world to be processed, then shipped back home to the place of origin? In what kind of insane world is this the accepted practice? Simply from a freshness standpoint, even if we knew that the country doing the processing was a country with safe practices and clean conditions, which is not true of much of the Third World, it still makes no sense to send foods to faraway places for processing. Surely this lunacy is all about money; do the businesses save so much by sending the food to be processed in Third World countries that it makes up for the shipping charges?

And I wonder what American foods are treated similarly?

The Washington Post also gives us a partial list of the many tainted products coming from China:
Tainted Chinese Imports Common

Dried apples preserved with a cancer-causing chemical.

Frozen catfish laden with banned antibiotics.

Scallops and sardines coated with putrefying bacteria.

Mushrooms laced with illegal pesticides.

These were among the 107 food imports from China that the Food and Drug Administration detained at U.S. ports just last month, agency documents reveal, along with more than 1,000 shipments of tainted Chinese dietary supplements, toxic Chinese cosmetics and counterfeit Chinese medicines.''

Some articles also mentioned products like lotions, hand cleaners, soaps, etc. which contained a toxic substitute for glycerine. Since reading that article, I have since noticed that a distressingly large percentage of skin products on our local shelves are 'Made in China.' I'll pass, thank you; I won't knowingly buy or use them, and I encourage everybody out there to shun the "Made in China" items. If I have to pay more for something that is made here in the U.S.A., or in another somewhat trustworthy country, then I'm happy to pay more.

The Washington Post article continues:

It's not just about cheap imports, added Carol Tucker Foreman, a former assistant secretary of agriculture now at the Consumer Federation of America.

"Our farmers and food processors have drooled for years to be able to sell their food to that massive market," Foreman said. "The Chinese counterfeit. They have a serious piracy problem. But we put up with it because we want to sell to them."

There is the problem: greedy American exporters. We have to buy Chinese garbage in order for some of our farmers and processors to have access to that prized 'Chinese market.' Why so many in this country are stuck on the idea of 'opening up new markets' and having limitless growth is beyond me. Nothing is limitless, and the idea that these people are willing to risk the lives of American consumers so they can sell more to the Chinese is disgraceful. It's the same people and the same mentality that gives us the idea that we can accept limitless numbers of immigrants so that the same greedheads can have millions of new customers here at home.

And the toxic Chinese products are not limited to food and personal care products like toothpaste and skin care. Now we read about toxic blankets:
Tainted blankets still on shelves

BLANKETS contaminated with dangerously high levels of a toxic chemical remained on the shelves of Sydney stores yesterday, despite claims by the importer, Sheridan, that the products had never been available to retail customers.

Dozens of the "Indulgence" blankets imported from China were on display at Sheridan's factory outlet in Homebush.

At the company's Arncliffe outlet, a sales assistant said the store had sold out of the blankets just days before.

Responding to the Herald's claims that independent tests on the blankets had revealed levels of the carcinogenic chemical formaldehyde almost 10 times higher than permissible under international standards, a Sheridan spokesman said on Sunday: "The blanket is sold to commercial customers, such as hotels, and is not available to the broader retail consumer market."

Some bloggers have written about the problem. The Town Crier recommends
Victory Gardens! Kill 2 'birds' with one stone...GROW something

...GROW SOMETHING! If you can keep a house plant alive, you can grow something to eat!

Worried about the food supply? GROW something to eat! One tomato plant or one pot full of lettuce - GROW something.

You'll dispense with part of the 'need' for 'guest workers' and you'll know it's safe. Most of your tomatoes at the store are grown in Mexico, where they have no restrictions on the chemicals or cleanliness. Check the boxes if you don't believe it. Besides, don't you think you're supplying Mexico with enough of your dollars?

During World War 2, our parents and grandparents did it. It made a difference of 85 Million 1945 dollars. Don't we have any of the 'stuff' left that those good people had to do the same?''

Good commonsense advice; I agree, and that was one of the suggestions I made in my earlier blog entries on this problem. We can't grow everything we need, but we should be as self-sufficient as possible, and of course by growing our own produce, we can exercise some control over what we are exposed to.

And Mike Tuggle at the Rebellion blog discusses the globalist connection:

Ah, globalism. We don’t have to go to the trouble of manufacturing anything in this country anymore. We let other countries go to all the muss and fuss of making things, and let them send their products over here. That includes cars, food, and even people.

But there seem to be some problems with outsourcing everything:

Dried apples preserved with a cancer-causing chemical. Frozen catfish laden with banned antibiotics. Scallops and sardines coated with putrefying bacteria. Mushrooms laced with illegal pesticides.

[...]
So why not simply stop this flow of substandard, unfit Chinese imports? The answer is a combination of greed and induced helplessness:

“So many U.S. companies are directly or indirectly involved in China now, the commercial interest of the United States these days has become to allow imports to come in as quickly and smoothly as possible,” said Robert B. Cassidy, a former assistant U.S. trade representative for China and now director of international trade and services for Kelley Drye Collier Shannon, a Washington law firm.

As a result, the United States finds itself “kowtowing to China,” Cassidy said, even as that country keeps sending American consumers adulterated and mislabeled foods.

Ok, so declaring ourselves borderless has created some problems, from residents still loyal to their home countries and peoples, to contaminated food. But as long as the globalist elite makes a killing, it’s our duty to accept it. Objecting the globalist agenda could get you labeled as “protectionist” or, God help you, “xenophobic.” So to avoid having anyone calling us a bad name, we’ll put up with these threats to our families. ''

Really, this insane policy of openness which our government and elites have committed us to is a source of danger to us in many ways, the obvious one here being the exposure to unfit and unsafe foods, all considered part of the 'cost of doing business' and expanding our exports to China. Likewise, we are all at the mercy of the 'open borders' mania of the globalizing elites, as in their lust for cheap labor and 'expanding markets' they are willing to let millions of illegal and legal immigrants overrun us, along with many atavistic diseases which our forefathers toiled so long and hard to eradicate from among us -- and now, all their heroic work is being undone by our elites 'open borders' and 'free trade' obsessions.

We can easily protect ourselves from these maladies. That most of our political leaders and cultural elites are opposed to doing so--or even entertaining the possibility of doing so--illustrates a malevolent hositility toward the average native.''

Who will speak up for the American people? Our leaders and politicians evidently don't care about our lives, our health, or our safety, considering that they seem to be willing to do nothing to remove or at least minimize the threats to the American citizenry. Profits seem to be the only concern. The block quote above, from blogger the Audacious Epigone, expresses what had also occurred to me: 'malevolent hostility' is a strong phrase, but if our leaders show no signs of taking any positive measures to protect the lives of citizens, what other conclusion can we come to? We are faced with deciding whether our leadership is hopelessly, shamefully inept, or whether they are just guilty of cold indifference when it comes to our lives and safety.

The WorldNet Daily article with which I opened this piece asks whether China is intentionally trying to poison us. The fact is they have already caused the deaths of a number of people in other countries with toxic cough syrup and toothpaste, as well as causing the deaths of a number of pets in our country. It seems pointless to speculate about their motives, but at the very least we can be sure they are inept and indifferent to human life and safety. Maybe in an overpopulated country such as China, human life is held much more cheaply than it is here, and maybe they simply don't care whether they harm us barbarians here in America. One would think common sense would dictate that it isn't good business practice to sicken or kill your customers, but since we go on merrily importing more of their unfit-for-consumption products, apparently we don't have any problem with buying their deadly wares.

And as I write this, there are many Americans around this country buying more cheap shoddy Chinese goods at their local Wal-Mart or Dollar Stores, willing to risk health and life to save a buck.

As far as our government's silence on this issue, I will be far less inclined to listen when some nannystate government official tells us about the dangers of trans-fats. Please, you government nannies and busybodies: stop obsessing about things like trans-fats while there are much more worrisome substances in all this Chinese garbage our government welcomes. The hypocrisy is staggering. Your credibility is nil when you refuse to deal with the Chinese threat.

"Blood runs thicker than politics"

Linda Chavez's opinion piece on immigration is hardly a surprise. Despite her claims to being a conservative, she has consistently been on the side of illegal immigrants, and in fact at one point, was denied a cabinet post in the first Bush adminstration because of the fact that she had harbored an illegal immigrant in her home as a domestic.

Linda's piece is full of name-calling and race-baiting, all of which confirms my impression that she is no conservative, but a neocon right-liberal. The neocons are as fond of using the race card as any of the liberals are. And although Linda Chavez accuses 'nativists' of not having any logic or facts on their side, she presents none herself. She simply states that the xenophobes believe all sorts of negative stereotypes of Mexicans, and it's obvious she takes offense at this fact, although she herself, being an American, should have no reason to take offense. There's the rub: obviously she identifies with the Mexican illegals more than with Anglos or other Americans. She has shown us clearly where her allegiances are, and they are not with conservatism, and most certainly not with traditional America. Blood trumps culture, as I have said before. Linda is born and bred an American. She is culturally American. She probably speaks Spanish with an American accent. But she has as much as admitted that her heart is with her illegal distant cousins, not with her fellow Americans, not with me. and not likely with you, my readers.

So again, as with Ruben Navarrette, her ethnic kinsman who writes pro-illegal articles gloating about the "re"conquest of America by Mexicans, Linda has shown us where her allegiances are. She is siding against fellow Americans in favor of illegal Mexicans, just as Navarrette and Mel Martinez and Luis Gutierrez and so many others are doing.

I'm not even going to protest at her labeling people like me and other immigration restrictionists as racist or xenophobic. I have no interest in playing that game; liberals of both right and left love to race-bait, and they love to see the target wriggle and squirm and protest and sputter their innocence. I won't dignify the race-baiting by any rebuttal; one can't refute a charge of racism anyway, and the race-baiter is not interested in hearing any defense. They simply want to silence and discredit people. And they are in the wrong for trying to do so. Plain and simple. I won't get caught up in their game.

Am I a 'nativist'? Probably. Is that bad? Not in my book or my ancestors' book either; it's just the natural state of being. We are all born with an inclination to side with our own and to put our own people first. Linda proves that, but her people are the Mexican people, evidently. So Linda is just as nativist or ethnocentric, but merely in favor of Latinos.

Some people insist, in the absence of any real evidence, that people of Hispanic descent who were born in this country are opposed to illegal immigration. I'm a skeptic on that point; I say show me. Prove it. Anecdotes don't count, such as 'I have a friend (neighbor, co-worker, colleague) who is Hispanic and he/she doesn't like illegal immigration.'
Fine; show me your friend/neighbor/coworker who opposes illegal immigration and I'll show you quite a few more Hispanic legislators, congressmen and congresswomen, Senators, local officials, journalists and 'pundits' (like Ms. Chavez) who are avid proponents of amnesty, and who identify as Hispanic first, American being a distant second.
When push comes to shove, I think blood trumps all, and as Lionel Sosa says today in the Los Angeles Times, quoted here at the VDare blog, 'blood runs thicker than politics.' Sosa, apparently a Republican, has decided to work for self-proclaimed Latino Democratic presidential candidate Bill Richardson Lopez (Bill Richardson as was; but he wants to go all Hispanic on us all of a sudden. He's another exhibit in my case here.) So Lionel Sosa says right out that 'blood runs thicker than politics' and it looks as though it certainly is for Linda Chavez, as she sacrifices whatever tatters of conservative principles she may have had in favor of sticking up for her race, her people. Shouldn't her people be Americans? I have read that her Mexican ancestors came here many generations ago, and she is, after all, half Anglo-American. Sosa, at least, is all Hispanic as far as I have been able to determine.

What is it with people like Chavez, Richardson (Lopez), and Geraldo Rivera, who have only half Hispanic ancestry, but who suppress their allegiance to the non-Hispanic side in favor of the Hispanic ancestry? It is almost always that way with people of mixed parentage: the European ancestry is shunned while the non-European is emphatically embraced. I suppose that simply reflects how our society has devalued European heritage as inferior or 'boring' or dull, or guilty, while non-European ancestry is exciting and 'vibrant'. And then one has the heady experience as a 'minority' of being a self-righteous victim. There are a lot of benefits and power that go along with being a member of a 'victim' group these days. It must go to one's head; it must feel empowering and morally superior.

I would bet that, as the Latino presence becomes more dominant here, and as our collaborationist government sides with the Latinos consistently, those in our country of Hispanic descent will start to identify more strongly with their Latino roots. Many American-born Hispanics will probably take up Spanish more avidly and speak it more often with their Mexican-born friends and neighbors. They will likely become less Americanized, especially in border states and other areas with a large Mexican/Central American colony. The same process has happened in some European countries with their Moslem populations; the more assimilated ones began to become more radicalized and more Islamic in culture and religious practice with the growing presence of Moslem immigrants in European countries. Some of the third-generation descendants of immigrants began to be more Moslem than their parents. The same will likely happen in America. We will see a lot of triumphalism and gloating among the Latinos as they see our worthless politicians truckling to them and taking their side.

Just as lots of people in the West comfort themselves by believing strongly in the 'moderate Moslem majority', the same people, liberals and neocons, believe with little evidence that Hispanics are mostly opposed to illegal immigration, and moreover, that they are conservative, well-assimilated, and on our side. No doubt some are, but we will shortly find out how many, as Hispanics will start to choose whether they are on the side of Americans or on the side of their kin from South of the border. As the country becomes polarized, the 'Hispanic community' will choose one way or the other, and if human nature holds true, blood will be the stronger tie.

So we will see more Hispanics in public life openly siding with their own over the rest of us.
I would like to think I am wrong; I would be happy to be proven wrong by events, but I am calling it as I see it at this moment, based on what people like Linda Chavez, Geraldo Rivera, and Ruben Navarrette are telling us.

Does Christianity demand Open Borders?

These days, in all the debate and rancor over mass immigration and ethnic division, Christians are getting battered from both sides: I have heard many people who are opposing multiculturalism and the breakdown of nations condemn Christianity as the cause of the West's self-immolation. And then the Open Borders fanatics and the multicultists have pummeled Christians with our Bible, telling us that God wants us to open wide our gates and welcome the immigrant, illegal or legal. Michael Gerson's article in the Washington Post, (H/T Lawrence Auster at VFR), excoriates Christians who are 'nativists' for their 'national chauvinism' and 'rage.'

Those of us who are Christians, with a traditional perspective sometimes find it difficult to give Biblical answers to the liberals like Gerson, who are brazenly Bible-thumping in support of their political agenda. I think they believe they can shame us out of our 'nativism,' and sadly, maybe their tactics succeed with many Christians who tend to go along with social trends. And believing in a soppy egalitarianism and universalism is popular these days, especially for many ostensibly conservative Christians who have fallen in with the 'emergent church' movement.

But here is one Christian perspective on the Bible and immigration. Rev. Childress talks about the religious activists' support for illegal immigrants based on their interpretation of the world 'sojourner'. For example, there are Biblical passages which God enjoins the people of Israel to welcome the sojourner:

The Bible is full of stories of sojourners, strangers without homes, whom God called people to protect. The Israelites "God's chosen people" were themselves sojourners for 40 years after the exodus from Egypt as they entered the promised land. God did not let the Israelites forget that they had been without a homeland for such a long time; the ethic of welcoming the sojourner was woven into the very fabric of the Israelite confederacy. It was more than an ethic, it was a command of God. 'Do not mistreat or oppress a stranger; you know how it feels to be a stranger, because you were sojourners in the land of Egypt' (Exodus 23:9)." p. 1

As these excerpts point out, the Bible in a great many places uses "sojourner" to refer to those who are in a location which is not their original homeland. However, it is clear that while a sojourner shares some characteristics with an immigrant, the two are in very different pursuits.

Using the term sojourner as a kind of proof-text for political statements about immigration clouds the issue because many people of faith find it hard to "argue against the Bible." Paul W. Lewis, an author on Christian engagement of social issues and a former missionary, admits "I have been greatly bothered by the way some people have used the term 'sojourner' to back up their own idea about immigrants. It was a totally different situation back then. We could also use the word 'traveler' today."

Childress says that the class of people called 'sojourners' were mainly temporary guests or travelers, in some cases refugees who were fleeing some troubles in their homelands. These sojourners who would be more like today's 'refugees' were not expected to stay permanently. In fact, even in our country, refugees were at one time in our history considered only temporary guests until they could be repatriated to their homelands. It's odd how even in my lifetime the attitude has changed; it used to be a given that most people, given a choice, would prefer the land of their birth. It was just assumed that a people would be happiest and most suited to their homelands, among others of their own people. At what point did we discard that most basic human assumption? Don't we all feel, deep down, that home is the preferred place to be? We have so many proverbs and folk-sayings which indicate our attachment to 'home.'
Be it ever so humble... and 'East or West, home is best.' And in the past it was implicit that home meant not just the house we live in, which may not be a permanent address, but our homeland, and for many of us our home state, our hometown, where our attachments are. What happened to that regard we once had for the natural ties which bind us to our people and our homeland? Now, everybody, regardless of political leanings, seems to accept this liberal notion that people are innately nomadic, searching for the cushiest and easiest conditions. Home and kin are now regarded as trivial; what matters is, apparently, A Better Life, which it seems can only be found in our country. How did we come to this? We Americans are in the unfortunate position of living in a country which is seen as the world's cornucopia, the dispenser of goodies and Better Lives for the whole world. There is no longer any need or desire, apparently, for anybody in the less prosperous countries to better themselves there, or to improve their homeland; far better to get an airline ticket to America, or pay a human smuggler a bundle of money to bring them to the Promised Land. This situation is not what the Bible is talking about in those passages about 'sojourners.'

Our country is THE destination of choice for most of the world's covetous have-nots. And the last time I looked, the Bible forbids us to covet our neighbor's goods. Poor people don't get a pass on that; coveting is not justified by being less fortunate, and stealing and defrauding are also sins. Yet we excuse the coveting, stealing, and bearing false witness and defrauding of the illegals because they are poor. This is not Biblical; we don't have two sets of commandments, one for the wealthier and one for the poorer people. Wrong is wrong, and there is no respect of persons. And before somebody brings up the issue of charity, Americans can and do give a great deal of money not only by foreign aid, but via private charitable groups. We do our share for all the poor countries, and it is not our fault that their leaders often steal the aid or misuse it. It is not justice to demand that we take in all the world's peoples who are less well off than we are.

However, the open-borders zealots, religious and secular, always seem to imply, as I've said here before on this blog, that America has some kind of monopoly on 'democracy' and 'freedom' and 'a better life', and that it is our responsibility to spend our substance and our young people's blood to make other people free, regardless of their capability for it. And it is our obligation, so they imply, to essentially hand our country over to the masses of immigrants because we alone have the keys to the 'better life' and the 'American dream'. And it would be greedy and selfish to want to keep all freedom and prosperity to ourselves. So we are being forced to turn our country over to all who would come here, or otherwise we stand accused of greed and selfishness, as well as 'racism' and 'xenophobia.'

Rev. Childress says:

...Our religious rhetoric and practice often imply that only the United States offers the kind of life that's worth living in the world today. That's a national arrogance which can bear no positive effect.''

He is right, unfortunately. The neocons are just as guilty of that 'national arrogance' and self-flattery as are the liberal left. The left, as much as they denounce America, paradoxically think the whole world should come here. This country is not the only place where people can live decent lives; people can and do live good lives in their own countries. We are being duped into believing that we hold the keys to the whole world's prosperity and happiness and freedom. Wrong! And realizing that it is just not true would take the weight of the world off our shoulders. We are not responsible for making everybody rich, or for giving them the 'American dream' or for bringing them democracy all wrapped up neatly and deposited in their laps.

America is the best country on earth -- for Americans, for those Americans who love her, that is. But America is not required to gratify the wishes of the whole world; America cannot be all things to all people.

Yet another Christian commentator, Steve Marr approaches the illegal immigration question from a justice perspective. After all, although Marr does not say this, the Bible tells Christians to obey the laws of the land. If our illegal invaders are such devout, religious Christians as their apologists claim they are, they are disobeying God's command to follow the laws of the land. And if some leftist Christians aid and abet the illegals, and encourage 'civil disobedience', they are disobedient to God's laws too.

Many open-borders zealots, both secular and religious, claim or imply that the illegals are 'starving' in their countries, and come here out of 'desperation' or hunger or the 'need to feed their families.' To them I issue this challenge: show me evidence, solid evidence, of starvation or famine in Mexico and Central America. And the fact is, Mexico's poverty is always cited, but factually speaking, Mexico is not one of the poorer nations, being rich in natural resources, including oil. The problem in Mexico is that the upper classes control a great percentage of the wealth. This fact notwithstanding, it has been determined that many illegals had jobs in Mexico, and left those jobs to come here. They are not 'forced' to come here, contrary to what they and their defenders say.

This Christian commentator takes a conservative approach, and cites the Biblical fact that God sets the bounds of nations, Yet at the end, the writer gives in to liberalism and what sounds very much like a Politically Correct sermon on 'hatred' towards immigrants of other races.

When considering this issue, from a Christian perspective, I ask the same question I ask on most issues: are we wiser than our forefathers? My answer is almost always NO. How is it that today's Christians can see things in the Bible which our ancestors for the last 2000 years never saw? Did previous generations of Christians ever imagine that God wanted us to surrender our countries to any and all invaders in the name of kindness or charity? Did any past generations imagine that the Bible tells us to lay down our arms and passively let ourselves be conquered? Did our forefathers believe that God wanted to erase borders and create a single world system in which all peoples mingled willy-nilly together? If all these things are found in the Bible, why did our ancestors fail to realize that and abolish borders and nations 2000 years ago? Are we wiser than our forefathers?

I think too many people, even people who claim to be conservative, have this very radical liberal notion that we are the first enlightened generation in the history of humankind. Our ancestors were racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, and generally ignorant, whereas we, we are the wisest and most enlightened and 'tolerant' generation in recorded history. Now the fact that our world is so chaotic and troubled does not seem to create any doubt about our wisdom and enlightenment. And the fact that in many ways, past generations lived much safer, saner, serener lives than ours, does not trouble these people. We still persist in thinking we are the moral betters of our ancestors. Again, this is arrogance.

If our ancestors, who were generally much more Biblically literate and plain old commonsensical than we are did not see fit to establish multicultural societies, then that should give us a hint that we are on the wrong track. But our upstart generation is like a know-it-all adolescent, thinking himself wiser than his backward parents.

Here's another thought on the Bible and nations: God seemed to have divided us into nations, after the Tower of Babel incident in Genesis 11, as a way of keeping people from uniting in rebellion. Nations are a kind of system of 'checks and balances' to keep flawed human beings from excessive concentration of power. Most conservatives, religious or not, sense that the greater the concentration of power in the fewer hands, the greater potential for tyranny and evil.

Nations, kindreds, peoples, tongues: the Bible talks about these units of humankind. Nowhere in the Bible is it recommended that these things be abolished or that they are bad. The idea that such ordering of humanity is wrong and that the divisions and separations should be broken down is pure leftism; it has nothing to do with the Bible.

And if we allow millions upon millions of people into our country under the guise of charity or altruism, or whether we imagine they can help our economy, the fact is, the American people are disregarded and left vulnerable in such a situation. Multiculturalism and division within only weaken us. And it was Jesus Christ, not Abraham Lincoln, who first said that "a house divided against itself cannot stand."

Immigration, East and West

Here is a different approach to dealing with the immigration problem: France is offering money to immigrants to go home.

France to pay immigrants to return home

France is home to over 5 million immigrants -- and the new conservative-led government doesn't plan on making things any more comfortable for them. While the new regime in Paris is determined to curb illegal immigration, it is also looking to encourage legal migrants to reconsider their decision to stay in France -- by paying them to go back home.

New immigration minister, Brice Hortefeux, confirmed on Wednesday that the government is planning to offer incentives to more immigrants to return home voluntarily. "We must increase this measure to help voluntary return. I am very clearly committed to doing that," Hortefeux said in an interview with RFI radio.

Under the scheme, Paris will provide each family with a nest egg of €6,000 ($8,000) for when they go back to their country of origin. A similar scheme, which was introduced in 2005 and 2006, was taken up by around 3,000 families.''

Now, on the face of it, this looks like a plausible idea, but it would work only if France strictly enforces its borders and ports. After all, could the immigrants who are paid to return home not simply sneak back in, using different names, like so many of our illegals do, and collect some more money to leave? And if other countries adopt this practice, I can well imagine some shrewd immigrants going from one country to another and collecting their $200 every time they pass 'go.' They could conceivably make a tidy living this way if the countries involved do not keep careful record of who leaves and who enters.

And also Hortefeux, the new immigration minister who is quoted in the article, says that France will not give amnesty to illegal immigrants. Can we trade our our 'Homeland Security' chief for this man?

When Sarkozy was elected I expressed some skepticism about him; I don't claim to be an expert on French politics, but Sarkozy it seems is more of a right-liberal than a conservative. But if he is serious about doing something about the immigration issue, even a small effort is something, as compared to our political classes who have made it clear that they will do NOTHING about illegal immigration except to encourage it by every means possible, and to offer rewards and incentives to the invaders, while flipping the bird to American citizens.

So I suggest that American neocons who are fond of disparaging France might want to think twice: it looks as though France at least has some plan to deal with the problem.

So what say you, readers? Is this French plan a good idea, or not?
Paying immigrants to go home doesn't sound cruel and heartless to me. And look at it this way: it is much more costly to keep most of our immigrants here, because they are heavy users of social services and various government programs. They cost much more than they pay in taxes, so paying them the equivalent of $8000 sounds like a bargain to me. And I suspect it is the same in France, with the immigrants costing the system more than they contribute.

However, I have to defer to the judgment of those who know France better than I, and that includes just about everyone. Perhaps my reader and commenter 'zazie', who is French, may have an opinion on this.

And from the other side of the world, we read this depressing headline:

Japan Will Allow More Immigration

Japan will open its borders to more foreign workers to keep the economy growing as its population ages, Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs Mitoji Yabunaka said.

``We're ready to make Japan as open as possible,'' Yabunaka said in a May 21 interview in Tokyo. ``Clearly there's the need for more immigration. We're faced with all sorts of demographic questions.''

Japan's population began declining in 2005 and the government said earlier this year that it may fall by as much as a quarter by 2050. Japan has never had to rely on mass immigration, unlike countries such as the U.S. and Australia that were founded by migrants.

``Japan has no official immigration policy like those of the U.S. or Australia,'' said Hidenori Sakanaka, director of the Japan Immigration Policy Institute. ``The policy has been to keep people out if they intend to stay permanently.''

This is sad; Japan is a country with a high living standard and an orderly society. Why on God's green earth do they want to invite trouble by making Japan an 'open' country, and importing strangers? Japan is often described as 'xenophobic' which no doubt means they are sensible people who like to keep their country Japanese, and prefer their own to strangers. And make no mistake, any country has a perfect right to restrict who enters and who stays. It's a bizarre notion that everybody has a right to wander the world like a gypsy (oops, is that politically incorrect?) and take up residence wherever they choose without regard to the people of that country. Yet in our age, it is almost taken as a given that any country which strictly controls its borders is some kind of outlaw country which must be made to open up. And given that Japan is a First World, civilized country with a high standard of living, of course it is seen as a 'wealthy' country, and that means it's a target for the levelers, who want to drag everybody down to the same dreary level.

I would suspect that the average Japanese citizen will not acquiesce to this assault by the open borders fanatics and the globalists. If the Japanese people are as ethnocentric as they seem, they will not want their country changed into something else. More immigrants will make for less social cohesion, more strife and tension, and more crime. Breaking up a country by means of forced immigration should be made some kind of crime, the victims being the citizens of the country.

Surely the Japanese people are perceptive enough to see what is happening to other countries on whom 'diversity' and 'multiculturalism' have been inflicted, and they would not want the same fate to befall Japan. It amazes me that so many countries are having to learn the hard way that a 'diverse' society is unstable and eventually strife-torn, and the benefits which are derived from importing cheap labor are limited to the business interests who profit from it.

Earth calling Planet Peggy

Peggy Noonan has written a column which almost sounds like she is opposing amnesty, but which is really a paean to immigrants; her usual gushing mixed in with phony tough talk.

I've interspersed my comments in bold and in brackets below.

Slow down and absorb

Why do people want to come here? Same reasons as a hundred years ago. For a job. For an opportunity. To rise. To be in a place where one generation you can be a bathroom attendant at a Brooklyn store and the next your boy can be the star of "Ted Mack's Original Amateur Hour," with everyone in the neighborhood listening on the radio, or, today, "American Idol" with everyone watching and a million dollar contract in the wings. To be in a place of weird magic where the lightning strikes. Boom. You got the job in the restaurant. Crack. Now you're the manager.

[Sometimes Peggy is downright weird. Where does she get these ideas? From corny B-movies? And the allusion to 'Ted Mack's Original Amateur Hour' -- few people these days even recognize that allusion, and what the heck does it have to do with the illegal invasion, Peggy? And by the way: I don't buy that today's immigrants have the same motives as my ancestors. They came to a wilderness and created a civilized society from scratch. That's a little different than sneaking into an established country illegally and asking for handouts. But let's let Peggy continue:]

I asked myself a question this week and I realized the answer is "Only one." The question is: Have I ever known an immigrant to America who is lazy? I have lived on the East Coast all my life, mostly in New York, and immigrants both legal and illegal have been and are a part of my daily life, from my childhood when they surrounded me, to an adulthood in which, they, well, surround me. And the only lazy one I knew was a young woman, a European, not mature enough to be fully herself, who actually wanted to be a good worker but found nightlife too alluring and hangovers too debilitating.

But she was the only one. And I think she went home.

Everyone else who comes here works hard, grindingly hard, and I admire them. But it's more than that; I love them and I'm rooting for them. When I see them in church, (it is Filipino women who taught me the right posture for prayer; Central Americans helped teach me the Bible) I want to kiss their hands. I want to say, "Thank you." They have enriched my life and our country's.

[Peggy lives in a dream world, truly, if she thinks that lazy immigrants do not exist, 'except for one.' I've known immigrants who had little work ethic, bad attitudes, and an entitlement mentality. Ask anyone who works in a social services agency. All immigrants are not plaster saints, except in Peggy Noonan's gauzy, glamor-lensed world of idealized 'hard-working' immigrants. And if she could not have learned to pray, or learned her Bible, without immigrants to teach her, that is sad. Just sad. Plenty of Americans managed those things without having our moral betters from foreign lands to show us. And if Peggy's life would not be rich without immigrants, how did our -- excuse me, my -- forefathers ever survive, without all those enriching immigrants? I guess their America was grey, dull, drab, and impoverished, before all the huddled masses arrived to enrich our lives, along with Peggy's grandparents. Immigrants to the rescue, huh, Peggy?]

[...]So what should we do?

We should stop, slow down, and absorb.''

[Peggy goes on to say that we should 'Americanize' the immigrants; start teaching the story of our country again, teach them why they are part of something good here. Fine, Peggy, but I have a suspicion that the kind of history YOU and your fellow liberals would teach them is 'America is a nation of immigrants; the Statue of Liberty embodies America, diversity has made us great, immigrants built America" and so on; the usual sentimental, maudlin, PC twaddle that has encouraged us to passively allow mass illegal immigration in the first place.


Then, Peggy cuts to the chase, saying:]

Here is the truth: America has never deported millions of people, and America never will deport millions of people.
It's not what we do. It's not who we are. It's not who we want to be. The American people will never accept evening news pictures of sobbing immigrants being torn from their homes and put on a bus. We wouldn't accept it because we have hearts, and as much as we try to see history in the abstract, we know history comes down to the particular, to the sobbing child in the bus. We don't round up and remove.
[...]We do the small discrete things a nation can do to make the overall situation better. For instance: "You commit a crime? You are so out of here." And "Here, let me help you learn English."

[No, Peggy, I guess we won't ever deport anyone as long as there are so many Peggy Noonans out there to protect the illegals and to stir up emotion over them. Our ancestors, though, would have done it; they knew that sometimes tough decisions had to be taken. Such is life. And by the way: why would there be sobbing children involved? If the whole family goes home together, and they would, then who would be torn apart? Peggy, here's a novel thought: deporting simply means to SEND THEM HOME. Since when is sending someone home the height of cruelty?

Peggy, you are old enough to remember when occasionally some immigrant fell afoul of the law: some Mafia figure or sometimes even a petty criminal -- and they were put on a ship to the Old Country. Did that break up families? Maybe; but our society was tougher then, and we weren't the handwringers and weepers that we are today. So we sent people HOME. And guess what? Life went on. America survived and was the better for it. The deportees survived, presumably, back at HOME. With their relatives and friends and kin in the Old Country. And the sky did not fall, and the Statue of Liberty did not shed tears.

But back to Planet Peggy:]

Let's take some time and find out if the immigrants who are here see their wages click up and new benefits kick in as the endless pool stops expanding. It would be good to see them gain.
[...]Digest, absorb, teach. Settle in, settle down, protect our country.
Happy Memorial Day."

It would be good to see the immigrants gain? Really? I would call it a good thing to see Americans gain. There are plenty of Americans whose wages have been depressed by immigrant labor; there are too many Americans who have lost jobs and livelihoods because of immigration, legal and illegal. I want to see Americans gain, Peggy. Let Mexico worry about Mexicans, let Somalia worry about Somalians, and China about the Chinese. My place, and yours, in a just and sane world, is to take care of our own.

What a radical concept.

Peggy Noonan is one of those people who is labeled a 'conservative' -- someone please remind me why? What conservative principles does she uphold or embody? In all the important respects, this woman is a liberal flibbertigibbet. She is forever gushing about immigrants, and telling us about her Irish immigrant roots and her warm and wonderful life in multicultural Manhattan.

Yes, I know she was a speechwriter for Ronald Reagan and later, George Bush the elder ,and unless I am mistaken, she was the one who crafted some of Bush père's loopier phrases, like "a thousand points of light".

She is a good writer in a sort of fluffy, twee kind of way, but give me the plainspokenness and common sense of a Phyllis Schlafly any day over Miss Noonan's cotton candy nonsense. Peggy would probably be a crackerjack fiction writer; she could crank out lots of corny melodramas involving hard-working immigrants enriching the drab lives of dull whitebread Americans.

The Peggy Noonans of this world are the reason WHY we give in to all the demands made on us by the world. The sentimentalist, bleeding-hearts like her, who see everybody as just wonderful, are the reason why Western countries are being overrun by immigrants and riven by social division and conflict: because weepy-eyed sentimentality is stripping us of our common sense and natural self-protective instinct. Our countries now have a dominant group of soft-hearted, soft-headed, compassionate-to-a-fault, do-gooders and pollyannas. These people, whether or not they acknowledge it, are enabling the cynical corporate interests who want mass immigration.

And many of these busybody, we-are-the-world liberals are Republicans. Where is the party that represents the old, muscular, don't-tread-on-me America? Instead we have immigrant-besotted liberals like Noonan wanting to kiss immigrants' hands. What is it with Noonan and the hand-kissing? She wrote that same phrase about immigrants in a column about last year's confrontational Mexican-flag-waving protests. Bizarre. The immigrants are marching with Mexican flags and angry slogans about gringos going back to Europe, and Peggy wants to kiss their hands.

Peggy Noonan, far from convincing me that we should welcome all those immigrants, has only convinced me that the Republican party has far too many goofy people like her, who want to rescue and 'thank' all those colorful immigrants, and she has convinced me that unless we find an alternative to the GOP, we as a country are sunk.

No offense to anyone from New York, especially lifelong New Yorkers, but living in a city which is so very much unlike the rest of America tends to lead to an acceptance of multiculturalism. I am truly convinced that many lifelong New Yorkers truly do not see what the rest of us see: the drastic remaking of America. Those of us who grew up in what many New Yorkers call 'flyover country' remember an America which bore no resemblance to the polyglot, United Nations atmosphere which New Yorkers live and breathe. Maybe to New Yorkers it is a natural and desirable thing to be a minority in 'your' country, but the rest of us are decidedly uncomfortable with that; we don't want the America we know and love to be changed, without our consent, into something different and something in fact hostile to us.

If this country breaks apart due to this massive social engineering experiment being performed on us, we may see the country divided on an urban/rural basis, with big multicultural, heavily ethnic cities versus heartland, traditional America. I know which one I would prefer to be in. Noonan and her fellow xenophiles can live in the teeming cities with hundreds of nationalities and languages if they like, but me, I like my America American.

Peggy and her ilk can look down on me and feel superior to me all they want to; I know where my allegiances are: to my forefathers and my kin and my heritage. She and those who swoon over immigrants are free to dwell among them; in my America we believe in freedom of association. Her America does not.

The upside-down world of liberals

A question occurs to me: if liberals say that preferring one's own people is 'xenophobia', which means fear or dislike of that which is different, then could not homosexuality be described as a form of xenophobia?

If not, why not?

Would it not be an example of preferring those like oneself and fearing the different?

Liberals claim that homosexuality is inborn, and genetically determined. It used to be considered a psychological ailment or a mental disorder, but was suddenly removed from the psychologists' Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of disorders back in the 1970s, just about the time that homosexual activists became powerful, and the laws regarding homosexual acts were being removed or left unenforced.

The fact that something can be a pathology and a mental disorder one day, and perfectly normal the next, naturally leads me to question the scientific validity of the psychological belief system. No other science is so nebulous and so open to interpretation and subjective opinion, unless it's one of the other social 'sciences' like sociology.

But if liberals in general, and the psychologists, are willing to justify homosexuality on the basis that it is innate, why is ethnocentrism considered pathological or at least morally blameworthy? A case could be made that ethnocentrism, including what the liberals call 'racism' is an innate tendency, present in all peoples. Why excuse one behavior on that basis, while condemning other seemingly universal, inborn tendencies?

Liberals believe in evolution; if one believes in natural selection and the survival of the fittest, then a tendency like ethnocentrism is a positive aid in survival; people tend to trust and accept those like themselves, and to regard outsiders and strangers and those more unalike as potential enemies and threats to survival, or at least, as competitors for territory, resources, or mates. So ethnocentrism or distrust of strangers is useful in many cases; it causes us to put our guard up with strangers, who may in fact be a threat to us.

Homosexuality, however, seems to have no positive function in the cause of survival; it's a behavior, which, if universally practiced, would lead to extinction. So why is it justified and praised by liberals, although it is a net negative in the Darwinian sense, while ethnocentrism, simple preference for one's own, is condemned and called unhealthy?

Again, liberals speak of human beings 'evolving' towards higher, more enlightened behaviors. They speak of human beings needing to 'evolve beyond' warfare and violence. Yet warfare is seemingly ubiquitous in human societies.
Back in the 70s, when I studied anthropology for a while (I ultimately decided against majoring in it) we were taught about a tribe in the Philippines who were supposedly pacifistic and childlike, with a language that had no words for war or killing or violence. By contrast, we were taught about a South American tribe whose culture was violent in the extreme. Of course the attitudes of the professors were not at all unbiased in the matter, scientific objectivity be damned; they held the supposedly 'evolved' peaceful tribe up as an example of perfect, uncorrupted human nature. The ultimate noble savages: innocent children.

Of course, some of you may already have known that in more recent times, the story of the peaceful Tasaday tribe in the Philippines was shown to be a hoax; the idea of their Edenic, pacific society was a fabrication. So much for the myth of the idealized noble savages. But the anthropologists and leftist ideologues needed this myth of the peaceful little tribe to further their ideology, so they perpetrated this fairytale. Some insist even now that the tribe was genuine, but the evidence seems to say otherwise. Still, the truth is always hard for the ideologues to come to terms with.

Despite the fact that no such perfect, peaceful society has ever been known to exist, the liberals cling to the idea that man is perfectible, and basically good if not corrupted by some evil belief system. Just as liberals claim that 'you have to be carefully taught' to fear or dislike others, they believe you have to be carefully taught to be aggressive or to use force. And they believe that if we could simply 'teach peace' and outlaw guns and weapons and warfare, we could all live like that mythical tribe of childlike naifs.

So if human beings should 'evolve' out of the tendency to aggression and conflict and violence, which seem inborn in the human race, why should people not evolve out of homosexuality? Why does that behavior get a pass simply because it is claimed to be genetic? Why not teach human beings to be heterosexual?

The fact is, I am not sure I believe that liberals actually think being 'gay' is innate; I think they simply use that as an excuse to allow it and promote it as a healthy, natural option. Having options and 'creating oneself' are all-important to the liberal.

I've been told that among some of the younger generations, in certain circles, to be exclusively heterosexual is considered to be 'homophobic.' We knew it would come to this. I wouldn't be surprised if and when the liberals get the 'hate crime' laws they keep demanding, that rejecting a homosexual advance, or asserting a preference exclusively for the opposite sex, will be designated a 'hate crime.' So it appears that certain choices are not allowable; one has options but must choose the correct options, like sexual 'openness' towards the same sex, or one risks being branded as some kind of 'phobic.'

Liberals truly seem to see the world in an upside-down way, in which preferring your own people and kindred is a crime and a pathology. In their eyes, it's virtuous to prefer strangers and to take their side, but somehow it's good to prefer one's own sex to the opposite sex, in contravention to nature. Some objective anthropologist should do a study on the strange tribe called liberals, and their quaint and utterly irrational belief system.