Your humble Blog Goliard welcomes the recent debate over the issue of birthright citizenship, especially if it winds up opening the issue of wrong-turns we have taken in interpreting the Fourteenth Amendment more generally.

Reforming birthright citizenship would, however, merely address a symptom of the overall immigration problem—as, for that matter, would a tightening of border security. To attack the root of the problem would require addressing the welfare state on one hand, and the question of national identity and cohesion on the other.

Given the current state of affairs and the contours of the debate, I am very much in the restrictionist camp; I believe it is my only choice. But I could learn to stop worrying and love open borders, if I could be assured of five things:

• No alien will be granted admittance to, or allowed to remain in, the United States if they have a criminal record in any country that contains anything more serious than a speeding ticket. (Exceptions made for political prisoners and similarly persecuted persons, provided they can demonstrate they are fundamentally peaceful and law-abiding.)


• Everyone who comes here must hold down a job or operate a viable business.


• Non-citizens are forbidden from receiving any sort of public assistance whatsoever. (Exceptions made for medical care in a bona-fide extreme emergency, and for one-way transportation back to one’s native country.)


• Naturalization will not become, in any significant way, any faster or easier to attain than it is now.


• Anyone intending on long-term residence must learn English and plan on their children speaking English as at least a co-native tongue. They must also learn America’s history and heroes and guiding principles—and if they aspire to be citizens, learn to revere them above all the symbols and totems and mores of the old country.

A fellow can dream, can’t he?

Clive Crook at The Atlantic posted a piece yesterday that seemed most promising based on the headline: “Climategate and the Big Green Lie”. And it wasn’t bad really; yet the opening made it clear that it would never live up to the headline’s promise. It also made clear, once more, just what we’re dealing with in this climate change business.

The author has to remind us where he stands, as he puts it, in order to demonstrate that he is a decent person who of course takes the global warming religion seriously, and doesn’t really doubt it like those wicked heretical “deniers”. No, of course not…he’s just concerned that some people on his side have been a bit naughty in the way they’ve fought for truth and justice.

Such bowing to orthodoxy and denunciation of heresy—even if thoroughly insincere—is simply the price of admission to the debate these days, if you wish to be taken seriously by polite society. It’s all the demonstration one needs to establish that the bien-pensant segment of Western society is once again in the grip of a pseudo-religious (and, once again, not a little crypto-Marxist) delusion.

In the ’70s we were all going to die because of global cooling. In the ’00s we were all going to die because of global warming. In the 2030s, I’m sure, people will laugh at how silly we all were back in the ’70s and ’00s…while they fret about the undeniable fact that all of us are going to die because of global temperatures staying too much the same.

That is, if that decade’s version of the deadly flu pandemic doesn’t get us all first. (We’ve had avian, and swine at least twice…maybe it will be the donkey flu next? The llama flu?)

Good luck to the brave and long-suffering Iranian people, as many of them fully recognize, recollect, and confront the true nature of the regime run by their vile overlords.

May God help them use this crisis to make their country a better place, and preserve them from the violence, disorder, privations, and bitter disappointment that are the far-too-common fruit of even the most justified and best-intentioned revolutions in our world.

And may Khameni and Ahmadinejad either repent and find sanity in this world, or receive their just rewards in the next.

Here are some notes from an immigration discussion your humble Blog Goliard got into in the comment boxes of another website (yes, yes, he knows…but these were fairly sane and low-traffic com-boxes).

1

There’s plenty of Republicans as well as Democrats who believe that Americans have no right to preserve the country they grew up in and hand down something recognizably similar to their children. Sadly, this is an utterly bipartisan (and generally, elite) position.

If, however, millions of Germans suddenly turned up uninvited in Peru, taking jobs from locals and threatening to overwhelm traditional Andean cultures, you can bet the same bien-pensants would change their tune—lecturing not the Peruvians for trying to kick them out, but the Germans for respecting neither the laws of other nations nor the preciousness of the unique character of other peoples’ homelands.

2

Plenty of immigration fairy tales being peddled here. As with any issue, misinformation can be too useful to not propagate, and so we all come to “know” things that aren’t so. Here’s two.

* The fairy tale of the good, family-values, Catholic Hispanics:

Heather MacDonald is one scholar who has been on the case here. See, for instance, “The Hispanic Family: The Case for National Action” and “Honesty from the Left on Hispanic Immigration”.

* The fairy tale of a vast legal guest-worker system as a solution:

1) Ask, say, the Germans and the Dutch how that’s been working out for them.

2) If we’re so short on labor, then: a) I’m sure that will be a great comfort to those now looking for work, who surely even in this crisis should have been able to find something by now…if not, obviously they are just doing it wrong; b) the only real long-term solution, of course, is to start having a healthily above-replacement-rate number of babies again; else no matter what we do the country will not long endure.

3) This is supposed to solve the problems of inequality and people having second-class status in America how exactly?

3

Other comments:

* Deportation does not equal “demonization” (which is mostly a straw-man anyhow). And anyway, I read the above comments of Archbishop Chaput as criticism of both.

* Scott overstates the degree to which illegal immigration has been officially overlooked (the fact that these people needed to get fraudulent Social Security numbers to do any number of things should have been their first clue that what they were doing was still unlawful).

Also he fails to recognize that prosecutorial discretion cuts both ways–the prosecutor always has the choice to start aggressively enforcing the rules on the books again, just as he had the choice to give them a low priority before. Given fair notice (which we’ve already had; witness the number of immigrants who have voluntarily returned home in the past year or two), this is not a problem at all, especially legally.

Were the above not true, the successful “broken windows” law-and-order initiative under Mayor Giuliani would hardly have gotten off the ground.

* “Sacrificing for others” is not a reason for us to accept gravely damaging one of the minority of countries in the world that does work. Indeed, that starts to look more like a failure of stewardship. Charity has its place, but you cannot raise one nation up by dragging another down…nor have governments succeeded in raising other nations up by even the most lavish aid efforts, except in the rarest of occasions.

The best way to help the largest number of Mexicans over the long term is to encourage things to get sorted out in Mexico. Closing the border would be the most efficient way to do that, as it would cut off the main safety valve that the Mexican government uses to export and ameliorate its racial and poverty problems without solving them, and that the Mexican people use individually to escape those and all the other problems of their country without solving them.

Your humble Blog Goliard loves Inauguration Day. It is a day of hope and goodwill and unity. Of democratic pomp, of solemn civic liturgy. Of marveling at the regularly-occurring miracle of an outgoing President peacefully departing amid smiles and embraces, and his successor promising continuity with America’s greatest traditions and dearest principles.

God bless President Barack Obama. May his administration keep us safe and renew our prosperity. May those of us who spent Election Night on the brink of apoplexy be serene and of good cheer; and may the next four years give us plenty of sound reasons to admire the man.

And God bless America. May none of us fail to appreciate our outrageous luck to be able to live in this land…or the incalculable efforts and sacrifices that were required to make it the envy of the world.

Your humble Blog Goliard may not be a Brit, but in a pinch he can play one on TV. Or at least, he follows Anglosphere politics avidly enough to now and then roam about, playing at being Mark Steyn (with much the same beard, but vastly inferior knowledge of Broadway tunes).

This morning, it was a post on ConservativeHome that got the commenting juices flowing. The full article is short enough to read, but the gist is that some geniuses across the pond put together a report entitled “Future of Politics”, which dispenses advice on how politicos can “keep up with a new generation of ‘digital natives’”—largely by doing more stuff on the Internet, whether or not there is any real benefit in doing so.

And of course, it simply must be two-way, “interactive”, Web 2.0, [insert additional buzzwords here], because plain old websites have of course become completely passé and useless. So says everyone…particularly those folks over there, whom you may recognize from about fifteen minutes ago, when they were grabbing you by the lapels to tell you that you needed to hire them to make a Web 1.0 website for you right now, because that was the Future. (It appears that the Future has become even less durable than Aldous Huxley feared.)

Anyhow, the ConservativeHome blogger reported on the new document with some thoughtful criticism, but not nearly enough to suit this reader…or to ward off some silly follow-on comments welcoming the coming age of interactive Prime Minister’s Questions and Internet-based plebiscitary democracy. So yours truly chimed in to say:

What a damn fool bit of starry-eyed technobabble.

There’s almost too many points to be made here for one to sort out.

1) That graphic tells you more than it means to. It portrays technology being used, not to bring the House information necessary for informed debate, but rather the 24-hour news channel simulacrum of “information”. To wit: shallow visual flash. Fancy graphics, b-roll video, a mugshot of a person, outline maps…all of which are designed not to convey information, but to give ADD television viewers sufficient visual stimulus to prevent them changing the channel.

2) The digerati may think they have invented two-way conversations, but Alexander Graham Bell might have disagreed…as might anyone else who has ever engaged in that hopelessly outmoded exercise that involves standing in close proximity to another person and alternating between exercising one’s vocal cords and employing one’s ears.

And anyhow, meaningful two-way communication between MPs and the public will always be rare, whatever technology is employed, so long as: a) there are millions, not dozens, of Britons who would like to have their concerns heard and their questions answered…and only so many hours in a day; and b) one end of the conversation involves a politician who endeavours to say as little as possible while talking, whilst working in as many focus-grouped PR phrases as possible.

3) Even to the extent that a more involved and connected public is possible, that would first require an informed public capable of rational deliberation on the public good. How many of the people texting in their queries to be put to the Prime Minister will meet this requirement…especially if they are all ‘digital natives’?

Mitchell and Webb really deserve the last word here (the full skit can be found here):

What possible reason could there be for you to not email us? Certainly ignorance shouldn’t be a bar. You might not know anything about the issue, but I bet you reckon something. So why not tell us what you reckon? Let us enjoy the full majesty of your uniformed, ad hoc reckon by going to bbc.co.uk/meandmyimportantthoughts (all one word), clicking on ‘What I Reckon’ and simply beating on the keyboard with your fists or head.

One of the most important things Republicans will have to do, as they rebuild, is to explain why the last 20 years are not proof positive that Democratic administrations are better for the economy than Republican ones.

It will not do to simply count on the Obama years failing to bring recovery. It’s always a bad thing, on many levels, to find oneself rooting for bad news for political purposes; and also recall that, however bad things got after 1932, the Democrats successfully blamed Hoover for, what, 20? 30? 40 years?

The Carter vs. Reagan example won’t be much help, no matter how large it still looms in many of our minds. For the great mass of voters, that’s simply too far in the past to be part of the picture now.

Explaining that control of Congress is an important part of the picture, and getting into any number of other non-White House-centric macroeconomic arguments, will also be tough sells. Your humble Blog Goliard has long argued that as far as mid- to low-information voters (who are the overwhelming majority of swing voters) are concerned, our economic situation depends on who is President, pure and simple.

You’ll notice that Sen. Obama never had to offer much detail when he railed against the “failed Bush economic policies”. Swing voters didn’t need to know what policies those might be and why they were wrong. All they needed to know was: we have an economic crisis, and George W. Bush is President. So obviously, the former is caused by the latter doing it wrong. QED.

As mentioned in the post below, it’s almost as if they imagine there’s a master control panel in the White House, resembling the cockpit of a 747. If the President spends enough time at the controls, and operates all the buttons and dials and switches correctly, we have good economic times; if not, we risk recession. It all boils down to his dedication and skill at “running the economy”.

With persuadable voters bringing this half-formed mental picture to the table, all Democrats have to do is point to two President Bushes (three terms, three recessions, big deficits) and contrast to one President Clinton (two terms, no recessions, explosive stock market growth, budget brought under control). And poof there goes Republican standing on economic matters.

Unless Republicans can figure out how to put together an equally compelling counter-narrative, it’s going to be a long eight to twelve years. Because, again, hard times under Obama can’t be counted on to help. Messiah excesses notwithstanding, most Obama voters are already on board with the idea that that idiot-chimp-devil Bush—the worstest President ever!!!—did it so wrong that it may well take more than one term for even The One to get us out of the deep hole his predecessor dug.

ConservativeHome’s Tim Montgomerie has written a sensible piece with many good points; your humble Blog Goliard must admit that there may be some lessons to learn from Britain’s Tories after all, comments in the post immediately below notwithstanding. But I still bristle at two aspects of the Cameron leadership.

1) “Modernization”. Many of those who call for conservatism to “modernize” don’t go very far in defining that term. They’ll sometimes go on about 20th-century-this versus 21st-century-that, but that’s meaningless blather—the fact that the giant odometer rolled over recently isn’t an argument for or against anything.

Once again, the sense I get is that this “modernization” mainly consists of asking “what is the modern thing to do?” and then declaring “let’s do that!” But if conservatism means anything, surely it’s standing against the clueless chasing after what is trendy and new, and all other manifestations of presentism.

2) Public Relations. I’m still convinced that hiring a PR person as national leader holds every promise of being an even worse choice than hiring an MBA (W.) or an engineer (Hoover, Carter). The profile of that job’s professional strengths and occupational hazards may match up well with the business of campaigning…but with wise, effective, and far-seeing governance? Color me dubious.

In responding to David Brooks’ disappointingly shallow column in the New York Times, Yuval Levin gets it exactly right:

As I see it, the basic idea is to apply conservative principles and ingenuity to a broader range of problems than we have been used to thinking about—to think in concrete policy terms about the worries of American families, and offer concrete conservative proposals for reforming our governing institutions. These need to be extensions of conservative successes in the past, like tax and welfare reform: applications of our basic view of the world to the problems of the day. This kind of reformism is the conservative tradition, not a substitute for it.

This sits a lot better with your humble Blog Goliard than Brooks’ argument, which seem to be that conservative principles have somehow gone past their sell-by date, and need to be “modernized”…in the manner of (God help us) David Cameron.

I shall let Peter Hitchens describe what the Cameron ascendancy looked like:

The Tory Party had been put into receivership. Its supposed owners - those who voted for it and supported it - had lost control over it.

The ‘Centre-Left’ establishment, Britain’s permanent government of media types, politicised moneybags and their approved pundits, had taken over, and their task was to make it as unconservative as possible, as quickly as possible.

Cameron’s tenure as Tory leader should serve as a cautionary tale of what happens when you let PR people take the helm: you get the sort of “modernization” which asks, in response to any issue, not “what is the best solution?” but “what is the most modern thing to do?” It should go without saying that such clueless chasing after what is trendy and new is unseemly for conservatives…and would be even if we weren’t bad at it. (Which we are, in the manner of a superannuated youth minister making painful attempts to be “relevant” and connect with the youngsters.)

Along with the many reasons that “modernizing” and “moving with the times” is a bad idea generally, it is particularly unwise for the Right because, for a very long time in so very many areas, the movement of the times has been in a Leftward direction. To be on the Right is to—as as wise man once said—stand athwart history, yelling Stop. And that struggle takes place within as well as without the Republican Party—and within many other organizations that may prove amenable to conservatism, but are also forever susceptible to the working of O’Sullivan’s First Law: “All organizations that are not actually right-wing will over time become left-wing.”

I also pick up a whiff of backwards PR thinking in Brooks’ call to “appeal more to Hispanics, independents, and younger voters.” Maybe he simply means that we need to find new and better ways to communicate what we believe to these people, and that of course is fine and much needed. I fear, however, that he actually means we need to first try and figure out what these people believe (presuming, as liberals do, that all members of a group like “Hispanics” think alike), and then change our principles accordingly.

That does not comport well with your humble Blog Goliard’s understanding of what principles are, and are for.

Your humble Blog Goliard did some late-night commenting last night over on the AmSpec blog, discussing McCain’s grace in defeat and the matter of courtesy to the new President.

Regarding the former, was that grace in defeat a bit too eager? I was glad to see Lisa Schiffren mention some very interesting remarks from the Fox News reporter on hand in Phoenix, who almost seemed to be hinting that McCain had come to see it as his duty to lose this one.

Isn’t such an inclination a close cousin of McCain’s famous bipartisan impulse? Isn’t this oddly common among Republicans in general (well, the ones who have been in D.C. for years anyhow), especially compared to Democrats? Or is it just partisan blinders that create this view?

To expand on the latter point as well—this dignity and honor thing is an issue I’m torn on. I want Republicans to play more fairly than their opponents, to be more gracious in defeat, to do more to uphold the civic compact whereby the winner is recognized promptly and without quibble, and allowed to govern. But I don’t want them to be chumps, whose motto and objective is “lose with dignity”, either.

If it were entirely up to me, for instance, well-qualified Supreme Court nominees would have expeditious and courteous hearings, and be confirmed with near-unanimity in the Senate, under both Democratic and Republican administrations. But it takes two parties to maintain such a tradition; and one of them has now spent 13 of the last 21 years tearing it apart.

It is now up to Senator McConnell and his troops to decide whether they return to their practice from the Clinton years (Ginsburg, ACLU lawyer and feminist activist, confirmed 96-3), or begin to treat Democratic nominees in the manner that Bork and successive Republican nominees were (Alito, Federalist Society member with bland non-activist career, confirmed 58-42).

The angel on one shoulder argues that two wrongs still do not make a right, and that Senate Republicans should conduct themselves with dignity, honor, and due respect for Obama’s mandate. The devil on the other shoulder calls this suicide—believing that it would be a temporary, cosmetic papering-over of the civility problem, rather than a step towards real solution; and that when the shoe was on the other foot, the Republican dove of peace would again be replaced by a Democratic mailed fist…amid cackling over how stupid and weak and foolish the Republicans had proven to be, once more.