Something?s Rotten in the Republic
If you hang out at dissident-right websites you surely know the Berthold Brecht quote: ?Would it not be easier?for the government to dissolve the people and elect another?? This is offered on those websites?I mean to say, on those shameful digital cesspools that no decent-minded person would even think of visiting?in the context of Britain and America?s ongoing demographic revolutions. As the story line goes, a secretive cabal of elites, insufficiently stimulated by our nations? inadequate diversity, or irritated by their demands for better wages, or shocked by their insistence that their interests trump those of foreigners, has decided to replace them with as much stealth as such a project can muster.
I wish I could believe it. Being allergic to conspiracy theories, I can?t. Being also at an age when I can regard the future beyond the next few summers with calm indifference, I think if the root stocks of Britain and America?nations blessed with representative government?were so stupid as to let wily elites drive them to minority status in their ancestral lands, the fools deserve the race war that?s probably coming to them. I do feel some mild regret on behalf of my kids, who I suppose will spend some of their adult years in a continent-sized version of 1970s Lebanon or 1990s Yugoslavia or 1960s/70s/80s/90s/00s Congo/Sudan/Somalia/Ethiopia/Zimbabwe, but at least I?ve taught the little Derbs (him and her) how to use firearms.
So I?m not normally an easy sell for the evil-elites story line. I believe that rank, unorganized human stupidity and selfishness explain well-nigh all deplorable social phenomena. But there are times when I wonder whether the conspiracy theorists might be onto something. There are times.?
Item: I was sitting in the man cave Sunday evening with a slice of my wife?s incomparable pecan pie and a glass of supermarket plonk, watching 60 Minutes.
One of the segments was titled ?Trapped in Unemployment.? It was about some middle-aged, middle-class people in Connecticut who?d been laid off in the 2008-09 recession and have been unemployed ever since.
Never in the last 60 years has the length of joblessness been this long. Four million people, a full third of the unemployed, have been out of work more than a year.
There?s a stonyhearted cadre of commentators who respond with: ?This is capitalism. We don?t do jobs for life, certainly not middling-ability paper-shuffling jobs with benefits.? I kind of see their point, but having spent much of my own working life among the modern business office?s cubes-?n?-tubes people, I?m sympathetic on tribal grounds. These are my people.
The segment dragged its weary length for over 12 minutes while I howled at the monitor: ?Mention immigration! Go on, at least mention it! Tell us about the H-1B scam!?
They never did. Not a peep. Nor did any of the dozens of comments on the comment thread mention it. I suppose CBS monitors those comments closely. Wouldn?t want anyone raising controversial topics on a major TV network?s website. Good heavens, no!
Item: At least one US government agency is willing to break the law to ensure that Somali goatherds, Iraqi daughter-killers, and Uzbek terrorists keep flowing into our towns. The agency is the Office of Refugee Resettlement, demon spawn of the US Department of Health and Human Services. The law is Title IV, Chapter 2, Section 413 of the Immigration and Nationalities Act, which requires that Congress shall receive ?report on activities under this chapter?not later than the January 31 following the end of each fiscal year.?
As Ann Corcoran notes, the administration is now running three years late with these reports. Gosh, you might almost think there?s something they don?t want you to know about refugee resettlement, mightn?t you? Such as, oh, that the whole shebang is fraud-addled and that genuine refugees are a tiny minority of those resettled. Or that refugees are dumped on the welfare system ASAP and mostly stay there while fat-cat executives of the ?nonprofit? agencies running the scam purchase gold-plated Jacuzzis with their high-six-figure salaries.
And where is Congress?s amour-propre? Aren?t any of the Congressreptiles miffed that Kathleen Sebelius?s pet beagle is eating reports they should, according to laws their eminent selves passed, be getting annually? You might almost think?you might almost think?the Congressroaches are in on the racket. Nah, can?t be.
Item: A February 19 Associated Press report carries the headline: ?Immigrants trickling back to Ala despite crackdown?:
Ana Jimenez and her husband were so terrified of being sent back to their native Mexico when Alabama?s tough crackdown on illegal immigrants took effect that they fled more than 2,000 miles to Los Angeles, cramming into a two-bedroom apartment with more than 20 other relatives.
Now they are among the families coming back to cities like Birmingham, as the mass deportations never materialized and courts blocked parts of the law.
(I added the Birmingham link. Lotsa luck there, Ana! The whole thing is written in this triumphalist tone: Righteous people who?d been wronged are heroically asserting their humanity in the face of cruel oppression. Sound the trumpets!)
These are illegal immigrants the Associated Press is writing about: trespassers, scofflaws, job thieves, and future (or present if they get sick) welfare-state clients. And they are deemed worthy to receive benefits from a common fund into which neither they nor any of their forebears paid a single red cent.
Some initially feared the law would mean that people would be rounded up?said Ferreti, an anthropologist from the University of Texas who is living in Tuscaloosa, about 60 miles southwest of Birmingham, for her studies. ?That has not happened.??
What a pity. What a damn pity.
Yes, I?m turning. CBS; the administration; Congress; the Associated Press; there?s something going on here.
http://takimag.com/article/somethings_rotten_in_the_republic_john_derbyshire#axzz1naaY096h
