Thursday, May 18

The Angry Right

WHEN ANN COULTER IS ANGRY WITH THE PRESIDENT, you can be sure he is in trouble.

Or maybe he isn't. The thing to consider is that conservatives are a much more diverse group today than in 2004. Better yet, they aren't afraid of voicing their differences anymore. The soon-to-be-lame-duck President has made one too many controversial decisions (from Harriet Miers to the amnesty proposal), and conservatives are wondering whether they would be better off with a true liberal in the White House.

Plus, they may feel the need to ventilate all those small objections they've had against the President for the past 5, all those little things that have added up to a lot. If they are loud today, the candidates for 2008 might listen. And in any case, if the Left can be mad as hell, so can they. Right?

Surely there is a lot to be angry about. It makes little sense to allow hordes of poorly educated people from the South come and parasite on the American dream while highly skilled candidates aren't even allowed to "join the line". The problem here is, I can sense a clear animosity towards all immigrants, skilled or not, coming from the likes of Michelle Malkin and VDARE.com. The isolationist element of the American society is gaining strength.

It's a legitimate desire to build a wall around your country so that you can go on living unbothered by the people who happen to have been born elsewhere. And it's silly, too. Immigration restrictions come from the same misguided belief as steel tariffs: one that posits that there is a finite number of resources, money, and wealth that we share, and we you add a number of new people, others will have less. One would think that with the collapse of Marxist economies in Eastern Europe, educated people would abandon this economic fallacy.

Even if Congress allowed anyone with a college degree to self-petition for permanent residency, no American capable of competing in the global economy would suffer the consequences. On the contrary - educated people create more wealth, pay more taxes than they received in welfare benefits, and so on. Canada understands this, and has a sensible, point-based system of legal immigration that allows in anyone who is able to take care of himself. Why not the U.S.?

by Tomas Kohl | last updated 18.05.2006, 7:58
Comments on this post

Part of the problem is a problem of words: those in favor of open immigration and - more importantly - Hispanic pressure groups have worked hard to eliminate the use of the word "illegal", as it is rather profoundly inconvenient to their positions.

The perverse effect of this is to paint all immigrant with the "illegal" brush, since discussions on illegal immigration often ditch the word "illegal". And since most legal immigration discussions have been balled up in "outsourcing" debates and general sourness on the economy (even though it's actually booming - not that you'd know this from the media), Americans aren't feeling terribly generous and expansive at the moment about letting in lots of foreigners.


posted by X on 20.05.2006, 20:29

Thanks for your illuminating comment. I am only surprised that Americans would still buy into the "bad economy" myth - with the unemployment and consumer confidence at so likeable levels, how is it that anybody is taking the media "experts" seriously still?


posted by Tomas on 21.05.2006, 3:29

It's an ancient joke, and is shown in numerous polls that show that Americans feel, in general, that their _personal_ financial situation is going well, but that the country's is in an awful state. The media dwells on Social Security problems, Medicare problems, pension problems at places like GM, escalating health insurance costs, the housing bubble, the "twin deficits", levels of personal debt, etc. But IMO the real reason for media sourness is that "MSM" companies themselves are getting killed financially by the Internet, and the fact that the President is a Republican.

You find some laughable examples of media spinning any economic news to fit the "sourness agenda", with "no duh" headlines like "increasing real-estate prices hit poor homebuyers", or "decreasing real-estate prices hit poor homeowners".

But a more real concern is a sense that the world is a scarier, less stable place than it has been for a long time. You have Hugo Chavez and his merry bad guys in Latin America doing old commie tricks, Iran's President AhmDukeNukem, Osama still on the lam, and China and Russia throwing their weight around. As for employment, people feel less secure in even high-level jobs nowadays, and pretty much everybody has had to come up with an "outsourcing avoidance" strategy as part of their career management. Economically-minded types may argue that it's all wonderful - and the country is obviously richer than ever before - but something about these days feels oddly fleeting and ephemeral as compared with the 1980s, when it was us and the Sovs and we seemed to know where things stood in the world, or the 1990s, when tech was taking humanity to a wonderful Star Trek world...

So, it shouldn't be surprising that many people want to say "can we just cool it for awhile"?


posted by X on 21.05.2006, 4:30

I think Aann Coulter is right by being upset about the presedent who is worthening the horrid situation with a speed of a runing donkey robot. I guess the republicans could forget the congress elections this year.


posted by Maria loves pictures on 31.05.2006, 12:43