At the conclusion of the Constitutional Convention in 1787, a Mrs. Powell of Philadelphia asked of Dr. Ben Franklin, "Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?"
Dr. Franklin replied verbosely, "A republic, if you can keep it"
Today, we have lost it, as "the world's most deliberative body", conspiring with a White House desperate for a legacy that doesn't involve Iraq, has abdicated its role as the "saucer that cools the cup" and sends the nation careening into a shamnesty nightmare of epic proportions with the full power to devolve American culture and forever strip us of our unique identity as a "shining city on a hill".
The so-called Comprehensive Immigration Reform Bill is neither reform nor comprehensive. It was crafted in the dark and dusty backrooms of Washington deal-making, egged on by the monied powers of huge monopolistic industries bent on cheap, dumbed-down, foreign slave labor, and abetted by a weakling President who likes spine, conviction, character or integrity.
Instead of being debated openly and forthrightly in committee, under the glare of klieg lights of the press (and democracy), the Grand Old Schemers of the Senate GOP walked hand-in-hand down the aisle to a marriage made in Hell with the likes of Senator Ted "I Killed Mary Jo" Kennedy and Senator Harry "All Retreat, All Surrender" Reid. They built a bill with a mountain of paper and secret whispers, and built a story of lies and subterfuge to get their way. Along the primrose path to the chapel of amnesty love, they attacked their loyal friends and allies, insulted their constituents, and basically told the American people "Go Fuck Off".
Judge Michael Chertoff, the Secretary for the Department of Homeland Stupidity went so far today as to try and boil this issue down to fruits and vegetables. Thinking we are purely stupid, he claimed that the Bush administration is already vigorously enforcing current law, to the point that, "We're living in a world in which lettuce and fruit are not being picked because we are enforcing the law." If you are enforcing the law, where are the 600,000 illegal aliens awaiting deportation that you can't find?
My fellow citizens, it is clear to me that our elected officials and their appointed underlings think we are absolutely frakking stupid.
What we are witnessing is our own personal version of Mordor. Washington DC has become Mordor, and I-495 is the Ring of Power. President George Sauron Bush sends forth his hordes of Orcs to conquer all those opposed to illegal immigration, and his mouthpieces ape stupid comments like Chertoff's. Leading his most trusted servants (The Grand Old Nazgul) is none other than Senator John Angmar McCain, the Witch King.
This bill -- if it becomes law -- will effectively end control of our borders and make de jure what is already in place-- an untenable position where ten percent of our nation's occupants are a slave society. The immigrants are not brought here to share in the rich American dream. They are here to fulfill the dreams of rich Americans who do not want to pay market labor rates for their orange juice, cut their grass, or clean their own houses. They will be -- and will be joined by -- a permanent underclass.
Forget the fact that many of these immigrants may or may not register to vote for a particular political party. Preservation of one party or another is really a minor issue. What is not minor is the immoral grabbag that our facist, statist Congress is handing to large industrial interests at the expense of hard-working taxpayers and small businesses. Today's Congress is no different than the one before our War Between the States-- Yankee industrialists bent on a cheap labor pool and Southern plantation owners wanting the same.
Fixing illegal immigration under the current bill is not about freedom, liberty, and justice. It is about cheap slave labor. If there is a shortage of labor, that shortage naturally arises from a lack of wages. There is no such thing as "jobs Americans won't do". There is such a thing as "jobs Americans won't do if they aren't paid a market wage."
But instead of unleashing the economy to respond to a market shortage of labor, our Congressional hustlers in Washington insist on gaming the system. They do this all the time. They love to do it with fiscal policy. Not enough people buying homes? Fine, we will make credit so cheap, everyone will want to mortgage their lives to the hilt to buy one.
Where did that get us? Massively rising rates of foreclosure as people who had no business borrowing money for a home were lured into to crazy "no money down" ARMs. What did that do? Drastically (and artificially) increase the value of homes as an artificial shortage was created in the market.
The same thing will happen with immigration, because economies constantly seek equilibrium. One way they do this is through technology. When all those immigrant fruit and vegetable pickers that Michael Chertoff is so worried about are put out of business by mechanical pickers (don't laugh-- it happened in the 60's, and it drove Caesar Chavez nuts), we'll be seeing a massive, unemployed underclass that can't speak English suddenly living in ghettos and Hoovervilles.
Natural disasters also cause equilibrium shifts. When we are hit with the next flu pandemic (and that is when, not if), and travel collapses for 6-8 months as a result, we'll be seeing a massive unemployment wave amongst that same class again.
Who can we blame then? This Congress. This Senate. This President. All who abdicated their primary responsibility to protect us citizens. All who failed in their leadership to aggressively enforce current law. All who failed to use the tools we give them -- through our taxes, our treasure, and our children who serve in the Armed Forces -- to aggressively defend our southern border against the exodus of an entire underclass from failed states like Mexico. (If you want to know how bad Mexico is, note that their most successful military commander ever was-- a Frenchman).
We must rise up as a people and as a nation and say enough. We cannot wait for the next debate, or the next primary, or the next general election. We must fight. And we must keep fighting. We must reclaim our government from the monied, permanent class of career politicians whose hubris and arrogance is destroying the fabric of America. There is no greater enemy arrayed against the American people today than its own government. Not Al Qaeda, not Iran, not China. We have met the enemy, and it is our own Government.
Not our system of government, but our people in government. We must strangle the beast until the corruption and the corrupted are gone from the atrophy, or they willingly submit and leave. We cannot allow a Hobbesian Leviathan to run amok over our freedom and our liberty, to deny us our birthright to representative democracy. We must make every politician pay a dear price for their disloyal and un-American philandering with our Constitution, our Culture, and our Country.
We must retake that republic of ours once again, and truly make a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. If we don't, we face only tyranny and slavery.