Size of L.A. March Surprises Authorities
By PETER PRENGAMAN
Mar 26, 12:25 PM EST
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Thousands of immigration advocates marched through downtown Los Angeles in one of the largest demonstrations for any cause in recent U.S. history.
More than 500,000 protesters – demanding that Congress abandon attempts to make illegal immigration a felony and to build more walls along the border – surprised police who estimated the crowd size using aerial photographs and other techniques, police Cmdr. Louis Gray Jr. said.
Wearing white T-shirts to symbolize peace, the demonstrators chanted “Mexico!” “USA!” and “Si se puede,” an old Mexican-American civil rights shout that means “Yes, we can.”
Yes you can? Yes you can demonstrate. But what exactly is the message? That there are more than 11 million of you? That you can violate US immigration laws with impunity? That you can live off the generosity and under the protection of the stupid gringos while you wave Mexican flags in their faces?
“We construct your schools. We cook your food,” rapper Jorge Ruiz said after performing at a Dallas rally that drew 1,500. “We are the motor of this nation, but people don’t see us. Blacks and whites, they had their revolution. They had their Martin Luther King. Now it is time for us.”
You crowd our schools. You clog our emergency rooms. You are only one component of the motor of this nation, and you are quite visible, especially lately. WTF does MLK have to do with any of this? Is that some kind of lame attempt to play the race card?
“Enough is enough of the xenophobic movement,” said Norman Martinez, 63, who immigrated from Honduras as a child and marched in Los Angeles. “They are picking on the weakest link in society, which has built this country.”
Let’s get this straight. You leave your home, illegally enter another country, take credit for building it, and then call those who object xenophobes? Now that’s cajones. Mui grande huevos. I say enough is enough of the alien scofflaw movement.
These cries of xenophobia and racism are meant to intimidate people into silence. There is clearly rational justification for opposing illegal immigration. The fact for instance that it is illegal. In the US if you don’t like a law you can call your Congressman and convince him to change it. If you don’t like your Congressman vote for another. And no, criminals generally don’t get to vote, except in Vermont. The system is called constitutional democracy, and it’s generally acknowledged to work better than mob rule. Demonstrating in the street is how things get decided in less stable countries, like France.
If there’s an irrational position on this issue, one that literally taps into people’s emotions rather than their their reason, it’s the one that supports illegal immigration. It doesn’t matter whether the motive is compassion or self interest. The compassionate ones want to fling open the borders because they see human beings suffering and they want to help. And they want everybody else to be compelled to help too. And that’s where it goes over that little invisible line between harmless altruism and insidious collectivism.
Of course most religious leaders and certainly the majority of bleeding hearts and socialites have no socioeconomic agenda. They sure don’t think of themselves as “collectivists”. They just know it makes them feel good to feel bad for other people. But to paraphrase what they say in court, ignorance of history is no excuse. In evaluating his theories we have the advantage over Marx of more than a century of practical experience. Collectivism invariably requires centralization of control which invariably produces totalitarianism which invariably leads to widespread human suffering. Worse than the worst of the notorious Robber Baron excesses ever were. There is no better proof of the addictiveness and deranging effect of pure utopian thought than the fact that to this day so many “intellectuals” pine for just one more chance to get collectivism right. Fortunately they are in the minority, but unfortunately their audience is not. They prey on those who incorrectly reckon they have nothing to lose. Castro, for example, came to power as a champion of the people and has spent the decades since burning through the wealth he seized by pursing one idealistic collectivist scheme after another. Soft-headed sympathizers in the US swoon over Castro and his “paradise” even though there are shortages of just about everything and complaining or trying to get away will get you thrown in jail. The poor huddled masses of Central and South America are smarter than Marxist “intellectuals”. Smart enough to steer clear of Cuba.
Instead they flock to the US and create a situation which very clearly contradicts and should greatly embarrass the negativist natives (and more than a few legal immigrants) who take every opportunity to point out how terrible the US is. Illegal immigrants often work very hard for low wages, but they quickly discover they don’t have to. Health care and education are essentially free. An 800 square foot house is like a mansion – for all 10 occupants. The “taxes” they pay are mostly sales taxes. Which of course doesn’t come close to covering the burden they and their dependents put on the roads and schools, never mind the hospitals. Car accident? Baby? Oops, no insurance. Obviously they don’t want to give this up. The worst crime infested low rent neighborhood in the US is infinitely better than living in some shithole without running water and no TV outside Mexico City. Obviously. Because if it wasn’t they’d head home.
Which is where self interest comes in. You’d think from all the one-sided slinging of ad hominems like “xenophobe” and “racist” that the only people who could possibly be motivated by fear and greed are the rich white gringos who want to stop illegal immigration. As if the greedy desire to keep something good or the fear of living in a shithole isn’t universal. The US demonstrates the kind of wealth that can be created by the right combination of respect for freedom and rule of law. It is not immune to the effects of a breakdown in that balance.
Give us your tired and poor indeed, but please don’t flood us with hordes of ingrates waving Mexican flags.
Katie Couric is apparently very close to leaving her morning show to take Dan Rather’s old job anchoring the CBS evening news.
