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.

I have to admit Clooney has a certain je ne sais quoi. He is a gifted actor and I enjoy most of his work. Three Kings for instance. A great film in which the chemical weapons Saddam never had play a significant role. Anyway my fixation on Clooney has at least a little to do with his poster boy qualities. He symbolizes America in a way that makes his anti-American politics especially perplexing. How can a man living the American dream have such distaste for his home? How can someone so priviledged whine and complain as if he’s oppressed? How dare he pose as a rebel?

I focus on Clooney so often not so much because I dislike him personally, but because he symbolizes to me that all too common Western elitist mentality, detached from ordinary concerns, that somehow enables the most blessed among us to act as if they are superior. Somehow in their jetting and partying around the world they know better how everything works. On the contrary their pampered lives render them the least qualified to make such judgements. These communist aristocrats who would sell everyone else out to keep themselves looking cool and sauve and chic. “I’m out of touch, and proud of it!” he crows. Well today we need every American on our side. The betrayal of our elites hurts. They should be setting the example that it’s cool and sauve and chic to love and be proud of a country that does so much to fight poverty and disease and injustice, not helping to tear it down.

Peggy Noonan has some insightful comments on Hollywood and the Oscars and more than a little to say about Clooney:

Which gets us to George Clooney, and his work. George Clooney is Hollywood now. He is charming and beautiful and cool, but he is not Orson Welles. I know that’s like saying of an artist that he’s no Rembrandt, but bear with me because I have a point that I think is worth making.

Orson Welles was an artist. George Clooney is a fellow who read an article and now wants to tell us the truth, if we can handle it.

More important, Orson Welles had a canny respect for the audience while maintaining a difficult relationship with studio executives, whom he approached as if they were his intellectual and artistic inferiors. George Clooney has a canny respect for the Hollywood establishment, for its executives and agents, and treats his audience as if it were composed of his intellectual and artistic inferiors. (He is not alone in this. He is only this year’s example.)

And because they are his inferiors, he must teach them. He must teach them about racial tolerance and speaking truth to power, etc. He must teach them to be brave. And so in his acceptance speech for best supporting actor the other night he instructed the audience about Hollywood’s courage in making movies about AIDS, and recognizing the work of Hattie McDaniel with an Oscar.

Was his speech wholly without merit? No. It was a response and not an attack, and it appears to have been impromptu. Mr. Clooney presumably didn’t know Jon Stewart would tease the audience for being out of touch, and he wanted to argue that out of touch isn’t all bad. Fair enough. It is hard to think on your feet in front of 38 million people, and most of his critics will never try it or have to. (This is a problem with modern media: Only the doer understands the degree of difficulty.)

But Mr. Clooney’s remarks were also part of the tinniness of the age, and of modern Hollywood. I don’t think he was being disingenuous in suggesting he was himself somewhat heroic. He doesn’t even know he’s not heroic. He thinks making a movie in 2005 that said McCarthyism was bad is heroic.

How could he think this? Maybe part of the answer is in this: The Clooney generation in Hollywood is not writing and directing movies about life as if they’ve experienced it, with all its mysteries and complexity and variety. In an odd way they haven’t experienced life; they’ve experienced media. Their films seem more an elaboration and meditation on media than an elaboration and meditation on life. This is how he could take such an unnuanced, unsophisticated, unknowing gloss on the 1950s and the McCarthy era. He just absorbed media about it. And that media itself came from certain assumptions and understandings, and myths.

…when they show up in massive numbers (on a work day) to literally demonstrate just how out of control the problem is. Michelle Malkin has photos and links to several stories about the protest against H.R. 4437 in Chicago yesterday. Just look at all those flags, such a fine display of patriotism. So what are they protesting?

By a 239-182 vote the House of Representatives approved the Border Protection, Antiterrorism and Illegal Immigration Control Act, H.R. 4437, on December 16. The legislation, authored by Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), would make improvements in this nation’s ability to control rampant illegal immigration.

H.R. 4437 calls for a variety of steps to rein-in mass illegal immigration. At the southern border, the legislation authorizes construction of an additional 700 miles of security fencing, similar to the highly effective barrier already in place in the San Diego area. The bill would also require implementation of an electronic verification system to be used by all employers to ensure that the workers they hire are legal residents. Failure to comply with the verification procedure could result in fines of up to $7,000 per violation for a first offense and as high as $40,000 the third time an employer gets caught hiring illegal aliens.

Illegal aliens themselves would also face stiffer penalties for violating U.S. immigration laws under H.R. 4437. Illegal entry, now considered a misdemeanor offense, would become a felony and illegal aliens could receive jail time for immigration violations.

According to Pat Buchanan “Reagan said, the country that can’t control its borders isn’t really a country anymore.” It’s hard to argue with that, unless you think the U.N. is the only country anyone needs.

The focus now shifts to the Senate, which must also pass an immigration enforcement bill before it can be sent to the president for his signature. The Senate is expected to take up immigration matters in February, but the prospects for an enforcement-only bill are less favorable than in the House. While Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) has offered legislation similar to the Sensenbrenner House bill, it is widely believed what comes out of the Senate will look more like the McCain-Kennedy legislation that includes a massive guest worker amnesty program. The plan among open borders Senators, who also have the backing of the Bush administration, is to pass their guest worker amnesty bill then combine theirs with the Sensenbrenner bill in a conference committee.

Ironically enough (again according to Buchanan) “Twenty years ago, Ronald Reagan was persuaded to grant a one-time amnesty to millions of illegal aliens who had been here for years. Result: Some 1.5 million illegal aliens were caught almost every year after. They had missed out on the amnesty, and they, too, wanted in. When Bush first broached his “guest-worker” program two years ago, there was a surge to the border from Mexico.”

Many people say they’re willing to pay more taxes to fund the government they want. Well I’d pay more for goods and services to keep an unprecedented flood of illegal immigrants from overwhelming our country’s cultural norms and civil infrastructure. The Bush tax cuts demonstrated that lower tax rates can actually increase tax revenues. Likewise stemming the flood of illegal immigrants won’t necessarily ruin our economy or produce even a net rise in consumer costs. America was built by immigrants and remains strong because the best and brightest from all over the world continue to come here legally. The only way you can think legitimatizing the illegal immigration status quo with amnesty or a guest worker program makes sense is if you A) have no respect for those who immigrate legally, and B) ignore the below average tax contribution made by illegal immigrants (or guest workers) and their families and the above average burden they place on our health care, justice, and education systems. A country’s citizens have every right to be selective about who they let into their country, and it makes sense to start by excluding those who cut the line.