As if all the above weren’t outrageous enough, McClellan was also defending the phony manufactured holiday of Kwanzaa as an equal of Christmas and Hannukah in the same press conference. It’s a hell of a thing to watch as the culture goes down in flames.

I must disagree with Mr. Auster. The alleged contractual basis for the amnesty - if Bush is even thinking of it in common law contractual terms, which I very much doubt - is a mere fig-leaf calculated to make this extraordinary betrayal easier for gullible Republican voters to swallow.

Bush is pushing this amnesty, I believe, for four reasons.

Bush’s advisors tell him there is a honeypot of hispanic votes out there for a president who embraces Mexicans, and that this is the most effective bid a Republican president can make for them. Never mind that this almost certainly isn’t true, and that he risks losing more white votes than he will gain brown ones. (See Sailer, et al., at VDare about that.) Bush has already said that he prefers listening to trusted advisors to finding things out for himself, so he probably believes anything Rove tells him about electioneering.

Bush’s advisors also tell him (and he probably hears from major donors) that Mexican workers are essential to American business, and he wants to court the contributions and votes of American business. In the same way he is untroubled by the destruction of Americans’ jobs in technology, through sending work to India and China while simultaneously importing cheap Indians and Chinese to put Americans out of work at home. This is classic, principle-free Republicanism and owes nothing to free-market economics or the common law of contract.

Bush is a multiculturalist. He actually believes all the nonsense about how America’s strength is her diversity. He welcomes immigrants, especially Latin American ones - the more the merrier. Not a very intelligent or ethnically conscious man, he perceives no threat to America or his own group (WASPs, remember them?) from mass immigration. He has no sense that immigration strains America’s ethnic fabric to the tearing point. Similarly, he has no concept of the value of American citizenship. Rather than see it as the birthright of Americans, he sees it as a goody to give to (ideally non-white) foreigners at every opportunity.

Bush is a sincere Mexiphile. He loves his charming Mexican sister-in-law and his half-Mexican nephews and nieces. He feels a ranch and cowboy boots kinship with Vicente Fox. He wants to help his buddy. It never occurs to him that most Mexican illegal aliens are nothing like his in-laws and Vicente Fox. He is also not intelligent enough to see how the Mexican government and hispanic fifth-columnists are taking him, and his country, for a ride. When Fox says that Mexico and the United States must have a shared destiny, Bush agrees enthusiastically, without understanding what he is agreeing to.

What this adds up to is that while Bush may not be all that conscious of being a liberal - he’s not an intellectual gent, as he’ll be the first to tell you - he acts and governs as a Leftist. In the end the reasons why he pursues destructive policies are less important than the fact that he does. Call him right-liberal if you please, but he runs a Leftist administration. I’ll call him something else: traitor. HRS

Mr. Sutherland has indicated that Bush wants Hispanic votes, that he wants to help business, and that he wants America to become more diverse and more Hispanic. I agree on all these points. However, I was responding to Scott McClellan’s extraordinary formulation, the like of which I don’t remember having seen before, that the purpose of our immigration policy is to help willing people connect up with each other for consensual economic relations, and I was trying to bring out the meaning of that in terms of the classic American ideology of right-liberalism.

Mr. Sutherland’s purpose is to show Bush is a leftist. But there is nothing leftist per se about wanting wanting people’s votes or about wanting to help business interests. The only item in Mr. Sutherland’s list of Bush’s motivations that can be described as leftist is his positive desire to transform America’s culture. In fact, I was the first person to point out that fact, in “My Bush Epiphany,” WorldNetDaily, September 20, 2000, http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=16425

As always with liberal phenomena, we are dealing with a range of things. But what is most important here in my opinion is the explicit justification for what Bush is doing. It trivializes the import of this to say that Bush is just doing it for votes. As I’ve argued over and over again, Bush REALLY BELIEVES IN THIS. For some reason, many people today want to reduce politics to the most venal level of personalities and personal interests, rather than seeing the larger forces that are at work. Thus some immigration critics keep harking back to the idea that Bush’s real motivation in supporting immigration is to start a Bush Hispanic/Anglo dynasty. Based on that notion, we should be arguing, not against liberalism and open borders, but against the Bush family! A lot of good that will do us! The need to see politics in the most personal terms is a particular defect of the contemporary paleo right, as seen in their very personal hatred of neoconservatives.

In any case, while Bush’s ideological motives are a mixture of right-liberal and left-liberal, McClellan’s justification for the policy is right-liberal. That justification is especially significant because it connects with one of the oldest and most honored of American ideals, namely Lincoln’s Republican belief in an America in which there are no arbitrary obstacles to a man’s upward course in life, thus no arbitrary obstacles in the way of economic activity. And by taking that ideal to such an extreme, the Bush adminstration reveals its destructive potentiality.

No American president, not even Bill Clinton, has done so much to pander to Mexico. Yet here in Mexico, Bush is pilloried in the media. Mexican pundits call him stupid, ridicule his religion, and compare him to Hitler.
So much for pandering.

To Mr. Wall,

That of course is Bush’s standard operating procedure. He gives his enemies a back rub, they stab him in the back, he gives them another back rub. Now, Bush certainly has his own particular style when he acts this way. But the underlying pattern, his continual appeasement of enemies who are not appeased and continue to hate him, is simply an expression of LIBERALISM, is it not? (Think of the “peace process,” think of Bush’s hospitality to Moslem radical groups.) That’s why liberalism, rather than Bush’s personality or his political interests as he perceives them at the moment, remains the real issue here. Without the underlying liberalism, a personality such as Bush, with his “compassionate” style and his open-borders philosophy, would never have become president.

And sadly, Bush is dragging the rest of us down with him. While the Left continues to hammer away at the caricature of a “conservative Bush” bearing little resemblance to reality, the Establishment Right continues to cheerlead the guy - that’s the real tragedy.

According to Mr. Sutherland: “Bush is a sincere Mexiphile. He loves his charming Mexican sister-in-law and his half-Mexican nephews and nieces. He feels a ranch and cowboy boots kinship with Vicente Fox. …”

*******

Yep. The man reminds one of Sam Peckinpah, who used to gush over Mexico and Mexicans, finding some sort of elevated “purity” amongst them. (View the edenic Mexican village in The Wild Bunch, for example.) You know, “family values don’t end at the Rio Bravo (or the Rio Grande, as it’s known to *Americans*)”. The Bushes, all of them, really do seem to believe that Mexicans are more religious, more family oriented, and harder working than Americans. As a group, they are also one group of people, unlike the poor sods who are citizens of the country he actually governs, whose average intelligence allows George W. to lord it over them.

According to Mr. Auster: “For some reason, many people today want to reduce politics to the most venal level of personalities and personal interests, rather than seeing the larger forces that are at work.”

******

This, of course, resembles the Marxist view of history. Vast impersonal forces directing the masses of people replace the consideration of personal and dynastic lusts, the role of great personages, the ability of individuals to innovate and direct their fate as well as the fate of nations. The Elizabethan Age, for example, becomes a study of the economic dislodging of Spain by the English. I’m sure Mr. Auster doesn’t intend that, but that’s how it appears. More than one nation has been led down the path to national suicide, because of private aspirations of individuals and families.

I meant nothing like what Paul is saying, though I see how it might be read that way. I meant the same thing Matt said (if I remember rightly—I can’t find the quote) when he pointed out that the personal intentions of individual actors in politics matter less than the general ideological drift they are helping advance. This has come up from time to time when we say to someone, “You are helping advance an ideology of total feminist equality of the sexes,” or whatever, and the person replies, “That’s not my aim, MY idea of feminism is such and such, you’re imposing on me a belief I don’t hold.” Matt would point out that words and ideologies have generally understood meanings and that we can’t simply choose our own meanings for them. Now we can extend beyond that insight to the general idea that leaders in a liberal society, echoing the general liberal ideas, and taking generally liberal measures, should be seen primarily as people who are helping advance liberalism. That Bush may have some particular affection for Mexicans may add a distinct coloration to his liberalism, but doesn’t alter its basic character. That Bush may be motivated by the aim of winning Hispanic votes may also be a factor, but if he didn’t share the underlying liberalism, he would very likely see his electoral strategy in different terms as well.

This has nothing to do with a Marxist theory of history. I’m not denying the decisive role that great individuals may play in world events.

What if Bush is someone who is being true to his own principles? You could then accept that he is a good man, a man of integrity, whilst still arguing that his false principles are leading to bad, destructive policy.

The Republicans claim openly to have a political philosophy of individual freedom and free trade, in other words, the classic liberal philosophy, or, as Lawrence Auster puts it so well, the classic American ideology of right-liberalism.

A Republican starts within the general tradition of liberal individualism, in which freedom is identified with a lack of impediments to individual desire. He then adds to this a special emphasis on economic freedom: the belief that the free market is the best way to regulate millions of competing wills, and that both labour and capital should be unimpeded.

It wouldn’t matter if Bush were, at a personal level, a great patriot with a positive view of American culture and history. If he has integrity he will follow his political principles, which will tell him that race/ethnicity shouldn’t impede individual desires and that it is a great good to deregulate the movement of labour.

It doesn’t help much to blame Bush the man. It’s more important to understand how Republicanism, ie the right-liberal philosophy of the Republican Party, leads to destructive outcomes.

This thread has added since my last post several good diagnoses of President Bush’s peculiar pathologies that have led him to the point of proposing this latest amnesty. To varying degrees I agree with all of them.

Some have emphasized impersonal movements and ideologies at play in society that push individual actors, like Bush, in a given direction. In this case, pervasive liberalism pushes Bush left. That is true, but does not suffice to explain his immigration obsession, especially within just a few years of a handful of aliens murdering over 3,000 people on his watch.

To explain that, we have to look at Bush the man and what motivates him personally. My argument is that Bush’s desire for amnesty and his infatuation with Mexicanizing the United States cannot be explained by his liberalism alone. I look for the rest of the answer in his exposure to a certain, very elegant and genial, kind of Mexican and to the fact that he has Mexican relatives whom he loves. Others point to a Bush family conspiracy to hispanicize the country to keep Bushes in power. While I dislike the Bush political machine almost as much as the Kennedy combine, that strikes me as farfetched.

All of which is to say that in analysing what is being done to us here we have to be good historians, giving weight both to larger social forces at play and to the interests of the individual actors of our time. The last thing to remember about analysing President Bush’s actions is that while he is sly, he is not very smart. HRS

It is time for everyone to start contacting their two Senators and one Representative on this issue. They will be pressured to go along with the traitor in the White House in order to preserve party unity, not embarrass the President in public, etc. They need strong encouragement to do what is right.

I wrote my representative, Virgil Goode of Virginia, several months ago and received a letter from his office agreeing to oppose all illegal alien amnesties, as well as indicating that legal immigration levels might need to be examined soon. On the letter, Virgil Goode wrote in his own handwriting, “I oppose ALL illegal alien amnesty!” along with a couple of other sentences of agreement. Below is my email of this morning to Representative Goode. Please feel free to cut and paste parts of it in your own letters to your congressmen. Just go to www.house.gov and www.senate.gov and use the online contact systems there. You put in your 9-digit zip code and they match you with your representative in the House. I have also edited a copy of this letter and sent it to each of my two senators, George Allen and John Warner.
———————

Representative Goode:

I have already written you once on this subject, and was thankful to receive a reply indicating your agreement. I am writing again only to encourage you and express how important this issue is to me.

The issue is immigration, both legal and illegal. President Bush is selling out his country for some perceived political gain, and he is losing my vote as a result. I have never voted for a third-party candidate or Democrat in my entire life, but I will be compelled to vote for someone other than President Bush in 2004 because of his apparently greater desire to do what is best for Mexico rather than what is best for America. If some repugnant Democrat such as Howard Dean is elected president as a result of defections by voters such as myself, so be it. I cannot in good conscience have my vote taken for granted and see my country’s future, and my party, destroyed.

No doubt President Bush and his fellow traitors will be putting pressure on Republicans in Congress to support his illegal-alien amnesty program. Of course, in Orwellian fashion, they will avoid using the word “amnesty”, as if calling it by another name will give everyone political cover to vote for it. I hope that you will not be pressured into putting party ahead of country, and that you will communicate to your fellow representatives the depth and intensity of voter backlash on this issue.

President Bush’s strategy of “taking issues away from Democrats” by adopting THEIR position on virtually every issue means two things to me. First, the Republican Party is being moved rapidly leftward by its leaders. Second, there is not much to fear from the Democrats as compared to the Republicans. When Bill Clinton was president, Republicans in Congress could be counted on to resist left-wing policies. Now that those left-wing policies are coming from a Republican president, there is pressure to abandon principles in order to “not have the President suffer a defeat in Congress.” I hope that you will have the courage to see where this trend is leading our country.

Sincerely,

Clark Coleman

In contrast to President Bush, I believe that many Republicans in Congress have been doing the right thing on many issues. I see a tendency for many conservative Republican voters to misread the Congress. Razor-thin Republican majorities are often undone by the fact that a small number of Republicans are not, never have been, and have never claimed to be conservatives, such as Arlen Specter, the New England Republicans, the Oregon Republicans, etc. As a result, conservative voters hold the Republican Party responsible for all that goes on in Congress, when the Senate has only a 51-49 Republican majority, and that includes the likes of Arlen Specter, and constant filibusters by Democrats.

Would it not be more sensible to fight hard for a really solid Republican majority in both houses, then pressure one’s representatives by email for a few years, and see how it works out, before abandoning the party? In other words, individual Republicans like Bush might certainly deserve to be abandoned, but a 51-49 Senate with 1-2 liberal Republicans and a record number of Democratic filibusters and threatened filibusters should hardly have its performance taken as the most we can ever expect from the Republican Party.

On these issues, see Paul Weyrich’s piece:

http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=5882

Kudos to Mr. Coleman for his excellent letter. My rejoinder to his observations about the Republican Party would be that the party seems to have no interest in becoming more conservative or building a solid conservative majority. Current Republican leaders appear to assume that the way to popularity with the voters is to act like not-quite-Democrats. That is a fallacy with a long pedigree: does anyone remember the permanent minority days of Gerald Ford, Robert Michel and Bob Dole?

I’ll stick with my belief that the way to political health for conservatives begins with abandoning illusions about the Republican Party. HRS

Well done by Mr. Coleman.

Scott McClellan was on again today with his spin, insisting that this new Soc Sec scheme will encourage Mexican ‘undocumented workers’ to eventually return to Mexico. He pointed out that we have agreements with 20 countries to provide Soc Sec benefits to their citizens who have worked here and return home, but we have no such agreement with Mexico. I wonder if part of that has to do with the fact that those other countries were mostly here legally?

The semantic games Mr. McClellan played would embarrass George Orwell.

Bush’s latest insane, outrageous action justifies Mr. Auster’s warnings, back in 2000, of the danger of a second Bush Presidency. Howard Sutherland’s description of Bush as a traitor may be too kind. (Benedict Arnold and some other traditional traitors were far more likeable fellows than Bush.) I would, however, have to urge some caution in using that term in public arguments, since to call the President of the United States a “traitor” is a good way of provoking other people to stop listening to you— no matter how rationally justifiable such an evaluation may be!

I don’t know, Alan. The word “traitor” is rather subjective. One man’s traitor is another man’s— er, revolutionary? In any case, to label G.W. Bush a traitor, for his administration’s odd new Mexican immigration proposal, for example, is to assume that he was ever intending to act for the benefit of those who would be harmed by the enacting of said proposal.

If one were to discount every mangled word of rhetoric that has ever escaped G.W.’s lips, and just look at his life history, one would be able to gain quite a clear picture of just who our ostensible Commander-in-Chief has actually been representing in his three-plus years in office. G.W. is a man who was born with an enormous silver spoon in his mouth, and his family (at least two generations back) has been a notorious example of the awful things that can happen when capital and government are allowed to fornicate together without any impediment.

If you look at the substance of what G.W.’s immigration plan proposes, you’ll find that it merely codifies the status quo: Mexican migrant workers would have virtually no rights, including the right to organize and negotiate for better pay and working conditions; they would continue to enter the U.S. labor market, theoretically driving down that market and weakening the bargaining power of U.S. workers. Did I miss anything important? Now, think: who would benefit from this arrangement? If you said big business and corporate interests, you win the booby prize. Considering that G.W. is a dyed-in-the-wool right-wing Republican, how is this a betrayal of his core constituency (and I’m obviously not referring to Republican-voting ‘NASCAR dads’ or any other such self-deluding flag-kissers)?

Church Secretary is ingnoring a serious split among the Republican base, This split mirrors the general disconnect between politicians in Washington and the average working stiffs who pay the taxes.

The Republicans are presently controlled by what I refer to as the Country Club wing. This reprsents a group of folks who are generally wealthy and retain a liberal outlook on nearly every issue save their own pocketbooks. Bush is a perfect representative of this particular demographic, which is extremely influential despite its small size.

The other wing of the party is represented by James Dobson and all of the people who share his particular vision - one of social conservatism. The salient points are truly conservative in many aspects, though there has been a spurising acceptance of liberal ideals regarding racial issues and immigrations (which is viwed as a racial issue, at least in the US).

Bush and Roves’s overall strategy is to offer a sop every now and again to the religious conservatives ( like the patial birth abortion act which has already been declared.unsconstituitional.

(Completion of comment from 4:11 AM)

Bush and Roves’s overall strategy is to offer a sop every now and again to the religious conservatives (like the patial birth abortion act which has already been declared unsconstituitional) to buy their votes while persuing the liberal agenda of their corporate sponsors.