Stop the coup against America

See what Randall Parker has to say on the Senate Democratic leadership’s intent to rush this disastrous bill through to a vote within one week, before the public even has time to learn what’s in it. He calls it an attempted coup against the American people. There will be no committee hearings on the bill. Let that sink in. There will be no committee hearings on the bill. On a bill of this size and importance. With last year’s immigration bill, S.2611, there were hearings and a chance for a debate to occur, and the public had the opportunity to learn about its real provisions and the real numbers it would bring into America, most notably through Robert Rector’s groundbreaking articles that changed the entire tenor of the discussion and even drew the senators up short who themselves had not been aware that the bill would triple U.S. immigration. By contrast, this year’s bill, S. 1348 (by coincidence 1348 is the year of the Black Plague which killed a third of the population of Europe), is going from the small group of senators and White House honchos who negotiated and finished the deal last Thursday direct to the Senate floor. Moreover, the “cloture” vote to shut off the possibility of a filibuster, the best chance to stop the bill, will be held tomorrow.

Maybe this was why the bill’s backers didn’t care that the bill was so absurd and insane that the public would reject it; they knew in advance that they were going to by-pass normal public deliberations. And the guy leading this outrage, Sen. Harry Reid, in the early ’90s was the Senate’s point man for a massive reduction of legal immigration.

Here are the contact lists for the Senate and the House of Representatives. When you call your senators, emphasize, as much as the badness of the bill itself, the lack of committee hearings and the lack of normal time for debate. Put your senators’ staffers in the hot seat. Demand that they defend this indefensible rush-job, this coup.

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Paul K. writes:

This story makes me once again ponder the inexplicable. What does John McCain think he is going to get out of this deal? He is putting himself to all the bother of running for president, yet he happily sucker punches the Republican base every chance he gets. I really wonder what goes though his mind.

LA replies:

This is a type of question that recurs endlessly. Why is it so hard for people to understand that people do things for the most obvious reason—that they believe in them?

Paul K. replies:

I had thought that his belief that he should be president was his primary belief, but evidently there are other things he values more.

LA replies:

Think of the way you feel about immigration, that you want it reduced, that the country depends on it, that this is absolutely of the first order of everything America is and everything we are as Americans. Well, that’s the way McCain feels about opening the borders. To him making America diverse, getting rid of America’ culture (because, as he has said, a country without a culture is morally superior to a country with a culture) is the very meaning of America.

Then think of the way you feel toward the open borders proponents, how you see them as traitors to everything America is, that you would never compromise with them. Well, that’s the way McCain feels about us—and more so, because he really despises traditional Americans as representing a principle of smallness and meanness that must be wiped out.

That’s why he’s doing this.

James W. writes:

Assuming the worst about Bush—that’s easy—and that he generally likes the bill, it still does not add up.

Since the day after the election he has appeared to be a frat boy looking for a place to hide, or at least not to be slapped down to hard. Still doesn’t add up.

He knows this bill will be hated, so what could be the motivation for pulling the trigger together with the enemy in Congress?

I can think of only one thing. He has an understanding that he will get a few months breathing room in Iraq. Not cooperation, just room. If so, they’ll cross him up in this as well. Why wouldn’t they? Why wouldn’t anybody?

LA replies:

See my answer to Paul K. Conservative have this tremendous difficulty in understanding that people they think of as conservatives are really liberals. Therefore they keep coming up with these tortuous explanations of why the supposed conservative is doing some liberal thing. The most obvious explanation, that the supposed conservative is in fact a liberal, doesn’t occur to them. People need to believe that there is a conservative faction that stands against liberalism, and thus that America is basically ok. To recognize that both factions are really liberal would be to recognize that we’re not basically ok, that we’re in a crisis that is ultimately an existential crisis. I believe this bill is the greatest attack on our nation’s existence since the Civil War.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at May 20, 2007 07:23 PM | Send