Problem eliminator

Let us look again at what president Bush said in Glynco, Georgia on May 29:

If you want to kill the bill, if you don’t want to do what’s right for America, you can pick one little aspect out of it, you can use it to frighten people. Or you can show leadership and solve this problem once and for all, so the people who wear the uniform in this crowd can do the job we expect them to do.

What does Bush mean by this odd phrase, “solve this problem once and for all?” He can’t seriously mean that he expects that there will be no further problems resulting from this incomprehensible, loophole-filled mess of a law, that it will be easily enforceable, that it will work smoothly, that it will not lead to lots more illegals who in turn will demand legalization. No, in fact it’s the opposite. As I’ve been saying all along, Bush and the open borders advocates do not expect any of the enforcement mechanisms to work. Their purpose is not to enforce the law but to bust America so wide open that it will become impossible to stop any future immigration. And that’s what Bush means by solving the problem. As long as America is exercising any sovereign power over her borders and her national destiny, thinking of herself as a distinct country, choosing whom to admit and whom not to admit and thus exercising power over immigrants, and also as long as America is burdened with a vestigial European-American majority from whom the new immigrants are so different that the difference produces anxiety and resentment on the part of the majority (though liberalism does not allow them to state this anxiety in plain language) and aggression and grievance on the part of the immigrants (which is expressed loud and clear in mass marches throughout the country), as long as there is this tension between us and them, between Americans and immigrants, between America as it was and is and America as it will be, we have a problem. Bush’s bill solves that problem once and for all by destroying any ability on the part of the existing American people to exercise any control over their country, and thus by getting rid of the troubling tension between “is” and “will be.” The problem is solved, in short, by eliminating America.

- end of initial entry -

Ortelio writes:

I don’t really doubt your hypotheses that the president’s deep motivation is to open the US definitively to a population- and culture-submerging influx. But it’s not plausible to say that that is what he MEANT when he said “…you can show leadership and solve this problem once and for all, so the people who wear the uniform in this crowd can do the job we expect them to do.” Your interpretation of “solving this problem once and for all” ignores all the words that followed. Who were the people in uniform in “this crowd” (what crowd?)? Surely law enforcers of some kind or another.

LA replies:

But what is the job that “solving this problem” will enable those Border Patrol agents to do? Securing the border. But, as I showed in my article, “We’ll guard that border, after it’s gone,” Busheron doesn’t expect anyone to secure the border because, as he said, we can’t secure the border as long as people want to cross it illegally. We can only stop people from entering the country illegally when they stop trying to enter the country illegally, which they will do when we allow them all to enter legally. So, the real meaning of “Let’s solve this problem once and for all and allow the BP to do their job” is, “Let’s open the country to everyone who wants to come which will mean no one comes illegally anymore and so the Border Patrol’s job will have been done and completed—permanently.

I realize that my interpretation sounds extreme, but I’m looking at the pure logic of Bush’s own statements to try to get at their real meaning. Also, to reply to your initial objection, this is not a matter of what Bush is consciously intending. Political rhetoric has its own logic and its own effect independent of the intentions of the people speaking it. People who say liberal things are liberals who are helping advance liberalism. What political actors consciously mean by their statements is not what matters in politics. What matters in politics is the statements and positions that political actors publicly subscribe to and help promote.

LA writes:

By the way, the phrase “problem eliminator” which I used as the title of this blog entry comes from the James Bond movie “License to Kill” with Timothy Dalton, which I saw recently on DVD:

Sanchez: Well, it’s a wise gambler who knows when his luck has run out. Why this? [about Bond’s pistol]

Bond: In my business, you prepare for the unexpected.

Sanchez: And what business is that?

Bond: I help people with problems.

Sanchez: Problem solver.

Bond [with sinister gusto]: More of a problem eliminator.

In the Bond movie it’s a funny line. In the case of Bush’s plans for America, it’s not funny at all.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 05, 2007 02:16 PM | Send