WHAT PART OF 'NO' DOES OUR GOVERNMENT NOT UNDERSTAND?

 

 

 

By Beverly Eakman
June 16, 2007
NewsWithViews.com

�Immigration bill gets 2nd Chance,� screamed the Washington Times� June 15th top headline. Apparently both parties in the Senate have seen fit to �dis� the electorate and are putting the same, rejected �shamnesty� of an immigration bill right back on the agenda. President George W. Bush hasn�t been much more responsive to the public, with his ongoing �See ya at the signing� rhetoric, either. The only question left is how congressional proponents will razzle-dazzle resisters into acquiescence this time.

What part of �no� does Congress and the President not understand?

Think of it: Here�s the average Joe boarding a flight to see Grandma over the holidays. He suffers the inconvenience of long security lines, the indignity of being punched and prodded like cattle, the futile exercise of showing his ID at least three times (virtually anybody can get one), and the insufferable discourtesy of having his belongings searched by, guess who? Men wearing turbans and women wearing head coverings! All to prove�what exactly? How compassionate we are?

Meanwhile, Al Gore and his entourage saunter past security�they are our betters, after all. Yep, there are indeed �two Americas.�

The same issue of the Times carried another story describing recent financial disclosure forms for members of Congress. Most are living pretty high off the hog�so far above what most Americans earn as to be laughable, were it not for the fact that here are these multimillionaires who, like Al Gore and other �celebrities,� are rubbing everybody�s noses in it, telling the masses how they ought to spend their meager (by comparison) earnings.

Of course, the immigration bill isn�t really about immigration�or safety or border control. It�s about votes. Millions of low-skill, under-educated voters, especially those living on the edge of the law, are easy political marks. Too bad that many middle Easterners bear a physical resemblance to individuals of Mexican heritage and to natives of some other South American countries. But since the U.S. doesn�t engage in profiling�except psychological profiling; that�s okay�wealthy members of Congress can ponder their campaign coffers from behind gated communities while the average Joe ponders the chances of a terrorist loping around a non-existent fence with a dirty nuke.

Congress has been performing taxpayer-bypass-surgery for a long time. When legislators at the federal level want something really badly, their initiatives keep coming back like the proverbial Energizer Bunny, under first one name then another. If too much resistance is encountered (or anticipated), state governors around the country are enticed to help create and pass copycat legislation so that by the time the federal body manages to come through, similar bills are all over the place.

That�s how universal mental health screening (under the Marxist-like moniker �New Freedom Initiative�) got through, despite warnings that it will morph into a cradle-to-grave political litmus test. That�s how the No Child Left Behind Act managed to avert the axe, even though it doesn�t test much of anything and has left our students� international standing in math and science fourth from the bottom of the global barrel. That�s how the disaster known as �comprehensive sex education� managed to become institutionalized nationwide despite admonitions from experts and parents concerning its probable ineffectiveness and normalization of counterproductive behaviors (see the new Health and Human Services report: �Conprehensive" Sex Education Inefective and Offensive.

In the latter case, countless pundits over the years have protested explicit sex education, pointing out that while a unit on the reproductive system might be appropriate in physiology classes, the rest of the subject usurped parental prerogatives.

So just how did government get around that argument, or the one about local control. If I recall correctly, it was �a compelling state interest� that teen pregnancy and venereal diseases be avoided. So, now we have epidemic levels of sexual predators, de-stigmatization of unwed motherhood and, of course, lots and lots of genital herpes, HPV, ad nauseum, in our faces�from ubiquitous billboards to television commercials.

It�s one thing when elected officials are treated like celebrities and are excused from laws and sanctions other citizens must follow�such as former Washington, DC mayor/councilman-for-eternity Marion Barry, who now can add a drunk driving arrest to his astounding resume of abuses while in office. But it is quite another when our representatives start thumbing their noses at the public on matters of public safety and national sovereignty.

No means �no� on the current immigration bill. A nation cannot afford waves of new, much less illegal, immigrants during wartime. A moratorium on new immigration should have gone into effect immediately following 9/11, and it should have stayed that way until we were out from under the threat of rogue states on the loose with nukes or until we don�t have to worry about the possibility of terrorists setting off chemical or biological weapons on a crowded street�neither of which will likely occur in any of our lifetimes.

Our reckless and lax approach to crime over the past 30 years has exacerbated the debate over illegal immigration, allowing thousands of repeat violent offenders to ravage our neighborhoods and stalk our kids. Police at the local, county and state levels have had so many roadblocks enacted against legitimate crime-fighting, that they no longer can catch any real criminals, and are relegated to handing out $500 fines for dogs off their leashes and time-consuming seat-belt stops.

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The bottom line is that government is way, way out of control and has grown too big for its collective britches. The immigration bill fiasco is merely symptomatic of a much greater problem. If legal, American citizens don�t insist on reigning in this monster soon, illegal aliens will be the least of our problems.

� 2007 Beverly Eakman - All Rights Reserved