The Bosque Boys

I cannot vouch for these, I can only report that they were expressed on the floor at our national denominational meeting this week:

"When I die, I want to be buried in Chicago so I can remain politically active." Charlie Rangel.

"Good government is no substitute for self-government." Gandhi.

Some on-the-ground reporting. From a conversation with a small group of Iowa Dems, including an elected official active in the party at the state level.

They had the following thoughts: (1)Anyone the Democrats nominate in 08 can beat the Republican candidate, except Hillary. So, Hillary must not be nominated. (2)When the dust clears Edwards will be the strongest candidate for the Democrats to put forward.

But, as Farmer comments, repeating his 2008 Mantra: Nobody Knows Anything.

I am blogging this week from the General Synod meeting of the Reformed Church in America. We have been kept so busy that my production is low, but maybe tonight which they have promised will not last until 11pm.

At supper last night I talked politics with a layman from Illinois, a black elder from south of Chicago. I asked him about excitement for the current presidential candidates. He reported that he has not seen much excitement for any of the Republican candidates. His guess is that Rudy might have the most support, but that many are troubled at the thought of putting a man with his personal baggage (he's on his third wife) into the White House. He also reported that there has been some talk about "that Mormon candidate." (Romney)

On the Democrat side, he stated that Obama has generated a lot of excitement. He has heard Barak speak in person and compares his oratorical skills to those of MLK. And, he said that Barak mesmerizes crowds in Chicago and in the south counties of the state. But, he is not sure if Obama can beat Hillary for Illinois delegates, since she has lots of support as well. Edwards has not lit any fires of support.

These are, of course, the opinions of one man. But, a man well-connected in his community and politically aware.

A lot has been said about the Rasmussen poll and his analysis: "Why the Senate Immigration Bill Failed" (full article here).

Quoting Rasmussen:

"The immigration bill failed because a broad cross-section of the American people are opposed to it. Republicans, Democrats, and unaffiliated voters are opposed. Men are opposed. So are women. The young don’t like it; neither do the no-longer-young. White Americans are opposed. Americans of color are opposed."

End quote.

Continuing our "Immigration Reform 2007 is dead. Now What?" conversation (see here):

Let me posit that many of us are making an erroneous leap of logic in the aftermath of the great grassroots rebellion on the Right (over which even I am heartened).

We keep hearing that only 22 percent of Americans were for the immigration compromise. Some of us seem to infer from that statistic that, conversely, 78 percent of America is with us. That is a shaky assumption.

The bill was defeated, which as I said, if nothing else, illustrated that conservatism remains independent and not without a modicum of residual power in American politics. This is a good thing. We are right to take heart from this fact. In life, we should take pleasure in small victories.

On the other hand, nothing much has changed. We have proven that we can stop a flawed immigration compromise--but we are thousands of miles away from having the power to secure the legislation we desire.

We are still faced with the same choice: compromise or maintain the status quo, which means de facto amnesty.

We can all yell: "secure the border and enforce the law" until the cows come home--but I am not expecting George Bush to suddenly convert to the Tancredo position. I don't expect Hillary Clinton to be very friendly to us either.

I guess we can hope for Fred Thompson. Why not? This is the part of the season when hope springs eternal. I suppose anything is possible, but what is Plan B?

On May 18, taking our cue from the immigration compromise bill put forth with much ballyhoo and great optimism, we resumed a long-running discussion concerning immigration and acculturation on this blog.

I compliment our readers and contributors for stepping up to the democratic task of engaging national politics on an individual level. I am extremely proud of the conversation we had here. Kudos to the Bosque Boys community.

Having said that, we are where we were:

In fact, what I said on 18 May, "Immigration Comes Home to Roost" (you may review that post here) seems to me appropriate still:

1. For political reasons, Republicans passed on their best opportunity to craft meaningful immigration legislation back when they ran Washington (109th Congress).

2. The Political Strategy failed miserably. A hard line on immigration could not save the dismal Republican majority in 2006.

3. Choosing politics over policy in 2006 risked that nothing got done on immigration for a long time.

4. Doing nothing (then and now) means de facto amnesty and affirming a status quo that almost all of us agree is unacceptable.

5. On May 18, the Republican House and the conservative grassroots woke up to find themselves on the outside looking in, befuddled and angry.

Today they are still on the outside looking in--but much happier as a result of derailing the latest bill. I give conservatives credit for a bravura performance in mobilizing against this legislation. If nothing else, conservatism illustrated its independence and residual power in American politics.

Okay, most of the above is water under the bridge. But many of the problems then are still the same today.

Where Are We Now? I am not sure much has changed since 20 May when I wrote about a "tangled immigration dilemma faced by conservatives" (the full post here):

1. Our system of regulating immigration (especially immigration from Mexico) is so dysfunctional as to be non-existent.

2. We have no idea how many illegal aliens we are currently hosting in our nation, but most credible estimates indicate somewhere around 12,000,000 undocumented persons.

3. If we do nothing, immigration will continue to exist as an unrestrained force of nature, disturbed only by market variables.

4. The hard-line stance of many conservatives (an impermeable fence, massive deportations, an army on the border capable of maintaining complete security, etc.) is not politically possible in the foreseeable future.

Why?

The Democrats control both houses of Congress. They are content to allow the current system to continue unmolested.

The Republicans are divided on the issue between nativists and market-oriented, Wall Street Journal type conservatives, who believe that a large segment of the undocumented (illegal) population are essential to our economy.

The rest of America is mostly divided, ambivalent or apathetic; there is no national consensus for action at this moment.

5. Doing nothing means the continuation of a regime all of us (conservatives) can agree is bordering on disastrous.

6. We cannot get everything we want. We cannot even decide on what it is exactly that we want.

For the record, here is what I [still] want:

--secure borders (as much as that is possible)

--national ID cards

--tough penalties for employers who employ illegal workers

--some humane system for allowing workers from Mexico to work for American employers as the need arises

--some humane system for allowing a larger percentage of those workers to become American citizens, recognizing our special relationship with Mexico and other neighbors to the South

What to do?

Join the process with reasonable expectations and honest intentions. Let's get in the game and help solve the problem.

Unbelievable. The U.S. Senate has voted down the Cornyn amendment to bar terrorists and gang members from immigration amnesty. Story here.

For the previous verses, see this post and links.

Another root cause of Mainline decline: Liberation Theology separated from biblical teaching.

Liberation Theology, in a nutshell, is a way of looking at Christian doctrine that emphasizes God's "preferential option" for the poor. The Old Testament prophets over and over again proclaimed God's watchcare for the widow and orphan, and judged Israel's society on how well the weak got the justice they deserved. On the flip side, the wealthy frequently were castigated and were condemned as oppressors of the poor. See, for example, the prophet Amos. In the New Testament we find Jesus more often among the poor and outcast than among the rich; and he did say that the last shall be first, and that it was easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven. The Apostle Paul describes the early Christian church as made up of not many mighty. Liberation Theology emphasizes justice for the poor and weak of society, including the global society. We should not be content to wait for heaven when we die, we should work to make this world now look more like the kingdom.

And, since we tend to understand things, including Scripture, based on our background, Liberation Theology has emphasized the ways in which the rich (individuals and nations) distort the Bible message in order to remain comfortable. Indeed, Liberation Theology(s) teach that the poor and weak have better insight into God's teaching than do the rich.

So far, so good. However, . . . (more below)

» Read More

Last week I said that I was increasingly of the opinion, for reasons of political survival, that the President and his coterie of GOP pragmatists should pull the plug on the immigration offensive, retreat and regroup.

Obviously, more so now than then. Fold your cards and wait for the next deal.

What continues to frustrate me most about the immigration debate?

We (America) have a serious problem (immigration), which we are not addressing. Instead, we (conservatives) are having an internecine bloodletting in which too many of the most severe national challenges are obscured by pernicious abstractions. Although it is in our power to come up with something workable, I fear that we are more likely to do nothing, perpetuating the status quo that brought us our current crisis, beating ourselves into critical condition in the process.

Last week I listed three "realities" that opponents to immigration reform generally ignore. The post precipitated a frank and constructive discussion. You may review that post and comments here.

WHY OUR HOUSE IS ON FIRE?

The angst over immigration (a serious problem) clouds and distorts an even more important discussion concerning who and what we will be as an American nation. We are in the midst of a national crisis, but it is not a direct result of millions of underclass Mexicans entering the American bloodstream. The real problem is that we are not prepared to assimilate them properly. That is, Hispanics are not killing the traditional process of assimilation; the traditional process of assimilation and American inculcation is dead.

The real solution: FIX THE PROBLEM OF ASSIMILATION, which means educating young people (not just immigrants) to be good Americans. What is a good American? A good American is a functional citizen; patriotic and loyal, yes, but, more than that, a person who apprehends the essence of our national inheritance and our collective responsibility to posterity.

Ten days ago, Tocqueville directed me to this Rod Dreher post (here), entitled "ferocious differences," in which Rod explained how Mexicans and Americans are not like one another.

Dreher recounts the story of "a fourth-grader in a local school [Texas Metroplex]-- a Hispanic boy, the son of Mexican immigrants who can't speak English...[who offered up his] favorite figure from history: Santa Anna, the villain of the Alamo."

Dreher continued: "It was striking to me because this first-generation Texas boy had completely inverted the founding myth of Texas. And by 2020, say the demographers, Hispanics will be the absolute majority in Texas. How will Texans of the future think about Texas, when the villains and the heroes of the Alamo are reversed?"

Tocqueville is a big fan of Rod Dreher, as am I (albeit to a lesser degree). Dreher is always thoughtful, compassionate and logical. But he makes the increasingly common mistake of conflating the issue of who they are with who we are. Admitting that "the Mexicans that come north will be chewed up by the dynamism of capitalism, in time" [emphasis mine], Dreher correctly reminds us that this wave of immigrants possess "a lot more psychological resources with which to resist assimilation" (which include a unique sense of history, "contiguity to Mexico" and the "overwhelming numbers" of culturally similar fellow travelers).

Once Again: the Dreher post here; it really is a great read.

Can the power of the American story overcome the culture and history of a Mexico that they are leaving behind? Of course! As Dreher asserts, integration and assimilation will happen naturally over time.

However, the process needs our specific attention and action. We must approach the acculturation of these immigrants with a plan of action. We must inculcate these groups with traditional American values. In ordinary circumstances, this would not be a daunting task. Immigrants are generally inclined to see the good in our system and our history--or go home.

The Greatest Danger.

However, we must also acknowledge that we are in an all-important fight for cultural hegemony in which our enemies are not external; they are us. We are currently atop an educational complex run amok. Instead of imbuing students (immigrant and native-born alike) with a history that values "one Nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all," our system is busy poisoning these optimistic immigrants with an alternative narrative of exploitation, pessimism and victimization.

A point that Dreher considers within his post--but does not emphasize--is the twenty-first century reality of American-born Americans steadily losing touch with our own myths. My question for Rod: what were the Anglo kids in that class saying, many of whom, no doubt, possessed deep genealogical roots back into the era of the Texas Republic? My guess it that they were relatively uninterested in Davy Crockett, Jim Bowie or William Barret Travis.

More over, the identification of Santa Anna as an heroic figure is not a Mexican myth. Mexican history portrays Santa Anna as an inept scoundrel. The notoriously dictatorial and deceitful Santa Anna provides a figure only an anti-American academic could love. My guess is that the sanctification of Santa Anna in the case Rod mentions emanates from the bias of the fourth-grade teacher rather than the domestic Mexican-American culture of the student.

Our most serious national problem is that we are surrendering our sense of American exceptionalism and goodness. We are no longer teaching and believing in the grand experiment in self government based on the ideals of justice, opportunity and a republican subordination of self to community. We are no longer celebrating our national morality.

More than anything else, we need to guard and fight for our culture where it is most at risk: universities, pop culture, and government. We can easily assimilate 25 million immigrants from Mexico over time--if we stay faithful to a traditional unifying American narrative. The greatest security threat of our time rests in failing to pass on our national inheritance to the 100 million American-born citizens who are right now deciding who they are and what they want to be.

Recognize that ACCULTURATION is the key to security. Recognize that promulgating a narrative that takes apart the single unifying principle of a nation is suicide.

Yesterday on the Sean Hannity radio show, Frank Luntz (celebrity Republican-leaning pollster) pronounced John Edwards the winner of the latest Democratic debate (BTW: he calls last night's GOP bout for Romney, more on that story here on RCP).

Luntz's analyses are based on focus groups working dials to register their approval for the candidates and what they are saying in real time.

My point: Luntz called Barack Obama the surprise loser in the Democratic debate. Although this goes against the conventional wisdom, fund-raising contest results and the latest national polling, I AGREE with him.

Obama seems to be stiffer and less-practiced than he was when he entered the race five months ago. As someone who was intrigued by Obama, I am increasingly uninterested in and unimpressed with him.

Obama is sharp, charismatic, handsome and black--but that alone is not enough to lift him past Hillary Clinton. The Obama-juggernaut was always a long shot that needed flawless political acumen and stimulating oratory.

I am not seeing that. A few months ago, I could not take my eyes off him. These days I am mostly bored by him.

More Bosque Boys thoughts on Campaign 2008 here (click and scroll down).

Gaypatriot has this update on the woes of the Log Cabin Republicans (say it loud, I'm a gay Republican and I'm proud).

At a guess, I would think that Rudy might be the candidate to benefit most from their efforts, if they were able to act.