September 4, 2017

MY CORNER by Boyd Cathey

DACA and Illegal Immigration: Will We Cross the Rubicon and Descend like Europe into Cultural Dissolution?

==============================================

Friends,

You would have thought that the North Koreans had just sent a missile into the heart of Los Angeles, or that the Potomac River had overflowed its banks threatening to inundate the Capitol. Or, perhaps that the Congressional lobbyists and special interest slime on K Street had all of a sudden “got religion” and signed a pledge no longer to grease the upturned palms of our “elected representatives.”

But it wasn’t something so dramatic; no, it was the intimation that President Trump might well keep his oft-repeated campaign promise and—horror of horrors!—roll back, disallow, or even kill the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) Executive Order that Obama issued, and which is, very likely, an unconstitutional exercise of presidential authority.

All of a sudden the loathsome, self-proclaimed (for anyone within pained earshot) “conservative” Senator Jeff Flake (R-Arizona) got on the Sunday morning news programs, visibly anguished and flustered that millions of illegals might not have all the goodies of American citizens, and demanded—yes, demanded—that Congress take action, and soon, very soon!  Another oily self-proclaimed “conservative,” the illustrious Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, scurried to the most accessible and closest microphone to state firmly in the most wrenching tones—“We MUST preserve DACA! We must allow those approximately one million ‘children’ to remain—it wasn’t their fault they came here!”  And, of course, as is to be expected, all the Dems lined up in solidarity.

Incredible, isn’t it, the political parties in Washington cannot, it seems, get together on anything like health care or taxes, but just mention illegal aliens—and, suddenly, the Dems and the Reps act like bosom buddies, filled with “Christian” love and oleaginous lovey-dovey sentiments for “children,” many of whom are in their late 30s or 40s (!), and who, while not US citizens, are taking the jobs of thousands and thousands of American citizens and who are being educated largely at taxpayer expense?

Well, at least the Dems understand the fundamental issues involved. For them it’s twofold.

First, yes, there is on the part of much of their base the belief that very simply there should be NO national borders, that indeed the American nation must be an “open beacon and immigration destination” to thousands—millions—of the “downtrodden and oppressed” whom we must take in. Partially, that’s because we carry the indelible historical “white oppressor” burden and stain of slavery and “exploitation.” So, in a sense, this is a way to “make it up” to those unfortunates who live in Guatemala or Haiti or anyplace in the Third World who desire to come here. Our wealth and prosperity, so this narrative goes, derives from ill-gotten spoils wrenched away from those “wretched of the earth” (to use Frantz Fanon’s Marxist qualifier). Global equality demands and requires us to do this; after all, it’s in the Declaration of the Independence!

And in the forefront, side-by-side with the Dems leading these efforts are most mainstream Christian churches and their leaders and pastors, who have swallowed whole hog the cultural Marxist ideological narrative and talking points. “We must take in all those poor and downtrodden souls!” they plead and insist. “It’s what Jesus would do!” The problem is that they take such Biblical injunctions and such teachings out of context. For the nation, the country, is a microcosm of the family. And just as a family has the natural and God-given right to determine who enters its household and who remains and becomes a part of it, so the nation has the analogous God-given right. It is not uncharitable to look at our own citizens first, to protect our own existence as a national “family” first, and to refuse entry to those who do not fit in. Rather, it is completely in accord and consistent with the traditions of Christianity.

Just the other day the editor of Chronicles magazine, Chilton Williamson, reminded me of an instance that summed up what Christians have traditionally believed. During the trial of St. Joan of Arc, the canonized maid was questioned by the notoriously pro-English Bishop of Beauvais, Pierre Cauchon: “Jeanne, does God not also love the English?” “Yes, God loves them,” she replied, “but in their own land!” Despite the errors spewed forth from the mouths of countless clergymen, that response sums up what must be our response, in all charity and in justice.

Secondly, underlying the Democrat’s social justice template there lurks a practical consideration:  millions of new Democrat voters, for that is exactly what has been happening in states like California, Illinois, Arizona, and will continue to happen with millions of illegals entering, if something isn’t done to halt the process. DACA is one certain method to insure the avenue remains open, for as is clear, one of the major by-products is chain migration. The tearful pleas not to separate families always imply that mama, poppa, Aunt Luisa, cousins Jose and Juan, and third cousin once removed Andres and his extended family will show up, as well. And very soon, the little former mill town in Chatham County, NC, will have become “little Tijuana north,” where you literally have to post signs stating “Inglish spokin here.”  But, not to worry, this once little conservative community of hard working folks and taxpaying citizens has now become a solidly Democrat bastion, never mind that the jobs can’t really support the extended families, never mind that a majority of the inhabitants are on some form of welfare, never mind that Latino gangs have sprung up like springtime clover, never mind that town murders have jumped from 0 per annum to over 50, with rape, drugs, and other criminality on the rise.  Never mind that the native culture has been destroyed and replaced. At least the Dems have now got new voters.

And for the Republicans? For the Jeff Flakes, the Thom Tillises, the Paul Ryans, the Lindsey Grahams? For them, yes, there is a public patina of “social concern,” but percolating through those forced, crocodile tears are the overweening demands and wishes of their big agri-business campaign donors for a continuing supply of cheap labor, native American citizens be damned.  And underneath that, a raging intellectual infection of what can only be called “cultural suicide,” at the very least, a stubborn and resolute unwillingness to truly understand what characterizes this nation, what has made it a country, its fundamental traditions and heritage, its culture.

Ironically, the Flakes, the Ryans, the Orrin Hatches, the Lindsey Grahams bear more burden and share more blame for this situation than the Dems, for the Dems at least are honest, open and forthright about their designs and goals. A Thom Tillis will, all smiles and with greasy grins on the hustings here in North Carolina, boldly lie and obfuscate like a drunken sailor caught late night in a cat house by military MPs…while he goes about the business of wreaking cultural destruction along the Potomac. Such politicians merit utter disdain and disgust.

So, all eyes are turned to the White House and the capacity of President Trump to repel the pro-immigration snakes that lurk therein, and if he can resist the hue and cry of the organized “social justice” lobby that stretches across both political parties and holds them both in a tight vice…a vice that should it continue and succeed will spell the final, ignoble end to what once a noble republic. We are on the banks of the Rubicon.