Thursday, March 28, AD 2024 1:06pm

A Moral Crisis

 

 

Victor Davis Hanson, my favorite living historian, has long thought and written about the problem of illegal immigration into the US.  Go here to read some of his earlier thoughts about the issue.  He agrees that what is happening currently in the “children’s crusade” to effectively eliminate our southern border is a moral crisis:

 

 

Mexico strictly enforces some of the harshest immigration laws in the world that either summarily deport or jail most who dare to cross Mexican borders illegally, much less attempt to work inside Mexico or become politically active. If America were to emulate Mexico’s immigration policies, millions of Mexican nationals living in the U.S. immediately would be sent home.

How, then, are tens of thousands of Central American children crossing with impunity hundreds of miles of Mexican territory, often sitting atop Mexican trains? Does Mexico believe that the massive influxes will serve to render U.S. immigration law meaningless, and thereby completely shred an already porous border? Is Mexico simply ensuring that the surge of poorer Central Americans doesn’t dare stop in Mexico on its way north?

The media talks of a moral crisis on the border. It is certainly that, but not entirely in the way we are told. What sort of callous parents simply send their children as pawns northward without escort, in selfish hopes of soon winning for themselves either remittances or eventual passage to the U.S? What sort of government allows its vulnerable youth to pack up and leave, without taking any responsibility for such mass flight?

Here in the U.S., how can our government simply choose not to enforce existing laws? In reaction, could U.S. citizens emulate Washington’s ethics and decide not to pay their taxes, or to disregard traffic laws, or to build homes without permits? Who in the pen-and-phone era of Obama gets to decide which law to follow and which to ignore?

Who are the bigots — the rude and unruly protestors who scream and swarm drop-off points and angrily block immigration authority buses to prevent the release of children into their communities, or the shrill counter-protestors who chant back “Viva La Raza” (“Long Live the Race”)? For that matter, how does the racialist term “La Raza” survive as an acceptable title of a national lobby group in this politically correct age of anger at the Washington Redskins football brand?

How can American immigration authorities simply send immigrant kids all over the United States and drop them into communities without firm guarantees of waiting sponsors or family? If private charities did that, would the operators be jailed? Would American parents be arrested for putting their unescorted kids on buses headed out of state?

Liberal elites talk down to the cash-strapped middle class about their illiberal anger over the current immigration crisis. But most sermonizers are hypocritical. Take Nancy Pelosi, former speaker of the House. She lectures about the need for near-instant amnesty for thousands streaming across the border. But Pelosi is a multimillionaire, and thus rich enough not to worry about the increased costs and higher taxes needed to offer instant social services to the new arrivals.

Go here to read the rest.  One of the things I most detest about contemporary liberalism is its infinite capacity for moral posturing so long as someone else is going to pick up the tab.

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T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Thursday, July 10, AD 2014 7:38am

Tragically, the tens of millions of surplus, resentful/wrathful and ignorant/unintelligent people continues to increase.
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They overtly tried it seven years ago: 6/28/2007: “When the U.S. Senate brought the Amnesty bill back up this week, they declared war on the American people. This act created a crisis of confidence in their government. Thankfully, the American people won today,” said Senator DeMint. “This is remarkable because it shows that Americans are engaged and they care deeply about their country. They care enough for their country to get mad and to fight for it, and that’s the most important thing of all. Americans made phone calls and sent letters, and convinced the Senate to stop this bill.”
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“The Senate rejected this bill and the heavy-handed tactics used to ram it through. Americans do not want more of the same – amnesty and broken promises on the border. Americans want legislation to be written in public – not in secret – and they want Congress to engage in an open and fair debate.”
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“There is a better way forward without this bill. The President has said that the border security measures can be implemented over the next 18 months, and they can be done under current law. Now the Administration needs to prove it and stop holding border security hostage for amnesty.”
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“Once we have secured the border and restored trust with the American people, we can begin to take additional steps.”
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WK Aiken
WK Aiken
Thursday, July 10, AD 2014 8:24am

If what I have gathered from various sources is correct, this whole thing is being orchestrated by “The Cartels” – the Mexican crime syndicates – for whom a primary source of income is being threatened by a very-likely legalization of marijuana in most of the country within the next 3-5 years. They control the pipeline – the roads and crossings through which the stream of both pot and Central American kids is flowing.
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Illegals of all ages have come across the border for decades, but a concentrated and purposeful approach by tens of thousands of children is not “just another day along the border.” On the few occasions I’ve seen the “news” on television, the fact that this swarm is mostly kids doesn’t seem to be eliciting any kind of remark. Neither does the seeming absence of Mexican children seem to be noteworthy.
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Given the tightly-woven familial structure of Latin cultures, it is difficult to believe that families would let their children attempt this trip, and all the exposure and abuse it certainly guarantees, unless there was coercion, pay-off or other more menacing impetus to do so. And certainly, only the Mexican syndicates have the kind of money and power to nullify at will the draconian Mexican immigration structure; it is to wonder whether “No ninos Mexicanos” was part of the deal . . .
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My just-slightly-educated guess is that this is a shot across the bow; the Cartels are demonstrating their dissatisfaction and telling the Obama regime that they’d better not think about doing anything “rash” regarding marijuana laws. If there is a statement about “rethinking” legalization or a reversal of the lax enforcement of Federal law shortly, then, as the comedian says, “There’s yer sign.” It won’t happen until this crisis has dissolved into the shadows of the next, but once some back-channel “agreement” is reached, suddenly the tide will stop and a couple of weeks later, some “announcements” will emerge.
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Just putting 2 and 2 together . . .

Nate Winchester
Nate Winchester
Thursday, July 10, AD 2014 9:02am

Here’s what I’m wondering…

What if we emulated Mexico and just started shipping the illegals all straight to Canada?

Oh come on, you know it’d be funny!

Art Deco
Thursday, July 10, AD 2014 9:17am

Waal, this makes plain where we are. By and large, the metropolitan professional-managerial set are not curators of communities or of the country at large. Obama and (in the course of her adult life) Pelosi are derived from that stratum and manifest its vanity and its thoughtlessness. The rest of us are…employees. We are expected to accept without complaint management’s agenda.

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Thursday, July 10, AD 2014 10:47am

Nate,

A bunch of Canadians are not amused.

5/15/2008: “A couple of weeks back, Statistics Canada reported that, after adjustment for inflation, Canadian wage-earners are earning less than in 1980. For example, in British Columbia the median wage-earner earns 11.3% less than a quarter-century ago. The media flew into a dither about all the usual fixes — increase taxes on the rich, etc — until one lone columnist, Trevor Lautens, pointed out the obvious:
‘In recent decades immigration, especially in British Columbia, has massively swung away from Europe to the less-developed (awful phrase) world… The plucky (another vanished word) of any nationality can overcome anything, as many praiseworthy immigrants have. But any immigrants to Canada without English, notoriously hard to learn and internationally valued — see the April 28 New Yorker story on Li Yang, who literally shouts what he calls “Crazy English” to his students in China — or French, are likely to settle into ethnic ghettos where they are vulnerable to exploitation, including lousy under-the-table wages…’
“So it’s not surprising that, as a group, immigrants for decades have dragged down Joe and Jane Median’s income.
“When advanced economies admit ever larger numbers of unskilled workers (plus a chain of relatives through “family reunification”), they are importing poverty. The President says this is to do “the jobs Americans won’t do”. For the sake of argument, take him at his word. So why won’t Americans do them? Because they’re a great way to ensure you live in poverty. So we import foreigners to be our poor people. Can we import just the right number to ensure that poverty doesn’t “grow”? Unlikely.
“There are arguments to be made both for and against immigration, but you can’t be in favor of mass unskilled immigration and then pledge to fight the “war on poverty”. It’s like spooning out a bathtub with a thimble while leaving the faucets running.” And, you all can again repeat, “The monstrous Repubs hate poor people!”

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Thursday, July 10, AD 2014 10:54am

Because 12 million strangers and their exploitive employers decide it is economically beneficial to remake the law.

Phillip
Phillip
Thursday, July 10, AD 2014 10:55am

If this is so, it is an illustrative case of a structure of sin being errected. Individual sins multiplied across society to produce an unjust structure. I wonder if the social justice crowed is paying attention.

Michael Paterson-Seymour
Michael Paterson-Seymour
Thursday, July 10, AD 2014 12:02pm

I imagine some laissez-faire economists would argue that bringing down wages, like any other cost reduction, will also bring down prices.

Certainly, that was the argument for allowing the importation of cheap foreign food and the consequent damage to the incomes of domestic producers.

And I suppose in a world of perfect competition it would work.

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Thursday, July 10, AD 2014 12:21pm

MPS – That also is the position of the Chamber of Commerce wing of the GOP. And, the progressives/liberals are either simpletons or want to complete the destruction of the evil, racist United States.

My economic stratum places a high value on low wages we pay for unskilled labor.

There are more important issues than my personal ease and net worth.

Obamnesty is a disaster for blacks, Hispanic Americans and the rest of us, including 92,000,000 working-age Americans who are unemployed or forced out of the labor market.

Again, Friedman: You can have a welfare state or open borders, but not both.

TomD
TomD
Thursday, July 10, AD 2014 12:36pm

“If this is so, it is an illustrative case of a structure of sin being erected. Individual sins multiplied across society to produce an unjust structure. I wonder if the social justice crowed is paying attention.”

Exactly right. The problem is that the social justice crowd (an unfortunate but accurate term, as we should all be for social justice, but never as part of an unthinking crowd) sees U.S. immigration law as the structure of sin, and refuses to see these foreign structures of sin that have been erected in opposition to U.S. law and society. They are a classic case of spouting off on the color of the pot and ignoring the kettle.
If everyone who sees the inequalities in Latin America were to cite them to our bishops as what needs to change, and not our laws – indeed, changing or not enforcing our laws simply enables and perpetuates Latin American inequalities – then perhaps they might change their tune on this issue.

TomD
TomD
Thursday, July 10, AD 2014 12:46pm

A partial repost of a comment from two days ago.

It is unbelievable that so many people from Latin America, and in particular Central America, are sending their children north in this manner, especially when many do not support international adoption of their children. What does it say about them as parents? The best thing is ‘desperate’, but others less kind come to mind. Furthermore, what does this say about them as citizens of their counties? It says that they have decided their countries are failures, that their only hope for their children is to go to a better place, but they lack the humility to say so publicly and to do the only honest thing, which would be to get their leaders to apply for U.S. statehood. There are many options for them, but their pride keeps them from doing all but the trafficking.

TomD
TomD
Thursday, July 10, AD 2014 12:57pm

“And I suppose in a world of perfect competition it would work.”

Of course it would. I can’t wait to practice law in Scotland, I’d bet I’d make more money than what I do in the U.S. and the average Scot would pay less for legal representation. It should only take me about 2-3 years to get up to speed with the law. Can’t wait! Oh, there’s barriers to free trade? A bar association? Immigration laws? How bigoted! And I’m descended from some McLanes to boot, so I have a right to enter Scotland!

Art Deco
Thursday, July 10, AD 2014 2:12pm

Certainly, that was the argument for allowing the importation of cheap foreign food and the consequent damage to the incomes of domestic producers

Grain and fruit are grain and fruit. They do not generate social abrasions or create policy dilemmas through their mundane conduct. Neither are grain and fruit an electoral army which can be mobilized against domestic populations by The Regime.

That aside, it is characteristic of every single affluent country that the share of the population earning a living from agriculture has undergone a drastic decline over more than two centuries. There is no exception to this rule. New Zealand is the only occidental country in which the share employed in agriculture even made it into the double digits at any time in the last 40-odd years. (Not that the real value of agricultural production has suffered). You have liberal trade in foodstuffs, and your product mix changes to specialty crops or to those most amenable to mechanized production. (From yesterday, I take it you have a particular issue with the timber industry). The net effect of a mess of trade restrictions, cartels, and subsidies in agriculture is the promotion of rent seeking behavior. There is no analogue to this problem in the labor market.

Art Deco
Thursday, July 10, AD 2014 2:15pm

It says that they have decided their countries are failures, that their only hope for their children is to go to a better place, but they lack the humility to say so publicly and to do the only honest thing, which would be to get their leaders to apply for U.S. statehood. There are many options for them, but their pride keeps them from doing all but the trafficking.

Can we not have arguments which depend on rhetorical gamesmanship?

TomD
TomD
Thursday, July 10, AD 2014 4:22pm

“Can we not have arguments which depend on rhetorical gamesmanship?”
Thought we were, considering the economic and legal facts that most Central Americans would be better off as U.S. citizens – Costa Rica excepted. Prove otherwise Art (except with the “but they’ll never apply for statehood so it’s silly” argument, which would only prove my point) and I’d concede some rhetorical sin. Given the lives that are involved it is no game.

Paul W Primavera
Thursday, July 10, AD 2014 4:25pm

I am disgusted more at the response of the Church in the United States to all this – enabling the continuation of illegal immigration and exacerbating an already horrible situation – than I am at the Obama Administration for selectively enforcing the immigration laws that do exist. My wife’s daughter (a registered nurse in the Philippines) and her son (a construction worker with lots of electrical experience) can’t get a visa to visit let alone immigrate, and both speak perfect English (besides of course Tagalog). But if they were Mexican illegals unable to speak or write English and on the government dole, then the Church would say it is a moral issue to not welcome them with open arms.

TomD
TomD
Thursday, July 10, AD 2014 4:37pm

Paul, to be fair the Church does favor immigration laws and procedures that allow for family reunions such as that sought by your wife. The unfairness is that such stands are taking a back seat to people who are really impoverished and whose poverty is causing the Church to turn a blind eye to illegality.

Tom M.
Tom M.
Thursday, July 10, AD 2014 7:07pm

Wasn’t this law regarding these Central Americans passed by the Bush regime? Why can’t they just repeal it?

Steve Phoenix
Steve Phoenix
Thursday, July 10, AD 2014 7:20pm

Egon Wolff, one of the darlings of the Left, who is heavily studied and hugely influential in Mexico and throughout S America and its enclaves of socialism (a Chilean by birth; son of a German Jewish couple who emigrated there) sowed much of this concept, the invasion of the US, in his play Los Invasores (“The Invaders: A Play Within a Dream”):

“Egon Wolff’s Los invasores (1962) deals with an invasion—
the invasion and conquest of a city by the poor people or harapientos who
live on its outskirts. The conquerors, obviously bent on exacting vengeance for
the oppression they have so long endured, quickly destroy all vestiges of the
capitalist way of life and impose a rule which, although it has anarchic overtones,
is essentially socialist in nature. The destruction of capitalism and imposition
of socialist doctrine is exemplified by the confiscation and melting down of
silverware, jewelry, and other precious items to make tools, the equal division of
clothing among all the people, and the fact that every woman, regardless of background, is sent to do manual labor in the hills.” —Leon F. Lyday, preface

I have long been haunted by the glee expressed by those who have loved this nightmarish story, and longed for its realization as the emotional expression and the wish-fulfillment among many “educated” Mexican- and South American literati, a wish for the destruction of the USA, The play’s influence on the ruling elite and generations of students especially in Mexico City cannot be underestimated. Mexico’s bitterness over the loss of her northern boundary states is a living poison, bubbling for decades in the so-called educated elites, and now they are “living the dream.” And for us it is a true nightmare. And make no mistake: it is entirely a deliberate act by Mexico to facilitate our destruction.

Tom M.
Tom M.
Thursday, July 10, AD 2014 7:33pm

Friedman: You can have a welfare state or open borders, but not both.

What a dumb statement by Milton ‘turn on the printing press’ Friedman. El Salvador/Honduras/Guatemala have some of the lowest taxes and government spending in the world. In no way could any of them be described as a welfare state. Doesn’t seem to have stopped the mass poverty that makes parents send their kids to the much more welfare statish United States. Do people like Friedman actually check statistics before they write such drivel?

Penguins Fan
Penguins Fan
Thursday, July 10, AD 2014 7:50pm

I value Milton Friedman’s words more than yours, Tom D.

Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras have been wretchedly poor nations since they broke away from Mexico two centuries ago.

Notice that Mexico never bemoans the loss of her southern territories that became the Central American nations.

Tom M.
Tom M.
Thursday, July 10, AD 2014 8:06pm

Thanks for the video link Donald. While he makes a good case for restricting immigration when you have a welfare state, I don’t think he makes a case at all for open borders without a welfare state. Like I wrote before, there is no welfare state in Central America and they have some of the lowest taxes and government spending in the world. Does anyone think the solution to their problems is open borders?

Anzlyne
Anzlyne
Thursday, July 10, AD 2014 8:11pm

Steve Phoenix that is horrible.
Our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth. We do need to exalt the Lord, repent abortion, seek HIs forgiveness and guidance.
ISAIAH 56:1 Thus says the Lord: Observe what is right, do what is just, for my salvation is about to come, my justice about to be revealed. 2 Happy is the one who does this, whoever holds fast to it: Keeping the sabbath without profaning it, keeping ones hand from doing evil.

TomD
TomD
Thursday, July 10, AD 2014 8:35pm

Penguins Fan, I think you meant to reply to Tom M, not me. True?

slainte
slainte
Friday, July 11, AD 2014 12:04am

Mexicans who self describe as La Raza “covet” the improvements in their former American territories (ie, California) which generate so much wealth for so many. What they don’t acknowledge or appreciate is that modern day California didn’t just happen; it is the fruit of the Protestant work ethic and an American exceptionalism whose genius is not easily replicated. California’s vineyards, movie industry, high tech computer industry, naval bases, and agricultural output are the products of hard work and scientific innovation.
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La Raza members may discover that when and if they reclaim California, they will not be able to sustain it. Mexico has never proven itself capable of the sort of creativity, innovation, or sophistication necessary to birth and grow wealth generating businesses or a flourishing and well functioning state.
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Hence, La Raza’s infiltration of California may prove the adage that capturing and killing the goose that laid the golden eggs merely causes the production of the golden eggs to summarily end; a pyrrhic victory indeed.

Michael Paterson-Seymour
Michael Paterson-Seymour
Friday, July 11, AD 2014 4:20am

Some of these posts remind me of Sidonius Appolinaris predicting the ruin of Gaul by the Franks, the Burgundians and the Goths, or St Gildas, so shocked by the incursions of the Angles, Saxons and Jutes that he quit Britain for the Celtic enclave of Brittany. To Romans, or to Gauls and Britons Romanised, it must have seemed the end of civilisation as they knew it.

What would Europe (or the United States) be today, without the Volkswanderung of the Germanic peoples? The great story of the West begins with the anointing of Clovis and the coronation of Charlemagne. All that had been effete and decadent was swept away by that human deluge and all that was great in the Roman order not only survives, but flourishes. Their jurists are our lawgivers and rule the descendants of the barbarian conquerors from their graves.

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Friday, July 11, AD 2014 7:30am

Right, Mac.

They don’t call them the Dark Ages for nothing.

Maybe them German peoples weren’t wandering, they were being pushed by more savage peoples from the east.

The progressive agenda will result in a tragic fiasco.

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Friday, July 11, AD 2014 7:42am

I’d be rooting for Chile in Sunday’s soccer game.

Steve Phoenix- Thanks!

Tom D, I’m sorry you feel that way.

I am not an academic or an economist. I think (klaxons!) Dr. Friedman was a really bright guy: one of the miniscule number of academics with an iota of an appreciation for reality.

From 3/2/2010: WSJ: “How Milton Friedman Saved Chile” Bret Stephens synopsis –

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In 1973, the year the proto-Chavista government of Salvador Allende was overthrown by Gen. Augusto Pinochet, Chile was an economic shambles. Inflation topped out at an annual rate of 1000%, foreign-currency reserves were totally depleted, and per capita GDP was roughly that of Peru and well below Argentina’s.
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Chile had intellectual capital, thanks to an exchange program between its Catholic University and the economics department of the University of Chicago, then Friedman’s academic home. Even before the 1973 coup, several of Chile’s “Chicago Boys” had drafted a set of policy proposals which amounted to an off-the-shelf recipe for economic liberalization: sharp reductions to government spending and the money supply; privatization of state-owned companies; the elimination of obstacles to free enterprise and foreign investment, and so on.
As for Chile, Pinochet appointed a succession of Chicago Boys to senior economic posts. By 1990, the year he ceded power, per capita GDP had risen by 40% (in 2005 dollars) even as Peru and Argentina stagnated. Pinochet’s democratic successors—all of them nominally left-of-center—only deepened the liberalization drive. Result: Chileans have become South America’s richest people. They have the continent’s lowest level of corruption, the lowest infant-mortality rate, and the lowest number of people living below the poverty line.
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Chile also has some of the world’s strictest building codes. That makes sense for a country that straddles two massive tectonic plates. But having codes is one thing, enforcing them is another. The quality and consistency of enforcement is typically correlated to the wealth of nations. The poorer the country, the likelier people are to scrimp on rebar, or use poor quality concrete, or lie about compliance. In the Sichuan earthquake of 2008, thousands of children were buried under schools also built according to code.

Michael Paterson-Seymour
Michael Paterson-Seymour
Friday, July 11, AD 2014 8:24am

TomD wrote, “Maybe them German peoples weren’t wandering, they were being pushed by more savage peoples from the east”

Of course. There was a steady settlement of the lands west of the long, porous Danube frontier by tribes under pressure from fiercer rivals to the east, notably the Huns.

Then again, there were large contingents of barbarians, serving as auxiliaries in the Roman army, under their own chieftains (Clovis was the third generation of such commanders) and willing to support any victorious or mutinous general who offered to reward them.

Finally, there was a large servile class, of the same races, ready enough to throw in their lot with any adventurer who might ameliorate their condition.

There were no “barbarian invasions.” Clovis commanded a force of 5,000 men and with these he conquered a population of, perhaps, 2,000,000 Gauls? Really? The fighting, such as the battle of Vouillé (where Clovis had Byzantine allies), were between rival generals of auxiliaries. The real barbarian invasions, Mongol, Norseman, Arab, were all repulsed.

Chesterton’s gloomy picture is a caricature. My parish church in Paris (I have a little studio apartment off the Bd Raspail, near the Luxembourg Gardens) was build by Childebert, King of the Neustrian Franks, the son of Clovis and St Clotilde. He built it to house the holiest of his relics, the stole of Saint Vincent of Saragossa. It was consecrated in 558, in the middle of the “Dark Ages.” It contains the tombs of other notable benefactors of the church and abbey, all patrons of religion and learning: Chlothar II, King of all the Franks, who died in 629 and the assassinated Childeric II, together with his wife Bilichild and their five year old son, Dagobert, who died with him in Livry forest in 675. The abbey school was the nucleus of the University of Paris.

Art Deco
Friday, July 11, AD 2014 9:43am

Mexico has never proven itself capable of the sort of creativity, innovation, or sophistication necessary to birth and grow wealth generating businesses or a flourishing and well functioning state. –

Deducting natural resource rents and applying a fudge factor to correct for Mexico’s abnormally skewed income distribution, standards of living in Mexico are similar to those of the United States about 90 years ago, which is near to the global mean of our time. Life in the 1920s was in places hardscrabble in ways we can scarcely imagine anymore, but there was quite a bit of mass affluence as well. Mexican crime rates are wretched. However, Chicago was not exactly tranquil ca. 1922 (and a number of Southern cities were in worse shape than Chicago).

As for the Mexican political order, there has been complete legal-formal continuity since 1920. There was a sanguinary civil war during the period running from 1913 to 1920, but the country has not had a military coup since 1913, nor since 1915 any head of state drawn from the institutional military, nor since 1946 any head of state with a history as a partisan officer. The political machine which ran the country for 80 years lost its monopoly in stages over the period running from 1983 to 2000.

A succession of governments over the last three decades has liquidated much of the country’s portfolio of state enterprises and common property. What remains if I understand correctly are PEMEX, some public utilities, and ejido lands. There’s also been considerable deregulation as well. The country suffered a sharp economic contraction in 2008 and 2009, but not a disaster of abnormal dimensions.

Mary De Voe
Friday, July 11, AD 2014 9:55am

Bush said America could be a “lawful society”. A “lawful society” of lawbreaking illegal aliens? How is that possible? The influx of minor children who must be supported until they are emancipated is created by foreigners who know full well that they are violating our borders and our laws. Weren’t American citizens targeted in recent history and accused of “stealing” Guatemalan children and smuggling them out of Guatemala? Now, all of a sudden it is OK?
Government does not get to dictate the virtue of charity for the citizens.

Anzlyne
Anzlyne
Friday, July 11, AD 2014 10:16am

Michael you and I have apparently read different accounts of history.

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Friday, July 11, AD 2014 10:30am

The Irish saved civilization.

slainte
slainte
Friday, July 11, AD 2014 11:34am

Art Deco,

I have visited Mexico approximately 5 times; once to Tia Juana on the west coast and four times to Tulum on the east coast (the Yucatán Peninsula).
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What I observed in Tia Juana in 2000 was an incalculable level of poverty that was beyond anything I had ever witnessed. People were living in homes that appeared to be made of cardboard boxes and children begged for food, money, or anything of value. I could not reconcile what I witnessed in Tia Juana with the world I had just left behind in San Diego where the poorest resident appeared almost rich by comparison. The persons who were suffering so profoundly in Tia Juana appeared to be native Indians.
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On the east coast, Tulum was beautiful with architectural remnants of a great and mighty Mayan (pagan) civilization. The local residents of this area were also primarily Indian, and very poor, making a pittance from work in and about the tourist areas of nearby Cancun supporting hotels which catered to tourists. All of the local people with whom I came in contact were gracious, kind, and appeared to be Catholic. They were, however, dependent for their well being on a political elite who controlled the economy by keeping native Indians living on subsistence level stipends. It was patently obvious that there was an existing class structure that excluded native Indians from its elite brotherhood and barred them from the bounties of the land just because they were Indians.
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Also very obvious was a strong military police presence in Tulum with approximately four or six uniformed police riding in the back of pick-up trucks with exposed rifles or machine guns (I am no gun expert) held aloft as they drove through the villages.
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I will defer to you on what occurs in places such as Mexico City but what I saw on the coasts was scary and I feel great compassion for the native Indians who are treated as second class citizens in their native land by corrupt overlords. The fact that so many American businesses, seeking cheap labor, would set up shop in this milieu is disturbing.
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As to my observations regarding those who comprise the liberal nationalist group “La Raza”…I found comments by “Victor Davis Hanson and The Conservative Forum” to be informative. See, minutes 1:16 and forward at http://youtu.be/E1NnxsOMG70

slainte
slainte
Friday, July 11, AD 2014 12:02pm

T. Shaw writes, “The Irish saved civilization.”
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Probably not…but we (their descendants) like to think so. : )

Art Deco
Friday, July 11, AD 2014 1:01pm

The Mexican military is contextually small. That’s bog standard for Latin America. They also have malintegrated labor markets and abnormally skewed income distribution. That’s also quite unremarkable for Latin America. You’re going to see deep pits of poverty there you will not in other countries of similar levels of mean affluence (the metrics I refer to above were comparisons of the middle 80% to correct for that skew). Also, the commodity mix available to people of similar real income levels changes drastically over time.

Latin American crime rates are exceptional. You do not see anything like it anywhere outside of southern Africa, and, again, the social stratification is weird and distorted in a way you find elsewhere only in quondam pigmentocracies like South Africa.

For the most part, though, Mexico is about average for the human race. Those places on the globe more affluent would be the occidental core (Western Europe, North America, and the Antipodes), Asian tigers, some post-Communist countries in Eastern Europe, and (if you do not bracket out natural resource rents) a mess of oil prinicipalities. There is a list of about 18 others whose income levels exceed Mexico, but most of these are ministates (like Malta) or have income levels of which Mexico is within striking distance (like Argentina).

slainte
slainte
Friday, July 11, AD 2014 2:06pm

What’s going on our border is not a moral crisis, it is a political one. The alignment of borders of different countries opening and closing at will, of security and police forces standing down to permit entry and transgress through sovereign territories, is not orchestrated by poor workers.
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It is a coordinated crisis by political and no doubt economic leadership within America, Mexico, and various Central American countries to tear down walls/borders and flood the United States with peoples from all over the Americas. .
It is the fulfillment of a political promise made to the international community by President Obama’s in his Berlin address of 2008.

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Friday, July 11, AD 2014 3:16pm

The evil, unjust United States are being destroyed. It is not accidental.

End welfare/free hospitalization for invaders. Secure the border without firing a shot.

cthemfly25
cthemfly25
Friday, July 11, AD 2014 3:49pm

“It is a coordinated crisis by political and no doubt economic leadership within America, Mexico, and various Central American countries to tear down walls/borders and flood the United States with peoples from all over the Americas. . It is the fulfillment of a political promise made to the international community by President Obama’s in his Berlin address of 2008.”

Slainte–so true. Recall how Clinton and Obama in 2009 supported a leftist despot who, through Honduran law and its constitution, had to be forcibly removed from office as he sought complete Chavez like power in his country. More recently the US did nothing as the drug cartels aided and abetted a hate filled Marxist in the El Salvador elections. The US withdrew support under Obama for any intermediary broker let alone opposition in Venezuela and has withdrawn aid and assistance as the Central American countries sought to fight the criminal overlords seeking to control their countries. We now have Chavez like regimes spreading throughout Central and South America all with the same ideology possessed by our own President. All this is done with the intention of destroying this country, destroying the civic and church and political institutions which promote liberty, and remaking America.

slainte
slainte
Friday, July 11, AD 2014 5:36pm

Lord Paddy Ashdown comments on “the Global Power Shift” as an evolution from a Lateral model of government (sovereign states) to a Vertical model of government (one world government) with an accompanying system of laws to regulate “global governance”. In this vertical model, traditional alliances between nation states give way to identifying new “common interests” which drive the formation of new alliances to meet those interests.
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See, Lord Ashdown at http://youtu.be/zuAj2F54bdo
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Noticeably absent from Lord Ashdown’s commentary is a failure to address the concerns of Lord Acton (10 January 1834 – 19 June 1902), who opined, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely…”
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Where in the world does one go to protest abuses which arise from a global world government and its absolute leadership?

TomD
TomD
Friday, July 11, AD 2014 7:26pm

Michael Paterson-Seymour, I didn’t write “Maybe them German peoples weren’t wandering, they were being pushed by more savage peoples from the east”, T.Shaw did.

T.Shaw, I didn’t write anything against Milton Friedman, Tom M did

Michael Paterson-Seymour
Michael Paterson-Seymour
Saturday, July 12, AD 2014 2:54am

Art Deco
You could have included in your summary that, in 1982, the Mexican economy effectively went into bankruptcy and had to be bailed out by the IMF, and international banks, with the support of the US government.
In 1979, the oil price had risen from $2 to $3 a barrel to $40 a barrel, following the fall of the Shah of Iran. In a fit of hubris, Mexico went on a huge spending spree, borrowing enormous sums of money, backed by the assumption that the price of oil would remain in the $30-40 range until the end of the 20th century without interruption. In the event, in 1982, the price of oil fell to around $10.

Michael Paterson-Seymour
Michael Paterson-Seymour
Saturday, July 12, AD 2014 2:57am

TomD – Sorry, a slip of the pen.

slainte
slainte
Wednesday, July 16, AD 2014 12:22am

Spero News reports that:
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“…Obama Seeks To ‘Destabilize’ the United States….A ‘Dear Colleague’ letter sent by Senator Sessions to all 535 members of both houses…accuses President Obama of a ‘breathtaking’ usurpation of power. Obama ‘threatens foundation of our constitutional republic’
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Sessions is further quoted as saying in his Dear Colleague letter that:

“….The action the President is reportedly contemplating would be a nullification of the Immigration and National Act by the Executive Branch of government. Indeed, it would be an executive nullification of our borders as an enforceable national boundary. By declaring whole classes of illegal immigrants beyond the reach of the law, it would remove the moral authority needed to enforce any immigration law, creating the very open-borders policy explicitly rejected by Congress and the people. And it would guarantee that the current illegal immigration disaster would only further worsen and destabilize….”
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Source: http://www.speroforum.com/a/SWNRKOIWOH49/75034-Obama-seeks-to-destabilize-the-United-States-says-Republican-senator#.U8YJzJRdWSo
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Ugh….sort of makes you want to have a drink…anyone for a Margarita?

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