I am very tired tonight, but I can’t sleep. I haven’t written anything new for this blog for nearly a month, and that’s way too long. So here are some brief thoughts about three things which have gotten my attention in recent weeks.
I read recently that the Bush administration plans to allow 7,000 Iraqis to become permanent residents of the United States, because they have helped Americans in Iraq, and it’s too dangerous for them to stay in their homeland. That story is on the back pages of the newspapers now, but it’s going to get a lot more attention, because my prediction is that these 7,000 are just the beginning. Though I supported it, I remember that allowing people from southeast Asia to come to the U.S. was initially very controversial in the 1970s. With all of the uproar over illegal immigration, Americans may just yawn about this, but I suspect there will be some opposition, the usual ineffective opposition which doesn’t prevent the powers that be from doing what they have decided to do.
Congratulations to Iraqis who have helped Americans, but removing the best people from the insane Middle East is not my recipe for an improved world, nor am I delighted to take on another huge community of Moslems, some of whom may have questionable motives. I don’t know how well things are going on the ground in Iraq, but it’s not a good sign when we’re accepting refugees before we have even withdrawn any troops.
Can there be any possible justification for a war on terrorists in the Middle East while our borders remain wide open to terrorists and drug smugglers? Does anyone believe a government which passes immigration legislation and then refuses to enforce it would enforce the next bill either? There is a profound difference between being a nation of legal immigrants who immigrate legally, retain some of their culture, but transfer their loyalty to the United States, and a nation filled with illegal immigrants, many of whom have no desire to become part of American society. We have MS-13 gangs in at least 235 American cities, importing drugs and violent crimes. We have approximately 10 million Social Security numbers which are being fraudulently used, including many by illegals, and our elected officials lay awake at night, trying to come up with ways to reward this behavior. Our immigration system is broken, but it wasn’t broken by Americans. Apparently Americans won’t be allowed to fix it either.
Here’s another thought related to the subject of immigration. Back in 1971, John Lennon recorded a song called “Imagine”, in which he imagined the world would be a better place without God, country and private property. Ironically, the song helped him continue to amass a personal fortune, which he never was willing to part with, but I’ll ignore that for now. The song “Imagine” is still what animates the left today. Hillary Clinton recently condemned President Bush’s “ownership society”, prefering instead a society where all wealth is redistributed by the government.
Even so, John Lennon could not have imagined how his legacy continues to carry the left forward. Recently, the Fox News Network aired a discussion between Bill O’reilly and Jeraldo Rivera about illegal immigration. O’reilly asked Rivera, “Shouldn’t we deport criminal illegal aliens?” Rivera responded, “John Lennon was a criminal illegal alien.”
The comparison is a very poor one, because John Lennon did not sneak into the country. He was never in the United States illegally, and he applied for legal permanent residence. Certainly he was not brought into the country under harsh conditions by British coyotes who had dreams of reconquista for the red coats and the queen. He was not smuggled into the country to do jobs Americans won’t do, for a minimum wage which he could send back to England. The Nixon administration tried to have Lennon deported because of a prior conviction for marijuana possession, and because John Lennon’s song “Cold Turkey” was about his efforts to quit using heroin. President Nixon figured that if Lennon hadn’t obeyed our laws before he came here, he probably wouldn’t obey them if
we allowed him to become a permanent resident. Ironically, if Richard Nixon had gotten his way, John Lennon might still be alive today.
According to Jeraldo Rivera, we shouldn’t deport illegal immigrants because we didn’t deport John Lennon. We shouldn’t deport them, even if they commit murders, rapes, robberies, and they molest children, things John Lennon never did. We should surrender our national sovereignty, because John Lennon smoked a few joints. In the depths of reefer madness, John Lennon couldn’t have imagined that he was taking a giant step toward re-Mexicanizing the United States.
I mention that so I can make the obvious point that Jeraldo Rivera’s ethnic loyalty is much deeper than any loyalty he feels toward the United States. There’s no other reason he would make such a ridiculous argument. Furthermore, the Fox News Channel is so dedicated to being fair and balanced that they find it necessary to give a microphone to both Americans and American traitors. I don’t find it necessary, or even desirable, for the air waves to belong exclusively to flag-waving superpatriots. But how can any network justify keeping someone on the air who lacks even a basic concern about the safety of our citizens? Jeraldo Rivera is just as empty as the vault of Al Capone’s he tried to open years ago, and I have changed channels every time I’ve seen him on TV for many years.
Now, onto my second subject. It has often been observed that people who oppose abortion often favor capital punishment. More importantly, most who favor abortion oppose capital punishment. Right now there is a big move on the left to do away with capital punishment on the grounds that even lethal injections are cruel and unusual, or they may be poorly administered, causing inappropriate suffering to convicted murderers, rapists, kidnappers, or anyone whose lawlessness the A.C.L.U. is fond of. Ironically, these same people are horrified that some want to put an end to the continuing barbarism of injecting poison into the hearts of fully developed babies or puncturing their skulls so their brains can be sucked out. According to the left, this is the fundamental constitutional right of women, women are unhealthy if they can’t do this, and this practice can’t possibly be cruel, unusual or painful to those who haven’t developed language skills yet.
Cat Stevens once said, “Come and join the left. It’s not so far from you.” But he lied when he said it. The left is very, very far from me. I hate what they stand for, and I love what they can’t stand for.
Finally, a word of congratulations to conservative talk show host Michael Gallagher. Mike Gallagher has probably the smallest of all radio empires among the Salem Broadcasting crowd, so much so that he’s on the air here locally between midnight and 4 a.m. I don’t even listen to him very often when I can’t sleep. But he did something awesome last week, and he wrote a column about it dated June 8, which appears on the townhall.com web site. What he did, or actually didn’t do, is that he refused to interview a British author named Christopher Hitchens. Hitchens has written a bestselling book called “God is not Great”. Mike Gallagher has correctly figured out that it is Christopher Hitchens who is not great.
Among other things, Hitchens claims to be an atheist, and he writes that the Bible, and the Old Testament in particular, is a wicked document. He has gotten a lot of publicity for his book, even from conservatives like Hugh Hewitt, who disagrees with him, but likes him because he supports the war on terror. Supporting the war on terror is supposed to make everything else excusable. I read part of a transcript of a so-called debate with Mr. Hitchens on Hugh Hewitt’s show, but I didn’t read it all, because I felt very frustrated that his opponent didn’t challenge the obvious errors in the “God is not Great” book.
Mr. Hitchens argues that the Bible is wicked because it contains violence, an odd concern from someone who supports bombing everything in the Middle East, probably including Israel. The argument is that the God of the Bible cannot be great because he himself sometimes destroys people in both the Old and New Testaments. According to Hitchens, the God of the Bible would be wicked, if he existed.
The vast majority of the violence in the Bible is instigated by men, not by God. As for divine violence, I can only say that I wish there were more of it. This generation desperately needs one good Ananias and Saphira moment, a moment when God’s wrath is clearly and unmistakably shown to mankind. Of course, I don’t want to be the victim, and I don’t wish that sort of victimhood on anyone in particular. However, I do ask myself from time to time why Hugh Hefner has been allowed to live into his 80s. Wouldn’t society have benefited if God had wiped out Hefner and Larry Flint long ago in a dramatic display of divine judgment? We Americans are suffering from a lack of clearly divine retribution, not too much of it. The so-called wicked God of the Bible is more merciful than any of us, and we ought to thank him for it.
By the way, I read recently that by the end of the year the most popular name for baby boys in Great Britain will be one of the 14 variations on the name Mohammed. Christian England, who sent us the pilgrims and populated the 13 colonies with devout Protestants and Catholics is gradually becoming a Moslem nation. We can’t be smug about it, because we may be next. The important point is that secular societies usually don’t survive very long. What really happens over time is that nations change their gods. Sometimes they adopt the God of the Bible, and sometimes they adopt other gods. If Christopher Hitchens thinks the God of the Bible is cruel and capricious, he’ll be far more alarmed by Allah. Allah is the god of beheaders and throat cutters.
Aside from personal issues which I can’t discuss here, those are some of the issues which keep me awake at night.
