Brutally Honest Rant - 11/14/07

Brutally Honest Audio Rant: Illegalities
Audio Transcripts
11/14/07

[Start Program]

(Computer – Introduction)
(Music intro – “American Idiot Remix” – by Green Day and David Matthews 2)

Good evening and welcome to this week’s Brutally Honest Rant. I’m David Matthews 2, writer of the weekly online column Brutally Honest.

Well my friends I’ve been skirting around this issue for a while now, and I guess that it’s time once again for me to speak up about it.

I’m talking about immigration.

We have a SERIOUS problem with immigration, and it is one that we HAVE to deal with immediately and get it out of the way before we can deal with any other aspect of it.

Now as a libertarian, I am in principle…. IN PRINCIPLE… supportive of the idea that there really should be no borders and that people should come and go as they choose. That goes along with the whole bit about a “free society”. I agree to that idea IN PRINCIPLE.

Unfortunately that’s not something that we can apply IN PRACTICE at this time. We’ve got security on our minds right now and that’s not going to go away anytime soon.

Let’s put it this way… if the time should ever come again when I can simply go from my home to the airport and go to the boarding gate WITHOUT having to go through a metal detector, WITHOUT having to be subject to strip-searches, WITHOUT having my personal belongings searched by kleptomaniacs, WITHOUT having to give up my shoes for bomb detection, and WITHOUT possibly being detained while my name goes through some never-before-seen list of 750,000 people who may or may not be a threat to this country… AT THAT POINT, we can then talk about open borders and letting people come in-and-out of this country as they wish. You make THAT happen, THEN we can talk about open borders.

But AS LONG AS we have to deal with TSA airport screeners and all of the other hassles surrounding air travel, then we also have to put some restrictions on the other ways that people come into this country. It sucks, but we have to deal with it.

Now there are three groups of people in this country. There are those who are natural-born Americans. They were BORN either in this country or on US soil (i.e. an American embassy). By definition and by the 14^th Amendment to the US Constitution, they are automatically LEGAL citizens.

There are also those who came here LEGALLY. People who followed whatever rules and procedures our government set up to come here LEGALLY and they stay here LEGALLY.

And then there are those who DID NOT follow the rules. The ones that snuck across the border, or who were smuggled in, or came here legally at first and are now here beyond the time they were supposed to be here for.

These are the people that are breaking the law. They came here ILLEGALLY!

It doesn’t matter who they are, or what nationality they are, or from what country they came from… they could be Ukrainian Muslims, they could be Indian Hindus, they could be Chinese Buddhists, they could be El Salvadoran Catholics… if they were not native-born citizens and they didn’t follow the rules to come here legally, then they are here ILLEGALLY! There is no other way to say it!

And THAT is where we have a problem… because there are plenty of people who refuse to ACKNOWLEDGE that there are people who are here ILLEGALLY! They want to HIDE it. They want to blur the line between LEGAL and ILLEGAL.

They REFUSE to call people who are here illegally for what they are! They want to call them anything BUT ILLEGAL!

They want to call them “undocumented”. Hey, when I leave my home to get the mail and I forget to bring my driver’s license with me, then I’m “undocumented”, but that doesn’t mean that I’m ILLEGAL! Some Canucklehead from Montreal who walks across the border into New York without going through the proper channels and without getting a green card or carrying any kind of identification that says they can be here legally is ILLEGAL. That means they are breaking the law!

Note I said “Canucklehad from Montreal”. Race, ethnicity, and religion means absolutely SQUAT in this discussion. A French-Canadian can be just as much of an ILLEGAL immigrant as someone from Haiti, Mexico, or China!

But, of course, it’s still another way that people – especially liberals – are able to blur the lines, and that needs to END!

You see… what happens is that as soon as those lines between legal and illegal immigration are blurred, the argument then becomes one of civil rights. CERTAIN immigrants aren’t getting the full rights and benefits of being in this country! WHICH immigrants? Well that doesn’t matter now, does it? The fact is that they AREN’T… so what are YOU going to do about this?

Let’s get brutally honest here… THIS is the argument being presented to the American people in the media! This is the spin and the con game being served up to us through protest rallies and marches. It’s not about LEGALITY, it’s about CIVIL RIGHTS! It doesn’t matter HOW they got here, they just want everything that everyone else has! That’s the spin!

So now we have New York Governor Eliot Spitzer demanding that the state issue New York driver’s licenses to people who are here ILLEGALLY! Never mind that a state-issued driver’s license is a legal form of identification recognized in every state in the country! NEVER MIND that a state-issued driver’s license is considered proof that you are here LEGALLY and that you can use it to vote in elections. NEVER MIND that the US Government has been requiring a uniform standard for all drivers licenses as part of their effort to create a NATIONAL ID system. NEVER MIND any of that… because Governor Spitzer sees this as a civil rights issue! CERTAIN immigrants aren’t able to buy cars or take out loans or lease apartments. WHICH immigrants? It doesn’t matter according to Governor Spitzer.

And it’s downright hypocritical when you think about it. When he was that state’s Attorney General, it was hard to find a business that he didn’t want to prosecute! He was the red menace of Wall Street and he was PROUD OF IT! And each and every time that he would get in front of the cameras and announce a new wave of prosecutions at yet another business establishment, he would say “it’s not personal. I’m just doing my job! THE LAW says that these actions are wrong, so I’m going after them because they are BREAKING THE LAW!”

But now that he’s the GOVERNOR of the state, he’s saying “TO HELL WITH THE LAW! I’m going to make up my own law, and it’s going to override the federal law.” And he’s not even going through the proper channels to do it! He didn’t even think about taking this through the state legislature. He’s doing this all through executive order. Well gee… I wonder which government official inspired him to come up with THAT idea!

Let me break this down to you so that even a C-average Yale graduate from Texas can understand it… if you cannot differentiate between those who are here LEGALLY and those who are here ILLEGALLY, then you really have NO BUSINESS WHATSOEVER in this discussion!

YES, I understand the realities of this issue. YES, I understand the sheer numbers that we are talking about! YES, I know that we need more than just a legislative quick fix. AND YES, I can understand the business aspect of this issue and how this is essentially a form of legalized slavery. But all of that STILL DOES NOT ignore the fact that illegal immigrants are still here in violation of the LAW!

The law as it stands right now sucks, and it’s dysfunctional. And, in those situations, you have one of two courses of action. The first is to do what Spitzer and countless others are already doing… which is to IGNORE the law and reduce it to the point to where the argument can be made that ALL laws are ultimately meaningless and worthless… including the laws people really WANT in place!

OR… or… you can do something sort of radical… and you can use the momentum and the popular support to actually CHANGE THAT LAW! Yes, you can actually CHANGE a law to make it work! These things are not written in stone by some metaphysical being and then lovingly carried down from a mountaintop by some ancient fossil with really bad grooming habits. No, they’re actually written and enacted by very corrupt human beings whose lust for power and money are only seconded by their overwhelming survival instinct when either of those things are threatened.

In other words, if you go to those politicians and you make it quite clear to them that you have X-million of actual voters behind you who will either preserve or destroy their political careers based on fixing that flawed immigration system, then you will be honestly surprised how fast that law will get fixed!

And likewise, New York voters, if you REALLY object to Governor Spitzer’s asinine plan to give driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants, then you need to start including this word in your public vocabulary: RECALL! Don’t wait until 2010 to get rid of him. Use your ultimate power as voters and RECALL him from office! If it can happen in California, then it can happen in New York if the voters are that pissed off enough.

Now the GOOD news is that as of tonight’s rant, Governor Spitzer has GIVEN UP on his little plan. This commentator is glad to hear that the governor has FINALLY recognized the level of opposition to his grand scheme… but folks, don’t even THINK of calling that kind of an idea a “reform program” like the media is trying to do right now. REAL reform fixes things! Governor Spitzer wasn’t trying to FIX anything… although it could have quite possibly fixed a few elections if he was able to get away with it.

The whole concept of living under the rule of law only works if the law is actually RESPECTED and enforced, and simply saying that the law sucks and ignoring it does not fix the problem. All it does is that it makes the overall problem worse.

(Computer – some timely stuff, but you never listen to it anyway… seriously, I sometimes wonder why I even bother!)
(Fade Music In – “Mythodea” by Vangelis)

One of the things that politicians love to do is to PRETEND to fix problems. They love to come up with pretend reform programs that don’t really work but give the ILLUSION of doing something. They love fabricating new laws and stacking them ON TOP of the old laws instead of reforming old ones and trying to make them work, or simply trying to get rid of them altogether.

And of course it’s all really just a huge CON GAME! They really don’t want to EVER fix a problem, because that means that they can’t use it the next time around. They deal with the problem and it actually gets fixed, then the problem goes away. Then they have to come up with a new cause to pretend to champion.

Dealing with illegal immigration is just another con for these politicians. It’s just how much they can spin it and how murky can they make the whole matter, and the only way that’s EVER going to change is if WE force their hands.

And if you think that it can’t happen, I want you to remember what happened to Governor Spitzer’s so-called “unstoppable idea”. He thought he could get away with it because he was the governor of New York. He was proven to be DEAD WRONG!

(Pause)

Brutally Honest is a Get Brutal production; all opinions expressed are those of the commentator, and may or may not be shared by the online provider. This is David Matthews 2 saying good night, and I’ll speak with you soon!

(Fade out)
(Computer – Ending/“End of Recording”)

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