Respecting the Law ... but not my intelligence

I am perhaps more critical of writing which starts by pissing me off.

America, we have a problem. Millions upon millions of people want to move here. Permanently. Even a country as prosperous as ours cannot possibly absorb so much humanity.
1st sentence of the NRO article Respecting the Law

bullshit.

So what happens now? The bullshit detector is on.

next sentence:

As problems go, however, this is not a bad one to have. For the day that “huddled masses yearning to breathe free” no longer besiege America is the day we will have to admit that America has lost its “magic formula.”

well, maybe an intelligent neo-nationalist

8th paragraph, following rah-rah-ain't-we-wonderful self-aggrandizement of the United States of America:

Respect for the rule of law seems natural to most Americans, what America does he live in? and can I get a visa? but it is largely an anomaly in the history of other nations. really? Would this be the 'other nations' whose legal system we adopted, like England? Or China, the oldest country in the world, which has had a rule of law for centuries? Or maybe he really means a 'democracy', which really has little to do with a rule of law? Nowhere is this more evident than in Latin America. South and Central America have seen scores of military dictatorships and autocracies, despite endorsing democracy and democratic institutions, since freeing themselves from the shackles of Spanish colonialism. Because we keep funding the groups which remove the democratically elected people we don't like. ... Far too many of the region’s leaders have learned the fine art of manipulating electoral politics FROM US in order to install themselves as autocrats or dictators with our money and political backing.

The inconsistent adherence to the rule of law has made it difficult for democratic institutions to flourish in Latin America. there? what about here? Moreover, repeated flouting of the law by political and military leaders undermines respect for the law among the general public. only if you're a progressive This is evidenced in everyday life: Consider the streets of many Latin American countries, where simple traffic laws are violated almost universally, and with near-total impunity. Jesus, Mary and Joseph! Has this man seen the streets of America? oh, right ... we've already established he doesn't live in the same America I do. Like Michigan, which treats stop signs as general guidance, and Minnesota where running red lights is a local sport on par with jay-walking in Michigan.


It’s no surprise, then, that some immigrants from Latin America evince a residual disrespect for the rule of law in this country. trans: I come from a country without traffic enforcement, therefore I will become a felon here, rape your daughters, steal your dogs, and suck on the teat of American social security.

It explains why so many ______ remain convinced that they have done nothing wrong by _________. Their desire to work hard and provide for their families is, for them, enough to justify their actions — the rule of law is an extraneous concept.

Now, class, let's fill in the blanks above. Is the correct answer:

American politicians // fucking the poor
American politicians // fucking our children's future
American politicians // waging unfunded wars abroad
unemployed illegal aliens // being hired by American companies
undocumented workers // entering our country illegally

If you answered a, b, c, or d - your head is sufficiently far enough out of your ass to smell shit when it's there.
If you answered e, you read Mr. Ortega's article.

Why is it that I think they assigned this piece of propaganda bullshit to a person with an Hispanic family name?

So, in summary:
Latinos have no traffic control and therefore are inherently incapable of obeying any law and therefore are unworthy to enter the hallowed borders of a country which worships the rule of law.

by the way ...

I filed suit yesterday in small claims court against someone in this Rule of Law Worshiping Society who rear-ended me, stove in my back hatch, and has no insurance while driving a vehicle belonging to someone else with no insurance, who then drove off before the cops came, after being monumentally stupid enough to stop and talk to me. If she'd just driven off, no one would ever have been able to prosecute her, since it wasn't her car.
She must have been an illegal immigrant.

Our Forefathers

You don't need to be a member of any specific political party to realize that our government is and has been for some time spending money just they way that the voters have been letting them.

It is our duty as Citizens to tell our representative what we want.

As Citizens, it is our civic duty to vote them out of office if they don't do it!

Our civic duty demands we risk of voting for what we want, rather than for a label. Too many people vote for a party rather than the candidate.

The Two Party system has the average person over a barrel. We fear voting for something else, which results in our representatives not bothering to vote Our Way. They don't need to! They realize that, once in office, they need never fear their own party ousting them.

If you’re dissatisfied with the current representation, find someone else to put on the ballot. Protesting in the streets is only as effective as its 30-sec sound bite before the sports & weather. Hit the streets and work for it.

Your voice only truly works at the ballot box. This is the ultimate place where you have the power to negate all of the obscene electioneering money.

It is our Civic Duty to be include the rest of America in our political decisions. Ourselves and our children. On Independence Day, we reverently read: “... Our forefathers brought forth onto this continent ...”

Each political decision should consider: "What kind of forefathers will this make us?"

we owe them ... what??

The kind of politics that teaches us all we owe to those who came before us and those who will come after. That each of us has drunk from wells we did not dig; that each of us has been warmed by fires we did not build.
-- Mark Shields

The people running this country (the ones with political power every day, as opposed to you & me, who only get it on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November of even numbered years) fail to get the part about "we owe to ... those who come after [us]."

I am sick & tired of hearing about how we owe all this to those who came before us, intoned in quiet voices of reverential awe, or strident ringing admonitions. That would be 'those who came before us' and bequeathed us a world riven with environmental destruction and economic disasters and globalization of war and the privatization of governmental ethics.

I don't care if the world does revolve around you - it's still there, and without anything circling you, you're just a useless point.

Gravely Imperilled

The future of mankind will be gravely imperilled, if great questions are left to be fought over between ignorant change and ignorant opposition to change.

John Stewart Mill, Sociology, 1879.

he also wrote in his introduction to the book well the commentary is mine:

The great increase of electoral power which the Act places within the reach of the working classes is permanent. ha ha ha The circumstances which have caused them, thus far, to make a very limited use of that power, are essentially temporary. 131 years later, does it still count as 'temporary'? It is known even to the most inobservant The powerful certainly observed this, that the working classes have [... for good or ill realized their goals/opinions are in conflict with the powerful...]. However much their pursuit of these objects may be for the present retarded seriously retarded by want of electoral organization, by dissensions among themselves, or by their not having reduced as yet their wishes into a sufficiently definite practical shape, it is as certain as anything in politics can be, that they will before long before 2010? find the means of making their collective electoral power effectively instrumental to the proportion of their collective objects.

His introduction is poignant in its delusional futility. He - and perhaps the rest of Socialists in general - completely and totally underestimated the willpower of the disenfranchised classes. Their will to do nothing is astonishing. He also completely and totally underestimated the lengths to which the propertied/powerful would go, in order to protect their status quo. Or the awe inspiring, subtle creativity they would employ.

The disenfranchised have had their "collective objects" co-opted by the rich & powerful. The powerful, fearing to loose their proportion of that power, have convinced the Little Guy that "you can be just like me". So, all these tea-party idiots are running around defending the rich & powerful because they think they, too, can become rich and powerful, and want to have those power-perqs.

What better way to fuck the little guy, than to get her to do to herself?

Constitutional Amendment anyone?

Independence Minnesota (our big 3rd party) is soliciting opinions regarding a proposal: reduce the state legislature to one house. Unicameral legislature? Talk about changing the way gov't runs!