Newsday
June 28, 2007
James P. Pinkerton

Remember, back in the '90s, when then-first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton was peddling the "politics of meaning"? Well, government-provided therapy is back in the White House once again, this time brought to you by President George W. Bush.

But there is a difference. When Clinton, guided by Rabbi Michael Lerner, spoke of "the politics of meaning," she was hooted off the national stage. But when Bush offers his vision of soulcraft, a majority of the Senate seems eager to go along with a plan to alter radically the population and character of America.

In the White House Tuesday, Bush cited immigration, believe it or not, as a source for soul sustenance. Celebrating the pending vote in the Senate that kept his amnesty - oops, "comprehensive immigration reform" - bill alive, Bush said that because of immigration, legal or not, "The country is better off. Our soul is constantly renewed. Our spirit is invigorated." Got that?
Or maybe Bush has the wrong idea. Maybe the real source of American strength is the American people, just the way they are, free from Washington-provided demographic shock therapy.

The nation's founders thought that the people should rule, which is why the Constitution begins with "We the People." Inherent in the idea was that "the people" would be a coherent group, with a common language and culture - the Constitution was written only in English. Mindful of history, the founders thought that each people ought to have their own state. In ancient Greece, for example, the Athenians had their own government, the Spartans theirs, the Corinthians theirs, and so on.

Why? Because different cultural groups would not fully participate in a unitary res publica. Instead, each distinct group would look to its own interests first, and only then, maybe, consider the well-being of the whole. It might not be politically correct, to borrow the jargon of today, to see the world in such unforgiving categories, but James Madison & Co. weren't interested in PC. They were hard-nosed and history-wise, and they were determined to build and keep their republic.

The same birds-of-a-feather-flock-together principle of politics holds true today. The people of Canada, for example, may be perfectly nice and just as determined as Americans to secure for themselves the blessings of liberty, but they are a distinct and different people. Canadians are not Americans, and vice versa. To combine the two peoples into one government would be a formula for chaos; indeed, the Canadians twice, during the American Revolution and the War of 1812, raised armies to repel invasions from the United States.

And so it is around the world: Are there Peruvians, for example, who share American values? Sure. But Peruvians, whether they believe in democracy or not, already have a country: Peru. And the same holds true for Nigerians or Indonesians or Estonians.

So why would Bush, and the 64 senators who voted this week to move his immigration bill forward, be so eager to legalize the 12 million foreigners who came into this country illegally? And thereby encourage tens of millions more to come here in the future, by hook or crook, in full expectation of getting amnesty in a decade or two? What message does that send - beyond contempt for the rule of law and disdain for good citizenship?

The answer is clear: The ruling class in Washington wants to see the American people fractionalized and multiculturalized - that is, the small "r" republican experiment in popular sovereignty brought to an end. That might seem like a harsh interpretation, but what else explains the determination to bring in 100 million foreigners, according to the Heritage Foundation, to an America that fails to teach newcomers English, let alone civics?

Bush calls it "soul renewing." But history will remember it as the moment when Washington drowned the American principle of informed self-government in a flood of foreigners.


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