Thread: Spitzer and the Backlash Heard Around the World

Spitzer and the Backlash Heard Around the World
By Gary Krasner (11/17/07)
http://www.americandaily.com/article/20968

Governor Elliot Spitzer learned this week that even a rich boy---who's daddy bought him the election---must respect the voice of the people.

Spitzer snubbed the legislature and held no hearings on an issue that affected virtually every citizen in New York State. We are sovereigns of the states we reside in. That's what makes us citizens of the U.S. Yet what Spitzer wanted to do was give to illegal aliens the only benefit associated with citizenship that has thus far been denied to them---the right to vote.

In order to get illegal aliens registered as Democrats, Spitzer had to first fabricate a rationale to permit them to legally obtain drivers licenses. In other states, the open-border immigration lobby had often claimed that illegals must be permitted to drive so they can get to hospitals, schools, stores, and places of employment. You know, just like citizens and residents who are here legally. Not wishing to end up like California Governor Gray Davis, Spitzer came up with something that sounded better. He said that illegals could obtain drivers licenses, they can then purchase automobile insurance.

Only a man who's primary residence is a penthouse in Manhattan's clouds can actually believe this! We're talking about a population known for ripping building registries off vestibule walls if their names are listed as tenants. And he thinks that people with no legal reason for living in the state will purchase automobile insurance? He also probably believes that illegal immigrants who cannot demonstrate proficiency in a driving test will dutifully refrain from driving---just like they do now because they lack insurance coverage. Will the written portion of the exam be in Spanish? Spitzer didn't explore that question in his carefully layed out plan.

One must also wonder what happened to the Governor's climate change sensibilities, by favoring the licensure of another one million motorists---the estimated number of illegal aliens in NYS. Spitzer, Mayor Bloomberg, and the climate change alarmists have enacted zoning laws, taxes and tolls---all designed to discourage people like me from driving to work, and to take mass transit instead. But perhaps that's because I'm only a legal, taxpaying citizen.

What Spitzer cannot fathom is that Illegal immigrants will drive whether they have licenses of not. The reason illegal immigrants are able to obtain employment, housing, health care, education, bank and credit services, (etc.) in NYS in the first place is because liberal elites like Spitzer, the open border liberal establishment, and low wage employers enacted laws to bar local law enforcement and government and private sector bureaucrats in every sector of the society from enforcing immigration laws. No one can report an illegal alien to ICE. An illegal immigrant in NYS and other sanctuary states are as safe as fleas on a junk yard dog. If any of them break the law---short of a capital crime---they're released and ordered to show up for their deportation hearing. They never do, of course. But Spitzer believes they would purchase automobile insurance.

This stuff only makes sense if you're of the mindset of the "compassionate" liberal, or a member of the mainstream news media. Anyone with even half a brain can readily fathom that you foster cynicism and disrespect for the law when you rescind a law solely because certain people refuse to obey that law (i.e. driving without a license). If there's a good reason for a law, you enforce it. If it's a bad law, you rescind it. The excuse that illegal immigrants need to drive a car or commercial vehicle to earn a living is not a reason to give them drivers licenses. I'm sure there are people who need licenses of various kinds---to sell goods; to practice medicine; to practice law; to hunt wildlife; to dispense drugs; etc. They're all reasons to earn a living.

But the more central point is this: To qualify for licenses, people must meet or exceed an assortment of threshold requirements. With respect to driving a car, consider what is required: Illegal immigrants say they have to drive to get to their place of employment, among other "necessary" reasons. Spitzer says that with legal drivers licenses, they could then obtain automobile insurance. Long ago it used to be that having a legitimate place in our nation was unique to citizens, and legal residents. Only they were able to legally obtain employment, insurance, housing, financial credit, health care, license to drive, public assistance, etc. But in recent decades, there has been nothing on that list which was denied to illegal aliens---thanks to all the "compassionate" liberals like Sptizer. In his own words from last Wednesday, he said he wanted to bring them "out of the shadows." What he neglected to admit however, was that among all the aforementioned privileges associated with citizenship which he's willing to bestow upon illegals, would now be the right to vote. Under President Clinton's Federal Motor Voter Law, states are required to give motorists a voter application at the time they apply for a license. And county boards of elections informed Spitzer that they don't have the resources to verify an applicant's citizenship.

Therefore, Spitzer's executive order would have permitted them drivers licenses, which in turn would have purportedly induced them to obtain automobile insurance---Spitzer's overt selling point. With the exception of granting them the right to vote---Spitzer's hidden agenda---mere driving with insurance are subsets of many privileges associated with citizenship that illegal aliens have already been granted, in New York and other states. The open border, "compassionate" ones in NYS merely lost one battle---finally. One privilege has finally been denied to illegal aliens. But that doesn't absolve Spitzer and his "compassionate" allies of their crimes.

Their crimes are many. Let's start with federalism. State and local laws cannot contravene federal codes. Permitting illegal aliens de facto citizenship status is a clear violation. And granting them the plethora of privileges cited above is equivalent to granting them citizenship. It's one thing to refrain from actively enforcing immigration law. But when local laws effectively bestow citizenship on people who are essentially trespassers on U.S. territory, the local laws are illegitimate and cannot stand. Just look at the Fed's reaction when Oregon permitted prescription use of a controlled substance (marijuana). The only difference is that we have never had a President willing to enforce immigration laws from fear of being labeled a racist, xenophobic nativist.

Another crime is misplaced compassion. Hypocrisy really. When you listen to Spitzer, the open-border crowd, and all those who presume to be compassionate, they convey their compassion all right. But it's compassion solely for illegal immigrants. They show no concern for the hardships endured by Americans, that results from the huge waves of immigrants. So huge, that sufficient assimilation into our culture is impossible. When you listen to the Spitzers, or the mainstream news media, you never hear about master carpenter who spent years honing his craft and resume to earn $25 per hour, only to see it dwindle to $15 per hour, because immigrants will work for less. You never see them portray the social isolation of an elderly woman trapped in a neighborhood that turned into an immigrant ghetto, where she can no longer speak with her fellow neighbors, or read store signs in the language she was raised in---English. You never see coverage of the hardships plaguing parents and teachers in the southwest, with 70 children in a public school classroom, most of whom don't speak English. Or the increase in crime and gang violence.

You see and hear none on this from the "compassionate" ones, because their compassion is reserved for illegal immigrants. There are two reasons to explain this misplaced concern. First, Spitzer in his luxury condo in his father's Manhattan apartment building, and the journalist in his office in the Newsweek building on Columbus Circle, or the news producer at CBS studios on Sixth Avenue, all do not come into contact with the aforementioned real Americans. "Blue collar" to them is just a demographic group. Or a voting block. They're not seen as real people whose lives are adversely affected by "do-good, look how much I love poor immigrants" policies championed by liberals and elites. As aware as these elites are of the wave of immigrants coming into California, they are totally ignorant of the mass exodus of middle-class Americans seeking a better quality of life in Australia and New Zealand. Trust me, if they were aware of it, they would have been doing stories on that exodus.

The other reason is that being liberal and elitist, they're naturally attracted to the sanctimonious conceit that poor or practical people don't have time to indulge in. I'm referring to the multilateralist ethic, and the embrace of moral equivalency. When you reject the concepts of American exceptionalism and U.S. self interest, and instead believe that every nation and culture have equal value and legitimacy as any other, then of course you'll be a person who also believes that Americans are responsible for the welfare of all people across the globe---including those who are, in effect, trespassers.

Of course, you never see overt expressions of a liberal's abjuration to nationalism. But there are many hints of it in news programs on immigration. For example, you can watch any number of news stories, documentaries, or op-eds about the immigration issue. What you'll see in all of them are illegal immigrants and their supporters reciting lines like, "America is a nation of immigrants"; or "I came here to pursue the American Dream---to earn a living and provide for my family." The rhetorical question that follows---"What's so wrong about that---didn't every immigrant to the U.S. desire that?"---is intended to make the viewer feel guilty for wanting to prevent illegal immigration. Of course, the interviewers make sure to find an immigrant who can recite that stuff in English. And after uttering that syrupy sweet puffery, they expect us to melt from the warmth of the immigrants adulation of our nation.

But what you'll never see is commentary that critically examines such statements. You'll never see those highly paid correspondents challenge the immigrant by asking, since when did our nation become nothing more than a place of employment? Or since when did citizenship become a reward for obtaining employment at Walmart or a construction site or someone's backyard garden? You'll never see a CNN reporter (other than Lou Dobbs) ask an immigrant if there is anything more than a paycheck that induced him to live in the U.S.? Was the immigrant aware of any ideals the U.S. stood for, or anything in the Constitution, or American culture, or American history that beckoned him to this land?

You'll never see that. And it's not just because the vast majority latino immigrants wish to retain their citizenship status from their native country. It's also because nationhood is an abstraction to most multilateralist liberals, and they'd also be hardpressed to describe anything of a cultural nature that's uniquely American. They might claim that there isn't an "American culture." Because, as the chant goes, we're a nation of immigrants. True, we are. But there's a manageable immigration level that communities and societies can absorb, and then there's the level we're experiencing now. An engine's carburetor shoots a thin stream of gas into the intake manifold, and the engine runs properly. Remove the carburetor, and pour gas into the manifold, and you flood the engine. The U.S. needs a carburetor again.

But for the open-border, multilateralist crowd, a unified nation smacks of nationalism---even fascism. They prefer a fractionated, multi-lingual society. The sort that Victor Davis Hanson described in Mexifornia, in which Southern California high schools hold graduation ceremonies one day for people who speak English, and another day for people who speak Spanish. As Hanson cautioned, we must remain a multi-racial nation. But throughout history, extreme language and cultural diversity has often balkinized nations. And in most examples, it was the result of high immigration levels of people with foreign languages.

Most liberal multiculturalists are not inconvenienced by living in non-English speaking communities anyway. But it's no longer numerical ratios of English to non English speakers that affects assimilation. We used to say that an English-speaking person on each side of an immigrant forces that immigrant to learn English. And the converse---being surrounded by Spanish-speaking people---permits the immigrant to function in that community without having to learn English. But today, communication technologies via cable, satelite, internet, and VOIP telephony permits non-English speaking immigrants access to an entire world of same-language people and culture. No immigrant is isolated anymore from his native culture, let alone his native land. There's less incentives today for second and third generation immigrants to learn English. And those who want to learn our language, expect citizens to pay for their language lessons.

And Spitzer wanted a million of them in NYS to register as Democrats. With the exception of conservative news publications, that part of Spitzer's motivation for giving them drivers licenses was all but missing in Wednesday's story. On Wednesday, Spitzer came to Washington D.C.---instead of Albany---to announce that he was throwing in the towel on his plan. He decided to come to a town where politicians have lower favorability ratings than he has. That was a gem of a move. I can't help but imagine that Hilary's strategists suggested he hold his press conference in Washington, after "advising" him to drop his ill-advised plan (the latter allegation, according to Fred Dicker of the NY Post).

To cap off the Spitzer fiasco perfectly, the New York Governor said at his news conference: "The federal government has lost control of its borders, has allowed millions of undocumented immigrants to enter our country and now has no solution to deal with it."

As much as I love the English language and wish that everyone speak it, there's only one word that can describe that statement: Chutzpah.

FINALLY!!!!!!!! Someone exposing the REAL reason Spitty wanted ILLEGAL ALIENS to have licenses. And of course, they would vote for HILLARY?