That's an obsolete statistic, as is typical.  Recent figures indicate illegal immigration is on the upswing again: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jan/29/arrests-signal-9-percent-jump-illegal-immigration/

While we're on the topic of immigration, it always struck me as ironic that we have American churches go on short-term "mission trips" to Mexico to build houses for Mexican families in need, while the Mexicans come across the border to build our houses here.

Nothing wrong with either one (the latter if they come legally, of course).

However, it does seem ironic and it says a lot about the two societies, both good and not.  For one, we seem to be losing the ability or willingness to do manual labor such as to build houses for ourselves.  That is not good.  On the other hand, our society really has organized itself in such a way that our relative prosperity creates this situation.

Sorry for the side track conversation.

Illegal immigration needs to stop.  I blame lack of enforcement more than I blame the immigrants themselves.

Legal immigration needs to be lower, to give time for those already here to assimilate.  We had a historically high period of immigration about 100 years ago, but we had a historically low period following that for about a generation.  This is why we were able to assimilate that large wave fairly well.

Republicans need to reach out to immigrant communities precisely in order to help them with the assimilation process and introduce them to American ways, and help them to see beyond the identity politics.

When we cede immigrant communities to the Democrats, we let them convince the immigrants that it's OK to segregate, not assimilate; it's OK to engage in identity politics, and those Republicans are evil people who hate you because of the color of your skin.

What does this have to do with anything, unless it's the prelude to a personal attack, or an argument based on who Ryan is rather than the argument he is making?

The argument he's making isn't addressed at you, so don't take it so personally.  He's simply laying out another of the facets of the argument in the book.

The argument is directed at the activists on the further end, who are pushing the envelope to the far extreme (and by thus defining the far extreme, they end up dragging people like you to the new "middle").  They're being honest about where they want this to go-- why do you take offense personally when someone brings up their agenda?  Instead if you really want to be the reasonable-sounding moderate on this issue, make an argument why we should not listen to those activists in addition to why we should not listen to Ryan.

The Republican brand is heavily damaged.

After the way they handled the election, the way they are handling the current fiscal "cliff" negotiations, shutting out Tea Party congressmen, and so on, I'm inclined to believe the Republican party will go the way of the Whig party.

Good riddance.

If you want to revive family farms here in the U.S., and the fortunes of the small family farmers in countries in, say, Central America, so they feel less inclined to leave their farms and come looking for work here, then STOP the farm subsidies and STOP artificially managing the price of staple foods on the market!

If you want the government to do something to curb obesity rates, one thing it can do is to STOP doing.  Stop subsidizing all of the grains that go into so many of our cheap, unhealthy foods.  Stop expanding the food stamp program, which subsidizes many unhealthy foods.

As with many other things, the best thing government could do for this issue is to stop doing.

Stop subsidizing farmers and certain crops (such as the grains that go into so many of our unhealthy foods).

Stop subsidizing junk foods via SNAP (food stamps).

These turncoats don't last long in their new party.  They are welcomed with glee at first, but when the next political cycle comes and it becomes unfashionable to be a Democrat, they'll get voted out.  Or, later down the line their fellow Democrats often find themselves doubting the intentions of these turncoats and they get frozen out of anything but the margins of power.

Jim DeMint is an unapologetic fiscal con and social con, and has the honesty to say he thinks they actually go together.  Apparently some people have a problem with that.

Did Rick Santorum ever propose such a thing?  Or is this just the caricature painted by the Left?

These are great quotes-- thanks for sharing-- and I believe we are most certainly in decline.

However, remember the objections that skeptics may raise.  Namely, that it's easy to get a million predictions right-- simply make two million (50/50 chance) predictions.  Also, the saying goes that even a broken clock is right twice a day.  We've always had a doomer streak running through our culture.  It would be relatively easy for a skeptic to pull out plenty of predictions of decline that never came to pass.

DeMint is one of my heroes, to the degree any politician can be.  I'm glad to see him honoring his term limit pledge.

The last election made it even clearer that the battle will not be won primarily in the halls of Congress but in the larger cultural and philosophical milieu outside.  I hope he will now be better able to bring the fight to where it really needs to be fought.

This is just one of the reasons Social Security is really Social Insecurity.

The first reason is, of course, that in giving retirees the "dignity" of living alone on a subsistence income, and dying a lonely death in a different state from their children, we break apart the social structure that used to give people not only security but happiness and fulfilment.

This second reason is that, according to the laws of economics, you get more of what you subsidize and less of what you tax.  In other words, due to Social Security we get more old people relative to young people.  This is fine at first, as our previous growth trajectory was unsustainable.  But we have long since passed the ideal balancing point (population stability), and due to the increasing ratio of old to young people, the destabilizing effect only increases in a self-reinforcing feedback loop, at an accelerating pace.

Japan and much of Europe is there.  Korea is catching up fast.  China's demographic pension/retirement crisis is also already baked in.  We've resisted the trend here, partly due to religion and partly due to immigration.  But it's catching up to us as well.

Also, to Brent's point, it's important for EVERYONE to pay at least some tax.  That's the important thing, not whether there are some loopholes or credits.  Change the AMT so it affects everyone (albeit perhaps on a less drastic scale), so that even if you have tons of deductions and credits you cannot pay less than a certain minimum tax.

When everyone has skin in the game, tax rates will matter a lot more to the electorate.

What is our chance of accomplishing any of this?  Probably zero.

I would agree with this.

We've gone far too long without balancing our budget.  Guess what-- no matter what we do, there are huge costs already in the pipeline for us to pay-- the pain is already baked into our economic situation.  Better to take our medicine and get it over with.