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Yes, we discuss that phrase, but no, we don’t say the word. Instead, we do a deep dive on immigration with two of the sharpest minds on the issue: the Center for Immigration Studies’s Mark Krikorian and our good pal Mickey Kaus. Dig in.
Music from this week’s podcast: Dreamer by Super Tramp
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@jameslileks, it appears you are coming from the starting point that Trump is racist. Am I reading your comments correctly?
Yes, India: bleepholey, but they have nukes.
Perhaps the weirdest thing about immigrants departing India for a better life would be their real need to pay attention to the how-to-fasten-your-seatbelt spiel while settling in for their first plane ride.
For the most part, illegal, lottery, and chain migration immigrants are not net revenue generators. Poor and “working class” people pay some medicare, social security and other taxes, but they also consume social and other government services, including, later in life, medicare and social security. Upper middle class and wealth people are the net contributors to government balance sheets. Except for highly skilled people, immigration makes the medicare and social security situation worse.
@FredGoodhue
But if you try to argue that on twitter, they will pummel you with articles that say otherwise. Leftist and libertarian. I can’t deal with it. Some of those think tanks can justify anything, like O.J. Simpson’s legal team or whatever.
Gosh:
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/455422/country-origin-matters
I want to give James another view
From the Time article (which they won’t let me post because the bad word is in the link….yeesh
A lot of people have dropped the “Asia” part from the concern because it fits the narrative that Trump just wants white people here when it seems to me IF you believe the above report, it’s more in line with “skilled” vs. unskilled
Funny how Trump has been a public figure for 30 years now and only became a racist, sexist etc….. when he ran for president on the republican ticket. Interesting.
Trump talks like guys at a bar talk. He’s a New Yorker, we tend to be a bit on the crass side due to expediency. Politicitions take too long to make a point. It was like trump’s response to the reporter on the term anchor Baby.
I recently went to Athens on a business trip and described it as the loveliest bleephole I have ever been to. I said this to Greeks, who all agreed with me. Greece is a bleephole due to a socialist government and a citizenry who want to retire at 50 and not pay taxes. Many third world countries are also crapholes because of corrupt governments. Saying a country is a craphole isn’t describing some of the wonderful capable people who live there, but to describe the result of bad government and a citizenry that is either oppressed into submission or who are complicit in voting in their leadership. Remember the Venezuelan people voted for Chavez and were happy as long as the gravy train was still on the rails but once the gravy train ends all bets are off.
It’s hard to foster the values of individual freedom, liberty and work ethic into a society. It’s the values that we import that should take precedence.
My whole argument about everything is this is impossible under so much central bank discretion, so much centralized government etc. and pretending that the Frankfurt School and Cultural Marxism aren’t real problems.
Also, what you said about Greece was made far, far worse by the EMU and our investment banks. I am just disgusted by RINOs or whatever that can’t see why reasonable people would want out of the EU and the EMU.
Do you ever step way back and think about that stupid tax nonsense we just went thorough? What is that? Does moving those percentages around make anything better? Is it just useless central planning by multiple “committees” at multiple levels of government? Are they just granting us deductions and relief or not at the point of a gun? Or are they selling deductions and relief to K Street?
Is this progress?
What is the value added by not using a flat tax with no deductions? Who could possibly explain that?
Both the Emma Lazarus poem and the quote from Ronald Reagan refer to people who seek to be free. They do not express a desire to take anyone and everyone. They do not support the idea of welcoming people who do not want to be free, but instead want to turn the United States into the place from which they come.
I think assimilation is a concept of the past.
In the past, someone came to North America by sea, it took a week – or longer – and was so expensive, it was assumed to be a 1 way trip. Those leaving Ireland to settle in Boston or New York had a living wake, so that their friends and family could say good bye. People arriving where trapped, they succeeded or perished. (there was no going home, no welfare)
The jetliner has changed this, if the new immigrants fail they can go home in a day or less. They can apply for welfare. There is a lot less pressure on them to assimilate.
I mostly disagree with this.
The press part is fine. Even people like me, who will never like Trump, realize that much of the press is out to get him. This is a given.
But that shouldn’t blind us to right and wrong. And I think that you are wrong to speak of being holier than thou. It is not that. If one wants to defend Trump on all things, go ahead. But just because he has no dignity should not mean that dignity is now out. Ronald Reagan would not take his jacket off in the oval office. My Mom – Bless her Dear Soul – had an expression. When someone said to her that times change, she said “No – people change”. I say that we must bring back dignity, not get rid of it because some people like Trump.
We need a good economy with a disbursed prosperity and get rid of all of the Cultural Marxism and identity politics at the same time. Do that first. People can only take so much.
Yea, dignity has been drummed out of the culture for a while now. We have celebrities who are only famous because of a sex tape they made, the culture has problems. Trump is a reflection of the larger culture. Mourn the loss of dignity in the culture and then work to change that. Trump is just playing the game based on what the culture is. Like a wise man said “ don’t hate the player, hate the game”
Exactly, if we are not allowed to know how much illegal and legal immigrants of various nationalities consume and destroy, then that’s step number 1: allow access to the data. We need to measure immigration on multiple scales: continuous (income, excess capital), categorical (religion, nationality, etc.), ordinal (educational attainment), etc. If we must have immigration, let’s choose rich, smart immigrants of religions that are in order of preference: Christian (we can debate Catholic/Protestant too), low propensity for violence (sorry, Muslims), non-evangelical. Let’s also thank Donald Trump for moving the Overton window to the point where we can even have such a debate.
@bloodthirstyneocon
CATO has gigantic files and reports on why identity politics is good for the country. I am not making that up. This topic doesn’t lend it’s self to normal civic engagement, unfortunately.
The problem begins with a P and ends with a C. That was always one of Pres. Trump’s top selling points to me: he was against PC.
That is the part I disagree with. I don’t disagree with any of what you said, except that. It all should be done at the same time. Sacrificing doing the right thing for some other thing is never a good thing. This is like endorsing the concept of the ends justify the means, which a conservative should never embrace.
@Peterrobinson
Well in Calif it was recently reported that immigration actually takes one dollar out of every $ 5.50 in the state’s annual budget. And once a state is paying that much to various agencies and what not, it is hard to set limits on immigration. Which politician doesn’t want more money inside more agency pies? The better to have funds to skim off of… Right?
Californians themselves understand all this. They know the Dems control the voting machinery inside this state. So 300,000 of them have left Calif taking some 8 billions of dollars of income with them.
I like this, basically. I don’t find much wrong with it. But…… Trump is not a child. He is over 70, which is even older than me. He remembers Reagan, and what the culture used to be like. I am afraid that saying he is just playing the game, while true, is just an escape hatch for him. He doesn’t have to play. He is the President. If he leads the way in a restoration, things may begin to change. It is not a certainly, by any means, but I say it is worth a try.
Me, either. The statistics are all over the place on this.
About half of Italians returned to Italy, but you’re basic point is correct, I think: Only in the southwestern United States, and only in the past couple of decades, have we had immigrants who could go back and forth to the home country quite often. As the late Samuel Huntington of Harvard argued, this is almost certain to slow the old processes of assimilation–if not nullify them altogether.
The question is, how much does he value those cultural elements? I’m a Southerner. I was raised with “Yes, sir,” and “No, sir!” He’s from Queens. He was raised in a culture with some of the same touchstones that I was, but a lot that were different. Yes, we’re from the same country, but that doesn’t mean that we place value and prioritize things in the same order. Would I like to see a perfectly-mannerly and urbane PotUS? Of course I would, in a perfect world. But we are not in a perfect world. We have to take people in the packages they are. To get that perfectly-polite PotUS, what would I have had to sacrifice? And had I sacrificed these other things I value, such as the rule of law, would I have gotten the PotUS I wanted anyway? Probably not.
The guy I voted for in the primary was at least my fourth choice. It was not Trump. The PotUS candidates I wanted more fell by the wayside before the Michigan Primary. Stuff occurs. I have never gotten my first choice for President or even in the primary. Lots of times, I have not even gotten the President from my party. Big deal. I bet the Bernie Bros are even more unhappy about the sequence of events. But in every case, I got a man who was who he was. I knew that no amount of complaining or whining on the Internet would ever change that man.
Trump is not the PotUS I wanted, but he is PotUS and he is who he is. He is getting things done. Some may say that is despite who he is. Others are saying that only Trump could have moved things as much as he has. Is moving towards a crasser culture a good thing? Not in my opinion. On the other hand, eviscerating PC is a very, very good thing, and there was no way that ¡JEB! or Bobby Jindal or even Scott Walker would have managed that as Trump has. Take the good with the bad. The man is who he is.
I get that Trump is bad at statesmanship or whatever, but he took Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania for reasons. People are sick of Ruling Class leadership right now. Keynesianism and Cultural Marxism. Obama was their fascist thug. Now we got our fascist thug in control. Now isn’t the time for Ben Sasse goody two shoes idealism.
Just my very amateur opinion.
It really does feel like the goal is replacement of one population with another, and if you complain you are called racist.
Except that Trump is not even close to being a Fascist thug. He has been helping remove regulations. He has been working with Congress. He has reversed some of Obama’s over-reaches. He has been devolving some things back to state control. He has been trying to work within the law and through the Constitutional processes. Would a Fascist thug do any of that? What has he actually done that is Fascistic?
What I mean is people want their cut of some of the ***2%***GDP Keynesian graft and they want identity politics beaten down and humiliated with extreme prejudice. Who’s going to lead us out of this dynamic? John Kasich?
We are doomed.
(DJT said he used other words) + (Tom Cotton was in the room and did not hear s-word) + (Dick Durbin said DJT said s-word and is racist) = Dick Durbin is a liar.
Why is Durbin lying? See Harry Reid on lying to win elections: “it worked.”
Gee but Trump. Really? Remember Romney with “binders full of women” filling up the back seat so he put his dog on the roof of his car? There is no “R” that will not be demonized at every turn as it serves the Left’s cause. This very point was made in episode 379.
I get that the podcast episode topic was immigration but since the participants were [discussing, floating] the “is Trump a racist” DNC and #NeverTrump theme it would be nice to pay attention to the immediate context (the past week):
* African-American unemployment down
* MLK historic site upgraded to park status and expanded
* Immigration meeting exposed both sides of the table to the public without filter and working class African-Americans saw who was on the side of rising wages and employment.
* Annual MLK Day proclamation signing was a formal ceremony with Sec. Ben Carson and Isaac Newton Farris Jr. speaking.
The Democrats saw the real threat of President Trump “stealing” enough of “their” voters before the midterms. So the Democrats went to their one proven gambit and shouted* “racist,” counting on #NeverTrump to delight in dipping in and out of that insinuation while enjoying the confirmation that Trump is a really low-class man unfit for their support.
*Listen to the end of the MLK Day proclamation video.
This will never happen, but I wish the flagship podcast would interview John Gilmore. The David Horowitz of Minnesota. Pete Hegseth has had him on Fox News. He knows him personally.
Next, (GASP) David Stockman.
Very good show: great guests, serious topic — relatively inoffensive sponsor segues.
It was particularly nice not having Rob “Tourette’s” Long throwing in his two [expletive deleted] cents.
But speaking of language, I was sorry to read that my President, the man I voted for, chose to express himself in such a thoughtless and ungracious way. Who would have thought?
On a more serious note, and going out on that precarious what-was-he-thinking limb, what I think is both most charitable and also — happy coincidence — most likely as an interpretation of just what President Trump meant by his scatological comment was that he didn’t understand why non-Western cultures would be favored. I don’t think it was about skin color, eye color, hair color, or even religion. Rather, I suspect he has a sense of what “Western” means, and he favors it.
His idea of what that means might not be mine, precisely, but I suspect it does include the idea of markets and rule of law and individualism and materialism — things I also associate with Western culture.
And if that is an indication that he has a knee-jerk pro-Western bias that, perhaps unconsciously, informs his judgment, then that’s important to me, because I’ve always thought of him as a guy with few or no guiding personal beliefs.
And also, having a knee-jerk pro-Western bias is a refreshing change in the chief executive.