By Steve Sailer
06/10/2007
It was a fun week, with our side winning a big vote in the Senate on Thursday to prevent the Kennedy-Bush Axis of Amnesty from ramming their Amnesty/ Immigration Surge bill through.
Of course, the usual suspects are Kudlowing away — using their privileged access to the Mainstream Media to convince themselves, and their backers, that the bill can be resurrected. So here are a few lessons — some worrisome, some encouraging — to keep in mind.
"A big chunk of the 'elite' wants something like this bill and they want it badly — the polls be damned. And debate is curtailed in the simplest way possible: Anyone in their way will be insinuated to be (or sometimes even explicitly called) a racist or a xenophobe."
On Friday evening, in "Senate tries to kick-start stalled immigration bill", Carrie Budoff reported in The Politico:
"Senators and their staff, White House officials, and dozens of interests groups discussed strategy Friday. Pro-immigrant advocates met with Democratic staffers. Senate Republicans regrouped with the White House by phone."
So, don’t relax and assume all is well. As Andy Jackson pointed out in his Farewell Address, "Remember, my fellow citizens, that eternal vigilance by the people is the price of liberty…"
We're a long, long way from winning the war. Beating back a bad bill isn’t the same as passing a good one.
After the triumph of the cloture vote Thursday evening, a well-wisher in Istanbul wrote to remind me of the mordant Turkish saying in response to partial good news: "Now, that leaves only three horseshoes and a horse to find."
While much of the press was trying to pin the failure of the Kennedy-Bush gang on inside baseball minutia, the Los Angeles Times was honest enough to admit the primary cause in Immigration bill drew fire from both sides by Janet Hook and Nicole Gaouette [June 8, 2007]. Yet, look how their choice of language to describe us is so hate-filled that it might be drawn from the stylebook of the Völkischer Beobachter:
"But the single most powerful obstacle facing the bill is a groundswell of virulent opposition to illegal immigration — mostly among Republicans who peppered GOP lawmakers with furious criticism… Those angry critics booed Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), both bill supporters, at their state conventions. … [O]ne man shouted, 'I can tell you're for amnesty!' and stalked out. On Friday, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said misinformation and anger about the bill was such that 'in my 15 years I've never received more hate or more racist phone calls and threats.'" [Italics mine]
Yeah, okay, I get it, we're not public-spirited citizens, we're frothing-at-the-mouth irrational racist madmen …
I've written about immigration for over seven years (this is my 315th VDARE.com article). So I sometimes get depressed rereading, year after year in the MainStream Media, the same old fallacies. "Hey," I'll groan, "I debunked that on VDARE.COM back in 2001!"
A lie goes halfway around the world before the truth gets its boots on.
The good news, though, is that nothing goes away on the Internet. Concerned citizens can always use Google to find articles with the facts.
And they can email those articles to friends.
The legislation was written in secret. Committee hearings on it were blocked. It was far too long for many busy Senators and their staffers to read.
But networks of highly intelligent citizens examined it carefully and emailed each other with what they found. For example, Thursday’s VDARE.com article, Ten Reasons The Amnesty/Immigration Surge Bill Is Appalling, by 'An Economist,' grew out of an email list utilized by a brilliant economist-turned-highly successful businessman, who has been devoting a lot of his extraordinary energy to immigration.
Indeed, that helps explain something that baffled the clueless MSM. According to the press' interpretation of their own polls, the public thought the Kennedy-Bush plan was a swell idea. The "Gallup Guru," Frank Newport of the Gallup Poll organization, influentially claimed on May 22: "Senate immigration bill in sync with American public opinion."
In particular, the Washington Post didn’t just drink the Inside-the-Beltway Kool-Aid about the popularity of amnesty, it brewed up vast new quantities. Even on Saturday morning, June 9, the Post’s immigration "reporter" Jonathan Weisman [Send him mail](who was culpable for last Monday’s notoriously wrong agitprop classic Backers of Immigration Bill More Optimistic: Lawmakers Cite Sense of Urgency was still proclaiming:
"Within policy circles, immigration reform is viewed as vital, addressing both the growing demand for workers and the social costs of an illegal underclass. The public also generally supports the idea."
Yet, when push came to shove, an unexpected majority of Senators ran away from the Kennedy-Bush bill — because their constituents had made clear to them over the Memorial Day break that they opposed it.
That’s opposed — NOT supported. There’s a difference.
To his credit, Gallup’s Newport looked deeper into the topic. He reported on June 6:
"Those Americans who are following the debate closely are highly likely to be opponents of the bill. Among those who know enough to have an opinion, the bill is opposed by almost a three to one margin. Among those who say they are following the news about the bill very closely, opposition outweighs support by almost a four to one margin." [While Majority Unsure About Immigration Bill, Those With Opinion Are Strongly Opposed, Gallup News Service, June 06, 2007]
In other words, pro-amnesty pollsters manipulated the ignorant into expressing approval of the Kennedy-Bush plan by presenting them with a few carefully crafted talking points about what its sponsors claimed it would do.
That kind of polling technique would get a marketing researcher fired in the consumer packaged goods business. But any shoddy methodology is okay with Big Media when it comes to promoting its favored policies. I call this technique "pollaganda."
To quote an 1849 poem by Arthur Hugh Clough that was a favorite of Winston Churchill’s:
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SAY not the struggle naught availeth, |
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