06/24/2008
“National Guard Quietly Ending Mission on U.S.-Mexico Border.”
A few days ago, I saw this headline signifying the end of the National Guard’s two-year mission to bolster the nation’s scandalously porous southern border.
It also signified, of course, the Washington elite’s conclusion that, with the Presidential primaries safely over, it can safely go back to sleep on the nation-breaking issue of out-of-control legal and illegal immigration.
Which is why, when I googled around, I found this story:
“Border governors worried about National Guard pullout
“MCALLEN, Texas (AP) The thousands of National Guardsmen sent to reinforce the U.S.-Mexican border two years ago have almost completely withdrawn, despite pleas from border-state governors….”
(My italics.)
It was always pretty silly, needless to say. As VDARE.COM reported, when the Bush Administration dispatched the National Guard to the border, it was also deprived of guns. Don’t want to offend Mexico City!
One National Guardsman has just told a reporter that illegal aliens walked right by him: “I’ve seen it quite a few times…We have to continue working.”
The National Guard ploy was simply a ruse, a ploy by an Administration and a political elite stunned and scared by the outpouring of patriotic fury unleashed by Washington’s bipartisan attempt to push through amnesty for illegal aliens.
But at VDARE.COM, we welcomed it. Someone once said: “Hypocrisy is the homage that vice pays to virtue.” Washington was making an empty gesture, but it was a gesture that it made because it was afraid.
And Washington was afraid because of the power that patriotic immigration reformers displayed during the debate on amnesty.
Afterwards, as we reported on our blog, one newspaper editor who supported amnesty wrote ruefully:
“The opponents of the bill prevailed and they did so in a grand manner that I had to respect. It was democracy at its best — and an instructive lesson for anyone interested in politics. Countless time a day, I received messages from a variety of groups that had Freedom or American or Liberty as part of their title.
“The discipline of these groups was a sight to behold. Someone created a set of talking points that declared opponents need only focus on one word — amnesty — to denounce the legislation. And every group that came out against it did precisely that.”
I’m not going to say that it was VDARE.COM that created that set of talking points — although early we did run articles emphasizing the decisive importance of the term amnesty — but I do believe we played a key role in the greatest patriotic uprising for many years. And that role was supplying ammunition — facts, analyses and arguments.
Now, almost exactly a year later, the political elite thinks it’s got the patriotic immigration reform movement back under control.
After some hopeful moments, both major parties have nominated candidates who want to keep immigration reform out of the election.
My view: we’ll see. The political elite was wrong about the power of the patriotic immigration reform movement during the amnesty debate. It is wrong if it thinks that power won’t be felt again soon — maybe even in this election.
Meanwhile, we have to regroup. Rebuild. Stockpile facts. Refine our arguments and analyses for when our moment comes again.
That’s why we publish writers like Steve Sailer on the latest science of human groups, Edwin S. Rubenstein on the latest government statistics, Allan Wall on the National Question as seen from Mexico, Joe Guzzardi on immigration’s Ground Zero — his California classroom. And many others, every day. (And most hours of the day when you count the blog!)
At VDARE.COM, we are in this for the long haul. We are building an institution.But we need money to do that. We can only do it with your help.
Money is our secret weapon at VDARE.COM. Our fixed costs are very low. We have no offices, we operate entirely virtually. We don’t have to pay printing and postage (thank goodness!)
What this means: essentially everything you give goes to pay writers and editors.
Our writers and editors are not paid as much as I would like. But they do get something. This ability to pay our writers is what has distinguished VDARE.COM from a host of excellent but evanescent blogs which have come and gone.
Writers will often write for love — because they passionately believe in our cause. But in the long run, they need to be able to justify the time spent, to their families and to themselves.
To me as a professional journalist, the quantity and quality of non-professional writing on the immigration issue that comes in over the e-transom has been a revelation. Many of these writers have full-time careers in other fields, some are students; I encourage them all to write anonymously because of the very real reign of terror imposed by the curse of Political Correctness. Others are struggling, idealistic free-lancers; I shudder for them. All are patriots deprived of outlets because of the orthodoxy of the Mainstream Media.
Right now, I want to make a special offer.
We’ve just received copies of the Spring 2008 issue of The Social Contract, the quarterly magazine on immigration and related issues.
As they did last year, this issue is entirely devoted to material that originally appeared on VDARE.COM.
This is from my introduction:[More]
This is a content archive of VDARE.com, which Letitia James forced off of the Internet using lawfare.