Off The Subject, but ...

Until this last year I had not noticed it quite so much. Maybe this trend has been experiencing an upswing. People go berserk either pro or con regarding laws they haven't read.

Even the president makes comments which indicate he either hasn't read legislation, or he lies about it to serve his benefactors. Serve can be considered a broad enough term to include anger, agitate, and turn group against group. It happens a lot. Obama is not the only one guilty of such things.

The banking laws were so complicated most people have no idea exactly who got bailed out and how. Stimulus madness, and all the great "shovel ready" this and that proved not to be much good to most people. Of course in the middle of that, an official, whose name and title I do not recall, wanted to be sure jobs weren't going to skilled white labor. Always the need to create villains and animosity. Blame that guy, not all the other groups.

The politics of condition of birth is devoid of actual universal philosophy. It assumes we are not all equal under the law, not all similarly human, which implies we ought not all have the same basic rights. That's why rights has been redefined.

Maybe underlying all this madness is a shift from the American model to the Continental model. That is what it was called at some point in time, in some circles. The distinction is that under the continental model, you only have the rights granted by the state. They are privileges, and only the state can grant them. Under the American model, you have (had) any rights not explicitly forbidden. The state only had powers explicitly granted. All other power and right was reserved to states, localities and individuals.

It is an important distinction. In one case the government exercises power only through the permission of the people. In the other case people only exercise power under the permission of the government. We've moved toward the latter. But it is a tangled mess and lots of money is made with no regard to damage done to freedom of the individual.

The reason a senator would argue for a bill she hasn't read is because contained in the thousands of pages are provisions which serve interests who keep her in power. It is self serving and deal making.

In the case of the Arizona law, an alarming number of prominent figures have commented on it without looking at the the text of it or the reality of it. I find it much more dangerous for cities and states to more or less declare war on another state based on a law that state passes that displeases them. The worst part is that the arguments do not address the actual law, but wrong summaries of the law. If they want to take some position, they should get the facts straight.

This particular issue is the worst case of demagoguery I've seen in a long time. Groups are being frightened and angered purely to serve the power agenda of organizations which seek nothing but their own power. Now we have little clutches of people, and hate groups who claim to represent all Hispanics. And they try to pit them aginst some imaginary white conspiracy. It simply does not exist as they claim.

La Raza is right there at the forefront. They want to take part of America back because they say we stole it from Mexico. Where did Mexico get it? Let's see, Spain played a part, and France, too. And if they give it to the Azteca then the Azteca will have to give it back to a variety of ancient nations, most of which end in ec; toltec, olmec this ec that ec. And where they got it, I'm not sure. The point is, be consistent in how you want to work this out. And if you do get your raqcist state, will you loosen Mexico's immigration laws? They are far more strict than ours.

It is easier to play on emotion and tell people they will get accosted buying ice cream even though they are citizens whose ancestors have been here for over a hundred years. No, you will get rounded up for looking Mexican. Fortunately, that is simply a lie. Unfortunately when the president or attorney general say it, or a loud mouth la raza racist thug says it, people believe it without double checking. The attorney general admits he has made all his comments based on stories in the paper and such but hasn't bothered to read the actual bill. It may surprise him that it only reinforces the federal law already on the books.

If you take a bus ride from LA to Dallas, somewhere along the way the feds will board the bus and ask to see documentation regarding your legality for being in the US. They go all the way through Arizona and beyond before that happens. Because it is close to the border, and because people sneak in and there are some issues, like dead ranchers and disproportionate amount of crime committed by those who enter illegally. Not all of them, of course. Just a higher percentage than other groups.

Some of my good friends in the ast were here illegally from other countries. Eventually they found ways to work it out. They were not criminals. The law is not as bad as state income tax or a score of other such things.

Since when do states up north have a clue what it is like to run Arizona? In the case of California, it ought not waste time and money grandstanding about other states' affairs. It has its own issues.

The sadest thing is that many of the resolutions condemning what they do over there have been brought forth by people who never read the measure. Those who have and still act in such a way are merely fomenting hate and fear, then pandering to that in order to secure votes. It is nothing short of criminal. No way anyone would arouse such passion if they read the bill. No way, that is, unless they are willing to flat out lie.