The defeat of the Comprehensive Immigration bill is the single most important advance for democracy in recent memory. While most commentators point to opposition tot he amnesty provisions in the bill as the impetus for opposition, in reality, amnesty was a minor part of the problem with the bill.
When the bill was first announced I wrote that I was provisionally in favor of a comprehensive bill but offered the caution that "the devil is in the details." At the same time I was fully aware that there was no way I was going to spend the time and energy to actually read the bill. Legalese is a foreign language that I have no desire to learn. It has always struck me as being unnecessarily arcane; of course, the same can be said of medicalese, so I should be measured in my criticism. In any event, I lack the interest and energy to learn how "sausages and laws" are made.
Two important developments occurred in the debate over the Immigration bill which will forever change the way Laws are made.
First, and most important, primarily because of the internet, people who had the interest were able to actually take the time and spend the energy required to read and understand the bill. They were then able to leverage their understanding via the Blogosphere to allow a multitude of engaged individuals to piggy back on their expertise.
Hugh Hewitt performed such yeoman work and when he pointed out that the fantasy of a comprehensive reform was not matched by the reality in the bill, I withdrew my provisional support for the bill. Nothing that followed caused me to change my mind a second time.
As the Immigration debate continued, with the powerful forces in favor of the bill using all their legislative legerdemain to escape scrutiny, they found themselves being watched and caught every step of the way.
The second key point was the not surprising revelation that not only had no Senator even read the bill but that most of them had no real idea what was in it. Once their ignorance was documented, the bill was finished. It is one thing to know intellectually that most bills are passed with little in the way of real debate or understanding by those poseurs who reside in Congress, but to actually be able to see, hear, and savor their ignorance, all the while they were protesting how much smarter and wiser they are than the hoi polloi, has been truly enlightening. The fact is that the American people, via their unelected representatives int he Blogosphere, understood the bill better than its proponents in the Senate.
The Comprehensive Immigration Bill did not fail because people did not support its aims but because once people examined the bill, they noticed that it was not designed to do what it said it would do and in fact was a disastrous melange of mismatched pieces that would have exacerbated every problem we currently face with illegal immigration.
Democracy is always painful to those who wish to wield power. At long last, we are able to actually "Question Authority" with more than mere adolescent oppositionalism. This represents a profound change in American politics and our democracy will never be the same.
On a completely different note, I find myself taking guilty pleasure in watching a very likable liberal try to find ways to mesh his ideology with reality. I like Juan Williams, though find him quite exasperating when he consistently mouths democratic talking points without noticing how overly simplistic and unrealistic they are.
Despite that, Juan Williams retains an intellectual honesty in some spheres that leads him the occasional expression of thoughts congruent with reality and incongruent with his "liberalism." This is especially evident when he discusses race in America. It is gratifying to see when this happens.
Though I do not know much of Juan's background, my suspicion is that he has worked very hard for a very long time to achieve the success he has. This leaves him poorly tolerant of the race victimization narrative that is deeply ingrained in the Democratic party and in the liberal mindset.
On NPR this morning a report on the Democratic "debate" at Howard University presented sound bite after sound bite of Democratic contenders assailing the racist and quasi-racist behavior of our country.
As a welcome antidote to such pandering, in his New York Times piece today, Don’t Mourn Brown v. Board of Education, Juan takes issue with the more typical story line that the Supreme Court's decision to limit the use of race in assigning schools to promote diversity is a disastrous step back to a racist past:
Desegregation does not speak to dropout rates that hover near 50 percent for black and Hispanic high school students. It does not equip society to address the so-called achievement gap between black and white students that mocks Brown’s promise of equal educational opportunity.
And the fact is, during the last 20 years, with Brown in full force, America’s public schools have been growing more segregated — even as the nation has become more racially diverse. In 2001, the National Center for Education Statistics reported that the average white student attends a school that is 80 percent white, while 70 percent of black students attend schools where nearly two-thirds of students are black and Hispanic.
....
Racial malice is no longer the primary motive in shaping inferior schools for minority children. [Emphasis mine-SW] Many failing big city schools today are operated by black superintendents and mostly black school boards.
And today the argument that school reform should provide equal opportunity for children, or prepare them to live in a pluralistic society, is spent. The winning argument is that better schools are needed for all children — black, white, brown and every other hue — in order to foster a competitive workforce in a global economy.
If he keeps this up, his subscription to the Democrat's Talking Points will be in jeopardy. If enough liberals begin to believe such heretical ideas, our democracy will never be the same... but I suppose that would be too much to hope for.
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