Logic Times

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Page Two

Ockham's Dull Razor

2: SA Ron

May 21, 2006 3:46am EST

Good piece, but I don't agree with certain points.

First, I don't agree with you shrugging off the idea that these politicians are trolling for new voters (Hispanics).  For the Republicans, this might hold water.  They can't really afford to tick off their base at this point so their behavior is inexplicable to me.  I can only assume that they are looking at future revenue for business, but that is admittedly weak.  The Democrats, while the Republicans are split on this, are pretty united.  And they were united on this from day one.  They know their base isn't going anywhere no matter how much they get ticked off about illegal immigration.  No matter how mad they get, it won't ever equal their hatred for Bush and this administration.  This is a net plus for the Dems no matter how you look at it. Bush is going to give them amnesty, but the illegals will remember which party stood up for them and will vote accordingly.  Please remember that a good number of legal Hispanics are ticked off about plans to seal the border too.

The other thing I didn't agree with was that 'dilemma' business and the politicians knowing something that we don't about illegal immigration. Okay, I was laughing at this.  You mean to say that all the Dems and some of the Republicans know something and they've all managed to keep it a secret from us?  That was a joke, yes?

I found the part about Chavez friendly people being able to topple the current Mexican government interesting.  If this was the dilemma you were referring to, then our refusing to enforce immigration laws and secure the border really worries me.  It would worry me that politicians would be willing to hose the country based on a possibility of that.  Are we really saying that we’ll exchange cheaper gasoline for our Southwestern states?  Just to clear that last statement up, if illegal immigration is not curtailed, I believe that we'll have a third political party in 20 years.  La Raza (or something very similar).   That worries me more than a communist government in Mexico.

Finally, thanks for not bringing Ronald Reagan into this.  If I hear one more "but Reagan gave them amnesty in the 80s" I'm going to throw up.  I believe that Reagan was the best president of my generation.  By a long shot.  However, he certainly wasn't perfect.  His amnesty is one very good example of him not being perfect.

{Aslan: This was pretty funny; I especially like the third paragraph.  Let me start from the top.  We agree pretty much that the Republicans are a mystery because trolling for Hispanics is not going to work given their base.  So we need an explanation for this, do we not?  We’ll return to that.  Next, you are assuming that the Democrats have the discipline to pass up an immediate sure thing by seizing the border issue left in disarray by Bush and friends (wins in 06 and 08) all for future Hispanic votes.  I don’t buy it.  There is some reason that the new third rail of politics is a border fence (maybe an electrified border fence – ha, ha).  

Next, I did not mean to imply that there was a grand secret conspiracy regarding this hot third rail, just that there was an elephant in the room that was not being identified.  A stretch, I admit, but there is much inexplicable behavior to make me reach.

As for your comments about Chavez, communism and oil, I think you vastly underestimate the structural revulsion to communism in our government, a revulsion that sent tens of thousands to their death in Indochina and threatened a whole world during the Cold War. Strange I should point that out to you, given your reminder to me in your last comment about the seriousness of the Cold War. If instability in Mexico – something that very well may be common knowledge in political circles and not discussed on the street – is far greater than we know, we do indeed have a possible answer as to why all the strange behavior.  That said, I also reject the doomsday perspective on this problem, which is a personality characteristic of Betrayed Conservatives; the problem is yet manageable.

As for Ronnie, I love him, too. Plus, you already smacked me for picking on him last post.}

3: Larry Horacek

May 21, 2006 4:16pm EST

One observation has escaped reporting so far. Those who like to reference the wave of immigration in the early 20th century when explaining what we ought to do today fail to mention that for most of that early immigration period, the US did not have a federal income tax, no Medicare, no social security, no social programs, no free medical care.  One cannot fairly compare previous immigration with the problem today because the "game" has changed significantly and public tax dollars are now in play.  To use previous immigration explain what we need to do today goes against Ockham's principle and deliberately obfuscates the best solution.

I also find the highest levels of hypocrisy with those who advocate loudest that we are a nation of laws when they are trying to protect a woman's right to an abortion, yet advocate against the existing statutes when it comes to enforcing immigration laws and our border security.

{Aslan:  As usual, Larry, very good indeed – in particular the observation about how welfare has complicated the issue.}

4: Bill Hoevet

May 21, 2006 10:40pm EST

We could stop illegal immigration most easily by vigorously prosecuting people who hire undocumented foreign workers.  Employers are persecuted by tax laws, safety and environmental regulations of dubious value.  Why not search for illegal employers, list them in the media and send them to jail, taking their treasure in the process for illegally hiring people who have no legal right to be here.  In short, forget your wall and your national guard on the border.  Expand the IRS and set them upon the illegal employers’.

{Aslan: I hate to go after business, but it will need to be a component of the ole "comprehensive" plan.  However, you will NEVER get me to say these three words, "Expand the IRS."}

5: thomaspaul

May 21, 2006 11:24pm EST

Ockham's Dull Razor brought this update.

I like your humor and use of William of Ockham! Delightful reading and the choice about "ongoing illegal immigration" does seem black and white.  I wonder what William would suggest for handling the millions of current illegal immigrants working here.  

"In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin But this is predicated upon the person's becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American...There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag... We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language... and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people."

    -- Theodore Roosevelt, 1907

{Aslan: Great quote. Given that William was a Franciscan monk, he might choose poverty…which I understand can be found in plentiful supply in Mexico.}

6: Kruelhunter

May 22, 2006 10:56am EST

A few comments on your recent illegal immigration essay.  Overall I find your comments clear and largely supportable, as usual.  However you have made a couple of assumptions that I do not believe are necessarily valid.  The first is your seeming belief that politicians, in this case American politicians, must please their constituents in order to keep their jobs.  This belief is demonstrably untrue as is illustrated by the incumbent rate of return in virtually all election cycles.  Not satisfied with one mistaken assumption you next ask that we avoid the most obvious conclusion regarding their resistance to enforcement of our immigration laws in the following:

"And, please do not even present the idea that politicians are trying to cultivate the present or future Hispanic vote; such an effort would require politicians to look past their current constituents and beyond their own careers for the future good of the party, an alien act of selflessness from a graphically selfish creature.  For as sure as Hollywood is brainless, any politician opposing common sense and public opinion on immigration today will be politically extinct tomorrow."

If we examine the past performance of politicians from both parties we find that the one has made its lifeblood the adoption of victimhood as in the civil rights positions of the left.  The response of the other party has traditionally been to emulate those on the left or to ignore the whole question.  With the evident migration of the traditionally accepted victims, blacks, toward the political right the left finds itself in need of a new victim base.  Enter the illegal immigrant population and the attendant human rights brouhaha that can be parlayed into a civil/voting rights cause, a leftist hot button issue for generations.  The political left, by that I mean party and NGO leadership, sees this issue and the fact that virtually all illegal immigrants are brown skinned as manna from heaven.  If the left can replace American blacks with browns, American or otherwise, there is no need to even find new rhetoric with which to brand their opponents as racists bent on persecuting yet another nonwhite minority.

In the process Democrat party leadership fully expects to grant the national vote to illegal immigrants, as has already begun in local elections, while recruiting their voting bloc - we need only read the news stories of Democrat recruitment drives at the recent so called pro immigration rallies to understand the Democrat party's aims.  Meanwhile, Republican leadership, well aware of their error in allowing the left to take credit for forty year old Republican backed civil rights legislation proceeds in it's usual bumbling way to try to show these illegal immigrants that they too are nice people and deserving of their votes since the Republicans are busily attempting to be even more strident than Democrats in their efforts to grant undeserved, and largely unspecified, civil rights.  Thus far the only thing the Republicans haven't done is to duplicate the Democrats recruitment efforts at the various rallies.

The main reason that politicians expect these efforts to succeed is that they, unlike you evidently, are fully aware of just how rare it is that one of their number is ousted during any given election cycle.  Even the most self-centered politician is able to understand 98 percent re-election rates for incumbents and realize that his or her re-election is a virtual certainty regardless of their actions while in office.  I believe that both parties are fundamentally mistaken in their assumption that "their" voters will ultimately support them in their efforts to turn the nation over to foreign invaders.  I hope to see anti illegal immigration rallies and perhaps even violence, hopefully directed at the politicians rather than the illegal immigrants, in response to the politicians arrogance.

I applaud, as usual, your pursuit of truth through logical analysis but but hope that you will try to avoid the incorporation of unsupported assumptions in future analyses.

{Aslan: Ockham’s Dull Razor used hyperbole (and hopefully a little humor in there somewhere) to strip the issue down. Your comment – loaded with excellent points, by the way – demonstrates Ockham’s Razor to the T.  You have cobbled together some truths about the political process to overlay onto politicians alien behavior and postulate a grand synchronized high-risk effort. While incumbents do reign in politics, they remain paranoid creatures of public opinion, all having acquired a heightened appreciation for triangulation from the master, Bill Clinton. There is hardly a politician out there – perhaps a Kennedy – who is so comfortable in their incumbency that they operate independent of public opinion.  And an even more endangered species is the politician who passes on immediate gain for a future payoff, particularly unprincipled Democrats, who would shoot their mother in front of their priest for a 2% bump in their favorable rating.

Illegals will never get the vote; and this effort – if I agreed it was the mainstay of all this political juggling – is too long term for any except the most liberal politician to factor into their thinking, particularly with an winning issue waiting for them in the here and now.  Are you telling me that a Democrat in a close race up in Wisconsin couldn't slam home a victory by endorsing a hard-line wall first platform (that doesn’t matter a hill of beans on the local level)?  That kind of election year capital isn’t left lying around without a reason.

In the end, you may very well be right – it would be a tremendous feat of discipline and coordination by liberals.  This issue has taken turns people smarter than me cannot fathom, and so I played with the variables to see what might be turn up.}

7: Greg H

May 23, 2006 2:54pm EST

I appreciate the point that the "work force is already here."  I hadn't considered that point before.  Sure, there is likely to be further economic growth in the U.S. that will create more jobs for immigrants to fill.  But the remarkable economic climate we have been enjoying lately has been created with existing workers.  Excellent point!

But that's just another reason for me to support STRICT border protection.

I must admit I didn't see this as a simple issue until the mass protests by illegal immigrants.  I had been sympathetic to their cause.  "We are a nation of immigrants” and all that.  How could we have the Statue of Liberty in New York and an Iron Curtain across the southwest?  But when I saw illegal immigrants with upside down American flags demanding American rights and privileges, the issue became extremely simple to me. Now even the economic issue of the need for workers has been de-bunked.

I am so "Hard Core on Border Protection" now!

Let us know when you find out what the simple explanation is for politicians not taking what seems to be the obvious course of action.

{Aslan: I am with you, but I still don’t really know.  Some others making comments think it is all about Hispanic votes, but testing your incumbency against an angry electorate all for some future Latin votes doesn’t make sense to me.}