Category: Leftism – Statism – Democracy

This Isn’t News

This has been blogged before, but it bears repeating:

Reuters Editor’s Email ‘Sad But Revealing,’ Pro-Life Group Says



(CNSNews.com) – A Reuters news service editor sent an e-mail to a pro-life group last week, criticizing the group’s stance on abortion as well as its support of the Bush administration….

According to the National Right to Life Committee, the email came “out of the blue” from Todd Eastham, a news editor for Reuters. Eastham was responding to a press release that the National Right to Life Committee sent to hundreds of news outlets after a federal judge in New York struck down a ban on partial birth abortion.

Eastham’s email read as follows: “What’s your plan for parenting & educating all the unwanted children you people want to bring into the world? Who will pay for policing our streets & maintaining the prisons needed to contain them when you, their parents & the system fail them? Oh, sorry. All that money has been earmarked to pay off the Bush deficit. Give me a frigging break, will you?”

Douglas Johnson, the National Right to Life Committee’s legislative director, called it “sad but revealing to see an editor for a major news service so casually and gratuitously express such blatant hostility to both the Bush administration and to the right to life of unborn children….

At the bottom of Eastham’s email is a statement that reads: “Any views expressed in this message are those of the individual sender, except where the sender specifically states them to be the views of Reuters Ltd.”

That “boilerplate material” invites Eastham’s readers to visit the Reuters website, Johnson noted. Johnson said he did visit the website, where he found a Reuters’ editorial policy, which said, “Reuters journalists do not offer their own opinions or views.”…

Normally they slip their opinions and views into the articles they write for Reuters, but with no more subtlety than Eastham’s email.

Entertain Me!

Michael J. Copps, a Democrat member of the Federal Communications Commission, believes

our broadcast media owe us more coverage of an event that remains an important component of the presidential campaign. Yet tonight, if people around the country tune in to the commercial broadcast TV networks, most will not see any live convention coverage. That’s not right.

Let’s remember that American citizens own the public airwaves, not TV executives. We give broadcasters the right to use these airwaves for free in exchange for their agreement to broadcast in the public interest. They earn huge profits using this public resource. During this campaign season broadcasters will receive nearly $1.5 billion from political advertising.

Where to begin? Let’s start with fundamentals and go from there:

1. American citizens don’t own the public airwaves. The federal government, acting through the FCC, regulates the airwaves in the mistaken belief that chaos would ensue if the airwaves weren’t regulated. If the FCC didn’t regulate the electromagnetic media, the users of the media would regulate themselves, just as surfers regulate themselves.

2. How much money broadcasters make is therefore none of the FCC’s business.

3. What broadcasters broadcast is therefore none of the FCC’s business.

4. Broadcasters should broadcast in order to maximize their profits. A concept that happens (through the magic of the “invisible hand”) to serve the interests of consumers.

If Copps thinks that people who watch political conventions actually learn anything they can’t learn by watching or listening to news programs, reading newspapers and magazines, surfing the web, and — best of all — reading political blogs of all persuasions, then Copps is a fool. But we already knew that, didn’t we, when he said that a convention is an “event that remains an important component of the presidential campaign.” That’s true only in the sense that a convention affords a major party the opportunity to grab some free advertising for its candidate.

Copps is more than a fool, however; he’s a paternalistic fool. He’s itching to force broadcasters to cover conventions because watching them would be good for us, the unwashed masses who, obviously, don’t know where to turn for our political news.

Well, Copps’s term as commissioner expires June 30, 2005. So, if Bush wins re-election, Copps won’t be around the FCC much longer.

Lame Protest of the Day

Here’s a member of “Billionaires for Bush” mocking Republicans for their purported monopoly on rich adherents:

Of course, there are some real billionaires for Kerry (including George Soros, Ted Turner, and Warren Buffet), and a bunch of Hollywood fat-cats who aren’t living on food stamps. In fact, most of the wealthiest zip codes in the nation are Democrat bastions. It just proves, once again, that you don’t need a lot of sense to make a lot of cents.

Inflaming the Base

This site is trying to pretend it’s for GWB. But it’s so obviously phony that only those who are truly stupid or psychotically anti-Bush could believe it’s a pro-Bush site. In his zeal to ban smear ads (or is he really just engaging in another clever campaign ploy?), Bush shouldn’t attack this site. He should spread the word about it. It will inflame his base to new heights of enthusiasm for his re-election.

The Face of America

I’m reminded of something unpleasant in my past by this post at The American Thinker:

PC discrimination in the U.K.

Like the United States, Great Britain is in the throes of multiculturalism and political correctness. The latest evidence comes from racial discrimination complaints filed by London police. Half of them have been filed by Caucasian officers, alleging they are being unfairly passed over, as the police rushes to make itself “look like” the population it serves.

In order to achieve the desired racialist outcome, it is contended that 80% of the new hires will have to be non-white. That sort of nonsense is what happens when population demographics change rapidly, and it is assumed that all institutions should automatically reflect the new racial profile.

I once worked for a CEO who was a blatant Democrat; he carried his political prejudices in his briefcase. He insisted that the workforce at our tax-funded think-tank should reflect “the face of America.” No amount of logic could persuade him that we owed it to taxpayers to fill jobs with the best available candidates rather than satisfy his pseudo-egalitarian urges. (I say pseudo-egalitarian because upon becoming CEO one of his first acts was to double the already ample size of the CEO’s office.) In particular, no amount of logic could persuade him that unless we drastically reduced the quality of our professional staff (traditionally freighted with Ph.D.s), we would never achieve anything resembling “the face of America” among the professionals upon whom our reputation depended. We had these conversations with predictable regularity, and they always ended in a stalemate.

Luckily, our think-tank was merely in the business of producing analysis of doubtful usefulness and influence. Police forces and armies, on the other hand, have real work to do. It’s scary when that work is undermined by political correctness.

Favorite Posts: Affirmative Action and Race

Democracy, Is It for the Masses?

That’s the subtext of a piece in The New Yorker, with the title “The Unpolitical Animal”, by Louis Menand. Some excerpts:

Skepticism about the competence of the masses to govern themselves is as old as mass self-government. Even so, when that competence began to be measured statistically, around the end of the Second World War, the numbers startled almost everyone. The data were interpreted most powerfully by the political scientist Philip Converse, in an article on “The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics,” published in 1964. Forty years later, Converse’s conclusions are still the bones at which the science of voting behavior picks.

Converse claimed that only around ten per cent of the public has what can be called, even generously, a political belief system. He named these people “ideologies,” by which he meant not that they are fanatics but that they have a reasonable grasp of “what goes with what” -— of how a set of opinions adds up to a coherent political philosophy….

Just because someone’s opinions don’t square with what a political scientist recognizes as a political ideology doesn’t mean that those opinions aren’t coherent by the lights of some more personal system of beliefs. But Converse found reason to doubt this possibility….

All political systems make their claim to legitimacy by some theory, whether it’s the divine right of kings or the iron law of history. Divine rights and iron laws are not subject to empirical confirmation, which is one reason that democracy’s claims have always seemed superior. What polls and surveys suggest, though, is that the belief that elections express the true preferences of the people may be nearly as imaginary. When you move downward through what Converse called the public’s “belief strata,” candidates are quickly separated from ideology and issues, and they become attached, in voters’ minds, to idiosyncratic clusters of ideas and attitudes.

In the face of this evidence, three theories have arisen. The first is that electoral outcomes, as far as “the will of the people” is concerned, are essentially arbitrary. The fraction of the electorate that responds to substantive political arguments is hugely outweighed by the fraction that responds to slogans, misinformation, “fire alarms” (sensational news), “October surprises” (last-minute sensational news), random personal associations, and “gotchas.”…

A second theory is that although people may not be working with a full deck of information and beliefs, their preferences are dictated by something, and that something is élite opinion….

The third theory of democratic politics is the theory that the cues to which most voters respond are, in fact, adequate bases on which to form political preferences. People use shortcuts—the social-scientific term is “heuristics” -— to reach judgments about political candidates, and, on the whole, these shortcuts are as good as the long and winding road of reading party platforms, listening to candidate debates, and all the other elements of civic duty….

The principal shortcut that people use in deciding which candidates to vote for is, of course, the political party. The party is the ultimate Uncle Charlie in American politics. Even élite voters use it when they are confronted, in the voting booth, with candidates whose names they have never seen before….

Of course, if Converse is correct, and most voters really don’t have meaningful political beliefs, even ideological “closeness” is an artifact of survey anxiety, of people’s felt need, when they are asked for an opinion, to have one. This absence of “real opinions” is not from lack of brains; it’s from lack of interest….

And whence the lack of interest?

First, the rise of the professional political class and its support system of allied interest groups has taken most decisions out of the hands of the typical voter. It’s like the workplace: most of the work gets done by a minority of workers. Why take an interest when what you do matters little to the outcome?

Second, the rise of the professional political class and its support system of allied interest groups has dragged government into matters in which government shouldn’t be involved, such as social security and redistributive taxation. Such issues are too complex for most professional politicians and academicians, the majority of whom are mindlessly predisposed toward tinkering with the economy. So, it’s really a matter of blind elites trying to lead blind masses.

No wonder voters take shortcuts. It enables them to spend more time on things they can do something about: making a living, raising a family, and having fun.

The Folly of Being Nonjudgmental

It’s a sin to be judgmental in the brave (old) world of liberal wimp-speak. Mustn’t judge other cultures by our standards. Mustn’t condemn Islamists out of hand, they have a point of view and “legitimate” grievances (sorry, I just have to use quotation marks there). Consider the causes of crime (broken homes, poverty, etc.) and be less judgmental about criminals. And on, and on.

It makes me wonder what it would take to get a hemorrhaging cardiac organ (bleeding heart) to judge anyone. How about when she’s in line to buy tickets for a Bruce Springsteen concert; would she judge me if I cut in line ahead of her? How about when he’s cruising down the freeway in his SUV, while talking on his cell phone, and I cut across his bow as I spot the exit I’ve been looking for; would he judge me then? You get the idea.

It’s easy to say “don’t be judgmental” until someone violates your personal space. But if you wait until that moment to be judgmental, you will have waited too long.

What’s in a Name?

Many liberals have stopped calling themselves “liberal” in favor of “progressive” — a term that hasn’t yet become a vile epithet. Let’s help it along.

A “liberal” is a person who is liberal with others’ money and liberal in the use of the law to tell others how to live their lives.

A “progressive” is a person who believes in progressively raising taxes, as an excuse for spending others’ money, and who believes in progressively broadening the power of government to tell others how to live their lives.

How’s that for a start?

Look in the Mirror

Liberals want to regulate everything because they don’t trust other people to do the right thing for themselves or for others. Why don’t they trust other people? What do they know about human nature that I don’t know? Well, they know their own nature, that’s for sure. I must conclude, therefore, that liberals want to regulate everything because they don’t trust themselves to do the right thing for themselves or for others.

(Of course, there’s also noblesse oblige and guilt.)

Liberal Condescension…

…is no secret. But I couldn’t resist linking to this commentary about it at Tech Central Station (which today has more than its usual number of good reads). Here’s Joshua Elder, writing about “Liberal Noblesse Oblige”:

…[A]s Robert Fisk, Middle East correspondent for the left-wing British newspaper The Independent, put it after being viciously beaten by a group of thugs at the height of the recent Afghan War: “I couldn’t blame them for what they were doing. In fact, if I were the Afghan refugees of Kila Abdullah, close to the Afghan-Pakistan border, I would have done just the same to Robert Fisk. Or any other Westerner I could find.”

It’s a rare man (heck, a rare masochist) who can receive a savage, unprovoked beating and come to the conclusion that he probably deserved it. I attended a lecture by this unique individual two years ago at Northwestern University and took the opportunity to ask him if he would still consider the attack justified had the roles been reversed — if it had been an Arab journalist attacked by a group of grieving American relatives of those who died in the World Trade Center. He told me no, that Americans were too educated and too civilized to ever do something like that.

And there you have it. Americans (and Brits like Fisk, presumably) have agency. They are in control of their own destinies and can be held morally accountable for their own actions. Afghans, Pakistanis and all the other poor, brown-skinned people from that part of the world, however, simply cannot. They aren’t like us, you see. Nor do they matter except for the way that their failures reflect negatively upon us. Their failures are our failures and therefore our responsibility.

Unsurprisingly, the French have a term for this; they call it noblesse oblige. Defined as “the inferred obligation of people of high rank or social position to behave nobly or kindly toward others,” it is the philosophical cornerstone of the entire modern liberal project — at home as well as abroad. Leftists are self-anointed saviors, enlightened elites that will bring about a new golden age for mankind if only the American people will embrace their ideas and vote their candidates into office….

Add guilt for being wealthy, stir well, and you have a Hollywood liberal.

Refuting Rousseau and His Progeny

I’ve been pinging on Rousseauvian philosophy in recent posts (here, here, here, and here). Rousseau is the spiritual father of socialism and communism. His modern adherents, who might disclaim socialism and communism by name, nevertheless spout the party line when they claim that we don’t deserve what we have. Their ideas hark back to Rousseau’s The Social Contract, about which Wikipedia says, in part:

According to Rousseau, by joining together through the social contract and abandoning their claims of natural right, individuals can both preserve themselves and remain free. This is because submission to the authority of the general will of the people as a whole guarantees individuals against being subordinated to the wills of others and also ensures that they obey themselves because they are, collectively, the authors of the law.

In other words, individuals will be free only if they surrender their freedom to the “collective will” — which, of course, will be determined and enforced by a smaller group of citizens, whose authority cannot be questioned by the majority.

Latter-day Rousseauvians dress it up a bit by making assertions like this:

[T]here’s no good reason to believe that a system of free-market and private property is anything close to a merit-based system. Some people work hard on worthy projects for their whole lives or take exceptional risks on society’s behalf and nevertheless remain comparatively poor; others, through being lucky or rich, get to be as rich as Croesus. Is Warren Buffet more morally deserving than the firefighters on 9/11? Of course not. He doesn’t think so, they don’t think so, we don’t think so….

Warren Buffet can speak for himself. Those who remain comparatively poor can speak for themselves. And the “we” at Crooked Timber can speak for themselves. But they cannot speak for me or the millions like me who disagree with them. They are promoting a view of the world as they would like to see it — nothing more, nothing less.

And therein lies the refutation of their worldview. There is no Rousseauvian social contract. There cannot be when millions of us reject the concept. Rousseau’s self-appointed priests and acolytes may judge us to their heart’s content, but their judgments are meaningless because we, the millions, do not accept those judgments.

The Social(ist) Contract

In two earlier posts (here and here) I tore into a blogger for his presumption that we don’t deserve what we earn. The blogger is, apparently, a proponent of Rousseau, who penned The Social Contract. Here are some tidbits about The Social Contract from Wikipedia:

Perhaps Rousseau’s most important work is The Social Contract, which outlines the basis for a legitimate political order. Published in 1762 and condemned by the Parlement of Paris when it appeared, it became one of the most influential works of abstract political thought in the Western tradition. Building on his earlier work, such as the Discourse on Inequality, Rousseau claimed that the state of nature eventually degenerates into a brutish condition without law or morality, at which point the human race must adopt institutions of law or perish. In the degenerate phase of the state of nature, man is prone to be in frequent competition with his fellow men whilst at the same time becoming increasingly dependent on them. This double pressure threatens both his survival and his freedom. According to Rousseau, by joining together through the social contract and abandoning their claims of natural right, individuals can both preserve themselves and remain free. This is because submission to the authority of the general will of the people as a whole guarantees individuals against being subordinated to the wills of others and also ensures that they obey themselves because they are, collectively, the authors of the law. Whilst Rousseau argues that sovereignty should thus be in the hands of the people, he also makes a sharp distinction between sovereign and government. The government is charged with implementing and enforcing the general will and is composed of a smaller group of citizens, known as magistrates…Much of the subsequent controversy about Rousseau’s work has hinged on disagreements concerning his claims that citizens constrained to obey the general will are thereby rendered free….

Rousseau was one of the first modern writers to seriously attack the institution of private property, and therefore is often considered a forebearer of modern socialism and communism (see Karl Marx, though Marx rarely mentions Rousseau in his writings). Rousseau also questioned the assumption that the will of the majority is always correct. He argued that the goal of government should be to secure freedom, equality, and justice for all within the state, regardless of the will of the majority….[emphasis added]

In other words, the magistrates decide what’s best for the people. As I said before, “there’s a philosophy that’s fit for (dare I say it?) Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russian, and Mao’s China.” I rest my case.

Aha!

In the previous post I suggested that a certain Chris Bertram was either omniscient or arrogant, and I pointed out that his line of thinking empowers the beast of the state.

Well, it turns out that Bertram is a member of the Rousseau Association. There’s a link on the Association’s site to a biography of Rousseau. It seems that Bertram, who presumes to judge whether we deserve what we have, emulates Rousseau in his arrogance, pretensions to omniscience, and willingness to entrust all to the state:

Rousseau reacted against the artificiality and corruption of the social customs and institutions of the time. He was a keen thinker, and was equipped with the weapons of the philosophical century and with an inspiring eloquence. To these qualities were added a pronounced egotism, self-seeking, and an arrogance that led to bitter antagonism against his revolutionary views and sensitive personality, the reaction against which resulted in a growing misanthropy. Error and prejudice in the name of philosophy, according to him, had stifled reason and nature, and culture, as he found it, had corrupted morals. In Emile he presents the ideal citizen and the means of training the child for the State in accordance with nature, even to a sense of God. This “nature gospel” of education, as Goethe called it, was the inspiration, beginning with Pestalozzi, of world-wide pedagogical methods. The most admirable part in this is the creed of the vicar of Savoy, in which, in happy phrase, Rousseau shows a true, natural susceptibility to religion and to God, whose omnipotence and greatness are published anew every day. The Social Contract, on the text that all men are born free and equal, regards the State as a contract in which individuals surrender none of their natural rights, but rather agree for the protection of them. Most remarkable in this projected republic was the provision to banish aliens to the state religion and to punish dissenters with death. The Social Contract became the text-book of the French Revolution, and Rousseau’s theories as protests bore fruit in the frenzied bloody orgies of the Commune as well as in the rejuvenation of France and the history of the entire Western world.

Ah, yes, “training the child for the State in accordance with nature,” and “banish[ing] aliens to the state religion and…punish[ing] dissenters with death.” Now, there’s a philosophy that’s fit for (dare I say it?) Hitler’s Germany, Stalin’s Russian, and Mao’s China — speaking of “frenzied bloody orgies.”

Who Decides Who’s Deserving?

I explained why we deserve what we have after being inspired to do so by Will Wilkinson’s Tech Central Station essay “Meritocracy: The Appalling Ideal?”. Now, Chris Bertram at Crooked Timber takes Wilkinson to task over a technical issue, which is whether the idea that we don’t deserve what we have can be attributed to John Rawls. Who cares? Stick to the point.

Bertram actually concedes the point that we deserve what we have when he says:

There does seem to be a psychological need for those who have profited from the system to be comforted by the idea that they deserve what they have. (Maybe some of them even do deserve what they have!)

Bertram gives away the game in the parenthetical comment. If “some of them” deserve what they have, which ones do and which ones don’t? If Bertram pretends to know the answer he is either delusional (thinks he’s God) or arrogant (thinks he knows who’s deserving and who isn’t). Or perhaps he has a formula for deciding who’s deserving and who isn’t: If you make more than, say, $200,000 a year you’re not deserving, but if you make a penny less, you’re deserving.

Mmm…as long as we’re being arbitrary, which Bertram is apparently willing to be, let’s try this definition of “deserving”: If you believe that all people aren’t deserving of what they have, then obviously you aren’t deserving of what you have. Your income will therefore be taxed at 100 percent, for redistribution to the deserving masses. Well, that’s how much sense he makes.

To quote my earlier post, here’s my take on the matter:

There are many, many, many people whose IQs are lower than mine but who have earned far more than me and who live far more lavishly than me. Do I begrudge them their earnings and lavish living? Not a bit. Not even dumb-as-doorknob Hollywood liberals whose idea of an intellectual conversation is to tell each other that Bush is a Nazi.

Unlike Chris Bertram, I don’t presume to judge whether people are deserving of what they have. That’s the difference between socialists like Bertram (well, he talks like one) and libertarians like me. And it’s an important difference, because once you let the state (who else?) decide who’s deserving and who’s not deserving, you have ceded omnipotence (if not omniscience) to the state. That’s okay as long as the state is doing things the way you’d like them to be done, but what happens when the state turns on you? Won’t you be sorry that you vested great power in the state?

Lefties like Bertram rail about things like the war on drugs, the Patriot Act, and corporate welfare, to name a few. How do they think such things came about? They didn’t happen overnight. They’re the result of a long accretion of power by the state, which began in earnest in the 1930s, thanks to the Chris Bertrams of that era.

It cuts both ways, laddie. When you loose the beast of the state, you are at its mercy, like the rest of us.

Interesting but Not Surprising

Kevin Hassett, writing at Tech Central Station, reports on Kerry’s budget proposals. The bottom line:

Even with [a] generous accounting, the Kerry spending promises add up to an extraordinary amount of money. Our best estimate is that Kerry’s proposals will add up to between $2 trillion and $2.1 trillion over the next ten years. Since the revenue from his tax proposals relative to the current baseline is actually negative, this implies that the Kerry proposal would increase the deficit by perhaps as much as $2.5 trillion over the next ten years.

It’s not the greater deficit that matters as much as the greater spending. The real cost of government is measured by the resources it commandeers through spending.

I Missed This One

Thanks to Dean’s World, which points to The Queen of All Evil, I learned about this piece of trash that ran in the Austin American-Statesman about five weeks ago:

Ritter: The messages we send when moms stay home

By Gretchen Ritter

LOCAL CONTRIBUTOR

Tuesday, July 06, 2004

…It is time to have an honest conversation about what is lost when women stay home. In a nation devoted to motherhood and apple pie, what could possibly be wrong with staying home to care for your children?

Several things, I think.

It denies men the chance to be involved fathers…. [Not really. They don’t work all the time. Or should all fathers be stay-at-home dads?]

…It is not selfish to want to give your talents to the broader community — it is an important part of citizenship to do so, and it is something we should expect of everyone. [Working for pay isn’t an act of citizenship, it’s an economic act. Those mothers who choose not to do so are making a deliberate choice to raise their children rather than have them raised by strangers. That’s a rather decisive act of citizenship, if you’re looking for one.]

Full-time mothering is also bad for children. It teaches them that the world is divided by gender… [Only if they never see their fathers.]

…Our sons and daughters should grow up thinking that raising and providing for a family is a joint enterprise among all the adults in the family. [So, mothers who stay at home don’t “provide” for their families? Is that it? That’s hardly a good feminist attitude.]

…Many middle-class parents demand too much of their children. We enroll them in soccer, religious classes, dance, art, piano, French lessons, etc., placing them on the quest for continuous self-improvement. Many of these youngsters end up stressed out…. [She’s probably speaking from first-hand experience because she has no idea how it’s done by parents who really give a hoot about their children.]

Finally, the stay-at-home mother movement is bad for society. It tells employers that women who marry and have children are at risk of withdrawing from their careers, and that men who marry and have children will remain fully focused on their careers, regardless of family demands. Both lessons reinforce sex discrimination. [Well, then, let’s force all mothers to go to work.]

This movement also privileges certain kinds of families, making it harder for others. The more stay-at-home mothers there are, the more schools and libraries will neglect the needs of working parents, and the more professional mothers, single mothers, working-class mothers and lesbian mothers will feel judged for their failure to be in a traditional family and stay home their children. [I’d say that’s their problem. If they can’t stand the heat, they ought to get into the kitchen.]

By creating an expectation that mothers could and should stay home, we lose sight of the fact that most parents do work — and that they need affordable, high quality child care, after-school enrichment programs and family leave policies that allow mothers and fathers to nurture their children without giving up work. [So in fact most parents (i.e., mothers) do work (an unsupported statement), but it’s an invisible fact (don’t ask me how, if all those mothers are out there working), so that taxpayers (I guess they’re not mothers) don’t realize that they’re not shelling out enough for each others’ child care, etc., etc. That’s about the best I can do with that convoluted piece of “logic”.]

Raising children is one of the most demanding and rewarding of jobs. It is also a job that should be shared, between parents and within communities, for the sake of us all. [Ah so, it takes a village to raise your children, does it Ms. Ritter?]

Ms. Ritter is director of the Center for Women’s and Gender Studies (whatever that is) at the University of Texas and an associate professor of government and women studies (whatever that is). My Texas tax dollars at work. Grrrrrh!

It’s About Time

I predict that knee-jerk “civil libertarians” and various ethnic groups will protest this: U.S. to Give Border Patrol New Powers to Deport Illegal Aliens (from NYTimes.com, free registration required). But the operative word is illegal. The Times explains:

[T]he Department of Homeland Security announced today that it planned to give border patrol agents sweeping new powers to deport illegal aliens from the frontiers abutting Mexico and Canada without providing the aliens the opportunity to make their case before an immigration judge.

The move…represents a broad expansion of the authority of the thousands of law enforcement agents who currently patrol the nation’s borders. Until now, border patrol agents typically delivered undocumented immigrants to the custody of the immigration courts, where judges determined whether they should be deported or remain in the United States.

Homeland Security officials described the immigration courts — which hear pleas for asylum and other appeals to remain in the country — as sluggish and cumbersome, saying illegal immigrants often wait more than a year before being deported, straining the capacity of detention centers and draining critical resources. Under the new system, immigrants will typically be deported within eight days of their apprehension, officials said.

Immigration legislation passed in 1996 allows the immigration service to deport certain groups of illegal aliens without judicial oversight [emphasis added], but until now the agency only permitted officials at the nation’s airports and seaports to do so. The new rule will apply to illegal aliens caught within 100 miles of the Mexican and Canadian borders who have spent 14 days or less within the United States. The border agents will focus on deporting third-country nationals, rather than Mexicans or Canadians, and they are expected to begin exercising their new powers on Aug. 24 in Tucson and Laredo, Tex.

So, it’s better than nothing. But why limit it to illegal aliens caught within 100 miles of a border? Why limit it to illegal aliens who’ve been in the country less than 14 days? And why tell everyone when and where enforcement will begin, unless it’s disinformation?

UPDATE: I’m not going to track all the negative comments about the new policy, but here’s a sample. Repeat after me: We’re talking about illegal immigrants.

More Economic Illiteracy from a Usual Suspect

Today’s NYTimes.com has a story by Edmund L. Andrews, It’s Not Just the Jobs Lost, but the Pay in the New Ones, from which one gleans these tidbits:

The stunningly slow pace of job creation, which sank to growth of just 32,000 in July, has provided new ammunition in an intense political debate over job quality.

For months, Democrats have said that the long-delayed employment recovery was concentrated in low-wage jobs that paid far less than those that were lost. White House officials replied that the available data failed to settle the matter one way or the other….

It may or may not be true. But, so what? The market’s the market. What should we do, appoint a labor-market czar to dictate how many new jobs should be created, what they should be, and what they should pay? That would be a big help.

The Eye of the Needle

“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.” (Matthew 19:24)

Bush Listens to Sermon on Material Wealth. So saith AP via Yahoo! News:

By SCOTT LINDLAW, Associated Press Writer

KENNEBUNKPORT, Maine – A clergyman implored his affluent congregation, including President Bush’s family, to jettison their material possessions….

The Very Rev. Martin Luther Agnew preached Sunday to a packed Episcopal church just down the road from the Bush family’s seaside estate. Its oceanfront parking lot was filled with luxury cars….

“Gated communities,” Agnew said, “tend to keep out God’s people.” But, he said, “Our material gifts do not have to be a wall.”

“They can very well be a door. Jesus says, `Sell your possessions and give alms,'” Agnew said. “I’m convinced that what we keep owns us, and what we give away sets us free.”…

But aren’t the people who live inside gated communities also God’s people, Rev? And what happens to the poor when they get all those alms? Won’t they have trouble getting into heaven? What about putting away childish things, such as tennis and golf, eh Rev?

Material Persons

Daniel Akst sees through those who express guilt about material progress:

Heck, Thoreau could never have spent all that time at Walden if his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson hadn’t bought the land. It’s fitting that getting and spending -— by somebody —- gave us our most famous anti-materialist work of literature. Getting and spending by everyone else continues to make the intellectual life possible, which is why universities are named for the likes of Carnegie, Rockefeller, Stanford, and Duke. Every church has a collection plate, after all, even if the priests like to bite the hands that feed them.