We Need Immigrants by George Leef February 1, 2008 Immigrants: Your Country Needs Them by Philippe Legrain (Princeton, 2007); 374 pages; $27.95. Many years ago, I agreed to be a guest on a talk-radio program originating in California. The host wanted a speaker who would defend immigration. After I explained my position, the host opened the call-in lines, and for the next hour, I was subjected to a relentless barrage of attacks by irate callers. I was called a moron for not understanding that the “invading army” of immigrants was devastating the state. I was told, for instance, that there were places in California where good English-speakers would have trouble communicating because Spanish had become the dominant language. A real disaster. There is even more of that sentiment today. To a greater or lesser extent, just about all politicians subscribe to the slogan “We must control our borders.” The question isn’t whether but rather how severely “we” ...
Lou Dobbs and the Drug War by Jacob G. Hornberger January 22, 2008 Last night, CNN television commentator Lou Dobbs was commenting on the recent death of a Border Patrol agent at the hands of drug dealers along the border. The agent had used his vehicle to try to stop the Hummer that was being driven by the drug dealers. The drug dealers crashed into the agent’s vehicle, killing him, and then drove the Hummer back into Mexico where they escaped capture. Dobbs blamed the deaths on the drug dealers and the so-called open-border policy of the U.S. government, which is one of his favorite rants. What Dobbs fails to comprehend, however, is that he himself, along with other supporters of the war on drugs, are morally responsible for the death of that Border Patrol agent. That is, Dobbs and other drug-war supporters cannot escape moral responsibility for the agent’s death by simply pointing to the legal (and moral) responsibility of the drug ...
Hornberger’s Blog, January 2008 by Jacob G. Hornberger January 1, 2008 Thursday, January 31, 2008 An All-Abiding Faith in the Welfare-Warfare State by Jacob G. Hornberger Among the more amusing political mantras in the presidential race is that of Mitt Romney. "Washington is broken," he declares, inevitably bringing cheers from Republican audiences. It's as amusing as the popular mantra employed by the Democrats: "Change!" They still just don't get it. It's not "Washington" that is broken. It's the welfare-warfare state that Americans have lived under all their lives that is bankrupt in every sense of the term—morally, financially, and economically. People still just don't want to face that harsh reality. For them, the welfare-warfare state is everything. That's why many of them think it's just a matter of changing the identity of people who are running the system. Consider the welfare state. What part of it isn't an absolute mess? Social Security? Medicare? Medicaid? The dollar? Education? Home mortgages? Foreign aid? Every one of them is in crisis. Yet, people continue to pray for a political ...
Hornberger’s Blog, December 2007 by Jacob G. Hornberger December 1, 2007 Monday, December 31, 2007 Bhutto, JFK, and Conspiracies by Jacob G. Hornberger It’s interesting to compare the attitude of the U.S. mainstream press toward the assassination of Benazir Bhutto with its attitude toward the assassination of President John Kennedy. The immediate reaction of the American press (and U.S. government officials) to the Bhutto killing has been a presumption of a conspiracy. Equally ...
The Pomona College Debate on Immigration by Jacob G. Hornberger November 12, 2007 What a great time I had at the immigration debate at Pomona College last Thursday! Since I was debating the president of the “Minutemen,” Marvin Stewart, the event was rife with controversy on campus. You’ll recall that when the debate was originally scheduled last spring, the then-head of the Minutemen, Jim Gilchrist, backed out, ostensibly because he was scared ...
Immigration: Global Warming on the Right by Scott McPherson November 2, 2007 Honest debate on issues such as national health care, free trade, energy policy, and environmental controls is nearly impossible today. Something wicked this way comes, claims the Left, and it trumps any quaint old arguments about freedom and individual initiative. You see, man-made global warming is wreaking havoc on ...
Hornberger’s Blog, November 2007 by Jacob G. Hornberger November 1, 2007 Friday, November 30, 2007 Drug-War Idiocy by Jacob G. Hornberger Mexican officials are all aglow over the seizure of a record 23 tons of cocaine, which they promptly burned in the hope of receiving $1 billion in U.S. taxpayer monies from U.S. officials. When will the American people finally demand a stop to this drug-war idiocy? Some 30 years ago, when I was ...
Hornberger’s Blog, October 2007 by Jacob G. Hornberger October 1, 2007 Wednesday, October 31, 2007 Federal Blackmail, Privacy, and Conformity by Jacob G. Hornberger In today’s FFF Email Update, I have an article about the federal war on telephone privacy, the government program in which certain telephone companies allegedly turned over people’s private telephone records to the feds. A common bromide among some Americans is: “I don’t care what information about my telephone calls ...
Big Government at Home and Abroad, Part 1 by Jacob G. Hornberger September 1, 2007 Part 1 | Part 2 Practically everywhere we look there is a crisis. Public schooling: crisis. The drug war: crisis. Social Security: crisis. Medicare and Medicaid: crisis. Immigration: crisis. Iraq: crisis. Terrorism: crisis. Federal spending: crisis. The dollar: crisis. So many crises! Yet there is a common denominator to all these crises. Focusing on that common denominator provides the key ...
Hornberger’s Blog, July 2007 by Jacob G. Hornberger July 1, 2007 Tuesday, July 31, 2007 More Perversity from the Other Failed War Would you like to read about another perverse outcome of the other failed war that is being waged by the federal government? The New York Times is reporting that California farmers are suffering financial losses arising out of the inability to irrigate their crops. No, the problem does not arise ...
Hornberger’s Blog, May 2007 by Jacob G. Hornberger May 1, 2007 Thursday, May 31, 2007 End Both the War on Terror and the Drug War When President Bush declared his war on terror, I wrote that such a war would be no different than the war on drugs, in the sense that it would be nothing more than a perpetual justification for ever-growing big government. Six years later, there is no end ...
Gilchrist, O’Reilly, and the Cowardice Factor by Jacob G. Hornberger April 9, 2007 A debate on immigration controls vs. open borders was recently scheduled to take place at Pomona College in California. On one side of the debate was a man named Jim Gilchrist, a conservative who founded the “Minuteman Project,” an organization devoted to helping the U.S. Border Patrol arrest, punish, ...
