Our Great Illegal Immigration Mythologies. Part One Victor Davis Hanson

https://victorhanson.com/our-great-illegal-immigration-mythologies-part-one/

Myth #1: Mexico is our “partner.”

Joe Biden has recently praised President Andrés Manuel López Obrador as working hand-in-glove with him to alleviate the influx of illegal immigrants crossing into the U.S. from his country. In fact, Obrador is one of the main reasons there have been over seven million illegal entries since Biden took office. Obrador wants illegal immigration. He said as much when he giddily bragged that 40 million of his own countrymen had fled to the U.S. Would not a balanced leader regret the loss of over 30 percent of his current population? He urged such expatriates to vote Democratic, a direct interference in the internal affairs of the United States but ignored by the media since it has found such meddling useful. And why Obrador’s interference in our affairs? Because it is to Mexico’s advantage to destroy the border. Why so? Let us count the ways:

1) Mexico receives an astounding $60 billion in remittances from its citizens and residents in the U.S.—the largest source of its foreign exchange. Consider that weird statistic: Mexico’s main export is not food, oil, natural gas—but its own people, as in exporting human beings! Note especially that our local, state, and federal governments subsidize much of these remittances. Americans provide housing/education/legal/food/healthcare entitlements to illegal immigrants to free up their cash to send back to Mexico. Could we not at least tax the $60 billion at 10 percent? Or at least prohibit those on U.S. public assistance from sending money back to Mexico?

2) Mexican intellectuals and academics talk nonstop of the lost lands stolen by Yanquis, especially in the 1846–48 Mexican War. In their view, demography is doing what the 19th century did in reverse: reclaiming Aztlán by destroying the border. Such irredentism is encouraged by Mexico.

The Great University Reform Debate Should we appeal to norms of academic freedom or engage in a strategy of political recapture? Christopher Rufo

https://rufo.substack.com/p/the-great-university-reform-debate?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Earlier this month, I participated in a friendly debate hosted by Stanford University’s Classical Liberalism Initiative, on the topic of “Academic Freedom and Higher Education Reform.”

I made the case that the modern university has lost its sense of purpose and requires significant institutional reform, even political recapture, to restore the principles of classical liberal education, while my interlocutor, Princeton professor Keith Whittington, argued for a more cautious approach, emphasizing the values of academic freedom, faculty governance, and institutional autonomy.

My belief is that the old right-libertarian solutions, which rely on procedural values, are doomed to fail. In fact, they are responsible, in large part, for the current mess. Rather than continue to pursue this dead end, I believe that we must revive the democratic governance of our public universities and shape them according to the principles and priorities of voters, who elect legislators to govern state institutions in the interest of the common good.

The following are some highlights from this debate.

On the Question of “Who Decides”

Christopher Rufo: These are all political decisions. And I think, in opposition to many of my libertarian friends, that the universities are not overly politicized. The universities are overly ideologized and insufficiently politicized. We should politicize the universities and understand that education is, at heart, a political question. Aristotle presents his theory of education in Book VIII of the Politics. The point of education, he says, is to train citizens for participation in the polis, in political life. And so, libertarian conservatives who would want to retreat are actually abdicating an enormous responsibility. These are public universities funded by taxpayers. This is not a free marketplace of ideas; this is a state-run monopoly on education institutions. And we have a duty and responsibility to use political power to shape them towards serving the citizens, towards serving the public good.

Escape From New York, Etc. Big progressive cities suffer another year of declining population.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/progressive-cities-population-decline-census-bureau-chicago-new-york-san-francisco-e803562c?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

Population loss from big cities slowed last year, the Census Bureau reported last week. Was it trying to bury the lead? The bigger news is how Covid lockdowns, crime and the rising cost of living are causing an exodus from big progressive cities.

According to the latest Census data, New York City lost 468,297 people between April 2020 and July 2022, about 5.3% of its population. That’s more people than live in the city of Miami (449,514). Other big losers include Chicago (81,313), Los Angeles (76,529) and San Francisco (65,522). San Francisco lost a larger share of its population (7.5%) than any other major city.

Population decline in these cities slowed but notably didn’t reverse in 2022 after lockdowns were lifted. City leaders blame remote work, but can you blame workers for not returning to offices when they face high taxes, high housing costs and declining public order? Chicago logged 41% more crimes last year than in 2021, and crime is up 43% so this year.

CME Group CEO Terry Duffy recently revealed that his wife was the victim of a carjacking in broad daylight in Chicago. Citadel CEO Ken Griffin last year cited Chicago’s crime surge as the reason he moved his hedge fund to Miami, after first considering New York City. One colleague had been punched by “some random lunatic” in the head, he noted. Another had been robbed at gunpoint.

Elon Musk Is Right About George Soros—and Not Anti-Semitic The Hungarian-born billionaire has done more than anyone to turn Americans against Israel. By Alan M. Dershowitz

https://www.wsj.com/articles/elon-musk-is-right-about-george-soros-and-not-anti-semitic-hrw-j-street-israel-b7db935b?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

Elon Musk has been accused of anti-Semitism because of his criticism and mockery of George Soros. Mr. Soros is Jewish; Mr. Musk isn’t. But Mr. Musk stands falsely accused. Mr. Soros is an active participant in politics, and his Jewishness shouldn’t shield him from criticism.

Further, no single person has done more to damage Israel’s standing in the world, especially among so-called progressives, than George Soros. His financial support has multiplied the influence of the two major organizations that have done the most to shift the left-wing paradigm against Israel.

One of them is Human Rights Watch, which was founded by publisher and human-rights advocate Robert Bernstein (1923-2019). For years HRW critiqued the denial of human rights by all countries based on two criteria: the seriousness of the violations in any particular nation, and the inability of the nation’s citizens to protest and remedy such violations. But in 1993 Kenneth Roth became executive director and turned HRW into an organization that specialized in demonizing Israel.

By 2009 the Israel bashing had become so severe that Bernstein wrote: “As the founder of Human Rights Watch, its active chairman for 20 years and now founding chairman emeritus, I must do something that I never anticipated: I must publicly join the group’s critics. Human Rights Watch had as its original mission to pry open closed societies, advocate basic freedoms and support dissenters. But recently it has been issuing reports on the Israeli-Arab conflict that are helping those who wish to turn Israel into a pariah state.”

Soros is a lifelong antisemite By James Lewis

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/05/soros_is_a_lifelong_antisemite.html

George Soros is one of the strangest persons ever to achieve both power and celebrity, in my opinion. Because he is genetically Jewish, any public criticism of Soros is instantly followed by attack-dog howling by the leftist media, because Soros pays for many of the radical shock troops of the Democratic Party, and he uses that power to protect his public reputation.

But you can read Soros on himself very clearly, and he is quite willing to confess to actions that would make normal people feel suicidal shame and guilt.

The most famous story is told by Soros himself about his early experiences in Budapest, where he grew up in “an anti-semitic secular family” of Jewish origins. Soros’ birth name was “Schwartz” (“black” in German), not an unusual name, but he changed it to Soros, which sounds like a pun on the Yiddish term for trouble and pain, “tsores.”

That word reminds us of the English word “sorrows” as in Handel’s Messiah, which describes Jesus as “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.”

According to his autobiography, George Soros made his first fortune as a young man in Budapest by selling the (stolen) furniture of Jewish families who were deported to the death camps by the Nazis and their Hungarian allies. Soros makes no secret of the fact that he hates Jews, as his father did before him. He also hates the land of Israel, which is often seen to be the only good thing to emerge from the genocide of the Jews by Hitler and the Nazis.

Elon Musk is therefore not wrong to say that Soros “hates humanity,” as shown by Soros’s life-long pursuit of the destruction of the United States and its most precious values.

Today, Soros may be closer to his goal than ever before, given our Swamp Coup against constitutional government in the United States.

51 People Who Should Never Have Clearances Again By Gregory McCants (Pseudonym)

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/05/51_people_who_should_never_have_clearances_again.html

As a member of the United States Intelligence Community since I was 22 years old, I’ve had, at minimum, a secret security clearance for the better part of 17 years now. I’ve always taken this responsibility seriously, as while working in intelligence, I’ve seen firsthand the disastrous consequences of intelligence falling into the wrong hands, whether it’s a leak on our own side leading to the death of soldiers or information we’ve received because we convinced our enemies to pass data to us that resulted in successful military and law enforcement operations both in the U.S. and abroad.

Getting a clearance is not an easy process, as most folks will attest. Clearances are given only to those who hold a job that requires one (either military or government service, almost exclusively). The process can take anywhere from three months to a year, depending on the type of clearance. I’ve provided this preamble to ensure that readers understand that I do not make my argument lightly. I know the hundreds of thousands of dollars and man-hours that go into investigating, adjudicating, and processing security clearances.

The 51 Intelligence Community professionals who signed a letter claiming the Hunter Biden laptop showed “signs of Russian disinformation” should have their clearances immediately revoked and their access to classified information severed and never again restored. Their blatant disregard for the proper process through which an intelligence investigation is conducted, as well as for national security matters in general, is ground to terminate their clearances immediately.

State Department Official Criticized for Mandatory Pronouns Use in Emails By Eric Lendrum

https://amgreatness.com/2023/05/19/state-department-official-criticized-for-mandatory-pronouns-use-in-emails/

On Thursday, a State Department spokesman clashed with an Associated Press reporter over a new policy at the agency demanding that all employees give their pronouns in emails.

As reported by the New York Post, spokesman Vedant Patel was giving a briefing when he was asked about the “mandatory” pronouns policy by journalist Matt Lee.

“Have you gotten any emails from any of your colleagues before you came out here… since about noon or so?” Lee asked. Patel asked Lee to clarify what he meant, to which Lee asked if Patel had noticed anything new in the “from” line of any such emails. Patel grew increasingly frustrated, claiming he was not aware of any such changes.

“Within the last hour and a half… the State Department’s internal email system — and I tested this, so I know that it’s true —has added pronouns to people’s … not their signature … but to where it says from,” Lee explained. “Why? This is not something that anybody has a choice about, and so I’m wondering why and who made this decision.” Patel responded by claiming that he was not aware of the “phenomenon.”

Lee continued to press Patel, pointing out that there were many cases of people being addressed with the wrong pronouns.

“I don’t have a problem with doing it and if people want their pronouns attached to it, it’s fine,” Lee clarified. “But it should be a choice. Not something the State Department imposes on people, especially if it’s wrong.”

Patel then said he would “look into it,” then promptly left the briefing room.

A subsequent statement by the State Department blamed the pronouns ordeal on an error by Microsoft Outlook.

“The State Department’s Bureau of Information Resource Management (IRM) is aware of the recent issues with user profiles on Microsoft Outlook and working to remedy the situation,” tweeted spokesman Matthew Miller. “This change was unintentional and the bureau is working to correct this immediately.”

Release the Manifesto To demand the release of Audrey Hale’s undoubtedly deranged manifesto is not to “politicize” an act of mass murder. Rather, it is merely to demand the same treatment as similar tragedies in the past. By Josh Hammer

https://amgreatness.com/2023/05/19/release-the-manifesto/

On March 27, a transgender lunatic named Audrey Hale shot up a private Christian elementary school in Nashville, Tennessee. The shooter, who tragically killed three adults and three children before being neutralized by well-trained Metropolitan Nashville Police Department officers, was a 28-year-old biological female who had “transitioned” to a public-facing male “gender identity.” Nashville police also confirmed that the shooter once attended the school herself.

Based simply on those established facts, one might offer a reasonably educated guess as to the likely motive of this horrific school shooting: a one-time Christian seems to have spurned the faith of her upbringing, adopted a vogue new worldview that is in irreconcilable tension with Christianity, and lashed out in one final kamikaze act to vindicate her new paganism and vanquish the foes of her youth. 

The reasonable guess, in short, was—and remains—that this was an ideologically motivated anti-Christian hate crime, an act of domestic terrorism. The veracity of that guess was only bolstered by the revelation, which recently resurfaced on Twitter, that at some point during the murderous rampage, the shooter took precious time to divert from the school, scurry over to the adjacent church, and unload seven rounds into a stained-glass figure of Adam—that is, Adam from Genesis.

Let’s think this one over: Why, exactly, would a transgender former student of a Christian school return to that school to murder innocent Christian children and shoot up a stained-glass representation of no less symbolic a biblical figure than Adam himself? We don’t necessarily need Sherlock Holmes on the case to figure this one out.

In fact, shortly after the slaughter at The Covenant School, Nashville police revealed that the murderer had, in an act all too common in this gruesome genre, left behind a manifesto. But that manifesto has thus far never seen the light of day. In the days following the massacre, as Joe Biden and national Democrats stopped mourning the murdered Christian children and began pleading not to blame the “transgender community” at large, some transgender activists even took to social media to not-so-subtly threaten Nashville police against releasing the manifesto: “Don’t release it, or else.”

Weekend Parting Shot: Dems Bring Their Usual Level of Dignity to the House Hearing By Lincoln Brown

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/lincolnbrown/2023/05/19/weekend-parting-shot-dems-bring-their-usual-level-of-dignity-to-the-house-hearing-n1696732

In case you missed it, on Thursday, the hearing for the House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government happened. And of course, the Democrat legislators who are perfectly comfortable with going after corruption, as long as there is an “R” involved, were on hand to ask questions. Ah, the pageantry! The buffoonery! The baboonery! It was all there for the world to see.

Among the donkeys who rode the Clown Car Express across the screens for C-SPAN and other outlets was Representative Linda Sanchez (D-Calif./Karen). If that name sounds familiar, you may remember Ms. Sanchez as the person who flipped off the Republicans at the congressional baseball game. While managing to keep her hands to herself yesterday, she somehow found a way to embarrass herself even more with a single inquiry. Sanchez was questioning FBI whistleblower Marcus Allen. One may argue that the wheels came off as soon as Sanchez opened her mouth.

It wasn’t bad enough that she stepped on a rake. It’s that she kept stepping on one after another. She knew she had the wrong Marcus Allen, but the harridan just couldn’t excuse herself and yield her time. She just kept talking and talking, hoping that she might find someplace to land. As loathsome and uncouth as she is, even I started to feel sorry for her. She talked her way right off a cliff like Wile E. Coyote. But perhaps Barney Fife said it best: “You’re a regular clown, you are. Why don’t you put a red light on your nose and go in the circus?”

Gorsuch Condemns the ‘Breathtaking’ Use of Emergency Powers During Covid By Jeff Zymeri

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/gorsuch-condemns-the-breathtaking-use-of-emergency-powers-during-covid/

Justice Neil Gorsuch has penned a passionate polemic against the emergency powers that were widely used during the Covid-19 pandemic, saying that while they may have solved some problems, they created many others.

Gorsuch’s statement came in the Supreme Court’s final word on the effort of a group of states to challenge the end of Title 42, which allowed migrants to be expelled on public-health grounds. Last December, the conservative justices blocked the administration from lifting Title 42 and scheduled oral arguments. However, the justices removed the case from the argument calendar in February after the Biden administration announced it planned to end the Covid-19 national emergency. The justices closed the book on the case Thursday, days after Title 42 expired.

Gorsuch dissented in December and was relieved at the Supreme Court’s decision to render the case moot. He wrote that he does not discount the concerns of states like Arizona, a party in the case, about what is happening at the border. However, he said, “the current border crisis is not a COVID crisis.”

According to Gorsuch, the states attempted “to manipulate our docket to prolong an emergency decree designed for one crisis in order to address an entirely different one,” adding that the Court took a serious misstep in granting certiorari in December.

But for the justice, Title 42 was only one part of a much larger problem of emergency powers being misused.