Rock 'Em Part 5

Rock ‘Em V: Night of the Living Dead
“I don’t know whether this sham of an immigration bill is dead or just resting ‘in the shadows’ like a fine upstanding member of the Vampiric-American community.” — Mark Steyn

“The top Democrat and top Republican in the Senate last night said the immigration bill, which stalled last week, will be revived and back on the Senate’s agenda next week.” — “Immigration bill gets 2nd chance”, Stephen Dinan and Jon Ward, Washington Times, 15 June 2007

“It has been established that persons who have recently died have been returning to life and committing acts of murder. A widespread investigation of funeral homes, morgues, and hospitals has concluded that the unburied dead have been returning to life and seeking human victims. It’s hard for us here to be reporting this to you, but it does seem to be a fact.” — Newscaster in “Night of the Living Dead”, 1968

“I’ll see you at the bill signing.” — George W. Bush, 15 June 2007
Truth and Lies: “Follow the Money”

“Some truths are so obvious that to mention them in polite company seems either pointless or rude. What is left unstated, however, can with time be forgotten.” — Robert D. Kaplan, “On Forgetting the Obvious.”

Well, they’re baaack. You know, THEM: The Grand Bargainers, the rapacious Amnesty Conspiracists, the Senators with their thirty pieces of silver, newly minted by the Chamber of Commerce. They’re back, led by the Hacendado-in-Chief, Jorge Boosh and they ain’t taking “no” for an answer. Like the folks in Night of the Living Dead, we can only wonder, “How many times have we got to kill this thing?”

Self-described Republican “rodent” Trent Lott is angry they’re having to do mouth-to-mouth on this corpse of a bill. Complained Lott, “Senators on both sides are being pounded by talk radio,” and Lott seems to know just what to do about that:
“Comments by Republican senators on Thursday suggested that they were feeling the heat from conservative critics of the bill, who object to provisions offering legal status. The Republican whip, Trent Lott of Mississippi, who supports the bill, said: ‘Talk radio is running America. We have to deal with that problem.’ At some point, Mr. Lott said, Senate Republican leaders may try to rein in ‘younger guys who are huffing and puffing against the bill.’ “Senate Leaders Agree to Revive Immigration Bill.” New York Times, 15 Jun 2007

So now we have Republicans signing on to The “Fairness” Doctrine? My, the Imperial Senate must really be irritated at us disrespectful types who don’t know when to sit down, shut up, take our medicine and love them for it. I talked with one hapless Republican Kool-Aid drinker from Mississippi the other day who was mystified at his Senator’s behavior. “How can he do this?” he wailed. “Doesn’t he get that it’s (illegal immigration) tearing our party and this country apart? Why is he siding with Teddy Kennedy on something that is so WRONG for this country?” To which I replied, “Matthew 26, verses 14 to 16.”

“Then one of the Twelve–the one called Judas Iscariot–went to the chief priests and asked, ‘What are you willing to give me if I hand him over to you?’ So they counted out for him thirty silver coins. From then on Judas watched for an opportunity to hand him over. “

I’m sorry folks. Nothing else explains this kind of Republican behavior. “Follow the money,” goes the investigatorial truism. The Democrats don’t want money, of course, they want power. Let’s be specific, they want the votes which translate into power. The money can come later for them. Like Lenin, they are content to let the “useful idiots” like Lott, the Rodent Republicans and the National Chamber of Commerce sell the rope by which they — and us — will be hung.

“What the powerful want: A consensus exists among the powerful and politically connected of both parties that the 12-20 million illegals currently in residence must be given some sort of papers, if only to protect the businesses, large and small, which depend on their low cost labor. Democrats see a future voting constituency, charities and government agencies see more clients and more funding for their services, and some unions see more members. Republicans fear harming the economy with labor shortages and futilely hope to avoid being branded racists.” — Thomas Lifson, “No Grand Schemes,” The American Thinker, 12 June 2007

Howard Fineman thinks he knows where Bush’s motivation comes from:
“Though I’ve never heard him use the term, my guess is that George W. Bush sees himself as a Hacendado, an estate owner in Old Mexico. That would give him a sense of Southwestern noblesse, duty-bound not just to work ‘his’ people, but to protect them as well. His advisor, Carlo Rove, has explained that a system called “democracy” now gives peasants something called “the vote.” It would be shrewd, Rove said, for Hacendado to grant their workers citizenship. That’s the best explanation I have for why Bush is in the midst of what may be a suicide mission on immigration policy “embarrassing for him and ruinous for his party. Long ago, when he was running for governor, Bush told me that he was a ’southwestern’ Republican, not a ’southern’ one. As a son of the Southwest, he wants employers to have access to all of that cheap labor, but wants to make the system more orderly, at least not cruel. He hopes (as he did as governor) to get credit for wisdom. It infuriates Bush when people “ in his own party, no less “ are not grateful for what he sees as an act of heartfelt, enlightened generosity and foresighted management. So he sounded like the Texas gunslinger he pretended to be as a kid when he squared off against GOP foes of his sweeping immigration proposal. His timing was perfect, as in wrong, just as he was preparing to attend the Senate Republicans’ weekly luncheon on the Hill. ‘I’ll see you at the bill signing,’ he said, chestier than usual. He might live to regret such playground bravado.” — Howard Fineman, “Bush calling for GOP showdown”, MSNBC, 12 June 2007

Trust and Treachery: “The Business End of a Popular Revolt.”
But if the Amnesty Conspiracy is measuring us for our hangman’s noose, “Nothing concentrates the mind so wonderfully as the prospect of being hung in the morning,” as Ben Franklin said. And, as the Amnesty Conspiracy has now discovered, there are many, many of us who refuse to place the noose around our own necks.

“The White House is exploiting American alarm at uncontrolled borders to get its way. This of course has added to the sense of national alarm. They believe the alarm works for them: If you don’t pass our bill we’ll never control your borders–yes, ‘your’–and you’ll suffer! In the general air of agitation, anger festers. People feel powerless. Rage follows, and in this case I believe deep fissures will follow that.” — Peggy Noonan, “The Old Affection,” Opinion Journal, 15 June 2007

“Should President Bush and Congress continue to breathe life into the dead issue of comprehensive immigration legislation, they will find themselves at the business end of a popular revolt.” – Thomas Lifson, Ibid.

I wish that Lifson had been a bit more specific about what form that popular revolt might take. Rocks through the windows of county political party offices, perhaps? Nevertheless, it is apparent that, as Noonan observes, rage is building and will, in time, express itself with consequences, intended and unintended.

You know this is nothing new in American politics. In 1787 we Americans had another little argument about the future of our country. It was called the Constitutional Convention. Then the lines were drawn between the Federalists, including big-state elitists like Alexander Hamilton, and the Anti-Federalists. Among the prominent Anti-Federalists were Virginians Richard Henry Lee, George Mason and Patrick Henry (the latter was so opposed to the designs of the Hamiltonians that although he was elected as a Virginia delegate to the convention, he refused to go because as he said, “I smelt a rat”). Among small state Anti-Federalists were men such as Delaware’s Gunning Bedford, Jr. In the event, the refusal of the Anti-Federalists to go along with several of the Federalists’ proposals led to the adoption of the Bill of Rights as a counterbalancing of power in favor of the individual rights of the people and of the sovereign states.

At the convention, the small states themselves “smelt a rat” in one of the Federalist proposals for proportional representation that would benefit the big states. Delaware’s delegates were under instructions from their legislature not to compromise on the requirement of one vote per State in the Congress. The debate became acrimonious and even threatening. The emphases below were delivered in the original by Bedford with great vehemence.

“The larger states proceed as if our eyes were already blinded. Impartiality, with them, is already out of the question. . . notwithstanding they endeavor to amuse us with the purity of their principles and the purity of their intentions . . . Pretenses to support ambition are never wanting. . . I do not, gentlemen, trust you. If you possess the power, the abuse could not be checked; and what then would prevent you from exercising it to our destruction? . . .Is it come to this, then, that the sword must decide the controversy, and that the horrors of war must be added to the rest of our misfortunes?” — Gunning Bedford, Jr., Delegate from Delaware to the Constitutional Convention, 30 June 1787. Bicentennial Edition of Robert Yate’s “Secret Proceedings and Debates of the Convention, etc. . .” Originally printed in 1821, Albany NY, reprinted Birmingham AL, 1987, p 11.

“I do not, gentlemen, trust you.” Is this not the basis of our own objections to this odious bill today? We do not, we cannot, trust Bush and the Amnesty Conspiracy to defend the borders and enforce this country’s laws, including the Constitution they all swore an oath to uphold. We know this from past experiences over the decades. They have not done so and will NEVER do so, despite all their promises, threats, blandishments and insults. And if that is the case, we must ask the Amnesty Conspiracists again, “If you possess the power, the abuse could not be checked; and what then would prevent you from exercising it to our destruction?”
Principle and Power: “Against others’ malign impulses”

“We’re gonna give you forty acres and a mule. . . Because we’re your friends. And you’re gonna be voters. And you’re gonna vote like your friends do.” Carpetbagger in “Gone With the Wind,” 1939.

What is this rabid thirst for amnesty about anyway? It is first and foremost about power. It is about the power of money to influence the Republicans and about the thirst for unassailable political power on the part of Teddy Kennedy’s Democrats. Having been frustrated on the national political stage for the most part since Ronald Reagan, losing tight elections they feel they should have won, the Democrats are now poised to change, in the blink of an eye, the old rules of the game. Tired of losing the last several homecoming games, Team Democrat is about to open the back service entrance to the stadium to pack the playing field and the RINOs are willing to unlock the gate for them.

Ever hear of “Ya Es Hora”? It means roughly “It’s about time.” This is the name of the campaign to enlist legal Hispanic immigrants to apply for citizenship and, especially, vote.

“Backed by the largest Spanish-language broadcast network in the U.S., a massive campaign by Latino media and grass-roots groups to spur millions of eligible Hispanic residents to become U.S. citizens is showing results that could influence the agenda and outcome of the 2008 election. More than eight million green-card holders” that is, legal permanent residents” are eligible to become U.S. citizens, and the majority are immigrants of Latin American origin, according to U.S. government data. Now, Univision Communications Inc. is using its considerable clout with the Spanish-speaking community in the U.S. to turn this latent voting bloc into an active and potentially potent force. The citizenship drive, which is about to go national, could help turn Latinos into a key electoral constituency in several states. A larger bloc of new Latino voters would likely influence the immigration debate that has been dividing the country. In part because of this, Hispanic voters in recent elections have tended to cast ballots mostly for Democrats.” — “Univision Gives Citizenship Drive Unusual Lift,” Miriam Jordan, Wall Street Journal, 10 May 2007

And then there’s this:

“Thirty years ago Andrea Sbardellati left Argentina for a 15-day US visit and never returned home. Now the head of her own Los Angeles-based company, she has three children and wants to become more politically active in her adopted country. ‘The same kind of political abuse that used to go on in Argentina I am now seeing in the US,’ says Ms. Sbardellati, sitting in an office of the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials, where she is filling out an application to become a US citizen. ‘I’m applying to become a citizen because I want to vote, to make a difference, to have a voice in democracy.’ Just down the hall from where Sbardellati is filling out the requisite paperwork, a room of telephone operators logs inquiries from thousands like her. More than anytime in 10 years, say NALEO officials, the calls and applications are flooding in.” — “Legal immigrants seek American citizenships in surging numbers,” Christian Science Monitor, 26 March 2007
Now if you missed seeing the “same kind of political abuse that used to go on in Argentina” you’re not the only one. Somehow I missed the censorship of the press, the “disappearances,” the death squads and the military dictatorship that Ms. Sbardellati somehow sees in the present-day United States, for that is what Argentina used to be. Even today, it and other South American nations are but a military coup away from the same horrors. But it is the United States that is “abusive?”

Of course, for all this activity to enroll legal immigrant voters, it is currently not necessary to be a legal citizen to vote in our elections:

“U.S. citizens who go to the polls Nov. 2 to decide local, state and national elections are likely to get more help from noncitizens this year than ever before. Beyond requiring applicants to sign a pledge on voter-registration forms affirming that they are U.S. citizens, there is no way to prevent the nation’s estimated 8 million to 12 million illegal aliens from casting ballots in November, area elections officials said. Locally, only Virginia requires voters to provide their Social Security numbers, but the state does not require voters to show their Social Security cards. ‘There is no way of checking,’ said Maryland State Board of Elections Administrator Linda H. Lamone. ‘We have no way of doing that. We have no access to any information about who is in the United States legally or otherwise.’ Nationally, immigration experts said it is likely that illegal immigrants vote, but that only a small percentage does so. ‘Evidence suggests very few illegal aliens vote, but it’s certainly not zero,’ said Steven Camarota, director of research at the D.C.-based Center for Immigration Studies. ‘Illegal aliens don’t come to America to vote, and would generally try to avoid doing so.’ Today, there are roughly 8 million illegal aliens in the United States who are of voting age, he said.” — “Little to stop illegals from voting,” Christina Bellantoni, Washington Times, 24 September 2004.
Mr. Camarota would likely revise his statement somewhat given the stories since 2004 of illegal voters influencing elections in California and New Mexico. But of course, given the great “Amnesty Bargain” that won’t matter any more will it? EVERYBODY will be legal. And everybody will vote. And voting, in a democracy shorn of republican constitutional restraints, is pure, unadulterated power. It is three wolves and a sheep sitting down to vote on what to have for dinner.

“The most important feature of the Jim Crow system, though not the most obvious, was Negro disenfranchisement. In a democracy, people who vote can get themselves treated decently; people who can’t are powerless against others’ malign impulses. Once the federal government had made it plain, most dramatically in Mississippi in 1875, that it would not enforce black people’s constitutional right to vote, it left the way clear for the Southern states, after a time, to take that right away explicitly.” — Redemption, The Last Battle of the Civil War by Nicholas Lemann, New York, 2006, page 184.

Let me rephrase that for today, as if written by a future historian:
“The most important feature of the Amnesty Conspiracy, though not the most obvious, was the functional disenfranchisement of the conservative and libertarian native-born of all races. In a democracy, people whose votes are in the majority can get themselves decently treated, they can even vote themselves money and benefits from the government purse. People whose votes are always and forever in the minority are powerless against others’ malign impulses. They are as powerless as if they lacked the vote at all. Once the federal government made it plain that it did not care what the minority thought (for it could never influence the power equation), it no longer mattered that they had not taken away that right explicitly. They didn’t have to.”
What you must understand is that if this bill passes, within a short span of history, perhaps less than a decade, you and anyone who agrees with you about the primacy of the Constitution and the rule of law will be of no more political consequence to our rulers than a black Mississippi sharecropper was to the Democrat hegemony in the South in 1895. Your opinion will be worth spit in the wind, your life and your property will exist on the razor’s edge of a political boss’s whim and decisions will be made about your children’s education and future without any input from you. The best your children may hope for then is to become Janissaries in the new social order, executing the orders of their “betters” in return for a place to sleep and food to eat.

Rocks or Bullets: “You’re telling us we gotta risk our lives?”

“We may not enjoy living together, but dying together isn’t going to solve anything.” — Helen Cooper, “Night of the Living Dead,” 1968.

What would the Founders like Patrick Henry, George Mason and Gunning Bedford Jr., do if they were faced with that eventuality? For his part, Gunning Bedford already said it: “Is it come to this, then, that the sword must decide the controversy, and that the horrors of war must be added to the rest of our misfortunes?”
One of my many critics in the blogosphere has derisively labeled my desire to see the Sons of Liberty’s rock throwing tactics resurrected in present day as the “Ernest T. Bass theory.” Ernest T., you may remember was the ignorant and obstreperous hillbilly who used to go around getting attention in Mayberry by putting rocks through folks’ windows. When Andy and Deputy Barney Fife intervened, Ernest T. would run off yelling, “You ain’t seen the last…of Ernest T. Bass!” To which Barney Fife observed: “He’s a nut!”

Well, Ernest T. certainly was, and maybe I am too. Maybe it is nutty to think that the American people can influence the Mandarin class on this. Maybe it is nutty to risk jail on a sedition charge just to see if change can be effected short of real violence. Maybe it is nutty to think that at least some of the American people still retain the love of liberty and the fighting spirit of the Founders. Maybe.
But I do know this. Rocks now are preferable to bullets later. And that’s where this going, folks, if it is not stopped. Not now, not tomorrow, but five years, ten years down the road? Certainly.

You know, one of my favorite scenes in Night of the Living Dead, is when Ben, who has been fighting the undead all alone upstairs for what seems to him like ages, discovers that there are others in the house:

Ben: How long have guys you been down there? I could have used some help up here!
Harry Cooper: That’s the cellar. It’s the safest place.
Ben: You mean you didn’t hear the racket I was making up here?
Harry Cooper: How were we supposed to know what was going on? Could have been those things for all we knew!
Ben: That girl was screaming. Surely you know what a girl screaming sounds like. Those things don’t make any noise. Anybody would know somebody needed help!
Tom: Look, it’s kind of hard to know what’s going on from down there.
Harry Cooper: We thought we could hear screams, but for all we knew, that has meant those things were in the house after her.
Ben: And you wouldn’t come up here and help?
Tom: Well, if there were more of us…
Harry Cooper: That racket sounded like the place was being ripped apart. How were we supposed to know what was going on?
Ben: Now wait a minute. You just got finished saying you couldn’t hear anything down there. Now you say it sounded like the place was being ripped apart. It would be nice if you get your story straight, man.
Harry Cooper: All right, now you tell me! I’m not gonna take that kind of a chance when we’ve got a safe place! We lock into a safe place, and you’re telling us we gotta risk our lives just because somebody might need help, huh?
Ben: Yeah, something like that.
“Well, if there were more of us…” Folks, if you’re waiting for reinforcements before acting, they ain’t coming. We’re all that stands between what was and what will be, no matter how dark and bloody a future that is. The Amnesty Conspiracy has made a cold political calculation that you will let them get away with the biggest power grab in American history. A power grab so complete that it will end the Founders’ government of checks and balances and the rule of law. A power grab that will finish the Old Republic for good. It’s time, my fellow Americans, if you wish to remain Americans, to come out of the cellar and grab some rocks. It is time to be Sons and Daughters of Liberty once more.


Mike Vanderboegh
PO Box 926
Pinson, AL 35126
GeorgeMason1776@aol.com