Dear Future Angry White Men of America:
I would just like to document the fact that this time you can't blame Black folks. This time, it's your own leaders.
JIM LEHRER: Do you read the split in the party the same way?
DAVID BROOKS: Not quite. I mean, there is a split. And there's a split between the business side and the law-and-order side. But there's also social conservatives, like Sam Brownback, who are on the McCain-Kennedy side, because they believe in being good Samaritans, and for other reasons.
And I'm not sure how serious a blow it would be if they passed something like McCain-Kennedy. I think it's no accident that every major national Republican over the past 20 years has basically been where Bush is now — Reagan, Bush, McCain, who's got national ambitions, the big state governors, the senators who have to run in the states.
If you look at the hard-core anti-immigrant House members, they come from districts where the Republicans win 80, 90 percent, all-white districts, safe districts. So they aren't — I don't trust that they're good judges of the party, or of where the country is, or even where the party is. [P6: emphasis added]
Actually, it's always been your leaders...ours just talk and screen folks for entry into their respective political parties.
Mr. Brooks isn't a leader, of course...he is, however, a spokesman or vehicle those leaders use to get their viewpoint out there, trouble the waters, stuff like that. In the same roundtable, Mr. Lehrer says (in reference to possible personnel changes at the White House)
JIM LEHRER: You have tremendous sources within this White House, David. Anybody else going to go?
...so this isn't just an opinion.
No one forced Mr. Brooks to say that. In fact, the version he gave on Face the Nation was more polished, making no mention of the whiteness of those Republicans' districts. But I don't think he thought you were listening. And you weren't...were you?
Now to tell the truth, I think the "throw the immigrants out" contingent are...okay, "wrong" isn't the word I want, because you do get to make the nation you want...you just have to live with the repercussions. And I don't think most in that contingent have thought through the repercussions of what they are asking for (though there is no real answer to comments on the absurdity of implementing a guest worker monitoring bureaucracy when no one seems to know how to make the current system support much lesser demands). And I'm not really trying to make y'all crazy.
Article comments
1 - Joey
Why would I blame black americans? I only blame a corrupt legal system in Mexico, and an ineffcient legal system in the United States. One accepts corruption and graft as the way visa's are handed out. The other refuses or is incapible of carrying out the law that has been legislated.
New law (The Patriot Act) voted on and passed in the house and senate, assures the tax paying American Citizen of the right to protection from threats associated with the new normalcy. Should we expect less? Are we bickering over legality or illegality? Are illegal aliens really breaking the law or are they victims of circumstance? Should we insist, as the law cites, that aliens within our borders be documented through a process? If aliens refuse documentation; why? When I travel to foreign countries, I'm always documented. It's a matter of course. It's how business is conducted, it ensures accountability, it's a system that has been in place worldwide for 200 or so years (maybe). But it is an established practice. Why is it disestablished here? Logistics? Broken infrastructure and process? I'm sorry P6, I don't follow your reasoning, as it lacks clarity of purpose.
2 - P6
I'm not talking about immigrants or immigration law.
3 - Joey
Oh Really?