Washington Post Fact-checker Glenn Kessler finally couldn’t stand it anymore regarding Secretary of State John Kerry’s favorite lie, only trailing me by about nine years. As he was participating as a stooge in President Obama’s improvised vaudeville act regarding his “red line” and Syrian chemical weapons (but then, as Americans, so are we all), Kerry said this in an interview on MSNBC, where he knows any transparent and self-serving lie by a Democrat will be accepted as revealed truth:
“You know, Senator Chuck Hagel, when he was senator, Senator Chuck Hagel, now secretary of defense, and when I was a senator, we opposed the president’s decision to go into Iraq, but we know full well how that evidence was used to persuade all of us that authority ought to be given.”
Now I, for one, am thankful when Kerry, who is not Irish (his heritage is primarily Jewish) * and was elected Senator in Massachusetts using campaign posters with green shamrocks on them, reminds us all why he never became President. This was yet another re-phrasing of the deception he kept hammering during his 2004 campaign—you remember, the one with John Edwards as his running mate, because Kerry is also a magnificent judge of character?—he didn’t support President Bush’s invasion of Iraq.
Of course, he did, and emphatically too. Kessler, who is inclined to go easy on Democrats for the same kinds of deceptions he slams Republicans for (I measure the discrepancy at just short of two “Pinocchios”) decided to give Kerry a full blast with both barrels:
“Many politicians have a tendency to look back at their past statements with rose-colored glasses. But given that Kerry has now twice in recent months made the claim that he opposed the war in Iraq, this is clearly not a case of a momentary slip-up. For Kerry, the uncomfortable fact remains that he voted to authorize the use of force against Iraq, he believed the intelligence that Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and he said there was little choice but to launch an invasion to disarm him. Kerry may have been highly critical of Bush’s diplomatic efforts in advance of the invasion, but that is not the same thing as opposing the war when it started. It’s time for the secretary to stop making this claim. In trying to make a distinction between his vote to authorize the war and his later dismay at how it turned out, Kerry earns Four Pinocchios.”
This is John Kerry. When my late father, a decorated war hero whose World War II service was measured in years rather than months (unlike Kerry), saw the man who came to national prominence by publicly denouncing his comrades in arms still facing peril in the jungles of Vietnam as sadists and war criminals accept the Democratic nomination for President with a staged salute and the tag, “John Kerry, reporting for duty,” he was both apoplectic and incredulous. “Is Kerry really so stupid that he thinks the public will fall for that?” he sputtered.
Well, yes, in fact he was, and is. As Kessler shows, proving that Kerry was a full-fledged hawk going into Iraq is child’s play (and so was Secretary of Defense, then Senator, Hagel: Kerry lied on his behalf, too), yet Kerry persists as if the rest of the public is as willing to distort the truth as MSNBC. He is in a job and in the midst of an international crisis in which the credibility of the United States and its representatives is paramount, and yet cannot muster even the appearance of honesty and integrity.
Kerry’s words also remind us, as almost everything should these days, how little regard President Obama has for honesty, integrity, and least of all, competence, even in such crucial roles as Secretary of State. Loyalty, apparently, is all that matters.
* CORRECTION: In the original post, I misleadingly suggested that Kerry was Jewish. The accurate explanation of Kerry’s Jewish heritage is correctly explained here. He has Jewish roots; his father was the son of a Jewish mother and a converted Catholic son of Jewish parents. One of Kerry’s brothers converted back to Judaism. He is in no way Irish, but a majority of Massachusetts voters thought, and still think, he is. I apologize for not being clear. It is a tangential issue, but those shamrocks have always annoyed me.
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Source: Washington Post
Ethics Alarms 
Jack, Jack, Jack. As you know, I LOVE your posts….but this time you are at the opposite end of the spectrum from Ethics Hero! John Kerry is not Jewish, and never was. His PATERNAL grandparents in Europe were Jewish, converted to Roman Catholicism when they came to the U.S., randomly chose the Kerry name, and the Jewish roots were disclosed by a genealogist writing in the Boston Globe a few years ago. (Kerry claims that’s when he discovered his Jewish roots). His father was Roman Catholic, his mother Episcopalean (did I spell that correctly, oh magnificent editor?); don’t know why you would write that he’s not Irish, but Jewish. True, he’s not Irish; but he’s not Jewish either. Had you left this little aside out of your post, “right on.” Please don’t divert attention from your excellent analysis with such remarks. (And yes, I do understand that you were referring to his deviousness in putting shamrocks on his campaign posters).
Beat me to it. His roots are Hungarian on the paternal side, that home city now located in the Czech Republic. He is also one of the wealthiest Politicians in Congress.. And if he’s elected President, would be the 3rd wealthiest President in our history.
See above. Kerry has strong Jewish roots, but cannot, by typical standards applied today, be called Jewish. Not sure what his wealth has do with anything.
I’ll take the note, and I made the correction. See above. Thanks.
Another way to put it is that if the Mass. Senator who was briefly his colleague, Elizabeth Warren, is a Cherokee, Kerry is at least four times as much Jewish.
I should have been clearer…thanks.
Your correction is still wrong.
Actually, Kerry’s grandmother Ida was also a convert to Catholicism.
This is irrelevant, and misleading insofar as it tends to falsely suggest that your statements have some support in Jewish tradition.
Jewish law says that Judaism is passed along from one’s mother. So even conservative and Orthodox Jews who consider Kerry’s paternal grandparents and father to have been Jews, would still say that Kerry himself is not Jewish.
Many Reform Jews, of course, would accept Kerry as a Jew based on his paternal grandparents, if he self-identified as a Jew. But he does not.
The “four times as much” formulation, as if Judaism is determined by counting the number of grandparents, is nonsense. Maybe that’s how non-Jews count things, but it’s not how Judaism works.
Why you like this kind of quibbling, Barry, I do not know. Honestly, it seem like a deflection tactic and misdirection. 1.) His heritage is Jewish. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. 2) He has deceptively encouraged voters and the public to think he was of Irish heritage. Jewishness is, unlike religious affiliations, an ethnic as well as a religious and cultural designation. I know those in the throes of your particular intellectual malady like such impossible constructs as “if you say you’re Jewish, you are, and if you don’t, you’re not”…”if you say you have a baby in the womb, it’s a person, and if you don’t, it magically isn’t,” etc. And of course, George Zimmerman is white because that’s another way to shoe-horn facts into ideology. Got it. It’s nauseating.
But Kerry’s brother Cameron, based on his heritage, concluded he was Jewish, as related here:
“In 1994 as his brother campaigned for president, Cameron Kerry, known as Cam, traveled to Israel for the first time on what was termed a “private visit” that was arranged by a branch of AIPAC. Accompanying him on that trip was Kerry’s top advisor on Mideast and Jewish affairs.
During the visit he recalled finding out about his family’s Jewish roots and calling up his in-laws to tell them the news.
“I called up Kathy’s parents and said ‘I’m Jewish,’ and they said, ‘Yeah we know’ and I said, ‘No, I’m really Jewish,'” he said in an interview with JTA at the time.”
So Kerry’s brother, based on the same exactly the same heritage as Kerry, concluded HE was Jewish. Frankly, I don’t care…it’s too confusing and technical, and I don’t care who counts what, on what side. I care that John Kerry lied about it, and the people like you try to make excuses for him, while he continues to lie. That I care about very much.
Anyone who want to quibble over the links I have put there is free to do so. They are tangential to the post, and I’ll stick to my interpretation of them. What mattered to Kerry was not how Jews might interpret his background, but how non-Jewish voters might.
I’m not sure what the argument is, here. Judaism (being “Jewish”) is a religious affiliation, not a genetic disorder. As such, it is, and should be, more a matter of personal conviction than birth. Unless, of course, we are talking about the idea of being Lutheran because your parents were. Also silly. Further, why, ethically, would ANYBODY care about his, his parents, 2nd cousins or horses religious affiliation?
Well, obviously his grandparents did, presumably to avoid discrimination and bias. Why? Ask all the anti-Semitics…as the link suggests, Jewish heritage could be ruinous in the 30’s. Being Irish in Boston, however, is a plus, which is why Kerry faked it.
Sorry, Jack. I was replying while you were posting and didn’t get a chance to see what you wrote. I remain, however, unconvinced that he could or could not claim “Jewishness” based on his family’s religious background.
As I said, I don’t care. Madeline Albright certainly claimed to be Jewish based on similar roots, and nobody corrected her, presumably because she was welcome. I care about what it says about Kerry that he intentionally set out to make people think he was something other than he is. Whether he is really Jewish, crypto-Jewish, provisionally Jewish, ex-Jewish or not Jewish at all is ultimately irrelevant. He’s NOT Irish, and however little or much he’s Jewish, he sure qualifies as a Jew more plausibly than as a son of the Auld Sod.
I also fail to see why this is important. We already knew that John Kerry and the truth had only a nodding acquaintance, so what’s the point. He will do and say whatever he has to to make himself look better. That said, anything further seems like beating a dead horse. Why bother?
I can’t believe Jack decided to write a post about ONLY John Kerry’s “Jewishness”. Holy cow! I wish he had written something about his inconsistency, dishonesty and its association with the Obama administration’s thoroughly untrustworthy nature.
Well, the Jewish remark was weird. Anyhoo, an argument can be made that the job of Secretary of State requires dishonesty – as the old joke goes, why can’t I call it diplomacy when I explain to my wife why I’m late coming home – but not easily-checkable personal whitewashing. Sheesh.
Tex, my problem is with trying to compartmentalize Jews as a “culture”. There is no more of a “Jewish” culture than there is a Catholic one. My guess is that he thought he could claim “Irishness” (I made up that term) because it would help him get elected and because “Kerry” is apparently an Irish name. Again, not sure why anybody would believe him about this.
And with that said, I withdraw from the discussion. I am an old guy and 9:00 is my bedtime (South Texas). Manana, all.
Jack, contrary to your claim, I have not said one word here to defend Kerry. (If you think I have, quote it.)
Kerry DID lie by saying (or allowing staff members to say) he was Irish. That was obviously a lie, and I haven’t and wouldn’t say a word to defend it.
The idea that Kerry “lied” by not self-identifying as Jewish is silly and untrue, because Kerry isn’t Jewish. If you don’t understand this, it’s because you’re understanding of Jewish culture seems to be pretty minimal, and influenced more by your current need to score a partisan point than by any actual intellectual interest.
I accurately described what you’re doing, which is what you often do, and no, I don’t think it’s accidental or incidental: you devise a technical rebuttal aimed at deflecting from the central and valid criticism, and worse, the tactic is focused, 100%, on objects of an ethical critique that hail from the Democratic party.
If you agree that Kerry’s deception was unethical, why is my flagging it partisan? It’s not, of course. I would feel the same about Kerry and his habits if he were of any party affiliation. I can point you to literally hundreds of posts pointing out the ethical deficits of conservatives or Republicans, and if you had any nits to pick among them, I must have been in a coma on those days. The commentary here does not support your contention, which is part and parcel of your knee-jerk rescue efforts. I appreciate corrections…I don’t appreciate accusations of bias from someone who worries about whitewashing John Kerry’s actions, but who would never have been heard from if the equivalent criticism was leveled at, say, Newt Gingrich.
I’m confident that if you had mistakenly claimed that Newt was Jewish, and then to justify it said things about Jewish law that are obviously irrelevant to the question of if Newt is Jewish or not (i.e., some conservative Jews would say that his paternal grandparents were Jewish even though they converted), I would also have corrected you.
This is because I’m sincerely interested in Judaism – to the extent that what I do for a living is create children’s books about Jewish culture. (Look me up on Amazon if you don’t believe me).
But this particular, extremely eccentric example aside, you’re correct that I’m more likely to wonder “wait – is what Jack’s claiming true?” when make some amazing-sounding claim about a leftist. This is because I know from experience that your amazing-sounding claims about leftists aren’t always true. (And incidentally, I let plenty of your dubious claims pass without comment.)
Contrary to what you imply, there are many examples of me commenting on something that relates to a central argument of one of your posts. I’ve also more than once posted to agree with a criticism of a Democrat, btw. (Although I don’t claim to be non-partisan. That would be ridiculous – I’m obviously partisan. But so are you.)
You’re half right: you are obviously and apologetically partisan, which is fine, since you have never pretended to be anything but, and do it well. I only appear partisan to you because from your position on the extreme, oxygen-deprive Left, you can’t recognize a genuine objective moderate. Saying that Kerry’s roots are Jewish is hardly “amazing-sounding”—it is, in fact, accurate, and I’ll challenge you to post one of your unexpressed doubts regarding one of my many critiques of the ethics of someone who wouldn’t be praised by Ed Schultz. The evidence of my attention to all ends of the ideological spectrum is right here for anyone to see who cares to and is capable of it. All of your posts here, in stark contrast, go one way only.
I think you meant “unapologetically”?
I deny that “moderate” and “objective” go together. “Moderate” is a political position, and moderates who think that they are ‘objective” – that is, that they’re immune to cognitive bias – because they are moderate are mistaken.
I’d place you as a moderate Republican. I can think of one issue area – lgbt rights – in which you hold what might be called a moderate liberal position. (And good for you!)
There are also some issues you care a lot about which aren’t clearly associated with either side of the partisan divide – protecting child actors, for example.
On other issues, you either leave your precise policy position ambiguous but make it clear you hold the liberal side in what comes across as genuine, passionate loathing (your attitude towards Americans who are pro-gun control, for example).
Or, more often, you are solidly right-wing. There is no daylight at all between you and (say) Paul Ryan on issues like the debt, Benghazi, Voter ID laws, undocumented immigrants, likening media coverage of the President to “totalitarian state propaganda,” Shelby v Holder, Redskins, “death panels,’ Sandra Fluke (it’s commendable that you took the hoax down, but only someone blinded by cognitive bias would have mistaken that parody for a real story in the first place), “climategate” emails, characterizing an Obama speech as a “hate whitey speech,” unemployment benefit extensions, polls were biased against Romney, and I could go on, and on, and on.
Your positions on these issues are not “moderate” positions. They are right-wing positions. And that’s fine – the country NEEDS moderate conservatives, now more than ever! But it seems very odd that you won’t just admit that you’ve taken a side, when the overwhelming majority of your stated policy positions are strongly right-wing.
I mean, there are a handful of issues on which I disagree with the left, too. (See my blog posts about the Orson Scott Card boycott, for instance, or saying that photographers have a first amendment right to turn down gay wedding jobs). But that doesn’t make me a moderate.
Very nice and very subtle (almost successful) diversion from the accusations that are flying. Jack has shown, and rightfully so, that he is OBJECTIVE in his ethical analysis of ALL people, on both sides of the political spectrum. He is able, unlike you, to severely criticize the *ethical* failings of individuals in both parties, or any party for that matter. Your quiet and almost unnoticeable shift away from the behavior of individuals to Jack’s opinions of specific political topics won’t work to accuse Jack of partisanship. Sneaky, but failed.
If you would read Barry’s blog or many of his comments here on this one, you would know that he is frequently critical of the left, liberals and Democrats. Of course, he admits that the overwhelming majority of his comments lean to the left.
Jack tries very hard to criticize both the conservative and liberal sides of the political spectrum equally, but his language gives him away as far and away favoring Republican positions (the use of the term “illegal aliens” is one example). To my shame, Barry is much better than I am about telling Jack when he agrees with him. I usually don’t speak up unless I disagree.
In an effort to correct that, I agree that Kerry is dissembling when he says he was against the Iraq war. I had never heard about the shamrocks–wow.
Yeah…again…like I told Ampersand: The accusations against partisanship in assessing the ethical behavior of individuals is thoroughly unfounded. Being unable to substantiate the claims, Ampersand (and now you) have shifted the discussion to various political policy stances. Jack has demonstrated time and time again, that although his positions are slightly right of center, he is capable of criticizing individuals on all points of the political spectrum.
So a shift of identifying Jack’s specific political leans is immaterial to the accusations of partisanship. Quite the opposite, if it has material bearing, then as a matter of logic, it clearly implies that the definition of “non-partisan” DOES apply to Jack.
“illegal aliens” ???? You mean not using disguised, intentionally deceptive cover terms like “undocumented workers” makes someone a partisan? That’s hilarious. They are aliens and illegally here—using truthful and clear terminology is definitely not a marker of either party. As in “enhanced interrogation”. I call it “torture”—does that give me away too?
You don’t remember the big AP stink about the term “illegal alien” or “illegal immigrant”? That’s correct, the leftist position is that labeling someone honestly (especially if that label is derived from their personal breaking of the law) is partisan.
Yes, it’s Orwellian. The idea of dropping “illegal” is to deceive the public into forgetting that these people, you know, break the law to get here. “Undocumented” makes it sound like they lost their green cards in the mail. It’s lying essentially, and using such terms doesn’t make you a liberal or a Democrat–just a liar.
No arguments there. But who generally hold’s the narrative strings of the AP?
I knew you were going to come back with that, because that is the typical Republican response. “Illegal aliens” is a term the left shuns like the plague, and I would bet not many, if any, Democrats use it.
Typical honest response. If leftism is associated with dishonesty that should be a cause for instrospection.
The only reason the left pretends to abhor that comment is because they need the voting populace to forget the violation of national law and sovereignty that occurred when the ILLEGAL immigration occurred. Why? Because amnesty for all the future democrats is harder to defend if the voters at large don’t like illegal behavior.
I’m pretty bad about that, too. I’m one of those people who is just much more driven by disagreement than by agreement. I’ll try to post agreements more often in the future, however.
No Irish will be claiming Kerry as their own, trust me.
Jack:
No, it’s that the groups representing undocumented immigrants themselves have said, time and again, that they find the term “illegal aliens” offensive. As have groups representing Hispanic Americans. I respect those groups, so I call them what they prefer to be called.
Likewise, it’s happened a couple of times that I’ve been talking to a Conservative who says they want to be called conservative and not “Republican,” or an evangelical who tells me they prefer evangelical to “fundamentalist,” and I always abide by their request for the duration of the discussion. It’s just basic civility.
I don’t buy the “it’s a lie” nonsense.
1) Everyone who has paid any attention to immigration policy knows full well that “illegal alien” and “undocumented immigrant” are terms for the same group of people. No one who uses the term “undocumented immigrant” has any intent, or any expectation, of misleading anyone with the term. No one is misled by the term. If no one intends to mislead, and no one is misled, how could the term be a lie?
2) The “it’s a lie” nonsense is yet another example of resorting to personal attacks rather than discussing issues in a civil manner. People on both sides do this, and it’s the sort of behavior that poisons American discourse.
3) Basic civility says that you shouldn’t assume that the people you disagree with are maliciously lying when there’s another obvious explanation readily available.
4) “Undocumented immigrant” is one of a long line of terms that various subgroups, usually on the left, have chosen to use – “African American,” “LGBT,” “transgendered,” “person of color,” etc etc etc. Even if you find these terms silly, it’s unfair to assume they’re intended as malicious lies, when it’s obvious that huge numbers of people are using these terms sincerely.
They ARE illegal, and there is no reason why I should care that they find an accurate description that doesn’t mislead offensive. I’m sure rapists would rather be called “forceful lovers” too. I don’t give a damn. The obsession with misleading labels is Orwellian and dishonest, and nothing you wrote persuades otherwise. A good policy doesn’t require euphemisms and code words to build support.
“the groups representing undocumented immigrants themselves have said, time and again, that they find the term “illegal aliens” offensive.”
Unbelievable.
Au contraire. Very believable.
I’m not telling you what to call them, Jack. In his conversation, you’re the one attempting to police my (and Jan’s) language, not vice versa.
As I argued, using a term that everyone understands the meaning of, and with no intent to deceive, logically cannot be dishonest. That you have no argument at all in response, and have to resort to empty hand-waving (“Orwellian”! “Unbelievable”!), says it all about the genuine emptiness of your position.
Nor is the comparison to rapists reasonable. Immigrants, by and large, are good people, hard-working, who come to America because they cannot find work or because they’re desperate to support their families, and they can’t find another way. Furthermore, the overwhelming majority of empirical evidence shows that all Americans are better off having more immigrants here – immigrants are productive, they pay taxes, and they create jobs.
Rapists, in contrast, by definition have done something contemptible, and as deserve being named with contempt. Someone who cannot understand the enormous gulf between rape and overstaying a visa, has no credibility.
When you see Les Miserables, do you root for Javert to throw Jean Valjean in jail? Do you root for the students to get killed, since after all they broke a law and are therefore no different than rapists?
Illegal immigrants have done something contemptible. That’s the point of your language deception—make it seem otherwise. Breaking the law is contemptible. Jumping in line is contemptible.
You know the terminology makes a difference, and it is dishonest in the extreme to say otherwise. “Illegal” is pejorative, and should be. The point of your cover words is to color wrong as right, and mislead casual observers who aren’t paying attention. Who do you think you’re fooling? Just as Pro Choice avoids the main issue—taking a life, to focus on the easy part, life choices—in order to skirt the issue, so does dropping illegal. Really, Barry–How dare you say that “everybody knows” they mean the same thing? Everybody “knows” quotas and “affirmative action” are the same thing, but polls show that American hate the former and approve of the latter—why is that? Because the latter is a euphemism, designed to deceive and hide what is ethically wrong with the policy.
If illegal thought the terms meant the same thing,, what is there to offend? The correct term offends because it makes fudging right and wrong harder; the blurred term is “better” because it makes deception easier. That is its purpose, and you should have the integrity to admit it. And opting for descriptive rather than misleading terminology is not a mark of ideology, unless you are asserting that progressives are by definition liars. I don’t believe that.
But I do believe that “undocumented worker” is deceit, and this a lie, intended to deceive.
Re: “Contemptible.” It’s obviously not always contemptible to break the law. Otherwise, audiences would have contempt for Jean Valjean, rather than hoping he escapes from Javert. History and literature are both full of examples of people who broke unjust laws, and were still admirable, from the folks who ran the underground railroad, to LGB people who broke anti-gay laws, to stories like Mulan and Yentl. There is much more to morality than “obey the law “.
And our immigration laws are unjust; they are unfairly restrictive compared to the number of people our economy will inevitably bring in to work, and unreasonably make it illegal for people to earn a living through honest work that harms none. A law that tells a person to sit at home and watch their kids starve rather than go where there is work that is productive, socially beneficial, and will let them earn a living is an immoral law. Breaking such a law is not contemptible.
There is no law more firmly written in our character as humans, than the law that says we must eat and feed our family. I’m not going to hold a farm worker in contempt for doing that, and you shouldn’t either.
Everyone knows that “homosexual” and “sodomite” are two terms for the same group of people. But the former is a neutral term, while the latter is pejorative, even though many conservatives (not you, to your credit) would defend the latter term by arguing that it is technically accurate. My point – and it’s an obvious one, and one I suspect you already know – is that just because two terms both refer to the same group of people, and everyone knows it, doesn’t make the two terms interchangeable. One term sounds to the people it describes as a term full of contempt and hatred, and the other term does not.
There are people who are willing to have good-faith arguments, including taking other people at their word for what their motives are. And then there are people who insist on attributing malice and lies to those they’re disagreeing with, even though they are unable to prove those alleged lies at all.
I take the former position; you take the latter position. With all due respect, I think my position is the one with integrity.
1. The larger issue of when it may be ethical to break the law is not in play here. The immigration laws are NOT ethical to break. They are classic examples of laws broken because the lawbreakers find them inconvenient.
2. “And our immigration laws are unjust; they are unfairly restrictive compared to the number of people our economy will inevitably bring in to work, and unreasonably make it illegal for people to earn a living through honest work that harms none.” This is gibberish. There is unemployment in the nation, and illegal immigrants are exploited to keep wages and prices low. Of course it harms people. And the argument that its Ok to break laws as long as they don’t “harm” anyone is infantile. That is not the basis of law, especially immigration law. Nobody has a right to enter a foreign nation, and illegal immigration isn’t based on an argument of injustice—it’s people wanting to cheat the system, keeping legitimate, lawful immigrants from coming in.
3. “Homosexual” and “sodomite” is also a bad analogy…it is more the equivalent of “black” vs. “nigger.” The two words convey the same information–sex with the same gender—but one term has a gratuitous, non-informational slur attacked. Again, “illegal” is not a slur, nor is “alien.” Both are factual,and descriptive.
4. “My point – and it’s an obvious one, and one I suspect you already know – is that just because two terms both refer to the same group of people, and everyone knows it, doesn’t make the two terms interchangeable. One term sounds to the people it describes as a term full of contempt and hatred, and the other term does not.” Mindblowing. Black is white, day is night. Simply stating the truth suggests hate? I don’t hate illegal immigrants, but they ARE breaking the law, and the DON’T belong here. Your position boils down to “it’s hateful to tell the truth”—politically correct fictions again. Intellectually untenable. Madness. It is a position that I marvel how it could ever be accepted by so many, as is the tolerance of illegal immigration generally.
5. I am not attributing malice–you’re the one talking hate-speech for simply being honest about the material feature of those who cross borders against the law. I am attributing extreme “the ends justify the means’ utilitarianism, misguided, wrong, but rationalized as for the greater good. Alinsky/Lenin/Moore/Guevara. Romantic, facile, and dead, dead wrong.
You will recall, I assume, that I do not oppose legislation giving a path to legality for those illegals who are here, provided we make sincere efforts to keep the next wave down to a trickle. It’s the ethical thing because its the only thing at this point.
So? How does that differ from ValJean’s case – he could have arranged for care for Cosette and then turned himself in – or from the case of a gay person in the 1950s choosing to socialize at an illegal gay bar (or to have illegal gay sex, for that matter)? That the people who broke them, benefited from breaking them, doesn’t change the fact that the laws were unjust.
You’re wrong. You’re thinking of jobs as if they were a zero-sum game, but they’re not. Immigrants take some jobs, but they also create jobs through several mechanisms: They create a market for complimentary employment for Americans, they spend money on things like groceries and rent (putting more money into the economy, which creates employment), and by being productive workers they push the economy in the direction of greater employment. The net effect is to improve the US economy, increasing both employment and pay for American workers.
In theory, undocumented workers compete with and drive down the wages of the lowest-paid US workers (basically, high school drop outs). But that theory hasn’t stood up to empirical studies, which have found that any negative wage effects of immigration – if they exist at all – are swamped by the positive economic aspects.
Immigration grows the economy – it’s a major part of what turned New York and California into economic powerhouses last century.
And a growing economy is the best way to raise everyone’s living standards. It’s odd that conservatives, who have no trouble understanding that growing the overall economy is essential to raising wages in any other context, don’t understand this when the subject is immigration.
Consideration of harm is a legitimate concern (but not the only concern) when we talk about the ethics of lawbreaking, and it’s silly of you to deny it. We’re willing to forgive Valjean for stealing a loaf of bread, but what if he murdered a family with a hammer to steal their bread? That would be a different matter, and rightly so.
If immigration was actually economically harming Americans, that would be an important concern. But as far as the best evidence we have indicates, immigration is actually good for the economy.
Undocumented immigrants don’t keep lawful immigrants from coming in; laws do that. When the law keeps the number of “lawful” immigrant slots far below what economic conditions would naturally produce, the result is inevitably a great deal of problems and injustice caused by ridiculous waitlists, and also a great deal of undocumented immigrants. The solution is to raise legal immigration levels to a reasonable number.
The default state should be liberty – Governments should step in and restrict liberty only when there is a compelling and legitimate need. No such need justifies today’s low levels of lawfully allowed immigration.
If the same laws that exist today had existed in the 1890s, my great-grandfather would never have gotten in – or could only have gotten in illegally. But my family has had successful businesspeople, doctors, lawyers – we’ve been job creators. Keeping us out would not have benefited America.
People who use the word “deviant” for homosexuals make the same argument; they say it’s factual and descriptive.
I am NOT saying that you’re the same as those anti-gay bigots. I AM saying that I care more about how a term is received, then about its literal meaning or how it was intended. If someone steps on my foot and hurts me, I don’t want to listen to them explain in detail how their heart is pure and they didn’t intend any harm at all. I want them to stop stepping on my foot.
A lot of real people who have done nothing worse than trying to find paying work, receive the term “illegal alien” as insulting. For that reason, I choose not to use the term.
Whether or not YOU intend it that way is not the point. What matters for my argument is that it is TAKEN as a term of contempt.
Constantly using a term for group X that group X finds hurtful is one way people act to show group X that they’re held in contempt.
Nor is “truth” any defense when it comes to the name you call people. Anyone can use the “I’m just telling the truth” dodge to hide insults of people they don’t agree with into the names they call them (“Hi, you baby-killing anti-lifers!” “Hi back, you pro-state-enforced-childbirth fascists!”)
There is a long-standing convention in our society that we call people by the names they politely ask to be called. You don’t need to call people “illegals” in order to truthfully express your opinion that undocumented immigration is illegal, immoral, and harmful. (See what I just did?) There is no good reason for you to be against treating people with the very minimal amount of civility and respect it takes, to call them what they’d prefer to be called.
You weren’t? Okay, my mistake. Withdrawn, with apologies.
That said, you accused me of saying “a lie, intended to deceive.” You made the accusation multiple times, in fact. That’s ridiculous. The reason I use the term “undocumented immigrants” is exactly the reason I said I use the term. Period.
Great! But the “provided” is the tricky part. How are “sincere efforts” to be measured? For the last four years, we have arrested more immigrants than ever before. Immigration enforcement (measured by number of agents on the boarders, etc) is higher than ever. Yet I keep on hearing from the GOP that they don’t believe a sincere effort has been made.
This worries me, because unless “sincere effort” is defined in some way that’s measurable and practically achievable, it’s just an excuse for always saying “no” to a path to citizenship.
Personally, I think that putting all this effort into the border is terrible policy.
1) It kills hundreds of people, because when we block off the safe ways to immigrate, the poorest and most desperate people will take unsafe routes and die.
2) It’s unnecessary. Immigration levels are driven by economics, not by border patrols. If we raised the amount of legal immigration to match the demand, then illegal immigration would slow to a trickle without any increase in border enforcement.
3) It’s a waste of taxpayer money. The border fence, for instance, is incredibly expensive to build, and once built it has to be maintained and manned. Worst yet, the more remote the area of the fence, the more it costs to build and maintain, to the point that we’ll be spending over a million dollars for each immigrant stopped.
4) Many or most undocumented immigrants enter the country without illegally crossing the border – they just get a visa, cross legally, and don’t leave.
5) The harder it is to cross the border, the less likely immigrants are to voluntarily leave. So a strongly enforced border, ironically, means that the net number of undocumented immigrants increases, because the ones who get across the border never return home. (This effect has been documented – I could provide you with a reference if you want).
So increasing enforcement is terrible policy, it kills people, and it wastes my tax dollars. But I’d still be willing to agree to it as part of a compromise deal, and so would most Democrats.
Yeah, and murderers would be preferred to be called “Life span budgeting counselors”, so would you please respect their wishes? You see, the “conservative instead of Republican” and “evangelical instead of fundamentalist” analogies don’t fly. Illegal Immigrants don’t want to be called that because it’s an identification they are law breakers (which they are). You do realize that is a massive distinction from the examples you cited? Please tell me you can at least see that? I do doubt it though.
1) Irrelevant. A large portion of the population that may not know the ins and outs of “Immigration policy” or “debate”, still knows they don’t think Illegal Immigrants should be rewarded. And when the day comes for a vote, they will hear “undocumented immigrants” – Oh, well all that means is they are legal but somehow the system messed up their paperwork, sure, make ’em citizens! It is deceptive.
2) It is a lie. It was invented to deceive the voting populace that may not want to reward Illegal Immigrants with citizenship.
3) Basic civility no, basic logic, yes. Use it sometime.
4) Another set of false analogies. But I would submit you are accurate that the left does its best to divide us all by labels.
The real question is, which is the better disdainful analogy to “undocumented workers”—your “Life span budgeting counselors” for murderers, or my “forceful lovers” for rapists?
Yours is funnier; mine is closer to the euphemism under discussion.
“Forceful Lovers” is more in the style of “Undocumented Workers”, my option is clunky and lacks finesse (and is blatantly obvious a cover), so I’d submit your option probably would work better for purposes of pointing out how subtle euphemisms can be used to deceive.
I have heard a cruder reference for rape — known as the “struggle snuggle”. I cracked the forbidden smile on that one simply because of the rhyme.
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John Kerry is a hack politician of little ability who made it big through a combination of family ties, money, press manipulation and sheer gall. That’s hardly a rare combination for a modern Democratic politician, but Kerry did it with his own unique slant. What Clinton did with slob appeal, Kerry has done with snobbery. In supplementing this with the illusion of intellectualism, he has managed to rise far above his level of competence. Good for him, perhaps, but very bad for America in a time when we really need a steady hand of leadership in the State Department. I guess it was too much to expect that Obama would do other than appoint a white version of himself.
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The “alas” article is rich Jack. You can already tell its fallacious tenor when its very title “undocumented immigrant is not contemptible” misconstrues that your reference to the behavior as contemptible was actually a slur against the actual Illegal Immigrants themselves.
Of course, good ole Conrad is still fighting the good fight. You may recall he was one of the few voices of rationalism defending Due Process when Ampersand carries the banner of emotionalism on the great Trayvon Martin usurp justice for mob mentality movement.
I’ll pass. I don’t like being angry at Barry, who is an asset here, and when I point out to his knee-jerk Left readers that they are full of beans, he says I’m being disrespectful.
The fact is that I don’t respect people who make excuses for law-breakers, or at least respect that particular point of view that they hold.
If you read the thread, MOST of the people commenting there are right-wingers, and even one of the Democrats is arguing that I’m wrong, and I haven’t moderated any comments on that thread so far. (One of the other moderators gave someone a warning about using the term “illegals” to refer to people, rather than “illegal aliens” or “illegal immigrants.”)
I think the difference is that – as nice a guy as you are, Jack, and I mean that sincerely – you sometimes argue with a tone of anger and contempt, and any respect you have for people you disagree with fails to come through in what you write. That tone comes through VERY clearly when you write about the Martin/Zimmerman case.
I’m a strong atheist, and very critical of organized religion. But I still didn’t allow a comment yesterday from an atheist because although I agreed with the comment, it’s tone – anger and sneering at theists – wasn’t compatible with the respectful disagreements I’m trying to foster on “Alas.”
So I’ll cop to moderating with a much stronger hand than you do on this blog. But smart people who disagree with me are very welcome to post on Alas, as long as they respect other comment-writers and “attack the argument, not the arguer.” I don’t think that’s too much to ask, and I have a free speech right to try and create a space that facilitates respectful disagreement.
That’s a good point, Texagg04. I was careful to maintain that distinction in what I wrote, but the title was careless. I’ll edit the title.