A friend of mine sent me this video. I recommend you watch it, not because it's great or insightful, but because it's the only way my analysis will make any sense.
I'll be the first to admit it's a catchy tune, and if the situation it depicts is accurate, I won't even argue that it's not outrageous, but probably not for the reasons that immediately pop to mind.
States maintain their power quite often by pitting different factions of the population against each other. They pit rich against poor, black against white, etc. In this video, the two groups pitted against each other are the 'real Brits', and those pesky Muslim foreigners who, according to the video, show up in mass in order to sponge off of the real Brits, and that makes them thieves. I have no doubt that British politicians regularly claim to be riding in on legislative white horses to save the day and to rescue us from the barbarians at the gate. That is, if they are anything like their American counterparts.
My own thoughts on immigration in general are..complicated, and not a rabbit worth chasing at this point, but it is interesting to me how this issue is used as a club and a wedge to divide people into 'us' and 'them'. It's also yet another way to take money from one group of people and give it to another group of people (while claiming to be against them) while securing their future political loyalty. As the old saying goes, the best way to buy votes is with other people's money.
No one, regardless of where you were born or when you arrived at this particular piece of dirt, has the right to live at the expense of anyone else. For a natural born American to live on the dole is just as much an act of thievery as a Rio-Grande-fording Mexican. You didn't earn a free ride by getting here, and you didn't earn a free ride by being born here. One is not any more horrific than the other, but one certainly seems to stir the passions more than the other. I find that very interesting.
I'm not sure what the hard numbers are, or what the laws are, but I would be willing to wager that there are far more 'Americans' receiving benefits than any 'foreign rabble' Why such selective outrage? Why aren't we assembling in mass and tearing the government housing complexes apart brick by brick?
Most 'coservatives' enjoy utter hypocrisy on this topic and a philosophical blind spot the size of an aircraft carrier. I work with a fellow, that, no matter what issue you start discussing, he eventually drags it back to illegal immigration, which he is convinced is Public Threat #1. We’ve discussed this at length for years now, and he becomes very irate and incapable of rational thought. I started one particular discussion with asking him whether or not the government has any right to dictate who you associate with. He of course said no. I asked him should the government be able to tell me who I can have on my property? No. Who I can hire? Of course not. I said “Even if they are illegal aliens?” The top of his head almost popped off.
I proposed a solution to him. I said we should destroy utterly the welfare state. No freebies for anybody. If we do that, I posed to him, and we threw open the borders, who would show up? He grudgingly admitted that those that wanted to work would be our new wave of immigrants. I really thought I had made some headway, but then he lapsed into a xenophobic rant about how ‘they’ won’t learn the language and ‘they’ want to change our culture.
This blind spot , in my estimation, runs parallel to the 'anti-terrorism ' crowd. Any solution the state wants to impose, no matter how draconian is better than the alternative, in which we will be held helpless and our treasure laid bare before the encroachment of 'them', whoever the 'them' happens to be at the moment. For some historical perspective on this, do a little research and read the things written about the Irish immigrants at the beginning of the 20th century. It is no small irony that their descendants will cry out from the housetops about how 'they' are taking 'our' jobs.
As usual in this blog, if you want some real gems of intellectual wordsmithing, you'll have to go elsewhere.To this end, I recommend Mrs. Becky Akers, who despite her fiery grammatical invectives still is my nominee for the Nicest Person Ever. Enjoy.
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