Dennis Prager Examines the Complaint of a Methodist Marxist “Minister”

A Christian Minister Opposes ‘God Bless America’
Tuesday, June 11, 2013
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If you were a Christian minister who was given the opportunity to write an op-ed piece for the Washington Post, what subject would you choose? War and peace? The decline in faith among America’s young people? The increasingly empty pews in mainstream Protestant churches? The ethical decline in society? Or any of myriad other morally and religiously troubling issues?
Well, not if you were a Methodist minister named James P. Marsh, Jr.

For this man of the cloth, the issue troubling him so much that he had to write about in the Washington Post was … people standing and singing “God Bless America” at Washington National baseball games.

If you want to know how far much of mainline Christianity has declined, Pastor Marsh’s column would be a fine place to begin.

Think back to any time in American history. It is hard to imagine that a Christian minister would have any reaction to his fellow Americans standing and singing “God Bless America” other than unalloyed delight.

But that was when mainline Christian ministers believed in Christianity, sought to bring fellow Americans to God, celebrated America and hoped that God would bestow His blessings on this country.

Or to put it another way, that was before many mainstream Christians embraced another religion — leftism, the most dynamic religion of the last hundred years.

Leftism has influenced Western societies far more deeply than Christianity has since the beginning of the twentieth century. And leftism has influenced far more Christians (and Jews) than Christianity (or Judaism) has influenced leftists.

It is difficult to detect a single Christian idea or belief among the reasons the minister gives for not standing for God Bless America. All his reasons are leftist boilerplate. Had he been identified as an official of the ACLU or a professor in some social science department, no reader would have been surprised.

1. “I sit to stand for my religious beliefs.”

Presumably the minister’s “religious beliefs” are Christian. But how exactly does standing to sing “God Bless America” violate Christian beliefs? He doesn’t tell us. One would think that a Christian minister would be thoroughly delighted that tens of thousands of his fellow Americans were singing “God Bless America.”

2. “Being pressured to stand at a baseball game for a song that’s essentially a prayer seems, well, un-American. It feels like being pushed into the river for a baptism I didn’t choose.”

Only a true-believing leftist would label people standing and singing “God Bless America” as “un-American.”

3. “It’s an empty ritual, and one that I don’t think holds much theological water.”

Tens of thousands of Americans of all races and backgrounds standing and singing “God Bless America” is an empty ritual? And why doesn’t asking God to bless America “hold much theological water?” What is more theologically sound than asking God to bless America (or Canada, or the UK, or Costa Rica, or Portugal or any other free country)?

4. “I’m reminded of the admonition not to pray just to be seen by others.”

Who is James Marsh to judge 30,000 people’s motivations? And besides, when I stand at Los Angeles Kings hockey games when they honor a member of the armed forces, I do so in large measure precisely because I do want others, especially my son and other young people, to see me do so.

5. “When we ask for blessings to be bestowed only on ‘us,’ we are in danger of seeing ourselves as set apart from the world. ”

Who but a leftist could read “God Bless America” as “God Bless only America?”

6. “Why do we all too frequently seek to invoke rituals that undermine our common bonds?”

Most of us think that this ritual strengthens our common bonds. Perhaps the pastor is unaware that the song was written by Irving Berlin, a Russian Jewish immigrant.

7. “What does the good secular humanist do during this song?”

The good secular humanist stands and sings “God Bless America.” Even most liberals stand and heartily sing this song at baseball games. It takes someone who is not only left-wing but foolish to protest against doing so.

8. “We have the right to sit down when everyone else stands up.”

True. And the rest of us have a right express contempt for your decision and for your using Christianity to defend it.

Comment: One of the most significant reasons Christianity as an institution is disappearing from American life at a time when Americans need it most, is the preponderance of mental lightweight Marxists within the National Council of Churches communities, preaching the unChristianity held so dearly by Methodist James Marsh.

Feminism has buried Methodists, Presbyterians, and Anglicans in the dustbins of yesterday’s hasbeens. Stage one thinking prevails. Peace signs flourish. Pets are worshipped. Males flock from these verbal sewing circles leaving lonely ladies and the angry in the flock. The James Marshes are welcomed and found popular.

The Death of Small Town America?

Murphysboro & The Death of Small Town America
By Alex B. Berezow

On March 18, 1925, the deadliest tornado in U.S. history — the Tri-State Tornado — destroyed my hometown of Murphysboro, Illinois. Though it overestimated the final death toll, the front page of the Chicago Herald-Examiner said it all: “In the twinkling of an eye, Murphysboro was no more.” According to the Fifteenth Census of the United States, the town’s population fell from 11,070 in 1920 to 8,958 in 1930.

However, Murphysboro proved resilient. It rebuilt. When I graduated high school in 2000, the population was 13,295.

But then something happened. Many people moved away. By the 2010 census, Murphysboro suffered a breathtaking 40% drop in population. Currently, the town has 7,970 residents — fewer than in the aftermath of the Tri-State Tornado.

What happened? Murphysboro appears to be yet another victim among a much larger demographic trend: The slow death of small town America. From 2010-2012, for the first time in history, rural (“nonmetro”) America declined in population.

……. nonmetro America’s population has always grown — albeit in fits and starts. But notice how the gray line (“total population change”) dips below the dotted line starting around 2010. That represents population loss, and it’s happening because of falling birth rates and net migration out of rural areas. Click below to view chart with full article:

http://www.realclearscience.com/journal_club/2013/06/10/murphysboro__the_death_of_small_town_america_106556.html

It’s hard to imagine this trend reversing. Indeed, immigration into urban areas has been a global phenomenon for decades. In 2007, more people in the world lived in cities than in rural areas.

For my hometown of Murphysboro, losing 40% of its population isn’t the first catastrophe to hit, but it may very well be the last. In another 50 years, the joys of small town America may be just a distant memory.

The Orwellian Obama is Making America Orwellian

OBAMA’S ORWELLIAN LEGACY

by Justin Walker at realclearpolitics

Is America moving toward the Big Brother dystopia envisioned by George Orwell in some of his most famous novels?

That question has been on many minds in the wake of revelations about the National Security Agency’s sweeping surveillance of phone records and Internet data. The ACLU, for one, called these programs “beyond Orwellian” in a statement released last week. The ACLU’s response is characteristically feverish, but in at least one respect, the organization is right: We are indeed approaching an Orwellian world.

Given the safeguards in place against abuse, the surveillance programs are not the problem. Although Americans are right to jealously guard their liberty and to display a healthy degree of suspicion about government programs of this scale, suspicion should not obscure two truths. First, the evidence released thus far suggests that the programs are necessary and effective in disrupting, dismantling, and defeating terrorist networks that so often rely upon phone and Internet communications. Second, the Constitution’s checks and balances are at work in the oversight of these programs.

The phone monitoring component does not allow the government to listen in on anyone’s calls without a court order. PRISM — the program that collects emails, videos, and other data from major Internet companies — is limited to foreign targets and does not include U.S. citizens. These programs have been supervised by all three branches of government; Congress has approved them and is regularly briefed, and federal judges continue to scrutinize requests for targeting of specific terror suspects.

But the fact that these operations are operating under the rule of law is not the end of the story. For if we are not approaching the totalitarian nightmare of a novel like “1984,” the revelations provide a stunning example of how President Obama has come to resemble a character in Orwell’s other dystopian parable, “Animal Farm.”

That 1945 novella tells of a farm revolution led by pigs, who drive out their oppressive human master, only to move into his house, don his clothes, and wield his brutal whip to subjugate the other animals. At the story’s conclusion, the pigs’ victims gaze in on their new masters drinking and playing cards with half a dozen farmers. “The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”

To anyone comparing the conduct of Barack Obama with that of George W. Bush, the sense of confusion should feel familiar. America’s 44th president ran against almost all of Bush’s national security policies. But once power was in his hands, he began to embrace them as avidly as the pigs wielded their whips.

Senator Obama had voted against renewal of the Patriot Act in 2005 because he said it allowed the government “to go on a fishing expedition through every personal record or private document — through library books they’ve read and phone calls they’ve made.” But in 2011, President Obama signed the renewal of the same law and defended its roving wiretaps and searches of business records as vital to America’s counterterrorism efforts.

Presidential candidate Obama ran against the very ethos of Bush’s national security program, saying it put forward “a false choice between the liberties we cherish and the security we provide.” But just last week in California, President Obama told Americans they “have to make some choices as a society” because “you can’t have 100 percent security and also then have 100 percent privacy and zero inconvenience.”

The real effect of the NSA stories is to cement a narrative about Obama that will likely become part of his legacy: the liberal senator and constitutional law professor who, like the pigs in “Animal Farm,” metamorphosed into what he had so notoriously opposed. Guantanamo remains open. Drones still rain down on Pakistan, Yemen, and anywhere else the president sees fit. Leaks are prosecuted vigorously and reporters are investigated to uncover their sources. And now, the president is affirming the surveillance practices he once mused could be unconstitutional. In light of these actions alone, it seems that Barack Obama has learned that George W. Bush got a lot of things right.

The point of noting the president’s porcine transformation is not to criticize his current policies, but rather to serve as an instructive example for future White House aspirants: The responsibilities of power are difficult to reconcile with lazy criticism that is so easy to dispense from the sidelines. As long as he fails to recognize the debt that he, and the nation, owe to his predecessor, he will be practicing a vice that Orwell was a master of depicting: hypocrisy.

Dustin Walker is the editor of RealClearDefense.

Comment: Considerably more Orwellian in Obamaling society is the nation’s one party press, educational, entertainment, and even religious industries, none of them concerned regarding there own bigotry, its power, and what controlled thinking and believing has done to the nation and the nation’s individuals.

Tim Tebow Becomes a Patriot

My Favorite coach of all time regardless of the sport is and always will be Bill Belichick. I am not fond of Boston this, that, or anything. Probably only New York winds up downstairs of BeanTown. Such feelings have carried over from childhood when every mayor seemed to be more corrupt than the previous.

I loved Ted Williams, though….most beautiful hitter ever.

Belichick is bright, intraspective, quiet, professional, imaginative, and creative….a devoted student of his profession, and so, is a reliable winner.

What an honor to be a part of his athletic masterpieces.

Yes, I sweat Vikings, but therein lies the problem. I am to old to lose more weight, not enough time left for patience, hope, and a lifetime of futility of rooting for a team that is destined to be ordinary…..not the worst, thank God, but ordinary.

I like Tim Tebow, too. He’s a gutty guy with a gutty story, especially having to deal with slob and noise coaches at the Jets. Who ever wouldn’t be privileged to have this fellow as a son.

I watch Belichick’s Patriots whenever televised…..which is quite often, since American moneymakers know a reliable show to present when they see one.

I have a hunch Bill will arrange for some way Tim will be a real asset, not a complaint, to the team.

Keep going however you use Tebow, Patriots!

The following article by Karen Guregian is from the Boston Herald:

NO WAY TIM TEBOW COULD PASS ON PATRIOTS

Bill Belichick always says he makes moves with the best interests of the team in mind and doesn’t care about the headlines. He wasn’t afraid to bring in controversial receiver Randy Moss or let fan-favorite Wes Welker leave in free agency.

But his latest move will surely test that mantra.

Belichick signed unwanted “quarterback” Tim Tebow yesterday. The lightning rod was let go by the Jets this spring after a season in which he barely got off the bench on a very bad team.

.On his way out, and even before, there were plenty of coaches and players claiming he just couldn’t play quarterback because he simply can’t throw the football well enough.

That may still be true, but Belichick has always liked Tebow’s makeup and competitiveness. He brings intangibles that can’t be taught. How else could he lead the Denver Broncos to the AFC divisional round before losing to the Pats two seasons ago?

While there was plenty of speculation Tebow’s days were done as an NFL quarterback, he wound up in one of the few places where he provides absolutely no threat to the incumbent, and where the accompanying media circus will immediately be squelched.

Should we really be all that surprised he landed in Foxboro at Belichick’s side?

If Tebow had any ideas of remaining in the NFL, this was the best and perhaps only marriage for him.

Add in Patriots offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels, who moved mountains to draft him in Denver, and it was almost a no-brainer.

Tebow can comfortably exist in New England with Tom Brady, and perhaps even thrive if he allows Belichick and McDaniels to use him in any number of roles. Given he agreed to come, you’d have to believe he’s put himself in Belichick’s hands, which may be the only way for him to resurrect his NFL career.

To potentially get the best out of Tebow, Belichick might use him in goal line packages. Physically, he’s suited to play either tight end or H-back positions. Obviously, he can also run option plays after taking the snap from center.

In that light, think how great he’ll be on the scout team — which mimics the looks of an upcoming opponent at practice — giving the Pats’ first team the look of a mobile quarterback when they have to face one. In this NFL, that’s becoming more and more frequent. Still, you have to believe Belichick and McDaniels have plenty of ideas how to make use of Tebow, or at least make opposing defenses potentially have to game-plan for his possible use.

All the Jets seemed to want was the show, to sell tickets and to light a fire under starter Mark Sanchez. In the end, they went 0-for-3 on that scorecard. Tebow was a disaster.

The Pats don’t have much riding on the line. So it will hardly be a disaster if Tebow amounts to nothing. But if Tebow is willing to play other positions, and if he’s willing to keep a low profile and submit to the so-called Patriot Way, he has a chance of staying as the No. 3 QB.

He has to know this might be his last shot. And don’t think Belichick wouldn’t just love to make Tebow look good in some capacity and prove everyone wrong.

For more on the Tebow story, click here: http://espn.go.com/boston/nfl/story/_/id/9365517/tim-tebow-signs-new-england-patriots-wears-no-5

ObamaCare Includes ‘Bribing’ Funds…..$2,000.000.000 per year

and all of it at taxpayer expense……those who bother to pay federal income tax, that is. Remember 55% of the Democrats who voted for 3rd World Candidate, Barack Hussein Obama, don’t pay any federal income tax at all.

‘Bama doesn’t mention that in his partisan rantings.

The following article is from the National Center for Policy Analysis:

ObamaCare Bill Includes Lobbying Funds
June 11, 2013

A rarely noticed part of President Obama’s Affordable Care Act channels some $12.5 billion into a vaguely defined “Prevention and Public Health Fund” over the next decade. That money is going for everything from massage therapists who offer “calming techniques” to groups advocating higher state and local taxes on tobacco and soda, and stricter zoning restrictions on fast food restaurants, says Stuart Taylor, a nonresident senior fellow of the Brookings Institution.

The program, which is run by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), has raised alarms among congressional critics, who call it a “slush fund” because the department can spend the money as it sees fit without going through the congressional appropriations process. The sums involved are vast.

•By 2022, HHS will be able to spend $2 billion per year at its sole discretion, in perpetuity.
•What makes the Prevention and Public Health Fund controversial is its multibillion-dollar size, its unending nature (the fund never expires), and its vague spending mandate: any program designed “to improve health and help restrain the rate of growth” of health care costs.
Republicans in both the House of Representatives and Senate have complained that much of the spending seems politically motivated and are alarmed that some of the federal money went to groups who described their own activities as contacting state, city and county lawmakers to urge higher taxes on high-calorie sodas and tobacco, or to call for bans on fast food restaurants within 1,000 feet of a school, or total bans on smoking in outdoor venues, such as beaches or parks.

Source: Stuart Taylor, “ObamaCare’s Slush Fund Fuels A Broader Lobbying Controversy,” Forbes, May 30, 2013.

Climate, Weather, and Controlling Beauty

(I am a professional landscape gardener who began his training 75 years ago, at about age 4, when I discovered a sand box to occupy my time. At age thirteen, my Mother, often in an angry mood when she saw me wasting human time attached to that little space for painting a garden canvas, shouted, “Glenn Ray, you’re too old to be still be playing in a sand box!”

Experienced in language at this point in my life with Mother, despite countless hours of punishment, I snapped back with confidence and truth….”I’m not playing in a sandbox! I’m making scenery!!!”

I was too big to be hit.

She used to be pleased all of my years inbetween 4 and 13, to see me daily gravitate to the sandbox, my neighbor’s, not even my own. It was like hiring a baby sitter hour upon hour, day upon day, month upon month…..at no cost whatsoever to our family’s very thin wallet.

Yet, her message had stirred my fears deeply. It was the last time I ever visited that box of sand, my blocks, Tootsie-Toy cars, stone bridges, miniature gardens, cigar box buildings, arborvitae twig street trees, and other garden and urban adornments. No longer would I create parks for my cars and their roads to visit. No longer would the houses I built be so fortunate to exist among beautiful vegetation….including swipings from my Mother’s own sacred garden which no one in the world could touch except hands operating from her brain and imagination.

I knew she was right. For several years I had sweated, worrying what I would do if I were seen by any of my guy friends, where I actually occupied so much of my time which, like my Mother’s, never had anything to spare.

I never returned to that box, except by memory of my explorations and employment of how I could make a place of sand ever more beautiful.)

SPRING IN OUR NORTHLAND, 2013…..by glenn h. ray:

Cool to cold, mid January to mid June……snow to rain, more rain, and a helluva lot more rain, mid January to mid June in the year of our Lord, 2013, Northland USA.

What has this cooling and wetting meant for those of us oriented to the beauty of life living outside brick, concrete, asphalt, and flourescent lighting?

For plants, the overwhelming number of them from an inch to 100 feet of stature, this has to be nearly the best chapter in their genetic history ever experienced.

Regular, reliable moisture…..not too little, not too much, twice a day, three times a night….more the quiet stuff rather than the huff and puff of a thunder storm, tornado, or volcano eruption or an avalanche.

Nature itself, unknown perhaps to the New Yorker cement and concrete people who might have missed Earth’s outdoor life thus far in their lives, is an eternal battle between order and disorder……harmony and disharmony.

Each environment is in a constant state of war…..or competition, if you prefer, to stay alive….to defend its form and being from the everlasting threat of invaders.

Culturally, we Northlanders along with our pals from coast to coast, live in social disharmony where beauty is disdained. If something is beautiful, it is dicated politically and educationally, in newsprint and authorship, that something is NOT beautiful. We are better people, they preach, if we make everyone and things around us equal so as not to hurt feelings.

If beauty by sight and feelings, thought and action is noticed rather than disdained or ignored, the human animal might be moved, as in the past, to do better than merely exist, but to seek understanding of beauty, if for no other reason, to be shocked by its power to make the day more beautiful no matter the opposition.

Beauty is most penetrating through sight and hearing. Beethoven should never be allowed by any literate, civilized, Godfearing society to go deaf among its peoples.

More animal in us humans is our drive to witness the beautiful. Millions, perhaps billions of dollars are spent annually by people reaching out to view beauties of nature……yet they remain ingnorant, nearly void of any hint that beauty BEGINS AT HOME, whereever home may be.

Moreover it begins with the soul of the individual, not to be memorized at school, but to be led into an experience when each individual can radiate when they begin to understand the various basic rules, steps, reasons, and results of why some things, despite political and certain religious propaganda that all things are equally beautiful.

IF ALL THINGS ARE EQUALLY BEAUTIFUL, THEY ARE EQUALLY UGLY!

Spring 2013 in our Minnesotaland has been unusually beautiful in nature’s plantworld. It has been spoiled by the cool, the unthreatening, the reliable, which has allowed its color, textures, stature, and fragrance to radiate and therefore inspire all who are lucky enough to notice and enjoy….especially for those skilled enough to create beauty and work in the midst of doing so for an occupation in life.

Economically?……well, Spring, 2013 hasn’t been very good for an outdoor business. It’s hard to work in the constant mud.

Scandal Flavor of the Day…..Vanilla Hillary at State

THE STATE DEPARTMENT JOINS THE PARADE OF SCANDAL

by John Hinderaker at PowerLine:

CBS News is reporting on an Inspector General’s report on a series of scandals involving Hillary Clinton’s State Department. The most troubling aspect of the OIG report, according to CBS, is the extent to which senior State Department officials have tried to quash investigations of wrongdoing. Mrs. Clinton is not specifically named in the CBS report:

CBS News’ John Miller reports that according to an internal State Department Inspector General’s memo, several recent investigations were influenced, manipulated, or simply called off. The memo obtained by CBS News cited eight specific examples. Among them: allegations that a State Department security official in Beirut “engaged in sexual assaults” on foreign nationals hired as embassy guards and the charge and that members of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s security detail “engaged prostitutes while on official trips in foreign countries” — a problem the report says was “endemic.”

The memo also reveals details about an “underground drug ring” was operating near the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and supplied State Department security contractors with drugs.

These allegations are reminiscent of the Secret Service prostitution scandal.

Aurelia Fedenisn, a former investigator with the State Department’s internal watchdog agency, the Inspector General, told Miller, “We also uncovered several allegations of criminal wrongdoing in cases, some of which never became cases.”

In such cases, DSS agents told the Inspector General’s investigators that senior State Department officials told them to back off, a charge that Fedenisn says is “very” upsetting.

“We were very upset. We expect to see influence, but the degree to which that influence existed and how high up it went, was very disturbing,” she said.

In one specific and striking cover-up, State Department agents told the Inspector General they were told to stop investigating the case of a U.S. Ambassador who held a sensitive diplomatic post and was suspected of patronizing prostitutes in a public park.

Crazy as it may seem–why would a 70 year old lady want to run for president?–Hillary Clinton is obviously campaigning for her party’s 2016 nomination. Her stewardship of the State Department–the only significant executive position she has ever held–will be a key issue in the primary and general election campaigns. At the moment, with these revelations coming on top of the much more serious Benghazi scandal, not to mention the generally disastrous events that have taken place in the Middle East over the last four years, her tenure is looking hard to defend.

We Have a 3rd World President….Do We Want a Third World America?

As in Britain a generation plus ago, our national government establishment, now mostly left wing- big business, is determined to secure its own personal dictatorships by securing their constituencies with government dependent 3rd World populations.

Think BRITAIN….Study BRITAIN…. BRITAIN is in our American future when the State controls human life through its power to buy constituencies with $$ or other special favors. Review the campaign of 3rd World president, Barack Hussein Obama’s reelection tactics in 2012.

Dear Readers…..Your America has already become foreign to you with the rise of the sex, drink, and drug populations created by familylessness, megabusiness, and university Marxists and their assaults against the American male.

Help SAVE American values so honored and set forth by the Law of the Land, which today’s 3rd World intruder, infidel Barack Hussein Obama has organized his administration to destroy.

PLEASE READ CAREFULLY THE FOLLOWING ARTICLE FROM TOWN HALL:

“The ‘Gang of Eight’ bill is not immigration reform. It is big government dysfunction. It is an immigration Obamacare. All advocates of true immigration reform — on the left and the right — should oppose it.” — Mike Lee
”On every major front, this legislation fails to deliver on its core promises. It delivers only for the special-interest groups who helped write it. Should it pass, it would represent the ultimate triumph of the Washington elite over the everyday citizen to whom Congress properly owes its loyalty.” — Jeff Sessions
At a time when the Obama Administration is imploding under the weight of its own scandals and the GOP’s odds of taking back the Senate in 2014 are rising almost by the day, it’s incredibly ironic that the Republican Party is working with the Democrats on an amnesty bill that will depress the conservative base in 2014, permanently cement in a Democrat majority in America and give Barack Obama almost everything he wants in return for absolutely nothing of consequence.

It’s at moments like these when you realize that Republicans really richly deserve to be called “the stupid party.”

1) The bill legalizes illegal aliens before security measures are put in place: The entire history of immigration reform in this country over the last thirty years has consisted of the government promising to improve security and then not living up to those promises. Reagan signed on to a “one time” amnesty in return for security measures that were never put in place. Under Clinton, programs like Operation Vanguard were stopped BECAUSE THEY WERE EFFECTIVE at driving illegals out of the meat packing industry. Under George W. Bush, the fence the law says we shall build on the southern border was never completed. Under Barack Obama, an illegal DREAM ACT that never passed Congress was put in place, his administration essentially stopped deporting illegals without felonies on their records and thousands of already detained illegal immigrants were released. Claiming that we’ll give legal status to the illegals that are already here and then put security measures in place later isn’t even a good faith argument; it’s an attempt to deceive the American people by sleazy politicians whose only concern is amnesty for illegals at any cost.

2) Most of the key security measures in the bill are left up to the discretion of the Obama Administration: After the Obama Administration has shown little appetite for enforcing immigration law and the IRS has politically targeted conservative groups on Obama’s watch, it’s almost unimaginable that there would be Republicans who are essentially willing to say, “We’ll just take Obama’s word for it on security.” Yet, that’s exactly what this bill does time after time, in clause after clause. If the Obama Administration says we’ve met a security standard, then we’ve met it. Here’s what Mark Krikorian from National Review and the Center for Immigration Studies has to say about that.

Almost every requirement in this bill can be waived by Janet Napolitano: for instance, the time limits on when people can be legalized, the requirements on criminal activity or even the enforcement triggers. Those basically don’t mean anything if any of them is held up in court, still. …The litigation over the 1986 bill didn’t end until just a few years ago. The ACLU has been quite clear that it intends to sue to stop mandatory e-verify and probably sue to stop a bunch of other things. If, for instance, mandatory use of electronic verification is still in the courts 10 years after the bill passes, it’s entirely possible the Secretary of Homeland Security can just give everybody Green Cards on her own — and there are hundreds of other examples of that kind of discretion.

It’s not too much of an exaggeration to say that this 1,000 page bill after all of the amendments could be boiled down to, “We trust you, Obama; just do the right thing.”
3) This bill allows illegal immigrants to have American citizenship: Simply put, nobody who is in this country illegally should be given the privilege of applying for American citizenship. Truthfully, illegal immigrants don’t deserve to even be allowed to be part of a guest worker program, but let’s say theoretically as a huge compromise, the bill had gone that way.

That would have taken worries about massive chain migration off the table, it would alleviate concerns that the Democrats would be adding huge numbers of new voters, it would mean the retirement of poor, manual laborers would be an issue for their home country, not us and it would “get them out of the shadows.”

It’s better for America in almost every single way except one: It wouldn’t add millions of new voters for the Democrat Party. It might not be admirable that the Democrats would hold out for a provision that’s horrible for the country, but good for the Democrat Party, but it’s at least understandable. Why any Republican would try to demographically flood conservatism out of existence, put Americans out of jobs and hurt the country to get amnesty at any cost is a question voters should ask them the next time they’re up for reelection.

4) Illegal immigrants won’t be forced to pay back taxes: Illegals are able to “do jobs Americans just won’t do” because they are allowed to “do things Americans just can’t do.” You could work for a lot less per hour yourself if you didn’t have car insurance or health insurance and could cheat on your taxes with impunity. Illegals broke the law to be here and they committed document fraud to work and both of those should be disqualifiers are far as American citizenship goes, but even if you ignore that, they should at least have to pay their taxes just like Americans do. Isn’t that the least we could ask? Not according to Marco Rubio, John McCain, Kelly Ayotte and the other Republicans who support this bill.

Under the proposal as offered, immigrants would not have to prove a tax history. There would be no obligation to show evidence of prior filings or payments. It’s basically a simplified version of tax amnesty: there is no responsibility for settling up back taxes. The only exception to the rule involves a situation in which the Internal Revenue Service already has a taxpayer in their crosshairs; if you have an outstanding liability in your name, you’ll be obligated to pay up. Interestingly, this is a change from the current rules for applying for residency or citizenship status which makes tax compliance a criteria for legal entry.

On its face, the rule makes sense. It would be a near impossibility to require previously undocumented persons to show that they had filed and paid taxes. There are simply no records: we call them undocumented workers for a reason.
In a world where Tea Party groups are being politically targeted by the IRS and you have to pay your taxes or go to jail, the people who support this bill believe that illegal aliens shouldn’t have to pay the taxes they already owe. That’s not just wrong; it’s an offensive double standard.

5) Provisions in the bill could add as many as 30 million new immigrants: When massive numbers of Americans can’t find a job, how much sense does it make to import 30 million new workers?

The sponsors promised that the bill would not significantly increase legal immigration. However, it will grant legal status to at least 30 million immigrants over the next 10 years if you add up the proposed surge in legal arrivals, approval of 4.5 million previous green card applicants, plus work authorization and legal residency for an estimated 11 million here unlawfully today. The number grows higher if you take into account the removal of annual caps on migration for immediate family members.
Keep in mind that the vast majority of these people won’t be highly educated, won’t be highly paid and will cost more in government services than they pay out over the course of their lifetimes. A Heritage Foundation study put the cost to taxpayers at 6.3 trillion dollars over time.

Of course, advocates of amnesty hotly dispute Heritage’s claim and say that making illegal aliens citizens would be a huge financial boon to the country. Maybe if this were 100 years ago before America became a welfare state that was heavily reliant on highly skilled labor, that might even be true. But today, as Mark Krikorian has noted, the idea that making illegal aliens into citizens could benefit the nation economically is ridiculous.

Nobody would be saying, “Let’s close some high schools because we want to have more people with only a sixth grade education. That really benefits America.” It’s a joke. The very fact that they can say this with a straight face without being laughed off the stage is more a testament to the media’s gullibility than anything else. I mean, you expect politicians to engage in brazen lying, but the problem is too many people swallow this stuff and believe it.
What it all comes down to is that if you want amnesty at any price, this is the bill for you. However, this bill won’t secure the border, get an E-Verify system in place, stop future illegal immigration, fix our broken immigration system, build a fence or do anything but set us up for the next “one time amnesty” ten or twenty years down the road. Passing this bill will practically guarantee that we won’t take any serious measures to secure the border for the foreseeable future. In fact, just enforcing the laws we have on the books would do considerably more to secure the border and stop illegal immigration than this bill ever could. This bill would be a disaster for the country, a nightmare for conservatism and the end of any hope of getting border security in the next decade. There is nothing you can do to help your country right now that’s more important than speaking out against this bill, calling your senator and doing whatever it takes to stop this amnesty from becoming law.