I, Gringo

Okay, so what do we -- those of us who oppose open borders -- do in response to Monday?

Monday, you may have read, is when all the "undocumented migrants" (in p.c.-speak) who "live in the shadows" and supposedly fear being rounded up and sent to the Gulag will be marching down the streets of American cities carrying signs to inform us that this is their country.

My answer: we don't do anything, as far as direct response to the demonstrations. No counter-protests: useless -- the mainstream media will pretend they don't exist. They will get away with it because the counter-demos will be too small. Will your employer give you the day off work so you can go downtown to protest The Invasion? No, I didn't think so.

If you live in one of the cities affected, you don't confront the marchers, however confrontational they are. (And they will be.)

Why? Because this isn't, ultimately, a row between us and los illegals. It's between us and the greedy corporations who proclaim in season and out of season that they can't get by without an imported sub-minimum-wage servant class; between us and the corrupt Congressmen who have colluded with their big-business masters; between us and a president of the United States who, I am beginning to think, is insane. Not "insane" as a metaphor; insane in a clinical sense, who if he were an ordinary bloke instead of the highest officeholder in the land might be diagnosed as obsessive-compulsive or schizophrenic. Does he hear voices inside his head telling him that his mission in life is to Mexicanize the United States?

If you want to bring this demented episode in the history of our once and perhaps future republic to a close, those are the people who must hear you. You must make sure they hear you.

There are several organizations that will help you channel your energy most effectively, and I urge you to look them up. Go to Numbers USA, the Dan Stein Report, and the Minutemen.

Then turn the heat on. Let the people who have brought us to this crisis know that they can't get away with it anymore. Tell them that the '60s dead-enders and fence jumpers and the coyotes who enable them (for a big profit) and leftists who hate America and dud clergymen who have traded in God for political correctness have had their day and it's over. Tell them it's our turn now. Tell them America sent you. Tell them I sent you. I, Gringo.

The art of the link

Visual representation of links among political blogs during the 2004 election season. Red and blue dots represent conservative and liberal blogs, respectively; orange links go from liberal to conservative, and purple ones from conservative to liberal.

I continue to be fascinated by the way that modern software can represent data visually, often creating remarkable abstract art as a by-product.

The image above is from a paper titled "The Political Blogosphere and the 2004 U.S. Election: Divided They Blog," by Lada Adamic of HP Labs and Natalie Glance at Intelliseek Applied Research Center. (Tip of the hat to Visual Complexity, which has many other wonderful examples of data visualization "art.")

The researchers created a database of 676 blogs judged to be liberal in political outlook and 659 judged to be conservative. The figure from their paper presented above shows the links to other blogs that were found on the sites' blogrolls (not in text citations). It was created using a computer visualization and analysis tool. The size of each blog indicates the number of other blogs that link to it.

Adamic and Glance report:

[The figure] shows the unmistakable division between the liberal and conservative political (blogo)spheres. In fact, 91% of the links originating within either the conservative or liberal communities stay within that community. An effect that may not be as apparent from the visualization is that even though we started with a balanced set of blogs, conservative blogs show a greater tendency to link. 84% of conservative blogs link to at least one other blog, and 82% receive a link. In contrast, 74% of liberal blogs link to another blog, while only 67% are linked to by another blog.

So you might conclude that conservative bloggers tend to be more of a community and liberal bloggers tend more to be rugged individualists. Or you might not. Or you might just admire the pattern they collectively made.

The little President that couldn't

George W. Bush, having convincingly demonstrated his utter incompetence in subduing Iraq and saving the American economy from itself, now argues that we must hand the United States over to Third World invaders because he is incompetent to remove them.

El Presidente's latest ploy to revive a sneak-through amnesty for illegals on behalf of big business interests, in whose pockets he travels like a baby kangaroo, is to proclaim that "massive deportation of the people here is unrealistic. It's just not going to work." (Tip of the hat to Randall Parker at ParaPundit.)

Sorry, Señor Bush, but that's a con and we see through you.

No one is advocating a round-up and deportation of the 12 to 20 million illegals in the country. There is a much easier and more effective way to accomplish the same goal. If we enforce the laws against hiring illegals -- an unthinkable notion to Señor Bush, but not to most of the Americans he considers irrelevant -- and stop rewarding border jumpers with welfare for them and automatic citizenship for their litters, the "unstoppable" flow will reverse direction. Take away the punchbowl and the party guests start to head home.

The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) takes El Presidente to task for claiming a false set of alternatives.

"President Bush is using the mass deportation argument as a political straw man," charged Dan Stein, president of FAIR. "The fact of the matter is that no one has seriously suggested that we deport 12 million people. Nevertheless, the president continues to attack this straw man, while he refuses to exercise any of the powers he already has at his disposal to enforce the nation's immigration laws, protect American workers, and defend the homeland security of this nation."

Under the current administration, interior and work site enforcement have been virtually abandoned with the exception of extremely isolated and highly publicized raids such as ones that occurred last week. ...

"In reality, the choices we have before us are amnesty and guest workers on the one hand -- which would amount to a massive sell-out of the American middle class -- and, on the other hand, a comprehensive enforcement effort that eliminates the reasons why people come and remain in the U.S. illegally," said Stein. "There is a whole smorgasbord of options available to enforce our immigration laws, yet the president is still claiming that there is only one item on the menu."

FAIR, like Numbers USA, also emphasizes the staggering impact on the U.S. population numbers, with accompanying increases in urban sprawl, housing density, and traffic.

If current proposals to increase immigration give legal status to those currently here illegally, and create a new guest worker program were adopted, we likely will be facing the prospect of a population in 2050 of half a billion people. That would be about 200 million more persons than today (a 67% increase). If our policy makers pursue the latter course, our projection is that the country will be on a course to reaching about one billion people by the end of the century.

Well, now there's something you can look forward to for your children and grandchildren. (I don't usually resort to sarcasm, but sometimes I just can't help it.) Overpopulation is one reason -- not the only reason, but a significant one -- that most countries in places like Africa and Latin America remain mired in poverty. Resources keep falling behind ever-growing numbers. Good ol' Compassionate George wants to make sure that we are adding people at a clip like that of sub-Saharan Africa. The Lords of Business have whispered in his ear, and their servant heareth.

So now, having failed to make any rational case for amnesty and a new mass underclass, Señor Bush wants to win by avoiding the battle, on the grounds that he is powerless and incapable against the flood of illegals that his passivity is largely responsible for. But while he doesn't acknowledge it, this is still your country, not his. For how much longer is up to you.

The borders of sleep

In the gloom of whiteness,
In the great silence of snow,
A child was sighing
And bitterly saying: 'Oh,
They have killed a white bird up there on her nest,
The down is fluttering from her breast.'
And still it fell through that dusky brightness
On the child crying for the bird of the snow.

Edward Thomas is among the poets who were popular in the time of our great grandparents and nearly forgotten today. (Ernest Dowson, another, is not quite as obscure, if only because two of his phrases became well known through adoption: "gone with the wind" and "days of wine and roses.") There is a plainness about Thomas's style, too open and direct to allow much academic exegesis; even his name is ordinary, not one that clings to the mind. Born in 1878 to Welsh parents, he seems to have spent most of his career as a penny-a-liner journalist, and would probably never have turned to poetry had he not met and been encouraged by Robert Frost in 1913. The only thing dramatic about his life seems to have been his leaving of it.

Rain, midnight rain, nothing but the wild rain
On this bleak hut, and solitude, and me
Remembering again that I shall die
And neither hear the rain nor give it thanks
For washing me cleaner than I have been
Since I was born into this solitude.

Thomas's poetry distills nature, but it isn't the patented sort of "nature poetry." While using the earth and its fruits as a metaphor quarry, Thomas doesn't engage in Wordsworth-derived symbolism. I have no idea what his religious views, if any, were, but his literary method at least doesn't enlist the natural order as a manifestation of the Spirit whose "dwelling is the light of setting suns." Thomas simply uses the forms of nature as an analogue of feelings, and he word paints them in watercolors or sketches them sparingly. The effects are almost haiku-like.

I tasted deep the hour
Between the far
Owl's chuckling first soft cry
And the first star.

A long stretched hour it was;
Nothing undone
Remained; the early seeds
All safely sown.

And now, hark at the rain,
Windless and light,
Half a kiss, half a tear,
Saying good-night.

"Thomas's poetry is strengthening and consoling, not because it justifies God's ways to man or whispers of reunions beyond the grave, not because it presents great moral truths in memorable numbers, but in a more subtle and very much more effective way," Aldous Huxley wrote. "Thomas describes what is surely the characteristic emotion induced by a contact with nature -- a kind of exultant melancholy which is the nearest approach to quiet unpassionate happiness that the soul can know."

The green roads that end in the forest
Are strewn with white goose feathers this June,

Like marks left behind by some one gone to the forest
To show his track. But he has never come back.

Down each green road a cottage looks at the forest.
Round one the nettle towers; two are bathed in flowers.

An old man along the green road to the forest
Strays from one, from another a child alone.

In the thicket bordering the forest,
All day long a thrush twiddles his song.

It is old, but the trees are young in the forest,
All but one like a castle keep, in the middle deep.

That oak saw the ages pass in the forest:
They were a host, but their memories are lost,

For the tree is dead: all things forget the forest
Excepting perhaps me, when now I see

The old man, the child, the goose feathers at the edge of the forest,
And hear all day long the thrush repeat his song.

A good selection of Edward Thomas's work can be found at this artistically designed site created by Mike Cope, obviously as a labor of love. (I thank him for the photo collage at the head of this entry, which I am afraid I shamelessly pinched from him.)

It seems I have no tears left. They should have fallen --
Their ghosts, if ghosts have tears, did fall -- that day ...

The men, the music piercing that solitude
And silence, told me truths I had not dreamed,
And have forgotten since their beauty passed.

Edward Thomas volunteered for service in the Great War. While on duty, on April 9, 1917, he was killed in a shell bombardment. His collected poems were published posthumously in 1920.

I have come to the borders of sleep
The unfathomable deep
Forest, where all must lose
Their way, however straight
Or winding, soon or late;
They cannot choose.

UPDATE 11/13/07: I see the link to Mike Cope's beautifully designed Web site of Thomas's poetry is cold. Here's another site that has the poems.

The Sierra Club needs a spine transplant

A large part of Organ Pipe National Monument in Arizona is closed, courtesy of Mexican invaders and drug traffickers. But to the Sierra Club, that's better than taking a stand against illegal immigration.

The Sierra Club agitates on behalf of the environment, except when the environment is trashed by illegal border crossers. (See here for choice photos of the invaders' dumping grounds in southern Arizona.)

For years, the Sierra Club has refused to support population stabilization and immigration reduction, preferring to concentrate its efforts on selling scenic calendars and urging people to bicycle to work.

The Club's lack of seriousness and vision was, I assumed, attributable to many of its members inhabiting loony left catchment areas such as the San Francisco Bay cities. In places like that, you buy into the whole multi-culti, p.c. ideology or else you are a pariah dog.

However, a subset of Sierra Club members calling themselves SUSPS (Support U.S. Population Stabilization) is unhappy that their organization avoids the obvious conclusion that tearaway population growth — most significantly caused by immigrants with high fertility rates — is the main reason our cities are sprawling all over creation, traffic gets worse all the time, and you have to make reservations well in advance to visit our popular national parks.

Not only that. SUSPS has found evidence that the Sierra Club has, literally, sold out.

Since 1996, leaders of the Sierra Club have refused to admit that immigration driven, rapid U.S. population growth causes massive environmental problems. And they have refused to acknowledge the need to reduce U.S. immigration levels in order to stabilize the U.S. population and protect our natural resources. Their refusal to do what common sense says is best for the environment was a mystery for nearly a decade.

Then, on Oct. 27, 2004, the Los Angeles Times revealed the answer: David Gelbaum, a super rich donor, had demanded this position from the Sierra Club in return for huge donations. Kenneth Weiss, author of the LA Times article that broke the story, quoted what David Gelbaum said to Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope:

"I did tell Carl Pope in 1994 or 1995 that if they ever came out anti-immigration, they would never get a dollar from me."

In 1996 and again in 1998, the Club's leaders proved their loyalty to Gelbaum's position on immigration, first by enacting a policy of neutrality on immigration and then by aggressively opposing a referendum to overturn that policy. In 2000 and 2001, Gelbaum rewarded the Club with total donations to the Sierra Club Foundation exceeding $100 million. In 2004 and 2005, the Club's top leaders and management showed their gratitude for the donations by stifling dissent and vehemently opposing member efforts to enact an immigration reduction policy.

Is it any wonder that the Sierra Club, supposedly the environment's best friend, will not stoop to mere principle?

Human nature being what it is, the Sierra Club's surrender to greed isn't unusual. Organizations that start out dedicated to good causes all too often sink into institutional tar pits. The organization takes on a life of its own, and one that comes before any other consideration.

Maybe SUSPS can spank some sense into the Sierra Club, a big, fat, spoiled child. But my suggestion to the SUSPS members and other environmental realists is that they leave the Sierra Club in the hands of its Liberal Establishment plutocrats and instead support Numbers USA, a group that knows where those numbers are coming from and is doing everything they can to counteract the most serious environmental threat.

"Hey, Gringo, don't look now but we're taking your country."

I'm talking as slowly as I can

White legged Touristicus americanus

Britain's Sunday Telegraph reports that the U.S. State Department and "several leading U.S. companies" are publishing a guide for Americans overseas, to give us Yanks pointers on how not to come on like the loudmouthed, bragging, pushy oafs that the rest of the world knows us to be.

Among the "simple suggestions" for how you can "help your country while traveling for your company" are:

• Think as big as you like but talk and act smaller. (In many countries, any form of boasting is considered very rude. Talking about wealth, power or status - corporate or personal - can create resentment.)

• Listen at least as much as you talk. (By all means, talk about America and your life in our country. But also ask people you're visiting about themselves and their way of life.)

• Save the lectures for your kids. (Whatever your subject of discussion, let it be a discussion not a lecture. Justified or not, the US is seen as imposing its will on the world.)

• Think a little locally. (Try to find a few topics that are important in the local popular culture. Remember, most people in the world have little or no interest in the World Series or the Super Bowl. What we call "soccer" is football everywhere else. And it's the most popular sport on the planet.)

• Slow down. (We talk fast, eat fast, move fast, live fast. Many cultures do not.)

• Speak lower and slower. (A loud voice is often perceived as bragging. A fast talker can be seen as aggressive and threatening.)

• Your religion is your religion and not necessarily theirs. (Religion is usually considered deeply personal, not a subject for public discussions.)

• If you talk politics, talk - don't argue. (Steer clear of arguments about American politics, even if someone is attacking US politicians or policies. Agree to disagree.)

This is an excellent idea. Who wants to be the Ugly American? Perhaps I can add my own two dinars worth (notice I didn't say two cents -- thinking locally!) with a sample of correct conversational style.

"Pleased to meet you, Mr. Al-Zarqawi, and your friends here (afraid I didn't catch their names). Well, Mr. Al-Zarqawi, I suppose this has something to do with ransom, you hear a lot of talk around town -- yes, I pride myself on being a good listener, not much gets by me! I mean, I'm not bragging or anything; actually, things do get by me sometimes. Well, often, really.

"Anyway, I don't see a problem. I'm not really an important person, you know. That CEO title, it's just kind of a courtesy, gives me something to talk about on the golf course -- that is, the hawking sports club. If you'll just phone my company's CFO, I'm sure we can sort this out in no time -- uh, I'm not going too fast for you, am I? I'm a man of the world, I know not everybody likes to get right down to business like we Americans!

"So, I take it I can look forward to a few days of your hospitality? No problem. These quarters look perfectly fine. I like this minimalist, bare-walls look you've done the place in, just a Persian, sorry, Iraqi carpet and those ammunition chests converted into tables, hey, my interior decorator on Park Avenue hasn't got anything on you boys!

[Dead silence.]

"Okay, well as I said, I'm an excellent listener, just thought you might want to ... so what's for dinner? Do I dare hope for sheep's eyeballs? That's a delicacy that's tough to find back home, yes, even in New York. Are you a soccer fan, Mr. Al-Zarqawi? How about those Baghdad Camels, eh? What do you figure for their chances of making it to the playoffs?

"Let's see, what else ... would you like to look at some photos I keep in my wallet of my kids? Do you have any of your own, Mr. Al-Zarqawi? Sure is tough to raise them these days, they have so many temptations we didn't when we were growing up, don't you think? You'll notice I haven't said a word about my politics or asked about yours. We can agree to disagree, don't you agree? I'm sure you and your friends here just want to get ahead -- say, am I talking too fast? Just a habit, I know not everybody talks like Marty Scorsese on speed the way we New Yorkers do. I'm ... sure ... you ... and ... your ... friends ... here ... just ... want ... to ... get ... a ... head ... "

"Goodness, that's quite a sword you've got there. I'll bet that'd fetch a pretty penny in the antiques trade, I know a man on Third Avenue, if you're ever interested ... you don't find authentic native craftsmanship like that very often these days. What? Allahu Akbar? Well, Mr. Al-Zarqawi, your religion is yours, it's not a subject I ordinarily get into. My mother always used to say there are two things you shouldn't bring up at the -- "