Wednesday, November 22, 2006

I've been telling people Tancredo is nuts ...

WorldNetDaily: 'Bush doesn't think America should be an actual place': "'People have to understand what we're talking about here. The president of the United States is an internationalist,' said Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo. 'He is going to do what he can to create a place where the idea of America is just that – it's an idea. It's not an actual place defined by borders. I mean this is where this guy is really going.'

Tancredo lashed out at the White House's lack of action in securing U.S. borders, and said efforts to merge the U.S. with both Mexico and Canada is not a fantasy.

'I know this is dramatic – or maybe somebody would say overly dramatic – but I'm telling you, that everything I see leads me to believe that this whole idea of the North American Union, it's not something that just is written about by right-wing fringe kooks. "

12 comments:

Unknown said...

Well I am an isolationist at heart.

Help people yes. World government no.

All we need is to cooperate with each other.

An America without borders, that is colonism. Colonialism is responsible for much of the problems in today's world.

Colonialism made modern, war stricken, aids ridden Africa.

Let each people of their respective governments self determine the future of their nation without bringing harm to others.

truepeers said...

What do you think of this interpretation of the Declaration of Independence?

Charlie Martin said...

Which one? The one that claims that the Declaration of Independence is only intended to be about a collective, and at its heart denies the idea that the right to "life, liberty, and happiness" is an individual right?

I think it's questionable at best, and ahistorical at its heart.

Having said that, any chance we could talk about whether Tancredo is really suggesting that George Bush is trying to sell out the United States by establishing a free trace zone?

truepeers said...

Well, I don't know what Bush is trying to do. I don't know his heart of hearts, his true feelings about Hispanics and Americans though I've seen lots of provocative psychological speculation. So far, as best I can tell, the free trade fear mongers are saying we are following the path to the EU. Of course, you can find some people with some connection to Bush talking along those lines; but what does that prove? If there were an attempt to reproduce the EU in the Americas, with all the governmental functions, I'd certainly call that selling out America. But you're right, there's little evidence of it yet. The paranoid probably is a little nuts. Still, the idea that democratic self-rule depends on a sense of shared nationhood, and not just on liberal multicultural notions of rights and freedoms, is sound. The EU is becoming a tyranny because it gets this equation wrong in the name of free trade, rights, etc.

Syl said...

Tancredo is over the top. A free trade union is not the same as a new bureaucracy attempting to rule every part of our lives. And the EU is hardly about free trade, since it decides every detail of what CAN be traded down to the curvature of a banana. Nothing free about that.

Bush has spent much of his life in Texas, ergo he's right in the middle of territory where Mexicans come in to work, live, and play. He sees their value to the economy and culture. He has no bias against them.

I want the borders secured simply to keep out Islamic nuts. The Mexicans I ain't worried about. Most of the illegals are law abiding (except for being illegally in this country, of coure), we simply need to be more forceful about jailing/deporting/punishing the criminals among them.

Unknown said...

Tancredo is nuts and people like him helped lose this last election for the Republicans.

To hear these people tell it you would think that there had always been this big wall down there and Bush tore it down. Not so, when I was a kid growing up in Oklahoma people used to drive back and forth from Mexico all the time. It was no big deal.

We have free trade agreements with Canada, but that does not mean we are doing away with the Northern border.

Charlie Martin said...

Still, the idea that democratic self-rule depends on a sense of shared nationhood, and not just on liberal multicultural notions of rights and freedoms, is sound.

Assuming you're right --- since I grew up in a place where people flew flags of Mexico, Poland, pre-Commie Hungary, Serbia, and a couple more I don't recall, I'm not accepting it as true in the sort of strong sense you have proposed before, merely assuming --- what suggestion is there that Bush doesn't agree? Merely that he thinks people who've clearly chosen to work and live here, even at great risk, might deserve to stay.

Charlie Martin said...

We have free trade agreements with Canada, but that does not mean we are doing away with the Northern border.

Terrye, having been in pretty close contact with Tancredo and his supporters here in Colorado, I'm pretty confident that Canada isn't as much of an issue because Canadians "look right" and "talk right."

truepeers said...

Seneca,

The issue isn't what flag people fly at home, or what they eat, or do in private at all. In the modern marketplace we are all now "multicultural". I am thinking CHinese tonight. Rather, it's a question of how is public life to be conducted. Are we to have multiculturalism there - in which all must defer to the other publicly recognized groups and the officially recognized spokespersons for groups (often defined today by claims to having been victimized by the "mainstream") - in which case who finally decides among the competing interests and groups? We have to set up a system where judges and bureaucrats or sectarian politicians dole out the rights and favors by some byzantine system.

Or, do we have a system where it is assumed once you are an American, or Canadian, it is your duty, to represent yourself and what you stand for in a way that can appeal to other like-minded people regardless of their background? In other words, whatever our differences now, we are going to find a way to build a future together and rule ourselves, giving less power to the "experts" to work out multiculti deals in the back rooms. But this alternative would require some work to assimilate newcomers to public norms, which would not become practically possible at a certain point of large-scale immigration, legal or illegal.

Accordingly, I would judge Bush on his approach to politics, on the way he situates the claims of unity and diversity. I am not going to try to sum this up - too much work and I don't follow him that closely. But I think you could find in his practice several nods to the kind of multiculturalism that I think erodes the kind of unity on which real diversity in democratic self-rule is possible. That's not to say he doesn't think this is just being pragmatic in this day and age and that deep down he doesn't respect the unity of the American nation and what is necessary to maintain it. I'll let Americans argue this one.

loner said...

We have to set up a system where judges and bureaucrats or sectarian politicians dole out the rights and favors by some byzantine system.

Which is as it should be. After all, when you become a naturalized citizen of the United States of America you freely obligate yourself to support, defend and bear true faith and allegiance to a body of law.

I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God. In acknowledgement whereof I have hereunto affixed my signature.

truepeers said...

Loner, I'm not criticizing the constitution and division of powers; I'm suggesting that there are limits to how much people might want higher levels of government deciding, according to no transparent logic other than the power wielded in backrooms, matters that either need not be made great questions of state or could be settled locally if people had the confidence to share in a common purpose. A regime that creates more and more non-negotiable rights and entitlements, that are not the kind of fundmental rights envisioned by the COnstitution's founders (e.g. a right to privacy), "rights" to be decided on high instead of encouraging local compromises in order to foster faith in democratic self-rule is not in the spirit of the American Constitution as I understand it.

loner said...

I'm suggesting that there are limits to how much people might want higher levels of government deciding...

In which case they can vote to be governed by somebody else and/or ask the courts for redress of grievances brought about by the application of laws enacted by representative majorities.

My guess is that if, by some miracle, a good many of the drafters of the Constitution were to turn up at Independence Hall tomorrow morning they'd be pleased (and amused) that we concern ourselves with what they were thinking almost 220 years ago.