Crisis of the common good
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=49618
Alan Keyes
April 6, 2006
The crisis we face with respect to illegal immigration offers new proof of
the old nostrum that feckless laws can be worse than no law at all. Feeble,
self-contradictory enforcement not only allows problems to fester, it
engenders contempt for the laws, which in turn weakens public attachment to
the form of government producing them. This is especially true in the
present illegal immigration crisis. Bad enforcement contributes to the
presence of large enclaves of people who seek economic advantage in our
country, but may feel no particular allegiance to our form of government.
This highlights the need for action to defend the integrity of the concept
of citizenship so vital to the survival of the American constitutional
republic (read also, the West).
But the government ineptitude that allowed the situation
necessarily raises doubts about a system of decision making (electoral
politics) that can be corrupted and manipulated into neglecting such an
obvious general interest as the security of our borders and our identity as
a free people. At the very moment when people need to be roused to
participate in the decision making process, these doubts may lead them to
ask, "What's the point?" since the people we elect are so busy catering to
factional interests that they don't care about and won't defend the common
good.
The onus of blame for this failure lies most heavily on our leaders and
representatives in the national government. As a conservative, I am
outspoken against unwarranted expansions of the powers and activities of the
federal government. Sadly, though, as I and others like me have often
predicted, the willingness to allow federal action in areas best left to the
state and local governments has led to neglect of the national government's
true, constitutional responsibilities. The integrity and security of our
borders, and the policies that govern admission to our territory and our
body politic, are without doubt among its prime responsibilities. To meet
them effectively requires national policies, implemented through national
legislation and enforced on a uniform basis throughout the land. This
implies that, where necessary, state and local governments and their
officials will be compelled to comply with the national laws, and to refrain
from behavior that contradicts or undermines their proper enforcement.
We all know that this has not been the case in dealing with illegal
immigration. State and local authorities have shrugged off the immigration
laws, implemented welfare and education policies that explicitly disregard
illegal status, and sometimes adopted language and other policies that
purposefully facilitate illegal immigrants' access to public services
properly reserved to citizens and legal residents of the United States.
Exigent circumstances sometimes offer plausible excuses for this
nonchalance - "If illegal immigrants won't come forward how can we inoculate
them? How can we get them to testify in court? How can we make sure they're
tested for TB, AIDS, etc.?" - but it is often ideologically driven either by
conscious opposition to "archaic" notions of nationalism or a short-sighted
partisan desire to curry favor with an influential ethnic voting group.
Whatever the motive, this Balkanization of our immigration policy makes no
more sense than it would to allow every state and local government to pursue
its own foreign policy, which in a sense is exactly what they are doing in
these matters. Immigration policy is about how we shall deal with foreigners
who want to come into our sovereign territory. Not only is it an element of
foreign policy, it is the context in which we define the terms that
distinguish what is foreign from what is not, including the meaning of our
borders (where our land ends and foreign land begins) and citizenship (who
is part of the American body politic and who is not.) Without clarity in
such matters, we lose sight of the community we constitute. This makes
immigration policy the sine qua non of our common good.
Unfortunately, most of our political leaders in both parties operate on a
paradigm of politics that has no place for the common good. They have
accepted an understanding of political life that is all about the
competition for power, the deal making that divides up the public pie so
that more voters slop up the goodies at your trough than at the other guy's.
Though skilled at building coalitions, they have become utterly incompetent
at the work of building, serving and preserving a community. That involves
remembering what goes into making us a nation, and assuring that we are all
willing to work together to provide for and strengthen it.
I don't think it's a coincidence that America now confronts a general crisis
of the common good. In dealing with national security policy, immigration
policy, education policy, tax policy, moral policy and the judiciary's
general assault on the sovereignty of the people, the key issues cannot be
understood in terms of interest-group politics, ethnic chauvinism or
factional maneuvering.
The skillful manipulation that now brings too many of our representatives
and officials to power, actually makes them utterly unfit to deal with this
crisis. The divisions created and aggravated by their manipulation may in
fact be its proximate cause. We desperately need leaders who understand and
practice the politics of principle, the politics that challenge us to
remember our paramount goal as a free people, which is not to get what we
want now, but to preserve the knowledge and practice of liberty for those
who will come after us.
I hear the objection that so readily springs to your lips. "But they can't
get elected." I am in no position to contradict it. But the people of this
country can contradict it. Indeed, they are the only ones who can. We will
successfully meet the crisis of the common good when the common people of
America remember and act on this self-evident truth: Self-government can
survive only if the people it empowers accept and act on their citizen
vocation. Our leaders will serve the common good with better laws and better
actions only when we serve it first, by casting better votes.
[ed. i've said as much all along, "Nothing Will Change Till The
Majority Speaks"...]
--
Jim
http://www.geocities.com/anti_multiculture/index.html
Unite Against Multiculturalism!
"Abolish Multi-Culty and String Up the Traitors!"
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