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One Game At A Time

April 16, 2021 by Jim Leave a Comment

Gentle Reader, should you have read last week’s Gavel Gamut you may recall that another reader, Dr. Michael Jordan of Osage County, Oklahoma, sent a letter to the editor asking that I address the topic of immigration. No, I do not know why, but after a couple of minutes of reflection I thought, “Why not?” So here goes. Our current immigration mess should not be any more challenging than Winston Churchill’s view of the old Soviet Union that he called, “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma”. A few quick paragraphs ought to suffice. Let’s start back in the 1960’s when our national immigration policy began to gradually change from one based on admitting immigrants based on entrepreneurial or economic qualifications, that is, what does the immigrant have to offer, versus admitting family members to reunite with previous family immigrants already in America.

According to George Mason law professor F.H. Buckley:

“U.S. immigration policies were radically changed in 1965, when national origins quotas were replaced with preferences for family reunification. People from countries that had recently supplied immigrants were given a leg up, while those from countries that had supplied immigrants centuries before found it much harder to get in.

In the 1950’s two-thirds of legal immigrants came from Europe or Canada, by the 1990’s that figure had fallen to 16%. During that same period, the percentage of legal immigrants from Latin America and Asia rose from 31% to 81%.”

See The American Illness, Essays on the Rule of Law

By F.H. Buckley at p.51.

Buckley has written extensively about immigration to America. Ironically, Buckley is himself an immigrant from Canada. That aside, in his above referenced book, Buckley posits that part of the immigration solution is for the United States to return to our pre-1965 immigration policies. Buckley avers that USA law used to determine admittance of immigrants on a general policy based on national origin quotas and economic benefits to America, but changed to a policy of family reunification being the main factor. This led to a change from the long-time admission of immigrants mainly from Europe and Canada to those mainly from Latin America and Asia. Buckley states:

“What is uncontroversial is that the United States could do a better job of competing for the highly qualified immigrants who are more likely to confer economic benefits on natives. America is exceptional in the way in which, more than any other first world OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operational and Development) country, it favors family based immigration and admits relatively few employment-based immigrants.

….

“A move to a more entrepreneurial immigration system would likely offer non-economic spillover benefits. Economic immigrants are less likely to commit crimes or to rely on the welfare system, and for countries that favor them, immigration is less contentious. The natives are more likely to welcome immigrants, who in turn are more likely to assimilate to the natives.”

Buckley: pp. 51-53

Buckley’s book was published in 2013, but it has an eerie prescience to today’s southern border crisis of children being dropped over walls and left alone in the desert in hopes of somehow uniting with their family members already in the United States.

Of course, this does not resolve the immediate situation. We must follow our Constitution and provide due process to those who are legitimately seeking asylum. We have the means to provide humanitarian relief as we abide by the laws and policies we established until we change them. Deserving immigrants should be welcomed without prejudice as to national origin, race, ethnicity and faith or lack thereof and without encouraging the breakup of families. A gradual, fair return to an entrepreneurial immigration policy should begin now. And before anyone projects a conclusion that Buckley or anyone else is saying Canadians and Europeans are superior to Latin Americans or Asians, let us be clear. It is not one’s race, ethnicity or national origin that should determine whether an individual is admitted into our country. The criteria should be mainly whether the aspiring immigrant can be a benefit to America.

Through the fog of one of my undergraduate psychology courses at Indiana University I loosely grasped the concept of projection. One aspect of Sigmund Freud’s theory of projection is that we humans subconsciously cast upon others our own failings as a self-defense mechanism. When it comes to America’s approaches to the problems of immigrations and debates that have raged since at least 1620 and Plymouth Rock, I submit Dr. Freud would diagnose many of us as projectionists. But before we address what Emma Lazarus called the Mother of Exiles, the Statue of Liberty, and the “…[H]uddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore”, let me suggest an analogy between immigration and environmentalism based on an old adage.

In the simplest of terms, the green debate is between those who want to build a house in the woods and those who already own a house in the woods. And with immigration, the competing positions are often those held by we whose ancestors immigrated here versus those who would like to become ancestors for those who may later immigrate here. And while we have certainly managed to maintain many raging controversies about whether certain classes of peoples, Irish, Catholics, Chinese, Muslims, Italians, even people indigenous to North America, and numerous other groups, have a right to exist in the United States, our current concentration involves our southern border.

Some of us might project our own fears, prejudices and greed onto one side or the other of the issues. However, as with every extremely complex problem it may require much more time, effort, and goodwill than most of us care to invest. It is easier for us to simply say those who disagree with us are motivated by hate or ignorance. Hard work is never as appealing as harsh rhetoric. Facts are the enemy of bombast. A knowledge of the facts on immigration is vital to constructively addressing the problem. Just as catcher Crash Davis advised in the movie Bull Durham, we need to concentrate on the here and now and take things one “game” at a time.

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Filed Under: America, Gavel Gamut, Immigration, Indiana University, Oklahoma, Osage County, United States Tagged With: Bull Durham, Dr. Michael Jordan, F.H. Buckley, Gavel Gamut, Gentle Reader, George Mason University, immigration, James M. Redwine, Jim Redwine, Oklahoma, One game at a time, Osage Count, Soviet Union, Winston Churchill

Independence Day

June 26, 2020 by Jim 1 Comment

Lexington Minuteman
Lexington Battle Green, MA

The Fourth of July is called Independence Day with good reason. Our Founders were willing to die for the right to control their own lives. They were not seeking war with the most powerful nation on Earth in 1776. They were not attempting to dictate to King George III how the English should behave. They sought only free will for America to determine its own course. In these troubled times we are now navigating, perhaps a look back to America’s early struggles might be helpful.

We may wish we could ask George Washington or James Madison for advice. But the best we can do is read about past heroes’ courage and sacrifice and try to learn lessons that will help us during our own battles.

For example, one of my heroines is Frances (Mad Fanny) Wright, that fighter for women’s rights, Black rights and freedom from religion who spoke in New Harmony, Indiana on July 04, 1828. Oh, how much we could learn if we could speak with her now. However, we do know she dedicated her life and fortune to eliminating slavery. Had she lived only nine more years she would have experienced the start of the Great Struggle that ended a whole race of Americans’ loss of control over their lives.

Control, isn’t that what matters most to all of us? The visceral need for the freedom to make our own choices is why on that day we now call Patriots Day, April 19, 1775, at Lexington and Concord those suppressed colonists “Fired the shots heard ’round the world”. And in our current political climate when Americans get embroiled in political discussions it sometimes feels as if both sides have muskets at the ready.

When I find myself surrounded by the competing political mini balls, I try to remember this is nothing new. Over the two or three hundred thousand years we Homo sapiens have been around, after air, water, food, shelter and procreation we seem to have two more basic needs: the control of our own lives; and the strong desire to control the thoughts and behavior of others. These two related but directly oppositional impulses apply to groups of people and nations as well. You know, we will each defend to the death the right of our political adversaries to agree with us. But conversations can rapidly turn to confrontation if someone comes down on what we believe is the wrong side of such issues as religion, race, global warming, immigration, war and peace, who should or should not be President of the United States and a thousand other subjects.

The right to control our own lives makes us smile. The desire to control other peoples’ lives can lead to such things as vitriolic statements and sometimes even vicious interchanges in our public and interpersonal interactions. Sometimes today’s discussions about control may center on sexual assault and the “Me Too Movement” or hate crimes and “Black Lives Matter”.

Rape is a terrible crime not because of forced sexual contact, billions of humans have had sexual relations. No, rape is a terrible crime because of the victims’ loss of their right to decide for themselves whether and with whom to have sex. The fear, terror, anger and humiliation caused by losing total control of one’s body is incalculable. It is in itself a life sentence that can lead to permanent bitterness toward and distrust of our legal system much as lynchings can result in an entire race of people living with constant concern about their freedom.

Lynchings, such as those that were committed on the Posey County, Indiana courthouse lawn on October 12, 1878, are a collective denial of another’s right to control their own destiny. And it is not just the victims who lose, but even those who deny justice to others may reap the whirlwinds of retaliation and political correctness.

Wars of aggression, not constitutionally authorized wars for national defense, are our country’s intentional denial of another country’s or people’s right to independently determine their own destiny. One of the main causes of our country’s post-WWII denials of the right of other countries to control their own lives are wars instigated by independent executive action without congressional authorization.

We can each quickly cite evidence of such wars based on false premises and rash executive action. President Lyndon Johnson used the shaky premise of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution to get us hopelessly embroiled in Vietnam. President George W. Bush relied on false intelligence reports that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and was involved in 9/11. President Bush then precipitously led us into what appears to be an endless and pointless war in the Middle East.  As Pete Seeger’s song “Where Have All The Flowers Gone?” asks us, “When will we ever learn?, when will we ever learn?”

Our Founders’ wisdom of placing the authority to wage war in congress is that such a procedure keeps all of our citizens more closely involved in these grave decisions. And, it requires much more careful deliberation when congress is involved. Also, when we eliminated the military draft, we turned from a citizen minute man type military to a professional and less ecumenical type force. To make the tragic choice to go to war all Americans should feel the direct cost. It is too easy to hire others to impose our will on the powerless. With a professional standing military our armed forces never stand down. And the temptation for any of our presidents to play with these awesome powers as if they were toy soldiers is too intoxicating for most to resist. Of course, the draft is one of the ultimate impositions of loss of control. Our country should only use it when our national survival is truly at issue. And then it should include all able-bodied adult citizens. Not everyone needs to serve on the front lines but everyone can serve somehow.

One of the good things we received from one of our British cousins were John Locke’s Enlightenment philosophies as highlighted by the doctrine of separation of governmental powers. Our independence as a nation has survived great trauma due in large part to our three separate and equal political powers: Executive; Legislative; and, Judicial. We forget this at our peril. Control of our lives is an inherent need for individuals and nations and, if lost, can lead to long-term bad effects for both the invaders and the invaded. Freedom of choice is essential to our personal and national well-being. Our Founders enshrined that opportunity for us in our Constitution and that is what we celebrate on Independence Day as we struggle to afford that right to all of our citizens.

 

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Filed Under: America, Democracy, Events, Executive, Gavel Gamut, Judicial, Legislative, New Harmony, Patriotism, Posey County Lynchings, Presidential Campaign, Women's Rights Tagged With: 9/11, Black Lives Matter, Black rights, Constitution, control of our own lives, Enlightenment, Executive power, fired the shots hear 'round the world, Fourth of July, Frances (Mad Fanny) Wright, freedom from religion, freedom of choice, George Washington, global warming, immigration, Independence Day, James M. Redwine, James Madison, Jim Redwine, John Locke, Judicial power, King George III, Legislative power, lynchings, Me Too Movement, our Founders, Patriots Day, Pete Seeger, President George W. Bush, President Lyndon Johnson, race, rape, Tonkin Gulf Resolution, Vietnam, war and peace, wars of aggression, who should or should not be President, women's rights

© 2022 James M. Redwine

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