In my post on Greece yesterday, I came in for withering fire over my statement about elections. OK, that’s an exaggeration. I’m often surprised at what gets the attention of readers in my posts, but also in stuff I read on various sites. The comments sections have become the place where you can take the temperature of that portion of the reading public with similar interest to your own.
Anyway, the objection is that elections are not about problem solving and I can see the point. Often elections are nothing more than beauty contests. When writing that post I was looking at elections as an ongoing process. Individually they may be meaningless, but string a few together and you have a meaningful series that reflects the attempts by a society to solve a problem.
Still, that leaves the other objection, which is that current elections are not addressing the important problems. The country is being overrun by foreigners and the pols debate trivial changes to the tax code or how they look better in a blue suit than the other guys. In America, the 2016 election will have little to say about immigration, even though the public is concerned about it. In the UK, the only guy talking immigration is dismissed as a racist.
That last bit really did not resonate with me until I looked up some polling on immigration in the UK. In the US, the numbers have been creeping up, but immigration is still low on the list of issue important to voters. Americans are still far more concerned with the economy and the general chaos in Washington, than immigration issues.In the UK, immigration is the top issue. It’s not just the top worry, it is the top worry of most people.
The people in charge of Britain, however, are doing everything they can to keep the topic out of the election. So much so that the BBC stacked the audience during the last debate in an attempt to discredit Nigel Farage.
He will take audience questions in a 30-minute programme called Election 2015: Ask Nigel Farage.
The discussion, held in Birmingham, will air after the News at 10 and will be chaired by journalist Jo Coburn.
It will be held at the same time as a Question Time special featuring the Tory, Labour and Liberal Democrat leaders who will take turns answering questions from the same audience in Leeds.
A Ukip insider raised questions over the timing of the announcement from the BBC amid a growing bias storm engulfing the broadcaster.
It earlier emerged that Thursday’s debate featuring the leaders of “challenger” parties had an audience where just ONE THIRD leaned towards the political right.
The Ukip leader was booed on the programme when he suggested the make-up of the BBC election debate audience was left wing “even by the left-wing standards of the BBC”.
Host David Dimbleby even insisted the audience had been “carefully chosen” by independent polling organisation ICM to represent the balance between all parties.
But when the make-up of audience members was finally revealed it showed that nearly 70 per cent were left wing.
Think about the people who would risk a scandal in order to get a few more jeers at the UKIP candidate. There’s a level of fanaticism here that goes beyond the normal partisanship. UKIP is not going to win the election. They are taking a bigger bite out of the Tories than the even more leftist parties. Strategically, UKIP is serving the interests of the BBC types. Yet, they cannot stop themselves from attacking UKIP.
The question, of course, is why? Immigration should be no more emotionally fraught than zoning ordinances or garbage collection budgets. It is just another policy that free people must administer. But it isn’t to the people in the charge. Flooding their nations with foreigners has become a holy mission and those who oppose them deserving of the worst they can throw at them.
Immigration, of course, is tied to citizenship. Limits on immigration mean there are benefits to citizenship, which means there is such a thing called a citizen and that’s become the greatest taboo in Western societies. The idea that people are citizens and their government is obligated to protect their interests is a heresy amongst the ruling classes. They no longer see themselves bound to their host countries and the people of those countries.
That’s why immigration may be our greatest taboo now. In the UK, the people in charge desperately want to fold the country into the amorphous blob of Europe. The far less sophisticated rulers of America imagine themselves ruling over it all. The fact that the people may not be willing to go along with it makes the need to sacralize the immigrant and demonize the nativist.
It helps to think of the US Government as a corporation, and the board of directors is interested in forcing their pick for CEO over the preferences of the shareholders (the rest of us). CEO candidates, to varying degrees, seek to satisfy the board of directors, even as they attempt to earn the favor of the shareholders. The corporation and its executives are entirely interested in the growth and prosperity of the enterprise, and of themselves as the leaders of it. The rest of us just get in the way, and fill ourselves with traitorous ideas, such as the corporation actually serving the shareholders, not itself and its leaders.
The best understanding I’ve seen of what drives the destructive policies of the central governments of the West is this–it is the first revolt of the ruling class against the middle class.
Orwell observed that there was no place in the world where intellectuals had a loathing for their own citizens so great as British left wing intellectuals did. The US has caught up. In their dreams this newly immigrant body will be more compliant with their conjunction of dreaming and ruling. After all, the dependency checks and social services guarantee compliance. It really never occurs to them that they will be ruling over a wreak, if there is anything left to rule.
“In America, the 2016 election will have little to say about immigration, even though the public is concerned about it.”
Immigration is the winning issue for the GOP in 2016, and they refuse to acknowledge it, because their paymasters are open borders.
Think about it, the anger over the immigration issue allowed the unknown and unfunded Dave Brat to primary a sitting House Majority Leader.
Currently, conventional wisdom has it that Ted Crus holds the “far right wing” position on immigration in the GOP. The truth is that his position is the current GOP default position, and all candidates are settling there. In a nutshell, the position is:
1. Border security first. Staunch the flow of illegals.
2. Massive increase in legal immigration.
3. Massive increase in H-1B1 Visas
4. Legalization without citizenship for current illegals.
Given that we know that any border security measure will be a sham, and that citizenship will follow legalization like money follows a senator, the default GOP position is essentially the default Democrat position.
This is because we already have single-payer in the United States – it’s called the Two-Party System.
The Ted Cruz position on immigration, which is the default GOP position, is a center-left position. There is ample room to the right of Cruz to move on immigration. Quotas. Cessation of Muslim immigration. Drastic limits on legal immigration. Drastic limits on H-1B1 visas. Elimination of birthright citizenship. Prosecution of sanctuary cities.
The ground to the right of Cruz is the working class position on immigration. It is the middle-class position on immigration. There are polls that show that a plurality of the American public wants all these things. A strong immigration position has the potential to bring back disaffected whites to the GOP, and bring in a chunk of the black vote. The black community is not happy that its leadership, and the Democrat Party, are selling them out to the Latinos. The simple fact is that the Latino vote does not matter for the GOP, except perhaps in Florida. Yet a strong immigration position could potentially put Virginia, and the essential Rust Belt states back in the GOP fold.
The potential power of this: my relatives are all good Northeastern liberals. Ask any one of them, away from polite company, what they think about immigration, and they turn into Pat Buchanan like Lon Chaney turns into the wolfman.
Yet no candidate is going there. The Sweater Vest gave a few speeches that were promising, and he’s from a Rust Belt state, but he’s such a nut on social issues that he’s irrelevant. Scott Walker made a few ambiguous remarks the other day that indicated he might move to Cruz’s right, but he’s already been outed as an open borders squish, so no one will believe him. Even Palin, who has (or has had) the power to push candidates rightward has been silent on this issue, probably because she’s on Murdoch’s payroll.
It’s obvious that the two Parties are no longer in it to win; they are told by their masters who is going to be in charge for the next 4 years, and given a list of things to do. The Party is tailored to the tasks, and not vice versa. The current Middle East Project, in which borders are being erased and tribes emerge triumphant, is their blueprint for the rest of us. The end result for the rest of us will be obvious: a post-racial ruling class presiding over the Rainbow Fellahin Coalition.
I don’t think that immigration is as low on the list of concerns to voters as you might think. An awful lot of people are starting to wake up to the fact that our country is indeed being flooded with foreigners, most of whom have no intention of assimilating. And we have ceased demanding that immigrants assimilate, instead making all sorts of accommodations for our newest “citizens”.
The UK is a lot further along this road than the US, but we are on the very same road. Importing poor, uneducated people who do not speak our language or share our values, and who have no intention of one day doing so, is a recipe for disaster. We will be able to see our future by keeping an eye on events in Europe.
“In the UK, the people in charge desperately want to fold the country into the amorphous blob of Europe.”
True, but the reason is not what most people think, unless they look at one Neil Kinnock.
Kinnock, aka the Welsh Windbag, was leader of the Labour Party after Thatcher departed. The Tories at the time were in pretty much free fall and ended up with a man called John Major at the lead man, who was usually depicted as grey-skinned and dressed in a grey suit. Uninspiring was the word.
Come the 1992 general Election Kinnock seemed to be on a winner. At a mass rally in Sheffield a few days before the election it looked like a victory parade. It was Labour’s turn after Thatcher had gone, they purred. But, and this is always telling in Brit politics, there was what can best be described as a sea-change. The tide had subtly shifted and suddenly, even at the end of the rally, the Labour insiders were saying, “hang on a moment, is this really going our way?”
It wasn’t. Kinnock was defeated at an election he should have won and soon stopped leading Labour. He ended up in Europe as Transport Commissioner instead. Found jobs for his family on the EU payroll and made nice living looking at trains.
This is what drives the UK politicians. If people like Clegg (who may not hold his seat and therefore can’t lead the Lib Dems) can love Europe a lot they may get a cushy job there. Who cares if Britain goes under? There is plenty of gravy for the snouts to forge in and Brussels has no worries about losing power.
I think all the UK’s top politicians secretly envy Kinnock and think a nice office and fat expenses in the warmth of the EU hierarchy is what to aim for.