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Old May 28th, 2007, 01:51 AM
James Brody James Brody is offline
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Join Date: Jun 2004
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Default The Invasion from South and East

I've straddled a fence personally and do so now in this Forum: whether to watch the dance and talk about it later or to get onto the floor myself and risk being a fool. Will Prufrock dare to each a peach? Will Brody? Brody might. He attended his first protest rally a month ago. He was 65.

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Laura Ingraham, 5/24/07 9:38am, WNTP, 990 AM, Philadelphia, interviewed newscaster Major Garrett who pointed out the unprecedented "granularity" of analysis for the proposed legislation for immigration reform, all made possible by the Internet. Concerned citizens read the entire document rather than go over talking points about it. According to Garrett, neither party liked an earlier version: Democrats conceded to Republicans limits on chain legalization and awarding "points" for technical skills wanted, in return, a faster eligibility for citizenship. Eight-hundred pages descended as if from one large brain, in this case, the left cortex, the verbal side of us that is an emergent from sexual selection and like other male exaggerations, costs a lot to create while it lies, distorts, and amplifies whatever it does in order to impose its way. A fact of neurology: anyone who wants to be "reasonable" is probably a liar.

Irony: evolutionary mechanisms not only created those eight hundred pages but fuel public rebellion about them. That is, when resources --- in this case, popularity in the polls --- diminish, strong reciprocity appears: the members of a failing organization not only punish defectors but also anyone who fails to punish one. Low popularity ratings are to be corrected by doing something, anything, and that usually means more rules for the ruled. Members of Congress, however, will remain angry and suspicious forever of each other and of the voters, the voters will resent and remember, also forever and however this current chapter ends.

Peace is to be found not in this draft legislation nor in revisions to it. Abort the monster.*

A second irony: synchrony always emerges when similar entities influence each other. Yoshiki Kuramoto proved it. I believe him. This means that border states will develop their own methods for assimilating new arrivals so long as the onset is not too sudden. (Breznitz said the same thing about our immune responses.)

Further rants:

1) Break up the swarm in our Capitol: send each member of Congress, in T-shirt and jeans, on a Trailways bus across this country. They are, without revealing their identity, to make a friend in each of fifty states and to utter no more words than their seat companions.
2) This government sanctions slavery and conspires to maintain it: Illegal immigrants are expected to work harder, for less money, and to carry a three-fifths status. Justice, however, requires sanctions not only for illegals but also for plantation owners: start with the largest and work down with fines and jail terms. If one of them hangs in the public square, expect an army of smaller offenders to change their ways.
3) There are plenty of forms of identification and I resist the idea of a national data base. I live in an old farm house, cut and split my own wood with ax, maul, and wedges, and shower once a month in the winter time even if I don't need it. My ancestors from Poland and Ireland (possibly transmitted through grandmom by whomever she picked up in the bar!) were rebels and individualists, escaping from sheriffs, tax collectors, and rules. None of them wanted to be known to the authorities, neither do I. Neither do the Mexicans.
4) Deport illegals when they get arrested.

Seventy-five years ago, Arnold Toynbee described what is happening now when he applied his thoughts to the rise and collapse of civilizations. Consistent with Toynbee's model, one that predicted funerals and celebrated resurrections, the synchrony between the American people and their leaders lost its rhythm when the 1965 Immigration Reform, championed by Edward Kennedy, passed and we took the first step up a scaffold. In Toynbee's words, a dominant elite (in this case, secularists in the Congress and the courts) imposes regulations from above on people who ignore, evade, or disparage them from below. The working majority now looks for a new "religion" not only to neutralize toxins from Harvard-Yale secularists but also to avoid incoming criminals and the uneducated, perhaps uneducable, from Mexico or the Middle East.

The gene pools that invaded those of Christian Europe 800 years ago try again, their carriers encouraged by the fact that most of the West, old Q-Tips with bushy white hair and skinny legs who want to fight but cannot, didn't make children. The race from east and south is, therefore, less about killing what exists but more about being first in line to replace it...not a popular idea to mention in the bar after a protest movement. In fact, it produced, every time, absolute blank stares, silence, and no offers to buy me a drink.

Such are some of the eddies when a weed species, one in an r selection phase and carrying a short allele for impulsiveness, developmental delay, and aggression, pours into a new niche.

*Thomas Sowell (2002) traced the history of top-down and bottom-up organizations. Bottom-up is the reliable actor, the flexible, innovative one. Top-down lines up with Toynbee's second stage when a dominant leadership becomes a dominant minority that tries to hold onto its power by repeating old gambits.

JimB

References:

Breznitz S (2001) Immunoalienation. In A. Damasio, A. Harrington, J Kagan, B. McEwen, H Moss, & R. Shaikh. The Unity of Knowledge: the Convergence of Natural and Human Science. NY: Annals of the NY Academy of Science, 86-97.
Gazzaniga M (1998) The Mind's Past. Berkeley, CA: Univ. of California Press.
Gintis H (2000). Game Theory Evolving. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Kuramoto: see Strogatz, S. (2003) Sync: The Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order. NY: Hyperion; also Wikipedia "Yoshiki Kuramoto," and "Kuramoto Equations."
Paine T (1792/1999) Rights of Man. Mineola, NY: Dover.
Sowell T (2002) A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles. NY: Quill.
Suomi S (2000) How gene-environment interactions shape individual development trajectories in rhesus monkeys. Presentation at The Relationship System, Georgetown Family Center, April 2000.
Suomi S (2006) How gene x environment interactions can shape behavioral and biological development in rhesus monkeys, humans, and other primates. XVIII Biennial Congress, International Society for Human Ethology. Detroit, MI: August 2.
Toynbee A (1948/1958) Civilization on Trial and The World and the West. NY: Meridian Press.
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  #2  
Old May 28th, 2007, 01:54 AM
James Brody James Brody is offline
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Join Date: Jun 2004
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Default Bottom-Up Ideas about Morals and Illegals

Bottom-Up Ideas About Morals and Illegals

"...so long as original sin remains an element in human nature, Caesar will always have work to do..." Toynbee, The World & The West, p 211.
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Because of similarity and mutual influence, bees and Congressmen swarm but bees don't seem to have an equivalent to mass hysteria. Each Congressman should tour this country on a bus, alone, in jeans and T-shirt without credit cards or cell phone. There should be two goals: to pass for an average American, and learn something from the rest of us. John Steinbeck set an example when he installed a camper on back of his truck, put his dog, Charley, in the passenger seat, and drove across America. A bus, however, gives more immediacy than a camper...and more chances to get in trouble, to do a little good, and risk change.

I sent the a slightly different version of following to my representatives. None of them answered. And, so far as I know, none of them plan to buy a bus ticket.

JimB

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I understand that a revised immigration policy is imminent. Please stop the flow of illegal aliens by limiting their incentives to be here. Mr. Buchanan's book, State of Emergency, appears to contain good information, good psychology, and good ideas that can be adopted by each state.

My Objections to Mr. Bush's and the Congress's 800 pages:

1) We engage in the moral equivalent of slavery when we recruit people with little education and few choices and pay them substandard wages for working harder than an average American. Thus, American plantation owners have fine green lawns and profit while taking immoral advantage of Mexicans. America, to get lawns, lettuce, and clean dishes tolerates dual levels of citizenship, one of which is again equivalent to being about three-fifths of a person. (Robert Rector of the Heritage Foundation, remarked that in the late '80s, the Federal government arrested employers of illegals and triggered massive protests to the Congress. Enforcement promptly stopped. because it worked too well.)

There are lies that make our conduct less odious than it is. Some, the economist, Larry Cudlow, for example, disguise exploitation with references to how much the Mexicans offer to this nation and how much we might do for them. Mexicans, however, are practically sold now as Arabs once sold whites and blacks once sold blacks and for the same motives: Cudlow should be in Margaret Mitchell's next book. Another lie: remarks that the proposed immigration plan "treats people with respect" is both a lie and an implication that I stupid enough to believe it!

2) Another moral problem: we recruit brown teachers, attorneys, and scientists to this country although these are the very individuals who might transform Mexico's corrupt tribalism. America traditionally does this to foreign countries: train their doctors, economists, and engineers while knowing full well that they will resist going home. The less-talented African and Asians remain home, pawns in battles between warlords for money and women, race, territory, and religion because America, for self-interest, took their leaders. Furthermore, American governments, universities, and businesses will siphon leadership from Mexican communities as quickly as they now do from black ones.

3) Social welfare costs are transferred from Mexico and American corporations to the small proportion of Americans who pay taxes. Ever fewer taxpayers will cover health care, attorney fees, (special) education, and retirement for ever larger percentages of our population. I can't afford it. Individual responsibility continues to wither and our government steps forward with a grander welfare program to replace what we once had but abandoned as counterproductive. Our implicit insanity: when giving away money fails, give away MORE money!

4) Quality of life in this nation slowly sinks under:

- disease (Chagas Disease, Dengue Fever, TB, and even leprosy are with us),
- failing police resources (they can't translate, can't arrest, and might get sued),
- overwhelmed health care facilities (Wanda Piety, a writer with a broken wrist, spent a week in East LA County General Hospital. The floor in her room and bathroom was layered in dirty toilet paper and Blue Cross probably paid for the whole thing!) are only part of the dismal story.
- and public schools obligated to teach in two languages (or more) to transplanted children whose parents are loyal to Mexico rather than to the United States and who see themselves as reclaiming lands that belong to them.

If the LA Times is creditable, that city is a fragmented, dangerous ecosystem of drug runners, gangs, filled jails, crops of anchor babies and their parents who live in garages and who, 40% of the time, don't pay taxes: meanwhile, twenty-one Spanish radio stations keep them demonstrating in synchrony.

5) The Ecology: individuals who complain about SUVs are silent about the river of plastic bags, water bottles, and cans, a sludge that flows south to north.

Finally:

I have never advocated anarchy, injustice, or limits on opportunities for individuals. I prefer, like Thomas Sowell, bottom-up solutions and suspect that long, Federal, top-down solutions have failure built into them and are nourished by interests that conflict with mine. Hazelton's citizens, for example, derived reasonable solutions to repel their invaders and in a manner consistent with the history of our Republic. I hope that the federal government supports the citizens of Hazelton.

George Bush, in contrast, puts some of our Border Patrol in jail and is rumored to send 1500 to help the Iraqis keep out Al Kaeda. Another example, cocaine in a ship's hold or on a human back is the same substance but our Coast Guard advertises its ability to stop, search, seize, and imprison drug runners but our guys in New Mexico's "heel" cannot.

I must believe that:

- Intolerance for local planning and decisions implies that those eight hundred pages mostly protect special interests, Mr. Bush's personal friendships, and possibly secret commitments that he should not have made.

- I am alarmed, suspicious, and angry that government officials evade, rationalize, and lie as if they were French and that all three branches of government, established with good intentions, are infested now with the inept and mad, peculiar misfits who will not or cannot leave and who expect me to pay for what they want to do.

- I got a two-mile fence rather than the 700 that I wanted.* Instead of two pages of rules, I get 800. Instead of border enforcement, I am to be given a labyrinth of promises, traps, and costs, one filled with real opportunities to cheat and imaginary consequences for it. Unfortunately for this Republic, Ariadne hid her ball of string somewhere in Montana.

- Overspent, overregulated, and over secularized, Americans and America now collapse from within. America's leadership no longer moves in time with the beliefs of her people but attempt to impose rules on citizens whose ancestors made their own. Toynbee would give us a chapter in Decline and Fall because we commit suicide just as he predicted.

Self-adoration, arrogance, and complacence keep this government in the business of slavery. They also sank the Titanic...

JimB

* Note: There are: some claim one-half mile, some two miles, others 80.

References:
Mackay C (1841/1980) Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. NY: Three Rivers Press.
Paine T (1792/1999) Rights of Man. Mineola, NY: Dover.
Sowell, T. (2002) A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles. NY: Quill.
Toynbee A (1948/1958) Civilization on Trial and The World and the West. NY: Meridian Press.
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