In her column this morning on OpinionJournal, Peggy Noonan shows (once again) that she gets it on immigration and demonstrates through her wise words (yet again) why she is the Athena of political punditry. I noted last week how she called the bill “a big and indecipherable mess” and favored dividing it up into smaller bills, with one securing the border to be considered first.
This week, she’s back on her game (when is she not on her game?), first making this wise observation about the “American mood” on immigration: “Anti-immigration and for the immigrant. Against the abstract and for the particular.” This American Athena gets her homeland.
And she loves that homeland and is, like her humble servant, eager to integrate immigrants into our culture, but reiterates that we must first secure the border:
We should close the border, pause, absorb what we have, and set ourselves to “patriating” the newcomers who are here. The young of AmeriCorps might help teach them English. Those reaching retirement age, who happen to be the last people in America who were taught and know American history, could help them learn the story of our country. We could, as a nation, set our minds to this.
Exactly.
Not only does she gets America, but, like the real Athena, who restrained Achilles from rash action in The Iliad and helps guide nearly all the Greek heroes, understands that young men must learn to control their passions. Observing the Puerto Rican Day Parade in the Big Apple, she observed two young men behaving badly and comments:
We’re going to have to work on that young man, on both of them.
But we always have to work on young men, don’t we?
And so she writes truly in the spirit of her divine namesake, understanding that we have to work on young men. For, as I will attempt to show in my dissertation, the Greeks understood (primarily through the gray-eyed goddess) that young men need feminine guidance in order to fulfill their role as responsible adults. With the anecdote in her column today, Peggy follows in the footsteps of that armor-clad Olympian. A woman recognizing the needs of young men.
Don’t take my word for it, just read the whole thing!
– B. Daniel Blatt (GayPatriotWest@aol.com)
UPDATE: Charles Krauthammer (whom I believe Bruce or I once called the Apollo of political punditry) offers a perspective on immigration nearly identical to Peggy’s. He notes that only one provision of the immigration bill garners “unanimous support: stronger border enforcement.” He concludes with a point that echoes one Peggy made two weeks ago:
Comprehensive immigration reform has simply too many contentious provisions to command a majority of Congress or the country. We all agree on enforcement, don’t we? So let’s do it. Make it simple. And do it now. Once our borders come visibly under control, everything else will become doable. Including amnesty.
Now that I’ve whet your appetite just read the whole thing, especially as he makes a great case for a border fence.
Peggy Noonan is a goddess, but I do take exception with;
“Bush the younger came forward, presented himself as a conservative..”
Before 911, Bush touted himself as the “Education President”- campaigning on more Federal involvement in education. In 2003, he promised a massive prescription drug plan if elected. He keeps his word, we just don’t listen.
Amen, Tom.
Fool us once…. shame on us.
Fool us twice…. Bush-whacked. 🙂
#1 – “Conservative,” my aunt Fanny. Heck, even when GWB was elected governor here in 1994, we all KNEW he wasn’t conservative. He was just more conservative than Ann Richards – which is why he won.
In fact, by 1996 we had people calling local talk-radio complaining that GWB wasn’t conservative ENOUGH.
Plus, you have to remember that this is the same president that spawned conservative frustration over:
• Creating the Department of Homeland Security, originally an idea of then-Democratic Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT).
• Picking up the veto pen only twice in his six years in office, despite massive spending bills that could and should have been vetoed.
• No Child Left Behind, the product of bipartisan cooperation with the very liberal Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA).
• Campaign Finance Reform
• Harriet Miers
• Botching the push for Social Security privatization
• Failing to use his political capital to push for a thorough overhaul/reform of the maddeningly complex federal tax code.
And those are just the ones that immediately come to mind.
No wonder the only topic that all GOP presidential contenders agree upon is the War on Terror.
Regards,
Peter H.
And slightly off-topic, but between the goddess Athena’s “Olympian ideals” and our discussions of Wonder Woman, it seems we’re veering off into mythological territory. Which, incidentally, I enjoy immensely.
Regards,
Peter H.
Ah, but did Peggy spring from her father’s achin’ head in full battle gear? Perhaps… 😉
The reason why they won’t do border security first is obvious: they don’t want it. They want open borders and don’t give a damn what the American people want. It’s very clear that they are only throwing in tidbits for border security to buy votes in Congress and soothe the savage electorate with false promises. I do not trust the lot of them and prefer to see this bill die a horrible death. Secure the border first through existing law or something good added on, let’s see the results and then we can go back a hash out the rest. Until then, no dice.
I totally agree, John. I’m not sure what Bush is thinking if he honestly believes that by claiming he’ll spend 4.4 billion on enforcement, that he’ll get what he wants.
To paraphrase the Good Book, until I see those additional 20,000 border guards with my own eyes and put my hands on the newly-upgraded fence and the fleet of buses returning illegal immigrants who refuse to turn themselves in to Mexico, I will not believe.
#5 – Well, figuratively speaking, she has always referred to Ronald Reagan as a “father figure,” so if you want to say that in existential terms she “sprang from his head” (i.e. the Oval Office), then you would be right on!
What she lacks in physical armor she makes up for in mental toughness.
Regards,
Peter H.
Everyone says “control the border”, but no-one’s willing to pay the expense and accept the social and legal ramifications. Just as no-one’s really-willing to accept the consequences of rounding-up the 12-20 million illegals here in the US and actually forcibly deporting them. I just don’t see either happening in “this” America.
The part of the equation that I find horrifying is the contrast between those who DID walk across the desert just to reach the Border; and the tens of millions of native-born who scorn our school systems’ free education, spurn jobs as either “beneath them” or as “too difficult” to commute to, live supported at US-Taxpayer expense as “unemployable”…yet their civic “leaders” bray the loudest about the “Salvadoran maid” at the local Marriott.
Amnesty? Perhaps we are attempting to deport the wrong-portion of the underclass. How do I balance the claim on the “American Dream” between someone who crossed deserts and barbed-wire fences to get a job, a home and the American Dream for their families…against those who drop-out, reject making an effort, yet feel “entitled”?
Harsh? Why are the construction sites and landscaping crews mostly Hispanic, while only a few miles away are intercity neighborhoods full of underemployed able-bodied native-borns? Is this an economic problem…or a cultural-one? Or, the “6000-pound elephant in the room” that no-ones willing to recognize as there. People follow jobs…change who gets those jobs and you change the dynamic, otherwise you are dealing with “hydraulic inevitability”. like King Canute at the shore-line.