. . . on England, and on Ireland, Germany, Italy, and the rest.
The libertarian impulse to go Galt, to run away, is a feature of America, not a bug, a built-in self-destruct mechanism which went off most spectacularly and destroyed the root in 1861.
The rest of the plant has been withering and dying on the vine ever since, overtaken by tenacious weeds.
Freedom for Christian religion combined with plenty of Lebensraum, home country memory, and time made it seem otherwise in the face of the steadydecline, but here we are with Scylla and Charybdis for choices come November 2024.
The Declaration of Independence was a repudiation of politics. Two thirds of the country was not down for the struggle. Secession was a repudiation of politics. There was resistance to military conscription everywhere, but especially in the Confederacy. We were content to let the world burn for more than two years before the Japs forced our hand on December 7, 1941. We have rightnow the unthinkable European land war in its 20th month and sports is what trends on Twitter day in and day out. Mao killed by the tens of millions during The American Century. Americans quietly go to church every Sunday while tens of millions are aborted. It all began with migration, the most basic form of repudiating politics.
We do not need, in short, to relearn to think politically. Most of us have never thought politically in the first place. Apolitics is our politics, but this horrorvacui is why the left seems to have won and why we hate them. We hate politics. As polarized as we think we are, as rigged as our politics is, 100 million eligible Americans still did not vote in 2020.
You do not get political blood from this turnip.
Ultimately, nothing could be more un-American than to give up on America.
The American idea, alas, is precisely to stay out of it.
A studypublished in the European Journal of Endocrinology showed that all trans people were at a “significantly higher risk” of a host of serious and potentially deadly medical conditions, including heart attacks and strokes.
“A border wall is a 14th-century solution to a 21st-century problem,” the Democratic Texas congressmanHenry Cuellarsaid. “It will not bolster border security in Starr county.
The Biden administration says it is using executive power to allow border wall construction in Texas
FILE - A border wall section stands on July 14, 2021, near La Grulla, Texas, in Starr County. On Wednesday, Oct. 4, 2023, the Biden administration announced that they waived 26 federal laws in South Texas to allow border wall construction, marking the administration’s first use of a sweeping executive power employed often during the Trump presidency. The Department of Homeland Security posted the announcement with few details outlining the construction in Starr County, Texas. (Delcia Lopez/The Monitor via AP, File)
McALLEN, Texas (AP) — The Biden administration announced they waived 26 federal laws in South Texas to allow border wall construction on Wednesday, marking the administration’s first use of sweeping executive power to pave the way for building more border barriers — a tactic used often during the Trump presidency.
The Department of Homeland Security posted theannouncement on the U.S. Federal Registrywith few details outlining the construction in Starr County, Texas, which is part of a busy Border Patrol sector seeing “high illegal entry.” According to government data, about 245,000 illegal entries have been recorded in this region during the current fiscal year.
“There is presently an acute and immediate need to construct physical barriers and roads in the vicinity of the border of the United States in order to prevent unlawful entries into the United States in the project areas,” Alejandro Mayorkas, the DHS secretary, stated in the notice.
The Clean Air Act, Safe Drinking Water Act and Endangered Species Act were some of the federal laws waived by DHS to make way for construction that will use funds from a congressional appropriation in 2019 for border wall construction. The waivers avoid time-consuming reviews and lawsuits challenging violation of environmental laws.
Related stories
Although no maps were provided in the announcement, aprevious mapshared during the gathering of public comments shows the piecemeal construction will add up to an additional 20 miles (32 kilometers) to the existing border barrier system in the area.
“The other concern that we have is that area is highly erosive. There’s a lot of arroyos,” said Starr County Judge Eloy Vera, the highest-elected official in the county, pointing out the creeks cutting through the ranchland and leading into the river.
Starr County is home to about 65,000 residents spread over about 1,200 square miles (3,108 square kilometers) that includes ranchland and part of the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge.
Environmental advocates say structures will run through public lands, habitats of endangered plants and animal species like the ocelot, a spotted wild cat.
“A plan to build a wall through will bulldoze an impermeable barrier straight through the heart of that habitat. It will stop wildlife migrations dead in their tracks. It will destroy a huge amount of wildlife refuge land. And it’s a horrific step backwards for the borderlands,” Laiken Jordahl, a southwest conservation advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity, said Wednesday afternoon.
During the Trump administration, about450 miles (724 kilometers) of barrierswere built along the southwest border between 2017 and January 2021. Texas Governor Greg Abbott renewed those efforts as part of hisongoing immigration enforcementfrom the state level after the Biden administration initially halted them at the start of his presidency.
The DHS decision on Wednesday contrasts the Biden administration’s posturing when aproclamationto end the construction on Jan. 20, 2021 stated, “building a massive wall that spans the entire southern border is not a serious policy solution.”
U.S. Customs and Border Protection had no immediate comment.
The announcement prompted political debate by the Democratic administration facing an increase of migrants entering through the southern border in recent months, including thousands who entered the U.S. throughEagle Passat the end of September.
“A border wall is a 14th century solution to a 21st century problem. It will not bolster border security in Starr County,” U.S. Representative Henry Cuellar said in a statement. “I continue to stand against the wasteful spending of taxpayer dollars on an ineffective border wall.”
Political proponents of the border wall said the waivers should be used as a launching pad for a shift in policy.
“After years of denying that a border wall and other physical barriers are effective, the DHS announcement represents a sea change in the administration’s thinking: A secure wall is an effective tool for maintaining control of our borders,” Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, said in a statement. “Having made that concession, the administration needs to immediately begin construction of wall across the border to prevent the illegal traffic from simply moving to other areas of the border.”
The governor signaled that, while he was committed to naming a woman
of color, he didn’t want to give Lee the advantage of appointed
incumbency. This was a new standard, developed by Newsom since his last
appointment of a senator in 2021, when he chose Alex Padilla
to replace newly elected Vice President Kamala Harris. As an appointed
incumbent, Padilla ran for and easily won a full term in 2022. This
time, Newsom said, he wanted to make an “interim appointment”—indicating
an apparent preference for a caretaker senator who would merely finish
out Feinstein’s term and then leave the Senate.
It was an absurd calculus, offering the prospect of a brief rather
than ongoing expansion of representation for Black women in the Senate,
and Lee called him out for it. The representative said
in a statement, “The idea that a Black woman should be appointed only
as a caretaker to simply check a box is insulting to countless Black
women across this country who have carried the Democratic Party to
victory election after election.”
When he ran for president in 2016, few of Donald Trump’s
promises thrilled his supporters more than his pledge not just to build a
wall on the southern border, but to force Mexico to pick up the tab.
“And who’s going to pay for it?” he’d say at his rallies. The crowd
would shout back joyfully, “Mexico!” It wasn’t about the money; the
point was to conjure a fantasy of America standing tall and dominating
our neighbor; their humiliation would be our glory.
A fantasy is just what it was, as Trump now admits. At a speech
in Iowa on Sunday, he blurted out the truth. “When you hear these
lunatics back there,” he said, pointing at the news media, “say, ‘Trump
didn’t get anything from Mexico,’ well, you know, there was no legal
mechanism. I said they’re going to help fund this wall, but there was no
legal mechanism. How do you go to a country, you say, ‘By the way I’m
building a wall, hand us a lot of money.’”
Of course it was about the money. Everything is about the money.
It wasn't a fantasy to neoliberal Bush 43 pal Vicente Fox, who took it seriously enough at the time when Trump first proposed to make Mexico pay that he wouldn't pay.
This is revisionist history by Trump and by Waldman, which pretends there was no Border Wall Funding Act of 2017, nor serious elite opposition to its provision for a foreign remittances tax.
Trump would simply like to erase the history of his phony immigration promises, and Waldman would simply like no one to entertain seriously the particulars, which show there is a giant pot of money easily taxed to pay for border security.
Foreign remittances to the Latin South reached $142 billion in 2022, and Mexico's share was $60 billion.
The government of the United States farts away billions of dollars every minute of every day. Funding a $25 billion wall is a flea on that elephant's back. The fierce opposition to it is the thing of real size.
At the same time, though, I look at guys like Chip Roy, Tom Massie, Jim
Jordan, and they’re basically saying there’s not a plan to go forward
with whatever Matt Gaetz is doing.
