This 4th of July weekend has found me busy working hard, but by the same token happily working away at something that I love dearly and am expending the time and effort on of my own free will. I wouldn’t have it any other way. Today’s a day for celebration though, and I’ll be putting the work aside for a bit to enjoy some BBQ and fireworks.
As I penned in my journal a couple of years ago:
Give me all the risks
that go with being free.
I’ll gladly take the lot
as the price of liberty.
Happy Birthday, Old Friend. And Thank You for the life I feel so fortunate to get to live.
I’ve gone and gotten hooked on Penn Jillette’s weekday radio show recently, thanks to the podcast that enables me to catch it out here in the Bay Area at times when I can manage to listen. In addition to being frequently hilarious, Penn very often has interesting things to talk about and insightful things to say about them. To borrow terms in which Penn frequently describes himself: He’s my kind of nutty libertarian atheist wack-job.
Monday’s episode regarding the pro-immigrant / “Day Without Immigrants” rallies held around the U.S. was especially good, and Penn managed to express almost verbatim what I’ve been thinking on the subject.
Open up the borders entirely. Let anyone in. In order to do that — in order to let anyone in — you have to stop running a socialist country.
Given sufficient attention to security concerns, I’m all in favor of there being a reasonable legitimate means for immigrants to enter the U.S. and petition for and obtain citizenship. It’s been said so often as to have become a cliché, but it’s an accurate one: We truly are a nation of immigrants — and who are we, once in the “club”, to shut the doors? Immigrants, on balance, contribute far more to this country than they take, and I think we should welcome anyone who wants to come here and contribute to and be a part of this way of life we’ve defined with open arms (though unlike some advocates of open immigration I think it’s reasonable to expect immigrants to assimilate to some extent). It should come as no surprise, however, that this desire for openness to immigration comes into conflict with the desire many people have for our government to guarantee citizens a growing array of social service provisions. Having the latter only lends fuel to the otherwise specious counter-argument that immigrants are a net drain on resources and here to take more than they give back.
On a related note: Given that there appears to be a fair amount of overlap between those who advocate on behalf of immigrants and the folks who continually insist that the U.S. is such a dreadful place to have to live, I can’t help but wonder how such people proceess the fact that there are so many people who want so desperately to come here and live in this supposed cornucopia of crises that they routinely endure great hardships and take great risks in order to do so. Do they simply think these people have been misled about the promise of America?
Seems like if it was that big a disappointment, word would eventually get around and the immigrants would stop coming in droves. And yet, they keep coming. Fancy that.
Courtesy once again of Glenn Reynolds’ aptitude for picking up on the best stuff on the net, my attention has been brought to something brilliant I’d hate to have missed:
“Vodkapundit” Stephen Green hits the nail right on the head:
President Bush isn’t a fascist, and I can prove it.
We’ve seen what American bookstores and publications and universities do when confronted with real fascists: they knuckle under. You might not be able to find those Danish cartoons anyplace respectable, but you’ll sure find lots of anti-Bush stuff.
Ipso facto, America is doing just fine, thankyouverymuch.
Looks like I’m back on the air, following some technical trouble Blogger was having yesterday that apparently caused my blog, along with numerous others, to temporary vanish…
My copy of Glenn Reynolds‘ “An Army of Davids” arrived yesterday and I’ve just cracked it open this evening and am enjoying so far. One notable quote that’s caught my attention:
“The secret to success in big business and politics in the twenty-first century, I think, will involve figuring out a way to capitalize on the phenomenon of lots of people doing what they want to do, rather than — as in previous centuries — figuring out ways to make lots of people do what you want them to do.” (p. 21)
I certainly hope he’s right!
…courtesy of Instapundit. Something new to be concerned about, or just more of the same desperate theatrical posturing and attempts to incite divisions among Americans?
Meryl Yourish comments: “Sounds to me like they just got last season’s 24 on DVD.”
Indeed. Sounds like they’re scraping the bottom of the idea barrel. I hope they haven’t also been watching Battlestar Galactica and building poorly-founded expectations that they’ll drive us to some kind of pathetic navel-gazing self-doubt about our right to exist… Even a single attack of the magnitude they allude to would, I feel confident, put an end to such idle pursuits and galvanize Americans’ will to hunt down Al Qaeda and its brethren and unequivocally destroy their ability to ever do such things again — something the 9/11 attacks only partially succeeded in doing. But I certainly hope that any such attempts will be successfully thwarted, and we’ll therefore never get to find out.
Glenn Reynolds says he won’t be watching the Oscars this year. I’m not planning to go out of my way to watch them either. I’ve had my fill of Hollywood’s cultural cynicism and misguided activism in recent years, thank you very much. So many better things to do with one’s time…
UPDATE Sunday 3/5: The Manolo is liveblogging the Oscars, with guestbloggers Stephen Green, Gay Patriot, Roger Simon, et. al. Hilarious stuff! OK, so I’ve got the show on in the background now so I can at least get the jokes. So sue me…
