Opaque Lucidity

The Fickle Crowd

This week's immigration protests are unprecedented, but not for the reasons you may think. I really didn't think of this until yesterday, when a co-worker of mine brought it to my attention. The size of the crowds, while rarely seen in some of the protest cities (such as Dallas) is not unheard of in this country. Nor, despite news reports to the contrary, is the peacefulness of the protesters. What is unprecedented is their effect: for the first time in American history, people who by law have no say in the governance of this country (because they do not pay taxes or have the right to vote) are going to have beneficial laws passed on their behalf.

The writing was on the wall when none other than Ted "Swimmer" Kennedy addressed the protest in Washington. While not everyone in the crowd was an illegal alien, many of them were. When someone with Kennedy's amoral sensibilities looks at the sea of faces, he sees one thing: votes---millions and millions of them. What could be better for the Democrats than to lock in the Hispanic vote for 70 years the way they have locked in the African-American vote? To them, and to many Republicans, it does not matter that illegal immigration is a simple matter of law-breaking. Yes, these people have the right to expect a certain level of human rights while living here. But to assume the rights of tax-paying, law-abiding Americans is a perversion. Yet, it is allowed to stand in the name of greater power by one political party or another.

I told my co-worker yesterday that when I read about the Roman Empire, it is possible to look at certain events and realize that a keen observer would've seen the handwriting on the wall and known that it was time to change course or face the downfall of an era. My sincere hope is that historians hundreds of years from now will not look at this time with the same logic and wonder why we allowed the illegal rabble to shape our laws.