Big Jolly Politics

politics in Harris County and Texas

The IRS Scandal and Obama’s Magical Kingdom

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Ed Hubbard
Ed Hubbard

When I first saw the excerpts of President Obama’s commencement speech at The Ohio State University, I shook my head over what seemed to be his increasingly bitter and false critique of the conservative view of limited government.  Then as the news of the IRS scandal expanded, including the local angle of its impact on local Tea Party groups and on the leaders of King Street Patriots, it seemed to me that there was a connection between Obama’s view of government and politics, and the scandals over the IRS and AP that were unfolding.  So, I decided to actually read Obama’s speech (at http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2013/05/05/i-dare-you-to-do-better-obamas-ohio-state-commencement-speech/).

I was at once pleasantly surprised, while my deepest concerns were also confirmed.  First, the pleasant surprise—I could agree with probably 90{997ab4c1e65fa660c64e6dfea23d436a73c89d6254ad3ae72f887cf583448986} of what the President told these graduates.  The foundation of his speech was a discussion of American citizenship, including its foundation and its responsibilities, which requires all of us over our lifetimes to be engaged in more than our own immediate ambitions and interests.  Indeed, our society of free people will come to a screeching halt without such engagement.

Where the President and I (and probably most conservatives) disagree is over the role of the national government in this process of citizenship.  Most American Conservatives believe that the responsibilities of citizenship emanate from each individual citizen to form caring relationships through families, neighborhoods, congregations, businesses, private civic institutions and organizations, and local governments, and that those relationships bind us together into a society capable of accomplishing great things. To us, government is one of those relationships that forms a tool we use in this process to protect this society, to help coordinate and facilitate certain activities within this society, and to meet those responsibilities of citizenship that simply cannot be met through our private relationships alone.

Following the instructions from our Founders, we conservatives strive to limit the role of government in this process of society because of the vast police power that is inherently vested in government to accomplish the tasks we assign it—a lesson that has been learned as a result of too many tragic examples of the tyrannical use of such power by democracies as well as dictators over the course of human history.  We enforce these limits through laws and constitutions, but also through our own civic engagement in our private relationships and in our governments at every level.  As a result, we see ourselves as a society of free people using their caring relationships to create and maintain a Shining City on a Hill that is protected by the light footprint of three tiers of limited governments—local, state, and national—that we run.

In stark contrast to this conservative view of the relationship of government to citizenship is the President’s progressive view.    This viewpoint interprets the Founders’ actions as creating a national government through which citizens would channel their civic engagement to create a national society and to accomplish great national goals.  This viewpoint remembers every great civic accomplishment over the course of our history as resulting from an initiative of this national government.  This viewpoint sees the private and local institutions and governments through which we have developed and used our private caring relationships as being the source of tyranny and misery that the national government had to address.

In the end, this progressive view sees the national government as the source of society, the focus of our citizenship, and the primary force for collective good, which uses its power to avenge tyranny rather than create it.  One could call this progressive view of our society a Magical Kingdom of a benign national government bestowing society through the engagement of its citizens in its schemes, in contrast to the Shining City on a Hill in which a light government protects the civic engagement of a society of free people.

Let’s face it, neither ideal has ever been fully achieved—such is the nature of ideals—and there is some truth to both views of the American experience.  But we must ask ourselves these hard questions:  which of these views is most consistent with the ideas that formed this country, and which of these views is most consistent with human experience?  For me, the answers are obvious; and they become even more obvious when you remember that Obama’s views are further skewed by his experience of rising through the Chicago Democratic machine.

The model of the Magical Kingdom is the oldest, and most common model of society implemented by every culture and civilization at one time or another throughout human history.  In fact, one could say it is the default model, to which every society eventually has reverted because it is the easiest to control, implement, and manipulate.  It centralizes power, always in the name of the greater good; but to maintain that power it first asks for the allegiance, engagement and conformity of its citizens to its goals, and then it simply coerces conformity—and that coercion slowly steals the freedom of the citizen, minimizes the private relationships among citizens, and ultimately destroys citizenship.  This evolution of  the Magical Kingdom has occurred in democracies and republics, in tribes and theocracies, and in dictatorships and monarchies.  It is the model that has corrupted Chicago politics since the 1920s, and, if fully implemented at the national level, it will corrupt this “last, best hope of Earth.”

Today, we are seeing the first sprouts from the seeds of Obama’s coercive Magical Kingdom.  As he and his Chicago team were busy morphing their campaign apparatus from 2008 into an arm of the DNC, then his re-election campaign committee, and then into a tax-exempt “social welfare organization” under Section 501(c)4, his operatives at the IRS (and other agencies) were trying to coerce conformity by using governmental power to investigate its opponents.  When the public realized that the “emperor had no clothes” when it came to the story of the Benghazi attacks, we were told to conform by ignoring the story—it just didn’t matter anymore, and it was an old story that should be allowed to be forgotten.  When his docile press coverage became less docile, his operatives at the Justice Department used governmental power to conduct an over-broad investigation of the Associated Press, thereby coercing future silence from the rest of the media by using the AP as an example.

As the characters on ABC’s drama Once Upon a Time continually remind the audience, “magic always comes with a price.”  And the price extracted by the Magical Kingdom ultimately is a coerced conformity and a hollow citizenship.  So yes, Mr. President, some of us are concerned when you incorrectly tell these young graduates that “[t]he founders trusted us with this awesome authority.”  In fact, they didn’t trust us with that authority, which is why they created a limited national government, and preserved the tiers of local and state governments to conduct most of the business of government.  And no, Mr. President, we conservatives have never said that government is “the root of all our problems,” but your own view and actions have confirmed what every objective student of history has learned from human experience, that the potential for tyranny does lurk around the corners of false hope within the Magical Kingdom—as the conduct of your operatives once again confirms.

And that is why we conservatives embrace the radical experiment of the Shining City on a Hill, rather than the tired model of the Magical Kingdom; and why we challenge this year’s graduates to use their citizenship to embrace and engage in this harder work over their lifetime of building the networks of private relationships and local governments needed to preserve our exceptional experiment in self-government.

Our Battle for Liberty, Justice and Mercy

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Ed Hubbard

I hope all of you enjoyed this past weekend, as many of us reminded ourselves of the stories of mercy and resurrection that are at the core of our faiths.  In the context of this past weekend’s worship, I thought about the political debates this year.  In many ways, I find the recent political rhetoric emerging from the Obama campaign to be giving conservatives both a challenge and a rare opportunity to reset the political dialogue about mercy and justice in a free society.

Last summer, during the debate over the debt ceiling, I wrote a post entitled “The Compassion Trap,” in which I warned that the type of rhetoric we are now hearing indeed would be coming from Obama and his followers.  Just as they have confused liberty with autonomy, they have confused collective actions of the state with mercy and justice.  If we can re-frame this debate properly, we can change the political dynamics of this country toward a more constitutional and more just society.  We need to confront and seize this moment, but do so wisely.

To reset this debate requires conservatives to beat the following point like a drum:  compassion toward our fellow man is a fundamental principle that has guided the aspirations and actions of all Americans across the generations—both liberals and conservatives.  We simply, but profoundly, disagree over the role of our national government to provide compassion to our neighbors.

From the moment our ancestors landed on these shores, Americans wanted to live by the Golden Rule, and every failure to live by that principle eventually has been met, generation after generation, by a re-commitment to it.  In fact, this principle was written into the fabric of our Republic by our Founders.

A month before the Declaration of Independence was adopted by the Continental Congress, Jefferson’s fellow Virginian, George Mason,  with the help of Patrick Henry and a young James Madison, wrote and published the Declaration’s pre-cursor, The Virginia Declaration of Rights (also known as the Virginia Bill of Rights), which contained these passages:

1.    That all men are by their nature equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights, of which, when they enter into a state of society, they cannot by compact deprive or divest their posterity; namely, the enjoyment of life and liberty, with the means of acquiring and possessing property, and pursuing and obtaining happiness and safety.

…

15.  That no free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people, but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality and virtue, and by frequent recurrence to fundamental principles.

16.  … and that it is the mutual duty of all to practice Christian forbearance, love, and charity towards each other.

To our Founders, just as with our Settlers, commitment to the Golden Rule was a citizen’s duty that went hand-in-hand with the preservation of a society of free and independent individuals.  It is this commitment that spread the America that de Tocqueville encountered, neighborhood by neighborhood, congregation by congregation, across a continent.  It is this commitment that created civic organizations that provided charity and assimilation to generations of Americans, and new Americans.  It is this commitment that forced us to face our demons and open our society to all Americans of all races, ethnicities, and genders.  It is this commitment that guided us to try to reform Europe after World War I, to rebuild Europe and Japan after World War II, to airlift aid to Berlin, to try to find a peaceful resolution to the deep problems of faith and ethnicity in the Middle East, and to come to the aid of victims of disasters all over the world over many generations.

But at some point over the last 100 years, a growing number of Americans began to believe that our commitment to the Golden Rule here at home could no longer be entrusted to our citizens, or to the system of federalism and local communities that protected and allowed for the individual exercise of the Golden Rule.   Instead, these Americans believed that the individual and local approach was too slow and too inefficient to meet a modern society’s complex needs.  And so, they sought to unburden each of us from our responsibilities to adhere “to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality and virtue,” and “to practice Christian forbearance, love, and charity towards each other,” by delegating the duties of justice, love and charity to the national government and by ignoring the rest.  These Americans would have re-written the parable of the Good Samaritan to have the Samaritan delegate his act of mercy to the local constables in the nearest town.

Today, the difference between an American conservative and an American liberal (or a progressive), is that we conservatives know that delegating our obligation of mercy to government doesn’t end with the delivery of mercy; while liberals just want another chance to perfect their schemes, because they firmly believe that with just a little more tinkering and tax money they’ll finally get it right.  We conservatives know that had the Samaritan kept on walking, like the others had, the stranger on the side of the road would have died by the time the constables arrived to investigate.  We conservatives know that by delegating our obligation to govern our lives by the Golden Rule to bureaucrats, moderation, temperance, frugality, virtue and forbearance have been lost, and government has failed to provide adequate justice, love and charity to anyone.  In the process, we’ve bankrupted our country and ourselves, and we’ve condemned whole generations of communities to under-education, under-employment, and over-incarceration.   Meanwhile, all we’ve gained is a sense of freedom from each other.

Are our ideals radical?  Yes:  defining liberty as combining freedom  with the duty of the Golden Rule was always a radical experiment; but it was an experiment we as Americans always believed was worth continuing, and that Dr. King described as a promissory note due to all Americans.  If the unique, wonderful experiment of America is to last for our children ‘s posterity, we conservatives must resurrect our Founder’s first principles, and challenge our liberal friends and neighbors to prove that our ideals are not just radical, but that they are wrong.  Down deep, we know, and they know, that they can’t meet that burden.  While they try, we conservatives must persuade our neighbors that living by these principles requires a re-commitment to federalism and to governance through local action.

Finally, we conservatives must convince our neighbors that America wasn’t great because we allowed liberals to delegate our duties to the national government, and because they created failed grand schemes that made them feel good (but that are bankrupting us now).  We were, and still are great, because we created a unique society of caring, free people.  Our neighbors need to understand that we conservatives aren’t trying to take anything away from them.  Instead, we are trying to give them back a modern society based on true liberty, true justice, and true mercy.

If we make this point, we will win the election with a mandate for lasting reform.

A Basic “Conflict of Visions”

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In 1987, Thomas Sowell published a landmark book entitled “A Conflict of Visions,” in which he identified and explained the historical and intellectual roots of the differences between the modern worldview of Western liberals and that of Western conservatives.  Since that first work, Sowell has published other works expanding on this theme.  For any conservative who wants to fully understand the philosophical root cause of our political and cultural divisions with the modern left, these books are essential for your reading list.

But I want to focus on a more basic and practical conflict of visions facing us in 2012, and challenge you to listen to what our leaders say over the next two evenings.  As you know, tonight the four remaining Republican Presidential candidates will debate in Florida on national television, to be followed tomorrow night by President Obama’s State of the Union speech.  As you listen to these five men, I ask you to listen for their views on one topic:  what provides for the general wellbeing of the people of this country?  If you listen closely, the answer to this question will illustrate the basic conflict of visions between our two parties, and what is at stake in this election.

I believe you will find that the four Republicans, though they each will articulate the answer differently, will agree that the general well-being of the people is provided by private-sector jobs:  jobs that employ people; jobs that provide for families and churches and neighborhoods; jobs that expand wealth by creating new goods and services, and return on investments to be re-invested to create new jobs; jobs that provide tax revenue for our infrastructure and schools; and jobs that channel and nourish individuals’ energies, hopes, dreams and ambitions.  In turn, they see the role of government, like a private-sector business sees its staff or administrative departments—necessary to provide security and support for the people engaged in the creation of revenue for the company, or in this case for the creation of wealth by the private sector, but not as the primary creator of that revenue or wealth.  For more than a generation, the private sector has been reducing the footprint of staff and administrative jobs, and making those functions more responsive to the needs of the people producing the goods and services, and the revenue, of their businesses, and conservatives believe that government at all levels should be similarly reformed.  It doesn’t matter whether the conservative has been a lifetime elected official, a private-equity investor, or an entrepreneurial professional, conservatives share this fundamental view.

But what you will hear from President Obama is a completely different vision.  He and his fellow travelers believe that government provides for the well-being of the people, and that all institutions, including private-sector businesses, function at the pleasure and direction of the government.  Whether it is a re-distributive stimulus to try and spark employment, re-distributing resources to increase public-sector employment, or increasing taxes and then re-distributing them from providing security and infrastructure to providing entitlements, the underlying vision is that government owns and controls your wealth to use as it sees fit to provide for the “masses.” 

Let’s see how the left’s vision works in the real world.  Take public elementary and secondary education.  The production of education occurs in the classroom between the teacher and the student.  While we have re-distributed so much money to school districts over the last generation that we by far lead the world in per pupil expenditures, look at where it has gone.  It hasn’t gone to the classroom, but instead to bloat the size and scope of staff and administration and their facilities to the extent that in many school districts the number of staff and administrators now equals or exceeds the number of teachers.  When government sees itself as providing for the well-being of society, it increases its size, and runs every agency the same way—the perpetuation of the agency through increasing employment of staff and administration is seen as more important than the production of the service the agency was designed to provide.  Because of this inherent inefficiency, little or no effective service is provided, and the wellbeing of the people is not furthered.  Rather than reform this model, the left’s insane answer is to just continue to increase the wealth redistribution and the size of government until they “get it right.”  The joke on all of us is that they’ll never get it right following this model.

The left’s model—its vision—simply doesn’t work in the real world over the long run.  Not in Europe, and not here.  And, as we are seeing in Greece, and throughout the Western world, we can’t afford (culturally, economically, or politically) indulging this vision anymore.

Regardless of who you are supporting in the Republican primaries this year, remember that it is this basic conflict of visions between the importance of a private sector job and the importance of bureaus and bureaucrats, which is at the foundation of our battle this year for our nation’s future.

Can the 10th Amendment provide a path to address the “Immigration Issue”?

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Why can’t we seem to resolve the “immigration issue” this country has been debating, off and on, for the last forty years (and which we have debated intensely and incessantly for the last 4-5 years)?

This question has been nagging at me for more than a month now.  It most recently arose during the November meeting of the Clear Lake Area Republicans, when our focus-group discussion identified several issues that we bundle together as the “immigration issue” as the most important local and federal issues we currently face.  Then, in mid-December, I attended a debate about immigration policy between two well-intentioned and well-regarded local Republican leaders sponsored by a local chamber of commerce, which ended-up stirring the issues around rather than providing much clarity. I walked away from both of these events feeling that this issue—or bundle of issues—seems to be a wound that we can’t get to heal, no matter how hard we try.  In fact, the harder we try to close this wound, the more we seem to bleed from it.

This feeling is exacerbated for me, because I deeply believe that the long-term solutions to many of this country’s problems will be solved, if at all, by re-balancing the allocation of responsibility and power of government based on the principles contained in the 10th Amendment—and yet, effectively addressing the immigration issue has seemed to me to require a more coherent and aggressive federal, rather than a state and local response.  Because Washington seems increasingly incapable of addressing its own responsibilities wisely and effectively, this problem has seemed impervious to resolution, which is why States have tried to act on their own to attack the issue.

But, just when I decided to stop thinking of this issue for a while, some thoughts came to me, which I want to share with you as we move into 2012.  I am not promising that my thoughts provide all the right answers, or even the right path toward any of the right answers.  But, I hope they will provide a different perspective that could get us closer to finding at least some answers.

I think the reason that the present immigration debate seems like it is beyond resolution, is because the current problem arises from a structural dilemma related to the federal structure of our governments.  To understand this dilemma, I first want to digress to discuss that federal structure.

In Federalist 45, James Madison made this following observation about the nature of the different spheres of responsibility and powers delegated to the federal government and retained by the states:

The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined.  Those which are to remain in the State government are numerous and indefinite.  The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will, for the most part, be connected.  The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State.

Consistent with this view, the Supreme Court, after the Civil War and the passage of the post-war amendments that expanded the scope of federal authority over civil rights of citizens, articulated the difference this way:

… the United States is not only a government, but it is a national government, and the only government in this country that has the character of nationality. It is invested with power over all the foreign relations of the country, …, all of which are forbidden to the state governments. It has jurisdiction over all those general subjects of legislation and sovereignty which affect the interests of the whole people equally and alike, and which require uniformity of regulations and laws, …– all which subjects are expressly or impliedly prohibited to the state governments.

Knox v. Lee, 79 U.S. 457, 555 (1871).

While under our Constitution and form of government the great mass of local matters is controlled by local authorities, the United States, in their relation to foreign countries and their subjects or citizens, are one nation, invested with powers which belong to independent nations, the exercise of which can be invoked for the maintenance of its absolute independence and security throughout its entire territory.

The Chinese Exclusion Case, 130 U.S. 581, 604 (1889).

What these statements show is that the general division of responsibility and power between the federal and state governments was based on a division between authority over external and purely national issues on the one hand, and authority over local issues on the other hand; and on a further understanding that most issues faced by government were local in nature.  With these general understandings in mind, Hamilton, in Federalist 32, describes the further idea of the limited nature of the delegation of authority to the federal government this way:

But as the plan of the convention aims only at a partial union or consolidation, the State governments would clearly retain all the rights of sovereignty which they before had, and which were not, by that act, exclusively delegated to the United States.

He goes on to identify three types of exclusive delegation:

…where the Constitution in express terms granted an exclusive authority to the Union; where it granted in one instance the authority to the Union, and in another prohibited the States from exercising the like authority; and where it granted an authority to the Union to which a similar authority in the States would be absolutely and totally contradictory and repugnant.

Finally, Hamilton identifies the express delegation of the power to “establish an Uniform Rule of naturalization throughout the United States,” as an example of the third type of express delegation, and this view is elaborated upon by Madison in Federalist 42.  So, what our Founders intended was to give us a federal government vested with expressly delegated responsibilities, which were intended to address external and purely national issues.  One of those expressly delegated issues was Naturalization.

Now, before we return to the primary topic of this post, we need to address the difference between “naturalization” and “immigration”.  Naturalization is the process by which a foreigner, once having arrived in the country, may stay and become a citizen.  Immigration is the process by which a foreigner comes to, and enters the country.  The power over naturalization was expressly delegated to the federal government, in large part because of the problems the colonists encountered with restrictions imposed by Britain prior to the Revolution, and inconsistencies created by the States under the Articles of Confederation.  However, the Constitution is silent as to the power over immigration (except for an odd reference in the provision related to the continued importation of slaves until 1808).  Consistent with this silence, and with the colonists’ anger over limitations on voluntary immigration imposed by Britain before the Revolution, the federal government did not impose restrictions on voluntary immigration until the 1880s.

When the federal government first imposed restrictions upon immigration, the action was not justified as an exercise of the “necessary and proper” power related to naturalization but, instead, was justified as enforcement of treaty provisions with China and Japan, which restricted immigration from those countries. Eventually, the Supreme Court ruled that the authority to regulate immigration was inherent in, and arose from all of the powers vested in the federal government to conduct foreign affairs—or, as the Founders would have said, from the delegation of powers over external issues.  Then, as we in Texas remember all too well, about 30 years ago in Plyer v. Doe, the Supreme Court narrowed the ability of States to regulate the conduct and status of persons who had entered and stayed in the country in violation of federal immigration laws, by requiring that States provide the children of such persons equal access to public education.  And that opinion has led, in large part, to the tremendous strain on States and communities caused by the “immigration problem” in this country ever since.

So what is the structural dilemma I spoke of earlier?  Unlike most of the problems that have arisen from the allocation of power during our history, the current immigration problem is unique.  During most of our history, we have battled over the adequacy, extent, or legitimacy of the power delegated to, or usurped by the federal government from the states or individuals.  Whether the issues have been slavery, civil rights, economic, or social regulation, the debates normally centered on whether the national effects from local actions actually made the issues national in scope, and whether the power being debated could be exercised legally and effectively from Washington.  The current immigration debate is the exact opposite.  The immigration debate involves an issue that is expressly or inherently vested in the federal government to address (whether it be naturalization, immigration, or border security), but which creates negative effects that are almost exclusively local in nature.  From the strain on public schools and hospitals, to the local insurance and job markets, communities are absorbing the brunt of federal inaction.  In the meantime, communities and States have very limited legal means at their disposal to address these effects.

That the federal government has failed, and continues to fail, to address today’s immigration and naturalization issues is beyond serious debate.  It has failed to develop and maintain an appropriate bilateral relationship with Mexico within which border security and immigration could and should be handled.  It has failed to secure our borders to know who is coming and going, and to enforce current restrictions on entry.  It has failed to address the problem of expired visas for students and temporary workers.  It has failed to enforce laws on the books designed to stop the employment of persons who have entered and stayed in violation of law.  It has failed to enforce deportation laws.  It has failed to create positive laws that promote immigration of workers we need for today’s economy.  These failures have created a de facto federal policy of non-enforcement of illegal entry restrictions.

Though this de facto federal policy has created stresses on State and local governments throughout the nation, the problem is most acute where the policy is most abused:  in the States and communities closest to the border with Mexico.  In the meantime (though we should get some clarification from the U.S. Supreme Court on this issue by June, 2012), current legal precedents limit the extent to which States and local governments can address the impact of this policy.  While there is no question that State and local governments can, and constitutionally should enforce federal immigration laws, the current administration has been hostile to even modest attempts by state and local governments to cooperate in or assist with such enforcement.  Beyond basic enforcement, state or local regulations that attempt to regulate the activity of people because of their immigration status, to deny benefits to people because of their immigration status, or to impose additional state-law penalties for violating the federal immigration laws, have rarely been upheld by the courts.

So, while the federal government continues to dither, what can we do?  What should we do?

The simple answer is that we must do what we can do, and what we can do is take back control of our communities and States, consistent with the 10th Amendment and with the federal structure I discussed above.  To take back this control, we are going to have to embrace a paradigm shift in our thinking, though.  This paradigm shift will require a more realistic and forgiving attitude toward those who have come here, or who have stayed here, in violation of the law; and it will require a more appropriate self-image of ourselves and our role in this process.

First, the realism:  millions of people who crossed the Rio Grande and stayed illegally over the last generation, or who over-stayed their visas, will never go home.  Whether it is because we won’t have the stomach or the resources to do it, we will not deport that many people; and many of them will have planted too many roots here to ever leave voluntarily, no matter how bad the economy gets.  Moreover, for those who have established homes in the Southwestern U.S., why would they go home when they can build a better life in a place that is still culturally and historically familiar to them?

Second, the forgiveness:  except for our most serious crimes, such as murder, every crime has a “statute of limitations” period, after which someone can no longer be prosecuted.  Crossing the border and staying without complying with federal law in order to work and make a living are crimes, but they aren’t murder.  Just as society forgives other crimes over time, we need to begin forgiveness (especially if it comes with repentance, such as compliance with payment of fines and prohibition against citizenship).  We also need to remember that one of the hallmarks of our legal rights has been the principle that the “son is not liable for the sins of the father,” which is embodied in the Constitutional prohibition against bills of attainder, and to stop condemning children for the crimes of the parents.  Finally, we have to understand that all of us—citizen and illegal immigrant alike—have been harmed by the failures of the U.S. and Mexican governments to address the problems that have caused and attracted this continued exodus into the U.S.

Third, and maybe most importantly, we have to stop wallowing as victims over this issue.  For years, we have seen ourselves as the victims of a wave of illegal activity without protection from our federal government, and, to add insult to injury, we’ve seen ourselves as having to support the “villains” with public benefits.  In response to this feeling of victimization, we’ve come to sound and act collectively like “Inspector Javert,” the character from Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables, who eventually loses his soul over his quest to bring the petty criminal Jean Valjean to “justice” long after Valjean had paid his penance.

Ladies and gentlemen, these “villains” are our neighbors, regardless of who they are, where they came from, or how they got here.  And, as I noted before, most of them and their children will be here a very long time.  The Democrats and other organizations know this, and they are advocating that these neighbors remain separate from the rest of the larger community, and, therefore, dependent on unions, government and their political party for years to come.  As long as the Democrats can maintain the federal status quo, and we refuse to engage with these new neighbors, we condemn these newcomers to become wards of the long-term Democratic strategy for our country.

So, if the federal government won’t act, the paradigm shift requires us to use the principles of the 10th Amendment positively and aggressively to build better communities for the future.  To accomplish this shift, we will have to take control and build neighborhoods with these new neighbors.  The only way to build these bonds of neighborhood is through assimilation, and real assimilation is hard work—and takes both parties to make it happen.

That means, it is time we roll-up our sleeves and help our new neighbors to assimilate:  to privately establish the network of churches and private organizations that help neighbors and build communities; to teach English and help them become literate in our culture and history; and to mentor the establishment of private businesses and employment through which they can pay taxes, and support the public institutions that now support them.  We can not, and should not, reward the adults among them who committed the initial crime by granting them amnesty through a citizenship path (and we couldn’t do that anyway because that is the essence of the power of naturalization delegated to federal responsibility), but we must begin to fold their families into our neighborhoods so that their children—who will stay here because this is the only home they have known—become productive neighbors, and their children and grandchildren become productive citizens.

I know this paradigm shift does not address the actual needs at the federal level.  I do not address the federal problems, because, frankly, we know what needs to be done to secure the border and re-gain control over the legal flow of people into this country.  Our elected leaders in Washington will either have the will to pass this legislation, or we will have to keep electing new leaders until we find those who will.

But we can not wait for the stalemates in Washington, and between Washington and Mexico City, to resolve themselves before we begin to retake control of our lives and our communities.  That is the purpose of this idea of the paradigm shift—to use the ideas of the 10th Amendment to positively address the problems created by federal inaction and build stronger citizens and communities in the future; rather than to use the 10th Amendment as a negative argument to joust with the federal authorities over whether and how to should enforce federal law.

Some may label my paradigm shift as amnesty by another name, but it is not.  Amnesty, or other such regulations, deal with naturalization, and that is a federal responsibility.  In fact, if my idea would be implemented, there may indeed be neighbors who we help who eventually will be deported if and when the federal stalemate ends.  But the conditions of our schools and our communities, and the demands on our local infrastructures, require that we take control of this situation here and now where we live and work.  Frankly, this is what the Founders would have expected us to do.

I know many of you will disagree with what I have written here.  Do me a favor—read it once, give it some thought, then read it again.  Afterwards, give me your comments and let’s start a dialogue on this important issue.