Helen Weir
Rubio at the Rubicon
By Helen Weir
This past Independence Day week, Americans were treated to some real fireworks. Who ever imagined that the Executive Branch of the federal government — "our own" President, in the lingo of the sports culture — would file a lawsuit against one of the 57 states? After enlisting the aid of cartographical experts to determine just where Arizona is, the Democrats have evidently decided that it needs to be wiped off of the map entirely.
That is effectively what will take place, if BHO and his cohorts have their way. Deprived not only of federal protection in the form of the enforcement of existing immigration laws, but also of the legal ability to defend itself, Arizona as a state will cease to exist, civilly as well as practically. It will be the first to disappear into the matrix of the Alinskyite, "suit-and-tie" anti-Americanism that has long sought to destroy the balance of powers upon which this country depends — between one federal branch and another, between the sovereign states and the government which only exists due to their ratification of it, and between the inalienable rights of the individual American and the ruler who has no right to try to become his God.
If the current administration succeeds in granting itself, by means of craven judicial fiat, the ability to ignore whichever laws it chooses to ignore, to define "racism" as whatever it wants it to mean, and to manipulate all future election results by usurping control of who is and is not able to vote, then what is happening to residents of Arizona is really happening to all of us. Anybody get yet why the untouchable issue of Obama's personal birth certificate, his view of the seriousness of American citizenship, and his Party's possible collusion in subverting Constitutional requirements in this regard, really are a BIG EFFING DEAL after all?
What is a state, anyway — what the Founding Fathers established it to be, or a place where law-abiding Americans, undocumented workers just looking for a better standard of living for themselves and their families, and murderous masters of gangs and drug cartels, can all go out for a nice ice cream on a quiet summer evening without fear of official molestation?
Enter Marco "Sorry, Charlie!" Rubio, the rising Republican star running for a Senate seat in Florida. Rubio is charismatic; he is conservative; he is outspoken; he isn't buffaloed by interviewers or incumbents. Taking a tough, anti-Obama-agenda stance has worked for him so far, even unto running his primary opponent right out of the GOP. So why all the tap dancing on the immigration issue, while the ink on the "controversial" Arizona legislation was still wet?
Rubio apologists have generally advanced the theory that Marco should get a pass from the Tea Party crowd on this one because, after all, he is of Cuban descent. His policy positions are said to be legitimately influenced by the inclinations of his immediate associates, rather than by his professed Christianity, the Constitution, and his own conscientious determination of what, in practice, is right. This seems somehow reminiscent of what Bill Clinton just told us when Robert Byrd passed away. Making yet another notable contribution to the American Common Lexicon of Mind-Bending Orwellian Circumlocutions, Slick Willie asserted that we need not concern ourselves with the deceased legislator's "fleeting association" with the Klan as a young man, because Byrd was only doing what any blue-blooded Clintonian would have had to do, in order to get elected.
Is Rubio, in his sole waffle to date, "only doing what he has to do" in order to get elected in the close-to-Cuba Sunshine State; does he truly not understand what is at stake in the illegal immigration debate at large; or does his oft-repeated and otherwise seemingly credible claim to offer a "clear alternative to the Obama agenda" now have to carry with it an ominous and indelible asterisk?
Since the question of Cuba has been dragged into the debate, let's take a look at what's happening there right now.
Oscar Biscet, founder of the Lawton Foundation, is still rotting in jail for the crime of "disrespect" for the government. In rapidly declining health and only allowed to see his family on the most restricted basis, Biscet, who turns 49 this July 11, has served out about a half of his quarter-of-a-century sentence. Just what did he do to deserve all this? A medical doctor himself, he decried the slide from abortion to overt infanticide in the state-run Cuban healthcare system. Now a prisoner of conscience, Biscet heroically refuses to withdraw his allegations of genocide against the Castro regime.
Aren't these the same two pesky little problems with Obamacare that people are trying to call attention to here in the United States, amidst the swirl of dueling financial projections — namely, abortion and conscience rights?
After all, when Barack was but a knee-high state senator from the Land of Blagojevich, nurse Jill Stanek brought to the attention of the Illinois legislature the abandonment of live-aborted babies in the laundry carts of our own sparkly-clean hospitals. The Born Alive Infant Protection Act had about as much impact on Obama, evidently, as Biscet's well-documented plea had on the Communist dictator to the south. Fortunately for Jill, BHO didn't have the entire Department of Justice at his disposal just yet.
Marco Rubio, of course, is against abortion and its satellite crimes against humanity. But is opposing Obamacare alone — or even calling for its absolute repeal — really enough? Offering a "clear alternative" to the Obama agenda means more than resisting BHO's attacks on America on a case-by-case basis. It means championing the Judeo-Christian tenet that "all men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights" in its Declarationist-Constitutional entirety, border security and American identity included.
Interestingly, the universality-of-human-rights argument is invoked most consistently by those who evidently desire the de facto invasion of the United States to continue apace. Of course illegal immigrants have human rights. Everyone does! That is why the argument as presented proves too much.
Bank robbers have human rights. Some of them, for all we know, might only be trying to feed their innocent families. Does it follow that the laws against bank robbery should no longer be enforced?
Drunk drivers have human rights. They may even be of various racial backgrounds. Therefore, the rest of us have no claim to a reasonable standard of safety on the roads?
Prostitutes have human rights. They need to eat, like anybody else. Would it then be argued that — oh, sorry. Might be stepping on some libertarian toes with that one.
And speaking of the need to eat, I had a chance to meet Tea Party darling Ron Johnson while he was in Eau Claire last month. Nice guy. Passionate. Well-spoken. Took the time to talk to us little people before he left. Gave me the standard exceptions-and-states-rights spiel — "I'm pro-life, but . . ." — when the subject of Roe v. Wade, at my insistence, arose.
Johnson is running against Senator Russ Feingold, and no one would like to see Feingold suddenly get "bone tired"* more than I would. But there was still something indefinably troubling about Ron Johnson's overall political stance, reminiscent of his higher-profile confrere, Mr. Rubio's. Roll with me on this.
Mr. Johnson, who had been cruising along nicely, suddenly got a real deer-in-the-headlights look when I brought Terri up. After a moment, he had to admit that he "didn't really remember anything about that situation." I had the impression that he was being perfectly honest with me, and I respect him for that, as far as it goes. Nobody can know everything, and it is better to own up to your human limitations than to — oh, I don't know — lay claim to an ability to heal the planet, or something.
The problem with Johnson's ignorance of the Schindler Schiavo travesty is that he is basing his candidacy mainly on opposition to Obamacare. A successful businessman, Ron says that the healthcare debacle is what impelled him to run for office in the first place. Like the grade school math student who gets the right answer but didn't solve the problem using the correct steps, however, Feingold's likeable challenger apparently has no clue about why Obamacare must essentially be opposed. Costs are one thing; human life is another.
After the recess appointment of Obama's new Healthcare-Rationer-In-Chief, what happened to Terri is not something that any of us can afford to be ignorant of. Take a quick glance at the history of the twentieth century, if that hasn't been outlawed yet. It is the handicapped, the unwanted, the marginalized who are the first to go. Now that the law establishing socialized medicine in this country has been passed and we are all able to find out what is in it, its proponents are no longer making any bones about it. Obamacare isn't about healthcare for all. It is about healthcare for those they deem worthy of initiated or continued existence. Pro-choice, indeed!
With November approaching, we need to back candidates who offer more than "a clear alternative to the Obama agenda." We need to start demanding principled clarification about what that alternative is going to be. The question is not whether the Tea Party likes a candidate; the question is whether a candidate acknowledges the principles enunciated in the Declaration of Independence. If human rights are universal, they go for the Terri Schiavos of the world, for those conceived in conditions we salve our consciences by calling "exceptional," and even — believe it or not — for the lawful residents of the great state of Arizona itself.
Is Marco Rubio — and by extension, the brewing conservative revival he presumably represents — really ready to cross the Rubicon, or not? Are we going to commit to the elegant and immutable principles of our nation's founding, or settle for a cobbled-together, reactive-rather-than-proactive, Rube Goldberg Republicanism instead? As the "Gingrich Revolution" of 1994 has already dismally demonstrated, tinkering with tax reduction just isn't enough. Ready or not, the die is cast.
*This was Congressman Dave Obey's designated excuse for unexpectedly retiring from public life when, after expediting Obamacare, he was given a run for his money in the polls by Republican challenger Sean Duffy. Perhaps Mr. Obey now seeks to rival Mr. Clinton as foremost contributor to the above-mentioned American Common Lexicon.
© Helen Weir
July 10, 2010
This past Independence Day week, Americans were treated to some real fireworks. Who ever imagined that the Executive Branch of the federal government — "our own" President, in the lingo of the sports culture — would file a lawsuit against one of the 57 states? After enlisting the aid of cartographical experts to determine just where Arizona is, the Democrats have evidently decided that it needs to be wiped off of the map entirely.
That is effectively what will take place, if BHO and his cohorts have their way. Deprived not only of federal protection in the form of the enforcement of existing immigration laws, but also of the legal ability to defend itself, Arizona as a state will cease to exist, civilly as well as practically. It will be the first to disappear into the matrix of the Alinskyite, "suit-and-tie" anti-Americanism that has long sought to destroy the balance of powers upon which this country depends — between one federal branch and another, between the sovereign states and the government which only exists due to their ratification of it, and between the inalienable rights of the individual American and the ruler who has no right to try to become his God.
If the current administration succeeds in granting itself, by means of craven judicial fiat, the ability to ignore whichever laws it chooses to ignore, to define "racism" as whatever it wants it to mean, and to manipulate all future election results by usurping control of who is and is not able to vote, then what is happening to residents of Arizona is really happening to all of us. Anybody get yet why the untouchable issue of Obama's personal birth certificate, his view of the seriousness of American citizenship, and his Party's possible collusion in subverting Constitutional requirements in this regard, really are a BIG EFFING DEAL after all?
What is a state, anyway — what the Founding Fathers established it to be, or a place where law-abiding Americans, undocumented workers just looking for a better standard of living for themselves and their families, and murderous masters of gangs and drug cartels, can all go out for a nice ice cream on a quiet summer evening without fear of official molestation?
Enter Marco "Sorry, Charlie!" Rubio, the rising Republican star running for a Senate seat in Florida. Rubio is charismatic; he is conservative; he is outspoken; he isn't buffaloed by interviewers or incumbents. Taking a tough, anti-Obama-agenda stance has worked for him so far, even unto running his primary opponent right out of the GOP. So why all the tap dancing on the immigration issue, while the ink on the "controversial" Arizona legislation was still wet?
Rubio apologists have generally advanced the theory that Marco should get a pass from the Tea Party crowd on this one because, after all, he is of Cuban descent. His policy positions are said to be legitimately influenced by the inclinations of his immediate associates, rather than by his professed Christianity, the Constitution, and his own conscientious determination of what, in practice, is right. This seems somehow reminiscent of what Bill Clinton just told us when Robert Byrd passed away. Making yet another notable contribution to the American Common Lexicon of Mind-Bending Orwellian Circumlocutions, Slick Willie asserted that we need not concern ourselves with the deceased legislator's "fleeting association" with the Klan as a young man, because Byrd was only doing what any blue-blooded Clintonian would have had to do, in order to get elected.
Is Rubio, in his sole waffle to date, "only doing what he has to do" in order to get elected in the close-to-Cuba Sunshine State; does he truly not understand what is at stake in the illegal immigration debate at large; or does his oft-repeated and otherwise seemingly credible claim to offer a "clear alternative to the Obama agenda" now have to carry with it an ominous and indelible asterisk?
Since the question of Cuba has been dragged into the debate, let's take a look at what's happening there right now.
Oscar Biscet, founder of the Lawton Foundation, is still rotting in jail for the crime of "disrespect" for the government. In rapidly declining health and only allowed to see his family on the most restricted basis, Biscet, who turns 49 this July 11, has served out about a half of his quarter-of-a-century sentence. Just what did he do to deserve all this? A medical doctor himself, he decried the slide from abortion to overt infanticide in the state-run Cuban healthcare system. Now a prisoner of conscience, Biscet heroically refuses to withdraw his allegations of genocide against the Castro regime.
Aren't these the same two pesky little problems with Obamacare that people are trying to call attention to here in the United States, amidst the swirl of dueling financial projections — namely, abortion and conscience rights?
After all, when Barack was but a knee-high state senator from the Land of Blagojevich, nurse Jill Stanek brought to the attention of the Illinois legislature the abandonment of live-aborted babies in the laundry carts of our own sparkly-clean hospitals. The Born Alive Infant Protection Act had about as much impact on Obama, evidently, as Biscet's well-documented plea had on the Communist dictator to the south. Fortunately for Jill, BHO didn't have the entire Department of Justice at his disposal just yet.
Marco Rubio, of course, is against abortion and its satellite crimes against humanity. But is opposing Obamacare alone — or even calling for its absolute repeal — really enough? Offering a "clear alternative" to the Obama agenda means more than resisting BHO's attacks on America on a case-by-case basis. It means championing the Judeo-Christian tenet that "all men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights" in its Declarationist-Constitutional entirety, border security and American identity included.
Interestingly, the universality-of-human-rights argument is invoked most consistently by those who evidently desire the de facto invasion of the United States to continue apace. Of course illegal immigrants have human rights. Everyone does! That is why the argument as presented proves too much.
Bank robbers have human rights. Some of them, for all we know, might only be trying to feed their innocent families. Does it follow that the laws against bank robbery should no longer be enforced?
Drunk drivers have human rights. They may even be of various racial backgrounds. Therefore, the rest of us have no claim to a reasonable standard of safety on the roads?
Prostitutes have human rights. They need to eat, like anybody else. Would it then be argued that — oh, sorry. Might be stepping on some libertarian toes with that one.
And speaking of the need to eat, I had a chance to meet Tea Party darling Ron Johnson while he was in Eau Claire last month. Nice guy. Passionate. Well-spoken. Took the time to talk to us little people before he left. Gave me the standard exceptions-and-states-rights spiel — "I'm pro-life, but . . ." — when the subject of Roe v. Wade, at my insistence, arose.
Johnson is running against Senator Russ Feingold, and no one would like to see Feingold suddenly get "bone tired"* more than I would. But there was still something indefinably troubling about Ron Johnson's overall political stance, reminiscent of his higher-profile confrere, Mr. Rubio's. Roll with me on this.
Mr. Johnson, who had been cruising along nicely, suddenly got a real deer-in-the-headlights look when I brought Terri up. After a moment, he had to admit that he "didn't really remember anything about that situation." I had the impression that he was being perfectly honest with me, and I respect him for that, as far as it goes. Nobody can know everything, and it is better to own up to your human limitations than to — oh, I don't know — lay claim to an ability to heal the planet, or something.
The problem with Johnson's ignorance of the Schindler Schiavo travesty is that he is basing his candidacy mainly on opposition to Obamacare. A successful businessman, Ron says that the healthcare debacle is what impelled him to run for office in the first place. Like the grade school math student who gets the right answer but didn't solve the problem using the correct steps, however, Feingold's likeable challenger apparently has no clue about why Obamacare must essentially be opposed. Costs are one thing; human life is another.
After the recess appointment of Obama's new Healthcare-Rationer-In-Chief, what happened to Terri is not something that any of us can afford to be ignorant of. Take a quick glance at the history of the twentieth century, if that hasn't been outlawed yet. It is the handicapped, the unwanted, the marginalized who are the first to go. Now that the law establishing socialized medicine in this country has been passed and we are all able to find out what is in it, its proponents are no longer making any bones about it. Obamacare isn't about healthcare for all. It is about healthcare for those they deem worthy of initiated or continued existence. Pro-choice, indeed!
With November approaching, we need to back candidates who offer more than "a clear alternative to the Obama agenda." We need to start demanding principled clarification about what that alternative is going to be. The question is not whether the Tea Party likes a candidate; the question is whether a candidate acknowledges the principles enunciated in the Declaration of Independence. If human rights are universal, they go for the Terri Schiavos of the world, for those conceived in conditions we salve our consciences by calling "exceptional," and even — believe it or not — for the lawful residents of the great state of Arizona itself.
Is Marco Rubio — and by extension, the brewing conservative revival he presumably represents — really ready to cross the Rubicon, or not? Are we going to commit to the elegant and immutable principles of our nation's founding, or settle for a cobbled-together, reactive-rather-than-proactive, Rube Goldberg Republicanism instead? As the "Gingrich Revolution" of 1994 has already dismally demonstrated, tinkering with tax reduction just isn't enough. Ready or not, the die is cast.
*This was Congressman Dave Obey's designated excuse for unexpectedly retiring from public life when, after expediting Obamacare, he was given a run for his money in the polls by Republican challenger Sean Duffy. Perhaps Mr. Obey now seeks to rival Mr. Clinton as foremost contributor to the above-mentioned American Common Lexicon.
© Helen Weir
The views expressed by RenewAmerica columnists are their own and do not necessarily reflect the position of RenewAmerica or its affiliates.
(See RenewAmerica's publishing standards.)
