Cognitive Dissonance, Glenn Beck, and Immigration Law
My father used to say that the biggest disaster that ever befell America was Prohibition, since it inculcated contempt for the law and inured Americans to a cognitive dissonance that has only grown worse and worse.By creating artificial scarcity, Prohibition raised the cost and wages of what had formerly been a private sin. Drunkards took more bread off their families' tables; gangsters fattened on the business opportunities that the law created, sharing their wealth with the officials who were charged (but not empowered) to enforce it. Hardly anyone ever talks about this, but the medical profession was corrupted too. If you had the means, you could ask your doctor to write you a prescription for medicinal alcohol (a source of income that the AMA approved). The War on Drugs has been no different, but it's political suicide to admit it--even in a country that claims to worship the free market (whose inexorable laws of supply and demand clearly explain why such efforts are doomed to produce precisely the opposite of their intended effects).And now people who claim to hate the government are demanding that it stop the illegal immigration that big agriculture and the construction trades so depend on, and that provides an affordable servant class for the privileged but not-so-wealthy. Immigrants undoubtedly do put a strain on our chronically under-funded social services, but most of them don't come here to goldbrick--they come here to work and Americans hire them.If the people demanding a tougher stance on immigration are worried about lost jobs and depressed wages, then why aren't they also pro-union? If they hate jack-booted policemen so much, then why do they want to militarize the borders and empower patrolmen to snatch brown-skinned people off the streets?Glenn Beck hates illegal immigration almost as much as he hates the "disease" of Progressivism. The operative word, he told his listeners Tuesday, is "illegal." He has contempt for the government, but deeply respects the letter of the law. (Click here).
I have a problem with drugs! No, no, no — I have a problem with illegal drugs, not prescription drugs. I don't want to ban all drugs.Prescription drugs are good for you when you used by prescription and follow advice of the doctor — bad otherwise. Got it?Immigration, good. Illegal immigration, bad.
In the good old days before Progressivism, the railroads recruited tens of thousands of Chinese to lay tracks; the needle trades parceled out piece work to European tenement dwellers; and immigrant children labored in unregulated factories, mines, and slaughter houses. In the good old days before Progressivism, white people enjoyed the services of dark-skinned slaves and foreign-born indentured servants. There were no federal payroll or income taxes but there was no safety net either--no FDIC, no disability payments from Social Security, no Medicare, none of the entitlements that so many Americans resent paying for and presume that illegals enjoy for free. If you want an unregulated marketplace and a weak, pro-business government, then shouldn't you tolerate all the other stuff that goes with them?
