02 — The smack of firm government.
[Clip: Good morning. I am here today to announce that the program known as DACA that was effectuated under the Obama Administration is being rescinded. The DACA program was implemented in 2012 and essentially provided a legal status for recipients for a renewable two-year term, work authorization and other benefits, including participation in the social security program, to 800,000 mostly-adult illegal aliens. This policy was implemented unilaterally to great controversy and legal concern after Congress rejected legislative proposals to extend similar benefits on numerous occasions to this same group of illegal aliens. In other words, the executive branch, through DACA, deliberately sought to achieve what the legislative branch specifically refused to authorize on multiple occasions. Such an open-ended circumvention of immigration laws was an unconstitutional exercise of authority by the Executive Branch.]This is of course the U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, addressing the nation on Tuesday.
[Clip: The effect of this unilateral executive amnesty, among other things, contributed to a surge of unaccompanied minors on the southern border that yielded terrible humanitarian consequences. It also denied jobs to hundreds of thousands of Americans by allowing those same jobs to go to illegal aliens.]That's the third time Sessions spoke the term "illegal aliens," which is the precisely correct term used in our federal laws. In all eight years of the Obama administration, did any senior official of that administration utter the phrase "illegal aliens"? I doubt it. Here comes the part I really like.
[Clip: We inherited from our Founders — and have advanced — an unsurpassed legal heritage, which is the foundation of our freedom, safety, and prosperity. As the Attorney General, it is my duty to ensure that the laws of the United States are enforced and that the Constitutional order is upheld. No greater good can be done for the overall health and well-being of our Republic, than preserving and strengthening the impartial rule of law. Societies where the rule of law is treasured are societies that tend to flourish and succeed. Societies where the rule of law is subject to political whims and personal biases tend to become societies afflicted by corruption, poverty, and human suffering.]This is really water in the desert. When was the last time we heard any such firm, clear, honest statement of the rule-of-law principle from anyone in Washington, D.C.?
[Clip: To have a lawful system of immigration that serves the national interest, we cannot admit everyone who would like to come here. That is an open border policy and the American people have rightly rejected it. Therefore, the nation must set and enforce a limit on how many immigrants we admit each year and that means all can not be accepted. This does not mean they are bad people or that our nation disrespects or demeans them in any way. It means we are properly enforcing our laws as Congress has passed them. It is with these principles and duties in mind, and in light of imminent litigation, that we reviewed the Obama Administration's DACA policy.]As I'm sure listeners now know, the result of that review is that DACA — Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals — will end at the beginning of March next year. No more of those two-year work permits will then be issued. Note please this means that there will still be illegal aliens working at American jobs in the year 2020, so we're not exactly looking at blunt force trauma here.
[Clip: Ending the previous Administration's disrespect for the legislative process is an important first step. All immigration policies should serve the interests of the people of the United States — lawful immigrant and native born alike. Congress should carefully and thoughtfully pursue the types of reforms that are right for the American people. Our nation is comprised of good and decent people who want their government's leaders to fulfill their promises and advance an immigration policy that serves the national interest. We are a people of compassion and we are a people of law. But there is nothing compassionate about the failure to enforce immigration laws. Enforcing the law saves lives, protects communities and taxpayers, and prevents human suffering. Failure to enforce the laws in the past has put our nation at risk of crime, violence and even terrorism. The compassionate thing is to end the lawlessness, enforce our laws, and, if Congress chooses to make changes to those laws, to do so through the process set forth by our Founders in a way that advances the interest of the nation.]Immigration patriots like us at VDARE.com have all kinds of issues with our nation's immigration laws: with chain migration, birthright citizenship, the green card lottery, the refugee-resettlement cash rackets, and so on. If you read the website, you know all about that. We'd like to get those laws changed. We'll argue for that, and we'll help and support anyone who wants to accomplish those changes through proper constitutional means. Alongside and separate from all that, though, we nurse anger and disgust about the massive failure to enforce the laws we already have — about what I referred to a couple of podcasts ago as "the retreat of law." Its effects aside, the failure to enforce federal laws is a flagrant act of disrespect to the American people. The message going from high to low is: "OK rubes, you trusted to the Constitution. You elected representatives and lobbied them to pass laws. But see, we don't like those laws. They don't suit us, us Cloud People living on the heights here. So we're just going to ignore them. If you complain, we'll call you racist and have our stooges in the tech monopolies cut off your access to the public square. Eat crap and die, you dumb peasants." Then along comes this Attorney General. Say it again, Jeff:
[Clip: The compassionate thing is to end the lawlessness, enforce our laws, and, if Congress chooses to make changes to those laws, to do so through the process set forth by our Founders in a way that advances the interest of the nation.]A British Prime Minister once used the phrase: "the smack of firm government." That's what we got from Jeff Sessions on Tuesday: the smack of firm government. May it be heard around the nation, from sea to shining sea. Thank you, General. Thank you.
03 — The flap of limp government. If the Attorney General gave us the smack of firm government this week, President Trump followed up with the flap of limp government.
We were forewarned on the Friday before Jeff Sessions' announcement, when President Trump, talking to reporters in the Oval Office, was asked: "Should Dreamers be worried?" Replied Trump, quote: "We love the Dreamers. We love everybody." End quote. Later, in response to another question, he added that, quote: "I think the Dreamers are terrific." It's hard to imagine anything further removed from the clarity, firmness, and reverence for our law and Constitution that Jeff Sessions exhibited four days later. It's hard, in fact, to imagine anything more vapid and meaningless. For one thing, Trump is talking the language of the enemy. "Dreamers"? That's the feminized, emotionalized, subversive language of the Cloud People, dressing up their contempt for us and our laws in soothing euphemisms and pretty lies. Jeff Sessions says "illegal aliens," using the language of federal law. The President says "Dreamers," using the language of immigration romanticism and cheap-labor lobbying — the language of Nancy Pelosi, Mark Zuckerberg, and George Soros. Are these two guys, Sessions and Trump, are they really on the same team? The President's statements aren't even true. "We love the Dreamers," he says, using the imperial "we" — which I find obnoxious in itself, by the way. Hey, pal, you're not the goddam Tsar. You're the temporary elected head of one of the three branches of our republican government. Refer to yourself the way other citizens do, with the first person singular pronoun. And you don't love the DACA illegals. A normal human being loves his spouse, his children, his parents, his siblings, his closest friends. He may love his country or his church in the abstract, but that's not personal. Personal love rarely extends beyond the circle I just drew. There have been very rare individuals who claim to love all humanity. We have a name for those people: we call them "saints." You're just a normal guy, Mr President. Saint, you ain't. You don't love 800,000 strangers. You certainly don't love "everybody." Why do you feel moved to say preposterously stupid things like that? All of that was before the rescinding of DACA. What came out of the White House after Jeff Sessions' Tuesday announcement was even worse. Trump's first recorded comments after the A-G's announcement came at a meeting with congresscritters that afternoon. The meeting was about tax reform, but of course he was asked about the rescinding of DACA. Here was his reply, quote:I have a great heart for the folks we're talking about, a great love for them. People think in terms of children, but they're really young adults … I have a love for these people and hopefully, now Congress will be able to help them and do it properly.End quote. Well, at least Little Father of the Peoples used the first person singular this time. Again with the universal-love theme, though. Who talks like that? I don't know how the illegal aliens feel, but speaking as a citizen, I couldn't care less whether the President loves me or not. What I care about is that he does his duty, as specified in our Constitution, to "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed." Things got worse. Later that same afternoon — this is Tuesday, remember, right after Jeff Sessions' announcement — Trump tweeted that, tweet, "Congress now has 6 months to legalize DACA (something the Obama Administration was unable to do). If they can't, I will revisit this issue!" End tweet. What does that mean? Revisit the issue how? The thing's been rescinded, on a six-month fuse. Possibly Congress will grant the DACA illegals some kind of amnesty in those six months, perhaps as part of a deal, the other side of the deal being the reform of legal immigration proposed by the President a month ago, the so-called RAISE Bill. As I noted at the time, there are some good things in the RAISE bill, along with some little poison pellets. Is this where immigration patriots can accept a deal: those good things, or some of them — an end to chain migration, for example — in return for a DACA amnesty? Personally I'd say no, but it's a point on which there can be honest differences of opinion. The really pertinent question, though, given the performance of this Congress on Obamacare, regulatory reform, infrastructure spending, … pretty much anything, really: the really pertinent question is, what if Congress gets nothing at all done on immigration this six months? Does DACA stay rescinded? Trump's Tuesday afternoon tweet suggests not. So then the wrangling and argumentation and emoting over this wretched program, which every legal expert who's ventured an opinion agrees is flagrantly unconstitutional, and which Trump the campaigner promised to end on Day One of his Presidency, goes on and on poisoning the air down to next year's mid-term elections and beyond. With the decisive action back in January — the action Trump promised us on the campaign trail — the DACA illegals would by now be heading back to their home countries — to Mexico in eighty percent of cases. Instead, this gift from Barack Obama will hang stinking like a dead albatross around the nation's political neck for … who knows how long? Another year? Two Years? To the crack of doom? Who knows? So far the President has not bothered to offer any reassurance to citizens bothered by this. He has, though, reassured the DACA illegals, I guess because he loves them all so much, more than he loves us citizens. Thursday morning he tweeted, tweet: "For all of those (DACA) that are concerned about your status during the 6 month period, you have nothing to worry about — No action!" End tweet. Well, isn't that special. The President's stupid and counterproductive remarks are a sorry contrast to the clarity and good sense of the Attorney General's. There's the paradox of this administration, though: Without Trump, we wouldn't have Jeff Sessions as Attorney General. When the great Russian dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn was expelled from the Soviet Union in 1974, one of his supporters in Britain — probably Robert Conquest — said that future generations would remember Leonid Brezhnev as, quote, "a Russian politician who lived in the time of Solzhenitsyn." Based on their DACA performances this week, I'll speculate that future generations may remember Donald Trump as an American politician who lived in the time of Jeff Sessions.
04 — The Globalist-Nationalist fault line in Europe. Over in Europe, this week saw a widening of the gulf between the spineless, suicidal West and those Eastern-bloc nations determined to maintain their demographic stability in the face of mass invasions from Africa and the Middle East.
What happened this week was, the European Court of Justice, which is a sort of Supreme Court for the European Union, ruled that two of those Easten bloc nations, Hungary and Slovakia, have to take in quota numbers of the illegal aliens who have been flooding into Europe since the great surge of two years ago. This dispute in fact goes back just two years this month, to September 2015, the height of that crisis. There was an EU summit meeting at which it was decided that 160,000 illegals from Greece and Italy would be shared around the 28 EU member states. Several Eastern countries have just refused to take their quotas. Poland, for example, was given a quota of six thousand and some. Total admitted so far: zero. Hungary's quota was thirteen hundred. Total admitted so far: zero. Slovakia's quota was a mere nine hundred. Total admitted: zero. Czechia has been a tad less delinquent. Their quota was 27 hundred: they've admitted twelve. Not twelve hundred; just twelve. Hungary and Slovakia, with support from Poland, which has had a change to a more nationalist government since that summit, Hungary and Slovakia brought a complaint to the Court of Justice arguing that the quota agreement was not properly decided. That's the complaint the Court rejected this week. Responding to this week's ruling, the East Europeans are defiant, the Hungarians most of all. The court decision was, said that country's foreign minister, quote, "outrageous and irresponsible" and, quote, "endangers the future and security of Europe as a whole." "Politics raped European law," he thundered to reporters in Budapest. There's an element of kabuki about this. Because of their forty-year subjugation under the previous transnationalist scourge, Soviet communism, the East European countries are still economically behind their Western neighbors in the Union, so that not many of the illegals actually want to go there. Their preferred destinations are the big old welfare democracies of northwest Europe and Scandinavia. Most of the two hundred-odd assigned by quota to the Baltic republics — Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia — for example have since decamped to Germany. Still, this is a key fault line in the worldwide ideological struggle between nationalism and globalism. Their governments' defiance of the EU is popular with East Europeans, even though these countries are big beneficiaries of EU subsidies. Poland is the biggest beneficiary of regional aid in the EU; yet an opinion poll conducted in June this year found that 51 of Poles support leaving the EU if that's the only way to stop an influx of Muslims. Even more striking, younger Poles — in the 18-24 age group — are more anti-EU than Poles in general. The word "Polexit" has already been coined. Similarly in Hungary, the second biggest and most influential nation in the group. Hungary has elections coming up next year, and Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's Fidesz party, which is strongly nationalist, was polling at 53 percent in July. Polling second at 21 percent was Jobbik, which is even more nationalist. There is just not much of a market for transnationalist globalism in East Europe even though these countries are net beneficiaries of EU aid programs. I know, I know: these are small, distant countries whose concerns seem remote from our own. Or as British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain described what was then Czechoslovakia in 1938, quote: "a faraway land of which we know little." How'd that work out, Neville? Globalism and nationalism are at war, though, and one of the key fronts is Europe. I wish strength to the East Europeans, and firmness in their resolve to keep themselves as distinct nations. By paying attention to their struggle, perhaps we can learn something that will help in our own.05 —Hugely, spring exists again. John Ashbery died this week at age 90.
Some tiny proportion of the Radio Derb listenership just said: "Oh, that's too bad." Some very much larger proportion just said: "Who?" Ashbery was a poet. He was in fact, according to the obituary in Sunday's New York Times, quote, "one of the most influential figures of late-20th and early-21st-century American literature," end quote. I note in passing that from the photograph adorning that obituary, Ashbery looked somewhat like my Dad. So here's a question you might reasonably ask. When, twenty years ago, I published a CD of 36 Great American Poems, did I not include any of Ashbery's? Was it because I just didn't venture into Ashbery's generation of modern poets? Not really. I included poems by Denise Levertov, who was only five years older than Ashbery, and Richard Wilbur, seven years older — and still with us, bless him, at age 96 — and Randall Jarrell, fourteen years older, and Elizabeth Bishop, seventeen years older. OK, they're all older than Ashbery; but not much older. Was it that I just didn't know about him? Not at all. I hadn't read much of Ashbery; but my research materials included anthologies of modern American poetry, like Hayden Carruth's The Voice That Is Great Within Us, all of which had Ashbery selections (Carruth has four); and I must have read other Ashbery pieces in Poetry magazine, of which I was a subscriber in the 1990s. It was just that none of Ashbery's poems — those I'd read — stirred any response in me. Reading the samples of Ashbery's verse included in that New York Times obituary last Sunday, and in their follow-up "Appraisal" on Tuesday — samples I assume were chosen to showcase Ashbery's best work — I experienced the same responses I got the last time I tried him, fifteen or so years ago: responses in the range from "uh-huh" to "wha?" I respond strongly to good poetry of all kinds and periods, as you can probably tell from the selections at the "Readings" page on my website. From my schooldays on I have taken pleasure in memorizing poetry. I can recite from memory in several different languages, including languages I can't actually speak conversationally. It's just that Ashbery didn't do anything for me. So am I saying he was no good? Well … some proper humility is appropriate here. My own taste in poetry may be quirky and particular. Perhaps if I were to consult with friends much more literary than I am — the staff over at The New Criterion, for example — I'd find one or two who are Ashbery fans, and keen to explain to me what I'm missing. These are people whose opinions I respect. Perhaps I'd see the light; or at least be abashed by their enthusiasm, and come away feeling guiltily dumb. Do I believe that? Nah, not really. I'm striving to be charitable, that's all. Hey, the guy just died. (Leaving behind, I'm not very surprised to learn from the New York Times obituary, a "husband.") And as little as Ashbery's verses do for me, they are at least better than the victimological whining of the bogus poets offered for our enlightenment and uplift at Presidential inaugurations in recent years. Concerning one of those I wrote, in the section on poetry in We Are Doomed, quote from me:Nothing worth remembering, nothing striking, nothing amusing, nothing of universal appeal, nothing that owes anything to the magnificent centuries-long tradition of English verse; only the monotonous, structureless, sub-literate whining of nursed and petted victimhood.End quote. Possibly Ashbery wrote some victimological poems too, I haven't made a thorough investigation. Those of his verses I have read are not that way inclined. See, I really am trying hard to be charitable. The least I can do after all that is give you a sample of Ashbery's work. Here you go. This is one of the extracts in the New York Times obituary. I'll read it as straight as I am able. Quote. The weigela, I need to tell you, is a shrubby plant of the honeysuckle family. OK, quote.
All things seem mention of themselves And the names which stem from them branch out to other referents. Hugely, spring exists again. The weigela does its dusty thing In fire-hammered air. And garbage cans are heaved against The railing as the tulips yawn and crack open and fall apart. And today is Monday. Today's lunch is: Spanish omelet, lettuce and tomato salad, Jell-O, milk and cookies. Tomorrow's: sloppy joe on bun, Scalloped corn, stewed tomatoes, rice pudding and milk.John Ashbery, rest in peace.
06 — Blackety-blackety black. Good news for David Brooks and other guilty white liberals everywhere yearning for a nonthreatening black person to gush over: Ta-Nehisi Coates has a new long article out in The Atlantic this week.
Yes, America's foremost public intellectual — polymath, philosopher, master stylist, and recipient of a MacArthur genius grant — Coates has favored us once again with an analysis of our current discontents.But whereas his forebears carried whiteness like an ancestral talisman, Trump cracked the glowing amulet open, releasing its eldritch energies.End quote. "Eldritch"! That's an H.P. Lovecraft word. Has Genius Coates been catching up on his gothic fantasy literature? Are there other Lovecraft words in this piece? "Miasmal"? "Cyclopean"? "Cacodaemoniacal"? I'd do a Ctrl-F on the piece and tell you, but my eyelids grow heavy just looking at a Coates article … Sorry, I really have to go lie down and take a nap …
07 — Miscellany. …… That's better. And now, our closing miscellany of brief items.
Imprimis: Radio Derb likes to keep up with the latest jargon, especially jargon relating to the business we're in, which is of course internet commentary on public affairs. So I was very interested the other day to learn a new verb: the verb "to sealion." What does it mean, to sealion? It means to practice a style of aggressively, persistently, relentlessly, but politely demanding that the other party in an argument justify everything he says: endlessly asking for proof, then nitpicking whatever is offered and turning it round to more demands for proof. If you've been in any online disputations, especially about politically incorrect topics, you know what's meant. Why "sealioning"? What do passive-aggressive demands for endless justification have to do with sealions? Well, it goes back to a cartoon you can find online at wondermark.com/1k62/.08 — Signoff. That's it, ladies and gents. Thank you for listening; and our concerns, and best wishes for your safety, to friends in Florida and the Gulf down there.
The latest information I have going to tape here on Friday evening is that Hurricane Irma will make landfall Sunday, most probably on Florida's west coast. Please be safe down there, and help and support your neighbors in any way you can. I mentioned my Dad back there. Here to sing us out is one of his favorites, from the late great "Gentleman Jim" Reeves. There'll be more from Radio Derb next week. [Music clip: Jim Reeves, "He'll Have to Go."]