The Bush administration has not led on two of the greatest cultural issues of our time, (a) border and immigration control, and (b) the ideological battle against sharia. Indeed, rather the opposite. This creates a large opening for Democrats; of even greater concern is an eventual over-reaction if the concerns of vast numbers of Americans continue to be ignored.

Immigration. The AP reported that 500,000 people demonstrated in LA today against the immigration reform bill passed in the House that would make it a felony to be in the US illegally This vignette was presented as typical:

Many marchers wore white shirts to symbolize peace and waved U.S. flags. Some carried the flags of Mexico and other countries, and wore them as capes. Elger Aloy, 26, of Riverside, a premed student, pushed a stroller with his 8-month-old son at Saturday’s Los Angeles march and called the legislation “inhumane.” “Everybody deserves the right to a better life,” he said.

Ah, but do they “deserve the right” to insist that America have open, unguarded borders? In Elisabeth Bumiller’s NYT article on immigration, she quoted a GOP pollster to the effect that part of the issue is quite clear.

“He’s got a very strong position with the bully pulpit,” said David Winston, a Republican pollster, “but the dynamic of the issue at this point is that there is consensus around border security, but people have not come to a similar consensus about what to do with the 11 million in the country.”

We fail to understand why it is so difficult simply to address that part of the issue where there is consensus and defer the rest until later. Build a wall, build a moat, send troops to the border, quintuple enforcement agents, increase tenfold the drone aircraft on the border, whatever — there appears to be a broad consensus for doing so. It seems to us that much of the nativist rumbling beneath the surface would be quieted by bold, forceful, massive action to simply stop the problem from getting worse. Nobody in the US believes President Bush when he says nonsense like: “Our government must enforce our borders; we’ve got plans in place to do so.” What a joke.

It is difficult politically to tackle the issue of 11 million illegals already inside the country. It is a big winner politically to do what it takes to stop further illegal immigration dead in its tracks. What are we missing? If some Catholic bishops and CEO’s don’t like it, tough luck — they are not the most popular groups themselves nowadays.

Our new Cold War. As for leading in America’s so-far undeclared ideological war on sharia, the President has also been missing in action, as we have discussed even today. We are not in a war merely against “evildoers,” outliers and misfits from society who have to be “brought to justice.” We are in a war very much like the Cold War with adversaries who deeply believe in a clear, well-articulated ideology. Further, their ideology is a taught like Communism was in countries across the Middle East, and their most highly motivated and energetic youth are praised as “marytrs” when they perform their zombie-kamikaze acts. We believe that American opinion underwent a crystalling experience during the Cartoon Riots, as important in its way as 9-11. But instead of a ringing defense of freedom from the adminstration, we got mealy mouthed semi-apologies and a lack of proud insistence on the First Amendment during the Cartoon Riots. This is precisely the opposite of what Americans should hear and are entitled to hear from their leaders.

The administration needs to be out in front, not only in military action, but in rhetoric as well. The Cartoon Riots were a perfect opportunity. So were Rahmatullah at Yale and Abdul Rahman’s peril of execution in Afghanistan. The administration bypassed them all. The downside of using rhetoric and the bully pulpit is that it is quite public when you fail to win. The downside of keeping silent or working behind the scenes is that you cause confusion and fail to rally the people to the cause and cost of freedom — unforgiveable in this war of ideas as well as bullets, which will be fought for many years on many fronts.

The whitebread mentality of the GOP establishment has been pretty clueless on these two critical issues. So far, the great salvation of the Republican Party is that the Democratic Party is riven, and can’t veer much from the 32% of Democrats who believe America is at fault for the ills of the world — since that group includes its most potent financial backers. But the GOP should not keep counting on the incompetence of the opposition.

Even more important in our way of thinking is this: if you ignore the clear will of the people for a long time, when the tide finally turns or the damn breaks to put out that smoldering tinder, the overreaction will likely be too far in the other direction, and that outcome is something we most certainly do not want to experience.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 25th, 2006 at 8:35 pm and is filed under art, culture, business, Democrats, General, Left of Left, Religion, Republicans, War. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.