Illegal Immigrant Gang Members Must Renounce Membership - Same Procedure As Sen. Kennedy Quitting the Owl Club? [Uh - I don't think so...]

The United States Senate is administering CPR to the illegal immigration amnesty bill. One of the catastrophic provisions of the bill permits ‘gang’ members, here illegally, to become citizens if they just ‘renounce’ their gang membership on their applications.

Right….Well, perhaps they haven’t heard, but resigning from an L.A. street gang is not the same as resigning from the Owl Club.

The Owl Club, in case you haven’t heard, was a gang to which the esteemed blimp from Massachusetts, Edward Moore Kennedy [D-Goodyear] belonged for decades.

Its dues were one hundred dollars a year and its major criminal activity was preventing women from joining. It was due to this criminal activity that Kennedy had to resign from the gang in shame this past year.

But resigning from the Owl Club is nothing like quitting the street gangs of L. A.

Uh – uh….If anything, for those accustomed to a moral society - it’s more like trying to quit the Catholic Priesthood without having been de-frocked. As far as the church is concerned: once a priest, always a priest. Of course, there the resemblance between the Holy See and the L. A. hoodlums ceases, but you get the idea. Once you’ve been ‘ordained’ as a gang member, your membership is ‘irrevocable.’

Some of those gangs have a pretty straightforward policy: You leave when you are dead, and not one second earlier.

I happened to get an education about seven years ago regarding one particular L. A. street gang whose members were comprised of Mexicans and Mexican-Americans.

I was working as a teamster on a movie being filmed in San Diego. The crew members all had 24 hour a day access to a ‘walk-in’ food service vehicle that was basically a cafeteria mounted on a six wheel truck.

It was easy for passers-by to slip in and take a sandwich, drink or snack since there were a couple of hundred extras as well as crew members working on the film.

On one particular afternoon I was waiting in line in the food truck. Ahead of me in line stood a very muscular and tall black fellow. He and his girlfriend were trying to choose from the snack bin.

I do not know what the black fellow said out loud, but a security guard for the movie company overheard him. The guard then told the man and his girlfriend to get out of the truck and leave the set – that it was not open to the public.

The black fellow immediately threatened the guard. He said something along the lines of, “Hey man, mind your own business or I’ll give you a beatin.’”

The security guard, a middle-aged fellow of average height and possessed of a somewhat stocky and overweight build, turned down the collar of his jacket. “Hey!” he called out to the man, “You wanna step outside? I’ll f--- you up real good.”

With that one gesture by the guard – that of the down-turned collar - the black man suddenly started apologizing and practically humiliated himself with his suddenly humble and submissive attitude.

He took his girlfriend’s arm, quickly turned and started out of the truck. As the pair squeezed between the on-lookers, the man kept calling out to the guard over his shoulder such phrases as, “Hey man, I’m sorry – like, no offense – O.K.? I didn’t know man, O.K.? We’re leaving……Come on, babe, let’s go, hurry it up…”

I was amazed. I had no idea what had just occurred. I walked up to the guard and asked him what that ‘show’ had been all about. The conversation went like this:

“What’s with that guy?” I asked. “What just happened?”

“Oh, nothin’ much, man,” said the guard, “I just overheard the dude talkin’ to his lady. I realized he wasn’t part of the film crew, so I told him to leave.”

“Yeah, I know,” said I, “but at first he wasn’t going to go. He started cussing you out…But then you did something with your coat collar - something that scared him…I mean – that guy was suddenly petrified of you. It was obvious he couldn’t get out of here quickly enough.”

Again, he turned down his jacket collar, just as he had done when talking with the black man. “I just showed him this, and he knew he should leave.”

I looked at his neck – but --stupid me. I still didn’t get it.

I just saw a bunch of tattoos. I had no idea what the hell this guard was talking about. “I’m sorry,” I said, “but I’m from Massachusetts. I guess I don’t know what it is you’re trying to show me.”

The guard laughed. Then very quietly he said in my ear, “He saw my tattoos and realized I’m an ‘S.A.,’ so he knew he better leave or I’d hurt him real bad.”

[For purposes of this column, I am writing the letters ‘S.A.’ to express what the guard said. The way it is pronounced, the term sounds like the word “essay.” I’ve never heard a good definition of it. However, my guess is that the term comes from the abbreviation for Hitler’s original gang of street thug storm troopers which terrorized the Jews of Germany in the 30’s. They were known as the “S.A.”]

Anyway, at that point I decided not to push my luck. “Oh,” said I, as though I understood what he meant. “So that’s why he left?”

“Yeah…he knew better than to stick around.”

I was still amazed. No matter what the tattoo showed, the black man had looked like he definitely had the physical strength – and the youthfulness coupled with toughness and attitude - to stuff this middle-aged guard into a trash barrel.

Later I asked one of my fellow teamsters what an “S.A.” was.

He explained that it meant that the guard was a member of a street gang in L. A. I recounted to him what I had earlier observed.

“Oh yeah,” said the teamster, “the black guy was smart to leave. Those Mexican guys, they’ll kill y’uh, man. They are really, really tough. The black guys, especially if they’re alone, won’t screw with the Mexican gang members. They’re pretty much afraid of them. The black gangs will fight among themselves, but they leave the Mexican guys alone.”

Now I was fascinated. I wondered what a ‘street gang’ member was doing working for a security guard firm and what he was doing on the set. Remarkably, I got a rather full answer over the next few nights.

That evening, the same guard, whom I’ll call Miguel [definitely not his real name] was working a double shift. As part of my teamster duties, I was living on the set in a small trailer. Thus, he and I were there together.

Since it was a particularly cold evening, I asked Miguel if he wanted to sit in the trailer for a while and get warm by the propane heater. He was quite glad to accept my invitation.

Over the next three nights, from midnight until about four each morning, Miguel and I talked the nights away. He was a seemingly pleasant fellow and very soft-spoken.

We chatted amiably for hours. He told me of his girlfriend, who was toying with him and had just about dumped him. He told me about the new girl he had just met whom he wanted to ask out on a date. He also told me about a softball team on which he had played in the army.

And he told me about the number of people he had observed being shot, knifed, beaten, or robbed, depending on the circumstances.

In the same very soft voice, this man described all sorts of horrific crimes he had ‘observed.’ He discussed the gang structures in L. A. and the divisions of gangs between the northern and southern parts of California. He was careful not to say exactly what role he had played in the crimes he had happened to witness. But the implication was very, very clear: he had been heavily involved in the execution of these various crimes.

Miguel had also served in the United State Army as a young man. Even in the army, he told me, the gang divisions had reared their heads. He told me of fights that had occurred off-base between varying factions of gangs, including some stationed in Alaska.

As stated, some of the stories were horrific. Some were morbidly funny, and some were outright funny and rose to the level of practical jokes. Were they to be believed?

Or, were these tall tales like those of police ‘bloodbaths’ described by L.A.P.D. Detective Mark Furhman about ten years before the infamous O. J. Simpson trial?

I say that Miguel’s stories were true. Why? Well, it’s necessary to distinguish Furhman’s tales and tales told by folks like Furhman, from the stories told by Miguel during those evenings he and I spent together.

Furhman’s tall tales were brought out during his cross-examination by F. Lee Bailey. It was this cross-examination, more than anything else I can think of in our culture, that has resulted in newspapers and media resorting to the phrase “the ‘n’-word.”

[Incidentally – I personally find the phrase silly. When dealing with anti-semites, we do not refer to the ‘k-word’ for kike, nor when referring to disparagement of the Irish do we refer to the ‘H-word’ for Harp, etc. Whenever I write this column, I will state the word to which I’m referring – other than outright profanities – in full. I see no point in creating an alphabet soup of code words for racial, religious or ethnic words. We are – I hope, all grown-ups here.]

It turned out that Furhman had used the word ‘nigger’ repeatedly when talking with a woman who was purportedly writing a movie script about cops and criminals.

Furhman had sought to impress her. He told her story after story about cops beating up, as he said, ‘niggers,’ and leaving rooms with walls covered with blood from the victims of the police.

In fact, the stories Furhman told her were all urban legends that the cops told about themselves. Cops who told these stories were basically portraying themselves as the type of rogue cop one sees portrayed today on television by actors such as Michael Chiklis in “The Shield” television series.

But Furhman’s stories were told in a style of braggadocio. He was not apologizing for these [fictional] violent acts. He was using them to impress the young scriptwriter with how ‘tough’ he and his colleagues supposedly were.

But what about my gang member, Miguel? What distinguishes his wild stories from those of Mark Furhman?

Well, after three nights of these stories, I finally asked Miguel how he had gotten to be a security guard if he was actively involved with a street gang.

He explained that he was no longer in the gang.

How, I asked, did that work? Did one resign? Did you get kicked out? How did one end one gang’s membership since he obviously still had the tattoos that had put such fear in the black man days earlier.

Again, in that soft-spoken voice, he began to describe more of his history with the gang and spoke of a turning point that he had reached.

The story was this: He had joined the street gang when he was about sixteen years of age. For several years he had done the bidding of the gang leaders. Some of that bidding involved pretty violent and vicious stuff. Still other acts of violence he had done for the ‘fun’ of it.

Seemingly without doubt, these stories were the tales of a man who had no conscience. In other words – the stories were those of a sociopath.

In my lifetime, in the practice of law, I have had occasion to meet three people who turned out to be criminals who were sociopaths. However, with each of these three men, I had sensed from the first moments I had met them, that they were missing a piece of the ‘human pie.’ There was something not ‘there.’

I do not know how to describe it, but I knew that they, for lack of a better word, each had no ‘soul.’ In each instance, it was only later that I found out that each of these three men were, indeed, criminal sociopaths.

But I had not sensed that moral vacuum in Miguel. It was one of the reasons I had talked with him for so many hours. I did not sense that total lack of conscience in the man. And, this was in spite of the horrible stories he had recounted, some of which included vague descriptions of his direct and enthusiastic involvement.

He then described what one might call a ‘moment of moral clarity.’ Without going further into the details of Miguel’s life, suffice it to say that something terrible had occurred in his family’s life when he was about thirty-five years of age. By then he had been a gang member for almost twenty years.

This incident of ‘moral clarity’ had awakened his conscience. In one fell hit, the horror and repugnance of his actions and the life he had led had come crashing down on him.

He had had a moment of ‘empathy’ that led to this ‘clarity.’

‘Empathy’ is a quality that sociopaths are incapable of having. Miguel was not, in fact, a sociopath. Rather, Miguel had been a giant, walking-talking case of arrested moral development.

He was not a fully formed man with a full moral conscience when he joined the gang at age sixteen. As a young child he had admired the gang members. He had begun to develop a warped sense of loyalties and of morality. By the time he joined the gang, he had a totally twisted and misguided sense of what was right and wrong.

“Loyalty” was good.

Being ‘loyal’ to the gang was good.

The gang was his surrogate ‘family’ and the older members ‘surrogate fathers.’ Being in a surrogate family with surrogate fathers was a ‘good’ thing to the teen-aged Miguel.

Through it all, he had been able to ignore the havoc his acts and those of his fellow gang members had wreaked on the lives of their victims.

But, as I say, when he hit the age of thirty-five, something had happened within his own biological family. It had devastated him. This event had sledgehammered his psyche and what spark was left within him of a moral being.

It had taken but a moment for the door of ‘empathy’ to open in his very cold soul. But, when it did, repeated tidal waves of guilt and remorse had practically drowned him.

He had suffered a complete nervous breakdown.

With his hands trembling and his body shaking – his mind in a virtual catatonic state – he had been committed to a mental institution. It had taken him over a year to recover sufficiently to function outside the hospital.

After the year of hospitalization and with continued counseling, he had come to the conclusion that he could not continue in the ‘gang’ life. He could no longer behave as a sociopath – for – indeed, he was not a sociopath.

But he also knew the potential consequences of quitting the gang.

There was a penalty for leaving: it is known in the justice system as ‘the death penalty.’

Yup! Miguel would be murdered if he tried to quit the gang. His family, as well, might suffer consequences.

But, Miguel could not live with himself and remain in the gang. So, he decided to do the unthinkable: he would ask the local ‘board of directors’ of the gang if he could leave.

Everyone in the gang and among his family and friends had known about the nervous breakdown and what had happened to Miguel. After all, he had been in the ‘nuthouse’ for over a year.

When he made his request, he was told to come to a meeting. As he said, when he walked into that room the evening of the meeting, he did not know if he would ever leave alive. But he felt he had no choice. His mother and family were still in L. A. and his mother was an invalid. He could not leave her.

If he stayed in L.A. and tried to quit the gang he might be killed. But if he left L.A., his mother would certainly die without him there to provide home care. So – he faced a Hobbesian choice and decided to do so ‘head-on.’

The board had first met in ‘executive session’ without him present. They then heard his personal plea to be released.

They had told him that, due to his many years of loyal service on behalf of the gang [it sounds sort of like a speech at a retirement party for an insurance salesman, mais non?] that he would be allowed to leave the membership and to live in peace.

He was also assured that his family members would not be hurt or murdered. [Nice of those fellahs, ‘eh?]

So, about five years before I met Miguel, he had gotten his freedom. But the tattoos that had identified him as a gang member covered his body from his lower neck to his waist. There were a few small ones on the back of his neck and a couple of very small ones on his face.

But it was the ones on his neck that clearly identified him as belonging [or in his case, having belonged] to a certain gang. And it was those tattoos that had so frightened the black man in the cafeteria trailer earlier in the week.

As shown on that day in the trailer, Miguel had found that sometimes the old tattoos had come in handy during his security job. Sometimes when he encountered a street ‘tough’ who was not impressed by an overweight, 40-something ‘security guard’ who was armed with nothing more than a metal badge, it just took a flick of his collar to get the fellow’s respect, fear and immediate obedience.

So, that, my friends, is the story of Miguel, the L. A. gang member.

Senator Edward Kennedy may have had to resign the Owl Club in shame. They may have cursed his name for violating whatever sacred trust this little band of men had established.

But one can be sure that the Owl Club did not tell the good Senator that – due to his years of faithful service – they had decided not to murder him or his family members as a penalty for quitting the club.

Our distinguished Senators on both sides of the aisle are living in a total fantasy if they think that illegal immigrants who belong to the street gangs such as those found in L. A. are going to be able to quit the gangs even if they sincerely desire to do so.

Under this current proposed immigration bill, we will be granting citizenship to gang members, most of whom, unlike Miguel, have had no moment of moral clarity. These young men and women think nothing of driving by a group of people and opening fire in hopes that they might hit one of the people in the group – while taking down another six or seven who were unlucky enough to be in the way.

No, my friends, the folks known as S.A.’s live a world away from the Owl Club and the Whiffenpoofs and the super secret bunch at Yale known as ‘Skull and Bones.’

These clubs are groups comprised of the social and educational elite of this country. They play cards. They play golf. They have secret handshakes.

They are not, however, anything like the street gangs of L.A. and of other urban sites in California.

Those gangs are nothing short of a modern-day version of Chicago’s depression era mob known as “Murder Incorporated.”

If this immigration bill passes, these sociopaths-in-training or in-fact will not just own shares in Murder, Inc., will also become citizen shareholders in the United States of America.

This cannot and must not be allowed to happen.

Bush: Christian Fascist? Not for Illegal Immigrants!

A former writer for the New York Times has published a book with a title referring to America’s Christian conservatives as Fascists. I heard this clown speak on a panel. He discussed his book. He also talked about what he seems to view as some sort of Christian conspiracy in the White House.

I suggest he is quite wrong. At least he is wrong regarding Bush. Bush is not a fascist, he’s an Apostle. And that ain’t necessarily bad, but it isn't all necessarily good.

First, however, the positive side:

When Bush first ran in the 2000 campaign, his handlers were amazed that part of his platform included huge amounts of financial aid for the fight against AIDS in Africa.

Yeah – Africa.

You didn’t hear about it? I’m not surprised. It wasn’t the type of thing on which the petite fascists at the New York Times would spend much time.

And, did Bush do what he promised?

Indeed, he did.

In fact, the contributions made to Africa through his initiatives have been so large and thus, so embarrassing to the lefties, that they don’t know how to handle it.

A few months ago the Boston Globe ran an article – not by an in-house writer – describing an international AIDS conference that featured – of course – our Ambassador to the World, Bill Clinton. The writer noted that, though the Bush administration had done more than any other administration and/or country to assist in the fight against African AIDS, Bush’s name was barely mentioned at the conference. It was as though he didn’t exist.

The Warm and Fuzzy Brigade just did not know what to make of it all. The article made the Brigade’s position clear: They looked at the undeniable success of much of Bush’s program just as one would regard one’s drunken uncle at the party. Bush was an embarrassment.

I suggest that they missed the point.

Bush regards himself as a practicing Christian. As such, he felt compelled to make financial aid to Africa into a part of his platform in his first campaign. And, though it could not benefit him much in America, he went ahead and fulfilled his pledge upon election.

Now – with no constituency left – with the right deserting him and the left hating him, what has he done?

This week he’s announced he’s doubling his aid to Africa for the war on AIDS! You didn't hear about that either? I'm not surprised.

Which brings me to a digression: You also probably have not heard that one of the Bush twins is starting her own book tour this summer. And why have you not heard much, if anything, about that event?

Wellllll......you may ask....What’s her book about? Her book is about a teen-age girl whose life she followed for about a year in Central America. This girl’s parents died of AIDS. She has the disease. Reviewers say it reads like a novel.

I must make a snide aside while I’m in this neighborhood: Note that the Bush twins are not in the news anymore. Once they stopped going to parties and started living exemplary warm and fuzzy lives – living as the democrats say we all should live – they dropped from sight.

One of the twins has been teaching in the Washington D.C. school system. This is a school system to which no one: not Clinton, not Gore, not anyone in the capitol will send their kids. It isn’t just because of poor educational standards – it’s because they don’t want their kids getting shot.

And what of the other twin? She’s been doing the equivalent of missionary work in Central America.

Chelsea Clinton? We paid for her repeated tours of the world with Mom when Dad was president. As soon as she got out of college, she started working with some publisher for $110,000.00 per year starting salary. Like her parents, she knows how to translate fame into fortune.

The Bush girls are – well – liberal types, apparently. Or – perhaps put another way – they are Christians actually trying to live a New Testament style of life. Hence, they have completely fallen off the front pages. You have not seen, nor will you, a documentary on a Bush daughter’s day in the life trying to teach and survive in the D.C. schools.

Anyway – let’s move on.

The various conservative groups in the country have been astounded by Bush’s insane immigration policy. At first I was disturbed. I couldn’t understand it. But, considering his religious propensities, it makes sense: it is part of a perfect whole.

As the President said this week as quoted in the Houston Chronicle:

"I feel passionate about the issue. It's something I have felt strongly about ever since I was the governor of Texas. Texas is a very diverse state, Houston is a very diverse city, and through that diversity, if you're open-minded, you get a great sense of how it invigorates the society," said Bush, a Houston resident in the 1960s and '70s. Growing up in Texas, Bush said, "you recognize the decency and hard work and humanity of Hispanics. And the truth of the matter is a lot of this immigration debate is driven as a result of Latinos being in our country." [Houston Chronicle, May 31, 2007]

I have no doubt that Bush’s stand is a result of his Christian world view. That stand has prevented him from enforcing the laws on immigration. Why? Because employers have used and abused the labor pool for years. Because of that abuse, some Americans [if we ignore the crime costs and lack of tax payments] have benefited from the illegals’ labor.

But more than that: I think Bush's immigration stand is a direct reflection of his Christian principles. I think he believes that - the law be damned - it is not moral to enforce the law against these people.

Add to that that we are all sinners and you hit a moral stalemate: No one is able to cast a stone in this situation so no one can win.

For Bush it IS a personal matter. And I have no doubt his view is through the lens of a Christian Apostle. He knows the Latinos. He thinks anyone who disagrees with him doesn’t understand Christian values. He thinks we are haters.

He is not a statesman. He is not a politician in the classical sense. Bush doesn’t interpret Plato – he doesn’t act as a mouthpiece for a particular political view – No! He is a practicing Christian, as he views that role.

It carries over into his world view of terrorism: there is good and there is evil. Evil must be fought and good must be promoted. In this, I believe he is 100% correct.

Unlike Jimmy Carter, he is not a Bible thumping Baptist Sunday school teacher. [We always hear about Bush’s Christianity but everyone’s forgotten that Carter was almost rabid on the topic of religion. It permeated his world view. It still does. It’s one of the things that made him an idiot rather than a statesman. But he was so extreme that he never understood the need to use force. Bush’s Christianity has a little more ‘realpolitik’ to it.

Far from being a fascist, George Bush is Christian gentleman. The world has reaped some good and some bad from this fact.

He is sadly mistaken – tragically for our country – if he prevails on the immigration issue. His hope now is to use the left’s tactic of trying to convince people that those opposing illegal immigration compromises [read: Amnesty] are haters.

Far from it. For most people I know it is an issue of fairness and not an issue to be analyzed through the lens of Christianity's charitable principles.

Another reason he favors the amnesty has to do with his being a wealthy man. Mind you, I’m not a class warrior. I’m glad for him that he’s rich. [Really - hell, I wish I had his money.]

But rich people have something most middle class and lower class people do not have. That ‘something’ is a corral filled with professionals to help them comply with every goddamned little creepy law that the federal and state governments foist upon us.

The case of Senator George McGovern's Bed and Breakfast business is instructive. A few years after the country handed his head to him in the Presidential election of 1972, he and his wife retired from public life.

It had been their ambition to open a quaint little 'B and B' to accomodate travelers.

With McGovern's talents - the skills of World War II Bomber Pilot, a career as a college professor, and the campaign organizational skills of a U.S. Senator and former presidential candidate - running a 'B and B' should have been child's play.

Not so. McGovern later wrote about the experience. He was shocked at the amount of paper work required to run this little business. Of course, as a person serving the public [not as a Senator, but as a concierge] he was astounded at the number and complexity of the regulations with which he and his wife had to comply.

It was all too much for this highly intelligent man. The business went under. [It is no wonder that the U.S. Congress usually exempts itself from all the restrictive laws it imposes upon us regarding employers' obligations and liability.]

As for the rest of us?

We have to sort through our trash like land-fill workers trying to make sure we don’t get fined for violating recycling laws.

We follow our little doggies with sandwich bags so we don’t violate the pooper-scooper laws.

We fasten our seat belts so a state trooper doesn’t have the authority to pull us over and start asking a ton of questions.

We install car seats for babies so we don’t violate the law against leaving the hospital with an unrestrained baby.

We get permits to burn piles of leaves in our yards so we don’t get fined.

We put smoke detectors and carbon monoxide detectors in our houses so we don’t lose our fire insurance for violating the detector laws.

We submit plans, land surveys, percolation test results, and in some cases environmental impact statements just to build our own little house on our own little piece of land.

We put up business signs that don’t exceed ‘so-many-square inches’ so we don’t get fined or have the neighbors dragging us into court.

We don’t smoke cigarettes within – pick one - : fifty feet of a public entry; in a public park; in a barroom; probably in a brothel; in a casino – all so we don’t get fined for violating laws.

We go through rigorous car inspections so we don’t get fined. If we run restaurants in certain cities, we stop using trans-fats so we don’t get fined.

If we live on a ‘scenic way’ in a ‘Scenic Way’ jurisdiction in Massachusetts, we have to get permission from a town panel of idiots to cut down one of our trees on our lawn, in our yard just so we can clearly see our children while they await the bus. If not? We get fined.

If we are employers we obtain Workmen’s Compensation Insurance so we don’t get fined or charged under some criminal statute.

In Massachusetts, when a father and son go fishing, they'd best comply with all licensing and limits laws lest the fully armed Ecology Police - complete with cruiser and siren - show up to investigate a suspicious looking trout.

The list is just endless.

But the last and most important thing is this: We file our tax returns every year. We are taxpayers. It is the price of being a member of Club America.

We pay these taxes to the same governments that impose so damned many restrictions on every aspect of our daily lives.

And then what happens? We’re told that people who broke the law, people who haven’t paid taxes to our government, people who have stolen identities, committed all sorts of frauds and violations of significant and insignificant regulations – should be ‘forgiven.’

It’s ‘the right thing to do.’ ‘It’s only fair.’

Many years ago I was a classroom teacher in an urban public school. I learned the hard way how to run a classroom.

The rules must be clearly stated. They must be evenly enforced. The punishments must be uniform. No one – NO ONE must ever be allowed to get away with a violation.

And why?

Because if you are not fair and just, your class will fall apart. They will turn on you like rabid tigers.

They will be demoralized.

There will be no uniform classroom culture to which they belong.

It will be ‘every kid for himself,’ and the teacher be damned.

Bush the Apostle does not understand this. Nor does Kennedy or any of the other culturally suicidal idiots such as Lindsey Graham.

I do not know a single person in Massachusetts who regards this as a racial issue.

It is an issue of what is right and what is wrong.

Bush the Apostle and his allies are determined to prove we have been fools for trying to obey every single little goddamned crapola regulation and law that has been foisted upon us.

We are to be the silently suffering brother who watches the ‘Prodigal Son’ get all the special treatment.

Y’uh know, I always had trouble with the story of the ‘Prodigal Son.’ I think most people do.

That’s because it’s a story about forgiveness, not about fairness. Furthermore, it's not a story that is literally meant to be applied to a family nor to a culture. It is a metaphor. The 'father' in the story is, in fact, God. The 'Prodigal Son' represents 'sinners.' When the 'Prodigal' returns home, he is returning to God.

The lesson of this little story has absolutely nothing to do with a culture or a society. It tells those living a 'Godly' life that they should not resent those who have sinned and return to the fold. God will accept them.

Forgiveness of a ‘Prodigal Son’ may be fine in a family that doesn’t care about it’s internal order and the cooperation of other family members.

In the American culture – a culture founded on the rule of law – such forgiveness will tear the culture apart.

Another Christian dictum comes to mind: Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesars and unto God, the things that are God's.

Implicit in this admonition to pay one's taxes is the command to obey the law of the state while remaining true to God.

Bush should remember that his oath as President, sworn in God's name, is to uphold the laws and constitution of this country as President.

Bush is still a relatively young man. If he wants to be a priest and dispense forgiveness, there'll be time for that later.

Tuberculosis, Illegal Immigrants, and the Coming Plague Of Pogroms From the Left

The “lefties” have one huge Achilles Heel in their argument supporting illegal immigration and amnesty. It is a weakness so huge, it amazes me that no one from the anti-illegal camp has recognized and embraced it.

If exploited, this is the one weakness that would turn the ‘lefties’ against the illegal immigrants with a zero-tolerance-rage that would shock the ‘right.’

First, the foundation of the argument: The lefties live in a paranoiac fear of second hand smoke; of helmetless bike riding; of tap water; of pollution of water; of landfill dumps; of mold; and of virtually anything that would give them a head cold.

Ladies and gentlemen on the left, I wish to introduce you to something most of us had thought was a condition consigned to the toxic waste dump of health-history.

The condition?

Tuberculosis.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, tuberculosis is creeping back into the health care wards of our hospitals. It is transmittable by mere breathing. It is in our public schools. It is in our apartment buildings. It is on your front lawns – depending on the current health of you’re the illegal immigrant raking your leaves.

It is popping up throughout the United States. And the primary new vector [that is to say: delivery system] of the disease is – drum roll please – illegal immigrants.

Long forgotten in the tales told of the legal immigrants who landed at Ellis Island is the very reason they landed at an island.

They were on an island to be checked for communicable diseases. If they had any one of a certain set of recognizable and easily transmitted diseases – they never made it to the mainland. They were put on the quickest boat back to East Overshoe or from wherever it was that they had come.

In this manner, nuclear families were torn apart. Yet, it was recognized that the poorest of the poor, due to poverty and lack of hygiene, were carriers of a smorgasbord of various communicable diseases which were either untreatable or extremely difficult to treat effectively.

And now?

Now we have tuberculosis being discovered at rates not seen in the living memory of the physicians treating the patients.

And make no mistake about it – tuberculosis is one hell of a serious disease. It takes months of treatment – and very expensive treatment – to get it under control.

Poorly educated illegal immigrants are also presenting a problem to health authorities who try to treat them. Since they do not fully comprehend medical procedures, some fail to complete the course of treatment.

The result: They are still contagious, but with a strain of T.B. that has a strengthened resistance to normal courses of treatment. In other words – they are spreading a more potent form of T.B.

No one in the press is making that connection, and the ‘lefties’ and the granola crowd are unable on their own to connect the dots.

The American health authorities long ago recognized what history had shown – tuberculosis is a scourge that lacerates the lungs and results in coughing fits in which gobs of blood are spit up.

And, untreated, it is fatal.

For anyone wishing to see an acting interpretation of the exciting highlights of tuberculosis [or T.B. for short] you should just watch either or both movies made in recent years on the life of Wyatt Earp.

One such flick features Dennis Quaid as the T.B. ridden Doc Holiday.
The other flick features Val Kilmer in the same role.

Quaid, in particular, consulted with a dietician to lose enough weight to recreate the emaciated condition of a T.B. victim. Kilmer was already a skinny little rail and didn’t have far to go.

When one looks at their emaciated portrayals, one can begin to understand why T.B. was known in lay terminology as “The consumption.”

Why? Because it virtually consumed the person who contracted the disease.

All victims died within a few years of contracting the disease. And, in the process of waiting for their place in God’s check-out line, they hacked, coughed and spit up infected blood while waiting in line at the bank – while attending schools – while hanging out in bars – or in church.

When I started teaching in the public schools in 1974, I was required to go to a spartan waiting room in a radiology department in Brockton. There I was subjected to a mandatory chest x-ray. Additionally, I had to have my skin punctured by a little six-pronged device. It left a little circle of puncture wounds on the forearm.

If the chest x-ray was ‘postive' and if the site of the puncture wounds turned a certain color – you could just about count on putting your teaching career on hold for quite a few months while you underwent the cure.

Why was this done to teachers? Simple! T.B. is spread by merely breathing on others. An infected teacher could wreck an entire classroom of youngsters in a very short period of time.

The youngsters, in turn, would infect their whole families.

As far as I know – nothing since then has changed about the nature of T.B. There is, in other words, not a kinder /gentler form of T.B. available in the third world countries whose citizens are invading the United States.

I can just about guarantee that the first day some kid comes home from the Dover or Newton Public Schools with a case of tuberculosis acquired from an illegal immigrant classmate will be the same day we start hearing shouts for “Quarantines and Deportation!”

When the soccer moms discover that wide-open immigration without health examinations result in their little kid going through months of isolation and antibiotic treatment for T.B., we will have a major crisis on our hands.

The crisis won’t be deportation. That will be easy enough.

The crisis will occur when we have to keep the ‘lefties’ from launching a virtual ‘pogrom’ to force the immigrants, diseased and those not diseased onto non-stop buses at gunpoint.

Some of the Granola types virtually assault cigarette smokers who are barely within shouting distance. Right now Massachusetts is trying to ban cigarette smoking on any part of any public beach.

Imagine what they’ll do when the problem isn’t a behavior [smoking] but a person’s physical condition which – unlike second hand smoke – is a VERY REAL AND PRESENT DANGER to them and to their children.

When in a room with a smoker, the barely tangential nature of any harm can be avoided by having the cigarette put out.

But – when the harm in the room is T.B. – there’s only one way to deal with it: The person carrying the disease must be ‘put out.’

Why? Because THAT danger, the danger of imminent infection with T.B. is real and present.

Ahh yes….ladies and gentlemen. Once the issue is properly re-framed as a public health issue, the liberals will turn on a pin-point. And though the ‘lefties’ may not like guns, I’m sure they’ll have no trouble making spears to assist them in the effort to drive the scourge from the neighborhood and the country.

When the public realizes that illegals operating with false identities make it difficult to keep them from leaving treatment and going elsewhere to spread the disease, well – there’s going to be all hell to pay over that situation.

It’s one thing to attack the ‘right’ as being racists for opposing illegal immigration. But – as has been proven with the anti-trans fat campaign, the anti-cigarette campaign, the anti-soda pop campaign [the list is almost endless] – when the ‘lefties’ find out about T.B. and from whence it is coming, they will become even greater “Diseasists.” [one who hates diseased people who can spread the disease.]

The AIDS campaign is instructive.

There we had and have a disease that is almost impossible for heterosexuals to catch unless they are intravenous drug users. But the hysteria that accompanied it was rammed down our throats. Even the gay activists admit that it was a scare tactic that they viewed as necessary to convince the public that ‘everyone’ was at risk. By doing so, they could be guaranteed massive funding for health research. That was their goal and it was achieved.

But T.B. is very different. T.B. is a very real threat to every person in the country. It is of special danger to the young and the elderly.

T.B. actually IS as great a danger to the general public as AIDS was falsely portrayed to be.

Gradually the lefties may come to realize that one of the primary purposes of immigration procedures and screening is to ensure that a new immigrant is not presenting, literally, the symptoms not only of T. B., but of the bubonic plague – another disease found outside the States, but rarely seen within our borders.

Another new adventure in medicine is also on the way: Leprosy. Yep – just this past week it was reported that leprosy is on the increase in the United States.

Once the public service advertising starts on that issue, the danger to the immigrants will not be T.B. – it will be the ‘lefties’ metaphorically storming Frankenstein’s Castle – that is to say, the apartments where illegals live – to drive them by force onto the Granola Express Trains to get them the hell out of the country.

We now have health nuts who insist that no one smoke on the public streets in Sharon, Massachusetts, or in barrooms, or within fifty feet of a school or within ten feet of a businesses’ doorway. They are obsessed with a fear that years in the future, maybe – just maybe – one of them might get lung cancer.

When they find out that a couple of good sneezes and hacking coughs from a T.B. victim can actually infect them on the spot with the disease, you’ll see the ‘lefties’ trading in their sandals for jackboots.

There are many good and commonsensical reasons for a legal immigration process. Of course, none of those register on the ‘left’ because anyone who even whispers about them is, of course a ‘racist.’

Since illegal immigrants are composed of Irish, Mexican, Arab, Columbian, Iranian, Chinese, and – well – virtually every ethnic and racial group on earth – I’m not sure what race it is that I’m supposed to ‘hate.’

But once illegal immigration becomes a public health issue – once little Tommy comes home from third grade and coughs up blood – well, dear reader, all bets are off.

One thing we cigarette smokers know is this: If the ‘lefties’ think they can even catch a pimple from some behavior of another person – they will move heaven and earth to consign that person to hell.

The ‘right’ tends to want the illegals just to go home and go through the normal procedures so that respect for the law – the foundation of the country – can be preserved.

When the ‘left’ finds out about T.B., the major problem for the ‘right’ will be preventing the ‘left’ from burning the poor illegal bastards in the town square.

Illegal Immigrants: No Round-up Needed Mr. O'Reilly -- They'll Leave On Their Own

“What do you plan to do – ,” asked a recent caller to a Boston radio station. “Round up twelve million illegal immigrants and deport them? It cannot be done!” This sentiment was echoed by substitute radio talk host Emily Rooney on the Jay Severin show.

That same evening, Bill O’Reilly stated the same ridiculous proposition, and remarked that the US had rounded up some 222,000 or so, illegal immigrants this past year. At that rate, he speculated, it would take something like sixty years to deport them all.

You would think that these pundits were talking about canned peas on shelves – not about the ‘people’ equipped with legs.

For those not following this train of thought, I should point out that besides not having legs, there are other differences between canned peas and people.

Canned goods are not effected by outside stimuli unless it’s a can opener. Even then, with a can opener sitting next to it, a can of peas cannot run away. It doesn’t have a concept of self-interest.

A can of peas cannot warn a can of corn, “Watch out, the feds have can openers. They are coming for us – you’d better roll away while there’s still time!”

People, on the other hand, do respond to stimuli. And the first reaction people have to a threat is to guarantee their own self-preservation. We do that through two well-known mechanisms: Fight or Flight. A third mechanism of response to a threat is “Mending our ways.”

Anyway, that brings us to my point for today.

I agree that we probably couldn’t round up all the illegal immigrants. So, I’ll agree that it cannot be done.

However – it does not have to be done. We already know enough about human nature and law enforcement in this country to get them to leave on their own.

First Example:

In the 1960’s and early 70’s, it was not uncommon for kids to smoke marijuana openly on campuses. They would even light a joint with television cameras filming their faces.

Millions upon millions of young people smoked dope at concerts, at protests, in dormitories and on the sidewalk.

“What are you gonna do?” they would taunt the cops. “Arrest us all? You can’t do it!!! We’ll fill the jails to overflowing!!! Ha!!” And guess what? The kids were right. Trying to arrest everyone was impossible.

Hmmmm…’you cannot arrest us all.’ Sounds a bit familiar, doesn’t it?

Anyway, the situation was a law enforcement nightmare. Then ‘Someone’ came up with an idea. Mr. Someone said, “How about we stiffen the drug law penalties and enforce the ones we have? Let’s go after individuals and ignore the thousands at concerts and protests.”

The nation was in awe. Mr. Someone was suddenly a national genius. “Gee,” said the nation, “you mean put some of these people in jail and do it through high-profile court cases?”

“Yes,” said Mr. Someone, “that’s what I mean.”

For those oldsters who smoked too much dope back then and have a cloudy memory of the era, let me remind you of a few facts.

To defy the federal and state laws, there were several cities and towns which were homes to college campuses, that passed laws making public use of marijuana the equivalent of a five dollar parking ticket.

Police in those towns were instructed not to prosecute marijuana cases. The laws were openly flouted. In essence, those college towns declared themselves to be ‘sanctuary cities’ when it came to marijuana law enforcement.

Does any of this sound familiar?

Gradually the society decided that this was not a good idea.

Open disregard for the marijuana laws was not a good idea for two reasons. One of the reasons was stupid. The second reason was valid.

The stupid reason: “Marijuana is dangerous.”

There are many facts that made this a stupid reason. But this article is not about stupid laws – it’s about the stupid people making stupid policy. So – we’ll skip all the myths and lies about marijuana that were used to support the relevant drug laws.

Now the ‘good reason’ that the open violation of marijuana laws was not a bad thing:

“We are a nation of laws. If you flout one law – you may as well openly flout the others. And if that’s allowed – we’re going to end up in legal and cultural hell.”

The public use of marijuana was demoralizing to a society built on a foundation of laws. It created tremendous disrespect for police and for the government. Worse: It created disrespect for law -- and ‘law’ is the very foundation of our country and our culture. Worst of all: The disrespect for law was among the youth of the nation and that was a very poor introduction to adulthood.

So, law enforcement gave up on the crowds which were openly smoking dope. Arrests in those situations led to riots.

Instead, they targeted individuals. With stronger penalties in place, the cops started to target individuals and to make examples of them.

The results have been startling to this aged writer.

In 1970, I was a student at the University of New Hampshire in the bucolic little town of Durham.

No one could take a Saturday stroll down Main Street in that little town without passing students openly smoking joints. They’d openly offer a ‘hit’ to a passer-by if he or she seemed friendly.

That doesn’t happen in downtown Durham today.

Another example: In the late 90’s, I spent two years working in Hollywood. I worked with production crews and actors. I worked as an ‘extra’ on television and film productions.

On one occasion I was working as an extra on an Adam Sandler ‘bomb’ called “Little Nicky.” For three nights, from midnight until five a.m., some one thousand young people – all paid extras – filled a field near the Santa Anita Raceway. Since this was a full blown Hollywood film, there was little of what we would call ‘adult supervision.’

On the second evening someone in the crowd lit a joint. He passed it to the person next to him.

The result was one I had never seen when I was the age of the young people standing before me.

Shouting erupted. Virtually everyone within ‘whiffing’ and viewing distance of the joint started condemning the smokers. “Put that thing out goddammit!!! You wanna get us all in trouble? What the hell are you doing?” You’ll get us arrested!!!” The admonitions came fast and furious. Despite the fact that there were well over a thousand young people in the ‘extras group’ – and despite the fact that you’d need a helicopter and a floodlight to find a policeman – the kids who were shouting were doing so because they were afraid of being arrested!!

And note: Virtually all these ‘extras’ were aspiring actors! Yes! Bohemian types! Descendants of hippies! Yet, they were behaving as if they were the new members of the Carrie Nation ‘Nation.’

Thirty years ago these extras would have been begging to share the joint. Now they collaborated to destroy it.

And why? They DID NOT WANT TO GET ARRESTED!!!

The ‘complainers’ succeeded. The pot smokers – before my very eyes – put out the joint.

That was one of two times during my two years in Hollywood that I even smelled pot. The second time was at the corner of Hollywood and Vine. There, I caught a whiff, but I couldn’t tell who had the pot. It might have come from a passing car for all I know. But it was gone, carried away on a breeze in a matter of seconds.

Again – it is tough for young people today to imagine just how widespread and public was the use of pot in this country just thirty years ago.

And, for me – it’s tough to believe just how effective efforts to enforce the law, coupled with government advertising campaigns have been in virtually eradicating the rampant public use of the drug.

But, believe it I must. I’ve seen the result.

Law enforcement had smartened up. They stopped thinking about the ‘millions’ of pot smokers and just started picking off individuals.

It reminded me of advice I first got years ago when I was a substitute teacher. [This was in the days before there were actual school shootings.] “Jim, if you want to gain control of a classroom – just pick a kid and shoot him – the others will fall in line.”

Metaphorically speaking, that is what happened with the marijuana violators.

I know a retired college professor whose hey-day was the 60’s and early 70’s. He tells young people two things about marijuana: First, it is not dangerous. Second: you’re crazy if you use it because the penalties are too severe. This professor used to ‘grow his own’ and cultivate it.

Today? He doesn’t allow marijuana anywhere near himself for fear of legal repercussions.

Second Example:

We live in a country where taxes are paid based, for the most part, on an honor system. Don’t laugh – it’s true.

Despite the fact that we know that the government couldn’t possibly audit and/or prosecute all tax evaders, most of us who are self-employed keep track of our income and expenses and we tell the government that our calculations are honest and correct.

In this way, the United States of America pays its bills.

Some pay taxes because ‘it is the right thing to do’ -- others do it out of fear.

Since the ‘former’ are paying in order to save their souls, the latter are targeted by an IRS fear campaign. Every year during tax season, the IRS tries to announce indictments of high profile for tax evasion.

Some years ago the IRS prosecution of millionaire real estate mogul Leona Helmsley resulted in her picture on the front page of national magazines. She also ended up in jail for tax evasion.

Most recently we have seen Wesley Snipes appearing in court to explain why he hasn’t paid several million in income taxes.

The message from the IRS is the same as the one I received as a substitute teacher: “Shoot one – the rest will fall in line.”

Despite the common sense knowledge that the risks of an audit are low and the risk of prosecution even lower – the bulk of the American public coughs up its tax returns and makes payments every single year.

Why? They know that though the risk is low – the penalties are very large. And, whether they do it out of respect for law or fear of prosecution, they still do it and they keep the country afloat.

Today we have seen what happens when even the mildest effort is made to punish illegal aliens.

Some towns have made it illegal to rent an apartment to illegals and/or to employ them.

The result? Thousands of illegals have moved away from those towns. Entire apartment buildings have been emptied.

If the federal government made it clear that any illegal alien who is caught will be prosecuted and/or deported, the effect would be the same as with the drug laws and tax laws.

Even though the statistical risk of prosecution would be small, the threat of it would have tremendous consequences.

If every illegal family knew that mom or dad may not come home that night – and in fact – may find himself or herself thousands of miles away within twenty-four hours, the risks for most families would become unbearable.

It is the ‘lightning principle.” Even though we all know that the risks of being struck by lightning are very low – virtually everyone tries to stay inside and avoid open areas during a thunder and lightning storm. Even though the risk is low, the ‘punishment’ for screwing up is death by electrocution.

Even though only one illegal immigrant parent may be arrested and fail to come home during a given day – all illegal families will know that all illegal families are at risk.

Strict enforcement coupled with judgmental public service announcements would have an even greater effect.

Imagine an advertisement that went something like this:

“John and Mary came to America illegally from China. They did so to improve their family’s life. After they arrived, they had two children. John and Mary were arrested and deported on May first of this year. Their children – who are
American citizens – are now living in foster care. John and Mary came here, they say, to improve their family’s life. Now their children live on one continent and they are on another. John and Mary took a terrible gamble with their
family's life and lost. Now their actions and decisions have resulted in tearing apart the family whose life they sought to improve.

“It isn’t worth it,” said John in an interview. “Now my kids don’t have a father or a mother – AND IT’S ALL MY FAULT! Don’t make the mistake I did. Please, protect your family. If you want to come to America – a land that is great due to the rule of law – then start by obeying the first law you encounter: Obey the immigration laws. Apply for a visa.

[One is almost tempted to use a tragic-comic phrase as a tag line: "Like the advertisement says: “The Visa Card – don’t leave home without it. I did, and now my kids are paying the price.”]

Certainly public service adverstiting would re-frame the issue. It would squarely blame the parties who should be blamed for the splitting of families: the parents in those very families.

Such advertising would make illegal immigration the virtual
equivalent of child abuse. And, considering the risks to a family, that’s just what it is: child abuse.

As with the drug and anti-smoking advertising – it would take a while to sink in. But – eventually – the issue would be re-framed correctly.

Such public pressure would counter the effect of morons like Senator Kennedy who actually offer help to illegal immigrants. By mass media advertising we will show a national collective will and purpose that is lacking in media coverage today.

In America there always will be people who, with criminal intent, violate both our drug laws and our tax laws. Most people, however, are not of a criminal bent. Those latter people take the threat of law enforcement seriously and avoid tangling with drug or tax authorities.

I dare say that most illegal immigrants are also not of a criminal bent. Most, I would estimate, are not hard core felons and they do not have the stomach to have their families torn apart nor to have to serve jail time.

When the message gets through to the illegal immigrants that the risks far outweigh the benefits there will be little need to ‘round up twelve or twenty million people.’

Why?

Because most will go home rather than accept the responsibility for, and risk of tearing their families apart by their own hand.

There they will start the immigration process through which millions of law-abiding, full-fledged Americans have gone already.

When they have completed that process, we will welcome them as we ourselves were welcomed – as fellow ‘Americans’ worthy of the name.