Captain Ed is wrong that Bush 43 has been better than his predecessors. Not only did 43 actively reduce the level of employer sanction, but his politically-appointed bureaucracy prosecuted two border patrol agents for lightly wounding a drug smuggler–granting the smuggler immunity and giving the agents twenty years.

Whatever bolstering of border security Ed thinks Bush has done (I don’t know what he has in mind) has been the result of political pressure to do something even then mostly to facilitate his open borders proposals.

That’s the key point about the Mexican presidents and CFR stuff I linked to above–even if it’s an unrealizable pipe dream for them, and therefore people like Tancredo are being overly jumpy when they talk about it, for Ed to go off like this as though it’s beyond the pale of sensible commentary, hurting the cause even, is naivete on Ed’s part. When the Mexican government literally calls for something–every party, every chanve they get–it’s not crackpotter to talk about it as a serious possibility.

If nothing else, anyone who doesn’t agree that Bush wants effective open borders–the legal option for anyone on the planet to move here–is not paying attention or in denial. That’s what talk like “he’s at least been better than Clinton” sounds like.

Alex K on November 22, 2006 at 1:46 PM

To be fair, if you go to the “Facts and Myths” part (”New!”) of the spp.gov site it says explicitly that it is not an infringement on soveriegnity or a change in currency or legal system or anything like that. Of course, there are a couple points to be said about that:

1) It does not dismiss the idea as moonbat howling. It obviously considers the question widespread and serious enough to address. Perhaps the existence of a government website called “Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America” gave people the wrong idea. Plus the Mexican government’s open intentions on this. Plus the American governments antipathy toward stopping it.

2) It does not actually explain how the free movement of people is going to work while still leaving our sovereignity and legal structure intact. In other words, we’re expected to believe that much of the third world will get to live here but we’re not going to let them vote.

3) Why should we believe them?

Alex K on November 22, 2006 at 2:08 PM

“The weight of the evidence suggests we are moving to that, even if it is the result of unintended consequences.”

Well put. Also, the paranoia about the SPP/NorthAmUnion/whatever needn’t be based on the assumption that the actual abolition of the U.S. will ever happen…it’s just that the attempts to get us there will be destructive enough as it is. So it’s relevant that they’re trying for it, even if it will never strictly come to be.

Alex K on November 22, 2006 at 7:40 PM

Laura– Well, it depends what you’re talking about. There’s no way the elites can just abolish the country, drastically change the governmental structure and so forth, without some sort of dramatic ratification by the people. The SPP stuff certainly isn’t talking about doing any of that.

Though given the stunning divide between globalists and others on this, I don’t think your pessimism is unwarranted by any means. We’re probably just quibbing on the details.

Indeed, my point was that that “abolish America” stuff is a bit of a red herring. (Though I use the phrase myself a lot; it’s a good shorthand!) People sound crazy to worry about it, because the actual abolition of the United States is a pretty dubious bet.

But they’re not crazy to worry about what’s happening congruently, and what Bush et al are undeniably facilitating, with the NA Union as the north star (which means even if we never get there we will have gone a long way towards it before the borders finally close). That is: the free flow of people between the countries, with the migrants participating in both countries’ political systems. There could be free migration and, through dual citizenship, full participation by everyone in the U.S. political system without ever changing any big laws.

Basically, I agree with you, I was just trying to answer the mistaken belief that if the U.S. isn’t literally going to be abolished as a distinct polity than there’s no relevancy to all this SPP stuff and everyone is crazy to talk about it.

Alex K on November 22, 2006 at 8:38 PM