The immigration issue is turning.
As Congress debates the issue – especially the bipartisan plan for a half-million new “guest workers” to enter America each year – a peaceful revolution is taking place in politics.
For perspective on the situation, we might turn to a past student of revolutionary change, Karl Marx. Marx was wrong about communism, but he understood the dynamics of political upheaval. So let’s pull out “The Communist Manifesto,” written in 1848, and follow along:
When the struggle “nears the decisive hour,” the ruling class suffers from “dissolution.” After this breakup, “a small section of the ruling class cuts itself adrift, and joins the revolutionary class.”
This was Marx’s key insight into change: Yes, the revolution would come from below, but it would need help from those who understood the ruling class and its ways. Only the ruling-class breakaways, Marx suggested, would have the capacity for “comprehending the historical movement as a whole.”
It was a distinctly snobbish point, but Marx was right: For a new movement to be successful, it needs intellectual “cover” – and it’s usually the old elite that has the persuasive candlepower.
We can see this from the recent history of the immigration issue – when it failed and when it succeeded. For decades, ordinary Americans’ concerns about illegal immigration were dismissed by the propagandists of the open-borders elite as “racist” and “reactionary.”
When occasional eruptions of anti-illegal sentiment burst forth, as with California’s Proposition 187 in 1994, the establishment united to stomp out such “nativism.” But, beyond the bicoastal zones where the open-borders elite wields the most influence, the illegal-immigration issue has continued to bubble up.
Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., is nobody’s idea of an elitist or an insider, so he was free to spearhead this populist cause. Of course, Tancredo has been savaged by the mainstream media; just on Friday, The Washington Post suggested that his views on immigration were a function of his own odd mentality: It was his “anger,” the Post explained, that led to his “obsession” with immigration.
Most politicians back off in the face of such criticism, but Tancredo is out to make big change: He knows that revolutions are not tea parties.
Besides, finally, the ruling class is suffering dissolution; some members are even switching sides, joining the one-nation-building, border-securing revolution. Writing in the Post, centrist columnist Robert Samuelson declared that the guest-worker program, jointly championed by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., was a “bad bargain” that would have the United States “importing poverty.”
Liberal New York Times columnist Paul Krugman joined in, denouncing the guest-worker program as “deeply un-American.” Instead, Krugman offered a Tancredo-esque solution: “Reduce the inflow of low-skill immigrants.”
The elite can smear Tancredo, but can’t smear Samuelson and Krugman. So we know we have reached the revolutionary moment: The ruling class is no longer united in its open-border enthusiasm. And so, divided, the elite falls on this issue.
The open-borders elite controls one last fortress: the Bush White House.
George W. Bush stood with Mexican President Vicente Fox Friday and declared that “we share the same commitment” on immigration issues.
That was a strange comment from Bush, since it’s well known that Fox endorses steady “migration” from Mexico. But then, Bush has sometimes had trouble getting the gauge of foreign leaders: It was less than five years ago that he looked Russian President Vladimir Putin in the eye and came away with the conclusion that the Russian was “straightforward and trustworthy.”
Bush has adjusted his thinking on Putin, but he seems deeply committed to Fox and a Mexican-oriented guest-worker provision. But the American people disagree, and that’s how and why this peaceful revolution against open borders is coming about – with decisive help from ruling-class renegades.
