Republicans have made an art form of manipulating the language. They've become accustomed to saying anything, no matter how illogical or bereft of facts, and being believed by far too many gullible, distracted, uninformed Americans.
The immigration bill being referred to by its opponents as the amnesty bill is a prime example. It's a bad bill because it's far too harsh and punitive, not because it doesn't include a plan to export 12 million people.
Here's a question for the Lou Dobbs-Pat Buchanan wing of the Republican Party: If people sneak across the U.S. border because their families are starving and there are no jobs where they live, does that make them criminals..."illegal aliens"...or refugees?
A pox on the angry, frightened, authoritarian, bigoted jerks who can't sympathize with these good, hardworking people who typically work twice as hard for half the money lazy, spoiled Americans demand.
They use emergency rooms for health care and can't pay the bills, which then get passed on to taxpayers. They put their children in schools but pay no property tax to support the schools. They take their wages under the table and therefore pay no income tax. They put a strain on the welfare system. They drive down wages for blue-collar workers who used to receive respectable manufacturing industry salaries.
So why, then, don't we expel the poor, white Americans who do these things along with the illegal aliens who keep Lou Dobbs up at night?
A big problems with America is that downtrodden people who desperately need a powerful voice in government have no chance of getting one. It's too risky for our "leaders'" job security to speak for low-level drug users being routinely crushed by the "War on Drugs"....for gays who merely want the rights non-gays enjoy...for victims of a "justice system" that's speeding full circle toward trial by ordeal...and, yes, for poor, hard-working brown people desperately trying to feed and care for their families.
America is a tough-guy nation by any standard. And it obviously prizes strength and toughness over sometimes competing virtues such as wisdom, charity, kindness. But remember these wise words: America is great because it is good; if it ceases to be good it will cease to be great.
