Like a wily serpent lurking in the dark corners of unsuspecting places waiting to strike, so is the personality of the collectivist mind that is rotting America both socially and economically. Those of a conservative or libertarian mind are aware and on guard for the frontal attack of this beast when it tries to strike using direct government schemes and programs. And we are aware of how the entitlement programs and welfare state are a direct assault on the American philosophy of individual liberty and free market capitalism. But what if this snake is attacking us from dark corners that go unnoticed?

Let’s take two big issues, health care and long term financial security or retirement funding. These are two of the biggest issues we face as people, because they are critical and significant areas of life that concern everyone. For a long time we’ve had social security, Medicare and Medicaid crammed down our throats and washed down by some liberal progressive dogma, and are now told that two of the biggest concerns we face in our lives are no longer a concern because big brother has our back. Well the bill is coming due on this scheme, and it’s coming due on state and local government pension promises. It came due in the private sector with companies like GM, which was being crushed under an unsustainable health care and union pension system until we bailed them out. And it’s going to come due at your company soon, at least as it relates to your healthcare, because prices cannot continue to exponentially go up and companies be expected to pay.

The issue lost in the rhetoric of the traditional left/right argument is not about circumstances and poor people, but rather one of philosophy. Collective systems operate on a kind of “parent-child” philosophy. Citizens are told they are children who cannot take full responsibility for themselves and instead are taught to rely on their parents. Bureaucratic systems take care of them, decide the right choices for them, and always tell them that the system has their best interests at heart. The parent tells the child that they can’t be trusted. That the enemy out there will not protect their future but destroy their future. To the collective the enemy is the individual. And the individual is you! What has happened to the responsibility and empowerment of “doing it yourself”? We are not children and the parental control system is not taking care of us!

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[Ed Note: Part 1 of the series is here. Part 2 is here.]

What is a sane immigration policy you ask?

Well it starts with a simple and straight forward process for immigrating here, procuring a work visa, obtaining residency and finally becoming a citizen. What we have now is a highly political and difficult to navigate hodge-podge of ever changing rules that are meant to help fulfill some type of social engineering ideal. Currently it takes a lot of time, money, connections and luck to make it through, and that’s if you’re from a “preferred nation”. When I say time, I mean decades! If you’re from a country like Mexico with high demand to immigrate, you’re looking at a wait of over 130 years. No wonder people take their chances making a run for the border. This idea of “take your spot in the immigration line and you’ll get there someday” is a mirage. If someone told you the line at the DMV was 130 years long and others randomly get to jump in front of you, what are the odds that you’ll just drive without a license?

We used to have a simple path to citizenship that gave people who had endured so much to come here a long term stake in this nation. They wanted it to be excellent because they felt like it was now their home too. And generationally immigrant’s kids tend to be more upwardly mobile than their parents were. They also are more educated, speak English as a first language and culturally are as American as apple pie.

We need to get rid of the whole per nation quota system.

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The general attitude towards immigration emanates from a place of fear. Many people like the way that America is and are afraid that immigrants will change our culture for the worse. Well, those people would be wrong. This argument has been made over and over throughout the history of America.

The Germans, Irish, Chinese, Italians and others were all looked upon as threats to “The American Culture”. Well, were they threats? Are they now? No. And people fail to grasp the reality that most immigrants are coming here to become part of us and not change us. There is no evidence that if you allow immigrants to assimilate into your country that they change the national identity in any significant way. They want to learn to speak English, they want to be American. We won’t let them. Isolating people in a black market underworld prevents them from being assimilated; welcoming them is the answer.

Other than the American Indians, everyone here is the descendent of an immigrant and yet we somehow think the immigrants today are different. Look at the early part of the 20th century, dirt poor and starving immigrants with no education came over in droves from Ireland. They had nothing and were dying like flies in their home land. The people already here thought they were going to ruin America. What could those uneducated poor Irish do? Well, a hell of a lot actually.

Turns out that they didn’t want to be uneducated and poor but needed the fertile soil of freedom to prosper. How about the Germans? We went to war with them twice and threw a bunch of them into camps and last time I checked the masses of German born immigrants did pretty well too. The same with the Japanese, the Chinese, the Jews, the Italians and the list goes on. Most all of these groups were met with fear as outsiders, but it was irrational and unsustainable fear.

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So here we are. We have somewhere in the neighborhood of 11 million illegal immigrants in the United States. The rhetoric surrounding the debate is deafening and it seems most of the volume comes from one of two points of view. In the blue corner you have “amnesty” and in the red corner you have “round’em up and throw them out”. Well what if neither of these options provides any realistic or long term solution to the issue faced by having so many people here illegally?

“Amnesty” might be one of the most divisive terms out there right now, but what’s wrong with it? For starters we tried it already, in 1986, when we had about 3 million illegal immigrants. Now we have 11 million illegals. It didn’t work. At best all amnesty does is kick the can down the road until the illegal population builds back up to intolerable levels. We were at the breaking point in the mid eighties and we’re back at the breaking point again. Only now with a lot higher numbers. This policy also creates an atmosphere of disregard for the rule of law, continues to promote entering America through the “backdoor”, and does nothing to deal with the border security issue. And of course it never addresses the economic, social or political impacts of transitioning so many unassimilated people from the shadows to the citizenry.

The “round em up” crowd is just generally mad at an array of things. They think those who came here illegally cut in line, steal their jobs and destroy American culture. They see an incompetent Federal Government that rubs salt in the wound with baskets of welfare goodies passed out indiscriminately.

The main problem with the “round em uppers” is the total implausibility of extracting and deporting 11 million people.

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Hey conservatives, are you there?

No I don’t mean you Republicans…I mean those of you who are lovers of liberty! I mean those of you who defend the Constitution, not just when it protects them but when it protects someone they don’t like. I know you’re out there. You may be a Libertarian or an independent, you may not be affiliated with any party at all. Ok you might be a Republican too, but I know you’re there.

Well listen up!

I am not exactly sure at what moment the theft of the word “conservative” actually occurred, but I know it has happened. Through the rapid expansion of the size and role of government over the last 100 years the progressives not only infiltrated the Democrats but they infiltrated the Republicans too. They took over words like “liberal” and “conservative.” In fact, if you go back far enough “liberal” used to mean “conservative” until they stole that word. Then all the people who loved freedom found a new home as conservatives, and the progressives came to steal that too.

You see, that is what they do. Progressives are wolves in whatever clothes they need to wear to fool everyone about what their actual agenda is. The reason they do this is because their real agenda is so antithetical to the mission statement of America that most Americans would marginalize the people who espouse these ideas if they knew who they were. Unfortunately, America’s awareness has been dulled by years of addiction to the graft of big government.

If we are not only to survive but thrive as a nation we must separate the progressives who hate freedom from the conservatives that love it. Only then will we know who’s who.

How do we do that? Well conservatives love the Constitution, so let’s start there.

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