@cnels43.

As Loretta Lynch’s US Senate confirmation hearings for her nomination to the office of Attorney General opened on January 28, Republicans were dying to ask her just how friendly she might be to the class of people government defines as “illegal aliens.”

In an exchange with immigration scrooge Jeff Sessions (R-AL), Sessions wondered who Lynch believes has the right to work in America. Specifically, he asked, who has “more right”: A lawful immigrant, a citizen, or a person who entered the country unlawfully? Lynch wisely opted to dodge Sessions’s silly multiple choice question, instead responding that if a person is here unlawfully, she’d prefer it be as a participant in America’s workforce.

Sessions’s line of questioning — and the answer he was fishing for — reveals much about the political class’s warped thinking. The bipartisan immigration-bashing contingent in Washington believes, as Sheldon Richman notes, “permission to work is theirs to bestow.” Unfortunately, that belief is the law of the land. Today, who may work is a question decided largely by Washington bureaucrats and special interests jockeying to buy legal monopolies on their services. While you may think yourself free to pursue work of your choosing, the countless prerequisites and riders imposed by government drastically narrow your choices. If you’re fortunate enough to overcome those obstacles, your ability to remain effective at your craft is often curtailed as you’re forced to wade through a morass of government-mandated compliance. Politicians rely on this hugely important power to maintain a stranglehold on their subjects. The right to bestow work upon their subjects, and all of the ancillary terms and conditions that come with granting work as privilege, allow the parasitic political class to fill its pockets in the most efficient way possible. If work — whether that of an illegal immigrant or an American black market laborer — is re-routed through unregulated marketplaces, politicians lose the ability to track it and extort tribute. Failure to comply with their tangled web of tax, labor, and administrative law, not to mention licensing schemes laid over entire professions, risks having your livelihood pulled out from under you. The whole complex structure is falsely sold as protecting producers and consumers alike. Illegal immigration itself is not what scares bureaucrats. Their fear is loss of control over the income streams that result from unregulated immigrant labor. Sessions and his fellow border guards in Congress couch their fear in terms of “us vs. them” rhetoric, a brilliant stage act serving important political purposes. With this sleight of hand, politicians lead you to believe their fears are not for the loss of taxpayer loot, but for “your” jobs, “your” Medicare, and “your” Social Security. Those here legally and working lawfully (and paying taxes), are said to serve a patriotic function. The state’s skimming of their paychecks is not to be abhorred, but welcomed as a vital contribution to everyone else’s well-being. Those who work without permission are the enemy, undoing the noble work of the lawfully employed. “You” are good and “they” are bad. Politically powerless undocumented immigrants make an easy target for Washington, putting a false human face on politicians’ fake hysteria. Madison Avenue couldn’t have designed a better ruse. It’s also worth recognizing the immigration scare’s target audience: 1) Unemployed and unsecure American workers, and 2) retirees. The “us vs. them” mantra becomes more potent when you’re told something tangible may be taken from you if immigration is not stemmed. Those already secure, successful and relatively independent of the state concern themselves less with others’ work and pay arrangements. Furthermore, older Americans, many themselves immigrants or descendants of immigrants, are generally less tolerant of the new wave of brown-skinned immigrants. This otherization is an easier sell to older Americans who have less experience and interaction with them and are told that their presence leads to the disintegration of American culture.

The real source of worker insecurity, cultural ruin and general predation on honest, hard-working people is the state. Poking holes in the politicians’ immigration story and lifting the veil on their real motives, all while recognizing the humanity of our supposed enemies, is a solid first step on the road to real liberty.

Citations to this article:

Chad Nelson, GOP immigration issue just a distraction, University of New MexicoDaily Lobo, p. 4, 01/30/15

Chad Nelson, The Political Class’s War on Immigrants is a Diversion, Before It’s News, 01/30/15

Chad Nelson | More articles by Chad Nelson

Originally published at C4SS on 30 January 2015

Republished under a Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication

Image via ClubOfINFO Circulation

. @cnels43. #NoMoreWAR. #Iraq. #Obama. #IS.

American criminal law takes a nuanced view of murder, creating several punishable degrees of it. First degree murder is generally defined as premeditated. The murderer has a plan to kill and takes sufficient time to map out his crime. Second degree murder involves the killer who hasn’t necessarily taken the time to plan out his crime, but nonetheless has an “evil mind” and intends to kill. Another variety of second degree murder involves the killer who engages in conduct so depraved that the law says he should have known that his behavior would likely result in death. Then there’s manslaughter, sometimes referred to as “negligent homicide,” wherein the killer behaved negligently and someone died as a result. These are age-old American legal traditions.

Somehow, American war culture manages to turn a blind eye to these longstanding, basic legal principles when it comes to its government’s wars. Americans brook no nuance when it comes to war. A war with massive civilian casualties is the same as a war with no civilian casualties, as long it meets some vague government objective. For anyone who doubts this lack of distinction, simply look at the body of historical work surrounding “The Good War” – World War II.

War is hell, they say. War is a dirty business. You have to break a few eggs to make an omelette. The countless despicable metaphors used to describe war are intended to distract people from what war really is: Non-punishable mass murder.

Unfortunately, no matter how reckless, depraved, ill-informed or misconceived American war-making becomes, the war-makers are never held to the same standards as run-of-the-mill murderers. Neither George W. Bush nor any other American president, were he tried in a criminal court of law (loud laughter), would escape conviction for first degree murder.

But in war, all the war-making murderer needs is a place where he or she claims bad people exist. To hell with other details or circumstances. The rest of the war-making murderer’s conduct gets blanket immunity so long as that low threshold requirement is met. Most of the time even that part can later be found false or mistaken. The actual execution of war never matters. Its implementation always ends up being reckless, depraved, and of such a nature that even a toddler would recognize it as guaranteed to lead to the murder of innocents. Yet presidents and congressman always get away with behavior that would land any ordinary person behind bars, probably on death row.

Many critics of the American War Machine give their opponents the benefit of doubt by acknowledging supposedly good intentions. This is a grave mistake. It becomes a mantra that gets tossed out prior to challenging any war: “I know you mean well, but …” It’s time to drop that preface. Just as criminal law cuts the negligent killer no break, so too should serious war critics drop the forgiving aspect of their engagement with government killers.

Remember this when Barack Obama or any future president speaks to you in an effort to outline his or her war strategy. It doesn’t matter whether he or his clan of humanitarian killers are able to come up with some cockamamie excuse for dropping bombs. Their behavior is going to end innocent lives, pure and simple.

By Chad Nelson – More articles by Chad Nelson

Republished under a Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication.

Originally published at the Center for a Stateless Society on 17 September 2014