I feel this way about immigration reform: I’m all for equal economic opportunity, and I’m also for secure U.S. borders. I also think it’s unrealistic to think that we can summarily deport the 11 million illegal immigrants currently living in America. But since when did immigration policy become a question of “civil rights”? Here’s National Public Radio commentator Juan Williams writing in the Washington Post
“The massive demonstrations by Hispanics across the country have the look of civil rights history. The crowds protesting punitive immigration legislation have been huge, rivaling or exceeding the gathering for the 1963 March on Washington. Is this in fact a major new civil rights movement?…
“We’ve seen a movie a lot like this before — about 50 years ago. It ended with a country being transformed by a movement that called for it to live up to its founding ideals of equal rights for all.”
Come again–“equal rights for all”? Sorry but people lving here illegally don’t have “rights.” They’re here on suffrance. A quick lesson in history and etymology, Juan: The “civil” in “civil rights” comes from the same Latin root as the word “citizen.” The civil rights movement was all about U.S. citizens who weren’t being treated like citizens. It wasn’t about non-citizens demanding to be treated like citizens.
Of course, what people like Juan Williams are really talking about when they’re talking about “civil rights” is the creation of a new, demonstration-fueled, mass voting bloc for the Democratic Party:
“Imagine the power of Hispanics joined with other minorities to stand up for better schools and pressure politicians for national health care.”
Yes, imagine what the Dems could do if they managed to scrape up some votes outside of the wealthy, well-educated blue-state elite who now constitute practically the only sure votes for national health care and other big-government Democratic Party standbys.
Michelle Malkin has this photo (thanks to Wizbang) of Texas Dems’ efforts to turn the Dallas demonstrations into a voting-registration fair for their flailing party. Note the colors of the brochure: red, white, and, uh, green. Very patriotic folks, the Democrats, no? And, of course the map, depicting Texas as part of Mexico, not the United States.
Michelle’s also got a bunch of pix of the D.C. demonstration. Posters of Che Guevara? Since when did the virulently anti-American Che become a hero to those who claim to love our country so much that they want to live here?