Most of Alabama’s illegal immigration law—widely regarded as the toughest in the country—went into effect on September 29.

It seems “jobs Americans won’t do” might be a rather more diaphanous notion than any of the phrase’s supporters realized, eh?

We’ve got to get over the idea that it’s harmless to allow, and in some cases even actively enable, illegal aliens to access our country’s job market and government benefits essentially unfettered.  The above result startles me in its degree.  Clearly, it does matter—a lot.

Even if you believe it is a legitimate function of government to provide for people without regard for whether the government actually belongs to those people, how is it compassion for us to cut our own throats?  Is that not what we’re doing?

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If he’d been this guy since September, where would he be now?

I can’t recall ever seeing a standing ovation at a debate.

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It also appears very much as if this occurred in Afghanistan, these soldiers are U.S. Marines, and the bodies are Taliban.

“It was inhuman and despicable, an unforgivable act,” said Taliban spokesman Qari Yousuf Ahmadi.  (Good to see he found some downtime to comment in between beating and raping women, locking children in boxes to suffocate, and so forth.  But maybe he’s not on those teams.)

The video has been universally condemned by U.S. officials as well.  This condemnation is, of course, correct.  However, its degree is absurd.  I think we have here an administration eager to once again prostrate and flog the United States for the world, and thankful for the opportunity to do so.  Why, they even gets to flavor the whole thing with their thinly-disguised contempt for the military!

A proper response—a strong, mature response—would have been a sincere apology and an assurance of thorough investigation (followed immediately by execution of said investigation, and punishment as appropriate).  The end.

(Actually I’ll put a small asterisk here—*—and say yeah, they could stop today and be leaving it at essentially that, and if they do, then I’ll respond accordingly.  Not holding my breath.)

For one thing, this behavior is clearly very far out of line with how the huge majority of American soldiers conduct themselves, and our highest officials excitedly wallowing in it lends it perceived credence it doesn’t deserve.  For another, we don’t know what immediately preceded this, but we do know they’re not on a nature hike over there.  It doesn’t excuse the activity, but let’s please consider that a 42-second video might be robbing us significant context.

(You know, as we gaze at our iPads, sip our Starbucks, and quack about these horrendous atrocities our boys committed.)

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• Did we have this many debates last time?  I’m kind of glad that stage is over.  I’m ready for my dripping contempt of Barack Obama to have a face.
• The correct response to the loss of the UAV in Iran was taking it out with an airstrike (wow, Dick Cheney was right again!), with 30 minutes of humanitarian notice.  The incorrect response was saying “may we please please please have our little plane back, you mighty mullahs?”
• I love Condoleezza Rice.  VP?  I’m in.
• Merry War on Christmas!  Mark Steyn can’t wait to see what those courageous atheists come up with for Ramadan.
• The eagerness with which we relinquish substantive history because an evil, obnoxious minority dictates its terms to us depresses me.  (A longtime net acquaintance I know to be intelligent has decided that the Confederate battle flag and/or navy jack stands only for seething racism.)
• You know, I think it’s all the same hand-wringing tongue-cluckers who are so eager to emphasize the word “church” when describing those Westboro Baptist idiots.
• Night night, you rotten bastard.  “Ronery” no more, eh?  I’m sure the eighth circle of hell is crowded.

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Paul’s position is essentially that the United States has enemies in the Middle East because we meddle.  If we’d stop bombing and invading and just mind our own business, then we wouldn’t have an Islamist terror problem anymore.  I find this quite naive, mostly because I think it pretends to know too much about what our respective goals and objectives are.  The assumption is that everyone in the world is wired that way—or if there are dissenters, there aren’t enough to matter—and that if we’ll all just leave each other alone, we’ll have trade agreements and the honey will flow and so forth.

The problem is that far too many people have a fire in the belly that explicitly tells them not to leave folks alone.  This can be one of the oldest sentiments there is:  “I’m going to take that because I want it and I don’t believe you can stop me.”  Perhaps more germanely, it can be a drive to implement sharia law (and you know, I can’t think about sharia at all without chuckling at the memory of all those shrieking “theocracy” during the Bush administration).  I think there are dangerous levels of both out there, and I think it takes the biggest kid on the block imposing his will to keep them in check.

Consequently I reject utterly any notion of parity as a guiding principle in foreign policy.  Mutually beneficial is best, of course, and that’s possible with many nations.  (Gee, that list of “many nations” tends to include those with similar values to ours.  Coincidence?  Ha!)  But if impossible, then American interests prevail.  And when I consider that America imposing its will tends to have as its goal the lack of someone inferior imposing his will, I prefer it to any plausible alternative.  We’re not going to have a globe of equals.  We’re going to have the biggest kid calling a lot of the shots, and so I want to be the biggest kid.

Ugly American?  All right.  If you insist.

There is certainly still plenty of discussion for reasonable people.  Whence nation-building?  We can talk about whether the United States should “(embark) on decades-long, trillion-dollar campaigns to make them love us” or “quick ten-million-dollar lessons in why they should fear us,” as John Derbyshire so eloquently expressed.  I definitely tend toward the second position.  Radical Islamists, or two-bit dictators, or whoever can hate America all they want, and as long as that hatred also contains a goodly dose of fear, it doesn’t bother me a whit.

No greater friend; no worse enemy.

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(For those of you who don’t know who Nigel Tufnel is, click here.  And if you were born between 1960 and 1975, shame on you.)

Now being a huge fan of This Is Spinal Tap and numerical oddities in general, I thought this was a cool idea.  Started thinking about finding a skeletal torso T-shirt in neon green.  Began considering whether I could coordinate having “Stonehenge” or perhaps “The Majesty of Rock” blasting at 11 at 11:11:11 on 11/11/11.  But…

…wait.  Isn’t that Veterans Day?  Yes.  Yes, it is.

Now it’s not like I make a huge effort to observe Veterans Day, but I do try to have a quiet moment or two of thought and prayer, and perhaps offer something brief and respectful here.  However culturally significant Nigel Tufnel is, he shall not be enough to nudge that out with me.

As crass as we’ve become, and as tempted as part of me is to examine this line of inquiry, I really doubt there’s any intent to minimize Veterans Day with this.  I think someone saw the convergence of elevens, thought “these go to eleven,” and ran with it.  (Wow, do stop and enjoy 11:11:11 on 11/11/11, though.  Despite false reports of other calendric coincidences, that one really is only possible once every 100 years.)

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Is anybody in this “Occupy” “movement” saying anything that doesn’t grow the government and/or vilify the rich?

Then what makes it new?

The phrase “more icing on a stale cake” comes to mind.

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I have so far concluded that it’s run-of-the-mill, predictably-stoked wealth envy and class warfare.  (When The Nation is calling it the most important thing happening in the world, you can be pretty certain it’s receiving some heavy-duty PUUUUUUUUUSH from the clowns to the left of you.)  Our esteemed president has signaled that he intends to attempt to smear Romney with it.  (I am shocked that a hard-left ideologue would try to use class warfare as a political weapon, aren’t you?)  Finally, it seems pretty clear to me that they’re considerably more vulgar and enamored of much less personal hygiene than your typical Tea Party crowd.

Well, they are filthy hippies.  I kid, I kid!  You know, mostly.

Here’s the thing, folks.  You can throw all of the endlessly fascinating charts showing supposedly grave inequalities at me that you want.  You can find heart-rending anecdote after heart-rending anecdote allegedly illustrating that decent, solid people with good work ethics can’t get ahead because the deck is so stacked against them.  I shall continue to calmly maintain that the most reliable path to a comfortable living is a willingness to work hard.

That’s the truth most of the time.

Consequently, to the extent that I believe the government should be involved in legislating here at all, it should be with that at the forefront.  Consequently, to the extent that I believe the government should be involved in educating here at all, it should be with that at the forefront.

Consequently, it’s tough for me to discern anything truly resonant with thinking, reasonable people in the rhetoric I’ve encountered, so far, of the average “Occupier.”

Now I certainly did not grow up rich, but some good things happened to me by the grace of God.  I have never disputed that.  I am highly intelligent, and I had a conscientious mother and father who recognized that and nurtured it.  I had a father who made the tough call to move our family to northern Alabama right before my junior year in high school, and increased opportunity for me and his stepchildren was a significant factor in his thinking.

I was making $6 an hour at a bookstore when I moved into my first apartment, and things were tight.  More than once, I had a weekly food budget of $10 or so.  But I don’t pretend I was ever truly poor, because had I ever been in imminent danger of being hungry or cold, my father would have helped me.  I’m glad he never had to, but I don’t minimize the confidence boost that knowledge gave me.

(I also had a father who worked his ass off and didn’t teach me to resent rich people, by the way.)

I’m confident that a lot of these malcontents squatting at these gatherings can tell similar stories, if not better ones.  To anyone who had it significantly worse, I offer that our government has never in history offered more legs up—from student grants to small business loans—to anyone willing to pull a load.  If you want a better life, for the most part, it’s out there to get.

If you work.

For those of you working and making a good living, isn’t it nice?  Want more?  Work harder.  Take risks.  Sacrifice.  Did you know that’s what most rich people really do?  (You know, as opposed to sitting around lighting Cohibas with $100 bills, swilling 20-year-old Scotch, and thinking up ways to screw poor people?)

That’s the truth most of the time.

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I mentioned this site before, where you can check to see if a site is blocked in China, which this one was when I first mentioned it.  All of the tests I ran there tonight seemed to indicate that BoWilliams.com was still pretty hard to hit from behind the Great (Fire)wall (except for from Hong Kong, just like last time I checked).

I wondered about Wuhan, as in whether there was anything about it to make one think this hit might be a government censor.  Not really.  It’s a city of almost 10 million people, so odds seem decent it’s just someone who got through.  That’s pretty cool.

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“Conservatives are far more open to reaching out to someone with a different point of view than a liberal is.”

This didn’t surprise me out of the chute, simply because it matches my experience.  Some of my best friends are liberals.  Heh.  But the more I chewed on it today, the more I started hearing relevant crosstalk with this post.  After all, you can easily be friends with someone who’s merely mistaken, but not with someone who’s just a bad person.

Rush has some fun with this from time to time, calling his audience “mind-numbed robots” and what-not.  However, this is typically the comic setup for devastating validation that it is far more liberals who are lockstep drones, not conservatives.

The Republican Party would do well to embrace the “larger tent” that is waiting for it.  The longstanding obsession with social issues, particularly at the federal level, is unhelpful, and I think there’s some evidence of realization there.  A great many of us are reach-outin’ sort of people, and if we can genuinely rally diverse support around fiscal discipline, then our beloved country shall be better for it.  What interest has this match.com engineer in misleading?  I can’t see any.  So maybe there’s something to the claim?

Maybe it encapsulates a primary impetus for saving the United States of America?

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