Why does the globalist media still have so much trouble saying the words ‘ILLEGAL alien’?
“President Donald Trump stood firm Sunday on his demand for billions of dollars to fund a border wall with Mexico, which has forced a shutdown of the US government now entering its third week,” Agence France-Presse reported today, Jan. 6.
“‘We have to build the wall,’ Trump told reporters as he left the White House for the Camp David presidential retreat, while conceding that the barrier could be ‘steel instead of concrete.’
“‘It’s about safety, it’s about security for our country,’ he said. ‘We have no choice.’ . . .
“Building a wall along the 2,000-mile (3,200-kilometer) US-Mexico border was a central plank in the 2016 election campaign of Trump, who has sought to equate immigrants with crime, drugs and gangs,” the Paris-based news service concludes.
Now, despite five years of bookish high-school instruction, my French is far from perfect, I’ll admit. So I might on occasion grant the frog-eaters among us a little leeway in their English constructions. But this kind of thing has simply become too common all across the American and European media to be dismissed as some kind of “slip-up,” so let’s NOT let it go, this time.
Has President Donald Trump sought to “equate immigrants with . . . drugs”? At the risk of seeming a bit pedantic, I turn to a commonly accepted authority, my Webster’s New Twentieth Century Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged. It tell me “equate” means “to make equal or equivalent; treat, regard or express as equal or equivalent.”
Has President Donald Trump ever stated or implied that “immigrants” ARE “drugs”? That they somehow ACT is the same way as “drugs” (obviously referring not to penicillin or tetracycline, but to the controlled drugs of abuse — heroin, cocaine, and the like)? By which of the two most common methods do “immigrants” have the same effect on Americans citizens and legal residents as “drugs”? Do Americans degrade themselves into single-minded addicts by INJECTING immigrants into their bloodstreams, or by drying the immigrants out, chopping them up, and SMOKING them?
Yes, this is ridiculous. Neither candidate Trump nor President Trump has ever “equated immigrants with drugs” or with crime . . . in large part because this debate isn’t about “immigrants” (when that word is used without the necessary adjacent adjective), at all.
The globalists would LIKE TO HAVE US BELIEVE that Donald Trump hates and wants to block new “immigrants,” and proves himself a racist by opposing especially HISPANIC immigrants (who for the most part are neither Asian nor black, the term “Hispanic” meaning “descended from people who came to the New World from Spain,” meaning they are for the most part genetically predominantly CAUCASIAN, since most people from Spain are Caucasian, which is to say, “white.”)
In fact, President Trump has said many times that he welcomes legal immigrants — his own mother was a legal immigrant, as is first lady Melania Trump.
“Mass uncontrolled immigration is especially unfair to the many wonderful law-abiding immigrants already living here, who followed the rules and waited their turn,” the president said two months ago, on Nov. 1. . . . ( https://www.lifezette.com/2018/11/trumps-crackdown-on-illegal-immigration-protects-all-americans/ .)
The Globalist Lamestream Media haven’t just “slipped up and missed” this. President Trump says it every chance he gets, often adding that America needs skilled immigrant workers — admitted on a merit basis — to staff all the businesses now moving back into America due to his trade policies. (Is this “racist”? Try to emigrate to Switzerland or Germany or even Australia or England if you can’t show you’re rich enough or skilled enough to pay your way . . . unless of course you’re a cleaver-wielding Muslim murderer. . . . https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2329089/Woolwich-attack-Two-men-hack-soldier-wearing-Help-Heroes-T-shirt-death-machetes-suspected-terror-attack.html .)
Back in March of 2016, “GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump on Sunday halted a campaign rally in Illinois, handing his podium over to a man sporting a ‘legal immigrant for Trump’ shirt,” The Hill reported at the time. ( https://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/272838-trump-welcomes-legal-immigrant-for-trump-onstage .)
“People are going to come in to our country — we want them to come in, but they’ve got to come in like you: legally,” Trump said during the event in Bloomington, Ill., upon noticing the listener.
“My man — I’d love to get you up on the stage,” Trump told the audience member. “I’d love to get you up on this stage [and] I’d love to show them that shirt.
“Come on, bring him up,” Trump told his security detail. “He knows if he makes a move he’s going to get clobbered by these guys.”
Trump then welcomed the man on stage, eventually turning over the microphone and letting the supporter address his crowd.
“I came to this country when I was 5 years old, and my dad went through hell to get us citizenship,” the man said. “We did it by the book.
“I’m here because the media does not separate legal immigration from illegal (immigration.)”
This from a man who identifies himself — as do millions of others — as “legal immigrants for Trump.”
So, French gentlemen and ladies, are you sure you didn’t mean to write that “Trump has sought to point out that a wide-open, wall-less border allows the uncontrolled influx of ILLEGAL aliens — MILLIONS of them — that is to say, allows the INVASION of this country by law-breakers (ALL so-called “undocumented immigrants” being law-breakers — illegal entry and identity theft to create fake documentation merely setting the tone for a life of crime and deception designed to break down the bonds of mutual trust among Americans), many of whom BRING IN potentially addictive drugs of (dangerously) unknown purity and potency, BELONG to violent criminal gangs, and who after they have entered America ILLEGALLY proceed to COMMIT many felonies, such as the murders of Kate Steinle and California police officer Ronil Singh, himself the kind of LEGAL immigrant who President Trump has repeatedly CELEBRATED AND WELCOMED to America”? (
https://www.mercurynews.com/2018/12/30/suspect-7-others-arrested-in-fatal-shooting-of-california-police-officer-2/ )
Why does the globalist media have so much trouble saying the words “ILLEGAL ALIEN” — or even “ILLEGAL immigrant”? Omitting the adjective has the same effect as changing the statement of someone who has said “It’s OK to shoot rabid dogs” to report that they’ve said “It’s OK to shoot dogs” or changing the statement “Doctors in prisoner-of-war camps of course may amputate gangrenous limbs at their discretion” to “Doctors in prisoner-of-war camps may of course amputate limbs at their discretion.”
See how omitting the necessary, limiting adjective changes the meaning of the statement?
Pardon me, was that too subtle and understated? Do you see how BY DELETING THE NECESSARY, RESTRICTIVE ADJECTIVE YOU ARE PURPOSELY LYING IN ORDER TO MISLEAD YOUR READERS?
Why are you doing that?
January 6th, 2019 at 11:54 am
But, but, but … Orange Man Bad! /sarc
And they wonder why their viewership & subscription numbers are plumetting? Because, in #FakeNews what you leave out, how you phrase it, and how you frame it, is as important as the “facts” you manage to leave in.
Btw, my most recent copy of “Motorsports”, an English racing magazine, had as its editorial an anti-Trump diatribe. I put the magazine aside and will never read it again. Never mix business & politics.
p.s. Been following you for years, Vin, back to the usenet days …
January 6th, 2019 at 1:03 pm
Maybe they have trouble saying the words “illegal alien” because they’ve read the US Constitution and understand that there can’t possibly be any such thing under its mandate?
Somehow I doubt that that’s how they came to avoid the oxymoron “illegal alien,” but it’s the only plausible explanation that comes to mind.
January 6th, 2019 at 1:19 pm
It’s Critical Theory, part of the Frankfort School doctrine of Cultural Marxism, a.k.a. Political Correctness.
You see it all the time: ANYTHING Trump does is criticised.
– While the Dems insisted a wall was needed, now Trump actually wants to build one it’s bad.
– When Trump appeared not to be visiting the troops in Irak, the MSM was all over him; when it turned out he did (as a surpise visit), they were all over him again.
– When FLOTUS went with him (first time since 1969 this happened) they complained about her boots.
– Trump was told to get out of Syria, when he actually did they claimed he was an idiot.
Etcetera, etcetera,
Critical Theory is about criticising only, not about suggesting alternatives or solutions. Goal is to destroy civilised society.
“Martin Jay writes, “If it can be said that in the early years of its history, the Institute concerned itself primarily with an analysis of bourgeois society’s socio-economic sub-structure,” – and I point out that Jay is very sympathetic to the Frankfurt School, I’m not reading from a critic here – “in the years after 1930 its primary interests lay in its cultural superstructure. Indeed the traditional Marxist formula regarding the relationship between the two was brought into question by Critical Theory.”
The stuff we’ve been hearing about this morning – the radical feminism, the women’s studies departments, the gay studies departments, the black studies departments – all these things are branches of Critical Theory. What the Frankfurt School essentially does is draw on both Marx and Freud in the 1930s to create this theory called Critical Theory. The term is ingenious because you’re tempted to ask, “What is the theory?” The theory is to criticize. The theory is that the way to bring down Western culture and the capitalist order is not to lay down an alternative. They explicitly refuse to do that. They say it can’t be done, that we can’t imagine what a free society would look like (their definition of a free society). As long as we’re living under repression – the repression of a capitalistic economic order which creates (in their theory) the Freudian condition, the conditions that Freud describes in individuals of repression – we can’t even imagine it. What Critical Theory is about is simply criticizing. It calls for the most destructive criticism possible, in every possible way, designed to bring the current order down. And, of course, when we hear from the feminists that the whole of society is just out to get women and so on, that kind of criticism is a derivative of Critical Theory. It is all coming from the 1930s, not the 1960s.”
https://www.academia.org/the-origins-of-political-correctness/
January 6th, 2019 at 2:13 pm
Mr. Knapp, an adherent so staunch and sneering as to be deemed inflexible on the supposed “libertarian” (but actually globalist-communist) notion that “Borders do not exist,” that no objection may be raised or resistance offered as any and all of the several billion non-self-supporting, non-English-speaking welfare cases in the world sneak surreptitiously into the United States without legal permission, without going through any legal rigmarole — even a health inspection — and then squat where they wish, bankrupting our hospital emergency rooms by using them for free medical care, threatening to bankrupt the taxpayers who are forced to support our “free, multi-lingual” government schools, illegally registering and voting to put more of their socialist comrades and comradettes in power here (just for starters), will presumably soon advise us how many “undocumented guest workers” he has invited to squat in his spare bedroom and raid his refrigerator at will.
Meantime, it appears he’s made no effort to read even a summary of de Vattel’s “Law of Nations,” a work quite familiar to the Founders.
As summarized by Jon Roland of the Constitution Society, “Art. I Sec. 8 Cl. 10 of the Constitution for the United States delegates the power to Congress to ‘define and punish . . . Offenses against the Law of Nations.’
“It is important to understand what is and is not included in the term of art ‘law of nations,’ and not confuse it with ‘international law,'” Mr. Roland points out. “They are not the same thing.
“The phrase ‘law of nations’ is a direct translation of the Latin jus gentium, which means the underlying principles of right and justice among nations, and during the founding era was not considered the same as the ‘laws,’ that is, the body of treaties and conventions between nations, the jus inter gentes, which, combined with jus gentium, comprise the field of ‘international law.’ The distinction goes back to ancient Roman Law.
“Briefly,” Mr. Roland continues, “the Law of Nations at the point of ratification in 1788 included the following general elements, taken from Blackstone’s Commentaries, and prosecution of those who might violate them:
“(1) No attacks on foreign nations, their citizens, or shipping, without either a declaration of war or letters of marque and reprisal.
“(2) Honoring of the flag of truce, peace treaties, and boundary treaties. No entry across national borders without permission of national authorities. . . .
“To expand on point (2), Blackstone, in discussing border passes, stated “by the law of nations no member of one society has a right to intrude into another . . . [I]t is left in the power of all states, to take such measures about the admission of strangers, as they deem convenient.”
That “right to define and punish” such offenses being, you understand . . . as mandated in the United States Constitution. (found at https://www.constitution.org/cmt/law_of_nations.htm )
Nor is “illegal alien” an oxymoron, which is to say, “amusingly redundant,” like “Military Intelligence,” or “jumbo shrimp.”
“Legal resident aliens” include foreign diplomats, who are here by the permission of our elected government, but who neither seek nor gain U.S. citizenship, and whose children (for instance) do NOT gain automatic U.S. citizenship if born here, just as the 14th amendment failed to grant automatic birthright citizenship to others resident in this country but not fully “subject to the jurisdiction thereof,” as, for instance, Native American Indians. ( See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elk_v._Wilkins .)
Which means the term “illegal alien” has to mean something else. And we all know precisely what it means, don’t we? Can anyone reading this really contend they don’t understand the meaning of the statement “José Inez García Zárate, the murderer of Kathryn Steinle, and Gustavo Perez Arriaga, the murderer of California police officer (and legal immigrant) Onril Singh, are illegal aliens”? Really? Come on.
But I understand. It’s so much more complicated and demanding of both time and effort to actually do the reading, and then measure our snippy, memorized aphorisms against the likely real-world consequences, should such received sound bites actually be instituted as policy by those willing to take any responsibility for the results . . . out here in the real world.
— V.S.
January 6th, 2019 at 2:35 pm
Great essay, Vin. What bugs me the most about the so-called “MSM” is how they never even really TALKED about immigration, even though it was Trump’s main campaign issue. The talking heads on CNN or MSNBC only talked about how it would play as an issue, giving their voting viewers no concrete information such as how many illegal aliens are in prison or how many are on welfare (including the Earned Income Tax Credit using ITIN’s to file taxes and nephews in Mexico as claimed dependents).
January 6th, 2019 at 5:19 pm
Our old friend Eric Andreasen sends along a thoughtful video laying out the traditional Jewish position on nations, borders, and the threat of the seductive globalist/Marxist call for uncontrolled immigration:
https://youtu.be/hm2kU_SG57w .
— V.S.
January 6th, 2019 at 6:20 pm
I appreciate your retort to those who supposedly support “Liberty”, yet would allow a Million-Man plainclothes army to march right into our country. Libertarians believe in private property, yet some bar-stool “purists” love to rail that citizens cannot own their country.
January 7th, 2019 at 4:23 am
Thanks for that video, Vin (and by extension, mr. Andreasen).
Interesting how at the end mr. Shilo refers to the last 120 years with respect to the “terrible evil and tragic results of Marxist ideology”, not coincidentally equalling the period where ‘common voting rights’ (they’re not’rights’, of course) were implemented, under pressure from the socialist movement.
January 7th, 2019 at 4:36 am
Two and a half years, and Mr. Knapp still hasn’t read the rest of the Constitution. He’s still taking that one line out of context, when he knows that was about importing slaves.
January 10th, 2019 at 12:05 am
Vin ,, they can’t say it , , if they did , they would have to admit that ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION IS CULTURAL RAPE, it forces the cultural habits and mores of the illegals on the host population/culture without the consent of the host culture ,
It is done by force .
With complicity of the democrat party and the Est Republican party.
They are both guilty of crimes against the the Constitution, in giving aid and support to illegals already in the country, and in directing tax monies to be spent to defend illegals from deportation and treats them as extra judicial subjects, not subject to laws the citizens must observe, in direct violation of the oath of office every state officer takes in these United States,
Call me an optimist , I’m hoping Donald rounds All of them up and puts them before military tribunals, its the only way to clean the body politic of this country . the professional politicians must be subject to the laws of this country ,
too many political operator’s have been getting get out of jail free cards ,,
the pendulum has to swing back ,
I hope Donald is that pendulum.
February 24th, 2019 at 12:20 pm
Although I agree with the meaning of Vin’s comment wholeheartedly, the editor in me is forced to point out…
‘Nor is “illegal alien” an oxymoron, which is to say, “amusingly redundant,” like “Military Intelligence,” or “jumbo shrimp.”…’
The proper word here is not “redundant,” but “contradictory.”
February 24th, 2019 at 12:40 pm
@Henry
While I may not be an editor, I am forced to point out you’re barking up the wrong tree here. The invalid term in this context is ‘oximoron’, which should be either ‘pleonasm’ or ‘tautology’ (there’s some room for interpretation here) which both indeed indicate redundancy.
‘Illegal alien’ is not a contradiction, but a valid indication of, well, an illegal alien, but an alien is not per se illegal, hence it’s not ‘amusingly redundant’, as Vin correctly points out (and which is the point of this whole post).
The mistake is not Vin’s, but Mr. Knapp’s; Vin just did not correct him.