Controversy currently convulses that country, thanks to the author of a new book whose title translates as Germany Abolishes Itself. Thilo Sarrazin once reigned as the Finance Senator of Berlin; he is now a member of Germany’s federal bank. How a publisher decided that a career of printing and inflating money qualifies a guy to advise Germans on immigration, I have no idea. Perhaps it’s the same strain of insanity that has the American Congress inviting Hollywood’s charlatans to gossip—sorry, testify against the oil industry.
Meanwhile, German central bankers are as evil as American ones if Thilo is any measure. Among the inanities he unleashed in an interview is his assertion that “all Jews share the same gene.”
Germany’s Chancellor and assorted talking heads immediately castigated Thilo as a racist. But far more disturbing is his ignorance and jaw-dropping stupidity, though I suppose both are requisites for federal banking. Does this nut seriously imagine that all Jewish folks inherit identical chromosomes – even those who are non-Semitic converts or whose parents intermarried?
But Thilo has made a career of such foolishness. “In a magazine interview last year he said: ‘I do not need to accept anyone who lives on handouts from a state it rejects…’”
Like the fatuous Thilo, far too many Americans blame the recipient of those “handouts” rather than the thief who steals the money in the first place. Though they themselves live on Social Security, send their kids to State U, or work for corporations rife with government’s immoral contracts, they denounce immigrants for loafing on welfare and crowding everything from emergency rooms to public schools. But it is government they should loathe and oppose, not the victims of its suborning.
Sadly, much of fallen humanity aspires to be leeches. Whatever their culture, upbringing, nationality, or religion, most people delight in free rides and grab as many as they can. They pray the supermarket’s clerk will mistakenly hand them an extra buck in change; the politician who promises to deliver more freebies than his competitor receives their vote. This explains the lying, thieving, murderous State’s otherwise inexplicable but universal popularity: as Frederic Bastiat put it, “Government is that great fiction whereby everyone lives at everyone else’s expense.” Rarely, a hero with the rectitude and independence to pay his own way shines, but most folks happily sponge off their neighbors — especially if doing so is not only easy and legal but encouraged.
And Leviathan very much encourages all of us, immigrants or descendants of the Mayflower’s passengers, to swill every meal from the public trough; indeed, the beast often makes it illegal not to do so (the Feds automatically enroll us in Social Security and Medicare; only recently has the State grudgingly allowed homeschoolers to avoid public schools; etc). How will politicians and bureaucrats maintain their power over us if we spurn their bribes?
Blaming immigrants, then, for the socialism that saturates America is as wrongheaded as efforts to kick them out and “save” those “resources” for “our own people.” We should apply those strenuous efforts instead to abolishing the whole Satanic system of welfare, with its bankrupting of both our pocketbooks and the human soul. (Recall as well that it’s not at all clear whether immigrants consume more “social services” than natives – for every study showing they do, another says they don’t. And the despised “illegals” who give employers false Social Security numbers actually “contribute” about $6 billion to that Ponzi scheme annually without hope of benefitting from it.)
Meanwhile, the more we scorn immigrants for accepting “free” money as readily as anyone else, the more we play into Leviathan’s hands. Because democracies supposedly depend on the consent of the governed, they convince voters they’re indispensable by ginning up bugaboos, dire dangers from which only the State can save us (provided we vastly increase both its budget and powers, of course). America’s “wars” on drugs the Feds don’t like and on unelected terrorists are very expensive “solutions” to very exaggerated threats. Joining pot and Osama as menaces that will destroy America are immigrants, or so our rulers pretend.
Why do we heed these demagogic bozos? They conquer by dividing us, deluding us into hating poor and often persecuted people instead of the State.
Who harms us more, the government that robs us for Aid to Dependent Children, food stamps, and Medicaid or an immigrant, legal or otherwise, harvesting fruit because “local residents just won’t pick apples, regardless of the unemployment situation…”? (And that’s according to “John Rice, president of Gardners, Pa.-based Rice Fruit Co.” He added, “… packing apples, like picking a lot of crops, is tough work…”) Who costs us more, the immigrant at the emergency room (where an average visit consumed $1000 in Austin, TX, in 2009 – and where “Just nine people accounted for nearly 2,700 of the emergency room visits in the … area during the past six years at a cost of $3 million to taxpayers and others…” All nine parasites appear to be natives) or the legislature forcing hospitals to treat everyone who staggers through the doors, no matter how many times? Who makes a better American, immigrants seeking freedom or politicians stripping it from us?
It’s time we repudiated our true enemies and their web of welfare. Let’s work at eliminating both while welcoming the newcomers they demonize.
Becky Akers, an expert on the American Revolution, writes frequently about issues related to security and privacy. Her articles and columns have been published by Lewrockwell.com, The Freeman, Military History Magazine, American History Magazine, the Christian Science Monitor, the New York Post, and other publications.
