From John Adams to Alberto Gonzales
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In a USA Today op-ed, former Bush administration Attorney General Alberto Gonzales gives us a 21st Century-suitable updating of John Adams’ saying that we should have “A government of laws and not of men:”
Alberto Gonzales: Obama’s time for immigration action
Alberto R. Gonzales 5:24 p.m. EDT August 12, 2014
We are a nation of laws, but also of immigrants.
Laws outrank men, but immigrants outrank laws.
In the future, Adams’ quote will be retconned to read: “As Abigail Adams said, ‘We must have a government of immigrants and not of old cisgendered white men.'”
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Gonzalez is the deceitful worm who made up the legalese gobbledygook that gave Bush & Cheney their actually illegal excuse to order Americans to torture enemy – and even suspected enemy – captives, in flagrant violation of treaties to which the U.S. is Senate-ratified signatory.
I wouldn’t trust Alberto Gonzalez to hold my lollipop while I bent down to tie my shoelace.
No I like that, it gets the message across very succinctly that you cannot remain a nation of laws when the demographic by and for whom the laws were created is no longer the vast majority of the population.
It’s not like the rule of law has ever affected Secret Squirrel’s reasoning in the past.
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Whoever eventually writes the definitive history of Civil War II — win or lose — will want to copyright this now.
We are a nation of laws, but also of immigrants.
This notion of a nation of immigrants needs to be put to rest. We are not, nor have we ever been, a nation of immigrants.
“Gonzalez is the deceitful worm who made up the legalese gobbledygook that gave Bush & Cheney their actually illegal excuse to order Americans to torture enemy – and even suspected enemy – captives, in flagrant violation of treaties to which the U.S. is Senate-ratified signatory.”
Remind me why torturing Al Qaeda assholes is bad again?
Laws have disparate impact, so out they go. Can’t have any hurt feelings amongst PoC.
From 1620 to 1820 there was very little immigration.
Man, USAT’s really gone downhill since the days of Larry King’s regular column
Because Protestantism.
Actually, what the hell does this pronouncement mean? Is it really a way of carte blanche saying that ‘immigration is the supreme law it takes priority over everything’?
So the next time yoi read a banner at some pro amnesty demonstration saying that ‘This is our continent not yours’ just bear Gonzalez’s dictum in mind and tell the immigrationist crowd that your ancestor’s immigration trumps their ancestor’s ‘right’ of precedence.
I will point out that the whole thing looks rather futile to me. Probably due to the efforts of people like our commenters, the Republicans can’t pass an immigration (ie amnesty) bill, and every time they try to get them to pass it, the rush from the grassroots stops them.
Seems like democracy in action. Now will they find a way around it?
anon #6:
You give the government some scary power with the promise that it will be used only against the bogeyman of the day–terrorists, child molesters, drug dealers, whatever. But inevitably, its use gets expanded over time. If torture is a tool in the toolbox, and we have professional torturers and torture chambers, then we’ll see it used. You can see an example of that with the way civil forfeiture and RICO laws were created to fight the mob, but then became things that could be used in all kinds of small-time criminal cases. You can also see it in the people who we know about who did get tortured. A lot of them appear to have had nothing to do with Al Qaida–either they were Iraqis or Afghans who looked to have some information about insurgents, or they were just random people who seemed like they might know something about AQ.
From what I can tell, it’s a good bet that Jose Padilla (a US citizen arrested in Chicago) was tortured during his several years locked up incommunicado because the Bush administration said he was a terrorist. That went on for years before he ever had a trial, and his eventual trial was for something completely differernt than the accusations used to justify disappearing him originally. If the president can declare anyone a terrorist and have them disappeared and tortured, it’s kind of hard to imagine why we’d bother to have any other limits on his power.
It’s not safe giving the government the power to torture people. That’s why very few places that have an official policy of using torture are places you’d ever want to live. It’s also illegal and violates treaties we signed back when we were facing the USSR, which is why Gonzales ought to be making these statements from inside a prison visiting room somewhere.
Remind me why torturing Al Qaeda assholes is bad again?Replies: @Chris Mallory, @Lowe
If you have to ask, then you really aren’t much different than those “Al Qaeda assholes” .
Remind me why torturing Al Qaeda assholes is bad again?Replies: @Chris Mallory, @Lowe
Nation of laws…
‘immigrants’ = non-white nationalism.
Gonzo is really saying he’s Mexican before American.
If immigration is so great for a country, and if Gonzo has such patriotic feelings for Mexico, he should take all Mexican-Americans & illegals and immigrate back to Mexico. Mexico will benefit from all that wonderful immigration, and Gonzo and his people here would be doing wonders for their home country.
Funny how Mexicans over here benefit from the fact that Anglos created a nation of rule of law–unlike Mexico which is based on rule of flaw–, but they have no respect for laws. Gonzo and his ilk don’t realize that Mexico is a mess because Mexers there act like Mexers over here: no respect for rule of law.
Of course, the Jewish elites are behind Gonzo.
I wonder what their motto is about Zionist espionage.
“We are a nation of laws, but also of information.”
Since Israeli spies are taking our information, isn’t it just dandy?
I wonder what the black motto is about crime and violence.
“We are a nation of laws, but also of letting the good times roll.”
I mean what is America without some fun? Can’t wait til
Black Friday at Walmart? Riot now.
I wonder what the militarist motto is about America’s perpetual and often illegal wars.
“We are a nation of laws, but also of wars.”
It’s true enough US was forged thru wars here and abroad, so let’s keep looking for more violence.
Ours is an indispensable nation without which the world would be missing out on all these wars.
Kilgore: “Someday this war’s gonna end.”
Not if neocons and Liberal Zionists and their stooges can help it.
Alberto Gonzalez – another reason (there are so many) to despise George W. Bush.
Oh gosh, not “moral equivalence” again. Pushing someone into the street in front of a car is different from pushing someone out of the street. You can’t just say both people are violent.
We all know that nation of immigrants isnt really a reference to Germans or French people or whatever. It means non-white only.
I’m coming around to the opinion that “rule of law” just means “the place where the nice white people live.” I have no doubt that, for example, Robert Mugabe is as sincere in his belief that the Big Man has the right to take stuff and give it to his family and friends as Ron Paul is as sincere in his belief in Lockean ethics. That’s just the way things are outside the Hajnal lines. As we invite more people from outside the Hajnal lines in, that’s how we’ll become. The best such places can hope for is a Paul Kagame or Bashar Assad. Hopefully a tough, smart, charismatic white alpha will emerge so he can carve out a place where white people can have their rule of law.
Alberto Gonzales frankly can’t help himself. That’s just how hidalgos think.
Not so sure of that, in the 30 years war there was lot of torturing from both sides.
anon wrote: “Remind me why torturing Al Qaeda assholes is bad again?”
Here, then, anon, is your answer:
I have no desire, and I pray you have no desire, to live under a surveillance state to whose Dear Leader, commissars, senators, agents you would grant carte blanche to torture – to torture any one whom the Dear Leader, commissars, senators, or agents brand – often with supreme arbitrariness – an “enemy.” If you are blind or mad enough not to see, not to grasp, that your permission to state agents to torture those whom their caprice brands an enemy gives also – simultaneously – your permission to the state to brand you an enemy whom its agents will torture on any pretext they choose, or on none whatsoever, really, your having given them no reason to have to justify their intent or their deeds.
Once you say to the state, “Torture those assholes!”, the state may – and likely will, given the consequences which the surrender or arrogation of absolute power have always visited on our species – at any future date declare you one of “those assholes.”
The nature of power is to aggrandize evermore power. In history, every time men have surrendered or granted a power to the state, the state’s agents have never relinquished it and, further, they have always used it to aggrandize further power over men. Over you and me.
It boils down to this: There are lines which no sane, knowledgeable, mature, worthy people can allow its Big Shots to cross. If that’s not a slam dunk for you, then not only must I pity you, but you would also give me powerful cause to dread the future.
Finally, to address this matter from another angle, back to Al Qaida: I should like to know, because I should like to trust, that our Dear Rulers and the agents they command are wise enough to know that there are smarter methods – far cleverer methods – to get information from a man without causing him or any of his relatives or comrades the slightest distress. A relaxed man, a man who feels he is at ease, speaks truths, but a tortured man blurts anything he thinks his tormentors want to hear to make his torturers stop torturing him, even if he has to make up and speak the particular fiction his torturers want to hear – the fiction his torturers prize as “useful” or, as the state’s agents seem fond of saying, “actionable.” Do you not see that the state’s agents often do not torture to gain truthful information, but that they often torture to force their victim to tell them a lie that the agents want to hear, because the agents want to use the “confessed” fiction to “justify” an action-they’re bent on taking or, more frighteningly, to take a power they desire to take?
Here, then, anon, is your answer:
I have no desire, and I pray you have no desire, to live under a surveillance state to whose Dear Leader, commissars, senators, agents you would grant carte blanche to torture - to torture any one whom the Dear Leader, commissars, senators, or agents brand - often with supreme arbitrariness - an "enemy." If you are blind or mad enough not to see, not to grasp, that your permission to state agents to torture those whom their caprice brands an enemy gives also - simultaneously - your permission to the state to brand you an enemy whom its agents will torture on any pretext they choose, or on none whatsoever, really, your having given them no reason to have to justify their intent or their deeds.
Once you say to the state, "Torture those assholes!", the state may - and likely will, given the consequences which the surrender or arrogation of absolute power have always visited on our species - at any future date declare you one of "those assholes."
The nature of power is to aggrandize evermore power. In history, every time men have surrendered or granted a power to the state, the state's agents have never relinquished it and, further, they have always used it to aggrandize further power over men. Over you and me.
It boils down to this: There are lines which no sane, knowledgeable, mature, worthy people can allow its Big Shots to cross. If that's not a slam dunk for you, then not only must I pity you, but you would also give me powerful cause to dread the future.
Finally, to address this matter from another angle, back to Al Qaida: I should like to know, because I should like to trust, that our Dear Rulers and the agents they command are wise enough to know that there are smarter methods - far cleverer methods - to get information from a man without causing him or any of his relatives or comrades the slightest distress. A relaxed man, a man who feels he is at ease, speaks truths, but a tortured man blurts anything he thinks his tormentors want to hear to make his torturers stop torturing him, even if he has to make up and speak the particular fiction his torturers want to hear - the fiction his torturers prize as "useful" or, as the state's agents seem fond of saying, "actionable." Do you not see that the state's agents often do not torture to gain truthful information, but that they often torture to force their victim to tell them a lie that the agents want to hear, because the agents want to use the "confessed" fiction to "justify" an action-they're bent on taking or, more frighteningly, to take a power they desire to take?Replies: @Steve Sailer
I write a fair amount about how opaque and conspiratorial Turkish politics is. One reason it’s that way is the threat of torture hangs in the air. That perception may be outdated.
We are nation of immigrants but also of laws.
People without laws are mobs, not citizens.
“We all know that nation of immigrants isnt really a reference to Germans or French people or whatever. It means non-white only.”
Nonwhite and lately also increasingly Non Christian as well, especially in Europe’s case where most Nonwhites follow the religion of Islam which is extremely toxic to White Western culture.
The only pro of American multiculturalism is at least most of the Nonwhites in this country are not Muslim, at least for the time being. 50 years from now that might not be the case. Our corrupt American government might start demanding a lot more immigrants from countries like Pakistan, Yemen, Egypt, Somalia, etc.
The bullshit of the “nation of immigrants” claim is that it defines a country by what it isn’t. It’s like saying that a reptile is an animal with gills, wings, and tits. What defines America is the culture that does not yet exist here, the people who don’t yet live here, the people who didn’t grow up here. We are not a nation of immigrants, nor have we been since our earliest decades. To call us a “nation of immigrants” is to say that everything of worth here – the culture, the people, their posterity – is scheduled to be destroyed, disgarded, and replaced.
“We are a nation of immigrants”.
Pure cultural Marxism.
We are a nation of the descendents of settlers is a far more accurate and honest statement. At least as honest as saying all those immigrants were white and from Europe.
I could just as easily say we are a nation of slave-owners. Does that mean we should have slavery today?
Pure cultural Marxism.
We are a nation of the descendents of settlers is a far more accurate and honest statement. At least as honest as saying all those immigrants were white and from Europe.
I could just as easily say we are a nation of slave-owners. Does that mean we should have slavery today?Replies: @The Anti-Gnostic
As I point out to people, “immigrants” don’t build States. “Immigrant” is a license granted by an established State.