Borderline Republican Disorder & the Terrifying Roots of the Anti-Immigration Movement

James Hood is a treasure. (Give his new blog a break) He’s come up with more information connecting Tanton, Garrett Hardin, et al. into Colorado back into 1996.  The roots of the whole anti-immigration movement go back to Hardin who believed in enforced abortion and turning the US into Quite frankly, I don’t understand why our  conservatives CAN NOT get it into their thick heads that they are being manipulated by eugenics and a policy that came streight out of Nazi Germany.  If this makes Sean, Rush, O’Reilly, or Tom Tancredo squirm, good.  They ought to.  They are pawns for a movement that has been manipulating the system and has assisted in the murder of 38 million innocent babies and endorses murdering anyone who is not physically perfect.

“When reporters start covering former Colorado governor Richard Lamm’s bid for the presidency on Ross Perot’s Reform Party ticket, they probably will focus on the politics of Lamm’s run, rather than on his views. That would be a mistake. Lamm has written widely on his vision of the world — and it’s not a pretty picture.

Among Lamm’s key issues are establishing population control, stopping immigration, raising taxes to reduce the deficit, increasing tariffs for greater trade protection and ending “excessive” medical care for the elderly. His ideology is based on the “lifeboat” philosophy of human existence, according to which a race or nation cannot survive with its own limited resources if it dispenses those resources to others.

A good distillation of that theory comes from ecologist Garrett Hardin, who has written, “If we include freedom to breed as one of man’s inalienable freedoms, and if we accept the obligation to share excess food with those who are starving, then how can any nation, class, or religious group that responsibly controls its numbers survive . . . ?” Chapters in Hardin’s books are titled “We Need Abortion for the Children’s Sake” and “Were the Luddites Wrong?”

To enforce population control, Hardin has argued for limiting American parents to two children, noting that “a technically simple way to control the number of children would be to sterilize the woman after the birth” of her second child. He asserts, “Only by making parenthood a privilege, to be enjoyed under specified conditions and to a specified extent, can society achieve population control…

More alarming than Lamm’s dismal and inaccurate predictions are his policy prescriptions. A key solution to America’s health care problems, according to Lamm, is for the elderly to die sooner. Lamm has long been a major booster of euthanasia and in a 1984 speech he spoke of the elderly’s “duty to die.” In Megatraumas, the secretary of health and human services proposes health care rationing, arguing that money should not be spent on transplants, artificial organs and other life-extending procedures for those over 65.

Lamm’s government of the future does not treat citizens of other countries any better. The secretary of agriculture in Megatraumas argues that America’s own “shrinking agricultural base” means we must stop sending grain to famine-stricken countries, even in emergency situations.

A Lamm administration is unlikely to be a big protector of civil liberties. Looking back from the year 2000, he writes approvingly, “The very controversial National Identification Act of 1991, requiring all United States citizens to carry identification, has greatly enhanced the ability of law enforcement officers to identify criminals and terrorists.”

Nor is Richard Lamm likely to promote racial harmony. When he ran for the U.S. Senate, his long-time tenure on the board of the anti-immigration Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) provoked the hostility of Hispanics. Black Americans have little reason to warm to Lamm either. The Detroit News reported recently that over the past decade, during Lamm’s association with the group, FAIR has received $1 million in contributions from the Pioneer Fund, a foundation that supports eugenics, selective breeding and “race betterment.”

America’s future is far brighter than Richard Lamm or those who might share his philosophy believe. The zero-sum view of the world is wrong about a whole series of issues, including trade, immigration and the economy more generally. If it were correct, then with each new person — every time a mother bore a child — America would become a weaker nation, which is simply not the case. Proposals to issue national ID cards, encourage euthanasia for the elderly, end famine relief, block imports and raise taxes would certainly head America in the wrong direction. They’re enough to make even Ross Perot look pretty good by comparison. ”

To me the whole idea is to see how far back these roots of extreme conservative weirdness go. I found a piece from 1996 about Buchanan and Tanton, David Duke, and a few other nice little people.  “Larry Pratt’s association with Pat Buchanan goes back many years. Pratt runs an assortment of far-right outfits out of an office in the D.C. area, including Gun Owners of America and English First, and has ties to anti-abortion groups as well. Pratt led an anti-abortion walkout from a Presidential conference on the family. His Gun Owners of America, which provided key funding to elect pro-militia Congress-members in the 1994 Republican take-over of Congress, was an early endorser of Buchanan’s 1996 campaign. Pratt is himself a former elected official. He served as a right wing Virginia state legislator. Far from simply having made an error in judgment in attending one meeting with Klansmen and racists, he has been a key figure straddling the line and providing links between the “mainstream” right, Christian Reconstructionism, and the openly neo-nazi forces of Christian Identity and the Aryan Nations. He has spoken, for example, at the Jubilee “Jubilation,” a California gathering sponsored by the leading Christian Identity newspaper, along with Aryan Nations “ambassador” and former Texas Klan leader Louis Beam. He was a repeated guest on Christian Identity minister Pete Peters’s talk show….

Pioneer has always been linked to the hard right in the U.S. Directors included Rep. Frances Walter of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), and die-hard segregationist Sen. William Eastland. In the 1970′s, Pioneer funded the racist “genetic” research of William Schockley and Arthur Jensen, which purported to prove that Blacks have hereditarily lower IQ scores than whites. Jensen served on the advisory board of “Neue Anthropologie,” a German neo-nazi publication of the time. Pioneer’s support for FAIR and Tanton’s other groups, which are unrelated to genetics, expose the racist thinking behind the fund. John Trevor, an officer of the Pioneer Fund, testified in Congress against repealing the racial preferences in U.S. immigration law (enacted in the 1920′s at the height of Ku Klux Klan influence and anti-immigrant organizing). Trevor warned that eliminating the preference for Northern Europeans would produce “a conglomeration of racial and ethnic elements” and “a serious cultural decline.”

In addition to Tanton’s groups, Pioneer also funded the work of Roger Pearson, the author of Eugenics and Race, a book which promoted the “Aryan superiority” theories of Hans Gunther, a racial theorist acclaimed in the Third Reich. This and similar pseudo-science funded by Pioneer formed the basis for the recent book The Bell Curve, promoting the idea that differences in “intelligence,” and in social standing, are based on genetic differences between the races. Pearson, who had a history of racist activity going back to 1956, later became a national and international leader of the World Anti-Communist League. This takes us full-circle back to Pratt’s milieu. (It should be noted, incidentally, that Thomas Ellis, the head of the Pioneer Fund during the 1970′s is a presidential campaign adviser himself — To Steve Forbes!) “

Borderline Republican Disorder is exemplified by William Greene who manipulates Newsmax (my former favorite site), Zogby, and about a dozen conservative and religious conservative sites and organizations.  He is the talking points puppet master behind Rush and Hannity.  He is not a true Republican, but considers himself a conservative first, dealing with idealogy and won’t hesitate to trash the party in order to get his own idealogical way.  He doesn’t hesitate to meddle where he doesn’t belong – just to get his way.  No Republican who is deemed idealogically incorrect is safe. Just look at what they are doing to Chris Cannon in Utah. No one in the GOP or conservative movement should have this much power.  It is against everything we believe.

What the heck are Borderline Republicans?  They have become the bane of my existance, trust me.  This is from the WSJ.  Tomorrow I will have an essay on Borderline Republican Syndrome.

“ In Congress, Republicans invite population-control advocates posing as conservatives to committee hearings to denounce the Administration’s initiatives. Republican Tom Tancredo of Colorado has gone so far as to set up Team America, a political action committee and Web site that bashes members of his own GOP House caucus who aren’t sufficiently anti-immigrant.

To date at least, restrictionism hasn’t been a political winner. Earlier this year in California, GOP state Senator Rico Oller ran for Congress by passing out fliers depicting Mexican aliens as turbaned terrorists. He lost the March primary to Dan Lungren, the pro-immigrant opponent he was attacking in the fliers. Nor did immigrant-bashing help Jim Oberweis of Illinois in his recent Senate bid. In radio spots Mr. Oberweis suggested that the immigrants not here to steal U.S. jobs are only here to collect welfare. Voters rejected such rhetoric and awarded the primary to Jack Ryan, a vocal supporter of the President’s immigration reform.

However, the border brigades are unbowed. Groups like the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), Numbers-USA, the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), ProjectUSA and the Coalition for the Future American Worker (CFAW) continue to use direct mail, television, radio and other media to target pro-immigration lawmakers throughout the country.

Among others, they’ve mobilized against Arizona Republican Congressmen Jim Kolbe and Jeff Flake, as well as Representative Jim Leach (R., Iowa) and Senator Chuck Hagel (R., Neb.). The crime? Support for legislation that would streamline the process for hiring foreign workers and allow certain illegal aliens to apply for temporary visas and U.S. citizenship if they pay fines and meet various work requirements.

Extra special attention is being paid to a GOP House primary in Utah, where incumbent Chris Cannon is facing a June 22 runoff against Matt Throckmorton. Mr. Cannon, now serving his fourth term, hasn’t had a primary challenger since 1998. This one comes courtesy of deep-pocketed restrictionists campaigning on behalf of his opponent, who is running hard on xenophobia. CFAW and ProjectUSA have used billboards in Mr. Cannon’s district to denounce him as a supporter of blanket amnesty for illegals.

Mr. Cannon tops the restrictionists’ target list because he’s been one of the few politicians in either party to expose the extreme nature of their underlying agendas, which has less to do with immigration per se and more to do with environmental extremism and population-growth concerns influenced by the discredited claims of the 19th-century British economist Thomas Malthus.

During a immigration subcommittee hearing in March, Mr. Cannon had the gumption to question the executive director of CIS, Mark Krikorian, as well as to challenge Roy Beck, who heads NumbersUSA and serves as “spokesman” for CFAW. After first denying it, Mr. Krikorian was forced to admit that CIS is a spin-off of FAIR.

In fact, CIS, FAIR, NumbersUSA, Project-USA — and more than a half-dozen similar groups that Republicans have become disturbingly comfy with — were founded or funded (or both) by John Tanton, a retired doctor in Michigan. In addition to trying to stop immigration to the U.S., appropriate population-control measures for Dr. Tanton and his network include promoting China’s one-child policy, sterilizing Third World women and wider use of RU-486.

FAIR, where Mr. Krikorian once worked, is run by Dan Stein and shares advisers and personnel with CIS and other members of the Tanton nexus. As our Jason Riley noted in a March 15 op-ed, “By Dr. Tanton’s own reckoning, FAIR has received more than $1.5 million from the Pioneer Fund, a white-supremacist outfit devoted to racial purity through eugenics.”

Representative Cannon says, “Tanton set up groups like CIS and FAIR to take an analytical approach to immigration from a Republican point of view so that they can give cover to Republicans who oppose immigration for other reasons.” It seems to be working. Messrs. Stein and Krikorian regularly appear before Congress at the invitation of Republicans, who don’t seem nearly as interested in people who can speak with authority about, say, the importance of flexible labor markets.

Representative John Hostettler of Indiana, one of the most pro-life Republicans in Washington, chairs the immigration subcommittee that featured representatives of CIS and NumbersUSA as the Republican witnesses. The third GOP witness at the hearing, if you can believe it, was Frank Morris, who at the time was running for a seat on the Sierra Club board and actively campaigning for the defeat of President Bush. Apparently, unless you’re a certified Malthusian, dedicated restrictionist or someone who knows next to nothing about economics, the Republican Congress isn’t interested in what you have to say about immigration reform.“

So, the GOP has been inflitrated by John Taunton and his long term plans to take over immigration.  Because it was exposed to the light of day by the SPLC no ‘conservative’ will take it seriously.  But then, we’re dealing with RINO conservatives who are no longer fair and balanced or intellectually honest, so what else would you expect from them?  Heck, these are people who are the most anti-abortion people in the world but don’t mind falling into bed and prostituting themselves to the world’s most influentual pro-abortion and people who have the deaths of millions of babies on their hands.  But what the heck, they want to get rid of illegal and legal Hispanics so why question their motives.  Better watch out, they also want to end medical care for anyone over the age of 65.

Memo to FAIR from John Tanton
	Since launching FAIR [Federation for American Immigration Reform] in January of 1979, the board has adhered steadfastly to one of the possible models for changing U.S. immigration law and practice. Our plan emphasized the national (rather than the state and local) nature of the immigration question, and, therefore, concentrated on building a national office and staff rather than working at the grassroots. It emphasized the need for changes in immigration law rather than using and defending existing statutes and regulations. Hence, we concentrated on legislative lobbying, rather than administrative lobbying of the executive branch of government, or use of the courts. We recognized the need to overcome the taboo that in 1979 proscribed discussion of the immigration issue, so we hired a writer as one of our initial staff persons to produce pamphlets, speeches, op-ed pieces, etc. In my judgment, grassroots work has not been a major emphasis. On the media side of this question, I believe we get high marks for good and consistent effort throughout our existence. We have relied upon the correctness and cogency of our argument, rather than upon raw political power. We cannot make it “snow on the Hill” as the saying goes for an organization such as the National Rifle Association, which can on short notice produce hundreds of thousands of postcards and letters from irate members. We have spent some time, money and effort trying to build a membership for purposes of political validity and power, but this has not been a major emphasis. Indeed, there has been disagreement among board members on whether this needed to be done. We’ve also concentrated on illegal immigration versus legal, on the sweeping solution rather than the incremental approach, on the “quantity” of immigrants rather than their quality or the social effects of immigration. Financially, FAIR grew rapidly its early years. The table shows our total revenues since its founding: 1979 $216,349 1980 442,916 1981 815,212 1982 1,269,126 1983 1,255,223 1984 1,447,161 1985 1,543,610 1986 1,600,000 (estimated) GRAND TOTALS: 8 years & $8,500,000 Our financial growth was heavily based on a small number of major donors, who rapidly increased their contributions in the early years, but have now leveled off. We have found few new donors, as reflected by the plateau in our budgets. We’ve discussed but have had no meeting of the minds on whether this budget is adequate, or whether additional resources are needed for the task, given its size and complexity. Our original plan called for a small board with one level of decision making. We’ve stuck to this, and in my judgment, it has worked well. We have had little turnover in the board membership, and even less among the officers, the undersigned in particular. We need to discuss how healthy a practice this is. I would summarize our effort as under-capitalized, Washington-based, and focused on comprehensive reform of immigration law, with success measured in new laws passed. Judged by that standard, our plan has not worked very well, though we must give ourselves good marks for defeating initiatives of the opposition and securing a big increase in the Border Patrol’s appropriation. Unfortunately these successes are of the incremental variety and less satisfying and less saleable to members and donors than a comprehensive victory. There are a number of reasons why we have not succeeded with comprehensive legislation, but chief among them has been the opposition to our ideas of one of the most senior members of Congress, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, “Mr. immigration” himself, Peter Rodino. Speaker O’Neill has also been less than helpful, but he’ll be gone after this year. We have no idea how long Mr. Rondino will last, but his health is good, he’s filed for another term, and the House of Representatives is his whole life now that his wife has passed away. We must assume that he will be there for some years to come, and will remain a formidable obstacle. As a result, I propose we stop banging our collective heads against that immovable wall, and that until Mr. Rodino moves on, we adopt a new strategy of working around him. Here are some proposals: A. Congressional Strategy A1. Work with other committees. For instance, we could go to the Ways and Means Committee to make sure that the earned income tax credit (the negative income tax that Mr. Nixon got through) is not available to illegal aliens. We could work with Henry Hyde — the opponent of many of us on abortion — on his interest in reducing document fraud. We can continue our work with the Appropriations Committee to help assure good funding for the Immigration Service and modernization of their computer capacities, or with the committee that oversees passport matters, to help the State Department achieve their goal of a machine-readable passport. We could encourage the committees that oversee military and drug enforcement affairs to share equipment and the intelligence they gather with the Immigration Service. We could try to assure that any protectionist trade legislation that passes requires, as a condition of the protection, that the employers hire only legal U.S. residents. What’s the sense of saving American jobs, if Americans don’t fill them? The possibilities for going to other committees, while not endless, are substantial, and offer the chance to educate other members of Congress on immigration problems in their areas of interest and responsibility. A2. Infiltrate the Judiciary Committees. This is a long-range project. We should make every effort to get legislators sympathetic to our point of view appointed to the House and Senate Judiciary Committees, and their Immigration Sub-Committees. Think how much different our prospects would be if someone espousing our ideas had the chairmanship! If we secure the appointment of our people as freshmen members of the committee, we will eventually secure the chairmanship. Remember: we’re in this for the long haul. A3. Focus our grass roots and direct mail efforts in Congressional districts that are of particular importance to us: Jim Wright of Texas who will likely be the next Speaker, the majority and minority leaders, and selected other key individuals. A4. Block the bills that our opposition wants. In our legislative system, it is far easier to stop a measure than to pass it. To pass a measure, one must be successful at the sub-committee, the committee and the full house level in both houses of the legislature, following which the House and Senate conferees must each vote separately to resolve differences, following which each chamber must adopt the Conference Committee Report before the President signs it. Count them up: it takes eleven positive responses in a row to pass a bill. To stop it, only a negative vote in one of the eleven places is needed. Passing a bill is almost as difficult as bowling a perfect game of ten pins. B. Increased emphasis on better enforcement of laws already on the books: agency lobbying. B1. Secure changes in the administrative rules governing immigration. For instance, the Immigration Service allows persons admitted for legal resident alien status to commute daily across both the Mexican and Canadian borders. This adds about 50 million border crossings a year to the total of 350 million, and makes the border that much more difficult to enforce. Let’s get them to stop this practice. Let’s follow up on Bob Park’s finding that employers of illegal aliens may be liable for withholding thirty percent of their wages in lieu of federal income taxes. This would get the IRS on our side, always an important ally. Let’s reverse Carter’s debilitating administrative rules on asylum. B2. Develop strong relationships with the INS, and with the Bureau of Counselor Affairs in the State Department (which supervises the issuance of visas). Here I’m speaking of not just the people in Washington, but the workers in the field. We should recruit field people to membership, and get their ideas on how to change things, drawn form their perspective of daily work with the problem. The Departments of Labor and Education also have a piece of this pie, and we should get to know them as well. B3. Secure employer sanctions by using legislation already on the books. Let’s get the INS to adopt and enforce our much more restrictive view of the Texas Proviso and the “protection” it offers to the employers of illegal aliens. If we can get employee sanctions this way, then suddenly our opposition will be on the outside looking in and will need to change the law. Here I have in mind the narrowing of the interpretation of the Texas Proviso. B4. Secure appointments of our friends to positions on the Board of Immigration Appeals, to the Commissioner’s Post if Mr. Nelson leaves, as he will eventually, to other advisory boards in the INS and Justice Department. B5. Look for other ways to enforce current laws. We’ve already done the background work with Dan Stein’s massive enforcement study. If we back away from our commitment to legislative lobbying, we’ll have the resources to do some of these other things. C. Increased emphasis on litigation to prevent further weakening and increase enforcement of current laws. C1. Challenge the Texas Proviso in court if necessary. If wecould get it thrown out, we would have employer sanctions without the amnesty that has been appended to it in Congress. Then we would have the same reversal of burdens that happened with the Supreme Court decision on abortion. We would then be king of the mountain. Our opposition would have to try to pass legislation to narrow employer sanctions, or to get amnesty passed without the bargaining chip of employer sanctions. The burden would be on their shoulders, and we’ve already seen above how difficult it is to pass something. C2. Use the court system. We’ve done some of this, but we could work both harder and smarter. Our opposition has whittled away at many good laws, wounding them. We could help make good law by pursuing our own cases. And as we’ve learned, this research often shows ways to achieve changes without going to court, by working with the responsible agencies. D. Shifting the emphasis of FAIR’s current programs: building for the long haul. D1. Build the organization for the long term. This means strengthening our fund-raising, finding new major donors, funding the Endowment Fund and building our direct-mail membership. D2. Work at the grass roots. This is difficult in immigration matters, where the federal government preempts the field. State-level employer sanction laws don’t seem to have worked very well. But perhaps we need to take some grass roots activity like picketing the plants of employers of illegal aliens. States could be encouraged to use the good offices of the INS to screen illegal aliens from their welfare and other benefit rolls, using the computer methods now available. In California for instance, the system is all set to go, but the political will is lacking to implement it. We could encourage our members to meet with the INS in their local areas to give moral support to balance their detractors. D3. Build the political strength of the organization. Increasing our budget will do this, but so will finding more members through direct mail who can write, contribute and act on the local level. D4 De-emphasize our media effort. This will be controversial, but Roger now spends a great deal of his time in this area. Will we need as much of this for the low-key behind-the-scenes approach suggested here? I think not, and we won’t have the time to undertake these measures unless Roger is freed up. D5. “Go with the Flow.” Governmental emphasis is now on balancing the budget, cutting expenditures and, where possible, increasing revenues. Let’s make proposals consistent with this emphasis, such as a system of user fees for immigration services. For instance, the government now charges $100 for the issuance of an immigrant visa, but nothing for non-immigrant visas, as many other countries do. Let’s change that. And let’s use the Grace Commission to help publicize the way in which we can cut government costs by getting illegal aliens off benefit rolls. In these times, such measures should attract wide support in these times [sic]. D6. Continue to build the intellectual basis for immigration law reform. Ideas will win out in the end, or so I believe. We should continue to produce thoughtful monographs, op-ed pieces and participate in conferences that enrich the intellectual base form which we operate. The advent of the Center for Immigration Studies is a major step forward in this regard. These suggestions don’t exhaust the possibilities, but I believe they do show a way in which we can work around the current impasse of Mr. Rodino, accomplishing useful work, and maybe even achieve our goals in a different way. I recommend we give it a try. John H. Tanton