A Turning Point for Conservatism

The stakes couldn’t be higher in the June 10 primary between Eric Cantor and conservative economics professor Dave Brat.This primary could very well be the election that determines whether amnesty passes.

A Brat win could stop wavering Republicans from caving on amnesty in the (rumored) upcoming June vote. Because Brat poses a credible threat to Cantor, the incumbent is now spreading falsehoods in an effort to keep his job.

Cantor’s campaign recently sent out an email claiming that a “liberal pro-amnesty group” supports Brat. PolitiFact Virginia rated this statement completely “false.” Those who have followed Cantor’s shift towards hard-left immigration rhetoric, and pro-amnesty barnstorming alongside Luis Gutierrez (D-IL), will not be surprised by the incumbent’s latest chicanery.

Cantor is playing the games one should expect of inside-the-beltway, cosmopolitan elitists. He is a member of the group that Samuel Huntington referred to as “Dead Souls”; elites who “have little need for national loyalty,” and who “view national boundaries as obstacles that thankfully are vanishing.” Cantor now has a growing problem in that conservatives, for good reason, view him as an open-borders liberal.

Indeed, Cantor is evidently unaware of one of the most important principles of conservatism: that which gets rewarded gets repeated.

If we reward illegal immigration with legal status, we guarantee increased future illegal immigration. The mere prospect of “immigration reform” already spurred a rush of border crossings and a federally endorsed stream of criminal aliens. If any form of amnesty passes, the federal government will have created an incentive for new generations of illegals to violate our laws, disrespect our sovereignty, and expect to get away with it. How could nominally “conservative” politicians like Cantor fail to recognize this simple cause and effect relationship?

We know that if the state gives out free housing vouchers, mobs will gather for it. We know that if the state gives welfare, generations will grow dependent on it. If American citizenship is given out like pork, legalization will become an entitlement. Any politician with a minimal level of historical understanding must know this. So what is Cantor’s problem?

Also, if we reelect pro-amnesty politicians, we’ll get more of their policy.That which gets rewarded gets repeated. This precautionary principle separates conservatism — for now — from left-wing myopia, and separates America — so far — from mediocre multicultural welfare states.

Unfortunately for us, Cantor is happy to have America join the fold by admitting massive numbers of people who will vote to expand the welfare state. Some Republicans think that more immigration, or rewarding illegal immigration, is a “pro- growth” policy. But that’s an extremely misleading half-truth, as the experience of England shows. The full truth is on display in California, where Stanford professors Michael Boskin and John Cogan concluded:

From the mid-1980s to 2005, California’s population grew by 10 million, while Medicaid recipients soared by seven million; tax filers paying income taxes rose by just 150,000; and the prison population swelled by 115,000.

That’s not a problem isolated to California. California used to be a stronghold of conservatism. Republicans won the state in every presidential election of the 50s-80s, with the exception of the ’64 Goldwater loss, but demographic change moved the state to the far left.

When we import a group that has an out-of-wedlock birth rate twice that of whites, we should expect that such groups would turn to the welfare state. Lectures about the Founders and free market capitalism do you no good when what you truly desire out of politics is a replacement for an absent father. This is even more so for groups who harbor nationalist resentment towards the U.S. because America “stole” the southwest from their “home” country. Amnesty supporters like Cantor turn a blind eye to such resentments, because they have the privilege of isolating themselves from the economic, political, and cultural changes wrought by mass third-world immigration.

Is Eric Cantor willing to see America turn into what Theodore Roosevelt called a “polyglot boarding house.” To get a sense of what a true leader said about nationalism, here is the context of Roosevelt’s famous words:

…[I]f we permit our people to be split into a score of different nationalities, each speaking a different language and each paying its real soul homage to some national ideal overseas, we shall not be a nation at all, but merely a polyglot boarding house; and nobody feels much loyalty to a polyglot boarding house or is proud to belong to it. Moreover, there is no such thing as a divided loyalty. Any kind of alloy in the loyalty makes the loyalty completely valueless.

Multiculturalism and third-world immigration guarantee “divided loyalty.” So, when you hear that the American flag was banned from a California high school on Cinco de Mayo this year, or that “Americans” booed the flag at a soccer match in Los Angeles (one California resident at the match said, “I was born in Mexico, and that is where my heart will always be…”), just know that this could all be coming to a town near you. It’s only a question of demographics and immigration policy.

Cantor’s position on immigration policy is evidently based on cosmopolitan elitism and PC pandering. Lately, this is his grand vision: “One of the great founding principles of our country was that children would not be punished for the mistakes of their parents.” From this silly platitude, Cantor concludes that illegal aliens should be rewarded with citizenship or lawful status. In response, Dave Brat says that it “dishonors the Founders to invoke the founding principles as a battering ram to fight for crony capitalists.” The choice couldn’t be any clearer.

The melting pot is broken, and we are importing inequality. The doctrine taught to immigrants, alongside citizens, in public schools and universities is one of American guilt-specifically, “white guilt.”  Who’s going to put a stop to that indoctrination? Eric Cantor? He’ll be safely distant from the communities most affected by his thoughtless policies. The Republicans pushing for amnesty will be the last to feel its impact, so they are comfortable bartering our economy and our sovereignty to grasp forvotes that will never go to the GOP in sufficient numbers.

The only way to influence politicians like Cantor is to put them out of work. But so far this year, at least one significant GOP primary turned out the wrong way for the pro-citizen cause. Frank Roche, who is well informed and appealing candidate, lost to Renee Ellmers, the woman who insulted Laura Ingraham for questioning Ellmers on amnesty. Thanks to donations from Mark Zuckerburg’s groups, Ellmers raised close to $1 million, while Roche raised roughly $23,000. National tea party organizations, much to their discredit, failed to support Roche. Despite the odds, Roche still earned 41% of the vote.

If what happened to Roche happens to Dave Brat, then Boehner’s rumored mid-June amnesty vote will be significantly more likely to turn out for the worst. If the estimated 11 million illegals in the country became eligible to vote, they would completely alter the country’s political landscape.

Cantor’s reelection would be a giant leap in the wrong direction for conservatism; he embodies the pro-amnesty Republican establishment. Brat stands between America and the next generation of welfare dependents in the “polyglot boarding house.”

John Bennett is a Virginia native and writer whose work has appeared in The Daily Caller, Townhall.com, World Net Daily, Human Events, Liberty Unyielding, Accuracy in Media, and FrontPage Magazine, among others. He has been a featured guest on the Laura Ingraham, Jerry Doyle, and Lars Larson programs.