On Monday, President Barack Obama gave an
emotional speech commemorating the $79 million
replica of the Senate chamber at the Edward M. Kennedy Center in
Boston, Massachusetts.
The thrust of Obama’s speech condemned
America as an unimaginative, prejudiced, unambitious country whose only
hope lies in liberals who selflessly dedicate their lives to leading it out of
the darkness.
The replica of the Senate chamber
celebrated the “hard, frustrating, never-ending” war progressives wage against
America on its behalf, Obama declared.
“We live in a time of such great cynicism
about all our institutions. And we are cynical about government and about
Washington, most of all. It’s hard for our children to see, in the noisy and
too often trivial pursuits of today’s politics, the possibilities of our
democracy — our capacity, together, to do big things,” Obama said. “And this
place can help change that. It can help light the fire of imagination, plant
the seed of noble ambition in the minds of future generations. Imagine a gaggle
of school kids clutching tablets, turning classrooms into cloakrooms and
hallways into hearing rooms, assigned an issue of the day and the
responsibility to solve it.”
Children in America are brought up with
a backwards view of the world, Obama said. Their moral universes are
small and prejudiced, but progressive governing will open their minds.
“Imagine their moral universe expanding as
they hear about the momentous battles waged in that chamber and how they echo
throughout today’s society. Great questions of war and peace, the tangled
bargains between North and South, federal and state; the original sins of
slavery and prejudice; and the unfinished battles for civil rights and
opportunity and equality,” said America’s first black president, elected after
he promised Americans a “post-racial presidency.”
Obama obliquely referred to Kennedy’s
role in pushing his influential political accomplishment: The Immigration and Nationality Act
of 1965.
“Towards the end of his life, Ted reflected
on how Congress has changed over time. And those who served earlier I think
have those same conversations. It’s a more diverse, more accurate reflection of
America than it used to be, and that is a grand thing, a great achievement,”
Obama said.
In this case, Obama is right: It’s worth
reflecting on how much America has changed since 1965, and examine the effects
of the legislation Kennedy promoted that brought it about.
The passage of the act marked a fundamental
change in America’s immigration policy: Rather than serving the interests of
Americans and national unity by setting limits on immigration, the act put
“family unification” as the top priority, serving the interests of foreigners
first.
Kennedy declared:
“First, our cities will not be flooded with
a million immigrants annually. Under the proposed bill, the present level of
immigration remains substantially the same…
Secondly, the ethnic mix of this country
will not be upset… Contrary to the charges in some quarters, [the bill] will
not inundate America with immigrants from any one country or area, or the most populated
and deprived nations of Africa and Asia…
In the final analysis, the ethnic pattern
of immigration under the proposed measure is not expected to change as sharply
as the critics seem to think… The bill will not flood our cities with
immigrants. It will not upset the ethnic mix of our society. It will not relax
the standards of admission. It will not cause American workers to lose their
jobs.”
How have Kennedy’s promises stood up to the
passage of time?
Fifty years later, the Census bureau
predicts that the foreign-born population is set to increase 85 percent by 2060, where Hispanics will
see their number grow by the tens of millions and native-born whites
are the only group expected to decline in both absolute numbers and fertility
rates.
Fifty years later, the U.S. places no numerical limit on
the immediate family members of aliens admitted into the country. Despite
holding only five percent of the world’s population, the U.S. is the most popular destination in the world for
immigrants, attracting 20 percent of
all the world’s migrants.
Fifty years later, the U.S. allows some 11 to 20 million illegal aliens
to squat on its territory while allowing over one million more
each year to legally enter the country.
Fifty years later, the native-born
population of whites, blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Jews and all the rest suffer
economic loss while the foreign-born see net job growth.
Fifty years later, Central American
governments are propped up by $12.2 billion in remittances taken out of
the American economy by foreign workers the U.S. refuses to tax or expel.
Fifty years later, Central American
migrants, thousands of whom are indigenous Mayans who
can’t write or speak even Spanish, storm the border in endless waves while
federal agents fly them to nearly every state in the union without so much as a photo ID —
while American citizens are fondled and scanned by the very same TSA
agents.
Fifty years later, we have Rep. Luis
Gutierrez threatening Americans in Spanish, vowing they they will be made
to suffer “electoral punishment”
for resisting a path to citizenship for illegal aliens, declaring his one loyalty is the not
to the United States but to foreigners breaking immigration laws, and printing “Do Not Deport Me” cards
for those same individuals.
Fifty years later, Americans are led
by a president who illegally grants deportation stays for five million
illegals that will allow them to get Social Security numbers (and
therefore the ability to vote in U.S. elections) along with $35,000 per head in tax benefit freebies
forcibly taken Americans who managed to hold onto their jobs, who joyfully
predicts that a “President Rodriguez” will leave the
borders wide open for future tsunamis of immigrants.
Fifty years later, American schools punish “racist” students who wear shirts
depicting the American flag and taxpayer-funded colleges vote to ban the flag
after angry illegal immigrants complain it
“triggers” them.
Fifty years later, illegal
alien Cinthya Garcia-Cisneros received no jail time after she slaughtered two Oregon children
playing in a leaf pile by running them over, fleeing the scene, having her car
taken to a car wash to scrub off the gore, and lying to police about her
hit-and-run.
Fifty years later, illegal alien Ramiro
Ajualip is charged with savagely raping and
sodomizing a 10-year-old Alabama girl while her parents left her alone in the
presence of their “family friend.”
Fifty years later, Vanessa Pham’s family
carries on without their daughter,
who died after the PCP-addled illegal alien Julio Blanco Garcia stabbed her more than a dozen
times after she gave him and his toddler a ride to a hospital.
Fifty years later, American marathon
runners walk on prosthetic limbs and suffer through countless painful surgeries
after Muslim Chechen immigrants Tamerlane and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev were granted asylum so they
could plot against the country that bent over backwards to
accommodate them.
Fifty years later in Boston, where English
colonists sparked what would become the American Revolution, nearly half of all
children have at least one foreign-born parent. “Learning English isn’t so
easy” thanks to incredible demand for adult English-language classes, reports Boston.com.
“Boston can’t benefit from its diversity if everyone can’t communicate.” Taxpayers
are on the hook for $500,000 to teach just 200 students, yet total enrollment
in these classes stands at 3,400 with another 4,000 immigrants on wait lists.
The costs Americans pay in lowered
wages, strained social safety nets, their children’s blood, their declining
quality of life, the chaos of sharing space with an ever-swelling criminal
population aided and abetted by the nation’s elite, the berating Americans of every stripe
endure when they dare ask their country merely be preserved — that’s the real
legacy of Ted Kennedy.
That the ruling class celebrates his legacy
indicates that they don’t plan to stop transforming America any time soon.
Email Katie at kmchugh@breitbart.com.