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Monday, April 16, 2018

Governor Moonbeam Strikes Again



Friends, my latest article, well, must be read to be believed.  I wrote it at the intersection of Californian lunacy, illegal immigration, and women's and transgender rights.  Intrigued?  So was I!  Enjoy...

Governor Moonbeam: Slayer of Genders

By now the American people are well-accustomed to the unmitigated kookiness that emanates from the Golden State, a.k.a. California. Governor Jerry Brown, affectionately known as “Moonbeam,” is naturally entitled to be recognized as Bedlamite-in-Chief, and he seldom disappoints in terms of the absurdity of his remarks, which is to say nothing of his policies (the less said about these, the better).

Recently, Governor Brown uncharacteristically agreed to President Trump's request that troops of the California National Guard be deployed to assist in enhancing security along our country's border with Mexico. He was careful to observe that these National Guardsmen would not be used to enforce immigration laws, however – they would instead focus on other criminal activity on or near the border, including drug smuggling and human trafficking. "This will not be a mission to build a new wall," Brown declared. "It will not be a mission to round up women and children or detain people escaping violence and seeking a better life."

The proviso “It will not be a mission to round up women and children” passed without any great furor in the press, but it is precisely this throwaway remark that I wish to analyze, because it cuts to the quick of casual Democratic/leftist bias on matters of sex/gender, and as such it merits our full attention.

The only possible interpretation of Governor Brown's remark is that any immigration policy that leads to the “rounding up,” i.e. detention, of “women and children” is wrong, or at least highly suspect. Consider that attitude and its implications. If children are not to be “rounded up” at the border, what this means is that all children worldwide have what amounts to an entitlement to U.S. residency. Already, children are entitled to preferential treatment upon their apprehension by immigration authorities, based on the protections they receive under U.S. law, but no law currently on the books insists that it is out of bounds to detain children, or to deport them. Governor Brown is making such a claim, albeit not on legal but presumably on moral grounds. Undoubtedly, this will be an encouragement to children who may be considering hopping the border. After all, Jerry Brown is saying that, not only are they presumptively entitled to residency, but even to detain them, or to impede their passage into the United States, is unacceptable. Extraordinary.

Governor Moonbeam goes further, however, and opines that “women and children” (emphasis added) should not be “round[ed] up”. Now, in doing so, it must be noted that Brown is using a time-tested formula, “women and children,” which presents these two categories together, based on the historical assumption that they are vulnerable and thus deserving of greater protection than that offered to men. “Women and children first!” was one of the last announcements that many passengers on the ill-fated Titanic heard. Its officers and crew were following the then standard practice of offering places on lifeboats first to women and children, and only later (if some places remained) to men. This was an act of chivalry, as well as an observance of the “Cult of Domesticity,” which seemed entirely appropriate at the time, but it cannot be denied that the ideology that undergirded it was patriarchal. Why should women receive places in lifeboats before men? Because women were presumed to be the “weaker sex,” and it was men's duty to protect them. In our allegedly more enlightened age, such an attitude would ordinarily be considered patronizing at best, and sexist at worst, but Jerry Brown invokes it without batting an eyelash. Presumably, he does so because he knows that, as a liberal Democrat, he can be as racist or as sexist as he likes, without meaningful consequence to his reputation. In any case, Brown is certainly not the first Democrat to dust off this patriarchal trope and deploy it for leftist purposes, but his invocation of the old attitude is one of the more arresting modern examples, simply because of its sweeping policy implications.

For, lest we forget, liberals no longer consider gender a fixed category, as certainly the officers and crew of the Titanic did. One's “gender identity” in this day and age, according to the left, is purely a matter of personal preference. To put it another way, Governor Brown presumably meant to say that the California National Guard would not “round up [people who identify as women] and children”. We will give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he was saving time by referring only to “women,” but, as a believer in transgender rights, it is inconceivable that he meant to exclude those who are transitioning, or have transitioned, or may someday transition, to femininity.

Consider, then, the full implications of Governor Brown's reimagining of immigration law and policy. The deportation of “[people who identify as women] and children” is unimaginable; even to detain them is abhorrent. Therefore, what is to stop anyone, anywhere on the globe, from relocating himself/herself/?self to the border and surrendering to the Border Patrol? If this imaginary “immigrant” had the misfortune to be born a man, this presents little difficulty, because he could simply redefine himself as a woman. Could this be seen as opportunistic? Surely, but the left has made its position clear: no legal or social standard can be imposed that limits a person's ability to define, or redefine, their own gender identity. Presumably, therefore, our imaginary male/female immigrant could, if he/she wished, reacquire his masculinity after receiving permanent residency. Why not? Not that we would count this as likely, however. After all, since Jerry Brown and people like him have already decided that men ought to possess inferior rights, who in his/her right mind would willingly embrace manhood, when there are so many more attractive categorizations, including femininity, at hand?

In such a way, Governor Brown may have found the silver bullet that can produce the abolition of all policies of border enforcement. Indeed, he may have found the formula for the left to eliminate international borders and men simultaneously! Brilliant! The world will never be the same.

Dr. Nicholas L. Waddy is an Associate Professor of History at SUNY Alfred and blogs at: www.waddyisright.com.

You can also find the article at Townhall.com:

https://townhall.com/columnists/nicholaswaddy/2018/04/16/governor-moonbeam-slayer-of-genders-n2471318

7 comments:

  1. Dr. Waddy: A very intriguing and perceptive critique, carrying a consequence of moonbeamthink to what should be reductio ad adsurdum except for the conceivable possibility that he means to act on it. How very accomodating of him to offer all of four hundred Guardsmen for border duty even unto combating crime or that which he deems crime. One wonders if he means them to interfere with Federal border forces. Should the President order the regular military into CA, as Eisenhower did with Arkansas and Kennedy with Mississippi, is there some possibility they might clash? Does Brown wish to convey the impression that he might order resistance in order to prevent the deployment of the regulars to his "country"? I'm reminded of Bonnie Prince Charlie, an irresponsible and dissolute dreamer who got his comeupance in 1745 from a British government weary of Highlanders descending periodically on the more settled areas of Britain. I'm happy to be descended from Highlanders and have reenacted one in the Battle of Culloden but Charlie's rebellion was romantic nonsense which ended up costing the Highlands dearly. I wonder if the effort by ever more CA cities to fight Brown's "sanctuary" policies is the beginning of a burgeoning and credible "take back our state" movement which could put paid to the humbug of Gov. Baby Boom's smoky fantasies and exile him to Malibu. After all, drag a plate of brie and quiche down a beach there and you are sure to roust out multitudes of his ilk.

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  2. You do paint a picture, Jack! Personally, I doubt that the California National Guard would ever be ordered to confront federal forces -- if for no other reason than because Governor Moonbeam would know such an order would be disobeyed. Brown is no George Wallace (and even Wallace wasn't up to much). It's not inconceivable that California could have its own little civil war, though...

    A Scotsman, eh? I'm a tad Scottish myself. Mostly English. My Scottish genes seem to have submitted willingly to my English genes, by and large. Quite right.

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  3. Dr. Waddy: You're right about the CA Guardsmen; the lala land types would never volunteer in the first place. I think Scotland is better off in Great Britain now; given its druthers it would have stayed in the European Union and had Italian bureaucrats writing regulations for small businesses in Glasgow. If they want to be their own country then they should be but they are better off as is.

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  4. Dr. Waddy: Jerry Brown today on the news "I do not share the party affiliation of the Governors of the other states sending guardsmen to the border and so cannot look at it as they do". Translation: "I'm far too just to consider that there is any downside to the entry into our country of people who have not complied with ('sniff')immigration law, which occupies that body of law I 'feel' constrained to obey or deny at my pleasure. I'll go through the motions of sending these troops but do not recognize any obligation on my part to enforce or tolerate the enforcement of federal law save that which allows the killing of unborn children and which further degrades the institution of marriage and maintains that all differences between genders are contrived. If you disagree, I expectorate on you!"

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  5. Ha! You have a knack for paraphrasing, Jack. I'm still waiting for prosecutions of politicians like Jerry Brown who ostentatiously obstruct U.S. immigration laws. Sessions is taking his time on that front.

    I agree -- Scotland is better off in the UK, and I don't like the idea of breaking up established European nations in general. Keep Spain Spanish, I say. Once you start redrawing borders, the potential for mischief is infinite. I'm still waiting for the NEXT country to leave the EU and rediscover the joys of sovereignty. Perhaps everyone is holding their breath to see if Britain survives (and prospers)...

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  6. Dr.Waddy: Since immense San Diego Co. has joined in the suit against Brown's sanctuary laws it would be interesting to draw a blue/red map of the state based on actions taken or obvious attitudes toward Brown's totalitarian pronunciamentos on that. I think the word totalitarian is appropriate because Brown defies national law in the enactment of which the interests of poor Latin Americans was considered and democratically accomodated along with our national abilities and interests. Since those he excoriates had some say in this process, he rejects it out of hand. Countries like Germany and Russia could have avoided their totalitarian ordeals had they taken timely legally justified action against those who later enslaved them. Let it be done to American far leftists like Brown when they flout our laws and our democracy.

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  7. Yes, I saw that San Diego County had joined the good guys! Very heartening. There's a little life (and common sense) left in my hometown yet, it seems...

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