In his immigration lecture Thursday night, President Obama revealed himself as a man politically broken, isolated from any sense of normal reality and completely unspooled from logic. The man who once unified this country with elegant, daring and powerful speeches was ashen, confused and doddering.
It was like watching someone you have had breakfast with your whole life slip into the haze of Alzheimer’s and suddenly become confounded about what to do with the carton of milk and the bowl of cereal.
President Obama started out lamenting the injustice of good, law-abiding immigrants who “enter our country the right way and play by the rules” having to sit and watch others “flout the rules.”
He then proceeded to flout the rules on a scale not seen in modern presidential history. He laid out a plan to grant amnesty to millions of foreign workers in the country illegally.
He took those law-abiding, legal immigrants and he slapped them. And he mocked them. He ridiculed all their hard work. And he corrupted the very nature the country those great immigrants devoted their lives to and worked so hard to become a part of.
The very reason those immigrants and the millions before them came to this country was to escape the rule of despots. They fled petty criminal governments. They came here for the freedoms ensured by the Constitution that Mr. Obama pledged to protect but has bastardized.
In his strange remarks, the president dismissed the notion that legalizing some five million illegals is somehow amnesty.
“Amnesty is the immigration system we have today — millions of people who live here without paying their taxes or playing by the rules, while politicians use the issue to scare people and whip up votes at election time,” he said.
“That’s the real amnesty — leaving this broken system the way it is.”
What are you talking about, sir? Have you lost your mind?
One minute, you talk about the hell that is these illegals’ lives by “living in the shadows” and the next thing you say is how that is some kind of amnesty. You are talking nonsense.
Then — after describing your amnesty plan — you say this: “What I’m describing is accountability.”
Wait a minute. You are telling us your plan is to legalize five million people who broke the law by coming here illegally. And yet you somehow call that “accountability?”
Have you gone mad, sir? Do you know the definition of “accountability”? You might want to look it up.
Then you said: “Undocumented workers broke our immigration laws, and I believe that they must be held accountable — especially those who may be dangerous.”
Okay, first off, you are going to hold them “accountable” by legalizing them? Wowsa. This is truly cray-cray, sir.
And then — wait, what did you say? Especially those who may be dangerous? You mean you have dangerous criminals who are here illegally and you have not moved heaven and earth to find them and jail them or deport them and make sure the never ever come back again.
In the end, that is what this whole debate is really about.
Twenty-seven years ago, politicians here in Washington agreed to grant amnesty to nearly 3 million illegals in exchange for sealing the border and cracking down on employers who hire illegals and thereby creating a draw.
As always, politicians back then did the easy part: legalizing millions. They never did the hard part: stopping future illegal immigration. So three million illegal aliens ballooned into 12 million or more today.
With President Obama’s amnesty by fiat, we might one day be talking about 46 million.
Charles Hurt can be reached at charleshurt@live.com, and on Twitter at @charleshurt.