Year: 2021

They seem similar, but if you take a closer look…

We have written against Open Borders before.

To illustrate, I copy Ann Coulter’s sarcastic fury, from two years ago, with my own comments:

The left’s enthusiasm for Third World immigrants isn’t only because they vote 8-2 for the Democrats. It’s that Latin American peasants seem uniquely amenable to idiotic socialist schemes.

Racism? Hmm.

You probably think it’s beyond silliness for Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren to keep promising FREE HEALTH CARE FOR ALL! NO PREMIUMS! NO CO-PAYS! ILLEGAL ALIENS, TOO! EVERYBODY GETS A PONY!

No one could be gullible enough to fall for that.

I refer you to the economic powerhouse that is Latin America.

Based on hundreds of years of indigenous people voting for politicians who made similar promises, Latin America has become the dream factory that it is today. That’s why Tegucigalpa is practically a byword for “technological innovation,” Santiago was the picture of calm sophistication this weekend, and Caracas is the ultimate in modern conveniences.

Perhaps you missed the article in last Saturday’s New York Times on what socialism has done for the water system in Venezuela:

“The brick shack on the outskirts of Venezuela’s capital is crowded with tubs, jugs and buckets. The water they hold must last the family of eight for a week — but it’s not enough for frequent washing or flushing, so the kitchen is filled with greasy pots and the house smells of stale urine.

“And none of the water is treated, making diarrhea and vomit a regular occurrence.

“’We practically live in the bathroom,’ said the mother of the family … [Her daughter] sat nearby, pale and listless, recovering from her latest bout of diarrhea just one month away from childbirth.”

Democrats: We need some of that Latin American magic!

Twenty years ago, 60 percent of Venezuelans had regular access to safe drinking water. Today, only 30 percent do.

How did this happen?

Answer: Poor Venezuelans voted for it. If we let them in, they’ll vote for it here, too. (Except 20 percent, who will be patriotic Americans, i.e. Republicans.)

That’s great news for Sanders and Warren! But it’s terrible news for the country.

Ugh. Contra Coulter, Rebumpkins™ are “Us Too, But Slower” Demonrats™.

Denouncing “squalid oligarchs,” Hugo Chavez promised Venezuela’s poor: “I will not rest until every human being who lives in this land has housing, employment and some way to manage his life.”

The poor were sold! In December 1998, Chavez was elected in a landslide, commemorated with this Seattle Times headline: “VENEZUELAN SLUM DWELLERS VOTE FOR CHANGE.”

As The Miami Herald explained, Chavez “crystallized anger and frustration among Latin America’s poor at free-market policies that have brought only limited prosperity.”

But something is better than nothing.

What did free markets and private property ever do for the poor? If they were poor, but others were rich, the “squalid oligarchs” must have stolen from them! (Elizabeth Warren should borrow that epithet. “Wealthy corporations” is getting old.)

Actually, wealth is not a given, finite quantity. Think: “A rising tide raises all ships.”

Bernie says he “wrote the damn bill” to give Medicare to all, but he was plagiarizing Chavez, who immediately implemented a “single-payer” system for health care in Venezuela. He set up free health clinics, opened military hospitals to the poor, and deployed tens of thousands of government workers to deliver medical services to the barrios.

“Plagiarize” is clichéd rhetoric, but otherwise correct.

At Chavez’s invitation, thousands of poor people took up residence in hotels, warehouses and luxurious golf courses. As one of the squatters explained, “We just want a home for our children.” That could be the epitaph of every once-great country: It was for THE CHILDREN!

As you may have heard, this worked out fantastically well. Within a year of Chavez taking office, the economy had shrunk by 7.2 percent and unemployment was at 20 percent. A decade into this socialist paradise, the poor were poorer than ever. There were constant blackouts, food shortages and appalling infant mortality rates. (Much like what we’re seeing in California.)

“California“! Oh, that’s a riot!

Venezuela’s infant mortality from diarrhea alone has sextupled in the past 15 years, according to the World Health Organization. (That’s an estimate, on account of Chavez’s quick response to the crisis, which was to stop releasing public health data.)

Potable water, that most basic element of civilization, is virtually nonexistent. Today, sitting on top of the largest oil reserves in the world, Venezuelans are starving.

Chavez didn’t seize power in a military coup. There was no revolution. He wasn’t imposed on Venezuelans by the C.I.A.

Well, the U.S.G. did draw Chavez’s people even closer to him by outside sanctions. (Same as they prop up Iran.)

He was the people’s choice, elected president in 1998 (with 56 percent of the vote), then re-elected in 2000 (60 percent), then again in 2006 (63 percent) and yet again in 2012 (54 percent). And that’s not counting all the regional, parliamentary, constitutional and referenda elections his party won, over and over and over again.

Remind you of anyone??

Like that other Latin American matinee idol, Eva Peron, Chavez destroyed a country by offering the poor pie-in-the-sky promises that were to be paid for by “the rich.” In both cases, it took only about a decade to turn two of the wealthiest countries in the world into two of the most dysfunctional.

In Mexico, the people voted for the Institutional Revolutionary Party for 71 straight years. Total economic failure, year after year. Yes, please, kick me again!

All of this would be of limited interest outside of psychological circles, except for the fact that these voluntary hellholes are adjacent to our country, which is why our southern border is always besieged with desperate Latin Americans.

They’re fleeing the very systems that they voted for, and which (80 percent) would willingly vote for again.

We elsewhere reproduced a very similar article by Gary North (והאבדתי חכמים מאדום, Amen).

Quoting a story by Rabbi Dovid Sears (abbreviated):

In my hometown of Norwich, Connecticut, I knew a kind and devout elderly woman named Mrs. Sarah Lang, whose father, Rabbi Yisrael Stamm, had been a respected scholar and posek there during the early 1900s. Like almost all the Jewish residents of Norwich (including the Sears family), Rabbi Stamm hailed from the town of Shat, Lithuania. Another “landsman” who was close to the Stamm family was a porush, or recluse, named Rabbi Yitzchok Luria. And like his sixteenth-century namesake, Rabbi Luria was a kabbalist, albeit in the “Litvishe” tradition…

Mrs. Lang told me that Rabbi Luria used to spend the entire week in a little shack on the grounds of a farm a few miles south of Norwich, near the New England shtet’l of Montville. On Shabbos he would join the Stamm family and accompany his friend Reb Yisrael to shul. She remembered with nostalgia how her father and his guest would exchange Torah thoughts on the weekly Torah portion. Then after Shacharis and Musaf, Rabbi Luria would go to the home of another talmid chokhom for the day meal; upon his return, while his hosts took an afternoon nap, he would sit quietly in the dining room and study for awhile. Then he would close his eyes and sing wordless melodies of awesome deveykus to Hashem until it was time for the Minchah prayer.

One Shabbos afternoon, though, the guest returned while the family was just beginning the main course. “Reb Yitzchok,” Rabbi Stamm exclaimed, “what happened that you’re back so soon? Is something wrong?”

A little embarrassed, the guest hemmed and hawed until finally he divulged his secret with one sentence: “The rebbetzin put a carrot in the chicken soup…”

I raised an eyebrow when Mrs. Lang said this – but with a mischievous look, she offered a commentary of her own on that cryptic remark. “In those days, there were all sorts of ‘isms’ in the Jewish world. And basically, there were those who didn’t change anything versus those who wanted to change this or that. My father and Rabbi Luria were in the first camp. And that carrot suddenly appearing in the soup was a sign that the other rabbi’s wife was moving away from tradition. So the guest was afraid of her kashrus altogether. My father understood his feelings and asked him to join us for the day meal, too. From that day on, every week he spent the entire Shabbos with our family.”