Watch Out For Those Jerking Knees

Libby posted about my entry on the immigrant crisis in Great Britain and took me to task for not checking the veracity of the facts for myself. Well, I looked up the definition to make sure. Sure enough veracity concerns adherence to the truth. I looked up the definition of truth and lo and behold, that's a slippery issue. It's like the definition of what is is. The truth is not exact, it means different things to different people. To Libby the truth about immigrants is linked to some ideal of making a better life as if that's the only reason people leave their home country to move to another.
Here is the key paragraph:

The vast majority of immigrants don't leave their family homes and move to a new country with malevolent intent. It's simple economics. People go where they can make money, not to take over society and although the miscreants get all the press, millions of honest immigrants work hard, contribute to their new countries, and are no threat to security.

Ah yes, this is mostly factual, but there is a downplaying of the role of the "miscreants" and their threat to good order. While most immigrants are harmless there is more at play than a better way of life. In Britain Islamic doctors are among the radicals. I would say that kind of shoots down the role of finances and poverty and puts Islamic fundamentalist fanaticism at the forefront.

I also take issue with the use of the term majority. It doesn't take too many "miscreants" to cause huge problems and most of those do have malevolent intent. They are there to raise money and to avoid prison or worse in their home country. The polls also show that these mullahs and false holy men have a lot of support among the majority. Libby then goes ad hominem:

As for the thousands of immigrants unknown to the British government, one wonders how Mr. Thomas can speak so authoritively on the subject. Has he personally conducted his own census? Since he gives no links to support his contentions, one can only suppose he made this up out of the whole cloth, out of his own distate for brown skinned people.

Well, when it comes to illegals in any modern western country there is no accurate way of counting, but they are there. There is no census in this country on illegals and I haven't taken one, but I know they're here. I see them everyday. The fact that they have brown skin in no way changes the fact that they are law breakers. Whatever their reasons are for being here they are secondary to the fact that they should be deported. The same thing goes in Great Britain.

I think far too many on the left are knee-jerk liberals and immigration is one of those issues that brings out the worst in everyone. To me, it's more about law and order than anything else. I don't care why you came, but if you came here illegally you're breaking the law. I was born here and if I break the law and get caught, I'm going to pay. Why shouldn't that be true for the illegals?

There are lots of fallacies on both side of this, but the idea that they are all just looking for a better life is a generality that ignores the facts. Liberals also want to use their tactic of calling anyone who disagrees with them a racist. That's always a weak argument and it is here as well.

Libby, you told me I could disagree with you anytime I wanted. Here you go.

Respectfully,

Jim Martin