OPINION: Hypocrisy As Policy

FRAMINGHAM – Affluent residents of Martha’s Vineyard are still congratulating themselves on the remarkable opportunity to “virtue signal” presented by Gov. DeSantis’s decision to send fifty Venezuelan refugees to their island. For all of two days, they were able to posture in support of refugees and migrants before the Commonwealth took the Venezuelans off their hands. If less affluent people, in Massachusetts and across the nation, were paying close attention, they may have recognized the hypocrisy emanating from the island: virtue signaling is great, as long as someone else has to deal with the consequences.

The Venezuelans made their way into the United States by crossing into Texas, a state whose population is about 2500 times that of the Vineyard. Proportionally, Texas should expect about 125,000 migrants to stay for two days, or some smaller number staying for longer, before they were moved somewhere else. But Texas, which is far less affluent than the Vineyard, has been receiving more than 5500 per day during the Biden Administration, and most of them are still there. What would the good citizens of that island paradise have done if 1000 or 10,000 arrived to stay? Instinct tells me they would be imploring Biden to do something to stop the influx, exactly as Texas and other border states have done, to the denunciation of Progressives in regions that haven’t had to deal with the problem. Pure hypocrisy.

Venezuela was once a solidly middle class country until the Progressive Hugo Chavez became dictator and drove that country’s economy to ruin, leading to violence which resulted in Venezuelan refugees. Progressives in the United States advocate for similar policies that will almost certainly have the same effect here. Where do Americans go if the Progressives manage to destroy our economy and country?

The current wave of migration from other countries in Latin America is basically a response to the populations of sending countries exceeding the carrying capacity of their territory; violence is one indication that this limit has been crossed. Enabling migration to the United States absolves the governments of these countries of having to deal with population growth; they can simply export the problem. In turn, this begs the question of whether growing ethnic violence in the United States is a result of our own population exceeding the carrying capacity of our country.

Apart from its impact on civilizations, human population growth leads to conversion of wild lands to human use, which is what habitat destruction means, and then to the species extinctions Progressives would like to blame on climate change. Evolutionary theory is quite clear that species don’t go extinct in response to expectations about changes that might occur decades, never mind centuries, in the future, but that is what Progressives’ linking climate change to extinctions requires. And then they claim the support of “Science” for their beliefs. More hypocrisy.

Most of the migrants supported by Progressives would have been turned away had they arrived during the great immigration wave of 1880-1924, when immigration laws (starting with the Immigration Act of 1882) prohibited the admission of people who were likely to become public charges, i.e., would require welfare payments to survive. Much of that changed with the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965, which was sold with a promise that it wouldn’t alter the ethnic composition of America. If its sponsors believed Americans wanted to see a change in the country’s demography, they could just as easily have tried to sell their bill on that basis, but they didn’t. In retrospect, it’s obvious that their Act altered American demographics and most likely was intended to do so; the claims that it wouldn’t were at best hypocrisy and more likely a deliberate lie.

That’s why the current election, especially in the congressional district where I live, is so frustrating and disappointing. We are “represented” by Katherine Clark, a Progressive who endorses changing the ethnic composition of America, whether her constituents like it or not, and measures that would undermine the economy. She may be aware that her constituents don’t support these policies, or much else that she advocates, but believes that if she avoids having to acknowledge what her preferred policies would mean, she can get re-elected. That’s why she doesn’t reply substantively to letters sent to her, and hasn’t even bothered to respond to invitations to present her views in open debate with her opponent, Caroline Colarusso. She knows what’s best for us, even if we disagree, and even when she is flat-out wrong. By doing so, she has made hypocrisy the central feature in her political philosophy. We can, and must, do better.

Yale Zussman, PhD
MIT–Political Science
Framingham