Many people have been pointing at Waco for years. Even Janet Reno later admitted regretting that episode, and yet you do not hear the left in the US saying at all that this was a problem - in fact it is stereotypical far right recruitment material.
This is why it is clear the problem with ICE is not their mode of enforcement, which is far less egregious than the Waco situation, but the fact they are remotely effective.
From "a problem" to "rallying cry" is a pretty neat goalpost move.
Leftists have long warned that expansions of government power (in general) and police militarization (specifically) are most likely to be eventually used against leftists.
Modern leftists are definitionally promoting expansion of government power - it is a core consequence of their beliefs.
The late Murray Bookchin was the exception that proves the rule, and he was hardly popular or widely known, and made some astonishingly prescient interviews before he died about the direction it was all headed in.
Obvious examples: health care, education, social benefits provision, public transit, arms control. All involve expansions of the state bureaucracy and decision making power.
This is tangential to whether those things are good/bad in and of themselves.
The reason Bookchin was interesting, and why he was isolated even from Sanders, was he accurately saw any hierarchy as oppressive, whether class, capitalistic, cooperative, or even a temporarily well meaning state bureaucracy. It also says something that such a person didn’t manage to create a sustainable movement.
The classic right wing policy which confused everyone was “the negative income tax” that Milton Friedman was so keen on, yet it is UBI by another name. Aside from advantages compared to a minimum wage the important point is by being universal you remove the scope for bureaucratic decision making, so they went to enormous lengths to ensure it never happened.
> Obvious examples: health care, education, social benefits provision, public transit, arms control. All involve expansions of the state bureaucracy and decision making power.
So what you have established is that the left and right both want to expand government power, but the left wants to use it to improve the general welfare while the right wants to use it to crush their fellow citizens. Thank you for the clarification.
I generally lean left, and favor a large welfare state, reasonable regulation, etc. and I find your statement unfair.
People can reasonably disagree on these things.
In particular, the role of the federal government (vs the states) is important. Many of the benefit programs have no real need to be national, other than the ability of the federal government to borrow an unlimited amount of money. And many regulations are only federal because that was seen as easier and faster than gaining support in each state for them. Forcing a nation wide policy on an issue that could easily be dealt with by each state because you know you can't get the support is not very democratic.
That does not seem to be a differentiator, either. The right is definitely trying to use federal power to enforce their positions on the entire country when possible, e.g. abortion. It sure seems like "states rights" is more a slogan used when convenient, not a core ideological position.
Certainly not; I myself held a green card at one point.
But that's a bit like responding to "Auschwitz was bad!" with "so you oppose giving free food and housing to Jews?!" I object to how enforcement is being performed, and the collateral damage ICE is willing to inflict on citizens not in their legal purview.
Now let's do you. Do you think the President should have a relatively blank check to get away with being convicted of felonies? Do you have concerns about the Vice President's claim that ICE agents enjoy "absolute immunity"?
Your problem is you want things more than think about them.
The rot of the bureaucracy coming to convenient decisions extends from illegally allowing millions of people to take up residence in the country to convicting people of trumped up nonsense in an obvious attempt to keep them from office to subvert the democratic intent of the people.
This is why Trump and co are the clean up crew before returning to a happier place. It is not a nice job, and nice people wouldn’t be able to do it, but it is a necessary one to prevent things getting so much worse.
You: "Selectively enforcing only the laws you want to is the key enabler of corruption."
Also you: "convicting people of trumped up nonsense..."
Whoops. Someone sure seems… selective. (And we've gone full circle, to my original point.)
> Your problem is you want things more than think about them.
This is precisely the implementation problem inherent in "immediately deport tens of millions of people upon which American society has relied on for decades for cheap labor".
What came first, Trump or failing to enforce laws regarding mass illegal immigration? With a multi decade head start too.
You cannot expect institutions that selectively ignored laws for decades to think it is legal for anyone to stop them from doing so, despite not being able to pin anything concrete to anyone at all. In fact you expect the kind of “ha!” you are trying to pull here.
Trump would not be close to the presidency without the historic selective enforcement by people you happen to have aligned interests with who opened pandora’s box. It is only now you feel on the wrong side of it that you have a problem.
As it stands they are in power, for almost another three years. It seems odd that they could manage this were their position as illegal as you claim. Somewhat reminiscent of the British declaring the American Revolution illegal.
> What came first, Trump or failing to enforce laws regarding mass illegal immigration?
If you wanna play that game, the country started with selective enforcement on day one. The Fourth Amendment didn’t apply to a rather large portion of the population.
> Somewhat reminiscent of the British declaring the American Revolution illegal.
It was absolutely illegal. What is legal is not always moral (the Holocaust, after all, was legal in Hitler’s Germany); what is moral is not always legal.
