Some Laws Are Better Than Others

Via Carpetbagger, I read this line from Tapped's Paul Waldman:

You can't call yourself a "deficit hawk" if the only programs you want to cut are the ones you don't like anyway.

Yet, this is what Republicans do all the time.  They have a laser-like focus on balanced budgets and reducing deficits, just as long as it involves us doing all the things they like, while getting rid of the things they don't like.  And anything they don't like is strictly off the table and can't possibly be discussed. 

In fact, if you even want to discuss the possibility of having a discussion on raising taxes or cutting any spending they like, they'll attack you and insist you're not acting in good faith.  Because the truth is that they don't care about spending at all.  They just use it as an excuse to get what they want.

Anchor Baby, Away

But we see this sort of atttitude in everything they do, where they act as if some rationale is unbreakable...except for when they want to break it.  For example, they act as if a law is inherently perfect because it's in the Constitution...unless they don't like the law, in which case they think it's disgraceful that we haven't already fixed the Constitution. 

Like with so-called "anchor babies."  The Constitution clearly states that anyone born here is a citizen, yet these people don't like that particular amendment, so that means it doesn't really count.  The 2nd Amendment is inherently valid because it's in the Constitution, and no further rationale is required to explain why all gun control is bad, but the 14th Amendment simply doesn't count, because it prevents them from passing a law they like.

Even weirder, the people trying to break the 14th Amendment are doing so on the grounds that it breaks a law that isn't even in the Constitution.  Conservatives absolutely insist that illegal immigrants must be booted from the country because they've done something illegal, and no further argument can be made.  Yet...if they're willing to change the Constitution in order to ensure that illegal people don't have legal children in our country, why can't we just change the law to make it NOT illegal for them to be here?

But of course, to them, that's Alice in Wonderland time.  The idea that we'd even consider changing immigration laws to make it so these people aren't illegal isn't even thinkable.  Somehow, this law is untouchable and requires no explanation.  The 14th Amendment says anyone born here is a citizen, and that's wrong because it violates a perfect law that can never change. 

The Second Most Important Law

And what exactly makes that law so perfect?  They never say.  They rant about how these people are here illegally, pretending to not remember that conservatives are the reason it's illegal.  They rant about how illegals don't pay income tax, again failing to realize that it's their own policies that make that the case. 

In fact, all of the problems conservatives rant about regarding illegal immigrants is caused by the law they support.  The problem isn't with the people.  The problem is that we made them illegal.  But rather than remove that stupid law, we're forced to create a whole host of other laws.  Not because we're bigots who want to keep Mexicans out of our country, but because we're trying to support a law that serves no other purpose than to keep Mexicans and other brown-skinned people out of our country. 

That's the second most important law of the land, and if we have to change the Constitution for the sole purpose of making that law more effective, so be it.  Even their precious Constitution is nothing compared with immigration laws.