Half Past the Month
Holcomb Opens the Door to Biden’s Conflagration
“A year before planes crashed into the World Trade Center, George W. Bush denounced airport security procedures that ‘racially profiled’ Arab air travelers as potential hijackers and promised to end air travel safety discrimination against Arabs.” — former National Review columnist Steve Sailer
THERE SEEMS TO BE a misunderstanding. Gov. Eric Holcomb has the impression that things are going well for average Hoosiers out here, so well that they can shoulder the extraordinary troubles of any godawful spot on the globe.
Maybe we can clear that up.
Stop! We’re not doing that well. Many middle class Indiana neighborhoods are downright fragile. That is especially true of our small towns.
First, in my neighborhood you won’t see much of that “privilege” they are always talking about. Maybe a hard-working parent has been able to save enough to help young marrieds with a part of a down payment. Most, though, feel lucky to have enough in the bank to cover more than a month of expenses.
Few know where they would find comparable work if they lost their current job. That anxious thought is only aggravated when the political class decides it is time to raise taxes again or impose costly regulations on their current employers.
Nor does it help to know that it’s supposedly for their own good. Climate control, zoning restrictions, social justice programs and health and safety edicts are not only arguable in the long term but discourage investment that might create new or better jobs immediately. Has the governor checked on the cost of food and transportation lately?
Hoosiers know — even if their elected representatives have forgotten — that their income is based on their employer’s profitability and their own productivity. They are not stupid.
Even choosing where and how you want to live is becoming problematic. The Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing law (AFFH) passed in the Obama years promises to turn neighborhoods into social science petri dishes. The Biden administration would use the AFFH penalties to put an end to suburban single-family housing.
Washington is determined that we live in precise numerical racial balance in high-rise apartments, work for the government, take the bus, and now it wants to decide which foreign nationals live next to us. Surely, local elected officials would share our concern.
That, it turns out, was too much to ask. Hoosiers learned last week that their governor is perfectly okay — enthusiastic even — with suddenly moving in swaths of people from 7,000 miles away all from a drastically different culture, a violent one if history is judge. Holcomb told us during a photo shoot at Camp Atterbury (where the Afghans are being held for transition) that they will “learn to love” Indiana.
Maybe, maybe not. Maybe they will continue a discordant lifestyle — only next door. These people were not homeless, they chose to leave their homes, to in effect time travel to America. Many of these immigrant “parolees” simply took advantage of confusion at Kabul Airport to board an evacuation flight.
That is their total investment in America — queuing up. What willingness have they demonstrated to assimilate? On top of it all, the Biden administration is gearing up to pay charities $2,000 for each Afghan they settle in Indiana and elsewhere. Rep. Jim Banks, an Afghanistan War veteran, released a report this morning from the Republican Study Committee on Biden’s broader plans for Afghan resettlement that is terrifying. A summary:
“The Biden administration has requested the House add policy riders to the government funding bill being considered later this month. Those riders include $6.4 billion in funding for Afghan refugee resettlement and language that would give any unvetted Afghan national flown into the United States between July 31, 2021 and the end of the next fiscal year lifetime welfare and a path to citizenship. The riders also make it clear these benefits are extended to relatives.”
No matter, Holcomb’s National Guard Adjutant General assures him that every single one of them — as many as 5,000 in Indiana to date, and the Indianapolis Star thinks we have room for more — has been checked out, vetted, deemed “safe.” Is he lying or is he just reality challenged?
In the local Sam’s Club a few days ago there was a group in niqabs (only eyes showing). They were being led around by a burly “husband.” How is that going to work out?
Again, we expected our elected officials to share our concerns. But Mitch McConnell says he would be glad to have some Afghans in his neighborhood. And great news, Holcomb reports that Indiana employers are lined up to hire them. Who? Where? Doing what?
Some believe the numbers will soon multiply and will eventually change the nature of the area in which they settle. Most immediately, it will strain the school systems, public safety and social services in the smaller communities. The Washington Post reports that towns assigned Afghans cannot even afford the needed extra English-as-a-second-language teachers. Will local citizen be asked to subsidize their own displacement?
And could this bunch be inherently different than America’s historic immigrants? A 7th century attitude perhaps? The Pew Research Center tells us that more than 90 percent want to live under Sharia law. Did the governor ask his new friends from afar their opinion on, say, stoning wives for adultery, the death penalty for apostasy, honor killings?
What is the record of other communities that have experienced such a sudden influx? There are examples in Europe and Great Britain (compare London’s 2002 census with the one only a decade later). And in the U.S. (the Indianapolis City Council might want to organize a bus tour of the Cedar-Riverside area of Minneapolis, now known as Little Mogadishu). You are challenged to find a criminologist who thinks this will be anything but a catastrophe.
Whatever, the governor spent a sunny September afternoon shaking hands for his publicist’s camera at Camp Atterbury.
When did you last see Holcomb in your town just checking on how you were doing — not whether you were voting Republican, but how you were really doing? Is your way of life worth protecting too?
You should wonder. — tcl
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