Immigration -- A Modest Proposal

Commentary by Lightning Rod - RIP 2/6/2013
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Lightning Rod
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Immigration -- A Modest Proposal

Post by Lightning Rod » May 26th, 2010, 2:44 pm

http://thepoetseye.wordpress.com/2010/0 ... -proposal/

There is only one good, fair and workable solution to our immigration problems. The answer is simple and elegant--Sell U.S. Citizenships. Since we are a nation of immigrants, we start by leveling the playing field. We begin by revoking all current citizenships. Your family came over on the Mayflower and has owned land here for over 300 years? Tough luck. You get in line like everybody else. Then for the nominal fee of a million bucks and if you pass a standardized written test, you are an American citizen and you become eligible for all the perks like voting, healthcare, fire and police service, highways, civil courts and the right to try out for American Idol.

It fits right in to the whole Ownership Society thing. Let's face it, we value things that we pay for much more than things we get the easy way, by birthright for instance. Let's not cheapen the value of citizenships by handing them out frivolously to any old somebody that happens to be born here. The more expensive it gets the more valuable it becomes. That's an ironclad axiom of consumer economics. If we pay for something, we appreciate it more and maintain it properly and take pride in it and wax it every Sunday.

Oh yes, we need to get back to the true and Constitutional definition of citizenship as envisioned by our founding fathers, that citizens should all be anglo-saxon male property owners who are current on their masonic dues. Seriously, anybody with a million bucks would be eligible. It would be the correct answer to every question on the application. How old are you? A million bucks. What is your religion or national origin? A million bucks. Are you now or have you ever Bin? A million bucks.

Of course other countries would soon see the benefits of selling citizenships and would begin to sell their own. Soon there would be a marketplace for citizenships and consumers could shop around for bargains and better services. We would be able to buy citizenships in bundles and on margin. There would be advanced derivative citizenships and citizenship futures. Only so many would be available so they would become rare and collectable. We would see citizenship bubbles, booms and crashes.

For a nominal additional fee you can sign up for the Premium Platinum Citizenship Plan. This would include cradle-to-grave health and social services, access to cushy government jobs, scholarships, fellowships, internships and dozens of other nepotistic opportunities.

What? Can't afford the million bucks? No problem, we will sell you a seventy year mortgage on your citizenship. You can pay it off by the time you die if you start young. For one easy monthly payment you can enjoy all the benefits of citizenship and even leave it to your children to be passed down through the generations.

How about the millions of people who can't afford to be citizens or just don't want to be citizens? Simple. They do the work. This gives them some human dignity and also keeps them out of trouble during the daylight hours. It enables them to pay the steep but uniform Value Added Tax which will be our government's chief source of revenue since bona fide citizens will pay no taxes after their citizenship is purchased. It's an elegant plan. Non-citizens would be perfectly legal and welcome as long as they pay all the taxes and do all the work. There would be no more illegals to burden our education system and social services because non-citizens would not be eligible for these things. They would depend on the good old trusty free market to provide schools and hospitals and insurance and consumer protection etc. Nonnies would be able to own as many guns as they felt was necessary to protect their property and enforce their contracts. They would be free of government regulation and restraint, real TeaPartiers.

The Poet's Eye sees this modest proposal as the real free enterprise way to handle our complex and puzzling immigration problem. No higher fences or more expensive border headaches and violence. The solution is simple, civilized. Pay to Stay. It's either that or fatten Mexican babies for American tables.
"These words don't make me a poet, these Eyes make me a poet."

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Post by Steve Plonk » May 26th, 2010, 4:54 pm

L-Rod, this "modest proposal" of yours for immigrants & citizenship has got to be satirical. Otherwise, it is outrageous. No one is going to revoke citizenship for people already citizens by birth or naturalization. No one is going to cannibalize immigrants' children either...just totally mean spirited parody and off the wall stuff... :roll:
Only war criminals, etc. who lied in order to become citizens have had their citizenship revoked!

Those folks, who are duly made citizens, or born in the USA, etc. should not have to pay for the right to be here. No one is going to mortgage their citizenship! Total fantasy!

Everyone, including immigrants, pay sales tax... One cannot escape death & taxes. Eventually, the revenuers will catch up with most individual tax dodgers. No legislator in their right mind would pass laws like you propose. A million dollars is just totally goofy &
unheard of! :roll:

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Post by Doreen Peri » May 26th, 2010, 5:39 pm

:lol: :lol: :lol: :shock: :P

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Post by stilltrucking » May 26th, 2010, 6:14 pm

You made my day.

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Post by Lightning Rod » May 27th, 2010, 11:34 pm

"These words don't make me a poet, these Eyes make me a poet."

The Poet's Eye

Steve Plonk
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Post by Steve Plonk » May 28th, 2010, 5:52 pm

I thought you were being satirical and making a parody of the whole
immigration issue. So Jonathan Swift was your inspiration? Interesting. Swift's cannibalism humor was also sick... But it was sardonically humorous for some people...

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Post by stilltrucking » May 28th, 2010, 7:19 pm

Just thinking Clay you forgot about our corporate citizens. Certainly they should qualify for a corporate discount.


Pardon me for breaking into your conversation Steve. Swift works just fine for me. I suppose I am one of those 'some people.'
What do you know about him other than he was probably a douche bag?:wink:

Interesting book called, Life Against Death a big section of the book is about Swift. The Section called The Excremental Vision The Protestant Era & Filthy Lucre.





Here is a link excerpt you might find interesting Steve.
John Middleton Murry, then, follows the lead of his sometime-friend Lawrence when he later characterizes Swift's excremental vision as "so perverse, so unnatural, so mentally diseased, so humanly wrong" (440).

In response to this dire diagnostic reading, Norman O. Brown, in his 1959 Life Against Death, asserts that Swift's scatological poems express their author's horror at the thought that "sublimation - that is to say, all civilized behavior - is a lie and cannot survive confrontation with the truth" (188). Unlike Lee, Brown does not fall back upon contextualist arguments to defend Swift, but rather openly celebrates his subject's coprophilic tendencies, suggesting that Swift implicitly recommends in his poetic texts a return to infantile polymorphous perversity, where excrement is viewed as an absolute good. Brown's reading has been taken up recently (in a 1991 essay) by Ashraf Rushdy, who claims Swift proposes an "excremental esthetic" that has behind it a utopian impulse: "the world will be . . . a healthier place," observes Rushdy, "not when shit is made invisible but when it is confronted as the other we produce, when false sublimations are denied and a true respect for the fallen body is affirmed" (29). And so we have this third interpretive camp, that flying the colors of what Rushdy has termed the "New Emeticism."
You can read more about Brown's prognosis here:
http://www.accessmylibrary.com/article- ... swift.html

I am not sure what it means but it cheered me up.

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Post by Steve Plonk » May 28th, 2010, 11:17 pm

I did find Swift's humor sick in the texts I read. (I also don't really care for the cartoon show: "The Simpsons" either.) However, I liked Swift's sardonic, and satirical humor in GULLIVER'S TRAVELS.
I am not that familiar with most of Swift's other works. Since he wrote allegory, one may read his work on two levels. I happen to have a copy of GULLIVER"S TRAVELS. To each, his own. I certainly don't think Swift was a "douchebag" :wink: I am familiar with Rabelais' work, GARGANTUA & PANTAGRUEL, which some people don't like and I loved. :)

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Post by stilltrucking » May 28th, 2010, 11:49 pm

Catchy phrase "filthy lucre"

I have never read Swift. I been reading the chapters on him in Brown's book been reading them and rereading them for over thirty years. No shit.

I used to think that there was a way out of this mess. Do you realize that there will be no Protestants on the Supreme Court after what's name Stevens? steps down. Not if Obama gets his first choice.

I was pretty amazed at your reply to Clay's amusing column. At first I thought this guy has got to be kidding. But now I realize your are serious as a fart in a space suit.

He says everyone wants to "bowdlerize" Swift.

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Post by Doreen Peri » May 29th, 2010, 12:04 am

I wrote a 'modest proposal' once about banning reincarnation to control population growth. I still think it's a good idea. :shock: :lol:

(I thought Lrod's column was funny!)

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Post by mnaz » May 30th, 2010, 10:07 pm

Hey! Lay off the babies!

We've talked about this.

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