Defending Marco Rubio's immigration bill

I have been asked several times why I believe Marco Rubio's approach to put illegal immigration problem is a better approach than that of Ted Cruz or Donald Trump. Here is my answer.

Rubio always has and always will defend families first. The fact that Mexico sucks is not in dispute. If I lived there and had the opportunity or chance to come to America and give my kids and family a better life than drug cartels and sex trade I would do it in a heartbeat. Wouldn't you? The fact that these people are running from the bad stuff and wanting a better life for themselves and their families shows their moral character and love for their children. They are not criminals for the most part. They are just good parents. Sure there is a huge problem with drugs crossing the border and gangs coming into our country. Rubio is not and never has offered those people a pathway to citizenship. Rubio's bill focused on three things. Securing the border, fixing our legal immigration system, and offering a road to citizenship for those people living here in the shadows who have not broken the law to the best of their ability once they have come here. The problem (and Rubio has recognized this) with the bill is that it didn't require the border to be secure first and it allowed Obama to enact part of the bill and ignore other parts. So Rubio has admitted that we need to deal with the immigration process in a peace meal way, one issue at a time.

What Ted Cruz and others are unwilling to admit and what Rubio points out, is that doing nothing is amnesty by default. Those 11 million people already live here! But they are living here without paying taxes, without buying car insurance, without purchasing medical insurance, and all of this costs the American people millions of dollars each year. The proposals that Ted Cruz has offered are so far right wing that they will never pass through congress. They will deport parents of US citizens (Like it or not anchor babies are American according to the constitution) and destroy families. It will also destroy the Republican Party because once you start doing that you will lose the support of moderate and independent voters. So the proposals offered up by those in the Ted Cruz camp are amnesty by default because they will never become law. With Rubio's plan at least these people will start paying taxes, they will stop going to the ER for every small medical issue, they will stop running from accidents because they have no insurance, and they will no longer be hiding in the shadows as second class people. Also it's important to note that if and when these people become citizens it would be much better for the Republican Party if the plan that helped them was a plan put forth by a Republican President, not a Democrat. Sometime in the future there will be another democrat majority in the house and senate, just like there was in 2008. And instead Obamacare being forced upon the American people we will have immigration reform, written by the democrats, and passed by the democrats, it will be true amnesty, it won't care about the border security or making them pay a fine, and it won't address several other important issues that Rubio's Bill addressed. For me it is important to note that our founding fathers welcomed immigrants to our country. They did not build walls to keep them out, but they placed the Statue of Liberty to invite them all to come. Japanese, Chinese, Germans, and Irish came here in droves. They did not need to jump through legal hoops or wait in line, and we didn't deport anyone who came looking for freedom and a better way life. Do we have the right and the need to secure our borders? Of course we do. But shouldn't we use some compassion and common sense when it comes to people running from drug cartels as well?

Education Shouldn't be Made Free. It Should be Made Worth the Cost.

    Currently there is a push from the left to provide free education to everyone in America. this usually means a paid for 2 year or 4 year degree at colleges and universities. On the surface this sounds great. And I agree, personally it would have been nice if I wasn't 30 thousand dollars in debt because of a political science degree. But there are many negative consequences to free education that I feel are being overlooked or ignored.

    Most arguments against free education that I've read focus on the cost and tax burdened or how it would effect our national debt. In my opinion these arguments are near sighted and shallow, but more importantly will have no effect upon a liberal's opinion other than to make them think you don't care about poor people. Democrats believe that a more educated country is going to have higher wages and thus the income and taxes would increase together, offsetting any costs. And statistically that is true. Better education brings better wages. A Democrat also believes an educated public is worth any financial burden it imposes on the country and would happily take money from defense spending or a number of other government programs to help pay for it. So the cost is not an issue to them.

    My argument therefore is not focused on the financial cost, but rather on the education costs and personal costs to the students themselves. We already see a sharp contrast in our youth between those who are educated in private schools and those who are educated by the public school system. Private schools are consistently producing more educated and better quality citizens. Do we really want all of our colleges to be an extension of the public education systems or four more years of high school?  High School is failing our youth. Why on earth would we pattern our higher education systems after it?

    Even if colleges remain private the lure of money is too great for many of them to resist making educational concessions in order to increase their cash flow. For instance; I don't know all the details, but a college in the city where I live recently got into a lot of trouble after it was found out they had been enrolling homeless people or other ill qualified candidates into their college simply to get federal financial aid for them. They were enrolling several people who they knew would not finish a semester much less graduate simply because the college benefited financial from each name on their roster. This was not a low quality community college either. 

    Many colleges and universities already focus too much on enrollment numbers rather than the quality of students they bring in because those students represent financial income for their programs. This will always be a fact, but the Federal Government incentivizing this is a recipe for disaster. Law schools across the country right now are lowering their standards in order to get enrollment numbers up. As a result I predict many of their new students will find themselves unable to endure the curriculum and will eventually drop out, but with a significant debt that otherwise might have been avoided had they initially been told they are not lawyer material. Some might even graduate, but be unable to pass a bar exam and will find themselves as out of work lawyers. 

    In my own University I saw several problems that I feel free education will only exacerbate. Many of my college professors felt that they needed to water down their materials, or in other words teach to the quality of students in their class. Otherwise their class grade averages would suffer as well as their year end reviews. Several of the top teachers resisted this temptation and still taught what they thought was best. But even they have admitted that they were forced by the school to make at least some minor adjustments to their grading, teaching, or testing styles that they otherwise would not have made. I spoke with many of the students who expressed the feeling, that as a result of these concessions, the significance of their degrees had been weakened. Not only because the work loads were made easier to suit the class and therefore they were robbed of a better education in general, but also because of the quality of their fellow graduating peers. They felt that their degree's worth was damaged by virtue of who else carried one. And it's true. I saw many political science students who knew very little about politics, or more importantly didn't understand statistical analysis or were otherwise incapable of analytical thinking and writing who graduated along side of me. How? because they were able to choose "the easy" professors and get the same degree that I was able to get, with less effort. In the business world however, where quality work actually counts, their quality of work will be significantly weaker than mine and my other good classmates and employers will take notice regarding the consistency and quality of students the college is turning out.

    So what will a fee education do? It will encourage every Tom, Dick and Harry who are otherwise not qualified for College to go, schools will lower their teaching standards, weakening the significance of their degrees,  businesses will no longer be able to rely on universities to provide their students with the basic tools necessary for the workplace environment, and those who actually cared to put forth the effort will be short changed and get a watered down degree because their fellow classmates were not up to the task.
    The solution is to fix the public education system so that children getting into college are prepared for college and to make degrees once again worth the cost of tuition. 50k in debt is not a problem if you can get a decent job coming out of college to pay for it. Making college free is not the answer. If free education prepared people properly for their futures high school graduates would be prepared for college; sadly most are not. The solution is to create an interim education system that is free. Something that can transition a high school graduate into college appropriately, but without weakening the significance of a college degree. If the quality of students coming into college improved the professors could teach at a higher level and the degrees being received by their students would actually translate into employment.

The abandonment of Justice will lead to anarchy

I have long held the idea that many in the Democratic party would define justice much the same way  Thrasymachus did in Plato's Republic. They have always been willing to abandon justice when it suits their purposes. To them justice is nothing more than an advantage over their enemies. When justice suits them they honor it, but the moment it begins to work against them they abandon it as old fashioned or out of step. This is why Democrats always rally around their own ,defending their party members instead of abandoning them when a law was broken. And yet they're often times so eager to crucify their enemies for even the slightest misstep.

In recent years however, the GOP have become so desperate for power and leadership they too seem to be abandoning justice in search of power and prestige. No longer is justice a moral virtue honorable for it's own sake. It has become to many in the GOP a means to an end. A tool to maintain power, and to punish their enemies when needs be. But the moment it works against them or their supporters they "bail out" their friends, abandoning justice in the process.

This recent debate in Nevada between the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and Clive Bundy is a prime example of people abandoning the principle of justice out of a desire to see their own wishes fulfilled. We knew from the onset that Bundy had broken the law, and yet when the BLM took steps to punish him thousands of so called conservatives came to his aid without questioning who they were defending. Why? Because the government is the enemy and anyone that stands up to them must be right. Now in their defense, the BLM did over stepped its bounds and made the situation far worse than it should have been. But even with that, Conservatives should have been wary of rallying around someone who they knew had broken the law.

One of the core principles of conservative values is justice. This country was founded on the idea of justice. When justice is ignored by the masses it's called anarchy. Those who claim to love the Constitution better be very careful of who and what they are supporting - because anarchy will surely be the downfall of the Constitution- not its saving grace. If we allow our countrymen to take the law into their own hands, obeying when they see fit and disobeying when they feel morally superior we will head down a very dangerous road.

Communism and Socialism get their power through disobedience to law. When the people fear freedom more than they do the government's rule strong government intervention will oftentimes be the result. Sure, we love our freedom, but freedom cannot mean free to take advantage of others. It seams in recent years that's what many in the GOP have been supporting. Big businesses who prey upon the weak. Oil companies who are only concerned about the bottom line. And a Wall Street out of control and wreaking havoc on the world economy. These groups to not maintain Conservative principles. They are void of any moral code. And the ideas of justice and mercy are foreign to them. If we do not get back to enforcing the law and punishing those who break it I fear this country is on the brink of anarchy or worse - Socialism.

Defending traditional marriage

I defend traditional marriage because I believe no other institution is capable of reproducing the same results that a proper traditional marriage can. Over the years however, we have watered down the purpose and meaning of a traditional marriage to the point where most people now believe marriage is simply about being with someone you love and who you want to have sex with; or even worse an institution designed for a tax break and dual incomes. Defenders of traditional marriage have become cornered into this as their definition, which makes it nearly impossible for a state to justify why they ban same sex marriage.

Properly defining marriage is critical if we are to save and protect it from being watered down to the point where it's indistinguishable from any other union of love. Same sex marriages by their very nature can never be equal to traditional marriage and it's paramount to the debate to ensure this concept is being taught properly and adequately.

Let me start off by saying what marriage is not. Marriage is not simply about sex with someone you love. Sex can be had with or without marriage. Marriage is also not simply about being with someone you love. In fact I would go as far to say marriage is more about loving who you are with than it is about being with who you love.

Marriage is a divine institution created for the betterment of mankind. A proper marriage creates a learning environment unlike anything else, and can lead to greater individual growth that is beyond the measure of growth obtained through any other means. If marriage is simply about being with who you love - then once you stop loving that person, or start loving someone else more it would be reasonable to divorce and start new. Sadly this happens all too often because of the warped definition of marriage we as a society have. Sacrifice and selflessness is at the center of marriage. Putting aside your basic human desires, working towards a greater good, and working on personal and family development is what marriage was intended for. It's about taking two things that are opposites in many regards finding a way to coexist and compromise.

The world has corrupted and twisted the definition of marriage into a union designed primarily for the purpose of indulging our base human desires. Such a marriage, even when between people of the opposite sex, is incapable of providing the personal growth a traditional marriage was intended to provide.

There is so much divorce and domestic violence in today's world because people marry to indulging their natural carnal desires. They see marriage as a means to an end. A tax break, increased (dual) incomes, or a means to sexual gratification. When the union no longer provides these selfish gratifications, or if their natural desires changes, they abandon the marriage with complete disregard for anyone hurt in the process, because to them the marriage was always about selfishness and indulgence.  They divorce for the same reasons they got married - self indulgence.

Same sex marriages can never be equal to a divinely designed marriage because same sex marriages are by their very nature about self indulgence and self gratification. They start off by saying I know better than God and I'm going to do it my way instead of his. They've come to this conclusion, in great part, because of the warped reasonings the rest of America has for marriage in the first place. They look at what marriage has become in today's society and see everyone else getting tax breaks and doctor visits for the people they love and conclude they deserve the same thing - and justifiably so. If marriage is nothing more than tax breaks, doctor visits, and sex than there is no reason to oppose same sex unions.

Only a marriage where selfless sacrifice and the setting aside of our base natural desires is present, a marriage where raising a family unto God out weighs all other concerns, a marriage where sex is recognized and treated as a sacred gift bestowed upon us from the God of this universe so that we might obtain a small glimpse into his power and the majesty of his creations, only this type of marriage is capable of providing the personal development and growth God intended for us to achieve. A depth of growth that lasts not only throughout our lives, but resonates in the generations to come.

Any other type of union, whether it be a starter marriages, political arrangement, marriage for tax breaks or government benefits, and especially a marriage where sex and self indulgence is at the heart of it are not the same, and by their very nature never can be. This type of marriage only leads to greater self indulgence. Lead our hearts farther from God and his plan of happiness. And instills in future generations a selfish self serving attitude likely to corrupt and destroy their very soul.

I love my friends and relatives who struggle with same sex attraction, as well as those who struggle with any other sexual indulgence and to them and everyone else I say trust in God's plan. There is a reason he has established marriage between a husband and a wife. I promise you can achieve greater happiness by following his plan than your own. As the years pass and this mortal body loses these passions and appetites  We all have inclinations and desires which conflict with God's plan and it's only by denying ourselves these pleasures that we obtain the self control, depths of love and understanding, and lasting happiness our Lord and Savior has in store for us. Sexual indulgence of any kind out side of the bounds which the Lord has set will not lead to happiness - it cannot, because they are by nature opposed to selfishness and self control.

Americans expect a king not a president

One of the major problems leading up to this recent government shutdown is the American people's ignorance of how our political system is supposed to work.  For some time now Americans have been electing a legislative president instead of an executive one. Presidential candidates today make all kinds of sweeping promises about social reform and economic issues just to get elected when the reality is that many of those promises cannot be fulfilled through the office of the President. 

The real power of the presidency is in foreign affairs. We should primarily be electing Congressmen and Senators for domestic issues, and our president should be to protect our nation from foreign threats as well as to run the federal government as Congress directs.  

In today's elections Americans are expecting a king not a president. They put a man into the presidency expecting sweeping change and when that change doesn't happen they feel cheated. The truth is no president is capable of enacting all the promises they make during their campaign days because the Constitution doesn't allow it. Americans need a better education on the proper role of government and what exactly a president is capable of doing for them.

Is Republican Corruption Responsible For ObamaCare?

     One of the biggest threats to the freedoms that the Constitution of the United States grants us is an unhappy populous. If we as a nation choose to ignore the needs of a large number of Americans it will be the cause of the downfall of the American Dream. 

     Our Constitution, like it or not, was created on Christian principles and ideals, and if we as a people do not provide for the needs of the poor and downtrodden, then the poor and the downtrodden will do whatever they can to fulfill those needs for themselves. 

     For several years now the Republican Party has been stuck in the back pocket of corrupt corporations and industries, and as a result they've allowed wars and Wall Street to dictate the flow of the Federal Government. Republicans have ignored the needs of the common American people and have instead focused on big progressive Right Wing agendas. America has failed to hold accountable the individuals in Washington and in the corporate world who have broken the law, and in many cases we have gone so far as to reward those people for their actions.  

     There are Conservative approaches to healthcare reform which would fulfill the healthcare concerns of the American people. But mark my words, if the needs are not met through a free and fair system, then the outcry for socialism and Big Government control will continue to grow louder and stronger.

    We can pass legislation that reduces costs and provides better rates for the American people. We can pass and enforce laws to punish businessmen and corporations which choose not to play by the rules. And most importantly we can purge the corruption from within the ranks of the Republican Party. 

     The influence which Socialism has within the United States is a direct byproduct of the corruption within the Republican Party! Conservative Christian Values are Correct Principles, and if we lived by those values the American people would have no desire for big Government intervention, but if the Republican Party insists on going down the road of corruption, scandals, unjust wars, and bailing out Wall Street and corrupt businesses we will soon see the end of the U.S. Constitution as we understand it. 

Republicans need to be proactive

Like it or not the Republican Party has become known as "The Party of No" and needs to do something about this image fast.
Any political pundit can tell you that image and name recognition are at times the most important part of politics and the Republican party has a serious problem with Image right now.
The current debate about defunding ObamaCare is a great chance for the Republicans to turn the tables. If the House of Representatives could pass a Continuing Resolution to fund the federal government except for Obamacare prior to the Senate passing one which includes Obamacare then it would be the up to the Senate to shut down the government or not. We could then use this opportunity to claim that the Democrats are the ones who want to shut down the government over Obamacare.