This is where pro-illegal immigration activists fail to understand legal equality.
I show ID when:
1. Pulled over by the police,
2. Making purchases with a department store card,
3. Showing up for a doctor's appointment,
4. Applying for a credit card or loan,
5. Applying for or renewing a driver's license or passport,
6. Applying for any kind of insurance,
7. Registering at a college or public school,
8. Donating blood,
9. Obtaining prescription drugs,
10. Voting,
11. Making some debit card purchases, especially if out of state,
12. Collecting a boarding pass to travel by plane or train,
13. Checking into a hotel,
14. Checking a book out of the library,
15. Going clubbing, buying any drink, cigarette, dry ice, lighters and more,
16. Attending most Phillips Academy and campus events.
All citizens are legally required to carry identification for the event of being stopped, and all visitors or residents are mandated by the feds to carry a passport with a visa or other documents if in the United States - this is just what Washington says [8 US Code Section 1304(e) and 1306(a)].
We who live in America are required to prove who we are nearly every day; why should certain people in this country not do so, and remain invisible to the law? Why do some legally privileged people expect America to exempt them from basic border security practiced by every other country?
You can rant about the details and nuances of legislation and policy, but at the end of the day, one reasonable goal needs to be achieved: equality under the law.
The politicians and activists that perpetuate a narrative of "victimization" and "injustice" stall legal equality for the rest of Americans - and always for political favors in elections and donations by powerful groups.
Do not defend the status-quo injustice against law abiding citizens - find a reasonable way to end it.
The idea of endless untapped bounty, abundance, wealth is undoubtedly a great American idea. This idea parallels the great American ideas of freedom and natural rights, initiative, autonomy, restricted government, independence and self-reliance.
These aforementioned “American” ideas are often equated with the historical and social context of the American people. Geographers, historians and sociologists agree that the geography of the New World’s great continent proved central in the formation of these American notions of liberty, independence, and limited government: the great oceans that distanced America from the armies of Europe brought economic and political independence; the broad lands that reduced the effectiveness of governance, promoted freedom; the lack of population and competing interests resulting from resource competition proved intensive governance ineffective; the great lands and expanse of uninhabited lands resulted in the freedom to be left alone, act as one felt, and access resources to generate wealth.
The abundance of America started with its very discovery by Europeans, overcrowded on a continent, desperate for resources and land. Explorers wrote of its magnificent forests, and “uninhabited” coastlines for the taking. Explorers landed on the Americas, claiming the continent and all on it, as theirs. The race for this abundance began.
This idea, from its very beginning, played out initially to be a myth – pilgrims arriving in the United States starved, ran out of gunpowder, could not grow crops, and did not find iron ore for tools. However, this idea and its more modern variation (discussed later) was most fundamental in America's attraction of immigrants from all over the world.
The abundance of America continued to set this land apart from others’. In the American War of Independence, the abundance of America became tied to the very strength of America and Americans – almost a form of patriotism. Thomas Paine, an America Revolutionary Thinker said in Common Sense: “ Tar, timber, iron, and cordage are her natural produce. We need go abroad for nothing. More land there is yet unoccupied, which…may be hereafter applied, not only to the discharge of the present debt, but to the constant support of government. No nation under heaven hath such an advantage as this…The infant state of the Colonies…is an argument in favor of independence. We are sufficiently numerous…” Paine even goes so far as to say that America’s natural plenty grants it the right to be independent, and is a testament to the strength of America.
The expansion of the United States beyond the confines of New England forests and Virginian hills meant unlimited resources for human inhabitation. The Ohio Territories, with its natural forests and waterways, provided the first taste of natural wealth for Americans. America immediately more than doubled in size with the Louisiana Purchase, opening up vast prairies with Bison and lush Louisiana wetlands. The Oregon Territories and Mexican Cession opened up Americans to more mineral wealth and land before Americans even settled the plains. John Wayne summarized the current mentality of Americans best when he said: “I don't feel we did wrong in taking this great country away from them. There were great numbers of people who needed new land, and the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves”. Aside from the politics, the underlying assumptions had not changed: that “this great country” had “new land” enough for “great numbers of people”.
Many of the initial descriptions of the frontier, with its resources were imaginary: fictitious depictions made by those on the eastern seaboard. One 19th century American drawing depicted the West as nude women tending an endless garden – both metaphors for endless resource utilization. One 19th century Illinois newspaper editor said this about the west: “Shall this garden of beauty lie dormant in its wild and useless luxuriance? Not only for our own use, but for the use of man.”
The California Gold Rush prompted the first great migration to the West, preceded only by the Westward migration of a band of Latter-Day Saints escaping religious persecution. Notions of gold in the East created a great stir, prompted by exaggerations of Western mineral wealth. [example] The new available land, combined with the Homestead Act, allowed every American to access vast amounts of land. In the Land Run of 1889, fifty thousand people rushed from the borders of Oklahoma to claim their 160 acres of the vast Unassigned Lands; like a marathon, men and women charged onto these “free lands” upon the blow of the Army’s whistle . Popular campaigns had been launched to open these lands. Within several hours of the opening, Oklahoma City and Guiterm had been established, organized, settled with ten thousand residents. At the closing of the frontier, Celebrity Historian Frederick J. Turner held in this ”frontier thesis” that the American character arrived from the abundance of free land, water, and forest; the settling of free land produced the very American traits of self-reliance, individualism, inventiveness, restless energy, mobility, materialism, and optimism.
Turner was concerned that the closing of the frontier would mean the end of this American idea. Isaiah Bowman wrote in Foreign Affairs:
“The pioneer is no longer a man armed with only a rifle and an axe…in a clearing in the forest. He is not only equipped in a totally different manner, sometimes even with modern machinery, but his incentives are no longer the same…it is a question whether the pioneer spirit as manifest in the west-ward spread of settlers in the united States still exists or weather it has passed out.”
While the west-ward spread may have ended, pioneer-spirit in the modern day, produced by the narrative of a great, untapped American abundance, has not. The 1970s energy crisis revived the idea of great American abundance in the public sphere.
Ronald Reagan ran in the 1980 election promising to further utilize America’s abundant potential in energy resources. In one portion of his nomination acceptance speech, Reagan said: “It is impossible to capture in words the splendor of this vast continent…America must get to work producing more energy. Large amounts of oil and natural gas lay beneath our land and off our shores, untouched…the economic prosperity of our people is a fundamental part of our environment.”
Noted Geographer XX once said ““No other area of the earth’s crust of similar size will ever match of exceed in quantity and variety the vast mineral wealth of the United States. Our people have had the skills necessary to utilize this rich endowment in building the industrial might of America. The United States is the world’s leading producer and consumer of minerals.” However, since the closing of the frontier, the population of our lands, and the consumption of our resources, this noble American idea may no longer be valid. The Geographer continued: “The heavy drain on our resources in the past is beginning to show up in declining or state production rates…We are a have-not nation in many essential commodities…The impact of depletion is showing up in the United States in no uncertain terms.”
The dawning reality of dwindling reserves and idea of American abundance was tossed around in the American public during the 2008 election year. The blunt, bumper-sticker catchphrase “Drill Baby, Drill” became a talking point of the most prominent conservative politicians. Its popularity among traditionalist-conservatives led to a Reaganesque revival of the need to put the idea of untapped bounty to work – to utilize America’s “vast” resources. This message resonated so deeply in Americans that offshore oil exploration was soon authorized in A.N.W.R. and the southern Atlantic Seaboard.
As America, and the West especially, base less of their wealth and production on raw materials, the idea of natural material abundance may have morphed into material consumer abundance, and the idea of plentiful economic wealth and opportunity.
Michelle Obama, at a rally for the President of the United States, used an allegory of a pie to present an alternative to this idea. She lectured to the crowd: “The truth is, in order to get things like universal health care and revamped education system, then someone is going to have to give up a piece of their pie so someone else can have more.”
Glenn Beck, the foremost conservative TV talk show host, repeated this very fundamental, individualist frontier idea of abundance: “Success and money -- it's not finite. This is America…You've got to look at money and success as the ocean…Let's stop thinking about pieces of pie…this is America. We're a freaking bakery. Bake more. Make as many pies as you want.”
The United States Chamber of Commerce launched this advertisement campaign in its attempt to appeal to this fundamental American idea for legitimacy.
A two minute commercial depicting the following shots was also aired.
“Unravel three hundred million individual economies”
Notice the frequent scenes of American entrepreneurs, embodying the pioneer spirit through their work and accomplishment, standing before the abundance of their produce and material inputs. While the advertisement promotes the idea of ‘dreaming big’, it does so by appealing to the material and opportunistic abundance harnessed by the American entrepreneurial pioneer. In many ways, these two American figures, the pioneer and entrepreneur, are connected in their quest to tap the plentiful, great, vast America.
