Your ‘Puter has the power! To reason away! Dang, the Doobie Brothers were awesome. Mostly because of their anti-bootlegging appearance on What’s Happening. Classic.

Liberals and the media (but then ‘Puter repeats himself) have been spectacularly successful in portraying conservatives’ guiding principle as irrational, unreasoning, fear-based rage. In fact, it is the left that “reasons” with its amygdala, substituting raw, ungoverned emotion for logic, and ad hominem attacks for dispassionate rhetoric.

The current conventional wisdom among media and inside-the-Beltway elites is that conservatives have swung too far right. Our liberal betters successfully rely on two factors to convince America: (1) Americans’ never ending supply of laziness; and (2) the existence of a few crazies they can paint as mainstream conservatives.

Despite the Left’s most fervent wishes, the vast majority of conservatives are not scorched earth absolutists, eschewing compromise as if it were a Nickelback album. If anything, conservatives are more moderate and realistic than liberals, both in policy and in practice.

Let’s look at one of the hottest issues on the national media’s radar right now: immigration.

Conservatives understand that America is not able to deport 11 million illegals currently living within its borders.  Conservatives understand that America must find a humane way to deal with this illegal population.  Conservatives understand that it is likely that most if not all of this illegal population will get some sort of quasi-legal status.  And conservatives are willing to discuss possible solutions and to compromise.

What conservatives insist on, however, is that the federal government secure our borders before we take any action with regard to the growing illegal population.  Essentially, conservative are willing to compromise regarding illegals already here if, and only if, America ensures conservatives won’t have to deal with a massive illegal population again.

‘Puter’s favored policy is to improve border security, up to and including a physical barrier running the length of the U.S.-Mexico border.  At the same time, ‘Puter would issue all legal residents (including citizens) a national identification card.  Without a valid national identification card, employers could not hire you, you could not apply for or receive welfare benefits of any sort and your children could not attend school. Heavy financial penalties would be levied on non-compliant employers, schools and governments for ignoring these requirements.  No penalty would be levied on the illegals themselves.

If the border is closed and the attractive nuisance of jobs, benefits and education is removed, the illegal immigration problem mostly resolves itself in one generation.  The current illegals either go home or stay here and eventually die, but their kids born here are U.S. citizens by right, so there’s no issue going forward.

‘Puter’s proposal is just one among many conservative proposals to deal with illegal immigration. The common theme among all these proposals is that the supply of illegal immigrants must be cut off in some manner, whether through border security, national identification cards, visa reform or numerous other means. Conservatives don’t much care how America retakes control of its border, conservatives just care that it gets done, and gets done before we do anything else.

Any proposed solution to deal with immigration without securing the border first is either (1) doomed to failure from the start or (2) specifically intended to fool Americans into thinking government is cracking down when it is in fact opening the floodgate to more illegal immigration.

To analogize, conservatives propose to treat the disease; liberals propose to treat the symptoms only.  Under conservative plans, once the disease is cured, the symptoms disappear. Under liberal plans, the diseases is never treated, only the symptoms, so the disease eventually worsens until it is no longer bearable. Conservatives treat the diabetes, liberals lop off fingers and toes.  Conservatives prescribe antibiotics, liberals prescribe cough syrup. Conservatives vaccinate, liberals don’t.  But you get the point.

So who’s the wild-eyed, spittle-flecked zealot? The conservative who believes that America must deal first with the cause of illegal immigration (i.e., de facto open borders) or liberals who want to maintain and/or increase the cause of illegal immigration?

One may disagree with conservatives’ policy prescriptions on immigration, but one should admit that liberals’ prescriptions are utterly useless.

Democrats should simply state what they believe: anyone who can get to America by whatever means they get here should instantly become, at a minimum, legal residents. ‘Puter knows this is what liberals believe in their hearts, because it’s the only belief consistent with their proposals and (in)actions.

Liberals and their media enablers work hand in glove not only to distort, but to deny, reality. Conservatives have a plan to deal with illegal immigration, and a plan that will work: close the border, then talk about the illegals already here. Liberals have no plan, or worse, plans that exacerbate the already bad situation for both Americans and illegals.

Whining about liberal media’s false caricature of conservatives’ immigration stance gets us nowhere. Defend our position, and do so proudly. Correct the lies when you are able, and don’t meekly sit there when we are portrayed as haters of Mexicans, or children of Mexicans, or Mexican food, or even Mexican miniature dogs.

Liberals can’t beat something with nothing, unless conservatives choose not to fight.

'Puter

Always right, unless he isn’t, the infallible Ghettoputer F. X. Gormogons claims to be an in-law of the Volgi, although no one really believes this.

’Puter carefully follows economic and financial trends, legal affairs, and serves as the Gormogons’ financial and legal advisor. He successfully defended us against a lawsuit from a liquor distributor worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid deliveries of bootleg shandies.

The Geep has an IQ so high it is untestable and attempts to measure it have resulted in dangerously unstable results as well as injuries to researchers. Coincidentally, he publishes intelligence tests as a side gig.

His sarcasm is so highly developed it borders on the psychic, and he is often able to insult a person even before meeting them. ’Puter enjoys hunting small game with 000 slugs and punt guns, correcting homilies in real time at Mass, and undermining unions. ’Puter likes to wear a hockey mask and carry an axe into public campgrounds, where he bursts into people’s tents and screams. As you might expect, he has been shot several times but remains completely undeterred.

He assures us that his obsessive fawning over news stories involving women teachers sleeping with young students is not Freudian in any way, although he admits something similar once happened to him. Uniquely, ’Puter is unable to speak, read, or write Russian, but he is able to sing it fluently.

Geep joined the order in the mid-1980s. He arrived at the Castle door with dozens of steamer trunks and an inarticulate hissing creature of astonishingly low intelligence he calls “Sleestak.” Ghettoputer appears to make his wishes known to Sleestak, although no one is sure whether this is the result of complex sign language, expert body posture reading, or simply beating Sleestak with a rubber mallet.

‘Puter suggests the Czar suck it.