I believe that “Show Of Force” was the title on this LA Times photo gallery earlier today. I meant to blog on this unusual way of describing the Mexican marchers, but they seem to have changed it to “Images Of Protest.”

However, a lot of people in the media are using this phrase, and it should worry you. “Show Of Force” is the phrase you use when you send a fleet around the world to remind potential enemies that you have a fleet, and they should behave. It goes with “big stick” diplomacy.

It should worry you that Mexico is deploying a “show of force” in American cities, and it should also worry you that the American media doesn’t think anything of it.

Update: a reader reports that before the May 1 protests, he saw President Fox in the media, addressing

his people in the United States. I don’t recall what the exact statement was but later when I thought about it, it seemed almost like a commander telling his troops to persevere or to do well.

It was encouragement from the homelands leader. It seemed like something a commander would put out to an invading force.

It’s called Hotair.com and it’s…well, hot.

Have a look (here).

Ok…it’s 2:30 (PST) and I just got the cancellation call from MSNBC’s Scarborough Country.

Apparently, they are having technical difficulties finding a satellite feed.

I live in California and the ideal studio from which to broadcast would be Los Angeles. HOWEVER…the gaggles of illegal aliens flooding the streets have made it virtually impossible to get into the city. (Tell the show how disappointed you are!)

On a more positive note, the BBC picked up VDARE.com’s coverage of Nuestro Himno…wow, we’ve gone international.

BBC link here.

Bryanna Bevens will be on MSNBC’s Scarborough Country [9:00 PM Eastern Time]tonight, discussing “Nuestro Himno“--not the National Anthem.

Gerald Martin writes from Dallas, Texas:

If you haven’t already, please go to www.nationalreview.com and read their editorial, No Left Turn. Despite its title, and despite language against open borders, it appears to me a rather poorly disguised surrender to McCain/Kennedy and Bush. The gist of it: “Please, sir, if you will only secure the border and fine a few employers we will be happy to oblige you - eventually - on amnesty and we hope you won’t demand guest workers ’cause we’re now OK with increasing legal immigration.”

I got a sick feeling reading it because until today NR had been staunchly against the President on immigration. But No Left Turn looks like a white flag, signifying NR’s final abandonment of any residual opposition it may have had to the transformation of the United States into a Third World country.

I hope VDARE will analyze or at least mention this sad cave-in. We need to know who is on our side, and who has given up the fight.

Actually, the whole point of the NRO Editorial is that while it makes some noises on the subject of amnesty, illegals, and enforcement, it seems to present a complete surrender on the idea of restricting legal immigration.

The wisest course for Republicans would be to say something like the following: “Immigration has made this country better. Immigration can continue to work for America if we make sure that it proceeds in an orderly, manageable, and rational way. We will enforce our laws at the border and the workplace. Once we have brought illegal immigration under control, we will consider increasing legal immigration levels and granting an amnesty to some illegal immigrants who are already here. Whatever we decide, we will at all times treat illegal immigrants humanely.”

The point of Peter Brimelow’s 1992 article,Time to Rethink Immigration?, was that America was being tranformed by immigration, not illegal immigration.

Would Maywood, California be a better place to live if everyone in it was legal? How about South Gate?

The transformation of America is the problem. And that’s the issue National Review has surrendered on.

It’s 10:00 am (PST), the protest rallies are underway and…California is still here!

Can you believe it? We were supposed to fall down and die without the contributions of all of our illegal aliens!

Whew…I feel better.

It is a fact that the great leaders of the Labor movement of a century ago disliked heavy immigration. They saw it as bad for members of their Unions. Samuel Gompers wrote Congress in 1924:

Every effort to enact immigration legislation must expect to …two hostile forces of considerable strength. One of these is composed of corporation employers who desire to employ physical strength (broad backs) at the lowest possible wage …The other is composed of racial groups in the United States who oppose all restrictive legislation because they want the doors left open for an influx of their countrymen regardless of the menace to the people of their adopted country.

Cesar Chavez took a similar view. And it is definitely non-PC to note that before the Civil War a large component of the opposition to slavery in the North, and particularly to its extension to new States, was derived from hostility to the competition offered to the working class by slave labor. (See The Real Lincoln in my view the key book to understanding the behavior of the modern American State.)

In a brillliant essay in the leftist Jewish magazine Tikkun, David Podvin excoriates the recent elite indifference to the plight of the working people: The Rape Of The Working Class,April 23 2006. Many VDARE.com readers will find Plotvin’s crude demonology implausible and offensive: but the point is what he concludes:

Illegal immigration is a means by which corporations savage America’s working class. Although the media conglomerates have misrepresented the undocumented worker influx as primarily being a racial issue, it is actually an economic bludgeon…It is a tribute to the political sophistication of the monied elite that employers can brazenly violate labor laws without incurring liberal wrath. In almost any context, a brutal assault on the working class would provoke vigilant opposition from progressives. However, the business community has learned the disarming effect of playing the race card, and now the mainstream media equates opposing illegal immigration with fostering ethnic bigotry….

In Southern California, which is the epicenter of illegal immigration, African Americans were once a significant presence in the construction industry. Today black participation in that sector is scant because contractors prefer sub-minimum wage foreign hirelings…Jobs that were once working class are now subsistence level and are held either by undocumented workers or by desperate Americans compelled to accept artificially low wages…According to the Pew Hispanic Center, undocumented workers currently hold over seven million American jobs. Most of the employees they have displaced are females and minorities, the very people liberals have sworn to protect.

If modern liberalism means anything more than hating Bush it must stand for economic and social justice. Working Americans deserve to have their living standards protected. Mexican migrants deserve to be treated as human beings. Allowing people into this country illegally assures that neither objective will be attained as business ruthlessly exploits one group to dispossess the other.

The MSM is full of cacklings about the problems the immigration issue causes for the Republicans. As more men of the left like David Podvin think their way through the issue, Democratic headaches are likely to be as bad.