The Wall Street Journal, Immigration, and the Politics of Guilt Manipulation
By Glenn R. Jackson
There is an old psychology experiment I learned about in Psych 101 done on the effects of behavior and cheating. Essentially two groups of students were paid to cheat. One group cheated on their test for $20, while the other group was paid only $1 to cheat. When asked individually to explain their behavior the group that had been paid $20 readily admitted to cheating and was open with their reasons. The other group, paid only $1 to cheat, when asked to explain their behavior went to great lengths not to admit to cheating, and offered elaborate explanations as to why they had not actually been cheating.
The lesson to be learned from this?
The group paid $20 felt that they had made a rational decision and had no guilt about compromising their personal values against cheating for a $20 payday. On the other hand those paid a single dollar to cheat had sold out their principles at such a low rate that the guilt for selling their “soul” for $1 would not allow them to bend and admit their failure of principle. Guilt is a powerful manipulator, and guilt holds its power not just from going against your principles, but also from the depths of your sell-out. Guilt is one payback for selling your soul so cheaply.
This all comes to mind in trying to understand the continued open borders and mass immigration stand of many of our business and political elites. It is the supposed objective media’s support for open borders/mass immigration that is striking, and in particular the immigration advocates at the Wall Street Journal and the WSJ editorial page that really puzzle the mind.
Michelle Malkin was one of the first to point out the strangely inconsistent views of the WSJ editorial page when immigration is the subject. In her article “The Wall Street Journal: bordering on idiocy” (March 22, 2002) she writes “The connection between illegal immigration reform and homeland security is now fantastically obvious to most Americans, but the loose-and-open borders crowd is as blind and dumb as ever. Leading the senseless is the Wall Street Journal editorial page, which I admired in the past for its stalwart promotion of the rule of law and abhorrence of race-card demagoguery. On March 18, the paper betrayed both principles with disturbing flippancy.”
A cause of concern then as now was the continuing attempts to ram through an extension to the immigration provision allowing illegal aliens and visa overstays to pay a small monetary penalty to remain in the U.S. in spite of their illegalities. This was proposed even in light of the clear dangers posed in a post-September 11th world.
Michelle Malkin wrote again on the Wall Street Journal in an August 2nd article, The Wall Street Journal's immigration foul, “The Wall Street Journal editorial page is a reliable beacon of truth and common sense. Except when it comes to immigration… To downplay the criminal nature of most of the program's beneficiaries, the Journal claims that 245(i) ‘applied only to immigrants who entered the country legally on a visa that had expired or was about to.’ That is an outright falsehood…”
What is the result of selling out your nation and her people in order to acquire cheaper labor in a crumbling economy? Apparently with the Wall Street Journal lies, cover-up, and more sell-out.
What Michelle Malkin has identified so clearly is the elaborate manipulations that selling your soul cheaply, and the guilt that ensues, will bring to the normally rational. This institutional guilt infests an organization and exhibits itself in many ways.
For example, it will show in deliberately exposing a former colleague, now gravely ill, as well as her family to all manner of harassment in order to strike back at her husband, an opponent of the WSJ’s pro-open borders stance. (Read Peter Brimelow’s accounts at The Tarantoad Beneath The Harrow and Stomping The Tarantoad (Again) ). While most would find this behavior abhorrent, not apparently the Wall Street Journal.
Or perhaps institutional guilt shows itself in the hiring practices of a supposedly “objective” media source. Many WSJ readers would not be surprised to find that the Cable News Network (CNN), a “news” outlet considered far from objective, would hire many H-1B visa workers over American workers. (See LCA Database at ZaZona.com and Enron and the H-1B American Worker Replacement Program ) And in fact this is as you would expect with over 185 H-1B visa workers hired by CNN in place of Americans in such categories as: Senior Editor, Online Writer Editor, Editors: publication, broadcast and script, and Other Occupations in Writing.
However how surprised would you be to learn that the Dow Jones Company, parent of the Wall Street Journal, has over 190 H-1B visa workers hired in place of American workers in the categories of: Editor-news, Reporter, Assistant managing editor, Editors: publication, broadcast and script, and Other Occupations in Writing. Leads you to wonder about the WSJ’s objectivity doesn’t it?
In a world sliding rapidly down the slippery slope toward a new civilizational clash, the Wall Street Journal’s continued adherence to the open borders/mass immigration Party line is nothing more than a false perception, wrapped in a lie, living in the fevered imagination of the guilty mind.
For the sake of cheap labor, how cheaply esteemed is the United States of America? Just ask the Wall Street Journal.
Glenn Jackson is Chairman of the American Reformation Project and a columnist for USA Daily. Glenn is also a former State Chairman for Buchanan Reform and former state Chairman of the Georgia Freedom Party. Glenn also served on the Executive Committee of the Reform Party USA. Glenn holds an MA in Philosophy from Georgia State University in Atlanta.
© Glenn R. Jackson