It is easy to become afraid.
Someone can become afraid that free trade will ship their jobs overseas. Someone can become afraid that market-based immigration policies will cause someone else to take their job. Someone can become afraid that overpopulation will destroy the environment. Someone can become afraid that an unplanned pregnancy will ruin their lives.
It’s hard when afraid to remember that if a business is allowed to hire young immigrants, import cost-effective goods and services, operate without overburdening environmental regulations, and have access to a growing population of consumers representing an expanding market share, enormous wealth is created. This wealth turns into more investment, more expansion, more hiring, and a better economy. Protecting the right to Life and Liberty is not only the right thing to do. It also happens to be the best thing to do.
Unfortunately, there are four huge organizations built to perpetuate and stoke those fears. The AFL-CIO opposes free trade, market-based immigration, and guest worker passes. The Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) fights against market-based immigration and guest worker passes. The Sierra Club promotes an environmentalist agenda making it difficult for businesses to create wealth and families to afford babies. Planned Parenthood promotes comprehensive sexual education for children, distributes contraception, and performs more abortions than any other organization in the nation. All four of these organizations promote ending Life or restricting Liberty. As a result, it is fair to consider their ideology anti-American — opponents of the Declaration of Independence.
Three of these organizations (AFL-CIO, the Sierra Club, and Planned Parenthood) are staples of the Left. FAIR and its two largest affiliates — NumbersUSA and the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) — are all allegedly part of the conservative movement.
It is time to expose the wolf in sheep’s clothing.
In May of this year, the New York Times wrote a hit piece on John Tanton, who founded FAIR — “the most influential unknown man in America” — in which the Times smeared Mr. Tanton as a racist. Unsurprisingly, the New York Times missed the point.
Who is John Tanton?
John Tanton was an opthamologist in Michigan with a passion for environmentalism. He was deeply concerned there were just too many people in the United States to allow nature to flourish properly. But how to reduce the numbers of people in the US?
John Tanton then founded and organized the Northern Michigan Planned Parenthood Association for the ascendant organization in 1965. He founded the Mackinack Chapter Population Committee for the Sierra Club in 1969. By 1971, he had been promoted to the Chairman of the Great Lakes Public Affairs Committee for Planned Parenthood and the National Long-Range Planning Committee for the Sierra Club. By 1975, Dr. Tanton had been promoted to the President of Zero Population Growth, a Planned Parenthood and Sierra Club allied think tank that helps to coordinate anti-population activities.
By 1979, Ronald Reagan was ascendant. He advocated refashioning the Republican Party to be pro-immigration and socially conservative (both reversals). He was appealing to the pro-immigrant and socially conservative Catholic vote and looked well positioned to found a politically dominant Republican Party. If his coalition clicked, the Democrats might have to move to the right on social issues to be competitive. Prominent social conservative Democrats such as Governor Bob Casey of Pennsylvania stood ready to lead such a charge.
For ZPG, it looked like a developing nightmare scenario. Two pro-immigration & socially conservative parties competing primarily over the economy and foreign policy! Two parties that believed in the Declaration of Independence (that inconvenient document)!
The solution, however, was obvious. Found an organization — led by Leftists — to gin up Nativist fear inside the Republican electorate. That way anti-immigrant rhetoric in the GOP would alienate the Catholic vote (many of whom were fresh immigrants anyway). Then, a Leftist Democratic Party could capture Catholic votes while still promoting abortion. A Nativist Republican Party could focus on limiting legal immigration instead of social issues while avoiding the chance to capitalize on the 60% majority that think elective abortions (which excludes rape or incest) should be illegal. They believed that the result was achievable — low immigration, high abortion — in short, Zero Population Growth.
So John Tanton founded FAIR, CIS, and NumbersUSA. He stuffed their Board of Directors almost exclusively full of Leftists (phrases like “works on women’s issues,” “passionate about the environment,” and “address population issues” abound on their website). The influential groups now stoke fear among Republicans to drive the GOP towards Nativism.
It’s time for Republicans to look in the mirror and ask themselves:
Do we want to be the GOP envisioned by John Tanton or Ronald Reagan?