WHAT’S the difference between conservatives and the Left? It’s another 150 boat people feared dead off Christmas Island
Those dead, and 1000 others drowned since Labor scrapped our tough border laws, are the price of one of the deadliest characteristics of the Left.
In 2008, then prime minister Kevin Rudd dismantled the tough laws, which for six years had kept boat arrivals down to three a year.
He could see those laws had worked. Officials warned weakening them would bring back the boats.
But still he scrapped them, with many in the media cheering him. ("A stain was removed from the soul of this nation," hallelujahed The Age.) (a good leftie paper)
And when I repeatedly wrote of the boat people being lured to their deaths at sea, Labor pretended not to hear or know.
("There is no evidence to support this figure," deputy prime minister Julia Gillard snapped, when the Opposition repeated my claim that 25 people had, by then, already died.)
It is because they wanted to seem "compassionate". They wanted to be judged by their intentions, not the consequences.
But across the Third World, people with $10,000 knew there was now a way to emigrate to somewhere safer and richer without having to queue or pass any tests. By throwing away their passports, they made it almost impossible for us to check their stories of fleeing oppression.
Even better, Labor stacked the Refugee Review Tribunal with pro-refugee members, appointed by a panel that included the Refugee Council boss.
We see now the consequences - 100 boat people arrive each day, or enough to fill Canberra in 10 years - even without family reunions.
These are mostly Muslims, largely without English or marketable skills. Two years ago, the Immigration Department estimated just 9 per cent of Afghan asylum seekers had jobs five years after arriving.
The danger to Australia of importing so many hard-to-assimilate people is obvious, even without the risk of Islamist militancy. The danger to the boat people we again see.
A conservative, prizing reason, would weigh all this and conclude the boats must be stopped, by almost any means. Never mind that we seem "mean". Fixing the problem is what counts.
But to romantics on the Left, seeming kind is what counts. Never mind the consequences of that "kindness" - bodies in the sea and strife on our streets.
Oh, and scream "racist" at conservatives who do point out such things. Making others seem bad is part of this game of seeming, not doing.
How many of Labor's worst mistakes are born of this vanity?
Think of the "stolen generations" myth. Never mind that no believers can name even 10 children stolen just for being black. Never mind the myth makes us leave Aboriginal children in ghastly danger.
Think also of the global warming faith. Never mind that the world has not warmed for more than 15 years. Never mind that pointless warmist policies makes electricity cost too much for the poor to heat their homes.
Seeming good while achieving evil has been the sin of the Left since even before the bloody French Revolution. But the Left has its victims even here. There they are, in the sea.
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/opinion/dismantling-border-laws-leaves-refugees-for-dead/story-fni0ffxg-1226660976128
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