Republicans are the party of white Christian conversatives, so whatever message is most expedient to appealing to them at the moment is what they stand for.
"Small government" meant "get the Black President out of my healthcare." "Personal freedoms" meant "let me discriminate against people."
Never take a Republican at face value, especially if you're not in their in group. Get them alone and they'll tell you what they mean behind what they say.
Not to lessen your point, because I 100% agree, but I'd like to point out that you could swap a couple words in your statements to make the same point about the Democrats:
- Small government: cut things we don't like (e.g. military), and spend more on things we do like (e.g. social programs)
- Personal freedoms: more freedoms for things we like (e.g. LGBTQ), remove freedoms for things we don't (e.g. guns)
Thank you for demonstrating the hilarious insanity of bothside-ism by jokingly equating people running around carrying guns with people who do not identify as heterosexual, made me spill my Coke. You are joking, right?
> Small government: cut things we don't like (e.g. social programs)
Yeah, and guess how? By claiming the program is rife with abuse, demanding all sorts of record-keeping and auditing...and then a few years later shouting blue-bloody-murder about "administrative cost" in the program.
I wonder what the actual stats are for TANF and SNAP in terms of paper-pushing and auditing vs funds dispersed to recipients.
> remove freedoms for things we don't (e.g. LGBTQ)
Or the really big one: abortion. Doing things like passing legislation that forces doctors to say certain things to their patients, for example...and mandate medical procedures like forcing the mother to go through an ultrasound so they have to see the fetus and if it's old enough, listen to its heart.
Can you imagine how much outrage there would be if democrats passed legislation mandating doctors tell their patients that the vast overwhelming majority of scientific evidence supports efficacy of vaccines, and oh by the way, flu shots are now compulsory? They'd lose their goddamn minds and riot in the streets (er...again?)
Even in the past it was nothing but a coded language. They don't actually believe in it from a principled point of view. Lee Atwater 1981 interview has continued to remain relevant. From direct racial slurs to forced busing, states' rights. Then it morphed into small government, personal freedoms. And now it's DEI and trans.
They never claimed to be the party of personal freedom. There's a libertarian contingent within the GOP that wishes they could persuade people to go that direction, but unsuccessfully for decades.
They have claimed to be the party of small government. And even someone who disagrees with them can recognize the "small government" within their idealized view means government that is only involved in the things that government should be involved in. It doesn't necessarily (or in practice ever) mean less spending.
> And even someone who disagrees with them can recognize the "small government" within their idealized view means government that is only involved in the things that government should be involved in.
Sure, maybe if they were ever ideologically consistent. Yet somehow “government should not be involved in healthcare” also means “government can dictate your healthcare decisions” vis a vis gender affirming care and abortions. Or how “government should not be involved in wealth redistribution” means “let’s grow the national debt to give billionaires more tax breaks and subsidies”.
This is totally setting aside the fact that small government has always carried the connotation of fiscal conservatism.
I don't think the hypocrisy has bothered them for quite some time. By "personal freedom", they mean the freedom for themselves to personally oppress others - not a society based upon widespread individual liberty. This is very apparent when a blatant violation of constitutional freedoms happens to someone in an "othered" group (eg Kenneth Walker's 2nd amendment rights), and they line right up in support of the oppressors.
It’s basically the party of narcissism. Which is why Trump has succeeded. Freedoms insofar as their world and life are concerned. Generally not an externally motivated “hey they need to be free too” unless they can somehow appear morally superior in a US Christian way, like abortion or prootecting marriage.
On the one hand the guy in OP article didn’t have documentation and he illegally crossed the border, so what do you do as ICE? The guy claims he is a US citizen, but I bet you a lot of illegal immigrants without documentation claim they are a US citizen as well.
Also there is no federal ID system, so how do you go about confirming if this person is a US citizen or not? It does seem reasonable that people within ICE custody should get the chance to call someone so that person can bring identification for ICE to confirm the identity, and that is maybe the missing part which lead to this situation.
> On the one hand the guy in OP article didn’t have documentation and he illegally crossed the border, so what do you do as ICE? The guy claims he is a US citizen, but I bet you a lot of illegal immigrants without documentation claim they are a US citizen as well.
For what it's worth, OP article says that the court documents claim he admitted to entering the country illegal. Guy himself denies this.
> Court documents say a Border Patrol agent arrested Hermosillo “at or near Nogales, Arizona, without proper immigration documents” and that Hermosillo admitted to illegally entering the U.S.
> Hermosillo and his girlfriend, who have a 9-month-old child together, live in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and are visiting family in Tucson. He says he has never been to Nogales.
The person would have a social security number, and face photographs in various government databases. Verification ought to be easy peasy. They do it all the time for people abroad who lose their passports while traveling.
Also, as you suggested yourself, even if he didn't have an ID on him, he would have had one at home.
They need to file a massive lawsuit against the US government, the agents that apprehended an innocent citizen and all parties involved. This is NOT OK.
Yeah, a lawsuit would be a strong chess move. Too bad it doesn't work on the opponent who already flipped the table with the board and is drawing a knife on you.
Perhaps. Supreme court preemptively reminding the government it has to stop deportations until court case is resolved has been reported as quite unusual. On the other hand, the only people who are empowered to punish Trump are terrified of him and the people he's pardoned.
Pretty sure ICE has sovereign immunity which is how they get away with this.
They also have deputized every state and even local law enforcement with their powers.
This has happened at least a dozen times this year, US Citizen detained for days.
Last story I read the judge immediately realized the mistake and wanted him released but ICE had put a hold on him so he had to go back to jail FOR NO CRIME, US CITIZEN BORN IN USA
Go ahead, it'll get thrown out due to qualified (read: absolutely unconditional) immunity. And on the microscopic chance it doesn't, Trump will pardon everyone involved and talk about what heroic hardworking Americans they were for standing up to the woke mob.
You best start believing in Russia-style mafiocracy, you're in one.
Are we done with the great deportation experiment? Giving amnesty like Reagan or Bush Jr's visa proposal (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guest_worker_program) would make us safer just due to IDing everyone, and richer due to taxing more people. That's the one great thing about America, we'll try every bad thing at least once (internment camps, segregation, false wars), and then we realize we're actually not down with it.
We can tighten down the immigration entrance policy after we humanely deal with what has already happened.
We had a shot at a general amnesty or reformed guest worker program in the mid 2000s to early 2010s, but unions like the UFCW (the primary decider of elections in NV) and others in the AFL-CIO opposed it.
That said, the AFL-CIO of today is much more white collar and diverse compared to that of 20 years ago, so it wouldn't be as brutal for their locals.
I've said this a thousand times: all unions aren't equal, and we as Dems need to drop the Midwest (aside from MN and IL, where unions are AFL-CIO aligned, and demographics are Dem aligned) and the UAW+ILU. The GOP has a platform that is closer aligned to their locals, and national has flipped as a result.
Give up the rust belt, and concentrate on shoring up UFCW heavy states like NV, AZ, GA, and NC.
Pandering to the UAW and ILU cause the Biden admin to snub Musk, which enraged an already unstable egotistical person to go into the deep end [0], and the UAW and ILU anyhow decided to endorse the Trump admin's current moves [1]. So much for making an enemy.
Stop pandering to the Hank Hills - they will vote red.
Of course, this won't change - such a change would inevitably break a lot of factions internally in the Dems, and would be fought tooth and nail by the Shapiros and Whitmers.
I was a tourist in the US and drove towards one of these ICE checkpoints in southern AZ I’ve heard so much about.
I was perfectly legal, but I was worried, started to think about where my passport was in the car, etc.
Before I could even stop the guy waived me through.
I’m white.
> FTA: Court documents say a Border Patrol agent arrested Hermosillo “at or near Nogales, Arizona, without proper immigration documents” and that Hermosillo admitted to illegally entering the U.S.
the article indicates he was visiting the area from where he lived in New Mexico and he was "lost", but it's not clear from the article whether he was seen crossing the border, or other evidence like that.
Assuming we have fair elections in the future, MAGA is screwed. Every demographic they made gains with last election is being targeted by this administration.
The real answer is that we need to align incentives and encourage the rule of law by getting rid of this blanket sovereign immunity. Held by the government for 10 days while the government slowly figures out that they shouldn't be holding you? Here's a hefty check compensating for your time, emotional distress, and other damages. Obviously, the chance of this happening with Krasnov in office is a pipe dream, but regardless of where we're at we need to remember which direction is forwards.
Does the article happen to say how many were denied judicial recourse and summarily shipped to an extrajudicial concentration camp?
Just because the authoritarianism problem has been slow burning for a while doesn't mean we're not facing an urgent problem of a new degree with this simple-minded fascist at the helm.
I think government accountability, which includes making government agents and agencies beholden to the laws they're purporting to uphold, would have helped prevent many of the frustrations and "both sides" arguments that made otherwise reasonable people shut off their reasoning and buy into the destructionist movement.
As for the realities of our current situation, I acknowledged that in my last sentence.
You just need to get back to the true meaning of bureaucracy: drone gov workers applying the law. Instead border officials were empowered to be mini dictators, a lot of power, no responsibility, and guess what, a bunch of them turn out to be dumb, malicious or raging racists.
Bureaucracy has different failure modes, but failures still happen. The point is to make the government accountable for its own actions, which increases its legitimacy and sets up an incentive to minimize the amount of harm it causes.
The sword cuts two ways and once genie has been let out it’s hard to put back. A lot of DEI was political posturing for prior governments and this one has retroactively punished institutions globally for that. So, be careful whose table you eat at today as tomorrow is another day.
The article is a bit confusing because the story they tell is ICE said he told them he was illegal but he maintains he never said that as he said he was a citizen. It’s the basic playbook of corrupt cops. ICE has demonstrably become out of control. I worry they are transforming into a lawless police force for the executive.
Truly the party of small government and personal freedoms :)
Was that ever true? At least over the last couple of decades those mostly seem to translate to:
- Small government: cut things we don't like (e.g. social programs), and spend more on things we do like (e.g. military)
- Personal freedoms: more freedoms for things we like (e.g. guns), remove freedoms for things we don't (e.g. LGBTQ)
Republicans are the party of white Christian conversatives, so whatever message is most expedient to appealing to them at the moment is what they stand for.
"Small government" meant "get the Black President out of my healthcare." "Personal freedoms" meant "let me discriminate against people."
Never take a Republican at face value, especially if you're not in their in group. Get them alone and they'll tell you what they mean behind what they say.
[dead]
Not to lessen your point, because I 100% agree, but I'd like to point out that you could swap a couple words in your statements to make the same point about the Democrats:
- Small government: cut things we don't like (e.g. military), and spend more on things we do like (e.g. social programs)
- Personal freedoms: more freedoms for things we like (e.g. LGBTQ), remove freedoms for things we don't (e.g. guns)
The crucial missing element is Republicans identifying as "a party of small government".
Sure fine but they describe themselves as the “party of personal freedoms” so the same applies, in my mind.
The point being neither party is anywhere close to being a party of either thing. There are giant “plot holes” in both their platforms.
> party of either thing
Democrats don't say party of small gov, only republicans say that. Democrats want more regulations instead.
Democrats want freedom but not freedom that give rights that kills kids.
Since when has either party ever cut military spending? I wish Dems were as cool as you say.
Exactly. I was looking this up and only saw a couple of failed attempts at cutting military budgets since the 80s.
One such "cut" was only increasing defense spending by 4% instead of 10%.
Clinton/Gore.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_policy_of_the_Bill_...
Also the only time the US had a budget surplus (1998-2001) in recent times.
Thanks so much. I was positive I was missing something there.
Thank you for demonstrating the hilarious insanity of bothside-ism by jokingly equating people running around carrying guns with people who do not identify as heterosexual, made me spill my Coke. You are joking, right?
No one is banning guns at the state level, but they are with abortion
> Small government: cut things we don't like (e.g. social programs)
Yeah, and guess how? By claiming the program is rife with abuse, demanding all sorts of record-keeping and auditing...and then a few years later shouting blue-bloody-murder about "administrative cost" in the program.
I wonder what the actual stats are for TANF and SNAP in terms of paper-pushing and auditing vs funds dispersed to recipients.
> remove freedoms for things we don't (e.g. LGBTQ)
Or the really big one: abortion. Doing things like passing legislation that forces doctors to say certain things to their patients, for example...and mandate medical procedures like forcing the mother to go through an ultrasound so they have to see the fetus and if it's old enough, listen to its heart.
Can you imagine how much outrage there would be if democrats passed legislation mandating doctors tell their patients that the vast overwhelming majority of scientific evidence supports efficacy of vaccines, and oh by the way, flu shots are now compulsory? They'd lose their goddamn minds and riot in the streets (er...again?)
Maybe in the past. Now, it's just the party of "whatever DJT says, goes".
Even in the past it was nothing but a coded language. They don't actually believe in it from a principled point of view. Lee Atwater 1981 interview has continued to remain relevant. From direct racial slurs to forced busing, states' rights. Then it morphed into small government, personal freedoms. And now it's DEI and trans.
Remember in the 90s, Newt Gingrich would speak in hallowed tones about the sanctity of the rule of law on Rush Limbaugh. All bullshit.
They never claimed to be the party of personal freedom. There's a libertarian contingent within the GOP that wishes they could persuade people to go that direction, but unsuccessfully for decades.
They have claimed to be the party of small government. And even someone who disagrees with them can recognize the "small government" within their idealized view means government that is only involved in the things that government should be involved in. It doesn't necessarily (or in practice ever) mean less spending.
> And even someone who disagrees with them can recognize the "small government" within their idealized view means government that is only involved in the things that government should be involved in.
Sure, maybe if they were ever ideologically consistent. Yet somehow “government should not be involved in healthcare” also means “government can dictate your healthcare decisions” vis a vis gender affirming care and abortions. Or how “government should not be involved in wealth redistribution” means “let’s grow the national debt to give billionaires more tax breaks and subsidies”.
This is totally setting aside the fact that small government has always carried the connotation of fiscal conservatism.
The inherent contradiction in the modern Republican party is that it's a blend of Christian conservative morality with libertarian economics.
That works... until a policy area straddles both areas: abortion, free trade, etc.
No illegal Russians are being sent to Mexico
I don't think the hypocrisy has bothered them for quite some time. By "personal freedom", they mean the freedom for themselves to personally oppress others - not a society based upon widespread individual liberty. This is very apparent when a blatant violation of constitutional freedoms happens to someone in an "othered" group (eg Kenneth Walker's 2nd amendment rights), and they line right up in support of the oppressors.
It’s basically the party of narcissism. Which is why Trump has succeeded. Freedoms insofar as their world and life are concerned. Generally not an externally motivated “hey they need to be free too” unless they can somehow appear morally superior in a US Christian way, like abortion or prootecting marriage.
What do you expect when ICE have quotas on arrests -- https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-lede/the-mystery-of-ices-...
A similar situation was documented here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ponylQTj_gg&pp=0gcJCdgAo7VqN5t...
On the one hand the guy in OP article didn’t have documentation and he illegally crossed the border, so what do you do as ICE? The guy claims he is a US citizen, but I bet you a lot of illegal immigrants without documentation claim they are a US citizen as well.
Also there is no federal ID system, so how do you go about confirming if this person is a US citizen or not? It does seem reasonable that people within ICE custody should get the chance to call someone so that person can bring identification for ICE to confirm the identity, and that is maybe the missing part which lead to this situation.
> On the one hand the guy in OP article didn’t have documentation and he illegally crossed the border, so what do you do as ICE? The guy claims he is a US citizen, but I bet you a lot of illegal immigrants without documentation claim they are a US citizen as well.
For what it's worth, OP article says that the court documents claim he admitted to entering the country illegal. Guy himself denies this.
> Court documents say a Border Patrol agent arrested Hermosillo “at or near Nogales, Arizona, without proper immigration documents” and that Hermosillo admitted to illegally entering the U.S.
> Hermosillo and his girlfriend, who have a 9-month-old child together, live in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and are visiting family in Tucson. He says he has never been to Nogales.
The person would have a social security number, and face photographs in various government databases. Verification ought to be easy peasy. They do it all the time for people abroad who lose their passports while traveling.
Also, as you suggested yourself, even if he didn't have an ID on him, he would have had one at home.
They need to file a massive lawsuit against the US government, the agents that apprehended an innocent citizen and all parties involved. This is NOT OK.
Yeah, a lawsuit would be a strong chess move. Too bad it doesn't work on the opponent who already flipped the table with the board and is drawing a knife on you.
Already plenty of lawsuits in place, with some already won. Question is, will there be any actual consequence. So far, it doesn't seem like it.
Perhaps. Supreme court preemptively reminding the government it has to stop deportations until court case is resolved has been reported as quite unusual. On the other hand, the only people who are empowered to punish Trump are terrified of him and the people he's pardoned.
The Trump administration has already started to ignore the courts.
Just waiting on a true flagship case to hit the Supreme Court and then being ignored for autocracy to start.
Pretty sure ICE has sovereign immunity which is how they get away with this.
They also have deputized every state and even local law enforcement with their powers.
This has happened at least a dozen times this year, US Citizen detained for days.
Last story I read the judge immediately realized the mistake and wanted him released but ICE had put a hold on him so he had to go back to jail FOR NO CRIME, US CITIZEN BORN IN USA
Go ahead, it'll get thrown out due to qualified (read: absolutely unconditional) immunity. And on the microscopic chance it doesn't, Trump will pardon everyone involved and talk about what heroic hardworking Americans they were for standing up to the woke mob.
You best start believing in Russia-style mafiocracy, you're in one.
I guess he doesn’t look American enough
Bingo. Racial profiling.
Are we done with the great deportation experiment? Giving amnesty like Reagan or Bush Jr's visa proposal (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guest_worker_program) would make us safer just due to IDing everyone, and richer due to taxing more people. That's the one great thing about America, we'll try every bad thing at least once (internment camps, segregation, false wars), and then we realize we're actually not down with it.
We can tighten down the immigration entrance policy after we humanely deal with what has already happened.
We had a shot at a general amnesty or reformed guest worker program in the mid 2000s to early 2010s, but unions like the UFCW (the primary decider of elections in NV) and others in the AFL-CIO opposed it.
That said, the AFL-CIO of today is much more white collar and diverse compared to that of 20 years ago, so it wouldn't be as brutal for their locals.
I've said this a thousand times: all unions aren't equal, and we as Dems need to drop the Midwest (aside from MN and IL, where unions are AFL-CIO aligned, and demographics are Dem aligned) and the UAW+ILU. The GOP has a platform that is closer aligned to their locals, and national has flipped as a result.
Give up the rust belt, and concentrate on shoring up UFCW heavy states like NV, AZ, GA, and NC.
Pandering to the UAW and ILU cause the Biden admin to snub Musk, which enraged an already unstable egotistical person to go into the deep end [0], and the UAW and ILU anyhow decided to endorse the Trump admin's current moves [1]. So much for making an enemy.
Stop pandering to the Hank Hills - they will vote red.
Of course, this won't change - such a change would inevitably break a lot of factions internally in the Dems, and would be fought tooth and nail by the Shapiros and Whitmers.
[0] - https://www.wsj.com/politics/elections/how-elon-musk-broke-w...
[1] - https://www.axios.com/2025/03/04/uaw-trump-tariffs-united-au...
I was a tourist in the US and drove towards one of these ICE checkpoints in southern AZ I’ve heard so much about. I was perfectly legal, but I was worried, started to think about where my passport was in the car, etc.
Before I could even stop the guy waived me through. I’m white.
We are taking back the 'Don't Tread On Me' flag and slogan. It now belongs to us.
> FTA: Court documents say a Border Patrol agent arrested Hermosillo “at or near Nogales, Arizona, without proper immigration documents” and that Hermosillo admitted to illegally entering the U.S.
the article indicates he was visiting the area from where he lived in New Mexico and he was "lost", but it's not clear from the article whether he was seen crossing the border, or other evidence like that.
Land of the free, until a clown showed up and they gave it all away willingly.
Assuming we have fair elections in the future, MAGA is screwed. Every demographic they made gains with last election is being targeted by this administration.
The real answer is that we need to align incentives and encourage the rule of law by getting rid of this blanket sovereign immunity. Held by the government for 10 days while the government slowly figures out that they shouldn't be holding you? Here's a hefty check compensating for your time, emotional distress, and other damages. Obviously, the chance of this happening with Krasnov in office is a pipe dream, but regardless of where we're at we need to remember which direction is forwards.
Do you think better incentives would have stopped the Holocaust?
Like not to go all slippery slope, but that's how ridiculous this sounds. You cannot fight fascism with fines and courts.
This isn't the holocaust though and probably not fascism. There's an earlier article about ICE arresting Americans:
>The largest number of those arrests occurred in 2012 and 2013 -- at the height of an aggressive push by the Obama administration to deport unauthorized immigrants. https://www.latimes.com/archives/story/2018-04-27/ice-held-a...
Does the article happen to say how many were denied judicial recourse and summarily shipped to an extrajudicial concentration camp?
Just because the authoritarianism problem has been slow burning for a while doesn't mean we're not facing an urgent problem of a new degree with this simple-minded fascist at the helm.
I think government accountability, which includes making government agents and agencies beholden to the laws they're purporting to uphold, would have helped prevent many of the frustrations and "both sides" arguments that made otherwise reasonable people shut off their reasoning and buy into the destructionist movement.
As for the realities of our current situation, I acknowledged that in my last sentence.
You just need to get back to the true meaning of bureaucracy: drone gov workers applying the law. Instead border officials were empowered to be mini dictators, a lot of power, no responsibility, and guess what, a bunch of them turn out to be dumb, malicious or raging racists.
Bureaucracy has different failure modes, but failures still happen. The point is to make the government accountable for its own actions, which increases its legitimacy and sets up an incentive to minimize the amount of harm it causes.
Agree there should be consequences for this kind of mistake. If there’s no evidence of wrongdoing then there’s no reason to hold him.
It’s worth noting the government didn’t figure it out. His family did. Without that he’d still be detained or already deported.
"Your papers, please."
A few steps later: tattoo them on so they're always with you
Having a tattoo will get you deported to El Salvador.
What won’t?
A $5 million dinner in Mar-a-Lago, probably.
The sword cuts two ways and once genie has been let out it’s hard to put back. A lot of DEI was political posturing for prior governments and this one has retroactively punished institutions globally for that. So, be careful whose table you eat at today as tomorrow is another day.
[dead]
[flagged]
I don't think this is your intent, but your comment reads like it's a mystery which side is lying and that we may never know the truth.
Except it's obvious. There no reason, barring police coercion, that a citizen would say they're in the country illegally.
I sincerely don’t know which side is lying, and I can certainly imagine situations someone might say that.
[flagged]
What?
> “He did say he was a U.S. citizen, but they didn't believe him,” Layva said.
The article is a bit confusing because the story they tell is ICE said he told them he was illegal but he maintains he never said that as he said he was a citizen. It’s the basic playbook of corrupt cops. ICE has demonstrably become out of control. I worry they are transforming into a lawless police force for the executive.
We always return to victim blaming.
Because it's hard to admit the truth; that there's something very wrong happening here.
[flagged]
Turns out Reddit circa 2017 was completely right about Trump.