Rep. Dave Brat, the Virginia Republican who unseated Rep. Eric Cantor last year thanks in large part to his uncompromising anti-immigrant politics, told talk radio host John Fredericks yesterday that a proposal to allow DREAM Act-eligible immigrants to enlist in the military represents the “decline of Western Civilization.”
Discussing the House’s narrow vote to strip the proposal from a Pentagon spending bill last week, Fredericks asked Brat, “What’s going on out there?”
“Well, what’s going on is the decline of Western Civilization at the highest level,” Brat responded. “I think everybody knows their old Roman history, part of the reason Rome fell was because they started hiring the barbarians in, otherwise known as the Germans at the time, to be troops in their own army, and that led to their eventual downfall.”
Brat also had a response to proponents of the measure who pointed out that being willing to serve in the U.S. military shows a certain level of patriotism: “I wanted to stand up and shout, I mean ISIS is willing to serve in our military as well.”
Later in the conversation, Brat compared allowing undocumented immigrants who were brought to the country as children to serve in the military to requiring President Obama to hire Republicans to serve in the White House, a nonsensical comparison for a number of reasons, including that President Obama is in charge of both the military and the White House:
It is an Orwellian situation where language is upside-down. I told some of the guys on our side last night, just as a joke, I mean, if the illegal aliens are so talented that they should take the slots of our military heroes, why not just start out and hire them to work for the White House? And that kind of reverses the humor, right? I mean, if these folks are so good and so patriotic, you know, hire them in the White House.
And even better, just so we’re equal opportunity, I would suggest they hire all Republicans, and so let someone else pick who will work for you in the White House. And if Mr. Obama thinks that’s a reasonable proposition, at least we’re on the same Orwellian footing.
