Uppity school kids are now dictating American law?

The Library of Congress is dropping the terms “illegal alien” and “alien” from its subject headings after a group of college students and the American Library Association protested the words’ usage.

As early as May, the Library of Congress will begin revising its subject headings and replacing “Aliens” with “Noncitizens” and heading references to “Illegal aliens” with “Noncitizens” and “Unauthorized immigration.”...

The Dartmouth Coalition for Immigration Reform, Equality and DREAMers (CoFIRED), a Dartmouth student group that has been pressing for the change, declared the move a victory for their cause and called on additional institutions to cease using use term “illegal” to describe illegal immigrants...

Recently the trend has been to eliminate references to “illegal aliens.” Last year California Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law legislation to remove the term “alien” from the state’s labor code...

One of the saddest aspects of the tragic decline of the liberty of the American people is the ease with which the most obvious and important predicates of the institutions of self-government intended to sustain it are being undone. What brought this to my mind was an article reporting the fact that “the Library of Congress is will no longer use the term ‘illegal alien’ or ‘illegal immigration,’ due to pressure from Dartmouth College students who insisted the description were discriminatory.” Congress should immediately take action to compel reversal of this decision, which directly impugns its legislative authority.

It is by acts of Congress that the terms on which people who are not citizens of the United States can lawfully enter and reside in its territory are enacted. The action taken by the Library of Congress effectively challenges and nullifies laws made pursuant to the Constitution of the United States. This challenge tends to bring both those laws and the authority of Congress into contempt. This may seem to be a matter of mere words, what some would consider verbal semantics.

But under the republican form of government the United States Constitution requires, the activities of government are to be bound by the words of laws constitutionally enacted by their elected legislative bodies – not by the edicts of government bureaucrats, submitting to the ignorant whims of students, no matter what the elitist student body to which they belong...

George Orwell's political novel “1984” painted a disturbing but all too prophetic image of how a totalitarian government would come to rule its citizens with an iron fist.  Language -- that is to say, the deceptive use of language -- was a critical element of the government and the dystopia it created that Orwell described.

In Orwell's thriller, electronic surveillance conducted by the omnipresent “Big Brother” was a major factor, as was the development and implementation of a language, Newspeak, that was devised to control thought over time by eliminating words from the vernacular.  When words were eliminated, thoughts and concepts those words represented would be eliminated.

Furthermore, terms to describe government agencies were often the opposite of what their respective missions were. The editing process of published material, especially by rewriting history books and employing propaganda, was the domain of the Ministry of Truth. The omnipresent Party understood that “who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”...

In the words of the official slogan of the Ministry of Truth:

“War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength.”

...The Founding Fathers understood that democracy could only exist when citizens were granted a series of freedoms -- including the freedom to express their thoughts and concerns with virtual impunity and to meet with others to hold discussions about grievances about their government...

Now let's consider how far we have fallen in just a few short years.

The term “Alien” has been all but expunged from any discussions about immigration.  This lunacy began under the administration of Jimmy Carter who mandated that INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service) employees stop using the term alien to describe illegal aliens.  The term alien is hardly a pejorative.  The term “alien” is a legal term that is defined in our immigration laws under Title 8 U.S. Code § 1101 – Definitions.  Under section (a)(3):

The term “alien” means any person not a citizen or national of the United States.

There is absolutely no insult in that term. The reason that there has been a concerted effort to expunge the word alien from the vernacular is to obfuscate the clarity that the term brings to the debate about immigration.  This is not about being "politically correct," but about employing the Newspeak tactic of confounding understanding and making honest discussions impossible.

Let me provide a bit of clarity: the difference between and an “immigrant” and an “illegal alien” is comparable to the difference between a houseguest and a burglar...

If ever there was a time when Americans need to stand together and resist the tyranny of those who would dismantle our freedoms, this is the time.