Here's a comment to a Washington Post op-ed piece about the Arizona illegal immigrant law, written by an Arizona legislator:

pomeroyt wrote:

I liked the idea below that any citizen should be able to demand id from any suspected illegal. Maybe Homeland security could have cards made up to give to every American citizen that say: in English, Spanish, French, Chinese ,Hindi and Lao:

Please raise your hands and move back against the wall. Very slowly and carefully (if you value your life) remove your id from your pocket and put it on the ground in front of you. Then lay on the ground face down.

If you are a legal tourist, Bienvenido a los Estatos Unidos hace algunos anos, la terra Mexicana, perro ahoro terra nosotra.

If you do not have any ID please put your hands behind your back and don't move if you value your life, while I call the authorities. You are going to be very very sorry.

We should consider setting up camps for Hispanic American citizens and legal residents - for their own protection - like we did for Japanese Americans during WW II.

We may want to consider handing out cans of chemical mace along with the cards (probably tasers wouldn't be a good idea). But some of those foreigners or even American citizens with roots in those foreign countries can become pretty violent when they imagine they have been insulted.

My response:

pomeroyt has fun ridiculing the Arizona law. But one exaggerated scenario deserves another. Let’s look at how things would work in Leftieworld.

No one has to identify themselves to anyone about anything, because otherwise it’s Nazi Germany. Well, that would eliminate identity theft, because there’d be no such thing as identity.

So in this Workers’ Paradise, pomeroyt goes for a walk, and when he gets back to his home, sixteen brown-skinned individuals have moved in and dumped his belongings on the sidewalk. He tells them to get out. One says to him “Tu eres racista.” Pomeroyt doesn’t speak Spanish, so he goes and gets a cop, who, in Leftieworld, had to demonstrate Spanish proficiency to get the job. Officer Gutierrez talks to the people, and tells pomeroyt “Sir these people say it’s their house, and you’re some kind of white racist who seems to be telling them to get out.”

Of course since we’ve done away with identity as obviously a racist plat, it’s pomeroyt’s word in English against the others’ words in Spanish. And the cops have been trained to take the word of anyone who isn’t white against the word of anyone who is, because whites are by definition racist. So pomeroyt has to go sleep under the bridge.

This scenario is ridiculous, of course. And so is pomeroyt’s. I’ve traveled in 17 countries, from rich ones like the Netherlands to poorer countries like Indonesia, the Philippines, and Mexico. Everywhere I went both the locals and I were expected to have ID, and wherever I looked different I was expected to identify myself more frequently.

By pomeroyt’s logic a young Arab guy with no luggage and a one way ticket would get exactly the same scrutiny as an 80 year old Anglo woman traveling with two grandchildren, with round trip tickets and luggage.

This kind of insanity comes from people who believe that we as a group cannot make any sacrifice too great—up to and including cultural suicide—as long as individual rights are protected and individual responsibilities are nonexistent.

Members of ethnic and racial groups that suffered from state-sponsored persecution are especially likely to fall into this logical fallacy. “To a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” So if the Cossacks persecuted my ancestors in another country on another continent in another century, local cops are exactly the same as those Cossacks, and citizens of another country who are trespassing in this one are exactly the same as my ancestors who were legal citizens of the country that was persecuting them.

Sandra Day O’Connor said “The Constitution is not a suicide pact.” The pomeroyts of the world need to study that sentence.