The Nation Glares at Arizona...really?

Washington Post columnist (and reliably doctrinaire leftist) Katherine Vanden Heuvel wrote a column titled "The Nation Glares at Arizona." Basically she took Arizona's immorality as a given, and devoted herself to tactical issues.

Heuvel allowed any number of frothing Tea Party comments to be entered, as you'll see if you click on the link--but she censored out mine, which was considerably less frothy. Here it is--see what you think:

Katherine Vanden Heuvel’s arguments against the Arizona law are as follows:

1. 22 years ago Arizona’s Republican governor rescinded observation of Martin Luther King Day. He also defended calling Black kids “pickaninnies.”

2. Several other cites and/or states outside Arizona have declared boycotts of Arizona.

3. The Arizona law is “culturally insensitive (or openly racist).”

Let’s examine each:

1. This is supposed to “prove” that all of Arizona’s Republican legislators are racists, have always been racists, and always will be racists, because of some things one of them did 22 years ago.

Arguments like this are symptomatic of the isolation of ideologues from those with opposing views. It appears that VDH simply has never had to defend her ideas against anyone who doesn’t already agree with her.

And even if Arizona’s current legislature turned out to be racist, that isn’t an argument against this law—only against trusting the motives of its creators. But the logic and factual basis for a law don’t depend on the motives of its crafters—they depend on the logic and factual basis of the law itself.

Attacking the character of your opponent is a common dirty trick—Republican campaigns use this as a matter of course; but don’t be fooled—Demos do too, as VDH demonstrates here.

Debaters call this the ad hominem attack.

2. Boycotts: How is this a moral argument? From a leftist point of view, would boycotts of “sanctuary” cities justify opposing illegal immigration? Of course not. Therefore it’s simply a declaration of power: Surrender, Arizona. Resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.

3. “culturally insensitive.” This is a Medieval syllogism. Illegal immigration is nonwhite. Anyone who opposes anything that nonwhites want is racist. Therefore resistance to illegal immigration is racist.

But as with #2, this is never applied the other way. For example, I know about white racists—as the descendant of what Southerners would call White Trash, most of my paternal line qualified.

Though to be fair to them, they did say that when the last of them to live in slave times was ordered to beat a slave, he’s take him behind the barn and beat the ground with a stick while the slave yelped. So for the time that ancestor was a good guy.

But since then I did a stint of teaching in ghetto schools, and that’s when I met such bigoted racists that they put my folks to shame.

Likewise, I find that people like Van Den Heuvel have zero respect for Anglo American culture. Every other culture on Earth (well, if it’s nonwhite), sure. You bet. But Anglo culture? It is to be destroyed as quickly as possible.

I always thought claims like this exaggerated the truth—nobody could hate their own society like this. But over the past four years I’ve read so many statements gloating over the coming destruction of Anglo America by a rising tide of nonwhite reproduction that I’ve come to realize sometimes even knuckle-dragging Southern whites aren’t totally lying.

Of course there’s the claim that it’s impossible to be insensitive to the group in power—as in only whites are racist. Everyone else is just defending themselves against the monstrous evil that is white folk.

But when I’ve been the only white person in the room—and I have on more than one occasion—then who’s in power? Or walking down the street in the part of town where the main street is named Martin Luther King Blvd.? Does an elderly white person in such a situation feel in power then?

I’ve traveled in 17 countries. My circle of friends includes people from half a dozen nations. But my parent culture is Anglo American, and I like it, I want to come home to it, and I don’t want to see it destroyed—and I find all the comments in this thread that accuse anyone who objects of being a racist, automatically—well, that’s truly “culturally insensitive.”

These aren’t one way streets—and everyone should apply to themselves the principles they expect others to uphold. Van Den Heuvel does not.