We should only be surprised that the WSJ crew did not label opponents of illegal immigration Nazis or genocidal racists. Their vituperation reminds me of the old lawyer’s standby “When you can’t pound the facts, pound the law. When you can’t pound anything else, pound the table.”

Well, the WSJ would obviously prefer to call people names rather than deal with their unaswerable arguments. But maybe we shouldn’t care when they use extreme language to describe historic American values. Maybe when John Q. Public sees the beliefs of his forefathers and his own entirely justified human needs and concerns described in derogatory political terms it tends to radicalize him and reinforce opposition to the slave-labor lobby.

Or maybe not. Maybe Mr. Public is busy thinking about the Stupor Bowl.

By the way, on the general subject of overheated political language, I have always been struck by the verbally unhinged response of liberal editorialists to any hint of what they call “racism.” We all know the litany: “odious, loathsome, hateful,” etc. They don’t use this language to describe actual murderers; they are unfailingly respectful toward murderers, and carefully attach a “Mr.” to their names. But anyone with an iota of incorrect racial ideation is to be excommunicated from the human race. One can only conclude that any evidence of what is perceived as “racism” stirs up some deep conflict in the liberal subconscious. They point and shriek because they feel that above all things, they must not be forced to admit and deal with their own actual perceptions of race.

(Similarly, every few years they need to find white working-class scapegoats for their suppressed racial feelings, e.g., the absurd Gulag sentences handed down to those bat-wielding kids in Howard Beach in ‘86, the L.A. cops who fluffed up Rodney King real good in ‘91 or whenever it was, etc., etc.)

The O.J. Simpson travesty was a perfect example of what Shrewsbury describes. Throughout, the liberal editorialists and reporters pounded the theme, “presumed innocent.” As Jeffrey Toobin admitted in The New Yorker, “We constantly picked holes in the prosecution case and never wrote that the evidence against Simpson was simply overwhelming.” When the Fuhrman affair surfaced, the press practically became unhinged, as you will remember.

WSJ editorial is throughly fisked in here:

www.nationalreview.com/comment/krikorian200401281002.asp

What, exactly, is supposed to be so bad about being a “nativist”? To me, the term simply indicates someone not willing to sacrifice the interests of native Americans to foreigners: i.e., it means to be pro-American.