Lelyveld: “illegal” is a false word made up by Republicans

Joseph Lelyveld, former executive editor of the Pravda on the Hudson, has a big article in this week’s Pravda on the Hudson Magazine on the illegal immigration issue that’s boiling over in Arizona. Lelyveld reveals his honesty and good faith in passages like this, in which he manages to put both “amnesty” and “illegals” in scare quotes:

The majority of the majority [of the House], responding to what’s called its “base,” wants to seal the border and deny permanent residence—which they say would amount to “amnesty”—to the uncounted millions of “illegals” already in the country; estimates run from 8 million to 11 million to more than 20 million (roughly half of whom happen not to have crossed the border on foot but simply overstayed visas).

Thus, for Lelyveld, persons who are in this country illegally are only here “illegally”; and for the U.S. to grant 12 million such persons legal permanent residence in the U.S. is not amnesty, but “amnesty.”

Leftists like Lelyveld aren’t content with destroying our nation and civilization; in the process of doing so, they seek to destroy the meaning of words, thus destroying our ability to speak about what the nation-destroyers are doing.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 16, 2006 10:26 PM | Send