Kathryn Lopez’s ignorant article on Tancredo, the pope, and immigration

According to the April 16 Sidney Morning Herald, Pope Benedict XVI during his flight to the U.S. told reporters that the United States must do “everything possible to fight … all forms of violence so that immigrants may lead dignified lives.” (The ellipses were in the original.)

That was the statement Tom Tancredo was responding to when he said last week:

I would like to know what part of our lax immigration policy is considered violent. I fail to see how accepting more refugees than any other nation—and providing free health care, education, housing and social service benefits to millions of illegal aliens is in any way “violent” or “degrading.”

Yesterday, Kathryn Jean Lopez at National Review Online criticized Tancredo and made a complete hash of it. First she quoted at length a statement the pope had made to U.S. bishops. Then she wrote:

Be chill, congressman. No one said anything about amnesty and no one said our immigration policy is violent.

Yes, it is true that in the pope’s statement that Lopez quoted, he did not say that our immigration policy is violent. That is because the pope’s statement she quoted was not the pope’s statement to which Tancredo had responded. Lopez for some bizarre reason was under the impression that it was. Clearly Lopez was ignorant of the pope’s actual remarks, reported widely in the media, that the U.S. must do “everything possible to fight … all forms of violence so that immigrants may lead dignified lives.” She didn’t even notice that Tancredo statement, which she quoted in her article, correctly quoted the pope’s actual words which Tancredo then criticized.

Not only did Lopez show a complete failure to grasp the facts at issue, she then proceeded gratuitously to inform us of her total ignorance of American history:

The pope knows this nation was founded by immigrants and that immigration today is a significant subject of political debate and struggle. The Church needs to continue to serve. And the government, while making and enforcing law, needs to be humane. Isn’t that pretty much what a pope would say?

“K-Lo,” the editor of the online edition of National Review, thinks that America was “founded by immigrants.” In reality, the American colonies were founded by British colonists, not immigrants, in the early to mid seventeenth century. In the late eighteenth century, 150 years later, the descendants of those British colonists, who were themselves British colonists, not immigrants, rebelled from Great Britain and created the United States of America. Lopez thinks that Samuel Adams, John Adams, Patrick Henry, Benjamin Franklin, George Mason, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson were immigrants. It’s bad enough that mindless liberal opinion shapers keep spewing the demoralizing lie that America is a “nation of immigrants.” Now we’re told by America’s leading conservative magazine that America was founded by immigrants.

By the way, the statement could not even be theoretically true. An immigrant is a person who moves from one sovereign nation to another. If America was “founded by immigrants,” what was the country to which they had moved, since, given that they were the founders of America, there was no country that was here until they founded it?

If you want to write to Lopez, she can be reached by e-mail here.

As for National Review, clearly it has lost its vocation. It has been here too long for any good it has been doing. It is time for it to go.

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A reader writes:

Normally, conservative journalists don’t like it when someone implies that America is filled with xenophobes eager to beat up outsiders.

LA replies:

What has filled the conservative Web for the last three weeks but outrage over Barack Obama’s statement that white people hate and fear everyone different from themselves? But when the pope utters the same kind of cheap slander against America that came from Obama,—but even worse, since he was charging that America uses violence against immigrants—and when Rep. Tancredo protests this smear, the editor of National Review Online leaps into print covering up this smear of America.

Now, maybe the news report of the pope’s “violence” comment was incorrect; maybe it was taken out of context. But Lopez didn’t argue that. She just ignored the statement and pretended it wasn’t there—even though she herself had quoted it in her quotation of Tancredo.

National Review is finished. There’s nothing there any more.

LA continues:

Another thing. I bet that if Lopez realizes the mistake she made, it won’t even bother her. She won’t feel embarrased or ashamed to have done such a stupid thing. The NRO people are simply creatures of the prevailing liberal culture with its contempt for standards.

Ray G. in Dearbornistan writes:

Ha, ha, I sent an email note to Katherine Jean a few hours ago, saying that Tancredo wasn’t wrong to point out the Vatican’s hypocrisy when it comes to its own border, laws and rules. In fact, the Vatican has fences and gates and doesn’t tolerate squatters and trespassers. Apparently, Americans are not to expect the same for our country.

Perhaps Tanc should have put it another way but he had every right to speak up for the other side of the immigration debate, which is rarely given equal time in the media or the politically correct, Washington Beltway.

Vincent Chiarello writes:

I no longer even bother to peruse NR, for, as most conservatives would agree, it lost its way many moons ago.

Hal Netkin writes:

“America was founded by rebellious English colonists—not immigrants.”

But giving you the benefit of the doubt and taking your point that if America’s founding was by immigrants as evidence that massive immigration must be a good thing in today’s world, then you must consider that since Australia was founded by banished English felons, that today’s Australian immigration policy would be enhanced by admitting the worlds felons.

LA replies:

Exactly. Or, as I argued in Huddled Cliches, since England was formed by repeated invasions by Germanic invaders between the fifth and 11th century, England during WWII should have welcomed being invaded by Nazi Germany.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at April 22, 2008 03:11 PM | Send