- "A right-wing militia patrolling the Mexican border
to catch illegal immigrants is pitting some residents in favor of old-style
frontier justice against critics who say the militiamen are the real threat."
---
-
- Thus read the opening line from a Reuters article written
by Tim Gaynor about the Minuteman Project, an all-volunteer effort being
conducted in Arizona by a group of citizens to call attention to the problem
of the porous border between the U.S. and Mexico.
-
- Such colorful journalistic phrasings as the ones above
can be great for reeling in readers tantalized by the prospect of a chaotic
and violent skirmish between militant rightists, illegal aliens and the
U.S. Border Patrol. In reality, however, what the Minuteman Project is
engaging in is more akin to a neighborhood watch than a lawless spree of
vigilantism, so readers looking for journalistic accuracy ought to look
elsewhere.
-
- You have to wonder if Tim Gaynor either slept through
- or totally missed - the first day of Newswriting 101, which must have
included at least some little tidbit about not writing biased and misleading
lines. Giving Tim's work just a cursory going over, one notices factual
inaccuracies popping up like mushrooms in cow dung.
-
- For instance, consider the very first words: "A
right-wing militia . . ." The obvious question for Tim is, what makes
the Minutemen either "right-wing" or "militia?" "Right-wing"
smacks of negativity and infers an extreme degree of conservativeness,
but by whose standards is it overly conservative to want to see the simple
enforcement of our country,s immigration laws?
-
- As for "militia," granted the Minutemen took
their name from a very famous one, but they are still not one themselves.
A militia is basically defined as an organized group of citizen soldiers,
but these Minutemen have no soldierly or military objectives at all.
-
- Skipping along a few words we come to "old-style
frontier justice," which suggests to readers that the "right-wing
militia" is looking for some kind of violent showdown with illegals.
In reality, the Minutemen have specifically stated that they will neither
confront nor apprehend anyone themselves, but instead only report lawbreakers
to the proper authorities. The same can be said about a reference to "vigilantes"
further on in the article.
-
- So, are you beginning to see a pattern? We,ve just dissected
basically one sentence from one article on a politically sensitive issue
and it absolutely reeks of misinformation and bias. And you can bet your
sweet bippy this wasn,t just an aberration that fell through the cracks
of an otherwise well-oiled journalistic machine that efficiently weeds
out bad information.
-
- Interestingly, the journalism problem and the border
problem both have similar underlying causes. The reason the border problem
is allowed to ceaselessly rage out of control--and the reason that people
who want that to change are branded by the media as right-wing, racist,
militia extremists--is because of the politically correct thinking that
rages out of control at all levels of society, even, unfortunately, all
the way up to the highest office in the land.
-
- That thinking says that if we crack down on the southern
border, it might be offensive to members of what is a nonwhite ethnic group
and that wouldn,t be kosher no matter how many millions of them blatantly
violate our laws and sovereignty.
-
- The Minuteman Project would like to shatter that imbecilic
paradigm into tiny irretrievable pieces before illegal crossings become
so numerous and crowded that bin Laden himself could waltz across the border
unnoticed amongst the multitudes. As sensible as that should sound to any
rational person, it will be fought every step of the way by the ACLU, the
U.S. Border Patrol, hordes of American politicians, el presidente de Mexico
and myriad others.
-
- First, the ACLU, America,s most infuriating gaggle of
lawyers, is looking for any excuse to slap a lawsuit on the Minutemen,
warning that they might come to Arizona "as vigilantes and end up
leaving as defendants." Of course, illegal aliens can flood into Arizona
until doomsday and never be looked upon as "defendants" by the
ACLU, but rather as innocent economic migrants just looking for honest
work.
-
- ACLU of Arizona spokesman Ray Ybarra went so far as to
say that the very presence of the Minutemen at the border constitutes "unlawful
imprisonment" of "undocumented migrants." Huh? Strait-jacketed
bedlamites in rubber rooms routinely make more sensible statements.
-
- The U.S. Border Patrol has its own complaints, among
them that the Minutemen have inadvertently set off devices placed in the
desert that are designed to detect illegals. Well, sure, there,s a big
problem. The normally stellar performance of the Border Patrol is being
loused up by a bunch of klutzy, interfering vigilantes setting off false
alarms in a system that is otherwise so efficient that only a million or
two illegals cross the border every year unimpeded.
-
- American politicians are scared witless of offending
Hispanic voters and Presidente Fox isn,t about to do anything to stem the
flow of illegals from his own country to the U.S. since they provide the
single biggest source of money for his basket case of a country.
-
- Aligned with everyone else against the Minuteman Project
is a vicious Central American gang known as MS-13, which has reportedly
made threats against the Minutemen for daring to bring attention to the
border problem (and possibly messing up their smuggling operations). A
perfect illustration of the problem is the leader of the gang who has been
arrested eight times since 2001, deported on numerous occasions, but keeps
coming back as if, instead of having to cross sovereign national borders
with some sort of legal restrictions, he,s traveling from Peoria on a frolicsome
motoring trip to the Wisconsin Dells.
-
- Make no mistake. There,s bedlam down on the border and
for various perverse reasons, nobody in authority wants to do anything
about it. The Minuteman Project, despite the grotesque inaccuracies and
caricatures in the media, stands some sliver of a chance of inspiring change.
If something doesn,t change, however, someday we,ll be looking back on
2005 as the good ol, days before things really got out of hand.
-
- Greg Strange is a freelance writer of humor and social
commentary. His columns have appeared in Atlanta Constitution, Christian
Science Monitor and Comic Relief Magazine. He is a regular columnist for
Ether Zone.
-
- Published originally at EtherZone.com
- Republication allowed with this notice and hyperlink
intact.
- http://www.etherzone.com/2005/stra041505.shtml
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