About the sad state of affairs in this country and what now passes as patriotism, head on over to Q and O and get a load of what Jon Henke has been dealing with lately. Jon linked to this outrageous video allegedly showing homegrown patriots executing illegal immigrants (the folks at Orcinus have been covering this in great detail). Jon writes:
Assuming the video is real…
He wanted to be free and live a better life where that was possible…so he was shot.
The shooter and everybody involved should be imprisoned for life. The United States would be far better off with millions of illegal immigrants living freely in our country….and one less of each of the people behind this video.
You would think the response, assuming the video is true, would be one of unanimous disgust and outrage. You would, alas, be wrong. Jon had to do a follow-up:
Last night, I wrote a post pointing to what appeared to be a video of border vigilantes shooting an illegal immigrant. Two comments to that post deserve to be exposed to sunlight…
1. “Look, America is our home. Our house, if you will. If someone breaks into my home at night, I’l shooting them. […] But when they show from the absolute start that they have no regard for our laws, I don’t want them here, and sicne the government is doing almost nothing to stop their entry, I would forward the idea that Paco and Jose will stop trying to break into our house once they hear about how Jose’s 2 brothers got shot trying the same trick last week…”
2. “That said, a few more of these may be a very effective deterrent against illegal immigration.”
There is no excuse and no defense for this, and it is not welcome in our comments.
Jon, of course, has it completely right, but the fact that these folks are out there and actually think they are patriots is still entirely too depressing for me to say much more.
ThymeZone
Apparently the video has been taken down. So it says to me when I try to play it.
The US Border Patrol (this may come as a surprise) does not patrol the border of the United States shooting at illegal aliens. It rounds them up, and takes them back to Mexico.
If there are actually people out there shooting at aliens and making videos, then those people should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. We don’t do vigilante justice in this country, and we don’t do vigilante border patrol.
The continued attempts of the crazy people to seize control of our country and destroy it will be resisted agressively. We executed Timothy McVeigh, just as an example.
No, America is not “your home,” making you free to shoot people as you see fit. It’s still a country of laws, and civilization. So far. I am in favor of having a United States of Dumbass Rednecks where people like you can go and live, but until that country is established and you move away, you will have to observe our laws and customs.
jnfr
Is there a link in there to Q and O? I’m not sure where that is.
Equal Opportunity Cynic
So if the vigilantes show that they have no regard for our laws, then it’s OK to shoot the vigilantes. And since the meta-vigilantes who shoot the vigilantes are violating the law, it would be fine for 3rd-order vigilantes to shoot them.
This is what we get when we discard the rule of law as an unnecessary annoyance: an infinite regression of vengeance.
ThymeZone:
Right on! I’d love for the Wingnut Homeland to exist — maybe called the Republic of Texas or something. I’d never have any reason to visit, but I think it’d be great for these people to have a place where they can be with the like-minded.
Sadly, I might have to leave my native Alabama again, in permanent exile. Then again, my county is just about ready to secede from the state anyway, since we’re such a disproportionate part of the tax base.
jake
Sorry. Many Native Americans tried executions and all out warfare. As you can see it didn’t stop the encroaching hordes of illegals, some of whom spawned slope-browed, knuckle dragging baboons.
Um. I recommend you not travel any further south or west than your current location. Or if you do, don’t talk to anyone.
Incertus (Brian)
Here I was hoping that the people described in Dave’s posts were mostly talk and little action, like most of the people I grew up with. Now I’m depressed. What the hell are we coming to?
Andrew
The QandO folks are against executing brown people, unless they’ve been waterboarded and tortured first, in which case it’s fine.
demimondian
For heaven’s sake.
American has a long and storied history of quasi-fascist terrorism. What do you think the Klan was? The “militia movement” in 90’s? The Posse Commitatus? Abortion clinic bombings? These guys are just proving, once again, that the fruit doesn’t fall far from the tree.
rawshark
I feel safe assuming these assholes are christians so I’d just like to quote the man and say ‘let he who is without sin cast the first stone’.
Psycheout
Since all life is sacred, murder cannot be condoned. These were probably Tancredo supporters, assuming this isn’t a hoax.
ThymeZone
I don’t know if it’s a hoax or not but it’s close to the truth we do know, which is scary in and of itself.
These people are all about demonizing aliens:
Get it? Aliens are child rapists and murderers running loose on our streets.
VidaLoca
Ayup. From the lynching of single individuals (which is essentially what we’re discussing here) to episodic pogroms (single city, 3-4 days) to the “border wars” in Kansas and Missouri that lasted through the late 1850’s and presaged the Civil War, terrorism is exactly what it is. And the ultimate purpose is not only intimidation of the immediately targeted group, but intimidation of anyone would seek to support or advocate basic human rights or equality under the law.
So here’s my question. I seem to recall the line about “America is our home / we can’t let anyone break into our house” as being one of the tag lines from the last Republican debate (I didn’t watch the debate so I don’t know who said it). And now it pops up out of the mouth of one of these knuckle-draggers. Coincidence? Discuss.
The issue of immigration, how it’s handled, how the immigrants are treated, how the rule of equality under the law is applied, is going to be the moral question for our generation like Civil Rights was the moral question for the generation of the 1960s.
Rome Again
Just wait until they decide to turn the guns inward and start getting rid of those they don’t like who live in “our house”. That will make this look like target practice.
The kind of people who are willing to decide who can be here and who can’t are absolutely insane.
Tsulagi
Yeah, looks like YouTube pulled the video. But I may have found it on LiveLeak. With a helpful music soundtrack to get the patriots sufficiently aroused.
Yes, our immigrant founders who wrote the Constitution would brim with pride watching these inbreds.
Tsulagi
Oh, while taking a quick look for that video I found another. Maybe representative of the calm, reasoned thinking on the thorny issue of immigration by The Base. He’s also fond of Hillary. Kinda funny. This guy needs to meet Prozac and be its best friend.
incontrolados
This link is at Orcinus — to the Southern Poverty Law Center — warning though, the audio is truly truly disturbing.
The complete disregard for another’s life — and the uncontrolled anger — what can I say. They don’t scare me, but I really wish that they could find an inanimate target for their rage.
Jon Henke
Screw you, Andrew. You don’t have a clue what I or my co-bloggers think about that.
Had you looked before you wrote, you’d have found that we’ve written quite a lot against torture. But you didn’t.
DougJ
Jon, I probably don’t agree with you on much, but you’re doing the right thing here and I applaud you for it.
Sirkowski
Right-wing extremists have had a free ride since the War on Terror took most of the police ressources. Are we gonna see another Oklahoma City bombing if a Democrat is elected President?
JWW
John,
I agree with you, if this does take place those responsible should be punished to the full extent of the law. I have seen the video, over and over, I would doubt its validity. It was bad acting and the guy who had the night vision was also the guy who appeared to be jacking the round. Even with that, they need to find him, he does appear to be going too far with the threat.
On the flipside, he could be a land owner on the boarder and wants to keep invaders off his property. That does not justify shooting somebody, but the loud verbal threats may deter some from using his property as passage.
ThymeZone
I’m sure that it will come as a great shock to the people over there in qandoland that people here don’t relish the idea of studying a site that pimps for a joke political party, a party that panders to Young Earth Creationists and has nothing better to do than bash Michael Moore in a country that is slipping toward the third world in healthcare and venal profitseeking as the prime driver of medical policy.
Fuck all rightwing apologists, blogs and pundits. Fuck them eternally and in every possible way for being the cheerleaders for people who are destroying this country every goddammed day.
“Iraq, the central front in the war on terror?” Get outta here with that load of crap. Who do you think you are talking to, a bunch of high school dropouts who can’t read a newspaper?
Your whole website and everything it stands for is a frigging joke …. on us.
Sorry, you guys long ago lost any respect necessary for anyone to care what you think about that, or about anything.
When people have been wrong about everything for as long as your side has, you don’t come along and say “Hey, you didn’t study up on my views!” Your views appear to be totally toxic, completely lunatic.
qando.net, for crissakes? I’d sooner get my ideas from Mad Magazine.
Davebo
Wow, it must have been hard for you to ignore McQ’s plethora of posts on the subject Jon.
Then again, I’d be embarrased as well by a guy on my blog claiming we should fund the Iraq war by defunding the NEA.
jake
Tweaked for accuracy.
But that’s one reason these wastes of skin are so gleeful to have an automatically “guilty” group to go after. They’re (usually) bright enough to realize the good old days of grabbing any brown person at random and stringing him up with no consequences are gone. But now they’ve got group of brown people who are here illegally. They’re breaking the law, ergo they’re not entitled to the protections of the law.
The same “guilty by reason of existence” logic powers the justification of keeping people locked up in Gitmo, approving of torture, even yawning while the Bill of Rights goes bye-bye. They’re convinced those things will only happen to “Those People,” and that gives them a big throbbing hate on.
The Other Steve
Last time I went to QandO it was a cess pool of diaper wearing Republicans in fear of the islamofascist terror.
McQ is a real piece of crazy work.
John Cole
You guys are embarassing me.
I don’t care if you disagree with his positions on other issues, he is on the right side of this one, and all you are doing is shitting all over him.
Wilfred
I feel exactly the same way.
ThymeZone
This may be so, but how does being wrong 99% of the time entitle a guy to a pat on the back for the one time he is right?
John, you are right 99% of the time but you know we’ll take you to the cleaners when you are wrong. So …. there you are.
numbskull
“I don’t care if you disagree with his positions on other issues, he is on the right side of this one, and all you are doing is shitting all over him.”
Boo-fucking-hoo.
If I could literally shit on him, I would. Or at least, I’d hire an illegal immigrant to shit on him…
John Cole
You know what- in threads at Q and O where there are people who disagree with me on as many issues as you disagree with Jon, I do not recall them acting like this. So you disagree with him on those issues- when he writes about them, put your opinions up- he has a comments section. But in threads here, I am not going to let you sit around and use them as a platform to shit all over him when he is taking a stand for the right side of an issue without saying I think you are acting like dicks. Because you are.
Act like adults.
jake
Just out of curiosity John, how often do you go to another blog and write things like this to commenter:
I’m not asking for an exact number, your best estimate will do.
And is the Pie/Rove filter broken?
Andrew
Are you kidding? If we’re going to judge sites by the comments, then QandO is like Hit & Run without the wit plus a little bit of LGF’s deep thoughts on race and religion. The live to call Scott Erb an America-hating leftard and have never had a reasonable debate on anything, as far as I can tell.
Janus Daniels
John needs to understand that gratuitous insults reflect esteem on our community, and demonstrate the writer’s intellectual superiority, thus converting the unenlightened to agree with us.
ThymeZone
Ah, bullshit. They simply reflect peoples’ honest opinion of something. If the recipients can’t deal with it, tough shit.
stickler
What?
I see a few people here, acting like very angry adult citizens of a Republic which is running off the rails. And they’re taking a healthy dislike to some chump from a bullshit pants-wetting Big Government “Conservative” website who just happens — this once — to be on the right side of a subject.
A day late and a dollar short, sure, but I guess the guy’s heart is in the right place. But so what. QandO has been shilling for Bushco for a long time now. And this is the wages of Bushco. Tough.
susan
John– dude. disemvowelling.
DougJ
I agree completely with both of the statements above.
Psycheout
The commenters in the linked threads were being pretty darn rude to Henke. I find it surprising that Jon chose to come over here to vent.
Beej
Uh. . .to go back, for a moment, to the original topic. . .
There is, of course, a surefire method of reducing illegal immigration to a bare trickle. It’s just that nobody with political ambitions will ever even attempt to use said method. Anyone who employs an illegal alien will be subject to a fine of $50,000 per incident and a minimum of three months in jail, non-suspendable. Make it a strict liability statute. Proving that you didn’t know your employee was an illegal alien would not be a defense. It is an employer’s duty to know. Enforce this vigorously for a year or two and the problem of illegal immigration would cease to be a problem. It’s never going to happen, of course. Whatever would the Friends of George do for gardeners and nannies?
dslak
I think it would be a defense if said employee had believable yet fake documents to prove his or her legal employability.
elchubs
Let’s not forget the Dems and their hispanic bloc of voters.
dslak
There’s certainly something to this, but the matter is far more complex.
Bush’s attempt to overhaul immigration laws was a Rovian strategy that was meant to bring Hispanics, who are assumed to be fairly religious and socially conservative, into the GOP’s “big tent.”
Instead, it brought out some of the virulent racism simmering beneath the modern GOP coalition, and sent Hispanics running for the Democrats. The Democrats don’t actually have to do anything to win the Hispanic votes for the next few election cycles; they just have to keep quiet while the xenophobes in the GOP grab the headlines.
Jon H
All you have to do is post a link (sorry I don’t have one) to a news story about the recent video released by Russian neo-Nazis, in which two captive men from the Caucuses region are killed – one shot, one decapitated – purely because of were they’re from.
The people responsible for the Russian video are of the same nature as the Americans shooting Mexicans.
demimondian
Ok, let’s not.
The Dems and their Hispanic bloc of voters would be unaffected. You see, you have to be a citizen to vote. No citizen is an alien, much less an undocumented alien.
But, I know, Michael Moore is fat, and we should all remember that the Clenis and the Clintoris did it first.
jake
Your idea would also shut down a lot of factories and construction sites. This is about a cheap disposable labor pool that thinks it has no recourse to the law, right here in the US of A. That’s the dirty little secret FoG don’t want you to know.
That’s also why talk about holding the employers accountable was quickly stifled.