not f'n acceptable
I am generally a supporter of the Minutemen project. I don't know a whole lot about it; I live in Pennsylvania, which, not counting Philadelphia, has a total Hispanic population of about 15. This state dosen't exactly have a huge illegal immigration problem (unless you count the West Virginians that keep sneaking up here).
But I do know that our border security is, largely, a joke. No shock there; as I've pointed out, Americans seem to love the appearance of security, they like knowing that somebody out there is working on it, but they don't much care for the actual imposition of real security or spending money to actually do something about it. Until a spectacular failure of the security system occurs, of course, then it's all anger and recrimination.
Anyway, a bunch of private citizens getting together to help out with patrolling parts of the border, if it's done in the proper manner, seems like a good idea to me. It wouldn't be, if it wasn't so obviously needed, but as things stand if people are willing to volunteer for the effort to improve the security of the nation's borders, good for them.
A big part of the reason I like the project is that the representatives I've heard, on news and talk radio, seem like pretty reasonable, sensible people. From my understanding, they sometimes carry guns, but only for defensive purposes, and possibly intimidation. There hasn't been a single incident of brutality or violence. They don't have anything against hispanics in general, and have no problem with proper immingration. The problem comes in massive amounts of people of unknown origin or motivation sliding in, with drugs or weapons or whatever. Stopping that is a noble goal, and it is one that our government isn't doing enough to accomplish. It isn't extremist to want to slow or stop people that are great big unknowns from coming into the country illegally in massive numbers.
But only in that format. This, on the other hand, is absolutly, unequivocably
unnacceptable:
See that Confederate Flag? Trashy, not acceptable. But not half as bad as the one next to it:
Us right-wingers keep getting all pissed off when the nutjobs at DU call us "Nazis" or "Fascists". And rightly so: nothing I say bears any resembelance to Nazism. For that matter, nothing Sean Hannity, considerably to the right of me, says bears any resemblance to it.
But this is ridiculous. I don't care if they just suddenly showed up with those stupid flags, they should've been kicked the hell out. The only excuse I can think of is that this is somehow a less-than-honest story, as it comes mostly from indymedia, not exactly the world's most trustworthy news source. But if it is true, as it appears to be, there is no excuse for it.
The people driving that project need to put a lock on shit like that, and weed them out of their organization. It dosen't really surprise me that they'd try to get in, but all they will do is corrupt a good cause. That kind of thinking is damaging to and has no place in any responsible organization.
Links via
Lab Kat, via
Army of Mom.
