Finally, the Times tells the truth about the amnesty opponents

Here was the front page lead headline in the May 25 New York Times:

Immigration Bill Provisions Gain Wide Support in Poll

The story reported:

Taking a pragmatic view on a divisive issue, a large majority of Americans want to change the immigration laws to allow illegal immigrants to gain legal status and to create a new guest worker program to meet future labor demands, the poll found.

This poll was, of course, part of the push by the Times and the rest of the liberal media to persuade the public that passage of the bill was a foregone conclusion and that resistance was futile.

However, after the bill was stopped on June 7, showing that resistance was not futile after all, the Times spitted out in its June 9 editorial:

The anti-immigrant hard-core—no amnesty today, no amnesty tomorrow, no amnesty forever—must not be allowed to hold the nation hostage.

So, despite the poll showing a “large majority” of Americans wanting the bill, it got stopped by an “anti-immigrant hard-core” that somehow held the “large majority” hostage. The will of the people was squelched by a tiny unrepresentative minority. This minority, moreover, was characterized by the Times as echoing George Wallace in the schoolhouse door declaring “Segregation today, Segregation tomorrow, Segregation forever,” thus equating opposition to the legalization of illegal aliens with the racial segregation of blacks.

Yet the next day, June 10, the Times’ front page lead story by Julia Preston presented a very different picture of the amnesty opponents:

Grass Roots Roared and Immigration Plan Collapsed

The grass roots roared? How’s that again? We thought it was just the anti-immigrant hard core that had suppressed the true desire of the American people to give all those illegals amnesty. In fact, Preston’s article is a truthful account of the deep convictions held by the Americans who participated in a grass roots phone lobbying effort of unprecedented scope and intensity, defeating a bill that all the experts including the Times had said could not be defeated. Preston also gives a fair account of those convictions: over and over, she quotes her interviewees stating in the plainest language that to give this massive reward to millions of lawbreakers is morally wrong, un-American, and totally unacceptable to them. Not once does she suggest that the bill’s opponents are motivated by racial animus against Hispanics. When the New York Times is more objective toward grass-roots conservatives than is the Republican White House, the Republican hierarchy, and much of the conservative establishment, somethin’ is cookin’.

Let’s continue with Preston’s story.

[T]he legislation sparked a furious rebellion among many Republican and even some Democratic voters, who were linked by the Internet and encouraged by radio talk show hosts. Their outrage and activism surged to full force after Senator Jon Kyl, the Arizona Republican who was an author of the bill, suggested early this week that support for the measure seemed to be growing. The assault on lawmakers in Washington was relentless. In a crucial vote Thursday night, the bill’s supporters, including President Bush, fell short by 15 votes. While there is a possibility the legislation could be revived later this year, there was a glow of victory among opponents on Friday.

Note the fascinating point that when Kyl said that support for the measure was growing, instead of that report breaking the opponents’ spirits, it spurred them to greater efforts than ever. This was an index of the level of conviction on the part of the opponents.

At the same time, being unwilling to let go entirely of the Times’ earlier fake script of a tiny minority illegitimately suppressing the will of the majority, Preston portrays the fact of citizens calling their senators on a historically important piece of legislation as an “assault.” This is the view of politics most closely associated with Sen. John (“We all know this issue can be caught up in extracurricular politics unless we move forward as quickly as possible”) McCain. Politics, according to McCain and the Times, is an illegitimate, nasty activity, even a form of violence, that needs to be avoided at all costs. Why is that? Because if the majority rules and has its way over the minority, that means society is not equal after all. To assure true equality for everyone, society must be ruled by an unelected elite who know what’s best for everyone.

Preston’s story continues:

“Technologically enhanced grass-roots activism is what turned this around, people empowered by the Internet and talk radio,” said Colin A. Hanna, president of Let Freedom Ring, a conservative group.

Mr. Hanna suggested the passion and commitment were on the side of the opponents.

“The opposition to the amnesty plan is so much more intense than the intensity of the supporters,” said Mr. Hanna, speaking of the bill’s provisions to grant legal status to qualifying illegal immigrants, which the authors of the legislation insisted was not amnesty.

In other words, there was passionate intensity at the grass roots level against the worst piece of legislation in U.S. history. Yeats’ apocalyptic vision has been reversed. Instead of, “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity,” now it’s the good and patriotic people of this country who have passionate intensity, while the people who favor the bill aimed at destroying the country lack conviction.

Christopher Sabatini, senior director of policy at the Americas Society/Council of the Americas, which follows Hispanic immigration, described the bill as “born an orphan in terms of popular support.”

“You got the sense of a deafening silence from the supporters, and the roar of the opposition,” Mr. Sabatini said.

An orphan in terms of popular support? What happened to that “wide support” for the bill, that “large majority of Americans,” reported in the Times’ own poll just two weeks earlier?

“Ordinary people like me rose up and put a stop to it,” said William Murphy, a retired policeman from Evansville, Wis., one of the Grassfire.org volunteers who delivered petitions to his senators. On Thursday before the vote, he said, he put in new calls to 15 senators.

Mr. Murphy said he felt strongly about the bill because he believed it would degrade the value of American citizenship.

“If I come from Mexico, I can jump the fence and get all those American benefits,” he said. “It’s outrageous when you can buy your citizenship for $5,000,” he said, referring to the fines that illegal immigrants would pay under the bill to become legal permanent residents.

Now get this:

When asked about Mr. Bush’s support for the bill, Mr. Murphy, a longtime Republican, had to pause to temper his words.

“I was stunned, really,” he said. Mr. Bush “has always been a person who stood for some basic human values, and now he’s going to give away the country?”

While Preston does not quote all the arguments on the opponents’ side, her fair and factual story shows a grass roots uprising driven by sincere conviction against a bill that people thought was just plain wrong. This was the exact opposite of the Times’ “official” view of the matter as expressed in its editorial the previous day.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 11, 2007 09:56 AM | Send