Arnold Schwarzenegger Endorses Minutemen; LA Times biased

Story dated 29 April 2005

I am happy that Schwarzenegger has come out in support of the Minutemen. If the government won't enforce the law, the people should have that power. It is only vigilantism if the people are also meting out punishments. In this case, the Minutemen are observing illegal border crossers and reporting them to the Border Patrol which is charged with arresting them. This is more like a neighborhood watch group -- and I have never heard neighborhood watches called vigilantes. Schwarzeneggers' critics who say that this support goes against his oath of office (an oath to uphold the law) are insane. The government is not currently enforcing the law; the Minutemen are there to correct this oversight. What bothers me is that people take the critics of the Minutemen seriously. The things they say make no sense -- their criticism of Schwarzenegger and the Minutemen is not logically consistent with the lawlessness of government inaction that they support.

The LA Times Reporting on the story was just plain irresponsible. They are deliberately trying to mislead people as to the nature of the Minutemen and they need to be called to account. The opening words of their story are: "Calling the nation's borders dangerously porous, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Thursday praised the private "Minuteman" campaign that uses armed volunteers to stop illegal immigrants from crossing into the U.S." Armed volunteers? It is not the policy of the Minutemen to recruit armed volunteers. Volunteers may carry weapons for self-defense, but this has nothing to do with their mission, which is to observe and report illegal border crossings. They do not apprehend border crossers.

One last question -- Why is it racism to demand that our immigration laws be enforced? This is our country; don't we have a right to demand that people coming here follow our rules to do so?

posted by The Sovereign Editor | 5:05 PM

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