A Pilgrim’s Digression

I think the intense heat generated over the issue of illegal immigration, and the anger among Conservatives, is out of proportion to the problem. The people I hear on the radio often talk about illegal immigrants as if the crime they committed is somehow tantamount to mass murder. I don’t understand that. Few people propose that someone bilking the welfare system should be taken out and shot, but it is not uncommon to hear someone propose that the border patrol should be able to shoot people crossing the border illegally.

On the Chris Core show on Monday, he had a caller, an African-American man no less, who was extremely angry over illegal immigration. The caller actually proposed that the National Guard should be placed on the border where they would be allowed to shoot people entering the country illegally. Core took him seriously, too. It was really astonishing.

Perhaps it’s just a sign of the times. People today more readily express themselves in overblown, angry rhetoric, than in reasoned, modulated tones. It’s a simple thing to sit in your car and call a radio show and suggest that a National Guard soldier take aim and shoot dead a Mexican crossing the border illegally. What the telephone bloviator does not consider is who is doing the shooting. What kind of man could pull that trigger?

These Guard soldiers are citizens who, when their two-week shift is up, will go back to their jobs as a school teacher or fireman or construction worker, or whatever. Do you really want citizens who are capable, let alone allowed, to shoot people for crossing a border?

People use that kind of hyperbolic language all the time, however. Leakers in the CIA should be taken out and shot as traitors–I’ve heard that one just recently on the Michael Savage program. I don’t think otherwise normal people talked like this, before the rise of Conservative talk radio.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying talk radio should be silenced. I just wonder if people realize how talk radio has changed our discourse in America from one of calm, reasoned debate to fiery attacks and denunciations?

There’s a great, brief post over at the New Republic that pokes fun at Conservative book titles. How angry they are! I don’t know which is funniest, Anne Coulter’s The Church of Liberalism: Godless, or Sean Hannity’s book title, Deliver Us From Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism, and Liberals. Yes, Liberals, he is equating you with terrorists and despots. Rejoice in your malignancy! Thanks to Andrew Sullivan’s blog for the tip about that New Republic post.

In 1971, was it common to hear people say that Daniel Ellsberg, the man who leaked the Pentagon Papers story to the New York Times, should be taken out and shot as a traitor? I’d be interested in hearing from people who were alive and paying attention, back then.