Catatonic shock, speechlessness, fears for sanity–these symptoms swept the Immigration Reform community today as word spread of the publication, on the Op-Ed page of the Wall Street Journal, of an article defending the Minutemen and their analysis of the US border problem. As Steve Sailer put it, -It Must be a Cold Day in Hell.”

The article, [Minutemen Are People Too ,Leo W. Banks, May 19, 2005 ] takes no prisoners. It is primarily a savage attack on the prejudice and lack of integrity of the Main Stream Media:

we saw the cultural divide separating media elites from ordinary people…story most editors and producers wanted. They wanted to stand up the angle that went something like–no, exactly like–this::Gun-toting vigilantes run amok in the desert, hunting harmless illegals who are only looking for work.

In making the case it develops a vivid and thorough exposition of the catastrophic conditions on the Arizona border, with charming details:

One rancher told me about illegals who rustled one of her newborn calves. The intruders beat the 12-hour-old animal to death with a fence post, then barbecued it on the spot.

Banks concludes:

How long do you suppose such outrages would go on in Fairfield, Conn.? Or Greenwich? It’d be a day and a half before some kumbaya-liberal flipped sides and founded the Merritt Parkway Minutemen.

A decade ago, when my brother was fruitlessly appealing to the late Bob Bartley to be permitted to reply to WSJ attacks on Alien Nation he could point out that already two years had gone by since an immigration skeptic had been allowed space. The subsequent years have been ones of shamefully dogmatic repression.

Quite possibly the Banks article was only permitted because of the Neocons need ammunition in their war with the rest of the media about Iraq. But one thing is clear: breaking the WSJ censorship is another triumph for the Minuteman Project and its leaders Jim Gilchrist and Chris Simcox.

The WSJ piece John Brimelow refers to above contains a reference to Bud Strom, a border rancher with a thousand head of cattle, and a zillion illegals opening his gates, and maybe closing them, and occcasionally cutting the wire for no reason.

Leo Banks writes that

Since the WSJ can’t manage the massive linking we do here at Vdare.com, I thought I’d link to the original story, so you can see for yourself the New York Times getting it wrong one more time.

But also, since Bud Strom is on the frontlines there in Arizona, I thought I’d do the friendly thing and link to his cowboy poetry CD here. You either like cowboy poetry or you don’t, of course, but have a look. Maybe someday he’ll get round to one of those immigration reform anthems that James Taranto doesn’t like.

Oh, by the way, Bud Strom is a youthful looking 72; this post is called “Young Strom” because of the contrast with Ol’ Strom, 1903-2003.

My recent blog item on the propensity of Latinos to litter triggered a powerful response. Americans, it seems, resent immigrants littering almost as much as their cruelty to animals. (Brenda Walker’s They Kill Horses, Don’t They? (Mexicans, That Is.) is amongst our most widely read items.)

But there are broader reasons to be dubious about the flood of Mexicans inundating every corner of America at present. These are powerfully and elegantly discussed in Greenbacks and ‘Wetbacks’: Mexico’s Northern Strategy” posted on ChronWatch by Robert Klein Engler (links added):

One look at the skirt of snakes and necklace of human hearts worn by the statue of the Aztec goddess Coatlicue at the Museo Nacional de Antropologial in Mexico City and you realize the history of Mexico is very different from that of the U. S…there is a substratum of cruelty and violence in Mexican culture that is best left outside the United States…”

The Mexican government makes it impossible for its citizens to earn a living in their own country. For the sake of greenbacks, the poor of Mexico have decided to become illegals. There is no patriotism in this decision, nor is there idealism about the values of the U. S. Declaration of Independence, either…Ask an illegal immigrant from Mexico about their motives and this is what they will tell you: “I go north for money, not to become a gringo…” ”.

What other ethnic group in the U. S. has a newspaper called “La Raza,” which means, “The Race?”… this strain of Mexican racism…acts as an obstacle to assimilation into American society…Maria Hsia Chang, Professor of Political Science at the University of Nevada…writes, “Today, there are reasons to believe that Chicanos (and Mexicans) as a group are unlike previous immigrants in that they are more likely to remain unassimilated and unintegrated, whether by choice or circumstance, resulting in the formation of a separate quasi-nation within the United States…””

“The Mexican government has a plan,” writes Howard Sutherland, “the ongoing Mexicanization of the United States, paid for by Americans. The spectacle of a superpower being colonized by its impotent neighbor is without precedent in modern history.” What Sutherland calls the Mexican government’s “Northern Strategy” is nothing more than…an act of slow and dispersed terrorism against the U. S.”

If we have 11 million illegal immigrants in our midst, and more than half of them are unwitting Mexican agents with no desire to assimilate, then we do not have to wait for a sudden 9/11 terror attack to happen again. Coatlicue awakens. The cultural divide widens. Another catastrophe is already upon us.”

Hat Tip, American Renaissance.