Are You a Crazy-Ass Racist?

Probably, at least according to the super-secret liberal e-mail group called JournoList. Mickey Kaus reveals a long string of e-mails among these elites of perfectly liberal opinion. The title of the thread is "Marty Peretz is a Crazy-Ass Racist" - yes, that's Marty Peretz of the liberal New Republic. What terrible thing did he do, you must be thinking. Did he use the N-word against a little-old lady? Did he call for the reinstatement of Jim Crow laws, or voice regret over the emancipation of the slaves? Not quite. What he did was raise some concerns about Mexican-American relations:

"Well, I am extremely pessimistic about Mexican-American relations, not because the U.S. had done anything specifically wrong to our southern neighbor but because a (now not quite so) wealthy country has as its abutter a Latin society with all of its characteristic deficiencies: congenital corruption, authoritarian government, anarchic politics, near-tropical work habits, stifling social mores, Catholic dogma with the usual unacknowledged compromises, an anarchic counter-culture and increasingly violent modes of conflict. Then, there is the Mexican diaspora in America, hard-working and patriotic but mired in its untold numbers of illegals, about whom no one can talk with candor."

Now the part I bolded above might be a thoughtless use of a stereotype - I have no idea how to measure the work habits of Mexicans, and not sure Peretz has any real knowledge to back that up. But otherwise, isn't all of the above at worst plausibly true, if not clearly true. I'm not sure what exactly he means by "Catholic dogma with the usual unacknowledged compromises", but if it has anything to do with the disturbingly high illegitimacy rates among Latino immigrants in the U.S., I think I have an idea.

The most questionable part is where he praises Mexican immigrants as "hard-working and patriotic." Is there much evidence of Mexican-Americans as particularly patriotic or having a particularly strong work-ethic outside of the illegal-immigrant sweatshop culture? Most ironic are his last words where he ruefully notes that "no one can talk with candor."

This group of liberals - Jonathan Chait, Eric Alterman, Matthew Yglesias and company - are real pips. Could there be any chance of reasonable discourse with such a group on, say, education policy? Well there can't, because the whole point of their conversation is to advertise their liberalness. They're really not even particularly interested in advancing an agenda. Policy discussions bore them - their liberalism doesn't lead them to propose policies - policies rather serve to confirm their liberalism.

They wouldn't, for example, exert one iota of brain energy on what the actual outcome of "comprehensive immigration reform" might be. They need only know that supporting it demonstrates their post-human perfection, in direct contrast to the neo-nazis who would prefer to see the number of illegal immigrants reduced. They don't advance agendas - agendas advance them. And so the accuracy of Peretz's comments is completely irrelevant - like craters on the moon, his musings suggest a flaw in the presumed perfection of the heavens - that there should be any doubts regarding the unalloyed equality of humanity; thus anyone raising these flaws must be dispatched to the rack lest such reckless talk be thought acceptable. The theology must be defended against all doubters!

Or consider energy policy. Does a single one of them consider for a moment exactly how we are supposed to achieve their angelically minimal carbon emission goals? Has the thought occurred to them how the utopia of Europe has minimized its use of (for them much more expensive) fossil fuels? The answer is through nuclear and diesel - oops - two fuels that the American liberalentsia utterly disdains. But it doesn't matter - proposing specific solutions is beneath them - the very exercise of calling for fossil-fuel reductions gives them that warm, fuzzy, superior feeling they crave. The theology is all that matters.