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We’re Against Emotionalism, Except When We’re Not
Conservatives have rightly taken pride in Neil Gorsuch’s calm and cerebral performance at his Senate confirmation hearings. Many commentators, along with Republican senators, have mocked Democrats for presuming to evaluate Gorsuch based on the outcomes of his cases. Did he “side with the little guy” or with big corporations? The correct answer, conservatives have correctly chided, is that justice is supposed to be blind. A good judge makes determinations based upon the facts and the law without regard to whether he personally prefers one party to another and without some social justice agenda to equalize the fortunes of little guys versus big guys. It’s not little versus big, sympathetic versus unsympathetic in a courtroom, but facts and law.
It’s a shame then, that so many conservatives are disregarding the virtues they laud in Gorsuch – prudence, careful weighing of facts, refusal to be swayed by emotional appeals – when it comes to a disturbing story of a rape in Maryland.
Reports indicate that a 14-year-old high school student in Rockville, Maryland (a suburb of Washington, DC) may have been sodomized and raped in the boys’ bathroom by two suspects. At least one of the suspects, according to Fox 5 in Baltimore, was an 18 year old who had recently entered the country illegally and was enrolled in the school as a freshman. The other, also an immigrant, is 17.
Emotional reactions to heinous crimes are completely understandable, but as Judge Gorsuch has properly reminded us, our feelings are not a good guide to justice. Neither are they a prescription for sensible policy. Quite the opposite.
If the evidence shows that the victim’s account is correct – that she was pushed into the bathroom by the two suspects and raped by both of them in a stall – the young men could be facing many years in prison and deserve to.
But many are rushing to link this inflammatory case – before we know the facts — to the larger cause of immigration restriction. White House spokesman Sean Spicer drew the link: “Part of the reason the president has made illegal immigration such an issue is because of tragedies like this. . .This is why he’s passionate about this. Because people are victims of these crimes. Immigration pays its toll on our people.” That is exploiting people’s anger, which is bad enough, and it’s false, which is worse.
There are good and bad arguments against immigration. I am sympathetic to some restrictionist points, but smearing immigrants as out-of-control criminals is shameful. High rates of immigration, legal and illegal, are not associated with spikes in crime. In our recent history, between 1990 and 2013, the illegal immigrant population in the U.S. more than tripled to 11.2 million. Yet FBI data indicate that the violent crime rate declined by 48 percent during those years. This included violent crimes like aggravated assault, robbery, rape, and murder. Rates of property crime fell by 41 percent, including declining rates of motor vehicle theft, larceny/robbery, and burglary.
As a survey by the CATO Institute shows, immigrants – both legal and illegal – are less likely to be incarcerated than native-born Americans. And when you exclude those illegal immigrants who are jailed for immigration offenses (i.e. just for being here illegally), the numbers really plunge. Looking at the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, CATO notes that illegal immigrants are 44 percent less likely to be incarcerated than native-born Americans. Legal immigrants are 69 percent less likely to be jailed than natives. White native-born Americans are more likely to be imprisoned than black immigrants, legal or illegal. The Wall Street Journal’s Jason Riley cites a Public Policy Institute study showing that while the foreign-born comprise 35 percent of California’s population, they represent 17 percent of the state prison population.
Some immigrants commit crimes. But as the data show, most keep their noses clean. About seven percent of our population is comprised of non-citizens, yet they account for only 5 percent of the prison population.
We don’t yet know the facts of the rape case in Maryland. But even if they turn out to be every bit as brutal as first reports indicate, the attempt to tar all immigrants with this brush – or to let emotional appeals dictate policy — is exactly what fair-minded admirers of Judge Gorsuch will resist.
Published in Domestic Policy, General, Immigration
I think you’re already out of bounds by pointing out that they are here illegally. They are Undocumented Americans!
It’s everywhere you just don’t see it. Go ahead and flag me again.
I’m going to dinner and signing off this place for a long time. Manana.
Exactly. Like this crapola about “breaking up families”(talk about “emotionalism”!) If mom is illegal, but has dropped a baby on our soil, and she gets deported, she can take the baby along, right? If the family is broken up, it’s her choice.
Oh, and then there’s “They have no place to go!” How ’bout to the folks back home to whom they’ve been sending tax-free remittances ? Those people certainly owe the returning illegals a favor…
so–I guess, if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em? Why should lib lefties be the only ones who can tug on the heartstrings and cry crocodile tears?
I cannot effing believe you were redacted for that innocent remark!
The problem is the incredible sloppiness of our immigration ‘system’. Apparently people just show up at our boarders, and our government’s Important Work here is to make sure they’re settled comfortably in our country. We don’t know who they are, if they have prior criminal records, or even how old they are (they usually claim to be under 18 so they can be called minors – a special, protected class). So with no verifiable school records, these “teenagers” are placed into high school freshman classes with our 14 year old daughters.
But hey, let’s make sure we don’t get too upset here!
Our country’s commitment to unfettered immigration has failed this young girl.
Your insults are far, far less insulting that they way our government treats our immigration laws.
These numbers have never been released, anywhere, and certainly not nationally. Americans have been trying to get prison population data for at least a decade, but the government will not release it. We are hoping Trump will change that, but meantime, please provide your readers with a link to that data you magically found, lest I decide to label you the “Fake News Leader” on Ricochet. I will gladly eat crow when you provide the link to the data you cited above. Please do not provide that study from 2006; it has no value in today’s America, unless you are one of those people who believe the false ’11 million illegals” number that the Left has been using since 2005. Oh wait, you did use that number in your article.
Okay, Mona, all that aside, please provide the link to prove your quote above. Prove to the world that only 5 percent of the prison population is comprised of Illegals.
In general, Mona has a point. There are a thousand excellent reasons to enforce our borders, but lowering the overall crime rate is not self-evidently one of them. On the other hand, deporting illegal alien criminals after they have been identified would certainly have an impact on recidivist crime.
But that’s not really the point, is it? Emotional arguments are not rational, by definition. Fear-mongering is a time honored tradition in political debates. I am wary of the damage that fear-mongering can do, but in this particular debate the other side is constantly dragging out sob stories meant to tug at our heartstrings, about families being torn asunder and suchlike tripe. If they’re going to do it, then maybe we are forced to do it. I don’t like it. I’m a little bit afraid of it. But if the other side is going to set the terms of the debate, then we might just have to play by their rules.
And one other thing. I thought I was done, but I am not.
Mona, why do you show zero outrage that a 17-year-old Illegal, and an 18-year-old Illegal, were enrolled in a junior high school? I am sure this poor girl was merely the last of the kids that these Illegal men had terrorized.
When I was in junior high, there was this one kid who had failed two grades. He was stupid, he was evil, and he was huge, at least to me. Everyone in the school, including some teachers, were afraid of this man. Eventually he punched a teacher out, and went to jail, and everyone’s lives got better.
If the MSM wasn’t a bunch of Illegal-coddlers, maybe they could go to that school and find out just how terrified the kids and teachers were of these two monsters. We’ll never know, though, because they aren’t outraged at these monsters, they’re like you – outraged that a man like me would call them monsters. How dare I, without “knowing all the facts” – how dare I!
Our government isn’t even attempting to discover anything about the people who just show up on our boarder. They’re given every benefit of the doubt. That’s a problem.
I am so very tired of the conflation between legal and illegal immigration. These are two different things. One can be very supportive of a manged legal immigration system, and at the same time, opposed to our current ‘turn a blind eye’ approach to illegal immigration.
I think its disingenuous of people to conflate the two.
You have laws against rape, or any other crime to provide consistent prosecution of a specific individual that has committed a specific crime. The crime is defined, defenses are defined, and punishment is defined in the statute.
Right on, Lily Bart, right ON! This is one of the favorite tactics of the Left, and has been for a long time. When George W. Bush decided that tax dollars would no longer be used to fund the destruction of human embryos to use their stem cells, the Left got Michael J. Fox to go on TV and (I believe) exaggerate his Parkinson’s and cry about Bush’s “Ban on Stem Cell Research”. There was no “ban” on research. Private companies who felt there was a possibility the embryonic stem cell could cure diseases were still free to do all the research they wanted, they just couldn’t use tax dollars to do it. But the Left still talks today about the “Ban on Stem Cell research”.
Yep, the Left loves to say that the right is “anti-immigrant” even though they know we aren’t. It looks like Mona has joined their ranks, officially.
As the parent of a daughter, I don’t think it’s overly “emotionalistic” to be enraged that they allowed an 18-year-old and a 17-year-old male to sit in class with 14-year-old girls. That is absurd and dangerous, as we have plainly seen. What were these people thinking?! And nobody is doing what the OP calls “the attempt to tar all immigrants with this brush.” That came straight from the DNC Talking Points.
Ever since 9/11, beginning with Bush ‘n Blair, we’ve been hearing the bleat “They’re not ALL like that!” No, of course they’re not. But so what? If even 1/10th are, that’s a lot of people.
Just like a lot of illegals commit crimes. Is there some excuse, like, oh, they’re so poor compared to us! So we should just let’em steal identities, avoid taxes? I truly cannot comprehend this line of thought.
Me either! (And I’d call it pretty emotionalistic, by the way)
I’m getting too angry and curiously, at the same time, too “emotionless”. I’m going to emulate @docjay and leave off for now. Nighty night!
What a far-fetched stretch. Honestly, I wondered when I might encounter such opportunistic trolling again while suffering through the blunt force stupidity of Senator Hirono twice today.
Should have known, the next Charen piece at Ricochet! Even Hirono’s sequence of non-sequiturs weren’t this silly.
In tone and temperament and snarkiness, Mona could take her seat between Hirono and Klobuchar.
And I agree largely with the analysis. A fair comparison of crime rates between illegal aliens and comparable race/ethnic/income subgroups might be unsettling to plenty of priors.
My relatively restrictionist views of legal and illegal immigration aren’t based on maligning the motives or basic human decency of most immigrants, and neither are the vast majority of immigration skeptics at Ricochet.
Mona’s turned into some odd embittered conservative version of that Buck Henry talk show host from early SNL.
Last time I bother to click.
I don’t feel exploited. Which part of the statement is false?
Maybe yes, maybe no, but it is an irrelevant comment as no one is doing this. Statements of truth are simply that. Calling a criminal a criminal is not smearing.
The illegal alien has committed a crime by simply being present within the United States. Period. I’m not sure anyone is calling this criminal act “a spike”, but it is an increase.
cont’d.
Cont…
LOL! Are you actually asking the reader to infer from this paragraph that illegal immigrants’ presence actually decreases crime?
Relevance to the specific crime discussed in your OP? NONE. And, again you are conflating legal immigrants with illegal aliens. You are insulting legal immigrants by including them in same group with criminals; this, is what is wrong, and it is shameful
I tend to read what people say instead of looking for reasons to be offended by what they say.
My attitude is, we played by the rules for decades; immigration restrictionists respected democratic norms and work within the system, and what was our reward? The 1986 non-enforcement “compromise” and Obama’s executive orders.
Immigration doves like Mona Charen pushed us into this corner. They took away our democratic rights and destroyed the rule of law, such was their unwillingness to compromise. We wouldn’t have to use these tactics if the doves had respected the 86 compromise, or if they’d been willing to compromise and pass a true border enforcement bill post-2010, or even if they’d enforced the existing law. We were not the extremists here.
Ms. Charen,
Sometimes, outrage is necessary. Those scumbags should not have been in the country. Further, they should not have been in a middle school. The fact that this occurred is a disgrace, and is indefensible. People reacted similarly to terrorist attacks. A purely rational pragmatist would ignore terror attacks until they kill more people than auto accidents. A purely rational pragmatist would sell out Israel to the highest bidder, and never champion democracy, always taking the easiest path of working with the biggest local dictator.
I want the rapists deported since they can’t get the firing squad. We should be aggressively deporting criminal illegals, since they provide no benefit to us. All immigration should be driven by benefit to the US, obviously.
That you cannot see the difference between popular outrage over an outrageous act of evil vs. a judge being judicious is disappointing to say the least.
Judges are supposed to be calm.
Regular humans are supposed to have human emotions. It’s part and parcel of humanity.
Sometimes I think firing squads should make a come back. And illegal aliens who have been deported for serious crimes who are caught doing a serious crime here AGAIN should be the primary recipient of such punishment.
By the way, when did Global…I mean National Review become so cowardly that they removed comments? That is a recent development, no?
You mean like laws against say, illegal entry into the country, illegal employment, identity theft, driving without a license, driving without insurance, drunken driving, illegal occupancy, illegal dumping, or any of the other laws routinely broken by illegals that don’t get enforced against them?
They switched to Facebook comments from Disqus awhile ago, and I’ve noticed lately that for a lot of articles and Corner posts the “comments” never load….