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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
You cannot prevent someone from doing something that is illegal. Laws should be enforced.
And here we go. I generally admire Ms. Charen, but here she is in sanctimonious lecture mode and it does not sit well with me. What I want from a Supreme Court Justice is not the same thing I want from my public schools or from my politicians. She is mixing those things and implying that unless we react the same way to the SCOTUS hearings and news reports of a horrific crime, we are somehow imperfect. Well, yes, I AM imperfect, but not because I want my judges to base opinions on the law and not on touchy/feely emotions, and I react with horror and deep sorrow to the crime of raping a 14 year old girl in a public school bathroom. And Mona – no one that I’ve heard so far claims that ALL illegals are behaving this way – that is a straw man argument if I ever heard one. The issue of illegal/undocumented immigrants is a fair one to bring up if for no other reason than one of the young man involved was stopped and instead of being deported was released. That policy needs to be seriously reviewed without all the “oh the poor children” whining generally associated with it from the liberals. And if the law is set up to allow this to be possible in our schools – then I expect our politicians to pass laws that at least TRY to protect our children while they are in public schools.
“Reports indicate that…. ”
“If the evidence shows that….”
“We don’t yet know the facts of….”
Oh throw those boys off the lacrosse team already.
The point is they aren’t enforced. And when people demand enforcement, we are accused of “emotionalism”.
By “conservatives”.
Fun times.
Throw in anchor babies in their teens or 20s. Add first generation Latinos and the numbers would change.
Law enforcement is reluctant to arrest. At least under Obama. Especially where minorities are involved. Cops are rightly worried that they will be on the carpet rather than the suspect. The DOJ under Lynch and Holder tied their hands with Federal compliance rules.
Spicer may have exploited emotions, but this is a political act. The left does it on a regular basis. We are not in a courtroom where innocence is presumed. This is public opinion where emotion is a natural occurrence.
There is some knowledge that comes down to us from The Wisdom of the Ages. Placing young men, whose identity and life history is entirely unknown to us, with our young teenage girls is A Bad Idea and will lead to Bad Events.
I remember when the news first reported that all these unaccompanied minors were being settled in areas around the country, and into our schools, and that many of the older unaccompanied minors might not be minors after all – I said this would be a problem. And it is. We’ve heard about this Bad Event because it was so heinous. How many lesser Bad Events have gone unreported because of political correctness and a bias toward turning a blind eye toward illegal immigration? Has anyone asked the other kids in that school in Maryland if they felt threatened by these older thugs in their school? Does anyone care?
Has anyone noticed that our 14 year old girls are not being protected by our laws? In addition to the above problems – our government is insisting that males be allowed into these girls’ bathrooms, dressing rooms, locker rooms, etc – places where they’re taking off there clothes. Intended to help trans-gendered people, these laws allow people to ‘self select’ and choose whichever bathroom they feel appropriate. I’m just going to allow my emotions to carry me away and predict this will lead to Bad Events. Because pervs will perv. And girls are not allowed to object.
It is interesting how we can read the same statistic and reach different conclusions. My reaction was holy [expletive] that is a lot of incarcerated immigrants.
This statistic is also mostly meaningless to the current discussion. Foreign-born does not make any distinction between legal and illegal or the differences between immigrants from El Salvador and Japan.
To be meaningful, you would have to compare the California population percentage of illegal immigrants from south of our border to California Prison population percent of the same group.
The same effect is found in your 7 % of our population are non-citizens but they are only 5% of our prison population. This comparison is not relevant to illegals from south of our border.
You have convinced me to do it, Lily Bart. I am going to write my column, “Why I Boycott Target” today, and let the chips fall where they may. I realized that I have been cowering under the jackboot of Political Correctness and keeping quiet for too long.
The question is not incarceration rates; rather, it is crime rates. The former is often a reasonable proxy for the latter, but it is a highly imperfect proxy. As many liberals will remind us, racial minorities and poor people are often jailed for crimes that wealthier whites and Asians would receive a fine for. As Glenn Reynolds points out, women receive much lesser sentences for sexual assault than men do.
Likewise, there are very good reasons why comparing incarceration rates of the legal and illegal population is not a valid measure of crime rates: illegals who commit crimes are often deported instead of incarcerated; they might flee the country; or they might be harder to track down (since they aren’t ‘in the system’). Kate Steinle’s killer was a repeat felon who was deported, not incarcerated, for his felonies before he murdered her.
There might be data out there showing that illegal aliens do not commit more violent crimes than American citizens or legal immigrants. But this isn’t it.
General incarceration rates are problematic. White collar crimes are not murder. These general statistics look only at the number of people in prison, not why they are there.
Even use of “violent crime” statistics are dependent on who is collecting the data. California passed Prop 57 it classified several things like assault with a deadly weapon or exploding a destructive device with the intent to cause injury as “non-violent” crime. http://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2016/11/09/law-enforcement-upset-after-californias-proposition-57-passes/
Crime statistics are only so useful. They can help frame the overall debate. I have not done the math but it would look like there are well over 10,000 incarcerated immigrants in California. So all this shows that this is not a freak incident but known danger, some not insignificant number of immigrants commit violent crimes.
What are we willing to do to prevent illegals from raping 14 year old girls in public schools?
Oh I agree. Except for some odd reason illegals in many states and sanctuary cities get a pass on things that routinely land citizens in jail.
This is the case in Denver. Many criminal cases here are pled down to “Criminal Trespassing” when illegals are “Justice Involved Individuals*”.
*note the good use of the modern euphemisms!
If you’re Maryland, nothing; in fact work to make it harder to remove the illegals.
Apparently Maryland stacks the deck in their elections. The sponsor of the bill is a Peruvian who came here for college and stayed. She finished third in the Primaries, and finished third in the General Election, but because of the bizarre way Maryland sets up their elections, it’s the top three of any Party who get the seats in their House, I guess? Very strange. I love this quote from the story you posted, Bishop:
I checked the dictionary and this fits perfectly in the definition of “Trump Derangement Syndrome”. This is a Sore Loser, still crying because her Queen Lost The Election Because Of The Russians, looking for some way to poke Trump in the eye, and the safety of her real constituents no longer matters in her twisted brain.
Compared to Seattle, though, it’s heaven.
Now, I’m not a big fan of living in Washington State, away from the crazy liberal stronghold, but still ultimately governed by them. My ballot each year is an absolute joke.
RA, nobody is claiming that outrage over the incident itself is overly “emotionalistic.” The point, with which I fully agree, is that when something like this happens, we need to be able to take a step back and identify it for what it is.
On the flip side of that, we’ve got something like Islamic Terrorism; individual instances of terrorism do need to be recognized for what they are in the same manner, and yes they do support our military action and our foreign policy.
But when you’ve got crimes that get committed by immigrants, it isn’t really any more logical to use that to bolster your immigration arguments than it would be for the other side to point to some successful doctor or engineer; or to point to a happy immigrant family that will be “torn apart” by deportation. On the right, we need to make better arguments (and there are plenty to be made!)
minor aside: I would dispute this.
We need judges who can put ideology aside and make rulings based on the law…
I am wondering which part of Mr. Spicer’s comments are false.
It would seem that Trump is making immigration an issue and has specifically addressed illegal criminals both in his speeches and executive orders. I would say this is True.
I would also argue that these crimes do happen to people and that immigration pays its toll. This first is undeniable true every violent crime has a victim. The crimes do happen to our people. As such immigration has negative aspects is also true. Look at this 14 year old girl or Kate Steinle. Or you can look at the ICE list of declined detainers from Jan 28 2017 to Feb 3, 2017 (This is just one week). Multiple counts of Assault, Assault with a weapon, battery, Domestic Violence, Burglary, Sexual Assault, Sexual assault of a minor, robbery. Also included are kidnapping and homicide. All of these crimes have victims. Some of these victims could have been spared if we enforced our immigration laws.
https://www.ice.gov/doclib/ddor/ddor2017_01-28to02-03.pdf
Not all immigrants are criminals, but immigration does have negatives.
You disagree with Mona saying that policy should be made not on anecdotal evidence but on reasoned analysis?
Yet many persist in trying to prove her correct, interesting…
I think this article is a nice summary of why the Establishment Right has lost most of its influence.
It’s a sad fact that Conservatives are required to interact with ACTUAL HUMAN BEINGS, and it would be great if Conservatives understood that actual human beings resonate with a personalized story.
Please feel free to correct me with a 17 paragraph philosophical exploration about how this does not matter to those who reason things out from first principles!
Funny how the concept of their being here illegally hasn’t made it into your comments.
These people came here in violation of our immigration laws, and we think they’re going to have average to better adherence to our other laws?
Spicer’s comment was about illegal immigrants, not about legal immigrants: whether they be permanent residents or naturalized citizens they are not the illegal criminal invaders Spicer was referencing in his comment.
It is the continuing conflation of the legal with illegal that undermines the conversation.
Emotion is also being used to ‘sell’ the idea of accepting illegal immigration. We’re told that they’re ‘here through no fault of their own’ (their parents fault actually), that they just want a better life, that they’re valedictorians, that it would be inhumane to send them back or separate them from their families, and they’re ‘scared’ they will be caught, etc.
So emotionalism is supposed to be a tool to get people to accept the non-compliance with our immigration laws, but must be strictly avoided making any argument for enforcement of our laws!
Ryan gets it right.
When Ryan changes all “immigrant” references to “legal immigrant” I and perhaps others will agree. Otherwise, the comment is not referring to the same issue.
Given that the referenced incident involves both categories of immigrant I think he generic term is appropriate.
On the Women’s March day, just after the Ingratiation, a woman carried a sign that made me laugh: “I can’t believe that I still have to protest this S***”.
I feel this way about our immigration system: I can’t believe that I still have to demand that my government enforce its laws! They have abdicated their responsibilities to us, the citizens, in favor of parties that benefit from cheap labor and easy votes. And we know they don’t care about how this affects us. Or our 14 year old daughters.