I feel like taking a shower after writing about the Southern Poverty Law Center, but for some reason it's taken seriously by the media and even government agencies, so I can't avoid it. A couple examples this week of how ludicrous the SPLC's charges of "hate" are. James Taranto at the Wall Street Journal wrote "In Defense of Carol Swain" in reaction to the SPLC smear-meister Mark Potok's claim that "Carol Swain is an apologist for white supremacists." Taranto does a good job of assessing the issue at hand, especially remarkable from the WSJ given the fact that Carol is an immigration restrictionist, though that's not what was at issue. I'll add only that I know Carol, a black woman who went from being a teenage mom and high-school dropout to earning a PhD and teaching at Vanderbilt, and the very idea that she's an "apologist for white supremacists" is so outlandish, not to mention scurrilous, as to render whoever makes such a claim not credible on anything else. How can any self-respecting reporter ever quote Mark Potok again on anything?
And just yesterday I received an SPLC "Hatewatch" e-mail, alerting me to the prevalence of "hate" and "nativism" all over this broad land. One example was this, which highlighted the hateful and evil and nativist decision by the Nashville city council to continue to work with federal immigration authorities to screen for illegal aliens in the county jail. (See a new CIS report on this nationwide program, called 287(g), here.) So, the SPLC is so thoroughly part of the open-borders lobby that even identifying illegal alien criminals is beyond the pale — not to mention hateful and nativist. Unbelievable.
Oh and here's the logo for their "Hatewatch" feature:
That creepy eye isn't Big Brother — it's them, the SPLC, "keeping an eye on the radical right." Oh, wait, it is Big Brother, and he's the one keeping an eye on the radical right. War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Dissent is Hate.
For more on the SPLC's sliminess, see this by FAIR, which, whatever its faults, is no more a "hate group" than I am Thomas the Tank Engine.
