Andrew and Me

It isn't a big secret that I admire many of the bloggers and journalists whose links you see to the right of these posts. Serendipitously as I start this blog one of my favorite, and most popular bloggers in the United States, Andrew Sullivan, posted and responded to an email I sent him several days ago.

Here is the exchange. My response to his response follows:

Dissent Of The Day - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan



Dissent Of The Day

29 Apr 2010 04:32 pm

A reader writes:

I've been fascinated with your vigorous defense of Obama and your disdain for the Labour Party. Within the span of several posts you dismiss the likelihood of a GOP sweep in November because they have awakened Hispanics with all their bigoted blundering around the immigration issue. Simultaneously you seem to be relishing in Brown's demise because he's caught calling a women a bigot for saying "You can't say anything about the immigrants."

Are you sympathetic with the issues of Hispanics here in America, or are you simply pleased that they are going to help hold back the bigoted waves of white rural America? Is this woman a bigot, as Brown asserts, or is she, unlike her Tea Party counterparts, expressing legitimate political anxiety?

Andrew's response:

I have not dismissed the likelihood of a GOP sweep in November. The anti-incumbent mood and the depressed job market suggests a robust swing to the GOP. What I have said is that the long-term branding of the party with the Arizona law is a terrible development for the GOP in the future, when minorities will become a larger and larger part of American society and politics. I do believe we should have a more honest debate about illegal and legal immigration.

More, I favor tougher measures to secure the border. I also favor easier ways for talented immigrants to come here legally. As an immigrant myself, I do sympathize with legal Hispanics who have gone through the legal channels for immigration and will now have to carry around extensive documentation to prove they are not criminals. This bill will thereby punish "suspicious"-looking legal immigrants as well, because they will all feel under surveillance. A society where one minority feels under surveillance is not a truly free society. This is beneath America, in my view.

As for Mrs Duffy, she was not speaking of illegal immigrants. East Europeans have every right to work and live in other EU countries. As for Labour, I find their fiscal record as damning - almost as damning as George Bush's. They really are socialists. And I'm not one. I hope Brown destroys that party and allows a liberal response to conservatism to be the two-party system.

My response:

I am sympathetic with many of Andrew's sentiments but he hasn't answered my central question. I am embarrassed that I didn't even realize she was complaining about legal immigrants which I think makes my question even more pertinent.

Is Mrs. Duffy a bigot?

If the answer is yes then should we really be stringing up Brown in effigy if he was expressing a politically disastrous but accurate observation? Andrew is free to criticize Brown all he wants for his socialist orientation but does he want to utilize base opportunism to bring about such demise? Can't Britons simply vote Brown out because they dislike Labour's policies?

I think Andrew has made it clear on his blog, and I agree, that the right and the tea partiers are constantly manufacturing outrage towards Obama by playing to the worst aspects of our nature, ie. the Jeremiah Wright brouhaha or the ACORN pseudo scandal. Is this any different?

Anyways, I'll just enjoy the moment now.