We no longer have a “Tom Tancredo” category into which to put this article, given that Tom Tancredo is no longer running for President in 2008. However, Tancredo still merits the attention for the nutty ideas he promotes.
Even in the speech during which he dropped out of the 2008 presidential campaign, Tom Tancredo managed to illustrate how truly kooky his campaign was. Tancredo attempted to convince people that, although he only had one percent support even among Republican voters, he had been successful in promoting the central idea of his campaign had been.
He explained, without any idea of the inherent contradiction in his statement, “For the past 10 years I have dedicated my public life to warning the nation of the perilous consequences of massive uncontrolled illegal immigration.”
Ten years of “perilous consequences”? Does Tom Tancredo realize what the word “peril” means? In the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, the very first definition of the word “peril” is: Imminent danger.
How can there have been an imminent danger from illegal immigration for ten years? Tom Tancredo, and his right wing followers, haven’t bothered to ask themselves that basic question. The reason is that their fears of foreigners are stronger than any appeal to reason. They begin with the assumption that illegal immigration poses an imminent danger to the United States, and make all their decisions based upon that assumption, never doubting, never asking why their predictions of doom never have come true. They’re like people who, day after day, year after year, carry signs declaring “The world will end tomorrow.”
The world has not ended. There has been no genuine peril for the United States from illegal immigration. The obsession that fueled Tom Tancredo’s presidential campaign was never based in reality. It’s no wonder that the hopes of the Tom Tancredo for President campaign turned out to be as much of a fantasy as the idea that the United States is suffering from “massive uncontrolled illegal immigration.”
(Source: Associated Press, December 20, 2007; American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language)
I’d say that having hundreds of thousands of foreign citizens marching in our streets under their countries’ flags in marches organized by those linked to the governments of those countries is definitely perilous, but then again there are always people who don’t think things like that are perilous.
Well, TLB, that was what, over a year and a half ago, and what disaster resulted from it?
Nothing.
If it was so perilous, how come nothing bad happened?
I suppose that there always those people who go around looking for peril where it doesn’t exist.