General readers are undoubtedly aware that the appearance of a BlogAd in our right-hand column in no way implies that we agree with its content, and sharp-eyed readers may have noticed that we’ve in fact run more than one with views that run counter to our own. With that in mind, here’s a letter from New York reader Jason Abrams:
I’m still a huge fan of your site, but I’m disappointed by the appearance of an advertisement for NumbersUSA on the right-hand side as a BlogAd. I understand that sometimes blog owners have no initial control over the content of the ads, but there must be a way to exercise some restrictions on the types of organizations that can run ads on your site. Based on what I have gathered to be the leanings of your editors and contributors, I wouldn’t imagine your site to be much of a recruiting ground for this borderline hate group.
It may be worth pointing out one aspect of the way BlogAds works: the blog owner approves an ad based on an initial submission of the “creative” (picture and text), but then the advertiser can freely change the creative as the week or month or quarter goes on. Sometimes later versions of an ad are more arresting or abrasive than the first version, or differ in other material ways. I don’t know how precisely this affects the overall run/not run calculus, but it seems like an interesting weakness in the process.
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So, Mr. Abrams, as a fan of a website with a libertarian/conservative leaning, objects to raising revenue through ads that aren’t even endorsed by the site? Ah, well, never mind: He’s accused NumbersUSA of being a “hate group” (because we all know that anyone seeking to restrict immigration or enforce immigration laws must be a “hater” – and with the Southern Poverty Law Center on the job, the number of groups qualifying as “hate groups” is unlimited). This, as the late Sam Francis has noted, is a sign of our new Victorian age, in which anything dancing around the edges of race or ethnicity is an “unmentionable” in the same way that you couldn’t mention “legs” in the real Victorian age (though I invite Mr. Abrams to share with us his view on such groups as La Raza or the NAACP). But as time has shown, sex didn’t go away because the Victorians wanted it to, and race and ethnicity won’t go away because the leftists want it to.
Of course, one thing we might always have will be our anonymity, won’t we my friend? In fact as an intern in law school I worked with a group fighting to protect your right to post anonymously from your Minuteman bivouac, your parents’ basement, even your law office.
I didn’t derive my characterization of NumbersUSA from SPLC’s recent list, and personally I don’t agree with La Raza’s methods to win in the court of public opinion. Rather, as someone privy to the economics of immigration (as opposed to being forced to get my information from Lou Dobbs), I can call it like I see it, and “illegal immigrants’ effects on the environment” is nothing more than a red herring.
But you accuse me of leaning so far to the left that I play the hate card at the mere mention of race. And while I applaud you for being vigilant for such overuse, I think you should look a bit deeper into the backgrounds of NumbersUSA’s staff and the facts behind their sham economics before you categorize them as lovable wonks with the best interests of all Americans in mind.
You should know from this very blog that a disclaimer is often worth nothing. Just because those guys say they aren’t against anyone, they just want to protect the land and have a “just economy”, doesn’t mean it’s true.
Since when are libertarians all for total government control of anything?
Why don’t you actually look at the Libertarian Party platform, which is totally consistent with Mr. Abrams’ point.
“The Libertarian Party has long recognized the importance of allowing free and open immigration, understanding that this leads to a growing and more prosperous America. We condemn the xenophobic immigrant bashing that would build a wall around the United States. At the same time, we recognize that the right to enter the United States does not include the right to economic entitlements such as welfare. The freedom to immigrate is a freedom of opportunity, not a guarantee of a handout.”
http://www.lp.org/issues/immigration.shtml
Memo to Walter Oslon:
I am a member of NumbersUSA, and I don’t hate anyone except, perhaps, the many politicians at all levels of government who have ignored their oath of office that requires them to uphold the rule of law. Many of these “lawmakers” now act as though they were elected to represent the interests of arrogant and corrupt foreign governments like the one in Mexico rather than those of the American people.
I’m also not very keen on the mainstream media that for some unexplained reason portrays illegal aliens as “victims” while ignoring the very real plight of our own working poor, especially blacks, who now must compete with foreigners for jobs that rightfully belong to them. As a retired print journalist, I read the news much closer than the average reader. After reading any of what passes these days for objective coverage of the immigration issue, I can only conclude that the only people entitled to “search for a better life” are the foreign-born, especially those here illegally.
My position on immigration is closer to the LP’s than to Numbers USA, but I’d like to see a better basis for claiming Numbers USA is a “borderline hate group” than their policy position on immigration limits. On their website, they explicitly disclaim “advocating hostile actions or feelings toward immigrant Americans” and worry about “the risk of inadvertently encouraging somebody else to show hostility toward the foreign-born as a group.” The SPLC hit piece on NumbersUSA (repeated on Wikipedia) is the same sort of friend-of-a-past-donor-equals-permanent-taint-of-everyone accusation that some on the Left use to smear the Manhattan Institute and AEI. Overlawyered speaks out against the problems of disparate-impact anti-discrimination litigation, and this is another case where disparate impact does not by itself indicate discriminatory intent.
Amy, I think I’m safe in saying that libertarians are not of a piece on immigration. I don’t doubt that the LP takes the position you cite, but there are libertarians who take the restrictionist view.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/kinsella/kinsella18.html
Jason, thanks for working to protect my anonymity as I post comments from my dirt-floor shack in Kentucky. I’ll do the same for you upon achieving a country in which those with your views are the ones who need anonymity.
Let’s cut to the chase. Walter serves up this site as a public service. It costs money to run it. Anything he can do to aid to that end is fine by me, and I suspect 99.9% of the readers never even noticed that ad, much less clicked on it. I am sure that NumbersUSA are thanking Mr. Abrams for bringing them to the attention of everyone here. He has managed to do more for them than the ad ever did.
We as a society suffer from advertising overload, ads are everywhere and often they are for products or causes to which we don’t subscribe, but unless you are ready to go the the BBC model advertising will remain a necessary part of media delivery. And media placement, particularly on the internet, has become a fine art of man versus machine. So unless someone is ready to “buy” OL’s ad space in toto, having someone else foot even a part of the bill seems quite reasonable to me. If you start to find the ire against the machine is over riding the content of this site, stick a little Post It note over your screen or send Walter a check. So as Officer Barbrady would say, “Nothing to see here, move along.”
PS – When did Lou Dobbs start forcing people to watch his show. I sure hope there is a clip of this on YouTube!
Blogads? Really?
I run Firefox with Noscript and Adblock. Haven’t seen a blogad in two years or more. In fact, I wasn’t even aware that there were any ads on tis site at all.
Now, if the free market could just do something better about email spam but, that is much older technology.
Amy what you claim to be the immigration position of the Libertarian Party is actually the position of one, a Michael Tanner. In order to find the LP position on immigration go to their home page and click on “our platform” then click on “immigration”. The LP position removes most of the existing incentives.