Ah yes. National Review…

10/17/00 9:35 a.m.
Who Are You Calling “Illegal”?
Complaining about scofflaws is racist.

By John Derbyshire, NR contributing editor racist…

Who was this group, so unfairly characterized as “illegal aliens”? Well, it was … illegal aliens. The event, held at a local VFW post, was organized by a local citizens group fed up with the presence of hundreds of Mexican day laborers in the town of Farmingville. Guest speaker was Glenn Spencer of the California-based “Voices of Citizens Together,” a noisy but entirely respectable group that lobbies against illegal immigration. Over to Newsday:

But Spencer’s presence on Long Island set off alarm bells among national civil and immigrant rights groups that call his organization a “hate group” and charge that it encourages vigilantism.

Newsday further reported that the 200 people who assembled to hear Mr. Spencer speak carried signs with legends like: “Illegal Aliens are Criminals … Not Immigrants!!!!” and “Peaceful Solutions through Deportation”. From the tone of the piece, I think we are supposed to find this shocking. And this, too: “A video put out by his [i.e. Spencer’s] group summarizes the history of Mexico partly by saying the Aztec Indians practiced human sacrifice and cannibalism.” Now, it’s been a while since I read Bernal Diaz’s Conquest of New Spain and Prescott’s Conquest of Mexico, but if I recall correctly, the Aztecs did indeed practice those two things, with great gusto in both cases. So what point is Newsday making by telling us about this video? That Spencer’s group tells the truth? Well, for sure they do a better job of it than the sub-editors of Newsday, with their mysteriously misplaced quotation marks. Yo, guys: illegal immigration is I-L-L-E-G-A-L…