April 22, 2005

DEAR HEIDI: CAN WE TALK?

By Joe Guzzardi

Ms. Heidi Beirich
C/O The Intelligence Project
Southern Poverty Law Center
400 Washington Avenue
Montgomery, Alabama 36104

Dear Ms. Beirich:

I trust this letter will find you well.

And I hope that you will forgive my lengthy delay in corresponding with you. I am rude not to have written earlier.

You no doubt recall that during the late summer of 2003, when I was a (Democratic)  candidate for governor in the California recall election, you told Modesto Bee reporter Eric Stern that it was "very scary" that I had aligned myself with the "true haters" in the immigration reform movement.

During Stern’s interview with you, you told him that because of my associations, I am on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s "radar."

I am not at all sure what your statement means. But it has a decidedly unfriendly tone.

And I have since noted—with dismay—that, during the intervening year and a half your organization has taken a keen interest in VDARE.COM, where my columns appear, as well as some of its contributors. (You have also attacked The Lord Of The Rings movies for being “Eurocentric” and patriarchal but I won’t go there).

All of this is troubling and bewildering.

Consequently, I write to you with the hope that we can take steps to improve the strained relationship between our two organizations.

Since you have indicated an interest in my activities and knowing that it must be difficult to keep me on your "radar" since we are separated by 2000 miles, I herewith offer you a detailed breakdown of my daily schedule to help you locate me whenever you may feel the need to do so.

This gesture is made in complete and total good faith.

While I hope this information is helpful to you, I suspect you anticipated something much more sinister.

You see, this is where the mystery surrounding your fixation on VDARE.COM deepens.

VDARE.COM advocates enforcing immigration law. That means we take a tough stand regarding illegal aliens.

And those of us who write for VDARE.COM unanimously agree that legal immigration and non-immigrant visas—both consistently made more generous over the past four decades—should be tightened to reflect the nation’s true needs.

In short, we favor upholding the law. And we are critical of a federal policy that we—and the vast majority of Americans—think has run amok.

Oddly, this infuriates you. And you go to great lengths to paint us as racists.

The racist charge is familiar to me. But the interesting thing is that it is only made by people who don’t know me. Those who have met and worked with me have a very different viewpoint, I assure you.

So let me get to the point of my letter.

Mending fences is difficult through the mail. I suggest that we meet at a mutually convenient time to hash out our disagreements face to face.

Here is my e-mail address: jguzzardi@vdare.com Please drop me a line to let me know what might be doable for you.

If your Intelligence Report responsibilities take you to California, perhaps I could show you around.

But if you have no plans to visit the West Coast, then please know that I have a summer vacation that begins in June.

I will be glad to travel south so that we can sit down and resolve our differences like adults and without rancor.

I await your response.

Yours most hopefully,

Joe Guzzardi
VDARE.COM