Stomping The Tarantoad (Again)

By Peter Brimelow

With the first issue of The American Conservative magazine off the stands, I am posting here my review therein of Michelle Malkin’s powerful new book Invasion: How America Still Welcomes Terrorists, Criminals, and Other Foreign menaces to Our Shores. I argue that Michelle has advanced the immigration debate very significantly by focusing very tightly on the admissions process, which she shows is hopelessly compromised and corrupt.

I am also using this opportunity to stomp once more on the Wall Street Journal Edit Page’s Best Of The Web columnist James Tarantoad (click here for picture. See?).  Unable to take criticism, like all immigration enthusiasts, Tarantoad reacted to my comments about him in this review by linking to my address and phone number, which at that time VDARE.COM’s webhost posted in full, even though he knows perfectly well that I work at home, that we have small children, and that my wife - his former colleague - is gravely ill with metastasized breast cancer.

Tarantoad didn’t like my outing him in this charming maneuver either, possibly because VDARE.COM readers disregarded my admonitions and communicated forcefully on  james.taranto@wsj.com, james.taranto@dowjones.com or taranto@panix.com. (Tsk tsk. But we appreciate the sentiment.) He again reacted violently (scroll down to third item from end).

Hooray for the internet.

Some readers urged Tarantoad to apologize. But I knew that toads don’t apologize. They just emit a foul fluid.  (I am, however, slightly surprised that Dow Jones CEO Peter Kann does not appear to have responded to the readers who wrote him on peter.kann@dowjones.com. Maybe the Wall Street Journal is doing better than reported.)

Tarantoad tries to slime his way out VDARE.COM readers’ complaints thusly:

“Brimelow complains that we decided to "link to VDARE.COM's webhost, apparently because (very much to my surprise) it had posted my address and phone number." He implies that our aim was to encourage readers to harass Brimelow and his family…[PB comment: note that the specific reason that publicizing my home was so contemptible is discreetly withheld from Wall Street Journal readers].

“Here's the real story…We did so in order to establish that it actually is Brimelow's site, since we were criticizing him in connection with something someone else had written that appeared there. VDare.com itself is somewhat coy about who is responsible for it, with this page describing the site as a "coalition" and an "editorial collective" but not identifying anyone as the editor or owner.”

With anybody but a Tarantoad, I would describe this as a childish lie. Far from being “somewhat coy,” VDARE.COM on its home page lists the name and contact email of all its principal contributors, which is more than the Wall Street Journal does. Moreover, VDARE.COM has also always carried a note on its home page clearly saying that it is a project of the Center For American Unity, complete with snail mail address and link for those wishing to contribute (many thanks to those of you who do) and I am clearly described as President of the Center, with photograph (touched up, I suspect, but at least recognizably human).  To pretend that there was some need to live-link to my home address is patently absurd.

But I don’t think it’s technically a lie. Long observation of the Tarantoad species has convinced me that they are incapable of distinguishing truth from falsehood when it comes to believing something that they decide to be in their interests (e.g. Tarantoad’s need to talk his way out of the embarrassment caused by my outing him). Professor Kevin MacDonald has written extensively about this phenomenon of “self-deception” in his remarkable book The Culture Of Critique.

Of course, the bottom line remains the same: anything Tarantoad says has to be handled with care. You could get warts.

More important for the future of the Republic, it should be noted that Tarantoad is still withholding from Wall Street Journal readers the content of my complaint against him. This is his latest evasion:

…Brimelow had accused us, in an article in Pat Buchanan's new magazine, The American Conservative, of being responsible for a series of murders. (The killer was an immigrant; we favor immigration. Ipso facto.) "Taranto feels no need to refute, much less explain, my point," Brimelow writes.

Indeed so. It would be absurd to engage in a debate over whether a policy disagreement with Brimelow really is tantamount to murder.

In fact, of course, my point was that the Mexican-born serial killer Angel Resendiz was an illegal alien (not an “immigrant,” although maybe the Wall Street Journal  wants to abolish the distinction). Over a period of 25 years, he repeatedly entered the U.S. illegally, had at least 25 encounters with U.S. law enforcement authorities, was convicted at least nine times, deported at least three times, and “voluntarily returned” to Mexico at least four times. When the Border Patrol last caught and released Resendiz, on July 1 1999 – his eighth such apprehension in the previous eighteen months - he had three outstanding arrest warrants for crimes that included several murders. He went on to commit at least four more.

To anyone except a Tarantoad, this spells a border that is out of control. To Tarantoad, any such concern just means that you think “Mexican gardeners are a national-security threat.” (OpinionJournal, January 15 2002).

I will repeat here what I said in my review of Michelle’s book: those murders are the direct responsibility of James Tarantoad - and of his entire nest of immigration enthusiasts, who have dismissed, derided and demonized those of us who have been pointing out the problem of border control for more than a decade.

The reason Tarantoad has to withhold this accusation from Wall Street Journal readers goes beyond self-deception. He simply has no answer. And, in some primitive reptilian way, he knows it.

I might also note (probably something that would only occur to an author) that Tarantoad again artfully avoids mentioning Michelle’s book which is now suspiciously overdue for review in the Wall Street Journal and the rest of the Establishment Media, although doing very well on Amazon. So I’ll mention it again here: Invasion: How America Still Welcomes Terrorists, Criminals, and Other Foreign menaces to Our Shores.

Many thanks to VDARE.COM readers who wrote us, and to Richard Poe for his searing summary of this squalid affair on his website.