Catatonic shock, speechlessness, fears for sanity—these symptoms swept the Immigration Reform community today as word spread of the publication, on the Op-Ed page of the Wall Street Journal, of an article defending the Minutemen and their analysis of the US border problem. As Steve Sailer put it, -It Must be a Cold Day in Hell."

The article, [Minutemen Are People Too ,Leo W. Banks, May 19, 2005 ] takes no prisoners. It is primarily a savage attack on the prejudice and lack of integrity of the Main Stream Media:

we saw the cultural divide separating media elites from ordinary people...story most editors and producers wanted. They wanted to stand up the angle that went something like—no, exactly like—this::Gun-toting vigilantes run amok in the desert, hunting harmless illegals who are only looking for work.

In making the case it develops a vivid and thorough exposition of the catastrophic conditions on the Arizona border, with charming details:

One rancher told me about illegals who rustled one of her newborn calves. The intruders beat the 12-hour-old animal to death with a fence post, then barbecued it on the spot.

Banks concludes:

How long do you suppose such outrages would go on in Fairfield, Conn.? Or Greenwich? It'd be a day and a half before some kumbaya-liberal flipped sides and founded the Merritt Parkway Minutemen.

A decade ago, when Peter Brimelow was fruitlessly appealing to the late Bob Bartley to be permitted to reply to WSJ attacks on Alien Nation he could point out that already two years had gone by since an immigration skeptic had been allowed space. The subsequent years have been ones of shamefully dogmatic repression.

Quite possibly the Banks article was only permitted because of the Neocons need ammunition in their war with the rest of the media about Iraq. But one thing is clear: breaking the WSJ censorship is another triumph for the Minuteman Project and its leaders Jim Gilchrist and Chris Simcox.