That Ann Coulter, Such a Nice Girl!

NICE IMAGE FROM A NICE GIRL. Just in case anybody wasn't sure that right-wing opposition to the immigration bill is racist, here's Ann Coulter to set them straight:

And as long as we're adopting an open borders policy for immigration, how about Opening the borders for emigration? . . . You can leave the country, you can Renounce your citizenship -- but you still owe taxes for 10 years. The government does not allow us to stop supporting welfare recipients in America, millions more of whom it plans to import under Bush's bill. That's not a free market -- it's a roach Motel.

Immigrants as roaches. Our country as a roach motel. Such a nice image. It's also very striking because the racial power of roach motel imagery starts deep within Coulter's white-supremacist gut with its connotations of welfare in relation to African-Americans. She also catches up the whole range of non-whites in her list of the most prominent sources of immigrants: "Mexico (161,445), India (84,681), China (69,967), the Philippines (60,748), Cuba (36,261), Vietnam (32,784), the Dominican Republic (27,504), Korea (26,562), Colombia (25,571) and Ukraine (22,761)." In Coulter's eyes, they're all either non-white or non-Protestant (the poor Ukrainians)-- all like the African-American population in not sharing a British cultural base, all as much non-white "roaches" as she imagines African-Americans to be.

Given Coulter's flair for the outrageous, I'm surprised that she doesn't find a way to apply the "n-word" to all these groups.

NOT ANN COULTER'S AMERICA. For Coulter, open immigration is ruining the country. The white percentage of the population has slipped from 90% in 1960 to 65% and is slated to go below 50% by 2050. Note that Coulter could not bring herself to mention that more than 10% of the population has been black. From her point of view, blacks were never "real" Americans. Coulter doesn't believe a majority minority America is not really America. She quotes the conservative political scientist Samuel Huntington as asking"Would America be the America it is today if in the 17th and 18th centuries it had been settled not by British Protestants but by French, Spanish or Portuguese Catholics? The answer is no. It would not be America; it would be Quebec, Mexico or Brazil." Or India. Or China. Or Vietnam. Or some combination of all of them.

AFTER THE ROACH MOTEL. Coulter can't abide that. For Coulter, open immigration is ruining the country and she wants out. "If these free-marketeers at The Wall Street Journal want the free movement of people, how about letting us freely leave after they've wrecked the country?"

But where's a nice racist girl to go if she emigrates from the United States? The logical choice for her would be a white, Protestant country in Europe. However, Great Britain, France, Germany, and the Scandanavian countries are all social democratic countries where even the conservatives reject the American right? There's so little interest in religion in these countries that they can barely call themselves Christian anymore. Even worse, they've all been letting in Muslim immigrants.

Personally, I think Ann might be happy with the Russians. True, they aren't Protestants, but it was the Russians who put the Caucasus in "Caucasian" and the Russians have the kind of government she likes--an elected autocracy that is flexing its muscles, expanding its power, and cracking down on soft-minded liberal dissent. What more could Ann want? But wherever Ann goes, we should wish her well as she flies off. Then we can have the pleasure of closing the door behind her.