Thread: Leave border patrol to the professionals

http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/news/opinion/12283047.htm

Posted on Tue, Aug. 02, 2005



Leave border patrol to the professionals

By Sarah Vowell
New York Times News Service

I have a name for it: 1775 disease.

The United States of America wasn't born of the pretty words from Jefferson's pen in the declaration signed July 4, 1776. It was born of anonymous gunfire at Lexington on April 19, 1775. And ever since, we have carried our violent nativity within us like a virus, a virus that lies dormant from time to time only to break out again and again.

We celebrate the Minutemen of 1775. And I'm not saying we shouldn't. I do love a good "Listen, my children, and you shall hear" legend. In fact, my mushy nationalistic heart skipped a beat when an old Minuteman statue, caked in alien goop, made a cameo in Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds.

All I'm saying is that there is an inherent pitfall in revering the volunteer militiamen of Lexington and Concord, our beloved raggedy, gun-toting amateurs who defied the powers-that-were.

As when today's raggedy, gun-toting amateurs defy the powers-that-be in their honor and someone gets hurt. Timothy McVeigh, for example. Ten years ago, he bombed the federal building in Oklahoma City -- on April 19.

And now -- someone alert the CDC -- 1775 disease is breaking out in at least 18 states, thanks to the Minuteman Project.

What started back in April as a nutty experiment involving armed citizen volunteers patrolling the Arizona-Mexico border to thwart illegal immigration is spreading to non-border states as well. This week Tennessee got its own Minutemen.

No serious person thinks random guys with guns stalking Niagara Falls or the Rio Grande are going to make the country safer.

On the contrary, in addition to all our other national security worries, Americans now have to fret for the safety of these clowns, who have been condemned by President Bush as "vigilantes." Because, odds are, the only people they'll end up shooting will be one another.

And I say that not only as a namby-pamby liberal writing for the most uppity newspaper in the world, but also as the daughter of a gunsmith, a man who was so persnickety about the very real danger of firearms' tendency to just go off that he practically made my sister and me don hunter orange just to play with squirt guns.

It's worth remembering that no one knows who fired that "shot heard 'round the world" at Lexington. What probably happened was that one man got nervous and accidentally pulled the trigger on his musket. (Longfellow meant to put that at the end of Paul Revere's Ride, but he couldn't find a decent rhyme for "uh-oh.")

The wonderful spirit of the old Minutemen -- their amateurish gumption, their do-it-yourself defiance -- can occasionally be ominous when inspiring latter-day gunmen, but glorious with regard to art. The police have way too many half-cocked rule-breakers to deal with; pop music can never have enough.

We Jam Econo, Tim Irwin's lovable documentary about the lovable '80s punk band called the Minutemen, is making the rounds of film festivals and revival houses this summer. It's nice to revisit the hullabaloo of their songs. And watching the bassist, Mike Watt, driving his van around his California hometown, San Pedro, and pointing at Minutemen landmarks is like listening to a fascinating Concord park ranger lead a tour across North Bridge.

"We were minute men," Watt says. That's my-NOOT men -- a little homemade band, not the slick Redcoats of arena rock.

Watt and the guitarist D.Boon are two men Sam Adams could have had a beer with. Their idealism, their humor and decency, is spellbinding. Their friend Nels Cline points out that Boon used so much treble in his guitar as "a political decision" -- to distinguish his sound from Watt's bass, like two "sovereign states." Egalitarian timbre!

Then there's the story of their album Double Nickels on the Dime, a jab at Sammy Hagar's I Can't Drive 55. Watt recalls, "We said, 'Well, we'll drive 55 and be crazy with the music instead of crazy with the cars.'"

The best part of the film, and the most heartbreaking, is when Watt walks around the park where he met Boon, a childhood friend who died in a car accident in 1985.

"I was quite smitten with him," Watt remembers. "He was playing army and he fell out of a tree on me."

As he stares at the very tree, it occurs to me that playing army when you're 13 is fine. Grown men playing army on the Mexican border? No, thanks.

After all, there are so few illegals in the country they must be doing a great job and don't need any help.

The more Minutemen there are, the happier I am.

The writer has no clue. Typical NY Times whinefest.

Originally Posted by dataman

After all, there are so few illegals in the country they must be doing a great job and don't need any help.

The more Minutemen there are, the happier I am.

The writer has no clue. Typical NY Times whinefest.

I agree with you dataman, but i am sure glad to hear that my Home state the state that Davy Crockett came from The great state of Tennesse. Has it's first Minutemen and lady's formed.

We'll just roll over and play dead because this idiot wants to romanticize about 80's punk bands. How does she even have a job!

She sounds more like a blogger than an editorial writer.

SARAH, SARAH, SARAH....

You shame us girl. Who in the world do you think you are writing for the NYTimes about the "old" Minutemen as if they accidentally "misfired" us into the Revolutionary War and the United States of America!!

I'll bet dear if I checked your wallet, you've got an ACLU card.

Go back to your little computer; play your little mind games; and word games; and reinvention of history to get yourself a "by-line".

Freedom is obviously something you think you buy at a cosmetic counter on Fifth Avenue....so go shop til you drop and leave Protecting Your Freedom to the Real Men and Women of the United States.

GO MINUTEMEN!!