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Originally Posted by roachboy
but for an example: if you look at the long string of articles that justify the patrol of the borders, notice the way in which "real americans" gets used.
who are "real americans" anyway?
who decides that?
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Fair enough roachboy. However, I think the answers to this particular set of questions are obvious. "Real Americans" are citizens and legal immigrants - so determined by the courts and immigration systems already in place. I'll admit that I haven't read every word of every article on that site, but this is the sense that I get. I suppose you could still be calling this xenophobia, but if so, I see it as a category not a pejorative term. I'm not even sure the word fits as a category label, since they aren't trying to shut down all immigration - just illegal immigration. To go even deeper, they don't seem to be pushing immigration reform half as hard as they are pushing for actual enforcement of the current policies. To me that's not really xenophobia, it's a set of people who, for whatever reason, are sticklers for one particular legal procedure. The law supports them in their views, so...
Regarding the militia thing - your understanding of this term operates on a different level from mine. I don't see these guys as militia because there doesn't seem to be a military or para-military aspect to their methods or goals. They don't even have a concerted effort to do much other than lobby government and use media tactics to highlight their pet issue. Heck, they even refer to their activities as "vigils" and not "patrols". I think of a militia as a group that attempts to (or supports an attempt to) set up or defend an independent area of sovereignty using force. The minutemen don't do that. They are attempting to force our existing system to work in the ways it says on paper that it ought to work. I'll check the Sara Diamond thing out - but it'll take a bit. If you think the militia thing is really that important, I would appreciate an executive summary - unless it's the kind of thing that would create a massive threadjack.