but for all this annoying democracy...

There’s a new kind of “hatred” in this country, a hatred borne of the worst impulses of humanity, a hatred that represents a giant step backwards in our progress towards a civil, fair, truly inclusive society:

The hatred of rewarding illegal behavior.

So says New York Representative Jose Serrano who described New York Governor Elliot Spitzer’s ill-fated plan to provide illegal aliens with New York driver’s licenses as having fallen “victim to ignorance, indifference, and, yes, hatred.”

What is it that drives normally pleasant, civilized people to such extremes of law abidance? These are after all the very same neighbors who keep their lawns nice, wave to you as you pass by, and volunteer to handle the refreshments for Wednesday’s PTA meeting and yet somehow turn into maniacal supporters of the long since discredited notion that people who don’t obey the law should be treated in a manner not wholly consistent with reward.

Governor Spitzer accused opponents of his plan of engaging in “fear mongering.” Many of these people went so far as to brazenly monger the fear that providing people in this country illegally with legal identification could easily lead to providing people in this country illegally with legal identification.

Sure, that sounds crazy, but it’s exactly that kind of “hysteria” that Representative Jerrold Nadler warned us about.

Perhaps an even more troubling question to emerge from this unfortunate episode is what does it say about our political process that a small but vocal group of 65% of the population can so easily influence the positions of our elected representatives? Are we simply going to allow public policy to be subject to the whims of this far-center wing of the moderate political spectrum? Are we going to allow, for example, 84% of Ohio residents to determine the public policy for all 100%? 

Is that really the lesson of “democracy” we want to send out to the world?

No, says, Presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton, who unequivocally stated that… wait, sorry, what she meant to say was… no, that’s not right either. Wait, yes, she believes that, no, had it wrong again…, okay, got it now, she is strongly in favor of the Governor’s proposal. Um, proposal to not propose it.

And you can count on that.

Whatever it is.

For now.

For their part, proponents of the measure pointed out that while there may be many legitimate concerns surrounding the issue of undocumented workers it is essential that we remember that we are not talking about hardened criminals, we are talking about attractive 20-year-old college students.

And that is something we as Americans can all rally around.

J.