Jim Sensenbrenner on Face the Nation: people who hire illegal immigrants are “21st century slave masters . . . just as immoral as the 19th century slave masters we had to fight a civil war to get rid of.”
Mark Kilmer at Red State calls it “a dangerous analogy.” John Podhoretz sees “insane moral equivalence.” Even John Derbyshire thinks it’s “dumb.”
But this isn’t a new kick for Sensenbrenner. Here he is in March 2006: “Those who hire large numbers of illegal aliens are the 21st-century slave masters. And in my opinion, that’s just as immoral as the 19th-century slave masters we had to fight a civil war to get rid of.”
Has he said it before? Has he even thought for a minute about this analogy? As Jonah Goldberg (“absurd and more than a little depressing”) observes, the only way this could begin to make sense is if someone’s covered up “some sweeping historical episode in which millions of Africans snuck into the country for the ‘opportunity’ to be slaves.” Now anyone can say something thoughtless, but as I say Sensenbrenner’s used the analogy previously. And he’s the House GOP’s lead guy on immigration issues.
