Paul Campos/University of Colorado: law professor, hack

Paul Campos is a University of Colorado law professor who offers "The workers often press '2'". A prolific hack, he's been writing a weekly column for the RMN since 1999. He's also the author of - hold on to your Oprah - "The Obesity Myth: Why America's Obsession with Weight is Hazardous to Your Health".

He says that "anxiety about creeping bilingualism is quite reasonable", but then says, "resentment toward the increasing prominence of Spanish is a product of the kind of ugly nativist sentiment exploited by Tancredo and his ilk" and then engages in the Appeal to Tradition logical fallacy.

Then, he goes even further off the deep bend:

Yet the most significant fact to keep in mind about people who speak Spanish in the United States is this: such people are invariably performing useful labor. In fact, it isn't too much of an exaggeration to say that the odds a person does the kind of work that simply has to get done in order to keep civilization afloat go up in direct proportion to the probability that this person speaks Spanish.

Part of this has already been answered here, and I'll offer a bit more.

While having a third world peasant class does do wonders for the ol' lifestyle, there are huge downsides. Those include the strong possibility of making said peasantry angry and susceptible to demagogues, perhaps resulting in revolts and the like. (Campos should ask someone in the History department to explain that to him.)

It also leads to decadence, as an out-of-touch elite class becomes separated from day-to-day concerns. And, it leads to cheap labor supplanting innovation. Why invent, engineer, build, and market a chicken-plucking machine when you can just hire a bunch of serfs to do the same thing? We need a balance, and the current situation is quite a bit too reminiscent of past societies that relied on some form of forced labor. (Once again, consult someone in the History department.)

Comments

this rat is a real Red! Pat is dead on, see mexico city for the new and old way of enslavement of a population of little people.

For current slave-dependent societies, see Saudi Arabia, where privilege and entitlement replace work, study, or entrepenuership. Result, absolute decadence.

Perhaps George "El Mexicano" Bush sees himself sipping mint juleps in the shade while those marvelous Latinos pick grapes in the sun. We've been down this road before and bought ourselves hundreds of years of social problems. Perhaps George needs to join Campos in American history class.