| 摘要 | Live with Michelle Malkin
Born to Filipino parents in Pennsylvania, Michelle Malkin began her journalism career in 1992 as an editorial writer at the Los Angeles Daily News, followed by a stint at the Seattle Times, and then a move to Washington, D.C. A nationally syndicated columnist since 1999, she has become known in print and on television as a no-nonsense patriot with little patience for political correctness or America-bashing.
In her first book, Invasion, she describes how our lax immigration rules allow terrorists and criminals to enter the country, despite much talk of tightened homeland security. In her latest book, In Defense of Internment: The Case for ‘Racial Profiling’ in World War II and the War on Terror, she argues forcefully that the primary concern of the U.S. government should be keeping its citizens safe, not dealing with ethnic grievances and civil-liberties complaints.
Malkin lives in Germantown, Maryland with her husband and two children. She was interviewed for TAE by senior editor Karina Rollins.
TAE: Would you start by giving us some background on your family and where you grew up?
MALKIN: My parents came here in 1970 from the Philippines. They were legal immigrants. My father was a doctor and my mother was a stay-at-home mom until we were school age, when she became a public school teacher. I was born in Philadelphia, and we moved around quite a bit before settling in southern New Jersey. After graduating from Holy Spirit High School I went to Oberlin College in Ohio, a small, radically left-wing, liberal arts college. I went there to study piano, but that didn’t work out so I got a degree in English and government. My parents were not politically active, although they considered themselves rock-ribbed Reagan Republicans. They are strict Catholics. So I was congenitally a social conservative.
TAE: You didn’t talk politics at home?
MALKIN: We didn’t, although my parents were both huge news junkies. At breakfast we’d all read the paper, and the morning news shows were on all the time. When my parents drove us to school, talk radio would be on. So the news was always a big thing with me and I always wanted to go into print journalism. When I was in high school, I was editor of the high school newspaper. I got a job with the little local newspaper, but because I didn’t have any connections it wasn’t in the newsroom but in the printing plant, where I inserted the comics and ads into the paper. I just loved being around newspapers.
It wasn’t until college that I became politically active, and even then I was not a very opinionated and outspoken person. On my campus, which particularly cultivated multiculturalism and anti-war orthodoxy, there was no ideological diversity at all.
I met my husband at Oberlin, and most of the student body, the administration, and the faculty chafed at us for challenging a few sacred cows, in particular affirmative action. We had subscriptions to Commentary and National Review, conservative publications that weren’t available at the campus library. Through our own reading we were introduced to Thomas Sowell, and forms of economic conservatism we were not getting in our classes, which really whetted my appetite.
If not for my experiences at Oberlin, I certainly don’t think I’d be doing what I’m doing today. It’s tough to be an ethnic-minority conservative. There’s a huge amount of pressure to conform and not be seen as a “sellout.” The ad hominem attacks that minority conservatives have to endure on left-wing campuses when they’re still very young and haven’t built up a thick skin are a life-altering experience. I think you deal with it in one of two ways: One is to grow skin like Kevlar and to let it roll off your back. The other is to retreat. A lot of kids are intimidated.
TAE: Are you comfortable wearing the “conservative” label?
MALKIN: Oh, absolutely. I started out more of a social conservative than an economic conservative, and then there was a period where I called myself a libertarian before I called myself a conservative. I voted for the Libertarian Party candidate Harry Brown for President in 1996.
TAE: Have there been any improvements in immigration policy since you wrote Invasion?
MALKIN: It seems like it’s one step forward, two steps back. The year after 9/11, there were a couple of major visa reform laws and border security measures, and of course the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. That was supposed to rein in a lot of the immigration chaos that helped lead to September 11 in the first place. But I don’t think there has been the kind of immigration reform that is really necessary.
Not only should we enforce existing immigration laws more carefully, we should also take an honest look at every single visa program and ask: Does this meet a national security test? Is this in our national interest? We have ridiculous programs like the Diversity Visa Lottery, created at the behest of Senator Ted Kennedy, which has turned into this random Pez-candy approach for passing out visas to underrepresented minorities.
It’s astounding to me that after the pain of 9/11 we still have immigration programs that exist for no other reason than to meet some multicultural agenda. These programs have already been used by people with links to terror acts in this country. I would think that both the “open borders” lobby and advocates of tighter immigration enforcement would agree that we shouldn’t be giving out visas the same way people play Power Ball. But we haven’t taken a systematic look at legal immigration.
And when it comes to illegal immigration, things have gotten worse. The “Minuteman” actions by citizens trying to help secure our southern border are a visceral indication that people are unhappy with the federal government’s failures. When people feel like they have to take into their own hands a function that is clearly a federal duty, something’s wrong.
There has been one major improvement since my book came out, which is that Americans are starting to understand that immigration should be viewed first and foremost as a national security issue. Even a lot of the people in favor of open borders now acknowledge that. President Bush had proposed an amnesty, and guest worker programs matching any willing worker to any willing employer. Now he’s retreated from that. I credit the immigration enforcement advocates in the House of Representatives, especially among the Republicans, for getting the message across to the White House.
TAE: Should legal immigration be restricted?
MALKIN: The Diversity Visa Lottery should be shut down completely. There should be at least a temporary freeze on visa issuance to countries that are high risk for harboring terrorists, and that includes a lot of countries in the Middle East. Why don’t we just start with all of the countries that are already on the State Department’s list of designated state sponsors of terror, and freeze visa issuance to those countries? The fact that the Visa Express Program allowed the 15 Saudi hijackers to basically get drive-thru entry papers shows that there’s a huge problem.
People who favor better immigration enforcement are often caricatured as wanting a total freeze on all legal immigration. I’m not for that. Rather than just bringing down the overall level of legal immigration we should target bad provisions that let terrorists and others slip in, so that the people who really do want to come here and achieve the American dream instead of destroy it are still able to get through. It’s just ridiculous how heavy the burden is on some people who work to come legally through our front door in the right way.
TAE: What do you make of President Bush’s refusal to do anything substantial about border security?
MALKIN: I wish I were a psychologist. I think as Texas governor he was close to many people who do not appreciate the distinction between legal and illegal immigration. He obviously has a close relationship with Mexican president Vicente Fox.
Bush understands what we need to do to win the war on terror overseas. I just don’t understand where the disconnect is that he doesn’t see what we need to do at home. He mouths these platitudes like “family values don’t stop at the Rio Grande” without realizing that terrorists don’t stop there either. You can’t just be so blasé about saying that the only people who are coming across the southern border are innocent bus boys and dishwashers. And it’s not just terrorism. There are negative economic and cultural impacts of illegal immigration too.
But most critical is the crime and public security aspect. When you have people coming across the border who are shooting cops, who’ve concocted fake Social Security numbers, then people are going to get mad. This is why there are people like Garrett Chamberlain, a police chief in New Hampshire who has called federal immigration agents several times to come pick up illegal aliens he’s arrested. They won’t do it, saying they don’t have enough time, or there’s no detention space. So he’s using local trespassing laws to get a handle on illegal immigration.
One of my first stories in Invasion is about how the September 11 hijackers went to the parking lot of a 7-Eleven in Arlington, Virginia where they were able to easily pick up fake photo IDs from illegal-alien Hispanic day laborers. You’ve got to get a handle on illegal immigration if you want to win the war on terror at home.
TAE: What grade do you give Bush overall in fighting the war on terror?
MALKIN: A overseas, and D at home. I had a lot of praise for John Ashcroft as attorney general, and I interviewed and dealt with many people at his Justice Department who understood the importance of immigration enforcement. But they had an uphill battle.
It wasn’t just the Left they were fighting; there were a lot of internal battles as well. Take the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System. The Justice Department wanted to make sure that people from terror-friendly nations didn’t overstay their visas, like so many al-Qaeda operatives have. Yeah, it amounts to profiling. You are profiling people who come from certain countries that have tendencies to breed al-Qaeda members.
If that unfairly burdens families from Pakistan who are coming to Disneyland, it’s not the end of the world. It is not the gulag. It’s not a human rights crisis to ask people who have no Constitutional guarantee of entering this country in the first place to submit to fingerprints and photographs, and check in with the U.S. government to let officials know they’re still here or tell them when they’re leaving.
When John Ashcroft tried to implement this program even in a small way, the cry from civil libertarians, big-business groups, and the tourism industry was ridiculous. But he stood up to them.
For each step forward, though, there is a step back. There are Republican sponsors for things like giving illegal-alien students tuition discounts. The Treasury Department approved the use of an identity card issued by Mexico called the matricular consular. It is used exclusively by illegal aliens, now with our approval, for everything from using public libraries to boarding planes! What are we doing?
TAE: Do you think that the majority of Americans understand the real scope of the terror threat?
MALKIN: Not nearly enough. We’ve backslid since September 11. Mark Steyn observed that people tend to see the 9/11 attacks like an ice storm, just one of those things that happens, instead of seeing it as a long entrenched war being waged against us.
I think the media is in large part to blame for this. As someone who works in cable TV myself, I’m embarrassed that there’s so much air time absorbed by the latest missing-girl story or shark attack. Meanwhile, important cases are not featured on TV like they should be to remind people that al-Qaeda continues to plot against us.
TAE: What is it going to take for people to finally wake up? A nuclear explosion in a major American city? And even then, might not half the population believe that if Bush hadn’t invaded Iraq it wouldn’t have happened?
MALKIN: I’ve been writing about the battle over the memorial at Ground Zero, what it should or shouldn’t be. Lots of blame-America types want to hijack that sacred ground for propaganda—that it’s our fault, that it’s Bush’s fault, that we need to understand the enemy. But people are fighting back. Not just 9/11 family members, but ordinary Americans. More than 11,000 people signed a petition to put New York City and George Soros and these human rights alarmists on notice that they will not allow Ground Zero to be violated that way. So some people still do remember. The fact that Bush was re-elected is also cause for optimism.
But the scenario that’ll finally wake people up is somebody carrying something in a suitcase across the southern border that’s going to kill five or ten or 20 times more people than died on 9/11. The way to prevent the major restrictions we’d face after a catastrophic attack like that is to do rational things now. Immigration enforcement. Sensible national security profiling at airports.
When people think that being questioned at the airport for a few extra minutes is cause for an international human rights tribunal, we’re killing ourselves. You just cannot have a rational discussion about profiling, about civil liberties, about things like preventive detention today. The debate we’re having about how prisoners are treated at Guantanamo Bay is indicative of that. The idea that we should give foreign enemy combatants the same panoply of Constitutional rights as an American citizen—that we should treat terrorists like shoplifters—was the mindset of the Clinton era, and look what it got us. Yet 99.9 percent of the newspaper editorialists in America believe that’s how we should do things.
TAE: What can average Americans do?
MALKIN: Pay attention to what their city council and police departments are doing with regard to immigration enforcement. Insist that their own local governments cooperate with the federal government in this area. A lot of people would be outraged to know that there are many cities across this country that defy war-on-terror strictures. You’ve got cities like Portland, Oregon that have declared that their police officers will not cooperate with the U.S. Joint Terrorism Task Torce. Not just with the immigration enforcement, but with any terrorism investigation.
You don’t have to wait for the Department of Homeland Security or George Bush to rescue you; that’s in your hands. If you’ve got a city council that’s subsidizing with your tax dollars an illegal-alien day-laborer center, you can do something about that.
People should be curious about what’s going on at their local mosque. Lots of terrorism experts had been warning about this long before September 11—people like Daniel Pipes and Steven Emerson warn that some of these mosques are huge organizing centers. There are Muslim charities that raise funds under the guise of moderation and benevolence while donating money to train killers. The Bush administration deserves a lot of credit for cracking down on this kind of financing.
TAE: The government routinely tells us to be wary of our surroundings and to report suspicious behavior—but we’re never told who we should look for.
MALKIN: That’s right. If you recall, an FBI agent in Phoenix sent out that now-famous memo before September 11, saying we should canvass flight schools, because he had suspicions about Arab students. The FBI ignored that, in part out of concern for lawsuits and accusations of discrimination. There was also the Agriculture Department official who had direct contact with lead-9/11-hijacker Mohammed Atta when he came in for a grant. She was very uncomfortable with him. Could this young Arab male possibly be a terrorist? People have to be willing to suffer the slings and arrows of being called nasty names if they have suspicions.
TAE: Has the State Department improved since 9/11?
MALKIN: Talk about enemies within. The State Department still won’t acknowledge its own culpability in the Visa Express Program, and the customer-service mentality it has allowed to take root in our consular offices abroad. That culture does not seem to go away whether it’s a Republican or a Democratic administration. But when you look at who has been winning between the Pentagon culture and the State Department culture, it seems that State is now less influential than it once was, and that’s a very good thing.
TAE: What do you do for fun?
MALKIN: Well, I’ve got a handful with a 5-year-old daughter and a 19-month-old son, and fun is my family. I am a stay-at-home, work-at-home, mom. When I used to have time, I did a lot of crocheting, and fishing too. We were also big game-players. I can’t wait until both kids are old enough to beat at Scrabble.
TAE: How long have you been married?
MALKIN: Twelve years. We got married right out of college. It’s an incredible arrangement because both my husband and I work at home. I just feel so blessed. I do a lot of my writing at night, and I’m with the kids during the day. I blog during the day too. We have computers everywhere. I’ve got one in the kitchen. I’ll have a thought, I’ll blog it. That’s a lot of fun.
TAE: How has the blogosphere contributed to the political debate?
MALKIN: I think it’s been a huge boon to political discourse in this country. A lot of people in the establishment media have a vested interest in shutting out that competition. To appreciate the blogosphere you need some humility (something a lot of old-media journalists lack). Because you quickly realize there are countless people out in this country who are smarter than you, funnier than you, and faster than you.
That’s juice to me. I’ve learned so much more from my readers, people who send me tips through the blog, than from the colleagues I’ve worked with during a whole decade in daily journalism and newspapers. Every time you look at a case study where the blogosphere has had a big impact—whether it’s the Dan Rather case, CNN executive Eason Jordan, or others—the collective knowledge of the blogosphere compared to the newsrooms is overwhelming. No wonder the major media are so vicious in their criticism of blogs.
TAE: Who are your biggest intellectual heroes?
MALKIN: I would say Ronald Reagan and Milton Friedman.
TAE: Who you would like to see as the next President?
MALKIN: Dick Cheney.
TAE: How optimistic or pessimistic are you about what’s going to happen in this country over the next 50 years?
MALKIN: As much as I gripe in my columns and on my blog, I have an underlying fundamental confidence in this country. A lot of that comes from my own parents, from their own experience here, and their ability to better themselves and achieve the American dream.
TAE: Specifically related to terrorism, how worried are you that your children will not live in a safe country?
MALKIN: Ask me after Election Day 2008. Then we’ll see. I have a poster in my home office done by a young artist after 9/11—a tastefully sketched Statue of Liberty holding a baby swaddled in the American flag. She has the baby in one hand and a gun in the other. The caption on the poster is: The Most Dangerous Place in the World is Between a Mother and Her Children.
As long as there is this sense that protecting the next generation of Americans is important, I don’t think we’re going to recede completely to the September 10 mentality. That’s why I say at bottom I am an optimist—I meet lots of Americans, like the wives and mothers of the men and women who are serving overseas, who are not forgetting what we’re up against.
These citizens may not be able to stop all attacks against this country, but they will keep us resilient, able to bounce back, and they’ll make sure there is a counter-force to the apologists. As this war continues there will be an ongoing battle with the civil-liberties Chicken Littles. The Bush administration needs to do a lot more to defend itself. And the rest of us need to do more tugging on our side of the rope. A lot more. |
