The Telegraph (N.H.), Aug. 24:
America has seen this before. This anti-immigrant sentiment being churned up by Donald Trump and others? It’s not new.
Trump wants to build a wall to keep out Mexicans and deport those who are in this country illegally back to whence they came. He wants to send their kids back, too – even those who were born here.
If some of that refrain sounds familiar, it’s because it’s an old tune with some new lyrics.
A similar kind of xenophobia once swept the country under the banner of something called the American Party.
“As a national political entity, it called for restrictions on immigration, the exclusion of the foreignborn from voting or holding public office in the United States, and for a 21-year residency requirement for citizenship,” according to the Encyclopedia Britannica.
Membership in the American Party was also restricted to Protestant men.
American Party members weren’t targeting Mexicans. Rather, they were worried about the influx of Irish-Catholics and Germans.
Their brand of intolerance allowed them to gain control of the Massachusetts legislature, win congressional elections and carry some big-city mayoral races, including Boston, Philadelphia and Chicago.
Party members were blamed for burning a Catholic church in Maine and giving the tar-andfeather treatment to a Catholic priest in that state.
Look how far we’ve come.
Last week in Boston, two men were arrested for urinating on and beating a homeless man authorities believe was targeted because he was Hispanic.
One of the men charged for the assault reportedly invoked the name of Trump, who made disparaging remarks about illegal immigrants when he announced his candidacy for president.
“Donald Trump was right, all these illegals need to be deported,” one of the brothers allegedly told police after he was arrested.
Trump’s response when told about the incident? He denounced it, of course.
Sort of. He proclaimed it a “shame.”
Then, almost before that word even had a chance to reach anyone’s ears, he continued: “I will say that people who are following me are very passionate. They love this country and they want this country to be great again. They are passionate.”
He sounded like the proud papa of a pair of schoolyard bullies who just kicked the dogsnot out of a disabled kid at recess.
Trump deserves credit, we suppose, for not trotting out the ol’ high school cheer urging his followers to “Hit ‘em again – harder, harder.”
Still, it’s hard not to see his “passion” comment as a tacit acknowledgment that he’s OK with it being open season on immigrants. Who’s next, we wonder .
Welcome back to the 1840s and 1850s, when the American Party flourished before eventually breaking up over the issue of slavery. You can still read about the party in the history books, though its members were better known in the press by another name.
They were dubbed the “Know Nothings.”
It’s a name that still fits in some quarters.
Hartford Courant (Conn.), Aug. 29:
The shocking murders of two television journalists in Virginia while they were working raises two issues that resonate in Connecticut.
The first, widely discussed after the 2012 Newtown massacre of 20 small children and six educators by a deeply troubled young man, is how to keep guns out of the hands of mentally unstable people. If Congress ever finds its conscience, a universal background check system would be a good start.
The other issue is how to prevent workplace violence. The suspect in the Virginia killings, Vester Flanagan, once worked at the television station that employed the two journalists he killed. He had been fired and was said to have problems with anger and other issues.
Connecticut has seen two horrific cases of workplace violence in recent memory: the Connecticut Lottery killings in 1998, when a silent and seething employee fatally shot four supervisors and himself in Newington; and the Hartford Distributors shootings in 2010, when a fired employee killed eight workers before turning his gun on himself in Manchester.
These are two sides of the same coin: We live in a country where angry and disgruntled people can arm themselves all too easily. From mass shootings to threats and verbal abuse, some 2 million Americans are subject to workplace violence each year, according to OSHA. No workplace is immune; but companies can increase their odds of safety by such steps as implementing a zero-tolerance policy toward workplace violence, safety training and creating a secure workplace. (For more information see courant.com/workplace-violence.)
Just hours after the Virginia killings, a police officer was shot and killed in Sunset, La., apparently with his own gun, trying to stop a man who was stabbing three women. The officer, Henry Nelson, was the fifth Louisiana police officer shot to death in four months. Police too often bear the burden of the nation’s lax attitude toward gun safety.
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