He Wouldn’t Have Been There
O’Reilly and Geraldo lose it, big time, over the illegal alien drunk driver who killed Alison Kunhardt, 17, and Tessa Tranchant, 16, last week in Virginia. The red-faced loss of control was startling enough. But in all the yelling, O’Reilly somehow failed to use the words that would get his point across–not to Geraldo, he was deaf to reason–but to any viewers who may have been wavering towards Geraldo’s side:
If the law had been followed, that man, Ramos, would not have been where he was at the time he was, drunk, sober, or in any other condition. And those two girls would still be alive. Geraldo can scream all he wants about the thousands of fatalities from drunk driving. How would he like to stop them? Seems to me about the most effective way, if you can manage it, is to prevent the presence of the drunk driver altogether. Seems to me that the government, not being able to foresee all ends, might want to consider that as a general policy, following the law will probably lead to better ends than not. Seems to me that Geraldo’s “17,000” don’t matter a whit right now to the parents of those two girls. Stats don’t, when it’s your kid.
Whatever Geraldo thinks, Bill was the farthest possible from making a political point. He was making a personal one, though he was too angry to use the right words. For those girls, for their parents, if Ramos had been deported for his illegal status, two dead girls would be alive and their parents spared the worst kind of grief. Yes, 17,000 other Americans may have lost their lives to 17,000 drunken American drivers in whatever fiscal period Geraldo was babbling about. It’s entirely irrelevant to the point that these two deaths need never have happened, had that man, Ramos, not been there. Liberals love individual life so much, as long as it’s in the body of somebody “disadvantaged.” It doesn’t get more disadvantaged than death for those two Viriginia girls.
Update: Patterico with the analogy that makes my point. Two extra “drinks” that would have been unspilled, had this criminal been removed from this country.
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“He wouldn’t have been there” smacks of but-for causation, which can be used to “prove” almost anything. My favorite example of but-for causation was a city that failed to maintain a tree over the road, then attempted to deny liability to a driver whose car was damaged by it, on the theory that the driver had been speeding, and would have been somewhere else when the tree fell if he hadn’t been.
A more sensible argument, IMO, is to show a difference in the rate of drunk driving among legals vs. illegals. I presume there is one, but I don’t know.
Comment by Xrlq — April 6, 2007 @ 4:04 am
Gotta agree with Xrlq on this one. The death of those two girls is tragic, but saying the crash was the result of illegal immigration as a singular cause is a bit of a stretch. This is not to suggest that illegal immigration nor drunken driving are inconsequential. I suspect — although I don’t know — that someone who is already breaking one set of laws (immigration law) is not necessarily deposed to follow others (sobriety laws). There are many Americans who also ignore the law against driving under the influence. If not that driver, then perhaps another; if not those girls, then perhaps others. The primary tragedy is that someone thought so little of other people as to operate their car while intoxicated. Two girls are dead as a result.
Oh, and both O’Reilly and Geraldo can bite me. Outrage makes for great ratings.
Comment by Allen — April 6, 2007 @ 7:13 am
I don’t see how the conclusion is erroneous, and yes Allen, that was Geraldo’s point, that people die via drunk drivers, American ones, all the time. My point is that for these particular girls, this man wouldn’t even have been in the country, and these particular girls are the ones who are dead. IMHO it’s irrelevant whether illegals drive drunk more than citizens in this particular case.
Did you watch the vid, Allen? That was no manufactured outrage.
Comment by Anwyn — April 6, 2007 @ 7:58 am
Xrlq, your city-tree-speeder can be turned around: if the city had maintained the tree, the speeding driver would not have been hit, just like if the city had not sheltered an illegal those two girls would be alive. If that speeder had not been there, likely another motorist would have, and if the two girls had not been in Ramos’s path, likely another motorist would have. You can’t say the same, with the same likelihood, in reverse–i.e. you can’t say “if Ramos hadn’t been there, something else would have killed the two girls” or “if the tree had been maintained, something else would have hit the speeder.” I don’t know how to define it in technical terms of logic, but the above comparison is the A-to-A, not the way you said it.
Comment by Anwyn — April 6, 2007 @ 8:04 am
I did watch the video. Thanks for asking. I’m not suggesting that his outrage was manufactured; I’m suggesting that he has gone to the Outrage Well a few too many times. Perhaps, now that he has expressed some genuine outrage and knows what that feels like, he’ll be less inclined to manufacture it in the future. Or not. His argument is still messy and conveniently similar to his other rants. It certainly does not follow that the mayor of that city caused the death of those girls. That’s just sloppy logic. Very sloppy. Maybe Bill O isn’t a purely political animal. Maybe he’s just stupid.
The geeky phrase is “post hoc, ergo prompter hoc” or, roughly, “after this, a result of this (or therefore because of this).” You can say with complete veracity that the girls would not have died in that car crash on that road at that time being hit by that driver if that driver had not been allowed to remain in the U.S. I’ll give you that and only that. But that’s not enough to suggest a policy is at fault (even though it might be).
Law enforcement is imperfect; additional zeal in the sealing of our border might have in fact kept this guy out, but then again it might not have. Illegal immigration is already illegal. Drunk driving is already illegal. Making it super-duper illegal might tend to lessen these kinds of events but it is not a sure thing. One cannot say with certainty, “if only we had cracked down on illegals a bit more this wouldn’t have happened.” The best you can say is something like, “if only this particular illegal had been deported earlier, he wouldn’t have been able to drive the car on that particular night, on that particular road in that particular state of inebriation.” (Unless, of course, he snuck back in.) The truth value of the statement is high, but it is also statistically anecdotal. Any number of other factors could have prevented the crash (the girls took another route; the guy had one less (or one more) drink, delaying him.)
OK… I’m going to do some yard work in the sunshine and try to wipe that whole crap stain of televised a “dialog” out of my head. Blah.
Comment by Allen — April 6, 2007 @ 9:42 am
Allen, I’m sorry for implying you hadn’t watched–I wasn’t testy when I said it, or trying to provoke, I just made a faulty leap from “outrage sells” to “must be fake” and drew an unwarranted conclusion. Sorry.
I don’t say the mayor/city caused the girls’ deaths. Ramos did. Ramos’s presence could have been prevented by following the letter of an unrelated law, but saying the mayor/city could have unforeseeably prevented the deaths is not the same as saying they caused them.
The best you’re giving me, that if this particular illegal had been deported, is exactly the only point necessary here–because he had been arrested before and should have been deported at that point. If he had never come before law enforcement before, this whole issue would be a lot closer to moot. But he had.
Comment by Anwyn — April 6, 2007 @ 10:09 am
First let me say that I liked the additional link you provided to further illustrate your point.
After reading your last comment, I think one can make a similar analogy to repeat offenders in general, not just limited to illegal immigrants. If you look at people who repeatedly commit DUI offences and receive no punishment, they are then enabled to some degree, or at least are freed up to offend again.
If Joe is arrested one weekend for a DUI and the judge let’s him go and he goes out the following weekend and gets wasted again and drives and kills two girls, one could argue that if he was jailed for the first offense, he wouldn’t have been around to commit the second crime.
Isn’t that why we have prisons? To prevent criminals from being around to commit more crimes? Don’t tell me it is to “rehabilitate”. What a load of crap. I would be curious to learn stats on people who get out of jail and re-offend, but I am way out of my element on that one.
You can bitch all you want about Bill O. His drama may get tiring, anyone controversial does after a while. His unwavering commitment to protect the children in this country when NO ONE ELSE will cover the stories is one reason he will always have my respect, even if I don’t always agree with him.
I still can’t figure out why he is nice to Geraldo. I didn’t watch the clip, before you ask. : )
I was referring to him having Geraldo on his show regularly.
Comment by thelmajoy — April 9, 2007 @ 7:47 pm
I wasn’t bitching about Bill. I think he was right on.
The difference between your “it goes for all offenders” and the illegal thing is what policy a municipality has in place for dealing with illegal status of those it arrests vs. what the sentencing laws are for the offense. I.E. for a legal citizen under this same scenario, if the sentencing laws were followed in the prior convictions, then there’s no case for wrongdoing on the part of the authorities–just a case that maybe sentences should be stricter. But in this case, it’s the policy or lack thereof of the various municipalities regarding illegals that comes into play.
Chesapeake, scene of one of Ramos’s two prior convictions, has no policy on illegals. Virginia Beach, scene of his second, is not *allowed* to establish status one way or the other, but the crucial fact in the article is that “in general” if the arresting body has “reasonable suspicion” that somebody is present illegally, they’re well within their rights and duties to alert federal authorities, who, of course, then may or may not do anything about it.
It’s the prevailing climate of “not doing anything about it,” whether at the federal or local level, that allowed Ramos to keep committing this offense in this country, finally killing these two girls.
Comment by Anwyn — April 9, 2007 @ 8:14 pm
By the way, I am agreeing with you.
I bring up the additional offenses piece to give more weight to your argument that if he hadn’t been there the crime couldn’t have occurred. Same argument can be made for any offender, illegal alien or not.
I wasn’t referring to you about O’Reilly….that part was for Allen.
She sings:
“Got to be startin’ somethin’…I said you wanna be startin’ somethin”
Speaking of crimes against children…let’s see if any MJ fans read your blog!
Comment by thelmajoy — April 10, 2007 @ 6:25 am
Well, sorry to be knocking holes in an argument meant to support me. ;) But although it goes for all criminals–that if they’d been in jail they wouldn’t have been free to commit the crime–in some cases it’s more obvious than others that they *should* have been somewhere else, like Bill said, and that the government had both a right and a duty to make it so. In the case of other criminals, like I said, if the sentencing laws have been followed it’s less clear-cut that they *should* have been somewhere else, only that they *could* have if the sentence for their prior crime was more stringent, which it currently isn’t. In this case it’s a slam dunk. He should have been reported and removed, according to existing federal law, but for the squishy municipal policies involved.
Comment by Anwyn — April 10, 2007 @ 7:32 am