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PDF versionGeorge Will Gets It Wrong on Puerto Rico
by Michael Sean Winters on Jul. 19, 2010
George Will had a column on Sunday in the Washington Post about how Republicans can use the issue of statehood for Puerto Rico to bolster their standing with Hispanic voters. The article was dumb with a capital “B.” It read like a press release from the island’s pro-statehood governor.
The issue of statehood for Puerto Rico is enormously divisive on the island. As Will noted, in the three most recent plebiscites on the issue failed to garner even a plurality even favor of statehood. He notes that the pro-statehood governor and his party won a resounding election victory two years ago, but is evidently unaware that the issue of corruption was the dominant concern, nor is he aware of the deep, and vicious, divisions within the pro-statehood primary.
Will’s article, however, suffers from deeper flaws. First, many Hispanics in the U.S. are jealous of Puerto Ricans who are U.S. citizens and therefore do not have to jump through the insane hoops established by current immigration law. I do not see why a Mexican or a Guatemalan would set aside their suspicions of the GOP, which has turned violently anti-immigrant, because Puerto Ricans would be full citizens.
The greatest failure in Will’s analysis is his inability to grasp why Puerto Ricans might not want their island to become a state. Puerto Rico is the only part of the U.S. that has a culture that was born in the Catholic Church. He quotes the governor to the effect that Puerto Ricans share many of the conservative values of the GOP, such as an opposition to abortion. But, he fails to grasp that the current GOP pays lip service to those social concerns while its unifying principle is a pro-capitalist mentality that is repulsive to a Catholic worldview. Note, I do not say “repulsive to Catholic values” because we are getting at something deeper than values. It is a way of life on the island, one that keeps the extended family at the center of the culture, one that puts common celebration of saints’ days ahead of an increase in productivity, one in which even the growing evangelical presence on the island (which Will notes) does not prevent those same evangelicals from insisting that a priest baptize their children and bury their dead.
“We don’t want to be Hawaii,” a Puerto Rican priest once told me. If Republicans think they can pull a fast one on Hispanics by pushing statehood for Puerto Rico, their morning coffee got spiked with too much good Puerto Rican rum.
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There is a vapidity about
There is a vapidity about your critique of Will's column that is unnerving. "Dumb"? That's what you can muster?
But the revealing thing about this column appears in the near-throw away statement "[b]ut, he [Will] fails to grasp that the current GOP pays lip service to those social concerns while its unifying principle is a pro-capitalist mentality that is repulsive to a Catholic worldview."
I mean that is a stunningly weak argument that you provide NO justification for. Do you really believe that most Republicans (who are increasingly Catholic) have such a capitalist mentality that they have do not share a "Catholic worldview"? What of the thousands of Catholics like me who have left the Democratic party because we have concluded that the statist mentality and cultural elitism (liberalism) that are the twin pillars of Democratic politics undermine the integrity and stability of the family and other essential voluntary groups that have defined political culture in this country since its inception? Are we driven by a pro-capitalist mentality alone?
The most telling thing about this statement is the usual cultural arrogance that defines liberalism by assuming that you know best what the people of Puerto Rico would and would not respond to.
thank you anonymous, for once
thank you anonymous, for once you get it right
except for one thing
by what basis do you give liberalism a bad name by associating it in any way with winters?
viva victor gerena
Funny how two people can read
Funny how two people can read a bunch of words and come to diametrically opposed conclusions. The beginning gives it away: anyone who starts a response to a blog entry with "vapidity" and "Unnerving" clearly has bigger fish to fry. The article mustered plenty, yet all you got was the word "dumb." Hardly fair.
I did not agree with the article in its entirety, but I must say that a lot of it resonated with my experiences growing up on the island and now living in the United States. The point about Latinos in the US seeing stetehood for PR as a unifying issue, for example, is quite persuasive. Also, the view that the governor's statement "read like a press release from the island’s pro-statehood governor" also seems on target. These are the statements of a politician who has been rumored as a candidate for higher office in the United States. Surely he is a man of ambition, and hardly unbiased and pure in his intentions. I am sure he believes that statehood is best for the island so did my grandma), but that does not mean his positions are unsullied by ideology. That would hardly be human.
You then lost me with the abstractions about liberals and the like. That makes it painfully clear that you are not interested in rational discourse, but name calling.
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