When I went into church this morning, the door above the room where worship services are held was labeled with a single word: sanctuary. That’s true for many protestant churches, and for other religions, as well. The word means simply "sacred place," and it’s long been associated not just with the center of a church or temple, but with the protection that comes from being in such places. Centuries of tradition have lent a degree of both formal and informal protection to those seeking refuge inside a church. We’re still shocked today when we hear stories like those produced during the massacre in Rwanda, where the tradition of sanctuary was so frequently and cruelly violated.
With that kind of association, you might think that Republicans, who present themselves as the guardians of Christian values, might feel a bit of reservation in attacking the word "sanctuary." On the face of it, demonizing a word that means sacred place is simply ludicrous. And yet, Republicans have been tuning the Mighty Wurlitzer, preparing to give it the old college try.
For the last few years, the idea that "sanctuary cities" are attracting lawless "illegals" has gone from an occasional red-faced rant of the Michael Savage and Ann Coulter variety, to a staple of slightly less frothing political pundits. It's followed a similar course in the Republican presidential campaign, with attacks on sanctuary cities first coming from the spit-flecked lips of Tom Tancredo, and now moving front and center of a new ad from supposed frontrunner candidate, Willard Romney.
"Immigration laws don't work if they're ignored," the ad's announcer states. "That's the problem with cities like Newark, San Francisco and New York City that adopt sanctuary policies. Sanctuary cities become magnets that encourage illegal immigration and undermine secure borders."
The not at all veiled effort here is to tie sanctuary cities to recent violence in Newark – that's why Jersey gets top billing over the cities the right usually treats as modern analogs to Sodom and Gomorrah. Listen. Hear the organ hitting those thunderous chords of doom? They're warming up their most discordant version of Tocatta and Fugue in D Minor. This is the right's Willy Horton for 2008.
There are a couple of odd thing about Willard's ad.
Somehow, he didn't mention the origin of sanctuary cities. Neither does the CNN story linked above or the vast majority of media coverage on this subject. Sanctuary cities didn't appear recently. They sprang up two decades ago when cities refused to capture those fleeing death squads in Central America and send them back to "friendly" regimes where they could be killed. Cities did that for several of reasons. One was certainly that turning innocents over to be slaughtered struck some people as kind of... wrong, even when those conducting the firing squad had been trained at the School of the Americas. The other reasons were even more prosaic: police have enough to do without taking on the job of the INS, and witnesses are reluctant to come forward if they think it means they might be the ones being shipped off in an orange jumpsuit.
The even odder thing about Romney's latest "rally around the cowardice" moment of Republican fear? New York City isn't a sanctuary city. It's convenient for Romney to lump NYC into the mix both because it emphasizes the idea that sanctuary cities are phenomena of the liberal coasts, and because it gives him an implied dig at Rudy Giuliani. However, there were three cities in Massachusetts that did either become sanctuary cities, or reaffirm their status as such while Willard was sitting in the governor's mansion. The ad doesn't mention that. Moreover, sanctuary cities aren't limited to the coasts. They're located in some very red states. Oklahoma City is a sanctuary city. So is Salt Lake City.
But it's not just that the ad is wrong about every fact, it's also wrong headed. There's no evidence that being a sanctuary city increases violence. Most, if not all, of those cities that have declared themselves sanctuary cities have seen crime decrease since they made that decision.
But of course there are no keys for facts on the Mighty Ring Wing Wurlitzer. This is an instrument that plays nothing but notes of dark emotion. If the reactions to the events in Newark and Romney's ad are any indication, this is a fact-free dance the media is still willing to follow. If we don't stomp this nonsense now, we'll be seeing it a year from now.