Hysterical nativism

A conservative border state is at risk of becoming a police state

RUSSELL PEARCE is the quintessential Arizona Republican. He wears stars-and-stripes shirts and has clips of John Wayne and Ronald Reagan on his website. He loves guns, his family, his Mormon faith, his country and the law, which he enforced for many years as deputy sheriff of Maricopa County. He jokes that being Republican, and thus not having a heart, saved his life when he got shot in the chest once. But his main passion is illegal immigrants, whom he calls “invaders”. He loathed them even before his son Sean, also a sheriff’s deputy, got shot by one. But now it is personal.

http://www.economist.com/research/articlesBySubject/displaystory.cfm?subjectid=894664&story_id=15954262

[Posted by: Austin Houlgate]