Horne reveals his attitude toward MAS and Latinos: Destroy them before they destroy us

by David Safier

According to Jeff Biggers in a piece on Huffington Post, Tom Horne, while speaking at a public panel Saturday, said the only way for MAS to come into compliance with state law is to "terminate the program." Then he raised his rhetoric to another level by making a historical reference whose message is, We must destroy them utterly and completely before they destroy us.

Horne said the program must be "destroyed," invoking Cato's obsessive call for warfare as a punch line, "Carthage must be destroyed."

Horne's use of the battles between ancient Rome and Carthage as an analogy for his war on Mexican American Studies is truly frightening. Here's what the comparison says: A very powerful enemy has tried to destroy us in the past and is trying to destroy us again. We must wipe it out utterly and completely or our civilization as we know it will cease to exist.

By using imagery like that, Horne is putting MAS, and, by extension, the "invasion" of Latinos into the U.S., into a category with Al Qaeda and global terrorism. In his use of language, both offer the same existential threat.

Cathage presented a very real, long-standing threat to ancient Rome. (Think Hannibal and his famous march across the Alps, with elephants, on Rome.) The Roman statesman, Cato the Elder, was said to repeat the phrase, "Carthage must be destroyed," at the end of every speech he made. He got his wish. In the Third Punic War, Carthage was destroyed utterly and completely. Its walls were torn down. It was burnt to the ground. The surviving citizens were sold into slavery.

To add a racial component to the equation, ancient Carthage was across the Mediterranean from Rome, on the North African coast. From our modern perspective, that makes this a battle between white, European civilization and the invading hordes of dark-skinned people from the south.

Horne, I have to imagine from his use of the phrase, is a student of history and knows what it means, even though his audience probably didn't. I'm guessing the line "Carthage must be destroyed" was an in joke with himself. You don't have to be a Freudian to realize that people reveal themselves by their words, thought patterns and use of imagery. By calling up that phrase, Horne revealed just how deep his hatred and fear of "The Other From South of the Border" has become — and how dangerous it is for people like him to be in positions of power.