A new ad campaign for Absolut vodka shows open hatred for the United States.

WorldNet Daily columnist Ilana Mercer has written an interesting item on her blog, about a cultural manifestation of open contempt for America. Mercer refers to a new ad campaign for Absolut vodka appearing in Mexico, which she characterizes as showing a "hatred of America."

As the Los Angeles Times notes, "The billboard and press campaign, created by advertising agency TeranTBWA and now running in Mexico, is a colorful map depicting what the Americas might look like in an ‘Absolut’—i.e., perfect—world."

In the ad, the article goes on to note, "The U.S.-Mexico border lies where it was before the Mexican-American war of 1848 when California, as we now know it, was Mexican territory and known as Alta California."

The LA Times story notes that Favio Ucedo, creative director of leading U.S. Latino advertising agency Grupo Gallegos, which was not involved in the Absolut campaign, explained the appeal the ad is supposed to have:

Ucedo, who is from Argentina, said: “Mexicans talk about how the Americans stole their land, so this is their way of reclaiming it. It’s very relevant and the Mexicans will love the idea.”

He added that Americans probably wouldn’t like the ad, a prediction that has been fully confirmed by the angry public reaction among those who have seen it thus far, according to the LA Times story. 

Mercer takes an interesting tack on the matter. As a classical liberal, Mercer finds herself often at odds with both conservatives and libertarians, though she usually sides with the latter. In this case, however, she excoriates U.S. libertarian advocates of open immigration, which she correctly observes is bringing about the idea the ad depicts:

I’ve observed that the usual libertarian offenders sided with the Reconquista ad campaign of Swedish vodka maker Absolut.

They have my absolute contempt.

Obliterating the logic (such as it is) of the ad’s libertarian defenders, Mercer points out the grotesque stupidity of the ad’s suggestion that things would be better for people living in the southwestern United States if the Mexican government were running things there:

The invasion of the Southwest—or “Reconquista” in the parlance of La Raza libertarians’—is wreaking havoc on a part of the world that was built-up beautifully by Americans, not Mexicans.

To shelter me and protect me, I’d trust a “red state fascist” any time over a libertarian Absolutist.

I would add that the Mexicans and other Hispanics moving into the United States both legally and illegally in record numbers are trying to get out of the very society that the Absolut ad suggests should take over much of the land area of the United States.

If the makers of the Absolut ad and their delighted Mexican audience were to have their way, Mexicans and other Hispanics would soon have to move east, to the Estados Unidos de America, in order to get the desired freedoms and protections that we Red State Fascists see as an essential part of the good life.

Mercer characterizes American libertarians’ support for the ad and for open borders as arising from a fondness for abstractions:

Such people are intent on never showing that they stick up for flesh-and-blood human beings—but can love only deracinated abstractions. Ideas and issues before individuals.

It is true that libertarians tend to value abstractions too highly and dismiss practical objections. That is true of radicals of all political stripes, and this is thus a good occasion to point out that radicals aren’t just on the left—they’re on both the left and the right.

To be radical means to have a specific vision of human society and want it imposed on everybody. That is as true of many libertarians and of Buchananite conservatives as it is of Marxists and radical environmentalists.

Radicalism is toxic precisely because it relies on forcing people to conform to a plan instead of basing one’s plans on what we know about people.

The founders of the United States of America consciously and intentionally did the latter. To shrink the part of the world where that is true would be madness.