7/5/2018 - Will Alexander
When the first bud
sprouted that made light of illegal immigration a few decades ago, it was hard
to be alarmed because such sentiments strayed so far from basic common sense.
“The law is the law,” we thought. Simple.
Democrats thought so,
too:
Chuck Schumer: “Illegal immigration
is wrong; plain and simple.” (2009)
Hillary Clinton: “… I am adamantly
against illegal immigration.” (2003)
Harry Reid: “If making it easy to
be an illegal alien is not enough, how about offering a reward for being an
illegal immigrant? No sane country would do that, right? Guess again. If you
break our laws by entering this country without permission and give birth to a
child, we reward that child with U.S. citizenship …” (1993)
Dianne Feinstein: “Mexico must do
its share because the day when America could be the welfare system for Mexico
is gone. We simply can’t afford it.” (1993)
Bill Clinton: “… we will try to do
more to speed the deportation of illegal aliens who are arrested for crimes, to
better identify illegal aliens in the workplace... We are a nation of
immigrants. But we are also a nation of laws.” (1995)
Back then, illegal
meant illegal.
Today, the little bud
has grown legs, and it walks around the country like a stitched-up Frankenstein
knocking over centuries-old legal structures.
It has a foul mouth,
too: “Abolish ICE!! Keep @#*& families together! Impeach @#*&
Trump!”
And why do we tolerate
this stiff-legged patchwork of organized lawlessness? Three reasons: Some
are afraid of it because it’s grown so large, and it’s not going away without a
fight. Others find it useful for their own agendas. And many believe that
the easiest way out is to tame it into something respectable.
America’s Frankenstein
is not a person, but a dangerously misguided idea: That we can openly defy
explicit federal law for decades without letting loose a world of other
institutional monsters. We’ve seen much of the mayhem being played out on TV
already, all of it in support of openly defying explicit federal law.
But ladies and
gentlemen, pay no attention to the scary faces on the big screen that tell you
that illegal is other than what it really is. Today’s media operates in a
“Land of Is” where those who hide behind the curtains of ulterior motives pull
at the levers of twisted language to confuse Americans on what the real meaning
of is, is.
In the Land of Is,
tough border enforcement is “terrorism”; a young criminal is a
“justice-involved youth”; terrorism is a “man-caused disaster”; a tax cut is a
“giveaway to the rich”; big government spending is an “investment”; a tax
penalty is a “shared responsibility payment”; a conservative is “far right”;
gradual socialism is “progress”; and an illegal alien is an “undocumented
immigrant.”
But in real life,
illegal is still illegal.
No matter how compassionate
you may be about your sick grandmother, you will go to jail if you rob a bank
to get money for medical care. If she’s an accomplice, she’ll go to jail,
too.
No matter how loudly
your starving children cry for food and shelter, if you break into someone’s
home to steal food and take over the house, you’ll go to jail – without your
children.
This is how we deal
with “good” lawbreakers in desperate situations in real life. And it’s the only
way we’ll solve this stubborn Frankenstein problem for good. The problem
will never be solved by renaming it Frankie, clothing it in patriotism, and
splattering its face with cheap rhetorical cologne.
Today, we’re sitting on
an institutional powder keg when organized mobs, illegals, lawmakers, activist
journalists, and a hodgepodge of Trump-haters openly, loudly and consistently
defy explicit federal law with no fear of repercussions.
The untold billions
we’ve spent over the years has amounted to putting lipstick on a pig.
We’ve drenched the airwaves with decades of media coverage. Elected
leaders, who swore to uphold the law, have broken countless promises to
citizens who break their backs to pay their taxes, only to have them lavished
on the unnecessary burdens of illegal immigration. And we’ve had to
listen to billions of empty words with the most soaring patriotic rhetoric
about the virtues of immigration, which have absolutely nothing to do with illegal
immigration. After all of this, the pig is still a pig, and it stinks to
high heaven.
Abraham Lincoln, in
1837, gave a speech in Illinois after he was struck with horror over the
widespread lawlessness infecting the country at the time. He called it
mob law, or mobocracy. In that speech, he had a warning and a
remedy.
The warning: “At what point then is
the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us it
must spring up amongst us; … If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be
its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all
time, or die by suicide. … I mean the increasing disregard for law which
pervades the country, … (where) the lawless in spirit is encouraged to become
lawless in practice … Whenever this effect shall be produced among us; whenever
the vicious portion of population shall be permitted to gather in bands of
hundreds and thousands, and burn churches, ravage and rob provision-stores …
depend on it, this government cannot last.”
The remedy: “How shall we fortify
against it? The answer is simple. Let every American, every lover of
liberty, every well-wisher to his posterity swear by the blood of the
Revolution never to violate in the least particular the laws of the country,
and never to tolerate their violation by others. … bad laws, if they exist,
should be repealed as soon as possible, still, while they continue in force …
they should be religiously observed.”
Lincoln had another
warning in that speech. “Good men” – those who work hard, love tranquility, are
quick to obey the laws, and would die to defend their country – would not
remain silent under the burdens of lawlessness forever.
“…seeing their property
destroyed, their families insulted, and their lives endangered … and seeing nothing
in prospect that forebodes a change for the better, (they) become tired of and
disgusted with a government that offers them no protection, and are not much
averse to a change in which they imagine they have nothing to lose.”
Today, all that good
men and women are asking the people they elected to do, when it comes to
illegal immigration, is to honor their oath: Make good laws and enforce
them. Forget the politics, and let the critics fuss over the
optics.
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