Along with many, many others here I admire, honor and have participated in varied missionary and social efforts to help the less fortunate raise themselves up - here and in other countries. However, I do not believe in breaking the law or violating our national common sense in order to render such service.
Most of humankind always has been striving for better economic and living conditions - nothing new in the human nature that causes the illegals to try to get here. This country not only developed a highly desirable standard of living and sustained it, but also has been very generous in taking in those from elsewhere who continue to strive for better lives for themselves and their kids. All good - but those successful practices were based on some very sound values and principles and, for the most part, we could depend on our government - and our neighbors down the street - to uphold those principles as well as the laws (thanks, Steelhead) designed to make the system work.
Given the events of recent years, we no longer can depend on our government - particularly the administration - to uphold those foundational values and principles and to properly enforce the those laws. Instead, we can depend on them to bend, evade, obstruct and even break those laws. And, we no longer can depend on all of our neighbors down the street to understand the values on which that great sytem has been based and to expect/demand that the government enforce the related concepts and laws. It is as if our populace has slipped into a civic/social malaise - often unconcerned with government wrongdoing and somewhow mistakenly believing that general "do gooder" attitudes will sustain our republic. Not so, and not without precedence in previous societies.
In my better moments I would like to think that some beautiful heartfelt human behaviors have gotten us here. Not so. Greed for power - economic and political - have played a huge role in the downward spiral of this illegal alien situation. Who will reverse the pernicious behavior - and how?
