and reach thousands of daily visitors
Listen to thisI often find myself wondering just how history will judge this time in our nation's history. I've got a hunch we'll be ashamed.
Just how insane things have become was exemplified last month in Oracle, Ariz. The town's citizenry had heard that 50 unaccompanied kids from Central America were being brought to a youth home near Oracle and, by God, the angry folks of Oracle were going to make sure they were turned away.
A crowd gathered on the road and someone spotted a yellow bus coming. "Bus coming in," Adam Kwasman, an Arizona GOP legislator, announced in a tweet. "This is not compassion. This is the abrogation of the rule of law."
According to an account in the New Yorker, he and a crowd of supporters, with cameramen in tow, charged the bus, which quickly drove away. But before it did, Kwasman proudly announced to a reporter that he got a good look at the children in the bus "and the fear on their faces."
"You know that was a bus with YMCA kids?" the reporter said – Arizona kids taking part in the Y's summer camp. The legislator was only slightly ruffled, the account added, admitting he may have made a mistake.
Unfortunately, incidents like this aren't all that rare nowadays. We've got Americans and politicians whipping themselves into a fury over perceived federal government overreach – all of it, of course, the fault of that black president, Barack Obama.
The clueless and shameless Texas Gov. Rick Perry suggested that the humanitarian crisis of tens of thousands of unaccompanied kids illegally entering the United States may actually be a plot by Obama and the Democrats: Lure the kids here so they will grow up to be Democratic voters.
But Perry and the citizens of Oracle aren't any more unhinged than the politicians who comprise the majority in the U.S. House.
What's so infuriating is that most of these throw-the-kids-out-immediately legislators piously pound their chests about their God-fearing religious beliefs. Perhaps someone should suggest – maybe, heaven forbid, their pastors – that they actually read the Bible's New Testament before trashing Jesus' teachings.
Or they could they visit the Statue of Liberty and read the poem paying tribute to a country that lived by the motto: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free."
No, today we insist those huddled masses need to be sent back to the gangs, the sex traders and the drug dealers who will eventually kill them and their families if they don't play ball.
Yes, we have many problems of our own. But the border crisis is just one that our government leaders, particularly in the House, refuse to address.
Critically needed immigration reform, the trend of U.S. companies to renounce their own country to dodge taxes, a broken highway trust fund, a need to bolster Social Security and Medicare – all sit waiting while the House decides to sue the president for at least trying to do something – anything.
Yes, we'll be ashamed when history judges us.
Dave Zweifel is editor emeritus of The Capital Times
17 August 2014
