On History
History is a pretty clear guide.
You can’t blame “a people” for national problems.
Especially when the “problem” you claim to be solving is defined simply as the presence of those people.
You can only blame policy.
Because groups of people, when named as problems, lose their rights - quickly.
Zones of “statelessness” arise.
History is a pretty clear guide.
Timothy Snyder described it in The Black Earth: stateless zones, where atrocity could be imagined. And, then begun1.
Over 400,000 Americans lost their lives setting that record straight in World War II.
And, then, all eyes turned to America. Our America.
On Winning, and Winning Big
Inside the beating heart of every American, they had heard that there were treasured ideals,
The Fourth Amendment:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated...
And, no exception to personhood. The Fifth Amendment:
No person shall... be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law...
So they had heard, was the American song sung.
Even we Americans, ourselves, looking at each other as one-by-one a world’s worth of enemies fell - that generation is not the Greatest so much for what they did, but because of the BELIEFS they were fighting for.
It’s not that the USA won WWII, and defeated such repugnaces like, “those people,” any people, are the reason for our woes; not only because of our hale and hearty soldiers, or our terrifying B-52 fortresses shadowing the sun.
No! Our enemies, and even we, Americans ourselves, came to an almost abashed realization that still sits uneasily at times like a bit of mythology. But less so to our enemies, who began to believe it, too. The reason we won that war is because we had better ideals. Those stated in our founding documents.
The Fourth Amendment:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated...
The Fifth Amendment, with NO IMMIGRANT EXCEPTION:
No person shall... be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law...
And, it is FROM these CORE principles that our strength is drawn - the yawning canyon which opened before the assembled world when put to the test.
As every ember of that war began to cool, those ideals, translated into every language, rang out - in the ears of those who opposed us, and in the heaving cries of those we fought and died to free from certain bondage.
And, quietly, but almost immediately, even our once-hated enemies began re-configuring their own states - taking the best of our system.
THAT is the Greatest Generation. Not for WHAT they did, though what they did was breathtaking and heroic. But, for WHY they did it.
And, on America, our America, that choice to land on those beaches in pursuit of nothing more than the very ideals of freedom that we cherish, that choice left, on our nation, our currency, even our very people, it left them all imbued with an epic ethos that speaks to the hopes of every person’s own personal limits. Heirs to a towering national tradition.
So, I have heard, it is in America.
Everyone did say.
SQUANDERING INHERITANCE
So, I have heard, it used to be in America.
In America, inside the heart of every American we believe that everyone has rights. You can no more not believe this than you can simply be, plainly, UnAmerican
Rights that are with you every step you take, as surely as you live and breathe today.
Having no immigration status is a civil infraction.
All civil cases are to be resolved by civil remedies.
A civil remedy is:
We’ll send you a letter from the court.
Not:
We’ll commission squadrons of shoot-to-kill deputies to apprehend you.
Not in this country. Not in America.
No fetid prison camps as stand-in stateless zones.
I have heard the people, the people there are free.
The Fourth Amendment:
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated...
The Fifth Amendment, with NO IMMIGRANT EXCEPTION:
No person shall... be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law...
The English Civil War asked whether the executive could invoke necessity, employ military force in civilian life and then decide for itself whether its conduct was lawful.
In a limited sense, they said no, but left themselves subjects.
The American constitutional answer was emphatically no.
In Houston and Biddeford that ancient question is presented again, now in unmarked vehicles, on ordinary American streets.
From Republicans, silence.
All people who are silent when houses or homes are ransacked are people who are unAmerican
All Republicans are people who remain silent while houses and homes are ranscked.
All people who remain silent when people are summarily executed in the street are unAmerican.
All Republicans are people who remain silent when people are summarily executed in the street.
Silence.
All Republicans are unAmerican.
Having rejected the very principles that made America the indespensible nation - neither our great ships of war, nor our towering skylines - no. As Bono said:
America is not just a country, it’s an idea.2
Having rejected the very ideals that made America the indespensible nation, Republicans have shown themselves to be UnAmerican, and not fit to govern.
Stop the Republicans. Now, and for the next generation.
Vote for the Democratic Party.
Stand with The Greatest Generation.
Do not vote for Republicans.
Republicans no longer hold Amercian beliefs.
Reject silence.
Stand for America.