In the Name of Patriotism

What is patriotism? What is meant by a love of America? What is America? Do we define America by out longitude and latitude? A country is defined by its character, its ideals, and what it stands for.

We love America because of its ideals even though we often fall short. For example, we tout our guarantee of a free press but are ranked 47^th among nations when ranking nations by the degree of freedom of the press. We value education but are also ranked very low among international test scores and we pay our teachers a very low salary compared with the 40 some odd nations that provide better compensation for teachers.

Today, millions put aside our ideals and lay claim to practical thinking. Nazi Germany and many other nations made such a claim when they found groups to blame for every ill in the country. Although Jews and Gypsies may quickly come to mind, nations have blamed scores of other groups for their nation’s woes.

Today, we toss aside the ideal of welcoming the poor of the world. We break treaties, agreements and our own laws. We certainly ignore moral teachings and moral laws. We do this in an attempt to eliminate foreigners, the newest group to blame for our personal problems and those of our nation. Some will argue that it is only the foreigners who enter America illegally that they blame, yet they also blame the refugees who seek asylum and are protected from prosecution for being on U.S. soil without documentation. Our laws forbid the deportation of those requesting asylum if they have a reasonable claim to asylum. That is our law.

That law does allow people to withdraw their asylum request. So we take away their children, do not tell the parents where their children are being held, and coerce parents to withdraw their asylum applications, voluntarily so they may be reunited with their children. We do not even keep track of the children so that they can ever be reunited. We deport parents without their children. 

This is the not the character or ideals of the nation we love. 

This will be a darker chapter in our history than the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII. This will be a darker chapter in our history that the Mexican American War. But it will pass. The arc of our history always bends toward justice.