QUESTION 1
A conservative blogger recently asked the question that I hear a lot from the Right...
I, personally, am confused. If fictitious Bill, a husband and father of two, is caught robbing a liquor store, for instance, do they not separate him from his family? Why is no one protesting this injustice?
And I am glad to answer this question (and DID answer it for the blogger who asked it, but he's apparently ignoring the answer, or at least it goes unaddressed, as so many reasonable answers and questions raised do go unaddressed), but I feel compelled to raise the question again, as I have so often lately...
Really??
Really? You don't see the difference between...
A. a robber forcibly taking stuff that isn't his in a robbery from a store, and
B. a family moving their family away from death threats and/or starvation and/or severe deprivation
...? Really?
The reason that this has been so damaging to this administration (in every place EXCEPT amongst the 1/3 of the nation that are his supporters or at least defenders) and has raised such an outrage the world over is obvious. It should be obvious.
The robber is causing harm. His actions are causing harm to an innocent bystander who has done nothing to harm the robber.
The immigrant family, on the other hand, is doing NO harm and indeed, is only seeking safety and/or a better life for their children... and this amongst those who are struggling in poverty and are just wanting to be safe and/or to have a better life, especially for their children.
In case A, there is harm in their actions and so, they are punished.
In case B, they are seeking safety FROM harm, and so they ought NOT be punished.
It is what almost any of us would do if we were faced with a similar situation. Moving to a better place is just reasonable. Staying where you are, especially if it harms your children, is neither rational nor moral, in and of itself.
(I will say that there is something to be said for those who'd choose to remain in/move to a tough situation to strive to make it better... that is usually a great moral good... but leaving to protect one's children or self is also a moral good. It's certainly not a harm.)
And so, the world (minus ~1/3 of the US, who are increasingly sounding deplorable on several issues) is appalled not only at the harmful and immoral and irrational policies of this administration, but also that so many people don't even seem to see the difference between a robber causing harm and a family seeking safety.
There is the answer.
========
QUESTION 2
To the Left, I ask if it's wrong, wrong, wrong for a Christian baker to refuse to make a wedding cake for a couple of same-sex individuals because it violates the baker's constitutionally protected First Amendment rights, why is it not equally wrong for a restaurateur to refuse to serve someone because it violates her conscience? To the Right I ask if it's right for a Christian photographer to deny service to a same-sex couple because it violates her religious beliefs, why is not equally right for this restaurant owner to stand on principle and deny Sanders service?
It is wrong/an ugly discrimination to deny service to a group/class of people, especially/particularly an historically oppressed people.
It is NOT wrong to say to an individual/individuals who are embracing harmful/oppressive behaviors, "You are not welcome here... we will not help to normalize your harmful behaviors by treating you as if you were just a regular citizen..."
It is the difference between a restaurant saying to a group of black or Latino people, "We don't serve your kind here!" (that is evil discrimination and rightly not allowed) and a restaurant saying to a group of klansmen entering for dinner, "We do NOT agree with you or what you stand for... you're promoting oppressive, harmful behavior. We do not want YOU to eat here." (that is not a discrimination against a group/class of people, it is saying that those who cause harm/oppress are not welcome in polite society.
Now, those on the Left can debate whether or not that is the best way to handle oppressors (some may say it makes the oppressor seem sympathetic and in need of support), but it is not evil/wrong in and of itself. Those on the Right, as the person asking the question noted, can't really protest, without showing themselves to be hypocritical. The Right has no moral standing to protest against such a policy by a restaurant.
At any rate, there's the answer to that question.
Maybe more to come...
I'm not really looking for any commentary on this. If you want to speculate as to why so many on the Right don't understand the big difference between the two, feel free to do so. If you don't think there's a difference between the two, even though it's blindingly obvious (or should be), no need to try to make that case. It's a deplorable case to try to make and I don't want to see it here.
8 comments:
More data on this point...
https://www.facebook.com/MikeHarlos/posts/2179883425362049
Question 1:
I don't know who actually posed the question to you as you frame it here, but there are at least a couple incredibly disingenuous aspects to this situation:
1. The question as I've seen it is more often presented in a more general manner. To wit: It is not uncommon for American citizens to be separated from their children (or their children taken from them) after being arrested for a crime. Why is there no outcry as there is for those arrested for unauthorized entry into our country? Can you see the difference between the way the question is posed here, and your specific crime question in your scenario? The issue is simply that there are two people, one a foreigner and the other an American citizen, each arrested for a crime and their children separated from them. You pervert the question by making a stark difference in the type of crime as if all crimes by Americans involve threats by the perpetrator to the health/life of the victim of the crime. As you continue to do in your defense of your no borders position, you jump to the reason the foreigner broke the law before the law can determine that reason and with that in mind proclaim the law immoral. That's preposterous. An honest debate requires an honest presentation. Here, the only thing to concern yourself with at this point, with regard to the question properly presented, is that in each case a law was broken and the result is that...and this is an important and incredibly moral aspect you totally ignore or are too emotional to consider...law enforcement removes the child(ren) from the situation for the sake of the child's safety UNTIL the details of the lawbreaking can be ascertained with some degree of certainty.
2. There are crimes people commit in order to provide for their families, or to, as you put it, "seek a better life", that do not require threatening the lives of the victims of that crime. A burglar does not need to have people in the building to break in and steal. He can get in and out with his booty with no one knowing until they come home or to work and find the place robbed. The burglar then trades his booty for cash to feed his family/provide a better life. If caught, the perp will be separated from his kids.
3. Typically, the American law breakers aren't bringing their kids along when they break the law.
4. The children of American law breakers are not incarcerated with their law breaking parents.
5. You keep mentioning the 1/3 of Americans who don't have a problem with the policy of separating foreign kids from their law breaking foreign parents. With media hyping the story, focusing on crying kids and parents, with the purpose of smearing his administration for doing its job of enforcing our laws, it isn't difficult to imagine how many gullible people will put themselves on the wrong side of the issue because crying kids cannot help but draw sympathy. I would suggest to you that NO ONE wants to see kids separated from their parents in principle. But not at the cost of abandoning the principle of obeying the law. What's more, there is another poll that shows most voters know where the blame belongs.
If you're going to argue your position, you'd do well to make sure you are formulating apples to apples type scenarios, as well as stick to the reality of the situation. You do neither with post on this issue.
As to question 2:
"To the Right I ask if it's right for a Christian photographer to deny service to a same-sex couple because it violates her religious beliefs, why is not equally right for this restaurant owner to stand on principle and deny Sanders service?"
First of all, in a nation where liberty once was a defining principle, no merchant need explain to the satisfaction of anyone else why he won't serve any individual or group, nor should he be forced to explain or worse, be forced to serve whomever he chooses to refuse.
More specifically to the question, you again fail to frame the issue honestly, pretending there is no mitigating factor to the refusal of service. In every case that has been newsworthy, the issue wasn't refusing service to a same-sex couple based on the couple being homosexual, but on the specific request of the couple. They didn't simply ask the baker for a cake, but for a specific cake. Any other cake or baked goods would not have drawn a refusal from the bakers. They didn't ask the florist for simply flowers, but to provide flowers for a specific purpose. They didn't ask the photographer to simply take their picture, but to photograph a specific event. Thus, in each case, there was no refusal based upon their "orientation".
Yet, the restaurant owner basically was rejecting Sanders for her political "orientation". She didn't come in to the restaurant to arrange for a pro-Trump dinner party, but simply to have dinner with her family.
For you to equate these two situations would mean that either the Sanders dinner was forcing the restaurant to take part in an event that was contrary to her beliefs, or that the bakers/florists/photographers were denying service because of who/what the same-sex couples are. Neither is true and they are not parallel scenarios. The restaurants who refused to serve Trump staffers are wrong. The merchants refusing to take part in same-sex weddings are not.
In each of the two questions, it is YOU who doesn't understand the distinctions/similarities (as each case may be), not those of us on the Right.
From my friends who are working first hand to deal with the trauma and oppression of current policies...
The time is now, good folks.....time to show your true values. Support Black and Non-black People of Color. Support Black Lives Matter, Mijente, and groups that are truly intersectorial. Be sure all these folks have access to self care strategies and culturally and linguistically competent mental health care that is also focused on healing trauma.....and use your privilege to lessen other people's trauma...be a shield, be a buffer, be a witness. Protect their space and rights.
My husband works, through his own media, without pay, to bring folks the news in Spanish, to highlight people and situations that are all but invisible, or who only get "reported on" in a language not their own. (how 'bout that rally on Sat. where NO ONE was invited to interpret into Spanish, even as they said they stand for solidarity with Spanish speakers?!how does that show we are a compassionate city? It effectively excludes and erases the people whose voices and message should be front and center).
And daily, I get more and more urgent calls from families in which one parent is in deportation proceedings, in which children are grappling with how to live with not knowing what will happen to their parents. More and more kids come in and speak of deportation in a matter of fact manner, taking it as a given, wondering who will care for them. Here, in Louisville. 50 new deportation proceedings a day. Real families ripped apart.
More and more people are coming to me in my private practice (trauma treatment) with a desperation that includes contemplation of suicide, i.e. seriously thinking about taking their own lives over being sent back to be killed. Yes, it is that bad. People who had hope for safety, who believed our purported values (freedom, justice, asylum, etc) are now losing hope. Many of them are being forced to wear ankle bracelets, to shame them into believing that they, the victims, are the ones who have committed a crime. It also means they can't work, which means they can't earn money to pay for food, rent, and immigration costs. They are being set up to fail, and failure means death.
More and more of my clients cannot afford even low cost evaluations. I take them anyway, knowing that it also means my family struggles to pay bills. (See above about how my husband does all his reporting for free).
We sacrifice because it is the right thing to do. We interrupt the system by refusing to take jobs that pay well in part because they contribute to the broken structures that uphold an oppressive system. A system that rewards personal enrichment and especially the enrichment of the system's powers that be. A system that ignores, categorizes, or devalues social work, education, equity, and non-profit work. I refuse to be told which of my clients "meet established criteria" and therefore deserve services. If someone wants mental health services, it should be available without judgement or criteria. I cannot buy into a system that tells me who i am allowed to serve. My husband can no longer buy into a system in which an editorial board tells him what can or can't be published, what does not fit within their alignment.
What will you sacrifice for the good of all? How are you disrupting the system? And if you are thinking about joining in, what do you need in order to do so? Now is the time.
Some people never fail to swallow camels and choke on fleas.
There are, literally, hundreds of thousands of cases where felonies are dropped by judges or sentencing severely retarded due to extenuating circumstances. It is simply normative in our legal system to judge justly:
“n 2007, a church in Greenwich, Conn. called and retained lawyer Philip Russell after they discovered child pornography on their musical director's computer. According to the Wall Street Journal report, "Russell told the musical director to retain counsel because possession of child pornography was a federal crime. The employee resigned. The church turned the laptop over to Russell, who destroyed it. No one told the feds." Russell was charged with obstruction of justice, a charge that can carry up to 20 years of prison time. However, the judge cited Russell's years of good service as reason to only give him six months of home confinement, a fine of $25,000 and community service.”
Principally because laws can be written in such stultifying terms that intent is totally lost:
“Your best friend calls you on a Tuesday night and says he won two tickets to see your favorite baseball team play on Wednesday. The seats are incredible and you know this opportunity won't come again any time soon, so you decide to call in sick to work on Wednesday morning. You figure that, after all, it's something everyone does every now and then. You did not know, however, that you have just committed a "scheme or artifice to defraud" the company to their "intangible right to your "honest services" — arguably a federal crime.”
And, of course, grace injustices, unconscionable one’s are committed by our system:
“Robert Blandford, Diane Huang, David McNab and Abner Schoenwetter — three American seafood dealers and one Honduran lobster-fleet owner — had no prior records. Yet they were given hard time in 2001 for "importing lobster tails that were the wrong size and that were packaged in clear plastic bags rather than in cardboard boxes." The three men were sentenced to eight years; Huang, the mother of two young children, was sentenced to two. They violated the Lacey Act, under which it is unlawful to "import, export, sell, acquire or purchase fish, wildlife or plants that are taken, possessed, transport or sold: 1) in violation of U.S. or Indian law, or 2) in interstate or foreign commerce involving any fish, wildlife or plants taken, possessed or sold in violation of State or foreign law."
Educated adults of clear thinking nah understand that no crime is like any other. That’s why we have judges and juries.
And why bad law is always at issue.
Some people never fail to swallow camels and choke on fleas.
1. States with larger shares of undocumented immigrants tended to have lower crime rates than states with smaller shares in the years 1990 through 2014. "Increases in the undocumented immigrant population within states are associated with significant decreases in the prevalence of violence.”
2. A February 2018 study by the Cato Institute (libertarian think tank founded by a Koch brother) using 2015 crime statistics from Texas found immigrants in the country illegally were 25 percent less likely to be convicted of homicide than native-born Americans. (Legal immigrants were 87 percent less likely.)
3. According to the study, immigrants in the country illegally were also 11.5 percent less likely than native-born Americans to be convicted of sexual assault and 79 percent less likely to be convicted of larceny.
Educated adults who think clearly give much more concern to policing high crime groups (native born Americans in this case) than low crime groups (illegal immigrants).
Some people never fail to swallow orange camels and choke on fleas:
Do some people know how many illegal immigrants from Europe (including Russia) arrive each year? And how many of them have their children separated from the parents?
Racist laws are not just. And command no respect from patriots.
Why did you delete my respectful, on-topic comment?
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