If you are like most of the rest of the country, you probably never want to hear the word “immigration” again. Not that the issue isn’t of paramount importance, mind you. It’s just that, in this day and age of media saturation, people reach a point where they have simply taken in all they can possibly process about a given subject. By now, the mere mention of the Mexican border problem is triggering the same dazed, deer-in-the-headlights stare that the term “hurricane” did, last reporting season. And still the talking heads are haggling on, the bloggers blistering their blessed fingertips, and the President, amusing himself on national TV by rhetorically rearranging deck chairs on the proverbial Titanic.
Then it happens. Like the clap of a called third strike clutched snugly in the nestling leather, like the first slant of sunlight stabbing through a roiling wrack of clouds, like finally fitting in the five-thousandth piece of an infuriating jigsaw puzzle, Dr. Keyes chimes in. And in one evenhanded op ed, he manages to debunk what is pernicious, propose what is vital, and cut to the chase in a way that gives one hope for the survival of the American experiment after all. He writes (May 17, 2006):
Given their track record, we have no reason to trust the administration or the political elites of either party when it comes to border security. Their first priority should be to restore our trust. If they refuse to respect that priority, it can only be because they no longer regard the American people as their proper constituents.
At first blush, one might be tempted to think that Dr. Keyes has indulged in just a touch of rhetorical overkill here. Isn’t there an important difference, really, between not doing enough to safeguard our national security and identity, and actually severing the ordered relationship between representative and represented? In a word, no; and I’ll tell you why not.
It isn’t concerning the current hot-button issue alone that the authentic voice of the future of liberty has split the apple with the aplomb of William Tell. That is his stock in trade. In this sense, “A Crisis of Confidence” is but vintage Keyes. Still, there is something especially arresting about the cited insight. You’ll have to pardon the pun; what I mean is that it reminds me of my own recent arrest.
Seen against the backdrop of a growing willingness to criminalize the actions of ordinary Americans, our leadership’s dereliction of duty when it comes to enforcing the law against “undocumented aliens” is revealed as nothing less than a turning towards totalitarianism. What is a totalitarian government, anyway, if not a power structure which uses everyone ?foreign and domestic ?for its own purposes, strewing blessings and exacting tribute as demanded by an internal agenda, and not according to any objective standard of justice? Make no mistake; the departure from the American ideal that has been foisted upon us in the form of unprincipled libertarianism, and which has not been significantly resisted by either major political party, is evolving from parasitic to predatory. Once freedom has been redefined as license, “licensing agencies” seem to crop up everywhere, accruing punitive powers derived from their own deranged logic rather than from the divinely-anchored laws of any legitimate regime. That is the flipside of the inexplicable expansiveness we are now witnessing on the part of our leaders towards those who are flaunting not only our existing statutes, but also our foundational tenets. If the symptoms of this watershed shift still seem slight, that does not mean that they can be safely overlooked. A mole that has changed its shape might be judged insignificant by the person who bears it ?until, that is, she consults an oncologist who is able to tell her exactly what the little brown bump now means.
I got a glimpse of what it means last Summer, starting with a terse missive from some officials in Pinellas Park, Florida. When I made the decision to bring a bottle of water to Terri Schindler-Schiavo as she was being dehydrated to death I understood, of course, that there would be sequelae. I figured I would be up for some community service, given the fact that I have never been arrested before for any act, pro-life or otherwise. But the Vogonian form letter with its unexpectedly checked box informed me differently. My application for admittance into the Pre-Trial Intervention program had been denied; I was to appear for arraignment and possible trial forthwith.
“That’s unbelievable!” fumed one-time Schindler family attorney Joe Magri when I told him. Domestic offenders, drunk drivers, and just about any criminal misdemeanor suspect gets rubber-stamped into the program, as long as they have zero or one prior offenses, he gave me to understand. “That’s like . . . like being a martyr!” was his verbatim assessment of the situation, in fact.
Of course, I was not the only Terri protester to be so treated. All of us who were arrested at Woodside Hospice were singled out by State Attorney General Bernie McCabe for unusual levels of prosecution. His people didn’t even have the decency to mask the fact. “Come on, Helen ?tell me what’s on your record,” coaxed my magnificent attorney, Tom Brejcha of the Thomas More Society, when I first gave him word of the denial. “They don’t keep people out of the PTI program for nothing.” But when he called down to Tampa, Tom was told point blank that my record was clean, and that I was being arraigned because McCabe’s office didn’t want any of the Terri protesters “to walk.” And why shouldn’t they have been up front about it? Who was going to stop them ?Jeb Bush?
Because of Tom’s sterling representation, and the prayers of my friend Brother Patrick of the Franciscan Brothers of Peace especially, the consequences I ended up with were minor. In exchange for a guilty plea, I got probation and a fine. The probation lasted until the fine was paid (about two minutes later), and Tom insisted on being the one who did the paying. Some people have faulted me for entering a guilty plea, but I do not hold this point of view. The question put to me was essentially: did you do the act you are accused of? And my answer, by means of the plea, was: yes, and I would do it again if the circumstances remained unchanged. Sophie Scholl of the White Rose not only pled guilty but insisted on being found so, and I don’t think anyone could plausibly allege any taint of compromise there.
The most lasting result of my saying, “No, sir,” and holding up a bottle of water that glinted in the Florida sunlight for “one brief, shining moment,” then, is the fact that I now have a criminal misdemeanor on my record, even though adjudication was withheld. This, evidently, was what McCabe’s office was bound and determined to accomplish. People in the PTI program put in their hours but end up with the offense being expunged. I don’t regret what I did nor its outcome, even though the necessity of mentioning the misdemeanor on job applications has already cost me two potential employment situations. I only regret not having been found worthy to suffer more for Our Lord, in the persons of those the most affluent society in the history of human civilization has now judged to be too burdensome to maintain. But let’s think a moment about the larger meaning of what has occurred.
When I hear about countless border crashers getting a wink and a free pass, I hear at the same time the voice of a Pinellas Park police officer who cuffed me, telling me in a tone that was kindly enough that he could understand how I felt about Terri’s situation but that we are all bound to follow the “rule of law” nonetheless. That, my friends, is quintessential libertarianism: the mistaken impression that feelings are principles, and principles are feelings. Enforcement is done du jour. The logically and morally unfounded personal agenda of a guy in a black robe gets enshrined as “law,” while those who stand for the statutory, natural, and divine order of things are pejoratively treated as though they were the ones mired in subjectivism. Getting arrested two Easter Sundays ago had nothing to do, I am afraid, with how I was feeling. If anything, I was feeling sunburnt and homesick. But the question remained: am I an American, and am I a Catholic as well?
As an American, I inherit not only to the Jeffersonian ideal, but also the legacy of the Nuremberg Trials. Ours is not the first country to impose starvation/dehydration upon its unwanted, but we are the country that provided the lead prosecutors in the proceedings that denounced such ineffable barbarism. A couple of days before my arrest, a reporter asked me on camera whether I agreed with the (in his view) outrageous attempt of Congress and the President to try to save Terri’s life. “I believe that not only the Congress and the President, but also every level of our government should be involved,” I said. “The Declaration of Independence explains the bedrock raison d’etre of the entire American system, which is the defense of the inviolable right to life.” At the end of the interview, the man gave me a curious smile. “That’s an interesting point,” he allowed. “I’ve never thought of that before.” On my honor, I am not making fun of him. I am simply relating his reflections to you, so that we can all make a sober assessment of exactly where things stand in this nation under God.
As a Catholic, I am enjoined to give food to the hungry and drink to the thirsty. Terri was denied her religious as well as civil rights, and I like to think I have joined her in some small way by having my right to practice my Catholicism infringed as well. It is the belief of Roman Catholicism and of all of Christianity that the law of God must be obeyed even unto the disobedience, wherever necessary, of man’s law. That was the thought ?speaking in sweeping generality, of course ?behind the Boston Tea Party itself. What makes America a shining city on a hill in the first place is its novel acknowledgment, on the constitutional level, of this higher imperative. Now, that very acknowledgment, bought and secured with the blood of patriots in every one of our wars, is being forgotten and even actively erased. What does this all mean?
It means that we are living in a country where our common life has become capricious, and that unless this state of affairs is radically rectified, our country will not remain the United States. I, having acted on American and Judeo-Christian principle, am now a criminal at the misdemeanor level; I have had my feet held to the fire to make sure that I become so. With a birth certificate, passport, driver’s license, and the whole works, I now, nevertheless, cannot be hired for certain jobs I am well-qualified to do. Illegal immigrants, on the other hand, are criminals at the misdemeanor level at least, but have had their records, in essence, expunged. Without legitimate identification of any kind, and often without any adherence to the values and worldview that gave rise to the very liberties in which they demand to partake, they are getting all kinds of jobs everywhere. I don’t say this with the vaguest tang of rancor in my tone. I say it with alarm. I say it so that we will all wake up to the full peril of our situation before it is too late, if indeed it is not too late already. An America that doesn’t make any sense is an America that has moved away from her own crystal clear identity.
When a President of the United States tells its citizens that he does not need the permission of the United Nations or anybody else in order to save American lives from foreign aggressors, and then fails to take effective action when an American judge orders the destruction of an innocent American, the disconnect is so great as to be considered culturally lethal. There is more to preserving America than protecting her from terrorist attack; more, even, than regulating the influx of Mexicans and members of other nationalities. There is the remembering of who and what we are. There is the valuing of a heritage which, once squandered, may well prove to be irrecoverable. There is the conviction of a responsibility to hand this heritage on to future generations, no matter what level of sacrifice may be entailed. To me, the problem with the border isn’t how many people are coming into our country who don’t believe in what America stands for. The real problem is how many people like that we have living here already ?many of them, in positions of sacred trust.
It is in this sense that I describe myself, picking up on Dr. Keyes’ incisive commentary, as my representatives’ former constituent. I have not left them, but they have left me. They left me when they left my sister in Christ to die the death of a concentration camp inmate, while they dickered about auxiliary verbs. They left me again when it became evident that no real solution to the illegal immigration problem would be forthcoming, at least for the foreseeable future. And the saddest thing of all is that they don’t even know that they have left me and wouldn’t even care if they did know, unless I deign to return the favor in the ballot box someday.
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