Determined Cause, and End of Dominion

What is happening at the southern border of the United States is not a holocaust and/or genocide. Citizens - mind you, legal citizens - are not being rounded up into concentration camps or ghettos to be used as forced labor aiding war efforts, grotesquely experimented upon for horrific purposes beyond scientific and/or outright executed for the simple reason of existing over notions of cultural and racial superiority. Meanwhile, other citizens are not turning a blind eye - either intentionally or naively - to the situation under the false belief that their government would never do such heinous things. With the current situation, there is a public awareness and presence that otherwise would not be if it were a case of bureaucratic deception and state-sanctioned extermination. The reason for this is that we no longer live in an era of unquestionable loyalty to government or its actions, or even beholden solely to mainstream media coverage. Thus, activists, citizens and politicians alike are openly involved in advocating and offering solutions that, under different circumstances, would place them equally in harm’s way of any totalitarian state that deems them a threat.

Separating Families At The Border: The Hysteria Overlooks Some Key Facts (Investor's Business Daily)

The Truth about Separating Kids (National Review)

In reality, a sovereign nation endeavors to enforce its laws and maintain the integrity of its borders against undocumented illegals who neither adhere to nor respect any of these conditions. They are not citizens, either by birth or lawful naturalization completed by millions of legal immigrants - like my Cuban-born grandfather and Irish-born great-grandparents, members of two immigrant nationalities that routinely faced discrimination yet persevered to achieve citizenship under established regulations. They, like multitudes of others, went through the arduous yet requisite process to become naturalized citizens rather than circumvent the system. These measures are not meant to dissuade or hinder any immigrants from being welcomed into and embraced by the country, but to serve only as the means for honoring and recognizing the requirements of citizenship. Even in a world bent on and consumed by globalization, this is not a hard concept to understand nor an idea archaic in its application.

There is the understood truth, as Benjamin Franklin eloquently opined, that liberty sacrificed at the expense of security potentially endangers the longevity of both. Nevertheless, we also should heed the words of the late John Ireland (1838-1918), archbishop of St. Paul, Minnesota, addressing American citizenship: “Law is order in liberty, and without order liberty is social chaos. The highest test of a people's fitness for free institutions is their willingness to obey law.” As for current global holocaust and/or genocide, I refer you to five prime examples that should demand and elicit more immediate action and outrage: Congo, Darfur, North Korea, Somalia, Syria. You also might study other historical incidents for context - Armenia, Bosnia, Cambodia, Rwanda, Sudan. Leave history to the historians, and the “fake news” propaganda and rhetoric on the ash heap of it - or it not only will be the United States, but all societies governed by the rule of law, burning in the destructive lawless chaos of their own creation.

©2018 Steve Sagarra