Some things never change

I listened to On Point this morning on PBS.  Tom Ashbrook, the host of this talking head and listener call-in program, was gathering points of view about what to do about the thousands of Central American children crossing our border illegally.

We shouldn’t use the extra money Obama wants to add more immigration judges just so we can figure out if a kid belongs here.  Use the money to hire lots of buses, load all the kids into them, take them to the border and dump them.  Let their relatives sort them out.  It’s not our problem.

I sympathize with those poor kids.  But ya know, we’ve got our own problems right here in the U.S.  Folks out of work and things like that. Who’s helping them?

I really feel sorry for those kids.  It must be awful where they come from.  Listen, I live in a well-to-do Houston suburb and my kids go to a good school.  But do you know that they actually have to tape some of their books together to keep them from falling apart.  We could use the extra money to get new ones and other stuff too.

It’s all Obama’s fault.  If he would just stop talking about the “Dream”, forget it, and just get more border guards.  And a fence too.  That’s how to solve this problem.  Meanwhile I got troubles of my own.  We don’t need to solve someone else’s.  Especially someone who doesn’t even live here.

These agonizing words sounded strangely familiar.  It was as though I had heard them before, in another time and with equal force.

While we sympathize with the Serbian or the Russian, with the Jew in Germany, the major portion of our sympathy is extended to our dispossessed farmer, our disconsolate laborers who are being crushed at this moment while the spirit of internationalism runs rampant in the corridors of the Capitol, hoping to participate in setting the world aright while chaos clamors at our doors.

Less care for internationalism and more concern for national prosperity.

Must the entire world go to war for 600,000 Jews in Germany who are neither American, nor French, nor English citizens, but citizens of Germany?

Father Charles Coughlin

Some things never seem to change.  We become a bit more politically correct, but when push comes to shove we show our true colors…maybe with a touch more phony pathos than Father Coughlin.  Like those patriotic protestors in Murrieta, California.

The federal government will continue exploiting these children. Releasing them on our streets with diseases is unacceptable.

The city needs a break. This is draining the resources of Murrieta. I don’t want to see our city go bankrupt.

We’ll be here protesting as long as it takes for the Federal Government to get enough buses to get those kids out of our town.

Meanwhile, reasonable solutions are tabled while we play hardball politics.  Maybe we just forgot what we’re all about.  Maybe we haven’t come so far after all.  Maybe it’s not important.  After all, they’re only children.