Rand Paul today ruffled some feathers talking about a pathway to citizenship.
Many of those who heard him at CPAC this week may have become part time fans. Thinking, "Wow! This guy makes sense and maybe isn't the nut the media has made him out to be." Then today, he expresses his libertarian edge and those temporary fans have fled.
I don't propose to analyze Paul's statement, in part because I don't think they take the issue it far enough.
Most of we Americans have forgotten our own history. The statue of Liberty - among our most cherished icons of freedom holds a plaque that says:
"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free;
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
Send these, the homeless,
Tempest-tossed to me
I lift my lamp beside the golden door! ..."
How beautiful! How touching and how much national pride we have felt being able to look back on our history and celebrate what we stand for. There was a point in the nineteen century when people showed up on our shores with no more than a satchel of clothes and couple coins and a burning desire to make something of themselves in a land that did not have institutional class divisions but offered the opportunity to soar!
Around the turn of the twentieth century, the federal government began changing the rules and imposing standards that included quotas by race or nationality. Recognized at the time, by many, as a pure violation of our national principals, we have a continuous effort underway to rewrite these rules.
Today, if you have means and an education, (especially in high tech fields,) you can get in the the USA quickly and get on a fast track to citizenship. If you are poor, little education, and no means to get to our boarders, you have no prayer of getting in. If you are a Cuban and risk your life crossing the Florida Strait, you are granted immediate citizenship. If you are Mexican or from other central and south American countries, you can pay smugglers to get you across the Rio Grand, but your options when you get here are strictly limited.
Conservatism should return to the values and virtues the country was build on. Not to earn the votes of the wretched refuse, but because it is right. Because it would return us to a land of vast and limitless opportunity.
Surely, some things needs to be fixed. America has become a magnet to some because of it's opportunity, and to others because of the seemingly limitless list of freebies that governments offer up with the promise of more to come if you'll just vote a certain way. There will be a price to pay, and it will require sacrafices in many ways, but, afterall, isn't that who we claim to be?
We must return to our founding principals and open our arms once again. Don't stand near me and celebrate your liberty and freedom and then turn around and deny it to someone standing by the golden door wanting the same thing you celebrate. I say Open the doors!
