The American People are a compassionate people, charitable and tolerant, and always ready to embrace the challenges the world sets before us (at least eventually). This Syrian Refuge crisis, however, has broken upon a much less open America, much less worried about the poor and the hungry and the sick. It infuriates me that this reality has become accepted as a stain upon our compassion and our systemic American values. What we are witnessing is not intolerance or bigotry, selfishness or greed; but a righteous indignation toward to a government that has sold us out at every turn, has torn our Constitution asunder, and spit upon the virtue, the sovereignty, and the dignity of the American Citizen.
Americans have always had a right to great pride and confidence – a pride and confidence frayed by nearly two decades of abuse and decline. A free and prosperous people are the most likely to demonstrate the most compassion and charity, for they have the most to give and no reason to fear giving it; but that is no longer the America we live in today. Our governments no longer enforce our immigration laws. Our corporations are bringing in immigrants on work visas to be trained by US citizens for a couple months before those citizens are on the street looking for work. Our wages aren’t going up and our economy isn’t growing. In fact, to find silver linings in our economic circumstances, one must (despite how silly it is) include statistics comprised of public sector jobs which do not produce wealth or capital, but exhaust it.
Islamists – and let me define “Islamist” (an individual who believes that Islam is the only true religion and that non-believers should either be subject to Islamic Law or killed) – are a different kind of enemy. They do not wear a uniform to battle. You’re shopping at Food Lion and seconds later you’re being torn apart by shrapnel from a suicide bomber’s vest. You’re celebrating the New Year in Times Square and someone drops a vile of biological weaponry. You’re praying in a Temple or shopping in a mall and then bullets, screams, and darkness. That so far, all we’ve faced are a few failed bombings, a few successful ones, a couple homicidal rampages, and planes flying into buildings, does not discount the crucification, rape, beheading, hotel massacres, concert massacres, and suicide bombings experienced throughout the rest of the world.
Have our governments given us reason to feel secure? Not even a little bit. They are great at taking away our liberty, but poor at protecting us from harm.
I am a Christian – and because I am, my heart breaks for those living in the Middle East, for the people in Syria, in Iraq, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Germany, China, Russia, and Paris, France. I want to help them and to show them love. I want a government I could entrust with that very charge and responsibility. I want a government that would work tirelessly and methodically to help orphans and widows and cripples – victims all of the horrible ideological war taking place in the Middle East. I want to trust that this government would also desire, with the same passion as the American People, to protect these very victims from their tormentors, from the Islamists, by ensuring that not one of them was given safe passage to our land.
Yet, such a government does not exist in America. We live in a country where our government is as likely to harm us as they are to protect us.
It’s not the victims of ideology and religion in the Middle East we’re afraid of. It’s our government and their reckless irresponsibility. We do not trust our government, nor do we even have faith in their good intentions. I would venture to say, that every person you’ve heard proclaiming that they do not want these Syrian Refugees would change their tune in an instant if they believed, for one second, our Government could be entrusted with the responsibility of caring for the widows, orphans, and injured who have suffered under the Islamist tyranny in the Middle East, while still protecting We The People.
My heart breaks for these people, but there is so very little I can do. I live in a country ruled by leaders that have allowed gangs and criminals to cross our borders. We catch them and release them. We let immigrants overstay their visa’s – a policy which enabled blood-thirsty Islamists to slaughter over 3,000 Americans on September 11th. Did they learn their lesson? Did anything change?
No. We love the people of the world. We do not trust our government. We care about the oppressed, yet we are increasingly oppressed ourselves. I’m opened minded to the arguments and the debate with regard to these Syrian Immigrants, but let no one proclaim that those opposed are opposed out of malicious intent, or cruelty, or bigotry, or intolerance. That’s a lie; and a disgraceful one at that.
Originally published at VAright.com
