There is a justified malaise growing within American citizenry over the willfully continued practice of its government to separate migrant children from their parents, incarcerate them in a manner suitable for criminals post conviction, and treat their health and wellbeing with an ambivalence that has resulted in the deaths of three children under 9 years of age, the youngest being not quite 2 years old. https://nbcnews.to/2AJyHn1
While it is fair and responsible for a nation of laws and citizenship to enforce both, the controlled scope of what constitutes enforcement of the law is a civil responsibility as well as a utilitarian obligation. Additionally, it is imperative to consider whether adherence to a policy which produces such results as the untimely death of children is in fact an efficient countermeasure to its intended exigency. To ignore the means and the ends, or to allow the ignoring of, is an irresponsible turn towards social and actual tyranny. This is a tyranny where the prejudices of a ruling group becomes the legally vindicated abhorrence of its supporters who in turn prop up the laws of the ruling group. This confirmation circle precludes rational policy decisions that best serve the civilization and instead distill a majority opinion into law. Majority in this case is meant to read as the opinions of the deciding group in the nation and not meant to imply that they hold a true numerical advantage. As this relates to the separation of children from parents at the border, as of yet, there are no discernible desired effects upon illegal migration to the United States as the result of these tactics. Instead, methods of this ilk resolve to be compulsory at best, to discourage would-be immigrants who would not be willing to lose their children perhaps forever. Where people cannot be reasoned with or instructed, compulsion may well serve the best course for their tutelage, as long as said compulsion is the best manner with which to best help them who cannot best help themselves. This is not the case in modern times concerning the peoples who, though often destitute, are not savage and incapable of reason.
Children, more than any adult, do not deserve the threat of incarceration, illness, or death for crimes they cannot understand and therefore could not have committed. Detaining families found breaking the law by illegally entering the United States, thus restricting their movement and ability to escape American recourse, is prudent execution of border control. In no manner is that endeavor assisted by the threat placed upon the young. In no manner are American ideals upheld and preserved by separating families. In fact, many of the dangers that the influencing parties would seek to avoid by employing these tactics like murder, erosion of values, crime, and general harm to the vulnerable are instead perpetrated in the attempt to prevent.
Regardless of the complicated arguments surrounding the state of the American border, the needs of South American immigrants, or the American need of them, one piece of the puzzle is clear. Three children have died while under the care of one the richest, “freest” nations in the world for no reason at all. The ultimate transgression against the liberty of the smallest of us has been not only employed, but sanctioned lawfully, politically, and perhaps most odious—socially. There may be reasons given for such an act, but currently they most closely resemble the attempted rationalizations of early colonists who, legally, persecuted “witches” or heretics or magicians.
Persecutory discrimination is a perfectly legal frame of mind to have, a perfectly acceptable set of opinions to keep to ones self. However, the transposition of these mental modes into compulsory laws of lethal consequence to the youth is an infringement upon the very tenants the American nation was founded upon, and cannot serve the true rational pursuit of any liberal government, especially one aimed at becoming the paragon from which the world should take notes. It is not enough to simply call one’s nation great, for true greatness is that which lasts past the individuals who would say it. For lasting effect, reflected in the histories of the world, make America think again…and greatness may follow.