Civics 101

If I have been writing a lot about politics lately, it's because I care deeply about who runs our country. No good citizen can be passive and abrogate their repsonibilty to vote. And no good citizen can cast a vote lightly, without serious consideration of the candidate in question.

Maybe that's just Protestant guilt bleeding over into my politics, but I wish more people had those blood stains to deal with.

Americans only seem to come in two flavors these days: ignorantly passive or highly partisan. And while I may seem to many people a highly partisan person, I'm not. It's just that I don't like much of what the right wing of government proposes.

The best thing GWBush did while he has been in office was to raise the immigration issue. And his plan for allowing illegal immigrants to naturalize makes fundamental sense. Not a hallmark of his administration to date, so finding one bit of common ground reminds me that no party has a death-grip on the truth.

Truth comes where you find it, even if it is out of the mouth of an illiterate and tirelessly-ignorant jackass.

But even he recognizes that asimillation will happen, with or without government sanction. Better to set new rules than trying to enforce ones that obviously don't work.

And, yes, we could beef up border control. Build fences and walls. Try to contain the illegal inflow of folks from south of the border.

But to do so in any significant way would cost billions that we don't have and would have to borrow from the Chinese, and it would likely have little effect on illigal immigration.

People already risk their lives to get here. They sometimes die in the deserts along the border. Or in transportation that lacks any allowance for replacing CO2 with fresh oyxgen.

While some may be more concerned about their house keeper and who's going to mow the yard, I'm more concerned about families being torn apart and people living in an underground sub-culture where they remain isolated and fail to reap all the benefits that come with American citizenship.

They aren't coming here because of our less-than-stellar public assistance programs. They don't want the next in line on the dole. They could probably do about as well and stay at home.

As far as immigration is concerned, most people will think only of Mexico. But we have illegal imagrants from all over the world. Asia and Africa are both supplying a good quantity.

And they all come here for the same reason: the chance to get ahead. To give their children a better life than they had. To work hard and get paid an honest day's wages for it.

Again, I'll say, it's the only thing I have in common with GWB. And I was disappointed to see legislation addressing immigration shot down in both houses of Congress. By both parties.

Too many people seem to be robots these days. They don't think: they just react. Thinking seems to be part of an earlier age. I mourn its demise.

This is all to say that I don't vote on partisan lines. I vote based on philosophical and ethical bases. As a citizen, it is both my obligation and my privilege to do so.

Voting is the only activism I participate in.