No Man Is An Island

2007-02-28

I remember singing this song in fourth grade chorus. Essentially the words of the song have stuck with me since then. I was a very enlightened child in retrospect. I haven’t sung the song since then but I’ve remembered the words ever since.

No man is an island, No man stands alone,

Each man’s joy, is joy to me, Each man’s grief is my own.

We need one another, So I will defend

Each man as my brother, Each man as my friend.

I believe it was during the 1975-1976 school year, the bicentennial celebration was approaching, hence all the patriotic songs. I remember we also sang;

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.

As many times as I have been to New York, I’ve never had the opportunity to visit the Statue of Liberty, but I know these are the words engraved on the plaque at her base.

But these were the tenets and ideals this country has always embraced. It’s what we do, and I laugh when I read people railing against Illegals in this country. Please. Unless you are 100% Native American, your racism is showing.

Just because your ancestors came over here in a boat, doesn’t mean the invitation doesn’t stand. Look at how many different refugees risk their lives to get here. On our southern shores the rule has always been if you come by sea and make it to land, you get to stay. It’s why so many boat people are captured and returned to their home ports. These are people, who are just as equal as the rest of us, except they still believe in the “American Dream.” They also will do the piss poor jobs none of us will. Don’t blame them for getting jobs illegally. Blame the employer who is hiring them to avoid paying federal wage taxes. These people are not working for free. They are doing gainful employment and not given the opportunity to pay taxes and contribute to social security, which is why the decision was made to allow these people to collect some benefits. However, Corporate America should make up the deficit, or at least the ones who are caught..right Walmart?

I live in Pennsylvania, where they just approved a local casino to be built. I guess so we don’t have to make that two hour drive to Atlantic City. The state also wants to take some of the proceeds and offset some of the educational woes by offering the revenues to school districts to reduce tax burdens. But only if your school district is in one of the not so wealthy districts across PA. Since I pay about 25% in school taxes on my home yearly, Chester County won’t benefit.

On today’s local news, the casino is having a hard time staffing the lower paying jobs. Did I mention the casino is located in Chester, right outside of Philadelphia, where the average home goes for about 15-30k dollars? When I worked for a bank and I had to travel there, it was behind secured fencing and security was tight. If you needed drugs or guns though, just spin around, you’d have a dozen offers. They are trying to revitalize the area by adding gambling and horse racing. That’s right, get the people with gambling addictions to come, they won’t be able to help themselves and we need the revenue.

I know they have tried to make the city over, but placing a casino in the middle of this town to draw tourist in is essentially the same idea of putting a salt lick in your back yard to shoot deer. However, the reasons they are finding is the pay is too low, the applicants can’t start when they need them, etc. The racial makeup of the city as of the 2000 census was 18.94% White, 75.70% African American, 0.20% Native American, 0.61% Asian, 0.01% Pacific Islander, 3.03% from other races, and 1.51% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 5.39% of the population.

The median income for a household in the city was $25,703, and the median income for a family was $30,336. Males had a median income of $29,528 versus $23,705 for females. The per capita income for the city was $13,052. About 22.8% of families and 27.2% of the population were below the poverty line, including 36.9% of those under age 18 and 21.8% of those age 65 or over.

They can’t find people willing to work? I bet if you asked an “illegal” they would jump at the chance. It’s Harrah’s Casino on the Waterfront. I just checked the job listings. Twenty-three different positions, ranging from Slot attendant to Human Resources. Of course, you do have to have a high school or GED equivalent and pass a hair follicle drug test. Aside from that, the one reason they were chosen, they knew they could draw off the local population and provide jobs to lower income families. I don’t think, to quote Cousin Eddie’s wife, is that they are “holding out for a management position.”

But what is the solution that has been up for debate? Let’s build a big old wall on our borders, the US is closed. Obama voted for it. But wait, hmmm…the only way to get that wall built we’ll use the illegals to build it, then trick them into going back to their side for some Quality Assurance and lock them out. Don’t worry about them sneaking in, I’m sure our fellow NRA Gun Toting I- have- a- right- to- own- a –gun- Americans will patrol the borders for free.

Are these the same Americans who want the right to bear arms, but only if they don’t have to use them as the intent was conceived? It was to form a militia. Americans had to defend themselves from the natives, when essentially we were the illegals. Many a pow wow went on, discussing these foreigners. Ingrates. We teach them to survive, and the repayment is Wounded Knee.

To quote a famous editor about the incident in 1890; “The Pioneer has before declared that our only safety depends upon the total extermination of the Indians. Having wronged them for centuries, we had better, in order to protect our civilization, follow it up by one more wrong and wipe these untamed and untamable creatures from the face of the earth. In this lies future safety for our settlers and the soldiers who are under incompetent commands. Otherwise, we may expect future years to be as full of trouble with the redskins as those have been in the past.”

That was written by L. Frank Baum who later wrote the Wizard of Oz. But in the case of wiping out 152 Lakota Indians, Medals of Honor were disbursed in 1891. A little over a hundred years later, we invade Iraq to stop ethnic cleansing and Saddam is tried and hung for the murder of 148 Iraqi Shiites. If he had only claimed four more, we would have given him a medal.

You can’t have it both ways folks. Our government isn’t perfect nor will it ever be. Since we knocked out the Indians, and have them confined to a few reservations in the West, our cowboy spirit has extended globally. We want or need something; we live by reputation alone and open up a can of whoop ass on them. But what happens when that reputation isn’t enough to protect us anymore? September 11^th is what happens. Then the government scrambles to enact the Patriot Act because no cowboy wants to be caught again with their chaps down.

So we are subjected to the government having the ability to see what we see, search our belongings if we want to travel, and we give up our “civil rights” because we don’t know if the person beside us wants to kill us or not. Of course, it’s not you, and you resent having the government looking over your shoulder. But it certainly is plenty of other someone’s, as the Timothy McVeigh’s have proved, and how do you know it isn’t your neighbor and what goes on behind closed doors?

Necessary evil? If you were under public scrutiny as an elected official, how would you recommend our government to handle things any differently and remain a democracy? Bring our troops home, and place them around our borders? Lock everyone out, place sanctions against everyone else and we become self-sufficient? Better get those noodles crackin’ with some inventive ideas if we can’t get along with the rest of the world and closing shop and going to rely strictly on our resources.

I don’t see us dismantling the lady in the harbor anytime soon, with a big old Return to Sender and leave her on France’s shores.

You can rail all you want against the current state of affairs. But look at the big picture, how many times do you grow tired of trying just to keep the people in your family happy? Everyone wants something different and looking to you for an answer. You’re pulled in every direction, and what do you end up saying? Do you give in and let the children have their own way, or do you react as a parent should and set the rules and boundaries that have to be obeyed regardless if they like it or not, but peace must reign whether they think it is fair or not.

Now multiply that by 301,227,000 which is our current estimated population, and know your responsibility is to defend and protect your people as defined by everyone’s wants and needs. Good luck with that. You’re political affiliation is not going to do any better of a job then the last administration or the next.

From John Donne Meditation XVII and I’m sure some of you will at least recognize the closing line but not the meaning;

“All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated…As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon, calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come: so this bell calls us all: but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness….No man is an island, entire of itself…any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”