A Modest Proposal Revisited

Jonathan Swift suggested that the solution to the Irish Problem confronting Britain during Swift’s day was to use a ready source of meat – Irish children – as a food source for the Mother island.

Or it was something like that.

(The contributing historical fact to Swift’s obvious irony was that the “Corn Laws” were in effect.

And those laws made food really expensive in Britain.

Except for one percent of the population.)

But I may be inventing all of this.

As for A Modest Proposal: I haven’t read it.

And that is good.

Because I take great pride in an ignorance fostered by not knowing about  things that really intelligent and educated people know.

But Swift’s suggestion seems to me – if it indeed had ever been proffered – to have been a good solution to a vexing problem: too many immigrants.

Or maybe it was too many potential immigrants.

Whatever.

But what more facile solution to the problem of all those little scofflaw kids running away from mayhem in their native Latin American countries could we propose in 2014?

What more elegant solution to a need for meat for MacDonald's could possibly present itself?

Ol’ Ted Cruz has signed on.

Or so I think I have heard.

He has suggested that we use some of the portable sausage factories that McDonald's has deployed in South Texas and South Arizona as “a source of valuable protein for the American people and a means of eradicating the scourge of illegal immigration”.

How nice.