As I have watched the toothy grinning hoard of white racists talk about immigration from south of the US border since donnie was put in office I have wanted to puke.
As they all toothily grin, they all repeat the mantra of that sort of under class: “the law is the law”.
And every time I have heard that I have been acutely aware that that is just plain wrong.
But I have been unable to come up with a strong enough counter argument to post anything on the subject: the doctrine of unconscionability, I kept thinking; but all I knew about that – if it even exists – was vaguely remembered conversations I had had with my friend Jack, who was in law school at the time, as we trudged along over the lava chip strewn fields of Eastern Oregon, decades ago, behind two German shorthaired pointers, in search of whatever kind of game bird Blitz and Brown – the dogs – could find and point for us.
I was reading a new book recently, after having finished Churchill’s Marlborough.
The author quoted Martin Luther King from his “Letter from Birmingham Jail”.
It said it all.
Here it is.
"I would agree with St. Augustine that 'an unjust law is no law at all'. Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law: To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: 'An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust'".
By the standards of Acquinas the US law that makes it a misdemeanor for people to immigrate to the US because they perceive that to be in their best interests is an unjust law.
It is also a law spawned by ignorance and hate.
A law that said "welcome all; if you want to come here and to live here and to join us here, here are our requirements; meet them and you are welcome; violate them and you must not come here" might be a just law.
That would, of course depend upon the requirements.
If the requirements were the similar to those required of all "legal" residents, we might have a just law.
It certainly could create the basis for an organized and productive contribution to be made to the future of the United States.
And it might be a law that could be defended by a mindless statement such as "the law is the law".
I'm a believer in not making things hard for folks.
Don't want to change their thought patterns, just their data.
No comments:
Post a Comment