Trust me, I realize it's complex and messy, and that is why we are arguing about it so much while schools and hospitals struggle through it all trying not to financially implode. And yet people keep hiring other people to work for them, care for their children, be an intimate part of their home life just to then turn around and complain about what these very same people are doing to our Country, our education system, our health care system, the very fabric of our nation and culture. Would we not care if these same people disappeared tomorrow? Would they just be replaced by other people? Are we really like that? To be honest I hope not.
I'm not saying as a Country we can just do what I would like to do and be all inclusive all of the time, I mean there is a reason I wasn't a founder of this Nation, when it comes down to it, I don't think I have what it would take to make the tough decisions, however at what point do we have to call ourselves out on the hypocrisy of it all?
I'm not going to lie I get a little suspicious when I hear someone talk about building houses in Mexico(which is important and valuable) and then when it comes to helping the person who works for them all of a sudden there is some important lesson they need to learn about self sufficiency or better language skills. This is absolutely not all people by any means, however it is still there, this under current of it is only OK as long as it serves me. And the truth it seems like that might be what is going on with a lot of our struggles as a Country, State, City, or community in general. We have finally reached the height of our individualism and there is no where else to go, and now we have some tough things to face.
Is there a way to walk this immigration vs illegal immigration line in service of both human beings and our Country? Is it not possible to do both? Is it like it reads in Matthew 6:24 "No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money. And can money be replaced by Country? Or is this Country able to be served while treating people with respect and dignity? Can we as a Nation actually look at our lives really examine them, and change for the better, not just protecting commerce but preserving our founding identity. Does there always have to be a political side to choose? A bloody battle?
Within our cry for assimilation and preservation of American culture, do we really want illegal or legal immigrants to pick up on some of our bad habits, like buying things we can't afford and being responsible for the most garbage per capita in the world? Probably not. Is the problem in our Country that we can't all live like Americans, so only we want to live like Americans, and everyone else needs to pack it up, or have we just stopped talking, thinking and considering what our founding values were, and if there is a way to consider them now?
I came across this interview below(I think worth a read and if you can a listen www.onbeing.org) it made me hope above all hope that there are people in our government starting to really think about what our values really are as a culture and country, and is also made me a little( or a lot) nervous about what needs to be sacrificed in order to stand strong as a Country not just economically but ethically.............
America"
June 28, 2012
It's easy to forget, especially around U.S. Independence Day, how much trial and error went into the creation of American democracy, how much of what Americans now take for granted wasn't fully formed for decades after 1776.
The warm and wise philosopher Jacob Needleman looked back at the American founders with this in mind for his book The American Soul. He took apart the ingredients that grew up our democracy. And he found that every iconic institution, every political value, had "inward work" of conscience behind it. Every hard-won right had a corresponding responsibility.
It feels important to me to revisit the conversation I had with Jacob Needleman about this in 2003, and have been formed by ever since. In our historical moment, it is as clear as ever before that the American republic is an ongoing work in progress. At the very same time, young democracies are fighting to emerge across the world and are looking for instruction and models. To rise to this occasion, I believe, we need to remember and pass on this inward work as much as the outer forms of government that were long in the making. As we created this show, we also pulled in words Jacob Needleman points to — of founding voices of "the idea of America." These include George Washington and Thomas Paine, but also Frederick Douglass and Walt Whitman.
For this journal, I offer excerpts of Jacob Needleman's insights from our interview — and a little Walt Whitman — for remembering and reflection.
On the rights of the individual
The warm and wise philosopher Jacob Needleman looked back at the American founders with this in mind for his book The American Soul. He took apart the ingredients that grew up our democracy. And he found that every iconic institution, every political value, had "inward work" of conscience behind it. Every hard-won right had a corresponding responsibility.
It feels important to me to revisit the conversation I had with Jacob Needleman about this in 2003, and have been formed by ever since. In our historical moment, it is as clear as ever before that the American republic is an ongoing work in progress. At the very same time, young democracies are fighting to emerge across the world and are looking for instruction and models. To rise to this occasion, I believe, we need to remember and pass on this inward work as much as the outer forms of government that were long in the making. As we created this show, we also pulled in words Jacob Needleman points to — of founding voices of "the idea of America." These include George Washington and Thomas Paine, but also Frederick Douglass and Walt Whitman.
For this journal, I offer excerpts of Jacob Needleman's insights from our interview — and a little Walt Whitman — for remembering and reflection.
On the rights of the individual
"Individualism and individuality have to be separated. Individualism can take a turn where it's a kind of egoistic, selfish thing: Me, me, me, me, and what I want and what I care, what I think and what I like. Oh sure, we need to have the liberty to express all that, but a real individual is a different thing. And to be truly one's self is to be truly in contact with this great self within, this divinity within. And the paradox of true individuality is that the more you are in touch with what all human beings have in common under God, the more you are uniquely what you, yourself, are. And that's why I say we need to bring back the obligations that go along with the rights in order to understand the depths of what the human rights really mean."On freedom
"A democratic citizen is not a citizen who can do anything he wants. It's a citizen who has an obligation at the same time. And just to give you an example, if I may, the freedom of speech, what is the duty associated with it? Well, if … I have the right to speak, I have the duty to let you speak. Now, that's not so simple. It doesn't mean just to stop my talking and wait till you're finished and then come in and get you. It means I have an obligation inwardly — and that's what we're speaking about, is the inner dimension. Inwardly, I have to work at listening to you. That means I don't have to agree with you, but I have to let your thought into my mind in order to have a real democratic exchange between us. And that is a very interesting work of the human being, don't you think?"On conscience
For the founders and for all spiritual teachers — and by "founders," by the way, I want to broaden the founders to include people who came later, including such people, of course, as Lincoln and also — one people may find strange — Frederick Douglass and people like that who spoke very powerfully of conscience. Conscience is an absolute power within the human psyche to intuit real values of good and evil and right and wrong. We are born with that capacity. It's not just socially conditioned into us. This is what the great traditions teach. This is what I think. But it is covered over by a lot of the egoism and chaos of our un-free inner life."On the importance of "thinking" in public, political life
"Shouting is not thinking. 'Come let us reason together,' the prophet says, God says to Isaiah… I think the moment you start thinking together with someone, immediately their eyes light up… I must confess I spoke to — I won't say who, but I spoke to some members of Congress not long ago. We had a very quiet evening together and we started opening up, just what you and I are doing now. And they said, in effect, you know, 'We never get a chance to do this. We're in there trying to, you know, speak to television cameras or make points with electorates or with lobby groups, but we never…' I said, 'You mean you never come together and just reflect together?' And they said no. To me, that's the dirty secret of America at the moment. That's the problem."From Walt Whitman's essay "Democratic Vistas," which Jacob Needleman also includes as part of the long tradition of the foundational "idea of America," and which ends our show.
"I say the mission of government, henceforth in civilized lands, is not repression alone and not authority alone, not even of law, nor the rule of the best men, but higher than the highest arbitrary rule, to train communities through all their grades beginning with individuals and ending there again to rule themselves. To be a voter with the rest is not so much. And this, like every institute, will have its imperfections. But to become an enfranchised man and now, impediments removed, to stand and start without humiliation and equal with the rest, to commence the grand experiment whose end may be the forming of a full-grown man or woman — that is something."
