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WHAT???
Apr. 6, 2005
Plastered on the front page of this morning's 4/6/05 edition of The Dallas Morning News is a statement that defies reason. Starting in 2008, American citizens will be required to present US passports to re-enter the United States from Canada and Mexico. What? Why should US citizens be required to provide this documentation to enter U.S. borders when citizens of Canada and Mexico don't need any at all? Of course, the policy in question does call for Canadian and Mexican citizens to present similar documentation, but we all know the reality: US land borders are swiss cheese. This is predictably a "Homeland Security" measure. How many of my tax dollars were spent on the planning of this policy? What is this Homeland Security garbage anyway? Are we securing our "homeland" against ourselves? Instead of increasing the level of supervision over the citizens of the United States, shouldn't they be spending their resources on eliminating those millions of unidentifiable people roaming back and forth across the borders? Or maybe I have it all wrong.
When a million people secretly and quietly (not to mention unlawfully) cross our border every year, do we really think requiring people trying to enter within the bounds of established law to present documentation is going to in any way address border (or "homeland") security? Why are we monitoring these areas so closely when the only deterrant in so many others is a river shallow enough to walk across? Excuse me for thinking that this would not keep someone who travelled all the way from, say, Saudi Arabia to Mexico, from crossing the border. Who's going to require their passport? We'll never even know they're here. The Saudi Arabian terrorist has more liberty and defacto rights to privacy in the U.S. than United States citizens. Only in America, the land of opportunity; but for whom is this opportunity reserved? For suicide bombers and illegal immigrants?
New York has the Statue of Liberty. It's supposed to symbolize the hope for a better tomorrow for those coming across the Atlantic. We have a different reality here in Texas. Someone (preferably a DC bureaucrat -or a collection of them -representing the responsible party) needs to commission a statue for Texas to place on the Rio Grande River; but instead of liberty, ours will be named the Statue of Apathy. I already know what it should say on the base: Bring us your frustrated, they can take their frustrations out on us; Bring us your enraged, we will be their victims; Bring us your lazy, we will support them. Instead of a torch, it would have in one hand an upside-down Texas flag, representing distress, and in the other a huge wad of $100 dollar bills ready to hand out to anyone that wants them. At her feet will lie the broken tombstones of George Washington and Stephen F. Austin, the founding leaders of the U.S. and Texas respectively, trodden underfoot in irreverence for their ideals of liberty, justice and true representative government.
While we're clearing up these modern realities, let's straighten out a few other things. In light of modern times and events, it seems reality would be better served if the STATE abandoned the Pecan Tree, and adopted instead the Weeping Willow, planting them (at some great expense I'm sure) all over the state to represent our perpetual mourning for the loss of liberty. Instead of the Mockingbird, the state would be much better represented by a Vulture. And the bluebonnet, as pretty and prevalent as it is in Texas, is much less representative of the STATE than American Wormwood grass would be, and they could mandate that we all cover our lawns with the offensive weed.
Of course, the people of Texas could simply decide to end this nightmare before it arrives at it's horrid inevitability. But will we?
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