Freedom

Imagine, for a moment, that you are a young man in your 20s, trying to make your way in the world. You are married and have a young daughter, just old enough to start to talk. You live in a run-down neighborhood, long passed-over by any economic advances. What schools you had access to barely taught anyone much. The few jobs you can reach have fierce competition, even though the pay is low. You worry about your health, but even more about that of your wife and child. Finding food is a constant concern. Although you are still healthy now, and you are willing and able to be a hard worker, there is simply nobody hiring people in your area. Not to mention the gunfights that erupt between gangs or drug dealers. Oh, and did I mention that your wife is 4 months pregnant?

Your top priority is to do your best to keep your family safe. You're afraid that your whole family will starve, or be killed by an errant bullet. You've tried for a long time -- it seems like forever -- to do everything you can think of, with no success. Finally, you decide that the only way you can have the hope for a better life is to move somewhere where the economy is better, and the drug dealers are fewer.

But moving hundreds or thousands of miles away is no easy task when you have no money to move. Somehow, with some luck, ingenuity, and tenacity, you have finally managed to find a way. You have no job offer in your new town, but conditions are so bleak at home that you just can't risk staying there. So the three of you move 1500 miles away.

You arrive with no money, no apartment, and don't know anybody. But you're a hard worker, and have talked yourself into a job. It pays what passes for minimum wage in your new home, but it's a fortune compared to what you made before. It's backbreaking work, and you work long hours. But soon you can afford a cramped apartment, and keep your refrigerator stocked with food. What a luxury!

Pretty soon your new baby son is born. You can afford to feed him, your daughter, your wife, and yourself, every day. When you're really lucky, you even have some money left over to send to your brother back home, who is still struggling to make ends meet there. You seem to have climbed the first rung on the American Dream ladder.

Years pass. Your old home becomes a memory; your daily life revolves around new struggles now. Your oldest child is in school, your wife finds part-time work sometimes too, cleaning houses for rich people. You've been laid off several times, your income isn't guaranteed, and the others in your new home don't take kindly to strangers -- and they still think you're one. But it's better than flying bullets and never knowing where your next meal will come from.

Then one day, while you are at work, federal agents show up. You are arrested and taken to jail. Agents show up at home, too, arresting your wife. It turns out that they realized you entered the country illegally from Ecuador those years ago. Meanwhile, your wife wonders what will happen to your son that was playing in a neighbor's yard while she was arrested, or to your daugther that was at school.

After months in jail, with little contact with each other, and poor medical care, the government decides to deport you to Mexico. Why Mexico? Well, it's cheaper, and there's no documentation showing where you came from. Apparently you "look" Mexican, and they don't believe your story.

After months in jail with no income, you are once again bankrupt. A government bus takes you to Mexico and drops you down someplace there, with your wife and your oldest child. Your younger child was born in the United States, and so is an American citizen and can't be deported. But the government isn't going to give him a free ride on a prison bus (and Mexico wouldn't take him anyway, since everyone knows he's American). You have no idea where he is. You have no idea how you're going to find food in Mexico, no idea how to find your son, no idea where to find refuge from the ever more prevalent drug dealers. Meanwhile, the Americans think you're scum because you wanted to protect your family, and it's going to be much more difficult to get back in to try to reunite your family.

This story is based on true events.

It's truly easy to demonize illegal immigrants, isn't it? Easy to round them up by the thousands, easy to build a bigger fence, easy to lock them away.

Sometimes it seems like this nation built on freedom, supposedly on Christian values, has lost sight of compassion for the lowly. In this country, we would throw in jail parents that didn't do everything humanly possible to find food for their children. We also throw in jail parents that grew up in other countries that are just doing the same.

How sad that we have people going on TV, suggesting we round up millions of Americans that happened to come here illegally, breaking up millions of families, creating an immense foster child problem, a human tragedy on a mass scale. How incredible that some of these people on TV wear the title "senator" or "candidate for president". How stupid do they think we are, suggesting that a poor South American family would somehow be able to navigate the arcane American immigration system and wait the 15 years to get here legally, if they manage to come up with all the necessary money somehow?

Politicians have been pushing our buttons for too long. We aren't a nation of selfish hoarders; we came together through tough times, survived the Depression, put in place the Berlin Airlift that saved countless lives in West Berlin. But the thought of someone with darkish skin coming to this country and building highways is enough to send some people looking for a rifle.

I hope that we will someday do better.

Terah found a great item: a disappearing civil liberties mug. As the mug warms up, the text of the Bill of Rights gradually fades, except that of the 2nd amendment.

Check out the exciting news:

"Because the Commission exceeded the scope of its delegated authority, we grant the petition for review, and reverse and vacate the Flag Order insofar as it requires demodulator products manufactured on or after July 1, 2005 to recognize and give effect to the broadcast flag."

Thus far, I have avoided commenting on the Terry Shiavo case, but I feel that it is time to do so.

First, the media has done an astoundingly poor job of covering this. For a very interesting, and needed, backgrounder, look here. I am amazed at how often the media portrays the case as hinging on the word of the husband. It, in fact, never did; several more of Terry's relatives had separate conversations with her that agreed with Michael's interpretation. From the court's findings of fact:

Also the statements she[Terri] made in the presence of Scott Schiavo at the funeral luncheon for his grandmother that “if I ever go like that just let go. Don’t leave me there. I don’t want to be kept alive on a machine,” and to Joan Schiavo following a television movie in which a man following an accident was in a coma to the effect that she wanted it stated in her will that she would want the tubes and everything taken out if that ever happened to her are likewise reflective of this intent. The court specifically finds that these statements are Terri Schiavo’s oral declarations concerning her intention as to what she would want done under the present circumstances and the testimony regarding such oral declarations is reliable, is creditable and rises to the level of clear and convincing evidence to this court.

So we have a case where three relatives recalled direct statements from Terri expressing her wishes.

We have heard plenty of comment from people saying that the judiciary is violating Terri's right to life by ordering the feeding tube removed. I don't think so; the evidence shows that she didn't want to live with a feeding tube.

If the courts decided the case any other way, it would be violating her right to death. Or, put another way, the right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" in the words of the founders of this nation. Terri apparently believed that living hooked up to a machine was no life at all, and if we deprive her of the ability to make these decisions about herself, we have also deprived her of her own personal liberty -- made her a prisoner in her own body, subject to the will of others.

I am particularly dismayed that Jesse Jackson and other religious people once again found it necessary to intervene on the wrong side of freedom in this case. Perhaps they don't agree with this sort of end-of-life decision. But plenty of people make these decisions and they should have the right to do so. The idea of not forcing one's will upon others seems to be a core Christian one to me, at least. Depriving someone of their liberty is an act this society usually exercises only regarding criminals, not hospice patients.

For Terri's parents, who tried so hard to override her will -- even if they were motivated by their concern for her -- this was a deeply selfish act for which they should not be proud.

I have no idea what her husband's motives are, but even if they were evil, his motives alone don't account for the other corroborating testimony given by Terri's other relatives.

Grounded, a fascinating (if wordy) story about John Gilmore's attempt to travel without having to produce a photo ID. I hope he wins this.

Bill gates recently gave an interview in which he said that people that opposed software patents, or other tightening of intellectual property laws, are "communists".

Richard M. Stallman has an amusing and elightening article, Bill Gates and other communists, in response.

Favorite juicy quote:

Thanks to Mr. Gates, we now know that an open Internet with protocols anyone can implement is communism; it was set up by that famous communist agent, the U.S. Department of Defense.

These sorts of things really tick me off. Wired is reporting that the U.S. House has passed HR2391, which, among other things, would make it a violation of the Copyright Act to skip commercials using a technological means (hardware or software) -- and it makes it a violation to make the computer program that allows people to skip commercials.

I feel a donation to the EFF coming on.

The Boston Globe has an interesting story about an exhibit in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art about works of art that have been found illegal.

According to an article entitled Pentagod Retaliates against GIs who spoke on TV, it is apparently prohibited for people in the military to criticize their elected representatives -- a basic right that everyone else enjoys. No wonder their morale is low.

An Associated Press article discusses a new state law in Kansas that automatically registers men 18-25 for the draft when they apply for or renew a drivers' license. Some Mennonites in the state are arguing that choosing not to register for the draft for religious reasons is a right that this new law removes. Not registering is illegal, but is rarely prosecuted. Mennonites have strong beliefs in peace.