Legalisms

John Battern encountered a difficult situation and asked a question that actually has profound implications far beyond his host’s back yard and as I was leaving him a comment on his post, I was reminded of a situation only a few days ago as I was driving across town.

I am a listener of talk radio, and in my listening area the station is extremely conservative. On this particular day, the talk was centered around Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee’s comment that our aversion to illegal immigration may have more to do with our prejudices than with our concern about the law.

Just about the time the radio host was blasting the governor about HIS prejudiced comments, the driver in front of me rolled down his window and tossed his cigarette butt onto the street. Now I have no idea about the politics of the person who committed this crime, but my own prejudiced mind took in the older model pick up truck and the general appearance of the offender and came to the conclusion that this person could well be amongst that crowd that “don’t want no damn Mexicans coming into OUR country, but that don’t make me no bigot”. I know, I know; the Lord loves him, too.

Still, the loudest and most prevalent objections to illegal immigration that have been so eloquently stated come from those who cry out, “What part of ‘illegal’ don’t you understand?”

Tossing even a tiny cigarette butt onto the street is littering, pure and simple. And in Arkansas, littering is a crime. In all states, there are posted speed limits and even though state police usually don’t seem to bother with we who choose to go “just a tad” over the speed limit, the bottom line is that the law places a definitive limit on how fast we are allowed to drive on our streets and highways.

That “everyone does it” as the common argument does not make any of these acts any less a violation of a prescribed law, and yet we are clear in our objections that “we ain’t no damn bigots; we’se law-abidin’ citizens”.

This all goes beyond what we think and what we do and what we believe. It moves into the lives of our children whose futures we influence by what we teach them and how we teach them. By word does not have the same impact as by deed; children watch much better than they listen, and they learn by both.

In John’s case, a keg of beer was being served at a party for high school graduates at the home of a parent. What sort of message does this convey to those young people? And what would it say if a concerned neighbor had bothered to call the police and report that minors were being served alcohol and the parents had been taken away in handcuffs? You can argue that the kids would have just been drinking somewhere else, but that makes this offense no more right. The law is the law, yes? On private property? So? Beating one’s spouse or abusing one’s children even on private property is still illegal. There is no imminent domain in this case in which parents can provide alcohol to the class of 2006 and be exempt from the law that prohibits such acts.

If we are going to be honest about obeying the law, let’s at least look to ourselves and our own communities and our future generation of law breakers or law abiders (entirely our choice!) before we begin to worry about “them damn Mexicans”.