Consequences

Stephen Covey has made millions teaching some basic principles, like the law of the harvest. He teaches that our actions have consequences; consequences we cannot control.

He often teaches the lessons of farming to an urban society. You must work hard to prepare the soil, a process that sometimes takes years. And you must plant and water and weed and contend with all the external forces…and if you are lucky you’ll have a harvest. (A harvest which requires labor, planning, and luck.)

I am hearing some disturbing things coming out of Washington. They are repealing the law of the harvest by holding in abeyance the consequences that follow our choices.

You see it with mortgages, abortion, banking, investments, manufacturing. In waltzes Uncle Sam with cash to bail us out of the messes of our own making.

And you see it with amnesty for illegal aliens. The roadshow of congressman Luis Gutierrez came to Chicago Saturday. Cardinal George was there calling for an end to the immigration raids.

And they bused in people from all over Chicagoland, mostly (95%) Hispanic. The placards on the buses read Saint this or Saint that. One read SEIU, whatever that means;)

At the rally they had a young girl read a short speech telling the cameras that both her parents are illegal and she is an anchor baby. What would she do if they deported both her parents?

(Well, first of all, they don’t deport both of them. They have had a humanitarian procedure in place for years that forbids that.)

Then Rep. Gutierrez talks about “breaking down the door in the middle of the night” to haul off parents whose only crime is that they don’t have papers to work here.

Gutierrez is either a fool or a lousy actor. They are not hauling people out of their homes in worksite raids. The only people they haul out of homes are fugitive absconders who have been through the courts and defied deportation orders, a process that comes years after a worksite raid.

As for committing no other crimes, he ought to know better. Someone working here without papers has either committed fraud or tax evasion. There are no other choices.

Anyway…back to the idea of consequences. Who is responsible for these people coming here in the first place? Who brought their children with them? Who fathered children into a life-situation like this? Who chose to purchase fraudulent documents? Who was working for cash-under the table?

There is something else amiss with the rally in the church. They commented that they were seeking justice. Actually, they should be pleading for mercy.

Cardinal George invoked the need for family security as the road to peace. I wonder if he ever thinks of the minority workers with few skills, unsuccessfully competing with illegal aliens for jobs? They have families, too. Or the way this glut of laborers keeps wages low and benefits scant? If he does, he never lets on.

The play was complete with the token white man, a young man from Poland whose father was deported a few years ago. It was another sad tale.

Make no mistake, it was a Latino event.

Welcome to the new America. You are not responsible for your own actions. Nanny is here to make all things right.

Have you sent out your tea bags yet?