What happened in Boston spread, and other colonial seaports defiantly followed the example set by Sam Adams (‘It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people’s minds’). When the news spread of what Sam Adams and a handful of Boston patriots had done, other seaports all down the Atlantic coastline followed the example and staged similar acts of defiance of their own.
Of all of the signers of our Declaration of Independence, Sam Adams probably best embodies those character traits found in colonial American patriots. He was an eloquent man, determined to keep himself informed regarding the abuses of power that continued to be heaped upon the colonies, and, in addition to sharing his insight and stirring eloquence, he was not afraid to act when it appeared that words would no longer suffice.
In spite of the education garnered, and knowledge shared, on this forum, I believe that most adult Americans could not even tell you who Sam Adams was. And, of those who are aware of his role in the revolution … and beyond … I believe most know him through his most famous declaration, ‘If you love wealth more than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, depart from us in peace. We ask not your counsel nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.’
Powerful words indeed … and perhaps more powerful now than then.
But another of Adams’ statements may even prove to be more pertinent and providential in America 2005:
Among the natural rights of the colonists are there: First a right to life, second to liberty, and thirdly to property. Together with the right to defend them in the best manner they can.
Life, liberty and property were the three sanctified entities that our Founders sought, and sacrifice beyond our comprehension, to guarantee each and every American – not only their eighteenth century contemporaries, but every one of us who has followed in their footsteps.
Yet during our lifetimes alone, there have been countless examples of government gone awry that have represented a direct and destructive assault upon the sanctity of those three God-given human rights that our Founders sought to ensure for us. The government-sponsored murders at Waco, the Supreme Court decision in Roe vs. Wade, the passage of the McCain-Feingold assault on the First Amendment, the court-ordered murder of Terri Schiavo, and the government land grab upheld two months ago in Kelo vs. New London come to mind. And in between each of those travesties, there occurred dozens more.
What happened in Douglas, Arizona this week deserves to be added to the growing list of what our Founders would have called ‘grievances against the King’.
In America 2005, we are experiencing a growing arrogance on the part of government at all levels … representing by the passing of liberty-restrictive laws and by judicial rulings that all but declare the Constitution a nuisance, and the American citizen a slave of the state.
But not only is government pro-actively trampling on our three most precious God-given rights, it is also accomplishing the same result by simply refusing to defend them when their sanctity is threatened by outsiders.
The illegal immigration travesty is the prime example of death through neglect. We are pro-actively fighting a ‘war on terrorism’ six thousand miles from our shore, and yet an onslaught that is threatening to destroy us, both physically and economically, and that also affords terrorists the ability to find a home and a breeding ground from which to proselytize on our own soil, and in our own neighborhoods, is being allowed to continue unabated. Government efforts to stop illegal immigration have been half-hearted, at best – and entirely unsuccessful.
Alexander Hamilton (and Washington and Jefferson as well) vehemently opposed granting immediate citizenship to new immigrants, writing, ‘To admit foreigners indiscriminately to the rights of citizens, the moment they foot in our country, would be nothing less than to admit the Grecian horse into the citadel of our liberty and sovereignty.’ And he repeatedly warned against allowing masses of immigrants to cross our borders, because he believed that our safety and sovereignty would be threatened by such ‘reckless policy’.
The Founders’ concerns were focused on the deadly threats to our republic represented by failing to limit legal immigration. It’s difficult to imagine what they would think of laws and court rulings that hold the American citizen/taxpayer hostage to the ‘rights’ of illegal immigrants. The fact that the American legal/judicial system would go so far as to seize the property of an American citizen and lawfully convey it to an illegal immigrant would surely be beyond their ability to comprehend, let alone condone.
The dollar cost of illegal immigration is rising exponentially, and consists of (among other considerations), the cost to the American taxpayer of:
- Providing ‘benefits’ to those illegal immigrants who are hired by American businesses looking to make a quick, illegal buck, but who provide no healthcare – thus causing their illegal employees to obtain ‘free’ (on the backs of the taxpayer) healthcare (thanks to the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act of 1985).
- Food stamps, free education and school lunches, subsidized housing, and seemingly countless entitlement ‘perks’ for their children born on this side of the border.
- The cost to the American taxpayer of supposedly ‘cheap labor’ being obtained by unscrupulous businesses.
- Driving down the wages that American citizens receive in whatever businesses the cheap immigrant labor finds a foothold (generally agriculture, construction and food services)
- Incarceration costs of those illegals who drive uninsured or otherwise get in trouble with the law, pro-bono legal services, and the cost of interpreters
- The drain, sometimes to the point of collapse in the border states, on the healthcare system … indirectly resulting in inferior, and more expensive, healthcare for our own citizens.
I can think of much better ways to spend our money, one of which would put a major dent in the cause of the US/Mexico border immigration crisis.
Simplistically, here is a layman’s partial solution – a very rough and ‘non-expert’ draft which would, of course require significant ‘fine tuning’ …
Let’s use the ‘average’ of the $10 to $40 billion estimates, and assume that illegal immigrants cost the taxpayer $25 billion annually.
The length of the US (CA, AZ, NM, TX)-Mexico border is approximately 5,000 miles.
Many nuts-and-bolts conservatives (yours truly included) have suggested building a wall and/or stationing armed guards as a reasonable solution to the illegal immigration problem occurring across our southern border.
Let’s look at the potential cost of doing both:
The extraordinarily effective protective wall that Israel has built in West Bank in order to prevent the infiltration of Palestinian suicide bombers cost them $1.6 million per mile.
Using that figure, the construction of a similar wall along our entire southern land border, would cost $1.6 million/mile x 5,000 miles = $8 billion.
Now, if we were to build small guard stations and assign an armed guard at each station every half-mile along that wall, we would require 5,000 x 2 = 10,000 guard stations.
Let’s liberally assume that each small station (something along this or this line) would cost $100,000 each to install (including wiring for air conditioning and a set of outside floodlights, plumbing, communications equipment, etc.). The total cost for all 10,000 stations would be $1 billion.
If we were to station guards at each station so that each worked an 8-hour shift, five days a week – and hired a sufficient number of guards so as to have a guard on duty 24 hour a day, seven days a week -- we would require 21 eight-hour shifts (totaling 168 hours) per week with each guard working a 40 hour week. Therefore we would require 4.2 guards per station.
4.2 guards per station x 10,000 stations = a total of 42,000 guards needed to patrol the border.
Let’s assume a cost of training each guard (in the procedures to be followed and in firearms training, both of which would be done in classes of 100 or more guards per class), and the providing of each guard with a firearm, to amount to $2,500/guard. Then the cost of training 42,000 would be $100 million.
Assume that each guard is paid an annual salary and benefits totaling $75,000. The total annual salary/benefits cost for all 10,000 guards would amount to $750 million.
Now take the estimated $25 billion dollar per year to the taxpayer cost of illegal immigration and subtract the $8 billion cost of an Israeli-like security wall running along the entire border and the $1 billion cost of guard stations positioned every half mile along that wall, the $100 million training costs, and the $750 million in guard salaries and we are left with $15.15 billion dollars (more than half of the figure with which we started) – which could be used for maintenance purposes, insurance, utility costs, additional equipment, etc.
And the large portion of the outlay described above is a one-time – as opposed to annual -- cost (the construction of the wall itself, especially).
Of course, all of the above are simply the estimates of a layperson, who has no expert knowledge in the costs of the physical items involved. But I believe those estimates to be not unrealistic. Neither do I suggest that I have covered all financial considerations that would be involved.
My entire purpose in creating this hypothetical example is to suggest simply that I believe there is a fundamental, nuts-and-bolts solution to the crisis represented by the exodus of illegals coming across our southern border. And I also believe that the financial cost of such a common sense solution would not be anywhere near as prohibitive as the financial cost of continuing to support (and now actually cater to, at the cost of our own freedoms) non-citizens who have committed a crime simply by being here in the first place.
How to address the problems cause by those illegals who are already here is an entirely different issue. But I believe that stemming the source of the problem now is entirely within our power … and entirely possible, dollar-wise.
As for the ramifications of the Douglas, Arizona Ranch decision …
I can’t help but wonder when we citizens of America 2005 will declare that the last straw has been placed on the camel’s back. Are we more ‘tolerant’ of the tyranny of government than Sam Adams and his fellow patriots were? Are we more of a mindset that we will not take action until the abuse occurs in our own backyard? Are we more willing to wear the chains to which Adams referred, because we love the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom?
Back in 1999, Claire Wolfe observed in her book, ‘ 101 Things To Do ‘Til The Revolution’:
America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system, but too early to shoot the bastards.
Considering the atrocities (both by neglect and by overt action) committed by our government in the six years since Claire penned that thought, I can’t help but wonder whether we have been pushed significantly closer to the revolution she envisioned in those last three words.
~ joanie .. 