Posted on 05/21/2010 11:02:42 AM PDT by The Conservative Camp
When you invite your next-door neighbor over for a friendly visit and barbecue, it is expected that the visiting neighbor is respectful of your house and your property. Under social norms, you would expect the visitor to come over to discuss any mutual topics in polite conversation while you, as the gracious host, do everything possible to offer your guest the full benefits of your hospitality.
As you dine over whatever grilled masterpiece you have conjured up, the conversation might cover anything from how your families are doing to issues such as repairing a shared property line fence, etc. However, that is where the conversation would end, as neither party, out of respect for the other, would inquire about how much money the other actually has in their banks, what there rules of discipline might be for their children, or how they are each managing the internal affairs of their respective households.
If each party had children at the barbecue, it would be expected that the visiting next-door neighbor would extend to his host the courtesy of making sure his children are respectful of your home, property and household rules. At the same time, you, as host, are expected to make sure your own children extend good behavior to your neighbor by being respectful of their guests and offering hospitality to their children, within the rules of your own household.
Maybe you have a swimming pool, or a trampoline, that your next-door neighbor does not have, and his children are coveting the amusements that your children take for granted. At the same time you have a nice Jacuzzi and fireplace on a beautiful patio that your neighbors seem very fond of, in an almost jealous way.
It seems that you have been fortunate in your career, having worked hard to gain higher positions, while at the same time you have managed your bank account in a responsible manner. And while your neighbor is gainfully employed and is paid reasonably well, he has simply not been able to match what you have achieved. Perhaps he cannot get a break from life, or maybe he has been a bit irresponsible with his own money and his spending.
Regardless of circumstances, he does not have all the amenities that you have in his own backyard. Yet his backyard is still a pleasant-looking place, with nice landscape and green lawn. By most standards, his household is still better than average in context of the neighborhood, although it is not nearly as nice as your own home is.
After the barbecue is over and the next-door neighbor family returns home, your expectation would be to maintain mutually respectful and friendly relations by keeping your household in order, while your neighbor does the same.
You would expect your neighbor to keep his side of the fence in a presentable way as you do to yours, and you would expect his children to respect the fence and not try to jump over and run roughshod all over your yard to swim in the pool or jump on the trampoline without your permission. You would expect your neighbor to have taught his children to respect property belonging to others, as your next-door neighbor is known for his own rule of immediately prosecuting any child caught trespassing on his own property, no questions asked. Even your own kids can expect this treatment from the neighbor.
Despite your own expectation that no neighborhood children may trespass and use the equipment in your yard without your own exclusive permission, your next door neighbor’s children have managed to continually jump the fence and use your yard as their own personal playground. They have not asked your permission, and they know that they are doing something they are not supposed to, but it seems not to matter to them. They do not seem to think it is wrong to trespass in your yard, even though it would be bad for your children to trespass in their yard.
Although the neighbor’s children are very good at making themselves “disappear” every time you happen to show your face, they leave things either damaged or in a complete mess. They have no respect for your property as they are only there to satisfy their need for fun.
As luck would have it, every now and then, you just happen to “catch” one of your neighbor’s children in the act of trespassing without permission. You return the child to his parents, who scold the offending child in front of you. Then he informs you that his child is in a lot of trouble and will be disciplined for breaching your property, after which he apologizes for the incident. He promises no more transgressions. No hard feelings between either of you. This is what you would expect of your neighbor in such circumstances.
What you do not know, however, is that your neighbor closed the door behind you, and then laughed out loud with his family at how gullible you are! That scolding was for show only, and the only punishment that the children are going to get is from you when they are again caught running rampant in your yard without your permission.
Regardless of the fact you have made clear that continual transgression by the neighbor’s children will eventually result in their being prosecuted if they keep violating your property, you have somehow become a bit lax on actually following through with your threat of punishing the neighbor’s children when they are caught in your yard again.
You understand that these transgressions and damage to your own property will only stop after you finally act on your threat. However, your spouse has opposed taking such action against the next-door neighbors, on account of the children being less fortunate than ours and only wanting to experience the fun that your own children take for granted. Every time you catch one of the neighbor’s kids in the act and start to call the police, your spouse takes the phone away from you and then screams at you with threats of tearing the family apart and cleaning your bank account out if you follow-through. So, in order to keep peace in your own home, you sigh, take the kid by the arm, and drag them back to your neighbor’s house, where the head of that household will feign anger and “apologize” to you again.
So the cycle continues unabated.
One day, your children become upset with you for not doing anything about the intrusive neighbor kids always coming into their yard and taking over their pool and trampoline. They beg you to call the cops, and while you are sympathetic to them, you keep quiet and actually do nothing, because your spouse has told you she does not want you to do this. After all, having the kids sneak into your yard is not doing much harm, and it is helping them build their own self esteem by equalizing the use of your yard between your kids (the haves) and the neighbor’s kids (the have-nots).
When the kids realize nothing is ever going to be done by your spouse and you to enforce your own household rules, they finally take matters into their own hands when you are away one afternoon. They catch the neighbor’s kids in your yard, and they call the police, who promptly come and take care of the matter.
When you find out what happened, you are actually happy and relieved to see your children’s own resolve to finally put an end to the nonsense. However, your spouse starts screaming at you about how unreasonable you are being, and she disciplines your children for having taken such drastic action against the “poor” children next door. She then goes on a rant to the entire neighborhood about how awful your children are to the neighborhood kids, while she informs all your neighbors of how you encouraged your children’s “unorthodox behavior” and “bullying” of the neighbor’s children, who, in her own opinion, have done absolutely nothing wrong!
At the same time, your next-door neighbor becomes infuriated with you and your children for having actually made his kids go through the humiliation of being arrested by the police. He goes around the neighborhood telling all who will listen about how his children were never causing any real problems in your yard, and that all they were doing was a “little harmless” jumping on the trampoline to have fun. Besides, he tells them, you have allowed his children to do this for months now with “no issues” prior to this. Since it has “never” been an issue, why the fuss about it now?
Of course, some of the nosiest of non-affected neighbors begin to interfere in the dispute, telling you that the neighbor’s children have a right to come into your yard whenever they want in order to seek fun. It is a “child’s right” and you need to not only quit making an issue of this; you must also open your yard gate to all neighborhood children and declare your yard a public easement for all. But you must personally maintain the equipment, pay the property taxes, and be liable to all lawsuits should the neighborhood children accidently hurt themselves on the public’s trampoline, pool and hot tub, the one that used to be yours! And for good measure, your children are ostracized by the entire neighborhood community, the violating neighbor himself, and worse, your own spouse in your own household!
Despite your protestations that you had simply tried to exercise your rights as a property owner in order to protect your property and yourself from liability lawsuits, and the fact that this was all being blown out of proportion as to what really happened, your pleas fall on deaf ears. Even the fact that all of your family, with the single exception of your spouse, simply want to follow the rules of the house and protect your property falls on deaf ears. This is because the only person in your household, in this case, your spouse, who adamantly opposes any kind of discipline, is the one who is being most shrill and loud while exaggerating what actually happened.
Finally, to add insult to injury, your spouse decides to invite the next-door neighbor over for that “friendly barbecue.” During the dinner, the guest lectures and scolds you on how unreasonable you are being for not allowing his children to have rights to run all over your yard at will. He explains that your methods of running your own household are not proper and must be changed. He tells you that you must give him money to help him get his yard looking a bit better, because he also expects you to take down the dividing fence and make both yards as one, with your half being the “public half” for “children’s rights.” Finally, he makes clear that you need to quit your policy of threatening his children with prosecution if they trespass on your property, as that is nothing less than “bullying” of his children for no reason other than being the next-door neighbor’s children.
Your spouse nods in strong approval of your guests smack-down of who you are and how your run your internal affairs. She is very, very eager to accommodate the message of your guest in any way she can. It seems to not matter to her at all that she is surrendering the ownership of her own household to this guest’s demands as she supports every hypocritical word he jabs toward you and the kids.
Then your neighbor complains about how you cooked his meat on the grill, and asks you to make him another.
Substitute “you” for the majority of the American people.
Substitute “your children” for Arizona and the several states.
Substitute your “spouse” for the liberals, Democrats, mainstream Obama media, and Barack Obama.
Substitute the “next-door neighbor” as Mexican President Felipe Calderon.
Substitute the “next-door neighbor’s children” for illegal, undocumented Mexican aliens, and substitute your own yard as being the United States. As for the neighborhood at large, consider that to be the United Nations and the “international community.”
Finally, substitute the “friendly barbecue” for an Obama White House state dinner.
Doing this, it becomes very clear that the scenario depicted above is exactly what is happening in current context with the fabrications against the new Arizona immigration law and our policy to stem illegal immigration into this country.
Mexico came to the White House for a barbecue dinner, and it is the United States that is getting grilled!
Robert Ditmar is the Editor of The Conservative Camp (www.ConservativeCamp.com), an American conservative website that advocates a return to smaller, leaner government and tax cuts as a means to solve many of the problems we are facing today. The site offers Conservative News, Editorials & Opinion, Multimedia, Humor, Issues, Commentary, Community, Blogs, Resources and Analysis and Information...Because Information is Power!
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This probably belongs in the blog section.. but it’s pretty darn good!
How long is this guy visiting? He already had a state dinner and bashed the AZ anti-illegal law. Go home Calderon and take the illegals with you!
“Mexico came to the White House for a barbecue dinner, and it is the United States that is getting grilled!”....
nothing to add....
I thought it was hard to have a Mexican barbeque...the beans keep falling thru the spaces in the grill.
EXCELLENT!!!!!!!!!!!!
Muy Bueno!!!!!
Here in San Diego..we are even required to literally clean up the sewage from Tijuana. We are building new processing station on the Tijuana river and their sewage is piped to Pt. Loma Treatment plant to be discharged in the ocean.
If we didn’t do it..well it would be all over our beaches and theirs..but they could give a sh-t.
Meanwhile Dora the Explorer was caught crossing from Central Amer. into southern Mexico thug Police beat her and took her backpack away.
I’d have given the Calderons a couple burritos from Taco Bell and left it at that.
Calderone needs to go home to his hell hole of corruption and STFU
Strong fences make good neighbors.
Looks like the Mexican Presidente and his host both hate the USA.
After reading this story,I have concluded that it’s time foe a better fence ....... and a divorce.
Feed Calderon the rat - grilled.
if it was me in this story, I’d demand a divorce from my “spouse”: liberals and Obama.
My first thought was that maybe the guy should have been wiser choosing his spouse in the first place. But that’s just too easy of a metaphor for the stupidity of Obama-voters.
Also, when even poorer neighborhood kids sneak into your neighbor’s yard, he is extremely harsh with them, yet he continues to insist that his own children be allowed to come into your yard whenever they please.
When his children do come into your yard, they often throw trash into the pool, torture your dog, make loud noise, break the trampoline and other mischief. Yet your neighbor insists that his children are “enriching” you by their presence.
Another thing this neighbor’s kids do is come over when they have colds, sniffles and flu, making your kids sick.
Squatter go home!!!
Both of them!!!
“...it’s hard to have a Mexican bbq...the beans keep falling thru the spaces in the grill”
Yeah, but they make great swastikas smeared on Arizona government buildings (sarc).
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