Now that things have quieted down, I sure hope that you take the time to read this to the end because I have some serious issues with what is has happened over the last few months.
You held some community events to listen to what people think about racial equity and social injustice in order to “solve” this systemic problem. I have some thoughts which are too detailed to share in public so I am sending my perspective to you.
I cannot believe what you did by reinforcing Montgomery County status as a “Sanctuary County” by your unwillingness to help ICE and the Federal Government enforce immigration laws, generally, but especially in their current efforts to locate and deport the people who have already had their day in court. Sadly, these actions were celebrated by the County Council. I guess you are missing the point and those people around you have failed to provide you with logical and wise advice.
Since I started writing this there have been more than one individual, undocumented immigrants, who broke our laws by entering America illegally and then raped women and children. This is reprehensible on their part and you and the rest elected official bear the responsibility for encouraging and supporting their illegal behavior which has led to additional crimes in our county. American citizens doing the crime of rape would have been treated totally differently and this reveals a major problem when it comes to social injustice.
One thing is very clear but by seemingly “granting” social justice by not assisting ICE, those who are in our county illegally are given special status beyond the rights of the citizens. You are creating a social injustice for the rest of us by your actions. In a way the situation is like extradition, if a criminal committed crimes in another state and then came to Montgomery County, you would be expected to send that person to the other state to stand trial, but you are not allowing the next step when it comes to the jurisdiction of the Federal Government. Criminals who commit crimes in our county need to be punished to the full extent of the law, whatever their immigration status nor should their crimes be plea bargained down to save money and court times and cost because with reduced sentences they return and do the same crimes again at more cost to the rest of society then if they had been left in prison. Governor Hogan and the District of Columbia are just figuring this out.
You are concerned about social injustice yet by protecting illegal immigrants who are to be deported and have committed a felony by coming into America, you are contradicting yourself. You have encouraged social injustice by this action. You are discriminating against citizens of this country - those who are truly born here and those who became citizens through the long process and you are telling us that our rights have less value than those who have broken our nation’s laws by sneaking in. Also, you have put at risk legal and illegal immigrants who may be threatened with harm if they tell on their neighbors, you have threatened all with enabling the rise of the gangs like MS13 and you have enabled human traffickers to exploit the illegal status of young women and teens. This county has put schoolchildren at risk by not ensuring that all children, specifically, those who have entered America illegally, have had their vaccines and have put many others at risk because immigration Health Laws related to children and adults have not been enforced. This county and the State of Maryland has enabled illegal aliens to obtain driver’s licenses without confirming their status. The argument is so that they can get to their places of work, yet there are laws are in place that as an employer you cannot hire someone who is in this country without proper documentation, i.e., here illegally so they should not have jobs at all. By your selected application of which laws you will enforce and which laws Montgomery County will ignore, you have created an inequality and inequity against the citizens and the residents of this county.
By telling the Federal Government as County Executive you will not abide by the multiple laws that were passed by Democratic and Republican Congresses and signed by Presidents of both parties over the years, and enforced by the bodies assigned that task, you are putting Montgomery County in the same condition which caused the American Civil War. South Carolina and what became the rest of the Confederacy did not like the Federal Government’s laws and did not like that a Republican President won the 1860 election and proceeded to go to war against Federal troops and shelled Fort Sumter in April of 1861. Multiple people in this country keep trying to remove, destroy, or desecrate statutes related to that war and destroy or disfigure paintings and monuments of the Founding Fathers because they are applying today’s mindset to the past and declaring what they did was wrong. I believe that one day we won’t take down the statues because how else will they remind us to explore the past so that we might learn from our errors.
I have lived in Montgomery County for 63 years and for most of those years, the Democratic Party has been in charge of the government. As a party, Democrats have had years to figure out what is wrong with this county and to solve one issue or another to improve the situation. The thing which does not seem to have been learned by the Democratic Party is that passing resolutions, spending money, holding hearings, and other activities are just band-aid solutions and feel good efforts which do not fix things permanently.
So many complain about the need for social justice and racial equity yet they need not to speak to the Republicans but to their own Democratic Party who have not evolved as President Obama claimed although this country’s voters did help to elect the first black President. They were the party against Civil Rights for descendants of slaves, for freedoms to be considered as equal in housing, wages, jobs, educational opportunities, voting, and by laws which imposed segregation, discrimination, and outlawed miscegenation. Democrats still thwart people’s right to vote by preventing voter identification which protects their votes from being diluted by the dead and liars.
Again sadly, often over the last 100 years, most of the inequities and inequalities which have occurred were because of the laws passed by Democrats at the local, state, and national levels.
They have been the deniers of freedom, the blockers of allowing people to strive for the American Dream by the laws they enacted and they fought anyone in the courts who tried to bypass their efforts to enforce these unjust laws. They are the party of intolerance by saying that anyone who doesn't speak with the right voice, the right words, or have the right litmus identity cannot be in Congress. Those in Congress should be representing all people from their state or district not just people who claim their specialness because of their skin color, their ethnicity, their sexual identity, gender, country of family origin, their religion, historical injustice, or victimhood. Now Democrats are trying to get the nation to pay reparations but in many peoples’ opinion that was tried by the Democratic attempts with Welfare which has destroyed the American family and has led to too many absent fathers, unwed moms, children raised by grandparents and single parent families. President Trump whose has been in office for only a short time and cannot be blamed for the many decades of evil actions. It is the Democratic Party who is to blame and they needs to clean up their act or clean house for their irresponsible inequities and social injustices.
Many of those in government are blind to the method of solving of racial inequity and social injustice and so are many of the people who elect them. But it is not just those elected - it is their staff, their families, and the bureaucrats who assist in running the government. The Declaration of Independence was written to justify going to war against Great Britain because it failed to establish a government which enabled people to exercise the unalienable rights endowed by God of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. After the Revolutionary War was over, America needed to create a government from scratch which enabled its citizens to ultimately achieve their personal American Dreams. Despite those who denigrate what the Founding Fathers did, the Constitution provided the mechanism to accomplish this. However, what people of today fail to take into account, is that government is a political creation and it does not deal with another part of human existence. People make up the world and countries and their desires interact and may conflict with others. That is why we have civil laws to handle being human and the failure to live civilly towards one and another.
First of all, racial inequity is different from racial inequality. According to the dictionary, inequity is a lack of fairness or justice. That there is unfairness, partisanship, favoritism, prejudice, and discrimination is based on someone’s race, not necessarily ethnicity or country of origin.
Racial inequality is the belief that one is not equal to another based on race. Which when taken in context, if one believes someone is not equal to someone else because of their race, usually one person then treats or acts towards the other person with inequity. At the same time, the person who is not considered equal has a choice - to believe that they are inferior and accept that position or disagree and try to prove that those who are subjugating them are wrong through changing the laws, going to court, through civil disobedience, or through violence. Ultimately, the goal is end this inequity but even though laws have been changed to accomplish this, the internal human side may not agree. No matter how many laws get passed there are still people who think because someone does not have the experience, speak the same language, does not have the same education, life skills, they are inferior to someone else but it is not because of race but is generally due to the lack of opportunity to achieve or attain this level of knowledge the other person has. But again, racial inequity has traditionally been a black and white thing in this country but lately, it has been appropriated to validate inequity towards anyone who is different in a long list of disclaimers.
There are cries, appeals, and calls for social justice and accusations of racism at the national level and not just in Montgomery County. Those who were held down recognize they were treated unjustly and want it to end but does that mean that to balance things, others are discriminated against while others are given special treatment? Dr. Martin Luther King marched, spoke, and accomplished much to end social injustice only to die by an assassin who did not believe that black people were equal to white people. His killer was part of the Democratic Party which had treated black people, descendants of slaves as inferior and had denied them educational, employment, and housing opportunities and prevented many from accomplishing, achieving or striving after the American Dream. However, black people in America (and around the world) were not the only ones who have been discriminated against and it was not just because of their skin color but for other reasons which were sometimes less noticeable except to each other. (Tribes in Africa have fought and enslaved each other for centuries). Over the years, Protestants, Catholics, Jewish people and Muslims were treated unfairly due to their exercise of their religion notwithstanding the First Amendment in the Bill of Rights at least in America. Swedes, Norwegians, Irish, East Europeans, Chinese, and other Asians and other nationalities were discriminated against not just by other Europeans in America but also by each other in their home countries. The point being is that throughout human history, not just in America, people have been considered inferior by one group or another. So how can this problem be solved once and for all?
Laws and resolutions can be passed to end social injustice but that doesn’t mean people’s beliefs will change. People lie, cheat, steal, and murder and have for centuries throughout the world and though there are laws that say these actions are wrong and deserve to be punished, people still do them. The motivations to do evil cannot be resolved through political machinations because they are based in human nature and and is displayed in the ineffective philosophy of humanism. Putting a bumper sticker on one’s car that promotes “Tolerance” or “Coexist”ence is very one-sided because it fails to take into account that the other person may not accept that premise or standard. Some people like to apply principles out of the Bible and though it looks and sounds good, they are missing the spiritual motivation power of God that enables and provides the ability to do so. They champion specific statements by Jesus - “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” or “Judge not, that ye be not judged.” Man is not able to put these into practice 100% of the time and, for that matter, the latter is misapplied for promoting tolerance when they use it to ram it down someone’s throat when they are questioned their actions. These statements are being taken out of context, because Jesus was speaking to His disciples and providing guidelines for interactions between people with a different set of standards and beliefs and not to the world at large, all though their universal application would be nice. Some people smorgasbord the Bible and pull out what they agree with and ignore the admonishments and requirements which they don’t like. They claim that the world is different now and those principles no longer apply in today in order to justify their behaviors but they negate the consequences which are quite in evidence if one just looks around. When someone questions their actions, they immediately cry hate crime or use anti-discrimination laws to destroy the other person for believing differently based on their religious beliefs.
We have caused racial inequity and social injustice by our application and non-application of our laws. When laws are passed the unintended consequences result in additional laws. Our humanness is to blame for much of it. We keeping passing laws to deal with a perceived problem yet then we discover in our ignorance that we failed to take into account something, so the law is revised to fix that gap but then another group claims that still is incomplete. When word “all” is used that is inclusive yet anti-discrimination laws keep adding additional people to the ongoing list and in so doing some gets missed ad the list is amended with even more laws. Sooner or later, a form of social injustice will occur. Additionally, when laws are selectively enforced or not enforced, based on some criteria, then profiling has occurred and our choosing to grant some people more advantages than others results in discrimination, inequity, and injustice. Leviticus 19:15 states that “You shall do no injustice in judgment; you shall not be partial to the poor nor defer to the great, but you are to judge your neighbor fairly.” We have not abided by this Biblical injunction, though it was given to the Jewish people, it is an universal imperative. There are other commands in this chapter of Leviticus which support social justice and equality but if one were to read the chapters on either side, and champion them today, one would be called all kinds of names.
Progressive Liberals believe that by passing laws, by intimidation, and other means, the world can become a utopia with everyone getting along fine and will play nice but again the internal beliefs and attitudes of equality festers into injustice, intolerance, and inequity which cannot ever be fully eradicated by man’s efforts.
People have always taken advantage of others because they are different in one or another. Outlawing these actions can prevent some of it from happening but it does not stop someone from doing or considering doing it. The problem is that man cannot solve a spiritual or heart problem with a law. Laws state what is right and establish a consequence for breaking it and then the law is enforced by police and courts punish the offenders. However, there is another problem which comes into play. We like to play “God” and try to determine the motivation and come up with extenuating circumstances to reduce or increase the severity of the punishment. This sets up a problem which can become discriminatory because it establishes the practice of inequity and inequality based on situational conditions. This establishes precedence and creates an opportunity for someone to question the motives of the courts. This creates more social injustice by treating criminals differently based on the circumstances - like country of origin, immigration status, home life, and other factors which maybe should not be considered because other people went through those same things and did not commit any crimes. Additionally, if it took a village to raise the child and the child does evil, whom do we blame? Rarely, is it the child, we tend to come up with all kinds of reasons and mitigate the blame instead of blaming the real culprits. First, it was the choice of the raised up child who committed the crime and, in my opinion, who in the village raised the child - did the village use the best instruction book, teacher, and methods? In reality, this is a folktale masquerading as fact. The person who is to blame is the person who committed the crime, not the drug, not the car, not the knife, the gun, or anything else!
I was told I was making excuses for racism recently which by my reading, the writer was implying I supported it. Actually, I am recognizing and writing this to state that racism, social injustice, and racial inequity exist because of human nature. Man cannot change his nature. There will be always be injustice in this world and inequity and inequality because there are too many factors which are out of the control of politicians and laws. Outwardly, people may act nicely towards each other but inwardly they resent that one person has more money, a better job, a bigger house, a prettier wife, a more handsome husband, more or fewer children, that they drive a bigger car, or they drive a gasoline powered car versus an electric, that they eat meat or they hunt, or they are vegan, or they are gay, they are straight, they believe in climate change or deny it, there are differences in skin color, or they are Republican or Democrat and so many other identities and criteria it would be fruitless to list them all. The question becomes what they will do with their inward issues with that other person.
Looking again at the current situation regarding illegal immigration. How many people are going to be allowed to enter this country illegally and to claim asylum for whatever reason based on whatever they choose? How many individuals are the taxpayers of Montgomery County going to have to support in our schools, or pay for by those who commit serious crimes on others in our community? What about the rights of those who came legally and became citizens? Is it fair that they had to go through a 10 year process while some gratuitous lawmakers want to hand others the rights of citizenship because of their travel hardship by getting into America? Those who did it legally do not appreciate that the government is so willing to ignore the breaking of laws because of wanting economic opportunities to available to themselves or their children. However, those in Congress and elsewhere want new voters (because over 60 million voters were aborted and their future offspring was prevented which is a huge civil rights issue for me) but they claim racism or lack of compassion, on the part of Republicans who don’t want people from south of the border coming in. This is not true. The issue is that anyone who comes into America illegally has broken the law. Not just someone who crosses the Mexican border from Central America but because it is a felony to do so even if they come in on an ocean container ship, or small boat, or cross from Canada. As I wrote to Council President Navarro “I am tired of people coming to America and expecting us to welcome them with open arms and ignore that they have broken laws to get into America and while here. We could not enter Canada or Mexico without documentation. We would be put in jail! So why will people not accept the reverse? You cannot fly on a plane or travel by train into this country or arrive by boat without documentation so what gives someone the expectation that by crossing some sand, sea, or a river they should be allowed to just walk in and expect no consequences for their actions? “ For that matter, I believe anyone who brings a child into this country should be arrested for child abuse, neglect, and human trafficking. How loving it is for a parent to travel with a child to America or to pay a drug cartel’s coyote thousands of dollars to enable their child to travel thousands of miles with the potential for rape, assault, starvation, disease, or death along the way and to sneak them in with aspiration that somehow they will survive and thrive in this country while being hidden or protected from authorities? What gives Montgomery County and other sanctuary counties, cities, and states the right or authority to not enforce federal laws? I wish someone would file a lawsuit and have the Supreme Court rule on that! We have created our own form of social injustice by our lack of enforcing and supporting these federal laws for which our own elected Congressional Representatives and Senators voted long before President Trump was elected! By our generous behavior and, in some cases, due to President Obama’s “decree,” children have been placed in Montgomery County and around the country without a guaranteed future status as to what will happen to them. This has led to a huge amount of new students in our schools and, not the reason, I heard from a County official on the news a couple of months ago, who claimed it was because our school system is so good.
As much as I am against people being in this country illegally, I am concerned for their well being. I don’t want anyone to be put in danger, to be exploited for financial gain or power, to be abused, blackmailed, forced into a gang, or threatened with harm whether they are citizens, or residents, tourists, or in this country illegally. But for those in the latter situation, they are put in greater danger due to their immigration status because they do not have protection. This is social injustice and we have encouraged it by turning a blind eye to those who have violated our immigration laws.
Just to reinforce something which I have written and said elsewhere in the past so as to protect myself. Less you think I am a “xenophobe” I work with legal migrant Mexican workers for six weeks each fall on a farm and they have been coming here for years and years. I am very passionate about ending illegal immigration and solving the other areas related to it, however, as a substitute teacher I do not concern myself with the possible immigration status of a student. My focus is on their education and I do not engage in social engineering while I am doing so. Also, I am retired County Employee who worked for the library system for nearly 37 years and I provided excellent customer service to those who entered the doors of the public libraries no matter what.
I hope I gave you food for thought to consider as you are the County Executive, especially since you and the County Council make decisions which impact all county residents not just the ones who you are currently claiming you are protecting with your actions.
