Immigrants
It's easy to be arrogant - power tends to corrupt and all that.
The idea of looking at it from their point of view - well, you see that discussed in the bible, but few Americans who I see do it.
Oh, sure, if I twist your arm you'll say how you don't hate them, and have some pity, but that's the extent before you go back to the corrupt arrogance.
This is what's meant by a sense of justice and morality. The ability to see them as human beings, to take the blinders off long enough to understand why we have things so much better - it's not all a Hallmark card about how we deserve it and they don't.
Look, it's too late to fix today, but our arrogance can be a little bit curtailed by the history that we committed an unjust war to steal half of Mexico's land - you know, the type we say Hitler and Hirohito were wrong for, but which we apply a different set of rules for ourselves on.
It's not just my opinion - ask Abraham Lincoln who was a leading speaker against the war in Congress at the time, whose young republican party said the war was wrong; ask President Grant who served in the war and later called it "one of the most unjust ever waged on a weaker country by a stronger."
We have the right to protect our border, and to determine immigration policies, but we should consider moral issues in doing so.
What would help is for us to look at how we can sensibly help the Mexican economy somewhat, so they don't have such compelling interests to come here - something most of the illegal immigrant critics would do themselves in the same situation.
Oh, that's just big government crazy idealism talking. Ya? We had the Marshall plan to rebuild the German economy (and others) after they had fought us under Hitler, and now benefit from trade - do we have less of an obligation to our next-door neighbor, who could be a better market for us?
Consider the action General Smedley Butler was talking about when he said the following - are you aware of the history of this type of thing with the US and Mexico?
"I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914."
