The "Separation of Families" the Left Doesn't Mind
Eager to find anything ... anything ... that can be used to make it look like President Trump is not succeeding somewhere rather than concede his victorious presidency, the left has jumped on another tack.
Now, they are all out there crying figurative and literal tears about "children in cages", meaning that the Border Patrol and ICE were, until Wednesday's executive order, separating the children of illegals who cross the border other than at the entry points where they can try to go through the asylum process. The children -- about 15% of those who cross; the other 85% are just sent over alone, remember, and are separated BY their own parents -- were kept in facilities, fed, clothed, housed and schooled for a couple months until the parents showed up for their court dates.
Of course, since it is "children", there is all manner of moral outrage and puffery seeking to find leverage to use against the president. For his sake, President Trump has been repeatedly pointing out that he had to follow the law, and is imploring Congress to fix the issues with current law that oblige him to take such actions.
But let's get into this a bit, shall we?
The catchphrase in tweets and hashtags and all that kind of social media stuff, of course, has been "separating children from their parents." And no one is particularly happy about that notion. I'm particularly concerned when phrases like "ripped from their mothers' arms" get used, even though that doesn't actually happen and the people saying those words know quite well it is not.
And I'm going to mention, but quickly get past, the fact that the separation of children from their families happens already in the USA, every time a citizen parent commits a crime and is incarcerated. That includes good old U. S. of A. criminals with kids. You break the law, and the consequences are that you get hauled off to jail and are separated from their kids. That applies to American criminals as well as Central American illegals.
But I'll get past that.
The hypocrisy of the left and particularly the "separation anxiety" criers is rather apparent in an issue that no one else seems to have brought up.
I refer, of course, to the millions of children who are separated from their parents each year, who actually are "ripped from their mothers", in every sense of the word, a million or more in the USA alone. Children whom the left couldn't possibly care less about, because the votes aren't there for them to cry about.
I refer, of course, to the million-plus children who are literally ripped from their mothers each year in the USA in abortion clinics.
Of course, those children have not quite been born yet, so there's no guarantee that they would vote for Democrats if they were allowed to live. That may explain the left's disinterest in them, but it doesn't mean that they are not relevant to the discussion.
And it doesn't mean that the hypocrisy of the left is any less at center stage right now, as the same people who march for the right of mothers to separate unborn children permanently from them, rail about the temporary and humane separation of children from parents who put their children at risk by violating USA immigration law through crossing the border illegally.
I would think that hypocrisy needs to be splashed all over the news media, but perhaps I'm the only one to see it.
But you do too, don't you?
Copyright 2018 by Robert Sutton