Introduction:  I write to challenge.  I don't expect everyone to agree with me.  I do expect people to pause and think about what they hold dear in their own lives.  I notice that people who have never been challenged; whether economically, or by losing their health, losing a loved one... take an awful lot for granted.

I've suggested to both of my children that when the time is right, I'd rather they spent a year overseas in a third-world country helping others than beginning college in some American fishbowl.  Growing up among nomadic people who had few material possessions has taught me much about the importance of family, hospitality, helping the less-fortunate regardless of how much or little I have, and of being grateful.

So here's what's on my mind today:

I've heard arguments of all kinds on the immigration debate.  I understand the economic arguments (on both sides).  As far as I'm concerned, they cancel each other out.  Then there are the racial arguments.  Oh, you probably won't hear someone frame it that way, but so far, the people I've heard argue against illegal immigration quickly slide into arguments against immigration on a broader scale, and suddenly the discussion becomes one about 'Mexicans', 'Guatemalans', or Spanish-speakers in general from 'south of the border'.

Let's call a spade a spade.  I hear an awful lot of White Anglo-Saxon rednecks who would otherwise call themselves 'Christians' use racial slurs against Latinos, make fun of their accents, stereotype their food, living conditions, personal hygiene habits, etc.

This is an issue about which I used to not feel strongly, but because of the abhorrent things I continue to hear, am quickly developing an aversion to most of the 'anti-immigration' arguments I hear from a visceral level.

Granted, I used the term 'anti-immigration' instead of 'anti-illegal-immigration'.

One problem I have with the entire argument is that illegal immigration can be largely blamed on a ridiculous system that actually encourages it.  Do I think people should be rewarded for breaking the law?  Of course not.  Do I think American jobs need to be protected?  Building a higher wall is not going to protect American jobs any more than raising tariffs on certain industries, and anyone who watched GM, Ford & Chevy during the '80's knows how they squandered that.

Americans need to be less dependent on 'jobs' and need to relearn how to be self-reliant.  100 years ago, this nation was made up of people who appreciated the smallest blessings, uttered phrases like 'waste not, want not', and 'a penny saved is a penny earned'.

Today, we utter words like 'entitlement', and phrases like, 'I'll sue'.  Asked the best ways to develop wealth, average Americans answer with one of the following means:  Winning the lottery, inheriting a large sum from a relative, or winning a lawsuit.

Here's one of my favorite arguments:  "These people should have to go through the legal process to become citizens."  This from people who had the luxury of being born American citizens, who did nothing more than exit their mothers' wombs on American soil.  Do you have any idea what ludicrous loopholes we require of people to become citizens?  Forget our neighbors south of the border for a moment - consider loyal translaters in Iraq who risk their lives and the lives of their families daily, and once they're targeted by Al Qaida in Iraq or another terrorist group have to flee to Jordan or Syria rather than being able to rely on the US State Department to protect them.  50 visas per year.  That's what we offer.  And we expect Iraqis to jump at the chance to help us?  Right.

I have a tremendous amount of respect for someone who risks his very life to cross a border for the chance to make his family's life marginally better, and at the same time actually pays the IRS taxes on the illegal money he earns working 12 hour days 7 days a week while sharing meager housing with a dozen other illegals who spend their days harvesting crops at wages that actually allow you to buy fresh produce at a price you can afford.

Here's another argument I love:  "The thing I can't stand is that they don't learn the language."  This is usually uttered by the very same people who can't put together a sentence in English to save their lives.  I work in an environment that is as homogeneous as it gets - not one minority in the place.  I hear these arguments daily.  I also don't have to dig very deep to find examples of English grammar gone wrong.  This hypocritical argument is just one of many that raise my ire.

I’m probably the world’s worst speller (that’s why I use ‘spell check’.  In this posting alone, I found three spelling errors.  So I’m not trying to put my fellow workers down – only pointing out the hypocrisy of being offended because someone is having difficulty learning English as a second language, when they have not even come close to mastering it as a first language!

I’m perfectly willing to hear people offer arguments who disagree – please just do yourself the favor of checking the facts and basing your arguments on solid ground, and not racial stereotypes.  You will get farther with me if you’re trying to convince me of the validity of your point of view.

A brother just returned from a missions trip to Nicaragua.  His impression was summed up in one sentence: “We are so rich compared to those people!”, he realized.  “They have so little, but compared to us, they are so committed to helping their neighbors who are even more poor than they!”

 What are you committed to?  Keeping up with the Joneses?  Materialism?  What’s your god?  When did our fellow man become less important than our individual pursuit of wealth?

(or... 'Whatever happened to principles over politics?')

I must be getting old - I no longer look at election year hopefully and with anticipation.  Now, it's accompanied by anxiety and despair.  Maybe it's not my age that's the problem - maybe the field of qualified candidates just seems to have been overgrown by the weeds of big money and influence.

I'm not going to take the time to review the list of candidates and their positions here - plenty of 'spin-spaces' in cyberspace for you to get your fill without me adding to the milieu.

What I will do, however, is share my gut instincts based on my decided cynicism of media coverage to balance my cynicism of self-proclaimed saviors and equally cynical pundits.

I won't even bore you with a complete listing of candidates - suffice it to say that if they're not mentioned here, I either haven't been paying enough attention to know they're in the running, or I've already written them off as 'not-really-serious candidates'.

Newsweek's Periscope has rolled out a humorous analysis of candidates' respective bumper stickers (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19762070/site/newsweek/ oddly dated the 23rd (don't know how they're pulling off the time-travel.)

Here's my gut reaction to the candidates:

Hillary scares me.

Obama interests me.

Giuliani makes me roll my eyes and shake my head.

Don't know enough about Romney.

Edwards scares me more than Hillary.

McCain makes me wish he were better at campaigning.

You see, the thing about McCain is that he frustrates me - I respect him as a war hero, as a principled statesman, and as an intellectual.  He amazes me in that it seems like such an effort for him to get his message across.  I know the media filters his (as well as everyone else's) message, but he just seems like a fish out of water on the 'Straight Talk' campaign trail.  It could be that the title seems absurdly simplistic amidst such weighty issues.  Maybe he should borrow Gary Eichelberger's slogan, "Principles - Not Politics".

One friend told me once that he didn't think McCain had a chance of winning, simply because 'he's mean'.  Sorry, friend, I think he should be even MORE mean.  What I'm trying to say is that he almost seems apologetic about his points of view on the Iraq War and on Immigration, when he should be coming across as passionate if he wants to sway over a majority of primary voters in the Republican party.  Otherwise, Charlie Brown, he just comes across as wishy-washy.

In any case, I haven't mentioned Senator Paul, because he's such a long-shot, and as much as I respect him, there's just no way he's going to last through any significant part of this primary season.  Similarly, I didn't mention Dennis Kucinich, because he's equally a long shot, although he has a way of making his liberal position on social issues sound almost palatable to even conservatives!

Enough of my random spewing... I gotta go put my McCain bumper sticker on my car.

"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things; the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war, is worse. A man who has nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety is a miserable creature who has no chance at being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself." - John Stuart Mill

Today's rising crescendo of voices against the war in Iraq begs the obvious question:  Is the answer to an unjust war an equally unjust retreat?  Through the fog and information-overload of daily death and bombing statistics, arriving at an educated conclusion to the query, "where do we go from here" may seem impossible.

The United States is on the threshold of choosing a new Commander-in-Chief.  If we select an individual based on his promise to stay or go in Iraq, we choose a simplistic response to a complex issue, and thereby abdicate our role and privilege as voters.  If we have blood on our hands now, cutting and running promises only more blood, and yet staying guarantees us a greater sacrifice.

While few today still believe we should have invaded Iraq, our imperfect memories betray us; we tell ourselves we knew this was a bad idea to begin with - we told everyone it was a mistake....  The historic data confronts us, however, and reminds us that Republicans, Democrats, and Independents alike were fooled into believing that Saddam was a bigger threat than he turned out to be.

It takes little integrity to turn and look away when there's violence taking place in another part of the world.  How often have we stood aside as genocide took place in locations like Cambodia, Rwanda, and now in Darfur.  In Iraq, we have the unique complication of having stirred up much of the trouble we are encountering; how much more are we responsible, then, for addressing it, and not running away from it.

It strikes me as an excessive degree of hubris and hypocrisy that the same people who wag a self-righteous finger at Republicans for not doing something about Sudan are the same people who are clamoring for us to lick our wounds, turn tail, and flee from Iraq, advocating that we leave sure destruction in our wake.  At the same time, the Republican Party continues to embarrass itself by justifying itself, rather than admitting what the rest of the world already knows - we made a mistake.  My father taught me long ago that a real man apologizes when he's wrong.  By not doing so, he only proves his immaturity, and subsequent inability to handle responsibility.

"We only went into Iraq because of oil...."  Regardless of your political point of view, I challenge you to rise above your paranoia and conspiracy theories to consider this fact:  We, the United States of America, have created a situation where not only are scores of our own soldiers dying weekly, but thousands of innocent people are dying every month, and millions who at first welcomed us as liberators, are left wondering what went wrong, as a few radical Shi'ia and Sunni terrorize them daily.

War is a horrible thing.  Doing nothing is more horrible yet.  When 'bringing home the troops' is a euphemism for defeat, then we have succeeded not only in defeat as a nation, but as a symbol for all who seek to come to the aid of the downtrodden in the world.

Our simplistic answers to the world's problems are haunting us; 'democracy' is just one small step removed from mob rule.*  'free elections' in many places seems to provide the majority with an inferred mandate to slaughter the minority.  On top of that universal lack of regard for human (read "minority") rights, we Americans lack the fortitude for commitment once the going gets tough.  If we don't win easily and quickly, then we shut the drapes and turn our heads, and pretend we can't hear the screaming anymore.

No political party has a corner on making stupid mistakes.  The Republicans can't seem to gather the integrity to apologize for being wrong about our intelligence.  The Democrats would rather trade integrity for populist "bring the troops home" propaganda.  Our collective integrity as a freedom-loving nation respecting the rule of law requires us to rise above our mistakes, past and present, publicly apologize for our clumsy stupidity, and seek an international alliance pledged to the restoration of a lasting peace in Iraq.

The alternative is too ugly to consider.

*"Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time." E.B. White, New Yorker, July 3, 1944