Save yourself (& us) first

When you are an air traveler, you tune out the safety message prior to takeoff, but I want to remind you of a chunky of it: If you are traveling with a child, and the oxygen masks suddenly drop from above. What are you instructed to do?

First put on your own mask, and then help the child put it on. That’s because you have to remain clear headed in order to help others. Emotionally, you want to go to the child first, but it’s not the smart thing to do.

Let’s turn to our southern border, where emotions have bumped reason into a ditch. 

Most Americans approve of immigration, 62% according to a Pew poll. The poll does not specifically say “legal” or “Illegal.”  The Left, for its own reasons, has erased the distinction over the past decade. Had the poll dealt with “legal” immigration, I suspect the positive number would have been even higher.

It was the Left that first banned the term “illegals.” There might have been some small, polite reason for that, but then they eradicated “illegal aliens,” a term in use for decades. Then even “undocumented” got tossed. This was done not for grammatical reasons, but for political ones. It was an attempt by the left-leaning editors to mask reality and  obfuscate what was really happening. 

I noticed about a decade ago a word — illegal — had vanished from news stories and even conversations.

This was done to protect the delicate feelings of those who had violated our laws, but the distortion of truth created an unanticipated side effect: When the word “immigrant” is used, some people — I don’t know how many — automatically assume they are illegal. That would be on the Right, while on the Left many don’t care about how immigrants arrive. That not caring evolves into Sanctuary Cities, which rewards those who break our immigration laws. The Left feels morally entitled to ignore immigration law. I wonder how they would feel about landlords ignoring anti-discrimination laws, for moral reasons of course? 

Now, did the 10 Democratic candidates for president know what the hell they were doing when they raised their hands when asked if they would provide free health care to illegals? 

We have by most estimates 30 million American citizens who do not have health insurance, but 10 Dems would provide that to people here illegally. 

Let’s think about the airliner. First, you help yourself, meaning your own country, before you help someone else. Don’t the Dems understand that?

Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders are demanding full bore Medicare for All. Since Sanders believes it is a human right, he would provide it to anyone in this country, legally or not. That this would be a magnet to pull more people here is probably OK with Bernie, at least until they start stealing union jobs. Bernie thinks globally until it hurts his base, and then he opposes free trade, the only “free” thing he dislikes. (Just kidding, Bernie.) 

At the border, Warren wants to “decriminalize” border crossing, which would reduce it to something like a ticket for overtime parking. She joins Julian Castro in that. 

We have half a million homeless in this country, we have an opioid crisis, we have a national poverty rate of 12.3% and more than 25% in Philadelphia. But we want to allow in perhaps millions more?

Shouldn’t we put on our own oxygen masks first?