While the arguments have almost wholly surrounded how the government should define marriage, I propose that the argument should instead be whether the government should be involved in defining marriage at all. What’s the purpose? What business does a government have in recognizing a sacred/emotional/spiritual commitment between citizens? Why must it determine who can officiate marriages? Why must its tax and social security laws distinguish between being married and not? Why is it involved at all?

Some may feel it’s the government’s duty to promote the family organization and procreation.

First, while personally I think that family and procreation are fantastic ideals and I support them, this is not what the founders meant when they declared that the government should promote the general welfare. This type of argument grants the government far too much control and is just the beginning of the slippery slope that leads to legislation like China’s one-child policy. Afterall, China’s promoting their general welfare…right?

Second, the government sucks at incentives (learn more about the Broken Window Fallacy). In marriage, the backfiring of incentives is readily demonstrated in sites like whypaytuition.com. To reduce your tuition costs, you can simply participate in “a marriage of convenience, no romance, no love, no sex, not even living together. You need to meet one time, get a marriage license, get married by a Justice of the Peace and then get a divorce after college is finished.” Heck, you can even find your convenience-marriage partner using their online matching tool! I know the government didn’t intend for this to happen–but it does happen and it happens all the time. Stay out of our marriages.

So if the government doesn’t define what a marriage is, who will? As far as I’m concerned, you can kiss a goat and say “I do” for all I care. I completely disagree with your definition and frankly think you’re crazy, but that’s your prerogative and right to do so. Likewise, if my religion states that God is the ultimate definer of marriage and chooses to only perform marriages between a man and a woman, that’s its right to do so as well.

I’m not the first one to express that government should stay out of the marriage business. In fact, you may be surprised to discover politicians that hold similar views. Take Andrew McCullough, a Libertarian who recently ran for Governor of Utah. When I asked what his stance was on same-sex marriage, he responded:

Marriage is a religious sacrament. If a religion is willing to conduct the ceremony, and if the parties are of age and capable of contracting, the State should stay out of it. The last person who asked me this question liked what I said. The law of averages says you will not, but thanks for asking.

One other Libertarian and one Constitutionalist in the state election responded similarly. Notice most of these people are not Democrats or Republicans. However, Ron Paul has likewise taken a similar stance as he recently expressed in the Republican presidential debate.

What’s your take? Should government be involved with marriage? Why or why not?

I couldn’t have designed a better case study for the polar ideals of American legislation if I tried! Don’t get me wrong–it sucks to have anyone’s house burn down, but I absolutely love this as a case study.

First, it’s amazing what stance people take when legislation is not directly labeled with a political party. If you peruse the forums discussing this incident you’ll find people affiliated with a particular party arguing for an ideal that’s completely opposite that party’s ideals. I love when people start to think on their own!

Second, it’s such a simple, stark contrast between raw emotion and economic reality.

Raw emotion: You’ve got to help the guy out! It’s not humane to let the man’s house burn down over $75! What kind of a messed up mayor or firefighter could stand around and watch this happen! This is the reaction that most people have expressed. When viewing a single incident with such strong, emotional ties, it’s also the easiest reaction to have and the hardest to reason against without feeling/appearing evil.

Economic reality: The fire department is not a charity. It has bills to pay. If the fire department puts out the fire without a penalty, why would anyone else ever pay $75 when they know they have fire protection regardless? If nobody pays the $75, there’s no fire department.

So, what’s more messed up? Having a man’s house burn down because he didn’t pay the $75 or not having a fire department at all because nobody pays $75?

This is a classic demonstration of a pre-existing condition. I recently wrote about these concepts in my Insurance and Pre-existing Conditions post, but I can’t help but re-iterate: accepting and supporting pre-existing conditions works for charities, not businesses. Fire departments and insurance companies are businesses regardless of the tragedies they deal with. If they don’t pay their bills, they no longer exist.

The main purpose of this post is to get people thinking regardless of my stance on the issue. Even so, I do think there’s room for middle ground in this particular case. In reality I would have put the fire out anyway and levied a fine high enough to encourage other homeowners to continue to pay the $75. What would you have done and why? Also, how do you feel about a-la-carte government (e.g., pay for fire protection only if you want it)? I’d love to hear what you have to say.

That’s right! I’m worth it! I’m worth L’Oréal beauty product and nobody can take that away from me. What else must I need for convincing? Why buy anything else? I’m going bold with L’Oréal and never coming back because I’m worth it.

But that’s not all. This morning my TV once again reminded me I’m worth it. CNN, America’s most trusted news source, interviewed a man in his 50s-ish who decided he was healthy enough to play the odds without health insurance. That’s not just my assessment; he literally acknowledged he was playing the odds. Good for him. Soon enough, he found out he had a cancerous growth in his neck and the operations to remove it would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Fortunately for him, he found a charitable organization that allowed him to get the operations he needed to remove the cancer. In the end, it cost the man $50,000 and the rest was paid on his behalf. What would he have done if that charitable organization did not exist? Poignant to rip the tears right out of my eyes, he, with some help from the reporter, finished up the interview with his delight that the health care bill passed because nobody should be placed in his situation–everyone deserves health care. Everyone deserves it. You deserve it. I deserve it. He deserves it. Because we’re all worth it.

Does a gambler deserve to be reimbursed for gambling his life’s savings away? Then why does this man, or anyone like this man, deserve (to have earned or merited) health care? For the mere act of breathing sweet air into his lungs? According to the reporter, this man was able to, and did, pay the $50,000 required of him. If he could pay $50,000, he could afford insurance. As Dennis Miller put it so plainly, “I want to help the helpless, but I could care less about the clueless.”

I feel bad the guy got cancer. I don’t feel bad he’s out $50,000. If you’re prepared to gamble, you better be prepared to lose.

Except me. Wikipedia defines insurance as “a form of risk management primarily used to hedge against the risk of a contingent loss. Insurance is defined as the equitable transfer of the risk of a loss, from one entity to another, in exchange for a premium, and can be thought of as a guaranteed and known small loss to prevent a large, possibly devastating loss.”

In other words, insurance is basically a big group of people that are willing to pay a little now to prevent the possibility of paying a large amount later due to some unfortunate, unforeseen occurrence. Insurance can exist because only a relatively small portion of insured are going to become critically injured or sick. From another perspective, this means that a majority of the insured are putting in more than they are taking out. But they keep putting money in because they know they may someday be one of the lucky losers. Not all the insured will or can be lucky losers; not enough money would exist to pay for the expenses. Insurance would cease to exist.

Some people, politicians or otherwise, feel it’s a discriminatory act to deny someone coverage because of a pre-existing condition. After all, someone with a disease has even greater need for insurance than someone who does not. While I agree, I do not agree they reserve the right to be granted insurance after having being diagnosed. Insurance is not a charity nor is it welfare. It is a hedge against risk and those who have been hedging for years should not be required to pay for someone who has failed to do so.

Let’s imagine this hypothetical scenario. One day the government drafts a program to help subsidize cars and has decided to fund it with approximately $3 billion. I know, I know, it’s a crazy stupid idea but stick with me. To make it sound a little more legitimate and family friendly we’ll call it something like Cash for Junkers. Since there are approximately 300 million citizens, the government has decided to pay for the program by randomly selecting one out of everyone 1,000 people to pay $10,000.

“Wow,” you say, “What if I’m the the lucky loser? I can’t afford a sudden $10,000 fee!” So you get together with some of your friends, family, and neighbors and find 999 other people that would like to spread out the risk. You figure that odds are one of you is going to be a lucky loser, so you each agree to put in $10. The lottery day comes and sure enough, one of your peeps is chosen to be a lucky loser. Lucky him–he’s only out $10! Soon after the lottery some of your other neighbors that decided not to put $10 into the pot come knocking on your door and say, “Hey, you know that ‘spread the risk’ thing you were talking about doing? Can we join now?”

Hellz no! Does that seem “fair” to you? Does it seem “fair” to the other 999 that decided to hedge their risk? Regardless of your reason to not throw a Hamilton into the pot, you didn’t. And you’re not going to make other people pay because of it.

This is insurance. Why can people complain to no end about insurance companies not allowing pre-existing conditions? Because they can blame insurance companies, the facade, not the people who are already paying their dues. Can you find a big group of people that want to allow pre-existing conditions into their pot and pay more because of it? Then you start an insurance company.

Before you determine I’m a purely heartless soul, let me give you some background. My own family has sought a health insurance plan when going from a government-sponsored health plan (my wife was a teacher) to an individual plan (I was working for a start-up that didn’t have group insurance). And I was planning on knocking my wife up soon (which, by the way, qualifies as a pre-existing condition if I were to have knocked her up within one year of signing onto the new plan). For several years we were also only on the giving end of insurance–dumping money into the pot and hardly ever taking any out. On the other hand, over the last three months we’ve been the lucky losers and have taken out several times more from the pot than we’ve ever put in.

More than anything, I’m as frustrated as you are that changing jobs means changing health insurance plans and dealing with pre-existing conditions. But let’s not fight the wrong battle. Pre-existing conditions are not the problem, third-party pay systems are. Why can’t you stay in the same insurance pot when you change employers? Why do employers have anything to do with it anyway? If I never have a lapse in my health insurance plan, then I don’t have to worry about pre-existing conditions in the first place. Stay focused on the real problems, not the latest political cusswords.

First of all, if I were the one responsible for coming up with the funding estimates for such an initiative I would be absolutely embarrassed right now. Financing ran out in 1/30th the time it needed to last. Really? 1/30th? Really.

Second, isn’t it convenient that the House could rush through 2 BILLION dollars in spending because they’ve got vacation to get to? Oh, and who decided they would get five weeks of vacation in August and September alone in the first place anyway? Maybe they were doing such a great job that we, their boss, thought they should have some time off. Not so much. They gave themselves vacation.  Here are their votes on giving themselves vacation:

Actually, now that I think about it, maybe time off is just what they need.  Less time working = less time to screw things up.  Heck, they could even go part-time and then we’d really be saving money!  I’m not the first to think up such an idea however; Citizens for California Reform is already petitioning the Californian government to do just that!

Third, and what makes me want to rip my hair out the most, is the typical politician response to so many people jumping at the free cash the program offers.  Representative Sander Levin (D) of Michigan explains, “The rush to use this program shows its need.”

Ah-hah!  I get it!  Offer people free money.  Lots of people take the free money.  We’ve found a runaway success!  May I have another?  Oh, it gets better.  Rep. Levin continues, “What else do we need to see [, idiot]?  This program is working.”

I see.  “Working” is no longer of measurement of effectiveness, but popularity.   Well why don’t we just make a bunch of programs that give people “free” money then?  Then we’ll feel important and useful!  Welcome to socialism.

Sources:

http://www.freep.com/article/20090731/BUSINESS01/90731028/House-approves–2B-more-cash-for-clunkers

http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2008/roll537.xml

SEC. 503. EXEMPTION FROM EXCISE TAX FOR CERTAIN WOODEN ARROWS DESIGNED FOR USE BY CHILDREN.

(a) IN GENERAL.—Paragraph (2) of section 4161(b) is amended by redesignating sub-paragraph (B) as sub-paragraph (C) and by inserting after subparagraph (A) the following new subparagraph:

(B) EXEMPTION FOR CERTAIN WOODEN ARROW SHAFTS.—Subparagraph (A) shall not apply to any shaft consisting of all natural wood with no laminations or artificial means of enhancing the spine of such shaft (whether sold separately or incorporated as part of a finished or unfinished product) of a type used in the manufacture of any arrow which after its assembly—
(i) measures 5⁄16 of an inch or less in diameter, and
(ii) is not suitable for use with a bow described in paragraph (1)(A).

(b) EFFECTIVE DATE.—The amendments made by this section shall apply to shafts first sold after the date of enactment of this Act.

Wow, really? This is what you call emergency economic stabilization? Now I’m all for removing an excise tax from toy wooden arrows, but here…and now? Come on, folks.

So who’s to blame?  Oh, there’s plenty to go around alright. Jimmy Carter? Ronald Reagan? Bill Clinton? George Bush? Franklin Raines? Jamie Gorelick? Chris Dodd? Barney Frank? Phil Graham?  The plethora of banks?  Wall street?  Predatory lendors?

Let me share a reader’s comment I found online while reading Bankruptcy, not Bailout, is the Right Answer that I believe encompasses the mindset of many American citizens:

Perhaps you should spend less time criticizing individuals for taking chances at success, and instead focus your unwarranted hostility at the corporations that took advantage of those people. It is perhaps quite easy for you to be so smug, when it may not be you that would rely on such a system in the first place.

Americans are struggling every day, and instead of acknowledging that and trying to understand the situation – you refer to them as “stupid”. I beg to differ, these individuals are losing everything because of corporate, and government, greed… not stupidity.

I would suggest that in the future you spend less time attacking the people that are suffering, and place a little more focus on the cause of the problem.

Within the scope of your mindset it was not Hitler and the Nazi regime that was responsible for the Holocaust, but the Jewish people for being Jewish.

When will we start accepting responsibility for our own actions?  When will we start to understand that being a Jew in the Holocaust is different than borrowing more than we can afford?  Who’s fault is this mess?  Sure, the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 allowed credit-unworthy citizens to take out loans over their heads at sub-prime levels.  Yes, Jimmy Carter was the one who signed it, Bill Clinton was the one who enforced it, and George Bush didn’t do anything about it.  Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and banks throughout the country did indeed enhance the problem due to greed and lax oversight.  Does this excuse us from the responsibility of wisely managing our own money?

Let me illustrate.  If every bank around the country said, “Hey, come on in.  You qualify for a gabajillion dollars and here it is!  It’s a 30-year mortgage locked in at today’s mortgage rates. Nah, don’t worry about your credit.  Here’s the check.  Enjoy your new home!”  Today’s market, in my view, proves the average American would spend more of that gabajillion dollars than he/she could actually afford.  But who’s fault is it?  The lender’s fault, of course!  How dare they put a gabajillion dollars in front of my nose!  Take it or leave it, that’s what’s happened.  That’s our society.

Over the last couple weeks I’ve spent about ten hours talking to lenders so I can buy a home.  I’ve spent many more hours researching mortgages online and understanding the terminology.  The majority of my time spent has been looking for answers to my questions.  I ask questions because it’s my fault if I don’t understand what I’m getting into.  It’s my responsibility to figure out how much can I afford.  When the lender says I qualify for a gabajillion dollars, it’s my responsibility to only take what I can pay back.  Regardless of government policy, greedy banks, or what my neighbor owns, my loans are my responsibility.

Thank you.  Thank you for ignoring evacuation notices so the coast guard can come rescue you at 100x the cost just a few days later.  Thank you for living below sea level where hurricanes rip through several times in a decade.  Thank you for coming back after each one, rebuilding, and pretending it won’t happen again in the next few years.  I can’t express enough how I love paying for levies and FEMA trailers.  We just don’t have enough open land in this great country of ours–what better way to make use of our scarcities than to create artificial ground!

Thank you for purchasing homes and cars that far exceed your income.  Thank you for simultaneously opening multiple credit card accounts and filling them to the brim with the latest designer fashions.  Thank you for racking up bills into the hundreds of dollars for your ten-year-old’s text messages.  Thank you for participating in lotteries, gambling, and pyramid schemes.  After all that, could you do me a favor and turn around and declare bankruptcy?  I just love paying for this stuff!  I can’t get enough of it!

Thank you for supporting outlandish proposals your political leadership offers for free.  Thank you for supporting socialized education to help narrow down the options of where our children should go to school.  Thank you for letting me help pay for your college tuition.  There just aren’t enough jobs and low-and-deferred-interest loans out there for you these days.  I wouldn’t want you to have to appreciate your education. Thank you for entertaining the idea of free health care so we can all get fatter because we know the remedy comes free.  I love trusting politicians with my education and medical problems.  I love it when hospitals and schools don’t have to compete for my money.  And I absolutely LOVE to pay for your smoking and disease-ridden sexcapades and stand in line while I do so.  Seriously, can I get some more?  I’m going through withdrawals here.

Oh, and that’s not all.  Thank you for letting me help pay for your retirement through social security.  I love how we can all share with one another.  I likewise appreciate how instead of saving for my own retirement I can offer that role to the government so they can do it for me.  There’s just no better investment than government agencies and national debt.  Thank you for hooking my salary up to a drip tube straight to D.C. so I don’t have to pay attention to what comes out.  Thank you for supporting labor unions and lobbyist groups. I’m just overwhelmed with appreciation when politicians represent them and not me.  Can we order up another bridge to Ketchikan please?

Thank you for fighting against nuclear energy and putting our Middle East friends first.  I’d hate to take advantage of our technology and I’d much rather launch bombs than drill around some antelope and tundra foliage.

Thank you for crossing the borders and allowing me to host you.  Please, feel free not to tell anyone and make yourself at home.  This is a no-pay zone for you and if we’re lucky we can keep it that way forever.

Keep it up everyone.  Thank you once more for sharing and I, too, will do my best to share for many years to come.

Over the last few weeks I’ve had several discussions with people both for and against school vouchers. In my experience, there is a high correlation between opinion of school vouchers and opinion of the role of government in education. That is, those who feel that government should provide our children’s education are against school vouchers; conversely, those who feel that government should stay out of education are generally for school vouchers. That’s a simple enough concept. Still, some find the concept that education should be completely privatized to be far-fetched, radical, and on the fringe of insanity. But is it? I’ve consistently heard a few arguments advocating government-managed education and I have counter-arguments to accompany them:

(1) But it’s our children! Surely we can’t trust our children’s education to the corporate evils of America!

I say, why not? Since when has the government performed better than capitalism? If you haven’t studied Adam Smith or the concept of the “invisible hand” in the marketplace, it makes sense to think corporate America is evil. After all, they make such hefty profits by stealing your money and bombarding you with ads. When we mix that with thoughts of our children’s education, it can be a daunting image that make some appalled to idea. But should it?

One reason why government exists is to break up monopolies. Interestingly enough, a monopoly is one of the instances where capitalism doesn’t work as it should. A monopoly creates a situation where one company has such a large consumer base and so much leverage that no other company stands a chance entering the market. When there is only one provider of a type of good, both suppliers and consumers don’t have many alternatives. When consumers don’t have alternatives, the monopoly can charge almost whatever it wants. They can also run as inefficiently as they would like and still be profitable; after all, where else are the customers going to go? Because the company has amassed so many customers, they have such leverage that they can squash any competitor that dares to enter the market.

In contrast, what happens in a free market? It’s survival of the fittest. Businesses compete for your money. They have to or they don’t survive. How do they compete? They run more efficiently. They target specific needs. They innovate. They give you more for your money than the competitor. Standards? You set them. If they’re not meeting them, you go somewhere else. You look for something better because you can.

With that in mind, isn’t it interesting that anti-voucher citizens would trust in the government, the biggest monopoly of all, to provide their children’s education? To you, public school is “free” in the rhetorical sense. Private schools, on the other hand, cost you money. It’s amazing that private schools currently even exist. Their competition is giving away its products for “free!”

(2) Poor families won’t have access to a good education.

There’s a specific concept here that I want to avoid for now: vouchers won’t provide enough money for poor students to attend private schools. I’ll address this issue later. Right now, I’m talking in a more generic, yet even more extreme sense: if education was completely privatized–as in, we paid no taxes for schooling…there were no vouchers…there were no public schools…we only paid private schools out-of-pocket. The argument is still, if not emphasized even more, that poor students would not be able to afford an education.

I completely disagree. Any good set of parents will tell you that their children are one of, if not the, most important things in their lives. If that’s true, then their children’s education is at the top of their list of needs–yes, even above the satellite dish on the side of their trailer home. This may be on the edge of being politically correct for some, but I dare say that any man physically and emotionally “well” could pay for his children’s private education even without vouchers. Maybe not with his current working status, but, if he deemed it important enough, he could put forth the extra effort and prioritize well enough to provide for his children’s education.

What about the divorced mom trying her hardest to raise four children on her own? These cases do exist and should be treated, but a blanket approach of public education is not the solution.

What if a poor family made the wrong choice and decided to buy a giganto house instead of tending to their children’s needs? This is the harsh reality of life where the line is drawn for governmental blanket approaches. As long as humans are fallible, the government cannot and should not make parental choices nor attempt to bring all families to an equal status. If government attempted to solve such a problem, we would all be paying a new “housing tax” and the government in turn would give us assigned cookie-cutter houses of relatively equal quality to live in. Oh, and unless you decide to leave the neighborhood completely, you can’t switch houses. And no, you can’t choose a different builder or a different style. But hey, everybody has a decent place to live! And at least your house is “free,” right? Sound anything like public education? Frighteningly so.

So, back to the concept I mentioned before. Let’s say you were completely dismayed at the idea that a poor family would be striving to get the even the cheapest, lowest quality of education. How good of a school would the family need to afford to be deemed “fair enough.” In other words, if there were 1,000 schools of different qualities and costs, how many would a family need to be able to afford in order for their children to get a quality education? 300? 500? 700? Now that you have your answer, let’s look at a report by The Sutherland Institute. Before discussing the article, I will preface it by noting that The Sutherland Institute is a pro-voucher institution, but their report is specific and detailed and is by far superior than any of the gossip you’ll hear on the back row of Relief Society. As it states, excluding a few extreme outliers, the average annual tuition of private schools in Utah is $4,519.97. The value of a student voucher for the lowest-income family according to the actual Referendum 1 bill is $3,000. What does this mean? While the voucher won’t completely buy a poor family the best of education, it will close the gap enough to where, I believe, a poor family is in reach of obtaining a higher quality education than public schools currently offer. And, if the voucher system worked as planned, public schools would increase their value enough that the family wouldn’t need to choose a private school anyway.

(3) Referendum 1 is full of flaws.

While I beg to differ that it’s full of flaws, I do agree that it has flaws. Any bill that goes through legislation has flaws. Heck, the Constitution had flaws too and the authors knew it. In particular, they could not agree on the distribution of taxes and the apportionment of members in the House of Representatives, the question being whether slaves should be counted as citizens or not. Rather than stalemating the Constitution and dooming the country’s future, the Founding Fathers chose to confront the issue at a later time and came to a temporary agreement known as the Three-fifths Compromise. Just as the authors of the Constitution were able to set aside differences/flaws to accomplish a greater good, so must citizens treat Referendum 1. Does this mean that we must overlook massive loopholes and flaws that will seriously doom the final goals of a piece of legislation? No, but I personally believe the greater good of private education outweighs the flaws in Referendum 1.

So, if Referendum 1 were to pass, what should we expect? Considering $3,000 is only half of what a public school spends on a student, private schools are still at a severe disadvantage. Improvements will come slowly and it will take a while for the worst private schools to get weeded out. In countries like Chile and Sweden, two countries which have similar school choice programs, it has taken five or ten years. Still, I’m hopeful that the improvements will come.

This article hasn’t addressed every controversy surrounding Referendum 1, school vouchers, or private education. Nor was that my intent. Instead, I thought I would provide a base for an intimate conversation by stating the major arguments I have heard and my accompanying rebuttals. Surely it won’t appease all the concerns and I still plan on driving to the voting booth with my wife so we can negate each other votes. Now that I’ve taken my turn, I invite you to join….the Intimate Conversation.

The argument is, “They aren’t illegal, they were just doing what they thought was best for their families and American law got in their way.” What!? They’re illegal. There’s no ifs, ands, or buts about it. The law is in place and they have broken it. Is it sad to see families split up because a hard-working father has to go to jail? Sure. Is it sad to see parents forced to go to back to their homeland and make the decision of whether to leave their children here? Yes, it definitely is. But when did we start changing our laws because of some disparaging images of innocent-looking and good-hearted people when these people are, when it comes down to it, illegal. They became illegal and chose the possibility of facing such issues the second they stepped over the border. Whether it was one week ago or ten years ago doesn’t, or shouldn’t, matter. They made the decision just like someone who robs a store, even out of need for food for his/her children. Does it mean I don’t feel bad for such people? No. I’m saying it’s an illegal act and should be treated as such.

So what’s the harm in making exceptions?

1. Those who came to the United States legally are suddenly discredited. After all, they did the work and didn’t need to!
2. Those who have been charged for crossing the border suddenly come up with a plethora of lawsuits because they were treated unfairly. I realize it shouldn’t hold any weight in court because changes in law generally can’t be applied retroactively, but it’s inevitable.
3. Every other law will be challenged because, hey, if so many “innocent” people are breaking it, there must be something wrong with the law, not the people!

One other thing to address before I get off my soap box. Another reason pro-amnesty folks throw out there for legalizing the illegals is that the U.S. was created by immigrants. Aren’t we all immigrants? Yes, we are all immigrants–and so is everyone else in most every other country. The difference is that those coming from New England or the whereabouts were legal immigrants at the time and subsequently created the laws of immigration. If other countries decide to assume similar laws of immigration so that I must go through a process to become a citizen of their country, I believe it is their right and I will abide by it…even if I really, really wanted to go to that country.

Before you let your horses stampede, let me conclude by saying that I really do appreciate those hard-working, tax-paying, since-crossing-the-border-law-abiding, English-learning immigrants that have entered the country. I appreciate your contributions to the economy and our society. I welcome you into the country, our country…but legally. I will not support the degradation of our nation’s law, society, and security to accommodate the need of a few who have bypassed but a single law: crossing the border. And if you love this country so much, neither should you.