WS Chronicle

By Henry J. Pankey

(Nothing is more dangerous than the silence and inaction of good people peacefully watching others being forced into slaughterhouses.)

Tragically, taking children from their mothers’ arms is as American as apple pie and baseball. Our babies are reason enough to collectively find it grotesque and offensive. The nation’s attorney general cynically quotes the Bible as justification for removing babies securely tucked in the loving bosoms of migrant mothers.

No, this can never be accepted as who we are!

For any responsible parent, a Friday 13 nightmare is their child wandering out of sight in the supermarket or at the playground. It is a punch in the gut for any mother as well as a kick in the lower groin for a father.

MS-13 is a label used by Pinocchio to misinform us who immigrant children will be when they grow up. Calling their relatives animals, rapists, murderers, thieves and criminals is a prerequisite for the dehumanizing process. Once Americans are convinced we are dealing with a non-human species, cages are a natural necessity.

Any cowboy can attest that numerous stray animals are lost during the herding process. Thus, the government’s uncertainty of whether it is missing 3,000, 4,500 or any other number of children is to be expected. 

A jurist’s mandate to reunite children with their parents might as well had been written on a document created with invisible ink. Its enforcement power has less sustainability as a sand cement foundation adjacent to the Statue of Liberty.

The Great Lady is a gift from foreigners.  Irving Berlin immortalized the core moral principles of the United States of America:

Give me your tired your poor your huddled masses yearning to breathe free  …

Children kidnapped and separated from parents are in juvenile jails. Pinocchios want us to believe the babies, toddlers and teens are in tax-paid summer camps. We can ignite a beacon of light that reaffirms we are still the world’s most loving guardian angels:

My country tis of thee, Sweet Land of Liberty, Of thee I sing.

The Statue of Liberty vigilantly and unswervingly is standing taller than a cypress on the shoulders of founding fathers.  Their ancestry includes multinational immigrants.

Ronald Reagan’s shining-city-on-top-of-the-hill speech symbolized why immigrants risk their lives floating on inner tubes in shark-infested waters. They also walk across venomous snake plagued deserts:

You can go to Japan to live, but you cannot become Japanese.

You can go to France to live and not become a Frenchman.

You can go to live in Germany or Turkey and won’t become a German or Turk.

Anybody from any corners of the world can come to America to live and become American.

Pinocchios have the status of our government’s diplomatic immunity and a pardon. Crying mothers accompanied by toddlers climbing on chairs and table tops at deportation hearings have shamed us in the eyes of the world. 

“America the Beautiful” is a prescription to heal all callous souls:

O beautiful for patriot dream

That sees beyond the years

Thine alabaster cities gleam

Undimmed by human tears!

America! America!

Ban Pinocchios! Let’s return babies to love, warmth and security of their mothers’ arms. God grant us a child-centered United States of America!

Henry J. Pankey is an author and former educator. You can reach him at eaglehjp@aol.com.