"Let's Say I Break into Your House..." Response

Below is a copy of my response to "The Email". If you haven't read the previous post, I would suggest doing that before you start reading this one.

Here's what I wrote:


That's certainly an interesting point to say the least, but it does ignore a large portion of issues surrounding the situation. Let's continue the metaphor, shall we?

Let's say you break into my house.

I worked hard to earn that house. I came from nothing, earned money, built that house from the ground up by myself. That was nobodies money but my own. That was nobodies work but my own. I alone own that property. As a free man living in America, that house and the land it sits on is mine. Unless I declare bankruptcy or something else along a similar line, I will not lose that house. It is mine.

Let's say you break into my house.

I load my gun and shoot you dead. That's my house. You were a criminal for entering it. It's my property. I feared for my life when you set foot into my small, isolated little piece of security. I wanted to protect myself, and I wanted to protect my family. I didn't want to hurt you, but my desire to protect the ones I love was more important than the discomfort produced by taking your life.

However, America is not a house. Like all other countries, it's a place of individual government and leadership. A large body of land full of houses, millions of them, for all those within and enough space for millions more. It's a community of people who sometimes like each other and sometimes don't Some people you know, some you don't. Some you spend time with, some you don't. But it's a collection of houses all the same, and though I can walk down the street within this neighborhood, I am not allowed to walk straight into any house but my own, unless I'm invited to do so.

America is a neighborhood.

Now imagine this. I am born in a neighborhood where bullets are constantly whizzing outside my door. I live in such an unsafe place that I cannot even lift my head off the ground without fear of a stray round ripping open my skull. When I hear a car pass outside my house, I pray to the God I lost hope in years ago that it isn't someone coming to drag me off and kill me for being born into a different belief system than himself. I grow up here, from child to man, and every second of every day I am afraid. I can't ever have children, because what awful person would bring a child into a life of such misery?

But then I hear that in the neighborhood several miles away, there is more room, there are less people, and there are laws that would never let what's happening to me ever happen to its citizens. So I leave this place, because I am human and I am afraid, just like the people who are living in the neighborhood several miles away would be if they were in my situation. But when I get there, I find it to be a gated community. And the gates are locked. The guards are waiting. When I arrive, they tell me to go home. I refuse, because I am scared, because I want a life for my children, because I don't want to die for nothing. But I am not allowed in. I am escorted home by armed guards, and placed back inside my house. Everyone has seen me march through the neighborhood that I tried to escape. Everyone watched me go. Nobody will talk to me now for fear of being associated with me. I cannot work, I cannot trade, I cannot survive. And then one day, because the people in my neighborhood wish for nothing more for themselves than I did for me, they come to my door, drag me outside, and murder me for running away. They take my insides out, and bleed me dead just because of the simple fear of being considered my friend when the truly terrible people come rolling back through our neighborhood.

Would you not let that person into your country?

Would you not let that person into your home?

If not, then think of this:

The statue of liberty its self, which sits at the gates of America, standing tall and proud welcoming all that pass her by, the symbol of hope for the entire world, reads:

"Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me.
I lift my lamp beside the golden door."

Perhaps you would prefer we string some neon lights that read "No Vacancy" over that inscription instead?

Sincerely,

James R. Mitchener