I have asked myself this difficult question many times over the years and have never been able to answer it well. Had I been a Catholic woman in Hitler’s Germany would I have housed my Jewish friends in my attic at risk of my own life and the life of my family? Obviously I like to think yes.  But would I have been that brave? That selfless? There is really no way of answering that question without being faced with it in real life and hopefully I will never have to face it.

I have never been as challenged by that question as keenly as I have been with the  national conflict regarding our border issues. I get all the legal/illegal alien arguments and don’t necessarily disagree. However, is the price of wanting to flee poverty and persecution and come to America having your children taken away from you? Do these people realize the gravity of the situation when they come? Are they educated enough? And if they don’t and aren’t, is this really the best we can do as a “deterrent?” “Go back and tell your friends if they try to come here the price of entry is your CHILD.”

If that is the best we can do then I believe we need to take a good look at ourselves, perhaps we are not as great as we think we are as a nation and that’s  not the fault of any group of illegal immigrants. That’s a national moral vaccuum at worst and a lack of good old Yankee ingenuity at best.

I guess in the final analysis I’d rather give up everything I have than be on the wrong side of history.  This practice is heartless and must stop.  The coldness with which our leaders justify this barbaric approach is indeed chilling and I can’t help but think of how cold a border agent must be to carry out the “law” to separate a child from his parents.  At what point does an individual begin to not question the order to carry out such an act and if I were capable of being able to do that, what else am I capable of doing with my hardened heart? Whispering “yes, the Jews are hiding over in that shed”? 

I like to think I’m better than that, that I’d do the right thing, that my Jewish friends  would be sheltered at the risk of my life, that human decency would be more important than my own life, that the values I was taught from an early age would give me courage, that martyrdom for the sake of standing up to evil would not give me a moment’s pause.

I hope I never have to find out, but right now I am more afraid of that day coming than I have since the 60’s when fire hoses were the method of choice to quell protests.