Getting Political
The Constitution, Founding Ideals, and the Role of Hard Work in Earning National Respect
In discussions about the U.S. Constitution and its relevance to non-citizens, it’s important to revisit the foundations upon which our legal and civic system was built. While the Constitution specifically outlines the framework for governing U.S. citizens, many of its protections—such as due process and equal protection under the law—have historically been interpreted by courts to apply to all persons within the country, regardless of citizenship status.
This broader interpretation aligns with the spirit of the Declaration of Independence, which boldly proclaims that “all men are created equal” and are endowed with certain “unalienable Rights.” These were never meant to be hollow phrases—they were radical ideas that inspired revolution, reform, and generations of civic evolution.
However, the implementation of these ideals has not always reflected their intent. Slavery persisted for nearly a century after independence, despite those founding declarations. It took a civil war and the 13th Amendment to finally abolish it. The legalization of interracial marriage didn't arrive until Loving v. Virginia in 1967. The right to marry regardless of gender came even later, via Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015—driven not only by judicial interpretation but also by decades of public advocacy and shifting societal values.
These examples illustrate that American progress often arises from tension between our ideals and the reality of their enforcement. The Constitution is a living document, shaped by amendments and judicial rulings, yet too often, key principles are overlooked or applied inconsistently—sometimes in the name of expediency, other times out of political bias.
Immigration policy remains one of the most contentious issues in this regard. U.S. law does establish procedures for legal immigration, including pathways to citizenship and protection under the law. However, selective enforcement and executive action can blur the lines between law and personal prejudice. Whether enacted by Republican or Democratic leadership, policies that prioritize partisan agendas over constitutional integrity weaken public trust in governance.
It’s also worth examining the economic and social impact of immigration. When critics claim that immigrants are "taking American jobs," they often ignore the essential labor these individuals perform in sectors such as agriculture, meat processing, and caregiving—roles frequently overlooked or refused by domestic workers. These jobs are critical to our economy, yet undervalued in public discourse.
For students of civics and government, this lesson is vital: laws exist to ensure fairness and order, but they require active stewardship and accountability. Our representatives are elected not to pursue personal agendas, but to uphold constitutional principles that serve the collective good. When leaders begin to cherry-pick laws based on ideology or political loyalty, the rule of law—and the credibility of our democracy—is compromised.
Whether one identifies with the values of the MAGA movement or with the platform of the Democratic Party, the same truth applies: national respect must be earned. It is not an entitlement granted by slogans or party lines. It comes through hard work, shared sacrifice, and an unwavering commitment to the ideals that built this nation.
Progress is never automatic. It requires us to show up, speak out, and work together—across differences—to ensure the laws and rights we inherit are honored not just in words, but in action. Only then can the United States truly live up to its founding promise.
The Constitution, Founding Ideals, and the Role of Hard Work in Earning National Respect
In discussions about the U.S. Constitution and its relevance to non-citizens, it’s important to revisit the foundations upon which our legal and civic system was built. While the Constitution specifically outlines the framework for governing U.S. citizens, many of its protections—such as due process and equal protection under the law—have historically been interpreted by courts to apply to all persons within the country, regardless of citizenship status.
This broader interpretation aligns with the spirit of the Declaration of Independence, which boldly proclaims that “all men are created equal” and are endowed with certain “unalienable Rights.” These were never meant to be hollow phrases—they were radical ideas that inspired revolution, reform, and generations of civic evolution.
However, the implementation of these ideals has not always reflected their intent. Slavery persisted for nearly a century after independence, despite those founding declarations. It took a civil war and the 13th Amendment to finally abolish it. The legalization of interracial marriage didn't arrive until Loving v. Virginia in 1967. The right to marry regardless of gender came even later, via Obergefell v. Hodges in 2015—driven not only by judicial interpretation but also by decades of public advocacy and shifting societal values.
These examples illustrate that American progress often arises from tension between our ideals and the reality of their enforcement. The Constitution is a living document, shaped by amendments and judicial rulings, yet too often, key principles are overlooked or applied inconsistently—sometimes in the name of expediency, other times out of political bias.
Immigration policy remains one of the most contentious issues in this regard. U.S. law does establish procedures for legal immigration, including pathways to citizenship and protection under the law. However, selective enforcement and executive action can blur the lines between law and personal prejudice. Whether enacted by Republican or Democratic leadership, policies that prioritize partisan agendas over constitutional integrity weaken public trust in governance.
It’s also worth examining the economic and social impact of immigration. When critics claim that immigrants are "taking American jobs," they often ignore the essential labor these individuals perform in sectors such as agriculture, meat processing, and caregiving—roles frequently overlooked or refused by domestic workers. These jobs are critical to our economy, yet undervalued in public discourse.
For students of civics and government, this lesson is vital: laws exist to ensure fairness and order, but they require active stewardship and accountability. Our representatives are elected not to pursue personal agendas, but to uphold constitutional principles that serve the collective good. When leaders begin to cherry-pick laws based on ideology or political loyalty, the rule of law—and the credibility of our democracy—is compromised.
Whether one identifies with the values of the MAGA movement or with the platform of the Democratic Party, the same truth applies: national respect must be earned. It is not an entitlement granted by slogans or party lines. It comes through hard work, shared sacrifice, and an unwavering commitment to the ideals that built this nation.
Progress is never automatic. It requires us to show up, speak out, and work together—across differences—to ensure the laws and rights we inherit are honored not just in words, but in action. Only then can the United States truly live up to its founding promise.
Understanding the Foundation: U.S. Founding Documents & Their Influences
To truly understand how America functions—and how it can evolve responsibly—it’s essential to explore the documents that laid the groundwork for our democratic experiment. Here are the core documents, with links and brief historical backgrounds:
-
Declaration of Independence (1776)
Authored primarily by Thomas Jefferson, this document declared the American colonies' independence from British rule. It reflects Enlightenment ideas and echoes the Great Law of Peace from the Iroquois Confederacy in its emphasis on natural rights and consensus-based governance. -
U.S. Constitution (1787)
The supreme law of the land, the Constitution laid out the structure of the U.S. government. It was heavily influenced by Enlightenment thinkers like Montesquieu, but also by Native American governance models that emphasized federalism and democratic participation. -
Bill of Rights (1791)
The first ten amendments to the Constitution were added to safeguard individual liberties. These were introduced to satisfy demands from Anti-Federalists who feared centralized power. -
Charters of Freedom
A collection of the Declaration, Constitution, and Bill of Rights, preserved in the National Archives. These documents form the philosophical and legal foundation of the U.S. government.
Influences & Evolution Through Amendments
The Founding Documents are not static—they evolve through amendments, which are a response to societal change, moral progress, or systemic corrections:
- 13th Amendment (1865): Abolished slavery after the Civil War.
- 14th Amendment (1868): Guaranteed equal protection under the law—later used in civil rights and marriage equality rulings.
- 19th Amendment (1920): Gave women the right to vote, reflecting changing gender roles and political pressure.
- 26th Amendment (1971): Lowered the voting age to 18 during the Vietnam War era, acknowledging youth involvement in democracy.
These changes reflect a core truth: Amendments are tools for progress, not political weapons. When used to correct injustice or expand rights, they strengthen democracy. When manipulated for ideological advantage, they distort our national values.
Additional Resources
- Library of Congress – Founding Documents Guide
- National Archives Constitution Day Teaching Resources
- National Constitution Center – Interactive Constitution
- Creating the United States (LOC Exhibit)
Let this serve not just as a civics lesson, but as a reminder that liberty, justice, and respect are not inherited—they are earned and upheld by an informed, engaged people.
Remembering What History Tried to Teach Us
It’s heartbreaking how easily we forget the deeper lessons of history. When I was in 6th grade, my teacher, Mr. Wayne Remus, shared a story that shaped my understanding of humanity and responsibility forever. Before he became a public school teacher in Wisconsin, Mr. Remus served with the Wisconsin National Guard. During the Kennedy administration, he was sent overseas as part of a delegation to Auschwitz. The mission was to help document and preserve what remained—not only to witness, but to ensure future generations never forgot.
He brought those memories into the classroom. When he spoke of Auschwitz, it wasn’t with anger—it was with a weight few of us could understand. His vivid recollections weren’t meant to scare us but to prepare us—to teach us what can happen when people are stripped of their humanity. Those stories gave me nightmares that lingered for years, but they also gave me something more important: perspective. Mr. Remus warned us that America’s future wouldn’t be endangered by those we welcomed—many of whom came fleeing tyranny—but by our failure to remember. He said, "Our downfall will come from forgetting—not from others, but from ourselves."
That lesson echoed again years later, while I was working in a nursing home here in Omaha. My boss in the laundry department was a quiet, hardworking woman, older than most of us, with a kind but no-nonsense demeanor. She never spoke of her past, but she bore the faded tattoo of a concentration camp survivor. She had lived through the unthinkable, and yet she labored with dignity and strength every day. Her silence was not forgetfulness—it was endurance. She, too, reinforced the lesson: the weight of history is carried not just in words, but in the quiet strength of survivors.
Today, as immigration raids and debates dominate headlines, I find myself returning to those lessons. Yes, law and order are important. Yes, justice must be served when criminal acts occur. But compassion must remain at the heart of our policies and actions. We cannot look away. We cannot dehumanize. Because the moment we do, we step onto the very path our teachers and survivors tried so hard to warn us about.
We are a nation of immigrants—yes, with flaws and tensions—but also with a deep responsibility. History teaches us that atrocities don’t begin with gas chambers or camps—they begin with words, with fear, with silence. When we forget the humanity of others, we lose our own. And if we dare to call ourselves a people of faith, then that faith must include the stranger, the refugee, the forgotten. It must include compassion, not just for those we like, but for those we’re told to fear.
This isn’t about politics. This is about people. This is about never forgetting what was passed down to us—not just through textbooks, but through the lived experience of those who walked through hell and came back carrying a lesson we now have the sacred duty to remember.
And that’s what A Different Path is about. It’s about honoring the past without being bound by it. It’s about treating people with the dignity we hope someone would show us. It's about compassion—even when it's uncomfortable. Especially when it's uncomfortable. Because when history looks back on us, let it say we remembered. Let it say we chose humanity.
When History Whispers, We Must Listen
History doesn’t always scream. Sometimes, it whispers. It nudges us quietly, through stories retold, faces forgotten, and policies repeated. And when we ignore those whispers, they grow louder—until we’re living out the very warnings etched into the past. This moment in American history, particularly around illegal immigration, isn’t just a political issue—it’s a moral and historical crossroads.
Let’s begin with an honest truth: no political party or religious institution has handled this perfectly. We've all been guilty, at various times, of weaponizing fear, justifying cruelty, and confusing loyalty with moral clarity. What we are seeing now isn’t new. From Nazi Germany to Soviet Russia to apartheid South Africa—totalitarian systems often began not with violence, but with bureaucratic precision. With words like "safety" and "order." With legal mechanisms that slowly turned neighbors into suspects and people into problems.
The parallels are sobering. Papers demanded. Families separated. Detention centers expanding. Justifications written in legalese, while the human cost remains unseen—unless it touches us personally. No, we are not living under a dictatorship. But yes, we are dangerously flirting with some of the same justifications that gave them their foothold. And history teaches us that once a nation starts dividing people into "us" and "them," compassion becomes conditional—and cruelty, bureaucratic.
This is not to say that criminal behavior should be ignored or excused. It shouldn't. Every sovereign nation has the right to enforce its laws. But how we enforce them matters. Are we treating people as humans first, or as liabilities? Are we building systems that reflect justice—or ones that slowly erode it under the guise of procedure?
The biblical call to “welcome the stranger” was never about ignoring evil. It was about seeing the image of God in every person—even those who crossed borders we built. The American ideal of liberty and justice for all wasn’t meant to stop at citizenship status. And yet, we find ourselves making the same historical mistake: justifying dehumanization in the name of order.
We must ask ourselves: what have we learned from history? From the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII? From the turning away of Jewish refugees aboard the MS St. Louis? From the rhetoric that allowed neighbors to betray each other in the name of ideology under Stalin? These weren’t isolated moments—they were warnings. And they didn’t happen in backward nations. They happened in advanced societies convinced they were doing the right thing.
This is what A Different Path is about. Not a rejection of law, but a rejection of moral blindness. A call to look at history not as something buried in museums, but as a mirror for today. A reminder that every decision made about immigration, borders, and security must begin with the question: "Have we learned anything from the last century?"
Because if we haven’t, we may well repeat it. Not in the exact same way, but in principle. We may become the very people our ancestors fled from. The solution isn’t simple—but it must start with honesty. Honesty about our past. Honesty about our present. And the courage to make choices that reflect our highest values, not our worst fears.
This path may be different. It may be slower. It may even be unpopular. But it’s the only one that leads forward without stepping over the graves of those who tried to warn us. Let us not wait for history to shout. Let’s listen now—while it still whispers.
The Price of Forgetting
Relearning history isn’t about guilt—it’s about responsibility. It’s about refusing to let the past become just another footnote when it was meant to be a warning. The stories we choose to forget say more about who we are than the ones we remember. And right now, in the face of growing political division and fear-driven immigration policies, we are standing on a threshold that history has seen before. The question is: will we learn this time?
Scripture doesn’t shy away from this. “So speak and act as people should who are to be judged under the law of liberty [the moral law that frees obedient Christians from the bondage of sin]” (James 2:12 AMP). Justice, in a biblical sense, is never divorced from compassion. It is not blind; it is discerning. And it always demands that we remember those who came before us—and the cost they paid for our freedom.
Let’s begin with a name: the MS St. Louis. In 1939, this German ocean liner carried over 900 Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany. They were turned away at every port of call—Cuba, the United States, Canada. They were forced to return to Europe. Over 250 of those passengers would later die in the Holocaust. This wasn’t a crime of hatred; it was a crime of indifference. Of bureaucratic excuses and legal loopholes. Of a world that chose policy over people.
We often ask how the world could have allowed the Holocaust to happen. The truth? It didn’t start with gas chambers. It started with silence. With people convincing themselves it wasn’t their problem. “They tie up heavy loads [hard to bear] and lay them on men's shoulders, but they themselves will not lift a finger [to help carry them]” (Matthew 23:4 AMP). The moment we decide that another person’s suffering is outside our moral jurisdiction, we’ve already surrendered something sacred.
During World War II, over 120,000 Japanese Americans—many of them born U.S. citizens—were forcibly removed from their homes and placed in internment camps. Entire families lost their property, their businesses, and their dignity. Not because they broke the law, but because their ancestry made them “suspect.” It was later ruled unjust. Apologies were made. But how many lives were silently broken in the process?
In the Soviet Union, under Stalin’s regime, whole populations were uprooted—Chechens, Crimean Tatars, and others—based on suspicion alone. Mass deportations were sanitized through state propaganda. Survivors recalled how neighbors would simply disappear. The machinery of fear worked precisely because it was legal, organized, and publicly justified.
And still, even within those brutal systems, there were survivors who held onto a different ethic—a code of humanity. I remember a woman I worked with years ago in Omaha. She had survived the Nazi camps. Still bore the tattoo. She never spoke of it, but her presence carried the weight of lessons we dare not forget. Her dignity in old age reminded me of my old teacher, Mr. Wayne Remus, who served under the Kennedy administration before becoming a public school teacher. He too taught compassion, not in word but in action. They were from different worlds, yet both stood as living reminders of what happens when we forget that human beings are not disposable.
The Bible reminds us: “You shall not wrong a stranger or oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Exodus 22:21 AMP). This wasn’t just a rule for ancient Israel—it was a spiritual principle meant to echo across generations. If we forget where we came from, if we forget the grace that carried us, we will fail to extend it to others.
This is not about ignoring lawlessness. It’s about refusing to lose our soul in the name of law and order. We can address border security and immigration reform without surrendering compassion. We can seek justice without choosing cruelty. And we can protect our nation without betraying the core values it was founded on.
That’s what A Different Path is about. It’s about listening to history—not rewriting it. It’s about honoring scripture—not cherry-picking it. And it’s about remembering that every time we trade empathy for fear, we inch closer to becoming the regimes we once condemned.
So I’ll keep telling these stories. Not because I expect to change the system alone—but because someone has to remember. Someone has to keep the flame alive when the world tries to blow it out. And if you're reading this, maybe that someone is you too.
