The I.C.E. Atrocities Should Be the Final Straw for Decent Human Beings.

This should be the final straw for us, America.

Compassionate human beings should not tolerate this.

People who claim to be pro-life should be brought to tears.

Those espousing family values should be fully incensed.

Anyone with children of their own whom they love should be sick to their stomachs.

Men and women of every faith should be unequivocally condemning this.

People of conscience and morality should be unable to sleep.

Good people ought to be fully heartbroken.

This is a sharp line in the sand, and we all have to make our choice in this moment.

There is no neutral middle ground here, no hedging or justifying or entertaining of both sides.

There is no valid human opinion that makes this OK.

You either permit the brutality or you don't.
You either make peace with the madness or you push back hard against it.
You either assign equal value to people or you don't.
You either hear the cries of a child pleading for her family and realize we've lost the plot, or you declare this is the story you're comfortable co-writing.

I don't want to hear about your politics; this is about your heart.

What I.C.E. is doing under the guidance of this Administration is a human rights violation unlike anything we’ve seen in our lifetimes.

It is a direct assault upon the very bedrock of the human experience.

It intentionally traumatizes people by violently severing the absolute most precious tether there is in this life: to safety in one’s own skin.

To willingly and repeatedly violate people under the guise of legitimate government is an act of abuse on the most horrifying of scales; one that illustrates the inhumanity of the perpetrator and the dehumanization of their victims.

There is no difference between this moment and all the others we see in the rearview mirror of history and look back in upon in disgust.

Our complacency is the same.
Our apathy is the same.
Our silence is the same.
Our culpability is the same.

This isn't about the laws of the land (though even those are being ignored), it is about the higher laws: of human dignity, of an elemental regard for life, of a basic level of empathy.

If we cannot come together around such things, we have no business pretending we're a civilized nation. If we can't transcend our theology and our politics to defend the most vulnerable among us, we forfeit our morality altogether.

A country that endures this kind of disregard for human life does not deserve people to stand when its anthem is sung.
It merits no allegiance from decent people.
It discards its pretense of welcoming the poor and tired.
It abdicates any moral high ground in the world.
A country that allows this kind of cruelty cannot claim greatness, and worse, it jettisons its goodness.
It cannot imagine that it is a place of liberty or equality or justice.

America, we are in the glaring spotlight of History in these moments. We are crafting our legacy in real time.

If we abide this, if we rationalize it away, if we ignore it, if we turn our heads from it, then we deserve the terrible place we're creating, the moral cancer our children inherit, and the hell that is waiting for us.

We need to come to our collective senses, to inhale deeply and then clearly speak in one voice, the words that will allow us to heal this shared sickness and be the best of ourselves:

What I.C.E is doing to brown-skinned people is a crime.
It’s a sin.
It’s intentionally cruel.
It is blatantly inhumane.
It's not pro-life.
It’s not Christian.
It’s not making America great.

It is wrong by any measurement decent people use.

And it’s time we said it.