Idly browsing social media is not a total waste of time. Now and then, some post that offers no particular insight by itself will set your thoughts on a certain track, leading you to read something you should have read years ago as part of a general education, but never did. You think; you read; with luck, you come out wiser.
So it was in mid-January, as I was scrolling through X over my morning coffee. A tweet from the Department of Homeland Security scolded Minnesota Governor Tim Walz for having released 470 criminal illegal aliens back onto the streets of his state instead of helping ICE detain them. “It is common sense,” said DHS. “Criminal illegal aliens should not be released back onto our streets.”
Of course not, but the phrase “common sense” snagged my attention. I am a big fan of common sense and too frequently find myself lamenting its paucity in today’s social and political discourse. No, race and sex are not “social constructs,” they are biological realities. Yes, criminals and lunatics should be humanely incarcerated where they cannot harm the rest of us or each other. No, the world’s civilized nations should not throw open their borders to settlers from the uncivilized zones.
Kipling’s poem The Gods of the Copybook Headings is an old favorite satirizing the utopian pretensions of the progressives of his day:
We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.
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