By Nathan Barton

As we enjoy the last day of Fall of 2018, there are some various issues being argued (some quite hot and heavy) on the day’s news and talk shows. Lets talk about two.

One is a tragedy: a seven-year-old Guatemalan girl, one of a group of 167 people sneaking across the border near Lordsburg, New Mexico died 27 hours after being detained by the Border Patrol.  Although there are charges screamed by all sorts of people in the past week (since this death became national news), her father (who was with her) said that they were not mistreated or abused by the Border Patrol.  The known symptoms match those of dehydration and exposure, although her father claims she was getting adequate food and water both before and after they surrendered to the Border Patrol in New Mexico. It is tragic.

The Media and various politicians and special interest groups blame Trump and his policies. And as usual, the fact that the last regime had the same policies is ignored.

This is  saddening and disheartening, and it is understandable that her family is upset.  And that other people are upset as well.

It is also a fact of life.  And has been for millennia.

Consider the Oregon, Mormon and California Trails, along which nearly a million emigrants walked and rode wagons and horses and dragged handcarts for forty years in the Nineteenth Century.  These trails have been called the world’s longest cemetery. There are thousands of graves of the emigrants who died along the way, never reaching their goal in Oregon, California or Utah.  These died from illness, injury, exposure, accidents and attacks.  And they ranged in age from infants in arms to men and women in their 70s and 80s.

Consider also the Trail of Tears, that series of forced migration of Cherokee, Creek, and other nations west from Georgia and the Carolinas to the “desert” of Indian Territory (today’s Oklahoma. Thousands of people were forced to march (or ride) as much as 1500 miles. Of the estimated 100,000 people who had to go west, an estimated 15,000 died on one of the 5,000+ miles of trails used.

There are hundreds more examples. There is the Exodus of the Hebrews from Egypt and the forced relocation of conquered peoples required by the Assyrian and Babylonian Empires. The mass “invasions” of barbarian Franks, Goths, and others into the Roman Empires. Right up to the Soviet-forced relocation of millions of Germans from the eastern lands after WW2 and the movement of Jews to Israel in the same period. There are the Cubans fleeing to Florida.  And all those trying to cross the Med to the European Union.

Like the death of little Jakelin, virtually every one of those deaths can be blamed on government policies.  Whether the migration was voluntary or forced, almost all of those movements had to do with government policies, either at the point of origin, along the route, or at their destination.

What sort of government policies and actions?  Here is a short list:

• The enslavement of the children of Israel by the government of Pharaoh for as much as 400 years.
• The aggressive imperialism of the Assyrian and Babylonian (New Chaldean) Empires, defeating and destroying smaller nations and then enslaving and/or deporting the people to break up their conquered nations and tribes.
• The pressure by enemy tribes on various barbarian tribes and the Imperial Roman policy of welcoming and settling barbarians in Roman lands to provide allies and labor.
• People “allowed” by government to steal the land and homes of AmerInd families and communities in the Southeast, violating treaties, before driving the former residents west to Oklahoma.
• The Holocaust, a government-directed ethnic cleansing in Germany and its conquests for almost a dozen years.
• The desire of people to flee persecution (example: Jews and LDS), tyranny (examples: any immigrants from Russia, Ireland, France, etc. for centuries), poor working and living conditions, war and more, all caused (or “allowed”) by government actions and policies.

As you might expect, I point out the common cause: government policies and actions against people: sometimes a specific group, and sometimes anyone without power and influence.

Is the Trump Administration to blame now?  No doubt – if for nothing else than the usual government ham-handedness and failure to repeal the Democrat-enacted and/or tolerated policies of his predecessors.  But so is that past regime.  And so is the government of the United Mexican States AND the State of New Mexico AND the State of Sonora (or Chihuahua; not sure where this batch of border jumpers came from).  And the government of Guatemala, which they were fleeing.

Anyone else?  Well, we can blame our Founding Fathers for not doing a better job of setting things up to keep liberty longer here in the Fifty States.  And the next generation, for not annexing ALL of Mexico so that we would have another 20 or so states like New Mexico (bad as it is, it is a whole lot better than its sisters still in Mexico).  And a whole lot of other people, including those idiots in Richmond who blew it in 1861-1865.

But right now?  Blame government.  Not just the Trump regime, and not just Congress.

As for that second point of discussion?  And Jesus? See the next commentary.

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