It was written during consideration of the comprehensive bill, but deserves reconsideration now:

June 6, 2007

Dear Senator Kennedy,

Your efforts to solve the immigration issue through your currently sponsored legislation have inspired me to take a stance for which I would have previously lacked courage: I would like to vacation this summer with you at your home in Hyannis Port.

Your familiarity with the warm waters gently lapping the southern coast of the Cape may leave you unaware of the desperate situation of beachgoers on the South Shore of Boston.  Denied benefit of the Gulf Stream’s tropical warming through mere geological accident, the waters of our coast are cold, the waves merciless, and the undertow inhuman. It is most heartbreaking of all to observe the little children who brave the waist-deep wade into frigidity, only to scramble ashore with blue in their lips, chattering in their teeth, and hopelessness in their eyes.  We yearn to escape this spiraling cycle of immersion and desiccation, and I know that you feel our pain.

You know that this is a nation of vacationers, built by and for vacationers.  You know that from the gentle beaches of Martha’s Vineyard to the rugged slopes of Malibu, the spirit of tourism has built a dream in this place called America that is the hope of mankind. You know that this hope, the yearning of the human spirit for free and unfettered recreation, is universal, and cannot be constrained to one country, one city, or one family compound.

Since I know how busy you are, particularly at this moment with the serious and sober consideration of amendments to your bill, there is no need for you to respond with a formal invitation.  My family and I can simply arrive at your property and obtain access to it through any means necessary.   Knowing that you recognize the ineffectiveness of border enforcement through fences, guards, and guns, I assume that only minimal effort and damage will be necessary for our entry. And, knowing that you understand the futility of incarceration and deportation, I am confident that our trespass will receive swift forgiveness once you perceive our sincere desire to respect all the laws that we hadn’t already broken.

While individuals of lesser enlightenment may think that the rule of law was established to protect property rights, and thereby the stability and integrity of a civilized society, you know better that it exists to protect the weak from the strong, the poor from the rich, and the underprivileged from the privileged.  While it would be completely appropriate for me to employ the law to bar you from my property (as Mexico does with its illegal immigrants), I know that you would consider it immoral to seek such an enforcement against a relatively weak, poor, and underprivileged person, as I am in comparison to you. It would be a betrayal of all for which you believe that this country stands.

In addition to leisure activities, I look forward to enjoying the fulfillment of all basic human needs to which my sojourn with you will entitle me, such as food, clothing, shelter, healthcare, top shelf liquor, and cable television with premium channels.  I also eagerly anticipate our discussion of other means by which your wealth and prosperity can benefit the less fortunate members of (what will become) our household.  Thank you very much for allowing me, as you have so many others, this opportunity to be brought (quite literally) “out of the shadow and into the sunlight.”

September 13, 2007

The Honorable Deval Patrick

Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts

Massachusetts State House

Boston, Massachusetts 02133

Dear Governor Patrick,

I am writing in regard to your speech at the September 11 commemoration ceremony, in which you assessed the cause of the disaster as “a failure of human beings to understand each other.”  I strongly disagree with your assessment.

It seems a certainty that understanding, compassion, love, and the other qualities addressed in your speech are necessary attributes of any civilized society. It seems a possibility that expressing these qualities to those unacquainted with civilization may encourage them toward civility. However, the perpetrators of the attack of September 11, 2001, were not unacquainted with our society and its qualities.  They were well aware of them, but yet rejected them, and further, sought their destruction. To extend the benefits of civilization to those who willfully reject its obligations and ruthlessly attack its existence is to risk that very destruction.

If you are determined to advocate the extension of understanding to those who seek to embrace barbarism, I hope you will advocate it as well for those who seek to uphold civilization.  If I may presume to include myself among the latter, then allow me to express my specific desires for understanding.

I hope that when I oppose the government mandated redistribution of wealth through social welfare programs, I am not denounced as greedy and uncompassionate.  Rather, I hope that I am understood as a human being who believes that individuals as well as society benefit eminently more from an ethic of hard work and personal responsibility than from an expectation of entitlement and collective dependence.

I hope that when I advocate enforcement of our immigration laws by the federal government with the cooperation of our commonwealth, cities, and towns, I am not condemned as a xenophobe and racist. Rather, I hope to be understood as a human being who believes that when disrespect for any law is promoted, respect for all laws is diminished, as are the freedoms they protect.

I hope that when I support the preservation of marriage exclusively for the union of one man and one woman, I am not accused of bigotry and hatred.  Rather, I hope to be understood as a human being who believes that the distinct recognition of an institution that has overwhelmingly contributed to the propagation of our species and society cannot lightly be cast aside without endangering both.

I hope that when I disagree with the increasing prohibition of religious expression in the public domain, I am not dismissed as unenlightened and theocratic.  Rather, I hope to be understood as a human being who believes that the freedom to publicly embrace faith is as important as the freedom to publicly condemn it, and that its public expression by one constitutes no compulsion of its acceptance by another, beyond the internal compulsion of his or her own conscience.

Although I suspect that my hopes for understanding are in vain, I’m certain there is one thing you have not failed to understand: no matter how much I am dismissed, accused, denounced, and condemned, I will never fly a plane into a building.

Thank you for your time and consideration.