Think About Independence Day - Every Day
By Dr. Alan Keyes

     The heart of our Independence Day celebration must always be a national recollection and reaffirmation of the great Declaration of principle that is the reason we understand the Fourth of July to be our national birthday.
    I think that American patriots should think about the Declaration every day of their lives -- and as a nation, we should think about it every day of our national life. The Declaration of Independence is so important that we should strive to make it inform and determine every important position we take in American public life and policy. The ideas contained in the Declaration are fundamental to who we are, and if we want to survive as a free people we must learn to take them seriously again.
    This is not just Alan's annual pious warning. Recourse to the Declaration is a critical practical need in the day to day political life of the nation. It is impossible to be a good citizen or leader without regular recourse to principles, because political life is a swirl of confusing, distracting and seemingly complex issues. We simply will not be able to exercise good judgment in political questions without cultivating the habit of seeking answers first from the political principles found in the Declaration.
    Perhaps this isn't as striking a claim as it should be. After all, doesn't everyone claim to be "principled"? Certainly no one willingly admits to being politically unprincipled. But what exactly does it mean to have a clear sense of principle? Some people have the mistaken view that a clear sense of principle requires a set of rigid rules, and restricts political judgment to the mere mechanical application of those rules. But human life doesn't work that way, and political life in particular is no place for the inflexible judgments of the ideologue. Events and circumstances are so various and potentially changeable that no simple, hard and fast rule can be applied in an absolute manner to substitute effectively for prudent deliberation and judgment. The statesman and the citizen both must always be striving to think things through in view of the real and living circumstances they face. So what is the importance of principle for political judgment, if it is not to provide a rigid and safe answer for every question?

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Seeking Biblical Principles to Inform Immigration Policy
By Jim Day

    Legislating by anecdote makes for bad public policy. While an illegal alien named Maria, whose story was related in a recent Christianity Today editorial, may put a sympathetic human face on the issue, her story of near-rape and apparent Christian faith isn't the end of the story that policymakers must consider.
    Indeed, Maria's Christianity doesn't seem enough to prick her conscience over the very real wrongdoing she's done by coming into this country unlawfully. And the fact she's a fellow believer doesn't excuse what she has done or relieve her of a moral obligation to observe the laws.
    For every Maria who unlawfully lives and works in America, there are many more would-be Marias back in the home country. And for every Maria, there are many times more Americans, including the native-born, whom Maria is hurting—call them Patricias.
    Patricia Morena is an American whose plight was reported in a 2003 Los Angeles Times Magazine story. Patricia, a U.S. citizen, is a single mother with three children, living in a one-bedroom California apartment. She earns pre-tax $300 a week as a motel maid.
    The magazine profiled Patricia's life as a poor American whose greatest fear is being replaced by the ever-plentiful illegal foreign workers—newly arriving Marias—who continually depress Patricia's wages. The Times Magazine put it, "Morena can't work her way up the economic ladder because the bottom rungs have been broken off by the weight of millions of new illegal workers."
    The average Mexican worker earns 1/12 what the average American makes. But there are 4.6 billion people in the world who earn less than the average Mexican. That's a lot of "willing workers" whose immigration here, lawfully or unlawfully, will hurt the most vulnerable Americans: minorities, the disabled, recent legal immigrants.

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