Dreaming Up A Mess

A friend asked what Ayn Rand would have had to say about this strange mess we've got at our southern border.

In her life, she often gave answers that surprised me, seizing on details of a situation that struck her as particularly significant. So I kind of wish I could hear what she would have to say.

She was a steady advocate of open immigration. She died before the southern border issue really heated up. I suppose that in response to the "overloaded safety net" argument, she would have recommended removing the so-called safety net, perhaps citing the success of 19th century immigration to this country.

God knows what she would have thought of this fiasco of Central Americans sending their minors across our border. It's one of these "unintended consequences" messes of grand proportions, a result of a very poorly-planned unilateral executive action. I suspect she would have seen both cynical calculation and sentimental altruism at work in the whole DREAM notion of giving amnesty just to children.

She sympathized with people coming here to make a productive life for themselves, but there's something crazy about kids being sent on life-endangering trips across our border.

You drove us into a ditch,
and declared it was only bad luck,
but here's the lingering hitch:
we're still stuck in the muck.