Doug Patton
Imagine you are a child
growing up in a small town. You have always felt safe there. The crimes of big
cities seem distant from your serene world, where no one ever locks the door.
Then one night your next-door
neighbors are murdered in their home, which is burned to the ground. Drawings
of the suspects are printed in the newspaper. The sheriff says they speak a
foreign language. No one in your town looks or sounds like that.
Your parents gather the family
together for a reassuring pep talk. "The men who did this will be brought
to justice," your father assures you. "Until they are caught, I will
protect you." Then your parents announce that the front and back doors of
your home will not only remain unlocked; they will be left standing wide open.
You are astonished. Murderers
are out there — loose! Why don't we just bolt the doors? Why doesn't the
sheriff just stop people who look like them? Your mother says that would be
"profiling." You don't understand what she means, but the way she
says the word, it must be worse than what the murderers did.
Miraculously, nothing happens
for five nights. On the sixth night, you hear a noise downstairs. You wake your
parents and follow your father down to the kitchen, where you discover a
suspicious-looking man rummaging through your trash. He is mumbling in a
foreign language, he is dirty, and you can smell his foul odor from across the
room.
Your father opens the
refrigerator and tells the man to take what he wants and to turn out the lights
when he is finished. Amazed, you ask why he doesn't just throw this man out and
lock the doors. He tells you that locked doors are not the way of your town.
"Besides," he says, "do you want him to hate us?" Angry and
confused, you go back to bed and listen to the sounds of the filthy man in your
family's kitchen.
Over the next fourteen nights,
six men wander into your house and take what they want. One night, you open
your eyes to find one of them standing over your bed. In answer to your
screams, your father simply puts his arm around the man and escorts him
downstairs to the refrigerator. The next morning, your family discovers their
home theater system is missing. Your mother shakes her head, while your father
simply shrugs.
On the second night of the
third week, just before you fall asleep, you smell something that sends chills
over every inch of your body. Gasoline! This time you don't wake your father.
You reach for the phone and call the sheriff, who arrives just before one of
the strange looking men in your living room lights a match. The men are
arrested and taken to jail.
The next morning, your father
tells you that you were right all along. He announces that he is having a
security system installed in your home immediately, which he does. That night,
you hear someone trying to open the back door. When they are unsuccessful, they
start yelling and pounding on the house.
When you open the door to go
to school the next day, your back yard is filled with angry people carrying
signs expressing how unfair your family is for locking their doors and
installing an alarm system. They scream at you, saying that you and your family
are bigots, that you hate people who are different, that you are a
"racist." You don't know what that means, but you know that life in
your town will never be the same again.
Note: A version of this
column was originally published shortly after 9/11. Since then, from time to
time, it has seemed appropriate to submit it again as a way of expressing the
frustration of a populace whose leaders simply will not listen to their will. I
offer it again in that spirit.
Doug Patton, GOP USA, February 06, 2014
Doug Patton describes himself
as a recovering political speechwriter who agrees with himself more often than
not. His weekly columns are syndicated by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.
Readers are encouraged to email him at dpatton@cagle.com
and/or to follow him on Twitter at @Doug_Patton.
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