Two dogs share my home; they're wonderful companions for empty-nesters such as my wife and me. They have worked their way into our hearts in ways we didn't expect. Our grown children get a big charge out of that. They accuse use of having let the dogs become surrogate kids and suggest half-seriously that they won't be surprised when we begin calling the dogs by their names.
To inoculate myself in advance against that charge, I have reminded them that my mother, in an astounding display of free-association, frequently comingled the names of children and dogs in her own household, both before and after my siblings and I serially grew up and left home — a hilarious fact my kids know well, having observed it for themselves over the years in their interactions with grandma. I have suggested therefore, that if this happens with me, it's genetic and I can't be held accountable.
I suppose it's inevitable that when you share your home with another species, you spend a fair amount of time studying their behavior, intellect, memory, and attitudes. One of the traits that's most endearing, yet confounding, about our animals, who of course I believe are smarter than the average canine, is the blind spot they often exhibit where cause-and-effect are concerned. By way of example (and I swear this is true), when one of the little guys breaks wind, he will jump up startled, glare backward with a look of disaffection trying to figure out exactly who has been so rude, and then quickly pad off to another room. There is no recognition that he himself is the culprit.
We humans tend to pride ourselves on our intellect and logic. I think it's one of the many ways we strive to draw the big dividing line between ourselves and animals of the lower orders. And yet, in my daily interactions with other people, I often see evidence of the same kind of gaping blind spot about cause-and-effect that I have noted in my dogs. My wife and I have even come to laughingly refer to it between ourselves as an exhibit of "dog logic" when we observe it.
I mentioned in a prior blog that I have been looking closely at the dictionary-sized immigration bill laboriously working its way through the Senate, and I have to tell you: I detect evidence there of "dog logic" on a grand scale.
To give illegal aliens the right to amnestize and stay here legally, page-after-page-after-page of the bill is filled with waivers and exceptions to all sorts of serious violations, things like filing fraudulent amnesty applications; falsely claiming U.S. citizenship; repeatedly reentering the United States after being deported; disobeying orders of an immigration judge or outright fleeing from immigration court; having committed identity theft by using other peoples Social Security accounts and numbers; being convicted of fewer than three crimes; etc. The list of forgivable offenses goes on and on.
Here's where the dog logic comes in: 1) If our legislators directly and specifically waive the unlawful and downright criminal behavior committed by a class of potentially 10 or 11 million aliens — all of whom had to break some variety of laws in order to be here illegally — why would they think the lesson learned is that it pays to be law-abiding? 2) Do our legislators really think that the next wave of would-be illegal entrants, who are undoubtedly watching the movement of this bill closely, will conclude that their own unlawful presence and criminal acts will not be tolerated?
Let us hope that the full Senate defeats the bill or, failing such a show of wisdom, that the House of Representatives shows more resolve by doing so, because if our Congress runs willy-nilly over the cliff with this poorly devised and ill-considered immigration bill, we will go too because we're tethered to them.