Once upon a time, there was a sweet Land of Liberty. It was envied everywhere as a beacon of hope for the rest of the world.
The country was comprised of immigrants who came from old countries across the ocean. Many had been persecuted. So they crossed the ocean to the new land where native people had lived for thousands of years. The immigrants weren’t good to the natives; they drove them off their lands or killed many. Some of the immigrants also bought and sold slaves. The women residents could not vote until 134 years after the nation was founded. But despite those bad things, it kept improving because of a document written by its Founders that set up a way for the nation to govern itself and which held up as hallowed the rights and freedoms for all people.
Many years later, fears took root when some people born in the great country turned bad and started to do horrible things. They used guns or bombs to kill people – in schools, in businesses, in movie theaters and in federal buildings.
Then, years later, on a horrifying day, bad people from other countries used airplanes as weapons to attack buildings in the Land of Liberty. Many died. Still later, there were more shooting attacks by people born in other countries or who sympathized with bad people in other countries.
There was much fear, worry and hand-wringing going on.
“Oh, dear, what can we do?” everyone wondered.
Along came a man with all the answers.
“I know,” he said. “We’ll build a big wall to keep out the bad people.”
Crowds cheered.
“And next,” he said, “we won’t let the bad people come here from across the ocean. We will ban the ones who live in countries that have different beliefs from ours. They hate us; they are dangerous. They could attack us if we let them in our country. Some of them might be good, but we can’t be sure. They’re probably mostly bad, really bad, so we will keep them out. All of them. At least for now.”
Then the leader signed a document banning people from seven countries.
“But doesn’t that go against our Liberty principles?” some asked.
“No,” said the leader. “This is an emergency. It’ll only be temporary.”
“But what about the other countries?” they asked.
“The seven ones I’ve named are the baddest countries where the dangerous people live, the ones who don’t believe like we do,” he explained. “If we keep them out, they can’t hurt us. The people from the nice countries can still come here.”
Many cheered: “What a good easy solution!”
But sadly, even after the bad people were banned, many bloody attacks continued in the Land of Liberty, and most were done by bad people who were born in it. Attacks also kept happening in the nice countries.
In desperation, the leader kept banning more and more people, kept building walls until by and by the Land of Liberty began to resemble a big fortress against all of the rest of the world. The bad people were kept out and so were the good people.
It wasn’t long before the Land of Liberty started to decay. It was no longer the beacon of hope; it had become a shameful nation – a country of walls and exclusions – to the point where even those who lived within the crumbling fortress felt like prisoners sleeping through a fading dream.
