Welcome back to the Back Porch, it’s still hot here and it’s not going to get any better. Weather wise this story is rather very simple. It can be summed up in just a few words “this ain’t exactly your grandmother’s summer.”   a few of us have gathered here on the porch even in heat, we have got the fans going and everybody’s got something cool to drink. A lot of times the conversations here on the porch will resolve around the news and what’s going on around us, sometimes we might remember some things from the past and get to reflecting on them and it’s always pleasant to remember things the way they used to be which in the minds of us older folks were the good old days. There was really no competition this week of excessive thoughts going around, we like to call them here  “the porch ponders”, it seems like the news of what happened in Cincinnati of the couple being beat up by a mob after a concert, kind of took the stage and we kind of dwelled on that. The news media attempts to try to inject race in everything that happens and we must say that those of us that meet here on the porch to ponder have a different outlook on things like that. We do not judge if it race were involved. We don’t know what happened, we weren’t there. But there is one common factor we can all agree on. This particular area is a “Sanctuary City.” Naturally with our group, we tend to look back and think about the biblical aspects of a sanctuary city so let’s do that before we ponder on the rest of this. In the Bible, the sanctuary primarily refers to a sacred place, often a designated area for worship or a place of divine presence. It was applied for the tabernacle and later for the temple in Jerusalem, as well as a place of protection and refuge. The concept of these cities of refuge as outlined in the Old Testament provides a biblical example of a sanctuary offering protection to those who had accidentally caused a death. Now the Old Testament describes the establishment of six cities of refuge which were served as sanctuaries for those who had actually killed someone. Basically, the cities purpose being a sanctuary place was that it would provide a place of safety for the accidental killer until their case could be reviewed by a judge protecting them from the avenger usually a relative of the deceased. These were not places of absolute immunity while offering protection. These cities did not grant absolute immunity to the individual, they had to present their case to the city elders and abide by the laws of the land, including remaining in the city until a judgment had been passed on their case. Somehow we’ve moved into today looking at it as modern-day sanctuary movement, that advocates for protection of vulnerable populations.

Keeping that definition in mind, we look at sanctuary cities, as jurisdictions of cities or counties that limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities. The interesting thing about this is there is no real universally agreed upon definition, but what they usually do is limit or restrict generally local law-enforcements ability to inquire about our act on immigration status. Let’s cut to the chase on this. The the story out of the Cincinnati that we’ve all been reading about and the beating of those people has taken many different turns but we here on the porch are pondering why is it that in our society today people are so mad and so mean? There is no doubt in most of our minds that it has a lot to do with politics, culture, and social agendas. The sanctuary cities have created a place of violence, lawlessness and total disregard for the safety and rights of the population in general. Folks, let’s just throw out the term illegal alien and simply say that if you’re not in this country legally, then there is a problem. Now we may be stretching this just a little bit too far, but the fact is sanctuary cities have encouraged lawlessness, and it gives a false impression that law-enforcement will not enforce the laws as written, and in many places for some reason or other, it expands past illegals or people not in this country legally and it goes past that and simply hobbles work of law-enforcement to where they cannot be effective. So I ask you today to Ponder This. How long can we as a nation continue to tolerate such lawlessness? How long will it be before we will support and encourage those within our justice system to do their job?

Kurt