Whatsoever you do unto the least of these...

As I understand the New Testament, Jesus made that statement as a call to service for His followers. If you visit the sick or imprisoned, feed the hungry or give money to those in need, you are doing that as if you were serving Him.

But how is the state treating its citizens and visitors in our name? We the People are supposed to be running the show, right?

If a TSA sociopath accosts a grandmother traveling on a flight in the appearance of "safety", are they not doing this to all of us in a figurative sense?

From Grigg: The Borders Are Closing In a link to an essay by William Norman Grigg of the experience of Canadian author, Peter Watts

Although Watts could have been forced to spend years as part the world's largest prison population, the presiding judge was content to pilfer $1,628 from the victim of the assault at the border -- after treating him to a patronizing lecture about the need to be "nice" to the feral armed adolescents who constitute the State's punitive caste.

Watts' experience leaves a decidedly totalitarian aftertaste. Crossing the border of a totalitarian state — in either direction — is an experience fraught with visceral anxiety. Finding himself in the unwanted company of humorless, heavily armed goons of questionable competence and dubious intelligence, the traveler is vividly aware that he can be arrested, imprisoned, beaten, or even shot at whim.The Borders Are Closing In

Is this what is being done to the least of us? In our name?

"When an officer tells you to come inside and sit down, you come inside and sit down.... When an officer tells you to do something, you do it .... There is no "why" here." -- U.S. Border Guard to a befuddled Canadian citizen arbitrarily detained while trying to visit a shopping mall in Niagara Falls, New York.

My America is no longer America.