Finished.

Extensions are both man's best friend and worst enemy. On the one hand, being granted a reprieve on a paper can mean the difference between a D and an A-B. On the hand, it also extends the pain and suffering.

Anyway, I finished for the year a day or two ago, with a 27-page paper proposing the affectus / intellectus debate surrounding mystical union with God surfaced in the late Middle Ages, whilst being completely unknown to Augustine, because Augustine and the late Medievals ultimately held varient epistemologies of God. Well, we'll see.

So, naturally, I've spent most of the last few days not thinking thoughts theological. Actually, I just bought a nice Spanish Guitar CD and an OK Yodelling CD :)

Right. Thoughts non-theological. So, the Government has decided to build a freakin' huge fence between the States and Mexico.

I have very mixed thoughts about this. I must observe that anti-immigrationism (if the president can say "strategery"...) is a solidly W.A.S.P-y preoccupation, and, since immigration tends to Catholicize the country or at least de-Protestantize it, has very Know-Nothing associations, viewed historically.

And, because none of us (except 1/128 of me) has any native claim on the land anyway, my gut instinct is generally that immigration into America is both good and something we have a moral obligation to support.

This makes me sincerely support legalization of illegal immigrants, especially when one realizes how terribly a person with no governmental protection can be abused by the anti-humanitarian tendencies latent in American capitalism.

Sed contra, there is one difference between democracy and mob-rule, and that difference is defference to the Law. I'm tempted to channel Javert: "the Law is not mocked." To hold the Law in contempt, or worse, to form new citizens with a contempt for the Law, lays the groundwork for mob-rule over democracy, and that cannot be.

So, I'm rather torn over the issue, but I tend to think--as distasteful as a huge wall would be--that legalizing the immigrants here, while enforcing existing legislated border regulations in the future, is the best answer, and so far as I believe that, I'm surprisingly pleased to see the Senate doing (for once) what I might have done.

Thoughts?