No, I won't sign your petition

     No, I won't sign your petition to overturn the bill signed by Gov. Martin O"Malley to give every Maryland student, even those whose parents are "illegal" aliens, the right to get the same considerations as they persue an education as any other Maryland student. And since you asked me to, I will tell you why I will not.
     First of all, I am tired of people getting up petitions to take everything they don't agree with to referendum. Our country's system depends on electing representatives to make policy decisions, and if we don't like what they do, we can un-elect them in four years. If we let the public vote on every item of business, we don't need elected officials, but we'd need more referees.
     Also, if we took every tough and complicated issue to a vote, this country would never have formed a constitution, let alone a nation, abolished slavery, fought to save the world from tyranny in 1918, returned to clean up what public opinion allowed to happen in World War Two, or ended the war in the Pacific without massive casualties that would have made two nuclear bombs look like firecrackers.
     We probably never would have had public schools (some are doing their best to trade them in now for private schools, usually sectarian in nature), the interstate highway system, the national energy grid or a space program.
     If we voted on every public expenditure, people would starve to death, die of curable diseases, and duke it out among neighbors in generational feuds (exactly like the tribalism that gave birth to the terrorists we deal with now from the middle east).
     Our economy would be based not on the auto industry, but on oxcarts, or working for the rich who own the mines, factories, big oil and big money. All those rugged, card-carrying, self-sufficient individualists who claim they hate government intervention in their lives would be wondering what that "all men are created equal" thing was about.
      The American dream would be a nightmare.
     But at least we would not be inconvenienced by the arrival of people from other nations who want a chance to work in the system we do have; we would have not had to deal with the Jews from Eastern Europe, or the Italians, or the Germans, or the Welsh or the Irish, or even the Mexicans and Central Americans.
     Yep, we'd have a lot fewer illegals, and the children they brought here with them to seek a better life.
     I guess my problem is that I can't muster up a reason to think that I, a grandson of Irish, German and Welsh immigrants, am that much superior to the "illegals" of today, who got here the same way my forbears did, but after the rules were changed.
     But most of all, the reason I will not sign your petition is that I can't imagine sitting down across the table from a young man or woman who may have come here as an infant, has committed no sin, no crime, no offense against me or my country.
     I cannot sit across from someone who may have been an honor student, class leader, better scholar than I ever was, and tell them they are not entitled to continue their education under the same rules as any other resident of my state.
     I know that the argument is that the "illegals" compete unfairly with the children of legal, taxpaying citizens. Sorry, it does not compute. What about the competition from the children of big contributors to schools and colleges? You think your middle-class kid gets the same shot as the fat cats?
     Maybe you're too much of a romantic, and I am too cynical.
     Or maybe it's the other way around.
     Either way, good kids with potential who have and can continue to make our nation better deserve something better from me than mindless, remote, and shamefully easy dismissal of their value.
     That's against every American ideal I ever learned.