Take A Step Back; A Deep Breath; Think

Chivalry is dead, but kindness is infinite. 

I made this claim quite a few posts ago, but the latter half of the sentence is what I'd like to focus on today, but with a bit of a twist: Kindness is infinite, but that doesn't mean "be stupid."

I've said on many occasions that some of the happier points in my life were when I was dumb. "Stupid and happy" is how I phrased it.

All of that said, let's not be kind and stupid. What am I talking about? Well, refugees, of course.

Look, I think it's super kind of us to lend a helping hand to Syrian refugees--I'm aware that it's also a part of our constitution to do so. I want to help them! That said, I think it's a legitimate national security threat--at this point in time--to simply let anyone into our country without, at the very least, being vetted first.

It's very important to be kind and loving, but we shouldn't be unintelligible at the exact same time.

To those that don't want to help refugees in this country because the refugees are likely Muslim, you're completely missing the point. There could be Daesh mercenaries disguised as Syrians. Shortly after the attack on Paris, a lot of people were blaming Syrian refugees. And for all the people saying that's completely untrue, they're not wrong. Of course the Syrian refugees didn't attack Paris, but what if certain Daesh disguised as refugees entered France? It would be very hard to prove that, since the perpetrators of the heinous attack have since been killed, but I would not say it's a far-fetched idea. These people operate stealthily. They have very recently made threats to attacking 5 different states within our nations boarders. Could these attacks happen whether we let refugees in or not? Absolutely. But why take the risk right now without at least vetting these refugees?

Let me reiterate in case it's not clear: I am fully aware that the refugees, actual ones, are not the problem. Right now, Daesh are flying so far under the radar that we have no idea who they are or where certain ones could be. If any of you have watched the show The Following with Kevin Bacon, the Daesh remind me of the same kind of clique. A leader brainwashes a ton of people, and those people carry out the deeds of the leader. Unfortunately, though, the Daesh have so many sporadically placed leaders that when the news tells me that the US and France helped kill a a Daesh leader I take it with a grain of salt, as opposed to how I felt we when we captured, say, Osama Bin Laden.

To conclude, I think it is important that we help Syrian refugees find refuge here, but I think it's equally important that we, as a nation, do our due diligence to ensure that we're not letting Daesh members waltz into our country with suicide packs strapped to their chests.

Let's be smart about this, people.

- PatInTheHat