 |
|
Imagine, right now at this very moment you and your loved ones need to run for your lives!
With hardly more than the clothes on your backs, you and your family must flee from an invading armed force.
Or imagine your quick exodus is due to the fact that gang members have threatened to kill your family because your teenage son or grandson has refused to join their murderous drug gang.
 |
|
The current debate over whether to welcome refugees fleeing the carnage in Syria reminded me of how one leader spoke to a similar situation some years ago.
Clifford “Tiny” Krueger represented much of northern Wisconsin in the State Senate for 34 years from the mid-1940s until 1983.
First a Progressive, then a Republican, Krueger was the GOP Senate floor leader from 1975 to 1981. When he retired, a veteran observer of the Capitol scene described him as “the conscience of the common man.”
That conscience was very evident in May of 1980. Tiny was asked to offer a few remarks at the Memorial Day observance in Rhinelander. Then as now, the issue of whether to accept refugees from another country was a hot topic.
|
|
The heartbreaking photo of the little Syrian refugee boy washed up dead on the shore of Bodrum, Turkey (see the picture at bit.ly/1PZHvDV) strikingly illustrates the tragic plight of desperate refugees — mostly Syrian — fleeing for their lives from the Islamic State and other violent groups in the Middle East and Africa.
The three-year-old boy, named Aylan, along with his five-year-old brother, Galip, and their mother, Rehan, drowned after the raft carrying them capsized near the Turkish coast.
