Ask not for whom the bell tolls

The president's de facto Muslim ban and the closing of the borders to foreign-born Muslims brings this poem to mind. Again.  

Twice this week. this poem has seemed a propos. First, it was during the ugly public squabble between Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto and the US president and then again yesterday, with the announcement of the Executive Action on Immigration.

Truly, no one could have said it better than Donne, but let me ask you:

No man is an island, 
Entire of itself.
Are we an island America? Entire of ourselves? Needing no one, wanting no one, harming no one, seeing that no harm is done?

Every man is a piece of the continent.
A part of the main. 
America, a nation of immigrants, each of them a part of the main.....or perhaps not. I wonder, our dual citizens from seven faraway lands, are they not 'a part of the main'? Should they simply be 'washed away by the sea' as if they were of no import?

If a clod be washed away by the sea, 
Europe is the less. 
We are the less when we cast them aside. Do we choose to be less? Out of fear? Ignorance? Rigidity? Bigotry? Spite?

As well as if a promontory were. 
As well as if a manor of thy friend's 
Or of thine own were: 
Are we not 'less' when we speak of our brothers and sisters in dismissive, ugly language? Are we not much less than or simply unequal to our values? 

Any man's death diminishes me, 
Are we not diminished? Thinking on this now, I wonder if this poem isn't also relevant to the whole ACA debate but more of that anon and elsewhere.

Because I am involved in mankind, 
We are involved in this, worse, we are implicated. We are implicated in the refugee crisis and we are morally implicated in our failure to act to solve it. 

Our faiths, all of our faiths, are founded on the Golden Rule: do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Are we doing as we would like to be done to? Do we care if we aren't? What of our great values by which we have always set so much store? 

And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; 
It tolls for thee.

The bell is tolling America, ask not for whom it tolls, it tolls for thee. 

The bell. I hear the bell. Do you hear it America? It's playing your song.