The "Law of Attractive Nuisances"

I recall when my too-soon departed wife Elaine and I purchased our first home together back in early 1979.

It was bigger than we needed, more costly than we could afford at the time, but it had a pool, and DAMN!...we wanted a pool and nothing, NOTHING, including 13.5% interest rates (thanks, Jimmuh Carter!), could keep us from getting that pool!

So, my best friend Sam did two things for us that we could not have managed without; he loaned us $10k to round-out the down payment, thanks again, Sam, and he offered up some of his best lawyerly advice:  "Lose the diving board!"

You see, this pool had been built shortly after the home had been finished, a couple of decades prior, and the pool sales guy back then no doubt convinced the previous owners to max-out the entire back yard with concrete and water.  And they did.  Big Time!  The pool was only slightly smaller than the back yard.  Only slightly.  And it was a big back yard!  You could barely walk around it.  And it had a diving board.  An old, rickety, ugly, corroded diving board that looked like it might crumble at any moment.  It was truly a fearsome beast.

Well, Sam was then kind enough to explain to me the "Law of "Attractive Nuisances."  That means, if it attracts stupid people to use it, or touch it, or smell it, or eat it, etc., and if they get hurt from having done so, it's your fault!

So, we tore out the diving board post-haste and used the pool happily during our 30+ years at what came to be known as "The Hotel California."  No injuries, no lawsuits.  Happy, happy, happy!

Anyway, I bring that up because we have a similar situation unfolding daily on our Southern Border.  Because we, The People, have a mish-mash of outdated and ineffective immigration laws that do not serve us well, immigrants enter our country illegally every single day, and risk life and limb in doing so.  And we will continue to have those stupid, dumbass laws unless or until our Congressweenies somehow manage to play nice and change them.  

However, in what has to be the cruelest sort of irony possible, if these reeeely nice folks from Down South manage to get hurt crossing our border, it's our fault, and we have to pay to fix them up.

An item caught my eye on the news yesterday.  In just one section of the Border fence near El Centro, CA last year, 1,500 illegals were hurt trying to jump over the 14' fence there and had to be patched up at one of their local hospitals.  Fixed up at a cost to us, the American Taxpayer, by the way, of more than $3,000,000!  

So, it seems they cost us if we don't prevent them from breaking in, and they cost us if we do.  

This, my friends, is what's called a No. Win. Situation...

So, I'd like to sum it up with this:

-     Trump was elected by a plurality of the Voters to Build The Wall.  Some two years later, we haven't.  

-     But in the meantime illegal crossings are at an all time high, and so is the number of injuries from such entries.  Proof positive of the "Law of Attractive Nuisances."  We are the shiny object they reach for, and if they hurt themselves in doing, it's our fault!  

So, we could simply build our walls higher.  If 14' isn't enough, let's go to 16'.  Or how about 18'?  Or 20?  Oh yeah, we can't do that, because there isn't the votes in Congress to do that.  I guess we should be happy.  Because if we jacked up the height of the wall and more people hurt themselves trying to get over it, then it would cost us taxpayers ever more to repair them.  Counterproductive, it would seem.  L
And proof once again of another of those immutable little Laws we're forced to live by:  The "Law of Unintended Consequences."