It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven

I'm constantly amazed by the number of cars I see on the road bearing expired license tabs.  Now, this reveals a couple of things -- first, that I'm so interested in license plates that I study them, as opposed to passing scenery, while driving; and, second, the I am so obsessive that I check the month and year of these licenses for expiration.

Let's forget about all that.  What's interesting is the degree of my irritation when I see a car with June 2013 tags on the road in July.  I'm irritated even though I know the owner probably has paid his fee and just hasn't got around to sticking the new tabs on the plate.  And when I see a car with 2012 (or a year or so older) tabs, my head is ready to explode.  Not only at the scofflaw who is pulling a fast one on those of us who religiously pay our fees and attach our tabs, but at the civil authorities who have not impounded this car and hauled its owner off to jail.  What the hell are the police doing, nowadays?  Mediating dog fights?

In calmer moments, realization of how ridiculous my outrage really is -- the tabs will get affixed, the taxes will get paid -- causes me some reflection.  While my anger at this particular "outrage" may be atypical, the nature of the anger itself seems to be a typical human reaction -- typical, if not of all humanity, at least of the middle class subset to which I belong.

Back in our nation's capital, even as I write, Congressmen are working themselves into a dither over whether to allow illegal immigrants a path to citizenship.  A large number of House members -- whether expressing their own private views or only those of their constitutents -- have adopted the mantra of "No Amnesty."  Illegal immigrants are in the country in violation of the law.  They should not -- must not -- will not -- be rewarded for their willful illegal entry. 

Taken to its logical extreme -- as, in fact, it usually is -- they argue that these immigrants not only should be refused a path to citizenship, but should be deported en masse.  Not only those who themselves crept across our Sacred Borders, defiling our Holy Motherland with their presence, but also their babes in arms who have since grown up speaking English, leading American teenage lives,  graduating with honors from college, and finding themselves now launched into respectable American careers.  "If they're so smart, let 'em go back to their 'own country'," I've read in comments. "They can be smart there, and help 'their countrymen'."

I'm appalled by these reactions, so lacking in compassion, so unreasonably callous as to the interests of immigrant families and so hostile to our own national interests.  But their emotional response is basically the same gut reaction I experience on the highway -- the law's the law!  Illegal immigrants violated the law; let them suffer the consequences.  In fact, let the consequences of the "iniquity of the fathers [be visited] on the children, and on the third and the fourth generations."

The proper answer both to me ("seize their cars and throw them in the slammer") and to the Republicans ("cast them hence, together with their mewling, snot-nosed brats") is pretty much the same:  Yes, the law is the law.  But a civilized society enforces its laws in a manner both reasonable and compassionate.

As we legal history buffs remember well, English courts of law in the early Middle Ages enforced the common law "by the book." The law was the law, by God, and appeals to fairness or reason were unavailing.  Over a period of time, however, England evolved a parallel set of courts -- courts of equity -- that applied the King's ultimate power to grant mercy in such a manner as to mitigate the rigors of the common law.

Congress is being asked, analogously, to apply equity in the enforcement of its own earlier immigration laws.  It is being asked, simply, to see the same need for flexibility and compassion that our English forebears had already discerned by the fourteenth century -- the need to temper justice with mercy.

But mercy is above this sceptered sway;
It is enthroned in the heart of kings;
It is an attribute to God himself;
And earthly power doth then show likest God's
When mercy seasons justice.

--Merchant of Venice.

And I, on my own part, will try to practice what I preach, the next time I find myself sitting in traffic behind a car with expired tabs.  "He's probably paid for the tabs, and they're sitting in an envelope on his dining room table," I'll tell myself, taking deep breaths.  "And even if he hasn't, he'll get the fee paid soon.  Not everyone has the luxury of focusing for long periods of time on their own and other people's license tabs."

And I'll certainly have a point.