How many of you have seen that 1992 movie A Few Good Men, starring Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson?  If not, you should stop reading this post, download it on Amazon (or just look for it on basic cable because it’s rerun pretty frequently), watch it and then come back to this blog.  Why?  Because this movie is *awesome* … I would even put it on my top ten list OF ALL TIME.  (Sidebar:  It also has the distinction of being my path to Kevin Bacon in the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game.  I have a friend who is friends with Ashton Kutcher, who was married to Demi Moore, who starred in A Few Good Men with … KEVIN BACON!)

You should also watch this movie before you finish this post because I am about to spoil it …

Jack Nicholson (his character’s name is totally irrelevant because he’s SO Jack Nicholson in this movie, unlike, say, in As Good As It Gets) is the head of the U.S. military base at Guantanamo Bay and orders a “Code Red” on a soldier who has failed to respect the chain of command. The Code Red was meant to punish the soldier, but ends up killing him.  After some serious courtroom drama and a very memorable monologue, Jack Nicholson is arrested for murder, but the two soldiers who carried out the Code Red are also found guilty of “conduct unbecoming a U.S. Marine” and dishonorably discharged.  One of them doesn’t understand why they have been found guilty if they were just following orders from a superior officer like they were supposed to do, and the other one points out that they failed to stand up for what was right.

And that’s what I’ve been thinking a lot about lately.  It can be hard to speak out against authority, but if someone imposes extrajudicial orders and circumvents the rule of law that has been put in place to protect those who may not be able to defend themselves, then we MUST do so.  Regardless of whether you think U.S. immigration policy needs to be reevaluated, what we saw this weekend was a “Code Red” gone completely wrong.  Not only were refugees escaping oppressive regimes banned from entering the U.S. for 90 days, but so were holders of valid immigrant visas, some of whom have lived in this country for years.

We are a country of immigrants.  Most of us came here at some point from someplace else.  Our culture is one of acceptance.  As is inscribed on the Statue of Liberty, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free … .”  There is no asterisk with fine print excluding every single citizen of certain countries without any consideration of his or her circumstances.  We cannot allow fear to dictate overly broad exclusions.  We did that once with the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, which was a dark moment in U.S. history.

Our country is amazing because of its variety of colors and shapes and textures … much like this Mary Katrantzou dress that I got from Moda Operandi (http://www.modaoperandi.com).  (Sorry, this is a fashion blog, after all.)