Over the last decade, I have seen a lot of change happening in America, and not necessarily for the best. In fact, I believe there is is a reckoning coming. Not a political reckoning. Not an electoral reckoning. A moral reckoning.

And no, I am not a preacher or a religious person, but I am someone who knows the difference between right and wrong and good and evil. Sadly, what I see today in America is cruel and inhumane, and it is un-American.

History has a long memory, and it rarely treats cruelty kindly. Today, in the name of immigration enforcement, America is witnessing the expansion of detention facilities, mass deportation operations, family separations, and policies designed to make life so difficult that people simply give up and leave.

Supporters argue these measures are necessary to secure the border and restore order to an immigration system that has been neglected for decades. Reasonable people can debate immigration policy. Nations have a right to secure their borders. They have a responsibility to know who enters and who remains within them.

But there is a profound difference between enforcing laws and abandoning our humanity. The measure of a nation is not how it treats the powerful. It is how it treats the vulnerable.

History repeatedly teaches the same lesson. During moments of fear, governments often justify extraordinary measures. Leaders insist the threat is urgent, the circumstances exceptional, and the suffering necessary.

Critics are dismissed as naïve. I have seen compassion portrayed as weakness by people ok who are supposed to be compassionate by definition—evangelical Christians. It’s hard to reconcile the contradictions, but it is real.

And years later, when the passions of the moment have faded, societies look back and ask a simple question: Was this who we wanted to be? The answer is often uncomfortable.

Future generations will not only examine statistics and policy papers. They will examine photographs.

They will examine testimonies. They will examine the stories of children who watched parents disappear into detention systems. They will examine communities living in fear. They will examine whether America responded to a difficult challenge with wisdom and fairness—or with punishment and humiliation.

The architects of these policies, along with those who defended them, enabled them, or looked away from their consequences, may believe history will vindicate them. History may have other plans.

I have lived long enough to know that every generation faces a test. Ours is whether we can address immigration without surrendering the values that define us. Whether we can enforce laws without celebrating suffering. Whether we can maintain security without sacrificing dignity.

Cruelty is often politically profitable in the short term. It creates villains. It energizes crowds. It turns human beings into symbols and slogans.But cruelty has never built a stronger nation. And I don’t believe it is building a stronger nation today.

Cruelty corrodes institutions. It hardens hearts. It teaches citizens to view fellow human beings as less deserving of compassion and justice. Most importantly, it leaves scars that endure long after the political victories have been forgotten.

We are still living with the scars of slavery and Jim Crow.

The great irony is that the strongest societies are not those that show the least mercy. They are the ones confident enough to uphold their principles even during moments of uncertainty and fear.

America’s story has never been perfect. It is a story filled with contradictions, failures, and painful chapters. Yet progress has often come when courageous people were willing to challenge policies rooted in exclusion, discrimination, and dehumanization.

The question facing us today is not simply what kind of immigration system we want. The deeper question is what kind of people we want to be. Because one day, the speeches will be forgotten. The campaign slogans will disappear.

The political arguments will fade. History’s verdict is often delayed, but it is rarely denied. And when it arrives, it is seldom kind to those who confused cruelty with courage.

What will remain is the historical record. And history, more often than not, reserves its harshest judgment for those who mistook cruelty for strength.

Today, I see cruelty, I don’t see strength. We are a weaker nation today than we have ever been in my lifetime. And that’s my take.  smithpren@aol.com