A rat and a cat. Those were two things my Grandfather Walker would not allow in his house. Well there’s one thing I won’t allow in my house. A politician. That’s why I change the channel when one of those bloated, self-important knaves hits the screen. That’s why I hang up when one of their flunkies calls asking for my support and money. That takes me from calm to irate faster than a Maserati can go from zero to 177 miles per hour.

We used to have statesmen and leaders. Now about all we have are career politicians. I get a kick out of this definition of “politician” from the 2008 New Oxford American Dictionary. “Noun, a person who acts in a manipulative and devious way typically to gain advancement within an organization.”

Manipulative and devious. You can’t say it any better can you. Now and then, politicians actually respond to their constituent’s needs and momentarily become leaders, but the politically correct, those oh-so-perfect people walking among us aren’t necessarily thrilled to see government actually working. Case in point: Arizona.

The politicians in Arizona are catching a lot of flack for the tough immigration law they passed recently. They had to do something. Illegal immigrants destroy their property, shoot their dogs, and recently killed a rancher and shot a deputy sheriff. The newsboys are having a field day with that law decrying having your papers checked as a Gestapo-like tactic. Funny thing about papers. I get checked at traffic stops and have to show my license, registration, and proof of insurance. Doesn’t bother me a bit. I’ve got nothing to hide.

What the media won’t tell you is that Mexico passed an even more stringent law in 2000 to protect its borders. Under the Mexican law, illegal immigration is a felony, punishable by up to two years in prison. Immigrants who are deported and attempt to re-enter can be imprisoned for 10 years. Visa violators can be sentenced to six-year terms. Mexicans who help illegal immigrants are considered criminals.

Arizona has a huge problem and it’s attempting to correct it, but critics say they’re “un-American.” You can be sure a lot of these elitist critics don’t live along the Arizona-Mexican border. It’s easy to be holier-than-thou when you don’t have a dog in the fight.

Here’s what I have to say to the critics and politicians making such hoopla over Arizona’s law. “Get over it. God gave you some common sense. Use it. Now shut up and run our country like it’s your house.” Here’s what I mean.

When you leave home for a night, a trip, or even a quick errand, do you leave your door unlocked? I don’t. I secure my borders, arm the alarm system, and if a trespasser thinks he can sneak in and take my flatscreen because he needs to buy street drugs, he’s in for a free stay at the Crossbars Hotel.

Or how about this. You come home from a grueling day at work only to find a fellow with a shaggy head of hair and a nasty 1970 “Give Peace A Chance” T-shirt hooking a hose and a long extension cord to your garage’s outlet and faucet. “Oh,” says this neighbor down the block who hasn’t worked in a year but always has money for cigarettes, “I didn’t think you’d mind if I hook up to some water and power. Mine’s been cut off.”

The next sound you hear is a cord and hose being ripped loose.

Run your country like you run your house.

How about this? It’s a Saturday morning, a beautiful day awaits you after a week of nothing but headaches and work issues. There’s a knock at your door.

“Hi, I’m Betty and I represent the homeowner association’s “No Empty Stomachs Committee.” You have a neighbor with no food to eat. We passed a regulation to the covenant that says people with a garage now have to provide one bag of groceries a week to the unfortunate fellow down the street.

“Are you talking about that shaggy-headed fellow down the street?”

With glee, “Why, yes, that’s him!”

“Lady, you got two seconds to get the hell out of here.”

Run your country like your house.

Check out this scenario. You need some help with your landscaping and a friend recommends a fellow who sounds a bit like Fidel Castro. He even looks like Fidel but you’re a nice guy, and you do need some help. You invite the fellow inside and offer him some tea. He sips the ice-cold tea complete with a sprig of mint and drops a bomb on you in Spanglish.

“Eef you want me to wurk, you speak el español. Yo no hablo English.”

“Excuse me, who’s paying whom here. Don’t let the door hit you in el trasero on the way out!”

Run your country like you run your house.

So here you are watching the Discovery Channel present yet another documentary on what will happen when an asteroid five miles wild slams into the Kalahari Desert. Some fellow with a British accent who sounds like Sir David Attenborough is predicting the end of civilization. “And as a colossal cloud of cosmic dust obscures the sun for years, all life on Earth will perish beneath a mile-thick ice cap and the ecosystem will utterly collapse so that not even a solitary Atlantic puffin survives, not even a microorganism like the lowly but elegant amoeba.”

You find it hard to sleep; holy cow, a rock five miles wide! The coming apocalypse flies through your mind all night. At dawn a sound like a jackhammer awakens you. That pesky woodpecker is back at work on your chimney, and for some reason he prefers Saturday mornings just after sunrise. But no, you can’t just eradicate the little fellow because the little lady across the street, a self-proclaimed ornithologist, has proclaimed it to be the rare “tripled-toed yellowbelly flea-flicker.” She won’t even let you replace the weathered boards it pecks on. The chimney looks like the devil. All the neighbors complain. Out comes the pellet gun.

Or how about this. Let’s say your home sits in a neighborhood near a beautiful park. The problem is all the neighborhood kids take a short cut through your backyard to get to the park. Not only have they worn a path through your beautiful lawn, they also vandalize your possessions. They get a kick out of pushing your fountain over, trampling your flowers, and now they’re even tossing a rock or two at your windows. What do you do? Put up a sign that says, “Please be nice?” Of course not, you catch the little punks in the act, grab them by the neck, and drag them to their house and demand a stop to this nonsense.

Run your country like it’s your house.

Or how about this, a neighbor, in a moment of undisciplined euphoria, spends six months’ budget, $18,000, on a gold Rolex. Then he asks you if he can borrow two month’s mortgage money. Sounds like a member of Congress doesn’t he.

“No thanks, pal. Don’t spend money you don’t have.”

Well, hmmmm you’re thinking, this guy makes sense.

But wait, all is not well. Out by my driveway I see folks gathering with signs saying I’m unfair. They say I’m selfish. They say I should leave my doors unlocked so the homeless can find shelter in a storm. They want me to contribute to a collection so the guy down the street can have water and power and give him groceries too. What a deal. He gets everything and still doesn’t have to work.

Another sign says “Learn Spanish. It’s fun.” And the woodpecker? I have to watch my house fall apart so it can raise a brood of fuzzy-head chicks. And one more thing, they tell me, is coming. The homeowners association plans to build a sidewalk through my backyard so the kids will have a nicer path to the park. “You’ll find it advantageous not to have to cut as much grass,” reads the memo they sent.

Well you know what. No deal on any of the above. I don’t care what these people think. You know why? Because they don’t value hard work and sacrifice. Because they pervert altruism to legitimize being sorry and no-count. Worst of all, they don’t even live in my neighborhood. They’re professional protesters with no dog in the fight, but they’re such good people aren’t they. Baloney.

If I let them have their way, I won’t have a home I can be proud of. If I give in to them, they’ll drag me down with some foolish pie-in-the-sky idealism not grounded in common sense.

My grandfather felt his house was all the better for not having rats and cats in it. Our country would be all the better if we vote out all the career politicians and replace them with leaders … if there are any left who will run our country like you and I run our household.