It is mordantly amusing to listen to progressives on MSNBC bemoan the incursion of ICE into the “sanctuary” of churches attempting to extend their invisible force field around illegal immigrants. These are the same people who have shown no respect or reverence for Americans who assert their religious beliefs regarding, to take one infamous example, compelled speech.
In the case of church sanctuary, they are oh, a couple centuries behind the times. Allowing a church to harbor criminals and others sought by the state is a tradition that goes back to Roman times, and here and there it has been bolstered by the law. Not here and now however. The tradition makes no sense in modern times, and if churches have no legal grounds to protect lawbreakers, the claims of so-called sanctuary cities and states are weaker still.
The political and ideological Left has dashed itself on the rocks of illegal immigration, and based on some of the talking head nonsense I saw on MSNBC and CNN today, they are still dashing. When they are not crying “Think of the children!” (Note: law-breaking parents who put their children in untenable positions by their parents’ conduct are 100% accountable for those children’s plight) the apologists for illegal border-crossers are asserting that they are “human beings” and deserve to “have their humanity respected and recognized.” That’s fine: nobody denies that they are human beings. They are also human beings who do not belong in the United States.
This, for some strange reason, seems difficult for some progressives and Axis hacks to grasp. One of the two women I saw rending their garments over the Trump deportation policy, stuttered, babbled, shrugged, sighed and finally said, “I just can’t believe that this is happening! It’s so cruel!” Her partner in absurd “Good Illegal Immigrant” rhetoric nodded and agreed that deporting illegal immigrants who weren’t violent criminals is a violation of human rights.
There is apparently, according to these revolutionaries, a human right to live anywhere you want to. This is pure “Imagine-ism,” probably caused by hearing John Lennon’s fatuous paean to brainless utopianism one time too many. Both women also bemoaned the “collateral damage” of deportations. All law enforcement has “collateral damage” to families and others who depend on the law-breakers. That is a reason not to break laws, not to stop enforcing them.
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Bonus cultural literacy quiz: Who is that lovely young actress playing Esmeralda in that clip from “The Hunchback of Notre Dame”? No cheating, now: this is an ethics blog…
Ethics Alarms 
Hamburg, post allied bombing, WWII
Ethics Alarms doesn’t have many discussions of foreign policy, in part because policy is usually less about ethics and more about practical realities, theory and policy. What discussion we do have involves leadership, a secondary passion here. Warfare, in contrast, is an ethics category, but also a grand, meta-ethics morass that isn’t a safe space for ethics generally. I regard war as the ultimate ethical anomaly where the rules and theories break down. We cannot avoid encountering mobius strip sequences like..
War is inherently unethical.
Sometimes war is an unavoidable and utilitarian necessity.
In such cases, it is essential to end such a war as quickly as possible.
The quickest and the most ethical way to end such a war as quickly as possible is by overwhelming and uncompromising force.
Uncompromising force inevitably involves the maximum loss of innocent life, and is unethical.
Half-measures prolong the damage of war and are also unethical.
Wait…where were we again?
My father—the kindest man I ever knew, a grievously wounded war hero and a natural leader who hated guns, detested war (but hated what he saw at the death camp he helped liberate more), would have devoted his life to the military service of his country if he could have and who told his son that if he chose to duck the draft during the Vietnam War that he had his full support—would repeatedly rail against modern surgical tactics designed to avoid civilian deaths at all costs as madness, and a symptom of weak resolve and cowardly leadership. His reasoning: “We could not have won World War II if the news services had been allowed to publicize what war does to civilian populations. It is as simple as that. We would have lost, and Hitler would have won, killed millions more, and divided up the world between Germany, Japan and the Soviet Union. The public had no concept about the horrible things we had to do, and that I participated in, to win that war. If one side is ruthless and the other side is more concerned about collateral damage than winning…and the ruthless side knows it, then ruthless wins.
He died after only a year of Barack Obama’s Presidency, but believed him to be a dangerously deluded and ignorant man regarding the use of power and military force.
I thought about all of this as I read texagg04’s Comment of the Day on the final item of yesterday’s Morning Warm-up. which began,
Here is his Comment of the Day, which Dad would have admired, on the post. “Morning Ethics Warm-up 7/7/17”: Continue reading →