A helpful comment, followed by my clarification of my comments last week:
“The Indians dying out was not a "deliberate and systematic extermination of an entire race of people," which is what the word 'genocide' means. This is just another way that Leftists like to use guilt manipulation to make us feel bad about being Americans. Here is an article that does much more justice to the complex historical situation, which concludes that "To fling the charge of genocide at an entire society serves neither the interests of the Indians nor those of history" (http://hnn.us/articles/7302.html)
We can't punish your ancestors as much as some would like to, but we can and should do our best in our current political circumstances. I do believe that we should be hospitable to the 'sojourner', but how long would you let someone stay in your house without paying rent, especially if they added a new family member (thousands actually) every day?”
The Orthodox Heretic responds:
I’m not trying to make anyone feel bad about themselves, nor do I wish anyone to be punished. In fact, I have a lot of pride about what our country has been able to accomplish. I don’t feel guilty at all about living in America, and I don’t think you should either. After all, the ‘Native Americans’ were inevitably not truly ‘native,’ but probably won the use of this continent through bloodshed. That’s just kind of how nature works – “nature red in tooth and claw,” as they say.
But I insist on pointing to the moral inconsistency in saying that we, as legal residents, are morally justified in residing in America, while those who have recently come here are morally unjustified. My soul is disturbed by those who stand up in our country and argue that the Latin Americans broke the laws by sneaking over, and that therefore they should not be rewarded for their stealth with amnesty. Those sorts of conservatives look thoroughly ridiculous on their moral high-horse, because they also have no elevated moral status which would allow them to look down their noses at “illegals.”
I agree with you that there are some difficult practical issues that come with unrestricted immigration. That is why I mentioned that we, as the current legal residents of a country recognized by the United Nations, have the right to use our own cleverness to keep out illegal immigrants. In principle, I am not particularly disturbed by those efforts, although I have some concerns about the motivations of these patriots. Deep down, do they just want a “pure” society? How is such zeal, as demonstrated by the “Minute Men,” those self-appointed border-guards, in any way reconcilable with Christianity? But as I said last week, I don’t have any good answers of my own about how to deal with illegal immigration, except to insist that the “no-amnesty” folks either haven’t thought through this issue properly, or else are not much like Jesus.
