Canadian Politics Today

This is an adaptation of a letter I wrote to my clergy, in response to the synagogue's missive about being compassionate to immigrants:

As you should know, I did not support Donald Trump. I am a lifelong liberal Democrat My vote for Hillary caused some hard feelings with some people to whom I feel close. Opinions on discrete matters and issues need to be based on facts, not emotions. The fact is that the separation of parents and children started in 2014. I doubt it was Obama's decision personally. I do not feel this lies at Trump's doorstep.

I do not feel that enforcement of U.S. law equals "nativist sentiment." As much as the caring side of me would like to solve the world's problems, the fact is that most countries in this world are anarchic, kleptocratic and violent. Though I am not an adherent of Thomas Hobbes, regretfully he was right when he wrote that "No arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death: and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short." The United States has created something better. If we encourage the chaotic onslaught of the billions of people that have not organized a civil society in this manner, the world will have no "shining lights" to which to look. Israel, the United States, Canada, Great Britain, Australia, and to a lesser extent the Scandinavian countries, the countries of the European continent, and Costa Rica are parts of this very limited constellation. When the West abandoned the respective colonial empires there was hope that each of these societies would find, in their own way, the path to civil society. For far, it has not proven to be the case.

People have cited the Bible on behalf of “humane” treatment of immigrants. See Exodus 22:21, Leviticus 19:33-34 and 24:22, Deuteronomy 27:19. This does not mean to fling open the gates. The Old Testament and Western democracy are not suicide pacts. I have not studied enough text to know what the passages mean.

Our duties to the immigrants are balanced by our responsibility to our own country. The people who "need to live safely and securely" to quote a recent clerical missive, include us. Bringing an unlimited number of people who have never lived in a society that exists as a free society largely because of self-discipline is not congruent with safety and security. What we are doing is dumping people more or less at random on communities not equipped to cope with them. The call for compassion does not come with any program for education of these people, either in English or in the ways of civil society. Bringing people in so that they can experience the glories of incarceration or at best severe disorientation is cruel. What is needed is to condition aid to these countries on allowing the donors to administer the aid.

In short, all issues of contemporary concern need to be discussed in a calm, cool and collected manner. Not one stoked by emotion.

Then I suggest unshackling yourself from the bible.

Apologies. I was responding to a letter signed by the three Rabbis, two Cantors and one part-time Cantor that made reference to the Bible. I edited out, for obvious reasons their names and the name of the synagogue (Jewish house of worship) in question.

I agree in reason over emotions.  We see a lot of emotion-led, fact-less hysterics on all sides in recent years regarding immigration, left & right.

It's an emotional issue.  If you lean to the left people tend to be too compassionate at times & disregard reason, if you lean to the right people tend to be too heartless & hateful at times & disregard reason (ie: womp womp).

You have to carefully balance doing what's in the interests of people already in the country vs those coming here seeking a better life.  If you lean too much one way you'll end doing things like Trump does like separating kids & banning all Muslims, if you lean too much the other way it can make locals legit resentful and hurt social cohesion.

Basically you just have to do what's fair for everyone involved.

The red section is a straw man.   No one has advocated this, probably not even the rabbis you’re replying to.

What is the limit then? In round numbers.

What is the limit then? In round numbers.

Ask someone who gives a crap how many people America lets in....  I don't really care.  But to say one side says "let them all in" is a lie.

Ask someone who gives a crap how many people America lets in....  I don't really care.  But to say one side says "let them all in" is a lie.

Yes, that's the problem. The Left doesn't care how many illegals or migrants come in. The Right does.
I think Trump is going to pick up support over this, and those who were wavering in their support will feel more need to stick to him now.

Democrats don’t care how many illegals come in???   That might be the dumbest thing you’ve ever said.   Of course they do.  They would never get a vote if they were for open borders.

You are making up straw men that there are these people who want to open the borders and let everyone in.   These people don’t actually exist except in your rhetoric and maybe your mind.

But you can't say how many is too many. I wager if you asked American liberals how many illegals they think should be allowed to come across the border and settle in the US they couldn't come up with a number either. But there has to be a number somewhere. This sort of thing tends to feed on itself, as we saw in Europe, and if something isn't done about it it produces very poor results.

I notice you didn't comment on my statement that this controversy would solidify Trump's support. Because even those who aren't happy about kids being taken from their parents are going to feel supportive of Trump trying to block illegals at the border.

I will repost a peritnent comment from an article I posted once before.



Your argument reached me just as I was returning to the work of Karen Stenner, who wrote a book about the forces that tear countries apart. Some people, who she calls “libertarians,” strongly prefer freedom and diversity, she wrote, while others, who she calls “authoritarians,” possess a perhaps innate discomfort with difference. They prize sameness and unity, even if coercion is needed to enforce it. Countries devolve into conflict when the predispositions of the authoritarians are activated.

They hire fascists to do jobs that liberals won’t do.

In her telling, showily, absolutely insisting on unconstrained diversity “pushes those by nature least equipped to live comfortably in a liberal democracy not to the limits of their tolerance, but to their intolerant extremes.” And once authoritarians are activated, the outcome depends in part on how its conservatives react. If they side with the authoritarians, repressive policies follow. But under the right conditions, conservatives can be counted on to rally behind pluralism and tolerance. One condition is that they feel reassured "regarding established brakes on the pace of change, and the settled rules of the game.”

Thus my alarm. When it comes to immigration, many conservatives presently fear that there are no breaks on the pace of change, and that the rules of the game are being broken.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/03/debating-immigration-policy-at-a-populist-moment/518916/

Just because the right throws out hyperbolic and nonsensical accusations it doesn't mean there is a crisis.

You will see what a crisis is if the numbers coming across our border start picking up, as they seem likely to do. Then we will see how bold, Sir Selfie reacts when his Quebec support starts seeping away.