I’m sorry I didn’t do a more Thanksgiving-y post yesterday but that shooting in DC got me riled up – and also got me thinking.
Trump announced last night that reverse-migration is now our goal, and this is the correct way to go. And everyone who is against this – even the leadership of my Catholic Church – should understand it and get on board with it. This is serious business and we need to understand what is truly just and merciful here.
I do want to be helpful. I do want to bring aid to the suffering. I don’t want some poor person to die because they’re in the “wrong” religion or ethnic group or sexual orientation of what have you. It is hideously wrong – here in 2025 – that some people are still being killed over such matters and I do want us, as a people, to do what we can to stop it and rescue those who are most immediately threatened with harm. But we have to be sensible.
I’m a pretty knowledgeable person. Over my 61 years of life, I have studied a lot of things intensely, especially history. For most nations on Earth, I can give you at least a short rundown on their history. I do know that in lots of places tribe, religion and ethnic grouping are of vast importance in deciding what sort of life a person is going to have, good or bad. But even with all my knowledge, I couldn’t begin to unwind for you all the nuances of the tribes of Somalia, Afghanistan and Nigeria. Click on this link: it is a list of all the ethnic groups in Nigeria. You’ll be scrolling down for a bit. There’s a lot of them. And that is just the tribes. When you get into religion you add a whole, new layer of demographic murk. Sure, its about half Muslim, bit less than half Christian with a small number of African traditionalists…but the Muslims have a host of sects with sometimes very different ideas of what Islam is. Meanwhile, over on the Christian side you’ve got a host of different denominations. What does this all mean? That in a lifetime of intensive study, you couldn’t possibly unravel all the various ethnic and religious strands of Nigeria and come to any solid conclusion about how the people there will react to particular situations.
And we’re supposed to be able to vet these people? Make such a solid judgement. Know with high certainty that transferred to the USA they won’t be a problem? How? How could we possibly? Sure, as we’re a society based upon Christianity we can probably do a pretty good job with Protestant and Catholic Nigerians (though, even there, lots of nuance! It isn’t like all Protestant Nigerians are carbon-copies of American Protestants) but how are we to unravel all the various strands of Islam? Even Muslims can’t. And then overlay that with the various tribal and cultural differences. They say when you go to a foreign land that you should take care most of all not to offend the locals. Which is true. But how can an outsider know what would be offensive? As an American I am likely to make a faux pas in Germany…which is an European country based on Christianity. Think of how boorish I might be in Nigeria even if I were trying to be polite?
All we can say for certain as regards places like Nigeria, Afghanistan and Somalia is that for decades now the people there have been engaged in vicious internal conflicts which revolve around different ethnicity and religion. In other words, even they can’t sort themselves out. Even they – who live next to each other – can’t compose their differences and get along. But we’re supposed to import these people to the USA and other Western nations and we’ll get them to calm down? Not in a million years could we do this – not with all the good will in the world.
It is still early in the time line but the first glance at the shooter in DC is that he’s an Afghan brought here under Biden as one of our allies in the Afghan war. Which might all be true enough. But we’re also learning that at least for some time now he’s been on welfare – along with his wife and children. That he has no identifiable skills. This makes me kinda curious about just what he did for us in Afghanistan. Whatever it was, it didn’t create a love for America and Americans in his heart. For all we know he was just a stool pigeon who had to get out of Dodge. But, regardless, here is what happened: we bet a life that he would be ok here. As it turns out, the life of a 19 year old National Guardswoman. It wasn’t his handlers who paid. It wasn’t the advocates of refugees. It wasn’t the Democrats who call us racists. It wasn’t the shooter’s family or friends or those who helped him navigate the system to obtain benefits. Nope. None of them. A life was bet, but it wasn’t theirs. It was Sarah Beckstrom’s. Who’s father had to hold her hand on Thanksgiving as she breathed her last.
The bottom line is that every time we allow a foreigner to move into the USA, we are betting lives on the outcome. What everyone must ask themselves before letting any foreigner in is, “am I willing to bet my life that this person won’t go bad?”. And if you can’t answer a resounded “yes” to that question, then its best that foreigner not come in. It is an absolute thing – if the foreigner is not here then that foreigner can never do anything bad here. If the foreigner is here then infinite possibilities of bad open up. So, as I spin the Wheel O’Foreigners if it lands on a Spanish lawyer coming in to visit Disneyland I’m going to place my bet…but it it winds up on some guy from a failed State wracked by ethno-religious violence…probably not gonna place that bet.
And if that guy from the failed State has provided some service to my nation? Well, then I’m going to be a lot more helpful. Still might not let him into my country, but I’ll be helpful. Like working with a friendly nation of similar ethno-religious makeup where I can settle him. So, maybe the Afghan guy goes to Morocco? Fine by me. I’ll even set him up with a pension.
And if Morocco won’t take him? Then I’m going to ask why – as the Moroccans are going to be far better at understanding the nuances than I am and if they tell me I’d be mad to let him settle in Morocco then while I still might try to find somewhere else, I’d be stupidly insane to allow him into my country. That is, I won’t bet Sarah’s life that I should let this guy in.
And this is simply just – and merciful. Do what we can to help within the confines of reality. There are lots of places in the world. Being in the USA isn’t the only place to be safe and prosperous. And, also, we are not responsible for every bad thing going on. At the end of the day, each nation does have to sort itself out. I get why the various tribes want to kill each other but I also say it is just stupid and they should stop. And if they never stop, then it’ll just have to go the way they want it…without me having to import the ethnic conflict.
Will you bet your life? That is the question. After all, you bet your life every day. When you take a shower, you’re betting your life you can get cleaned up without slipping and cracking your head open. It is, of course, a low-risk bet. While there are probably some hundreds who die each year from slips in the shower, when you bounce that against the gigantic number of showers taken each year the risk is vanishingly small. But it is still there! Each choice is a bet – and a bet of a life. Letting in a Japanese telecom executive and his wife who want to do some shopping in Beverly Hills is an astonishingly low-risk bet. Letting in an unskilled, unemployed Afghan and his family…much higher risk. And, hey, you still might want to risk it…but, remember: you are betting a life. Probably not yours, but a life nonetheless. How much risk will you take? In other words, suppose you let the Afghan in but it would be you to be made to pay the price of anything he does wrong? You’d take a long and hard look at it before you said, “yes”, that is for certain.
And that is how we have to approach this. Much as I’d like to have the shooter’s sponsors in jail for life over this, I can’t do that. But that must be our mindset in deciding who we allow in. If we don’t take this mindset, then we’re playing with matches in a room filled with gunpowder. We have to get much more serious about this whole thing – while not losing our mercy and humanity. While still being willing to help. To do what we can. And, yes, to even still take some in…but only those we’re very sure about. I don’t want to ever have a father have to kiss his little girl goodbye on Thanksgiving because we were unconcerned about who we let into the country.
Blogs For Victory 
Given the pushback the USA is getting from the local Catholic Bishops and the Pope regarding immigrants (especially illegals), perhaps that would be a valid question to ask them. If you’re insistent on the US take in these immigrants and / or keeping those already here, would you take FULL responsibility for anything negative those people commit? Would you be responsible for any cost they incur, including housing, medical, education and basic necessities? Would you be responsible for making sure they are gainfully employed such that they create some level of a net positive? Should they commit a crime, would you be responsible for any associated cost including legal fees, court cost, fines, settlements? Should they cause the death of someone else in any situation other than self-defense, would you compensate the family for that loss, including burial costs and a significant death benefit?
We know the churches cannot possibly make ANY of these guarantees. Many churches, but in particular the Catholic Church, cannot (or choose to not) ensure the clergy within their own ranks follow basic human decencies, to the point where the churches are already paying out tens of millions of dollars in settlements. And it’s not like “the church” is a revenue generating entity. By in large, the vast majority of money they receive is through the charity of their congregants and local businesses. And up till recently, the US has provided millions of taxpayer money to them for a variety of supposed good deeds.
But they feel necessary to push these responsibilities and associated costs on the citizens of a country that is already considerably benevolent. Most Catholics I know find the call from Rome and her bishops as largely irrational without a real understanding of the demands they place on others, especially when that demand is also placed on non-Catholics too. It’s not like they have nothing else to do. Perhaps they should spend more time shepherding their own sheep.
My personal observation is that most American Catholics don’t believe the Church has any authority beyond that of dogma and the rituals of worship. The global Left’s influence on the Church is so blatant that it has eroded a lot of respect for anything the Church represents when it comes to anything else and the sense I get is that Americans say to the Pope, et al, “stay in your own lane”.
We saw the Church get tangled up in politics with Vatican II and understand that the resulting “sex scandals” stemmed from the Church’s politically-influenced welcome to homosexuals in the priesthood. The Church is still reeling from the experience, as mostly naive older priests and bishops bought into claims of remorse and promises to reform when gay priests got caught molesting post-pubescent boys (not “pedophilia”) and focused on “protecting the Church” thinking that time in some kind of religious counseling followed by reassignment would solve the problems. Learning that sexual predators do not “reform” was a harsh and expensive lesson for the Church but its leaders, especially non-American leaders, still want the Church to be guided by political agendas.
We also need to understand that the Church, aside from its core dogma and ritual, is very different in South and Central America than it is here, partly because “capitalism” as we know it is not the same there as it is here. The political differences are far too complex to address here, but suffice it to say that there are legitimate reasons to distrust capitalism for people who have only experienced it in those countries—and that forms the matrix for the Church in those countries as well.
I guess I would say that American capitalism and Catholicism are more like “Leave It To Beaver” while in South and Central America they are more like “Chinatown”. Given an increasingly leftward lean in the clergy in general added to the influence of South and Central American bishops and cardinals we will inevitably see an effort to use the Church to influence/direct political policies in the United States. Fortunately, there is what I hope is a growing skepticism in American clergy toward the globalism and Leftism of the Church abroad. I actually heard an American priest, in a homily during a Latin Mass, assure the congregation that reading the writings of the late Pope would not be considered heresy.
In the meantime the new, American, Pope is supposedly doing some interesting things, like freeing up a lot of Vatican money to help the poor. We can only wait and see how much of this is productive and not merely performative. In other words, “put your money where your mouth is or STFU”.
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It is a mixed bag and we grant a bit of leeway because the Church is supranational and has always held that humans have a right to move around – what has happened, however, is that these two correct things have been twisted all out of recognition…and while I bet most Catholics involved are being suckered by a sob story, it seems pretty clear that at least some senior people involved in Catholic charity to migrants are malevolent. I mean it says right there in Catechism that nations have a right to control their borders and that migrants are obligated to obey the laws and customs of their host nation; to take that and somehow think it means we can’t boot out an illegal or go after really bad people among the migrants is rather absurd, but that is the position that some hold.
But this whole series of events has got me thinking and the crux of the matter is what constitutes being just and merciful to the migrants and to the citizens? As per usual, for a Catholic, I want a clear definition of terms! Is it really just to the migrant to shovel him and his family into a modern, American metropolis where he doesn’t speak the language, doesn’t know local customs and lacks any readily usable skill to find work in our modern, advanced society? Remember, some of these people – and not just the Muslims – are coming from some very backwards parts of the globe. And it should be kept in mind that this isn’t a new problem. In the 19th century we started to receive a lot of Polish migrants – the Poles being fed up with German, Austrian and Russian rule of their homeland and desiring a new start in the New World. But even with these – all of them Poles, all of them Christian, all of them Western – there was a distinct difference in quality between Poles from German-governed Poland and Russian-governed Poland. The “German” Poles were better educated, more civilized and more easily adapted themselves to America while the “Russian” Poles were ignorant, dirty and had a very hard time fitting in. So, too, with the varieties of Italian, Russian, Jewish, etc migrants we received. There has always been a need to vet the arrivals…first to determine if they are a threat but just as important to determine if they’ve even got a shot here.
We have to be selective under the best of circumstances…and when we’re dealing with millions, we have to be, in general, entirely negative. Too many all at once means we must take none at all…because, as I noted, we have no real way to determine which ones are good but once you start making exceptions then the exception becomes the rule.
This effort by some Church officials to insert the Church into migration politics seems quite comfortable with the fact that a significant number of these “immigrants” have the agenda of taking over host nations and then replacing Christianity with Islam. It’s as if the Crusades never happened. “Those who do not learn from history…”
If I am wrong you may feel free to correct me, but my understanding is that the Afghan national who shot two of our National Guard members worked for the CIA. He was also here on a temporary stay and is in the country illegally.
Speaking of illegal orders….
I think much of our problem here is that too many people suffer from suicidal empathy and don’t know the difference between love and tolerance. As Christians we are instructed to love everyone, but we are also not instructed to tolerate everything. Jesus did not tolerate the money changers and those who disrupted society and disrespected His Fathers house, and that’s exactly what millions of illegal immigrants are doing. Do not be accepting of this. It is our Christian duty to protect our families and culture from the forces of evil, and people who come here to take advantage of our benevolence, are evil. They are human just as we are. The land they came from offers the same God given bounty we found here, and their neglect or inability to build their own society does not give them the right to come and enjoy what we built … which effectively diminishes what actual citizens will receive.
When the Vatican allows Muslim immigrants to live inside their walls, I might listen to them. But until then, tell the Pope to STFU. He’s not a religious man, he’s a Leftist
“He’s not a religious man, he’s a Leftist”
Actually, he is both, trying to square the circle, walking a thin line between politics and religion. So far he has not gotten too globally political, coming down pretty much on traditional Catholic teaching, walking the walk to some extent like opening Vatican areas for the homeless to sleep and be fed and refusing to wear the ornate clerical garb except for rituals, instead just wearing plain white robes.
Knowing the Left’s love of “let’s you and him fight” I would need to see what, exactly, he has said and not rely on Agenda Media translations, explanations, etc.
So the Democrats have started a “fight club”, comprised of the strongest women they have, including Mark Kelly. And their only intention is to fight us I suppose. There is no substance behind the movement other than to be violent so …..
LET’S FIGHT. Get in their faces. It’s time to be confrontational Christians
As in a revival of the Knights Templar?
Something like that. Or worse. Depends on them.
For many years the Templars were fearsome warriors
Yep to all of that – but in the post I’ll be doing shortly, I add another wrinkle to the assault. But the main thing is that we have a Global Establishment hell bent on destroying not just America, not just the West, but what we call Civilization.
https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1BoPogYjxZ/
Brilliant compilation of violent rhetoric from the Left.
I thought so too and re: your list of actions taken to destroy the American culture is spot on. We are at war …. Or at least they are. We had better be prepared for anything …
Sadly, none of these lists of incitements to violence will affect the mindset of Dems who are so totally focused on Identity Politics that anything, no matter how violent or despicable, is still acceptable if it is AGAINST TRUMP.
You have to wonder what kind of mental deficiency allows people to substitute blind hatred for someone held up to them as a symbol of All That Is Bad for simple objective analysis of reality.
I stand by my observation that the Left actively recruits personality disorders, then validates them as virtuous and proof of intellect, to create mindless robotic armies of zealots. When I was on the Left, it was relatively benign, compared to today, consisting mostly of “rebellion” in the form of silly clothes and Country Joe and the Fish singing “Waist Deep In The Big Muddy”. Actual violence, like the assassinations of the 70s, was shocking and not claimed by the general masses of Identity Politics hippies and leftover hippies.
For me, it took the ripping away of the mask of kindness and compassion shown by the New Left and statements like “she’s too ugly to rape” to generate the kind of distaste it took to shift away from my admittedly shallow alignment with the Left, and I think a lot of my fellow travelers of the time were also turned off by the harshness of the new rhetoric, even though there were efforts to soften it with Bubba-speak.
But the water has been gradually heated, to the point where now it is nearly boiling and we have a whole segment of our society quite comfortable with this temperature. That is due not to increased allegiance to the dogmas of the Left but, I think, solely to the success of planting and then nurturing virulent hatred of certain PEOPLE. Once they had success in creating a “Trump” that could be the focus of so much rage and fury and hatred, the Left created a force of negativity that now seems to excuse any level of violence if it can be cloaked in the pretense that it is Against Trump.
You have to wonder what kind of mental deficiency allows people to substitute blind hatred for someone
Oh I wonder about that quote a bit lol. I also wonder how in the hell Democrats can vote for young, woefully inexperienced “politicians” to govern major cities. That makes no sense.
” I also wonder how in the hell Democrats can vote for young, woefully inexperienced “politicians” to govern major cities. That makes no sense.”
But it makes all the sense they need—-as long as a candidate is not Trump in any way, they will vote for him/her/it. They don’t think in terms of “governing”—that is all just some kind of magic stuff that just happens, like when the rent or mortgage gets paid when you are young. It is really just picking a tribe and then wearing the jersey, no matter who represents the tribe and as long as it is anti-Trump.