Pope Francis urged political leaders on Monday to defend migrants, saying their safety should take precedence over national security concerns and that they should not be subjected to collective deportations....That's a principled argument against armies, too: nobody should put themselves in a position of being personally harmed to protect an unfeeling thing like 'a nation.' Right?
Calling for “broader options for migrants and refugees to enter destination countries safely and legally,” he said the human rights and dignity of all migrants had to be respected regardless of their legal status.
“The principle of the centrality of the human person ... obliges us to always prioritize personal safety over national security,” he said.
Well, no. It turns out that national security implies a greater degree of personal security than otherwise. The reason to have a nation is that it protects -- it protects citizens and their rights. If the nation fails, the rights are endangered and the citizens are in danger. They might be oppressed by anyone who comes over the horizon with a strong force and/or bigger guns.
The nation provides this security, and in it a kind of human flourishing becomes possible that is not possible without that security. That's why, Aristotle argues, the state has a kind of priority even over the family (let alone the individual). It is why nations were long thought, and in many places are still thought, to have a right to draft citizens to serve or even die in defense of the whole if necessary.
A more sophisticated solution is needed here. The principle of the centrality of the human person isn't a bad principle; it really is individuals who suffer, not collectives. But the other problems don't go away just because we recognize that fact; and a lot more individuals may end up suffering, for that matter, if their nations are allowed to fail.
6 comments:
Those two children who died recently are the perfect example of how so called 'compassion' kills. Those people were told that if they could get here with a child in tow, they had a golden ticket in. They took chances they shouldn't have taken based on bad information from the people who push this sort of pseudo
'compassion'.
How people can be so blind to this- intelligent people- is beyond me.
the human rights and dignity of all migrants had to be respected regardless of their legal status.
No. No individual has a human right to enter another nation without that nation's prior permission to enter. And that nation has no obligation, human or otherwise, to grant that permission.
Else, what's a social compact for? And absent that, what we have is a reversion to a pre-compact state of nature where might makes right, and migrants have no place to which to go for their own safety, however perceived. Just places to go to take over and displace those who already are present, rendering them migrants. Or enslave them.
Eric Hines
And this bit from his...message:
Solidarity must be concretely expressed at every stage of the migratory experience – from departure through journey to arrival and return
Return to what? They're migrants, not travelers.
Regarding his concern for the personal safety of migrants, two things: how about the personal safety of those already present in the targeted nation? And: how is it that forced entry into the targeted nation is the only way to see to the personal safety of the migrant? How about moving to improve their safety in their places of origin so they have lessened/no incentive to migrate? Does the Pope ignore that obvious approach because he was such an abject failure of that--including his ongoing failure regarding child molestation--in his native Argentina?
Sadly, maybe not; he's far from the only Progressive to cynically ignore that alternative solution. That's at the heart of our own Progressive-Democrats' hue and cry over Trump's musing over cutting off foreign aid to Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala if those nations don't cut out their own contributions to "migrant" caravans. Our own carefully ignore the simple fact that not a centavo, penny, or centavo of that foreign aid makes it to those who otherwise will migrate; it goes into the pockets of those Central American oligarchs.
Eric Hines
Sooner or later the Divine Counsel will bring down the Judgment Hammer on this body of believers that have killed the saints of YHVH.
The whole child trafficking thing is just the initial beginning, not the end.
People may not know this, but the archpriests often had internal civil wars over who was the P of Rome. After they broke away from Greek Orthodoxy, they promoted the Patriarch of Rome to the Pope, as if a mere human title meant he was the Vicar of Christ.
It is a morality that only focuses on the moment, as a child might. Actions have downstream consequences, and are also part of the moral calculation.
Pure virtue signalling by and for those who will never be affected. As AVI has said, you're giving away something that is not yours.
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