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President Trump’s executive order on immigration quickly reverberated through the United States and across the globe on Saturday, slamming the border shut for an Iranian scientist headed to a lab in Boston, an Iraqi who had worked as an interpreter for the United States Army, and a Syrian refugee family headed to a new life in Ohio, among countless others.
Around the nation, security officers at major international gateways had new rules to follow. Humanitarian organizations scrambled to cancel long-planned programs, delivering the bad news to families who were about to travel. Refugees who were airborne on flights when the order was signed were detained at airports.This is a complete nightmare. The United States, a country founded by immigrants, has closed its doors to those who need us most. Almost everyday I see the Statue of Liberty in the New York Harbor on my way to work, welcoming those who come to our shores. Now I feel that Donald Trump has, in essence, destroyed this beautiful statue, rendering her completely meaningless.
Reports rapidly surfaced Saturday morning of students attending American universities who were blocked from getting back into the United States from visits abroad. One student said in a Twitter post that he would be unable to study at Yale. Another who attends the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was refused permission to board a plane. Stanford University was reportedly working to help a Sudanese student return to California.
Now, even those with Green Cards who have gone back to their countries to visit may not be able to re-enter the United States. It doesn't matter who you are - if you are unfortunate enough to belong to a country on Donald Trump's hate list, you are not coming to this country. And for those who are in this country, they are effectively blocked from their families in their home country because those people will not be allowed here.
President Trump has declared that his reason for the hateful Executive Order is to keep us safe from terrorists. It is almost certain that this EO will be used as a recruiting tool for more terrorists. People will hate our country even more, and can they be blamed?
Yes, Donald Trump came out in favor of the pro lifers marching in Washington yesterday. But what good does it do to protect life in the womb if you show no concern for people once they are born? That is not a pro life position.
Donald Trump is my president, but he does not represent me in any way. I live in one of the most diverse cities in the world - New York City - and I see the beauty of all the different cultures that thrive in this city. To point the finger and accuse someone of being a terrorist because of their religion and/or their country of origin is prejudice and hate on the grandest of scales. It is truly worthy of the most despotic dictators.
Donald Trump is no better than the "terrorists" he claims to be fighting against. In fact, he is worse.
Donald Trump is our National Nightmare.
This is the man we elected president of the free world? God have mercy on us all.
"Donald Trump is no better than the "terrorists" he claims to be fighting against. In fact, he is worse."
ReplyDeleteI occasionally glance at your blog in order to get an idea of how the other half thinks, or better feels. And have never before left a comment.
But the hysteria evinced by this last entry deserved some response. The response is that you should try and get a grip. You seem particularly blithe and nonchalant with the lives and fortunes of your "fellow" citizens when it comes to salving your own conscience with their sacrifices.
Why don't you go to Syria and solve their problems over there rather than demanding that my children be put at risk for the sake of your hyperventilating sensibilities.
"Donald Trump is our National Nightmare.
I don't know what your idea of a "nation" is, but I assume you have some idea of a collective identity in mind, one which you find compelling and affecting. Fine, have at it. But the U.S. is a political entity and not a religion, and you can practice your religion and indulge your masochistic impulses to your heart's content without dragging others along whose support you need, and apparently ungratefully simply assume is yours by right.
From my point of view, our national nightmare was manifest in the presence of a chief executive who used his administration to undermine the basic predicate of of our political association with his fascist notion of "positive liberty"; and with the imposition of insupportable legal burdens and punitive measures directed at those who once as free men and women had the political freedom to purchase, or not purchase as they decided, actuarial insurance.
Instead we found ourselves laboring under a left-fascist generated abomination designed by the ObamaCare architects; a system unworthy of a free people, or of any man or woman fit to be anything more than a sly peasant.
"This is the man we elected president of the free world? "
I don't know who you thought you were electing, but I was voting to fill the position of the chief executive of the Federal government.
Isolationist practices lead directly to war, as history has too often shown us, especially in the 20th century. "America First" is a sure fire recipe for disaster, as we have already seen.
DeleteDonald Trump has been in office for one week and is already on his way to destroying trade with the US second largest trade partner. He has criminialized innocent people for the mere fact of where they were born, and his policies are certain to create more terrorists. There have also been no known terrorists found among the many refugees from Syria or any other country. All terrorists have either been born in the west or naturalized citizens. So blocking people from other countries acoomplishes nothing but create more animosity and hate towards the US.
I appreciate your comment because it shows how people justify turning their backs on those in the greatest need.
If you think this man is going to save this country, I am afraid you are in for a rude awakening.
The U.S. citizenry has already had a rude awakening after experiencing decades of being reduced to grist for the social justice mill. That is how a man with no political credentials came to be president in the first place.
DeleteNow to return to the actual subject at hand and which I addressed initially.
You are sanctimoniously presuming to spend capital which is not yours to spend: and that would be the lives, security and prosperity of your fellow citizens, who serve it seems, as just so much stored capital upon which you feel free to draw.
The problem is not your religious sensibilities. You are free to donate your life, your energies, your liberty, bank account and opportunities to any needy person you happen to come across or manage to seek out.
The problem here is that you are placing items on an account which is not yours alone to debit, and through which you impose real and odious existential liabilities on every other citizen within the polity.
They have some say as well. You are free to give away all that you own, subject yourself to all manner of risks, indulge your sensitivities no end; and as long as the fallout is heaped upon your own head, very few of your fellow citizens are likely to object - or even care.
But that is not what you are doing is it.
I cannot imagine how someone with such a nonchalant attitude toward boundaries and prudence could possibly expect to protect their own children or elderly. But then, maybe you would not. After all, you cannot be held responsible - you are a work in progress.
"I appreciate your comment because it shows how people justify turning their backs on those in the greatest need. "
Unlike Obama, he's going to let persecuted Christians in. You know, Chaldeans. You may have heard of them. But perhaps they are not in need ...
You really don't give a damn about anyone other than yourself add those in your circle, do you? To quote our oresident - sad.
Delete"Catholic in BrooklynJanuary 29, 2017 at 12:10 PM
DeleteYou really don't give a damn about anyone other than yourself add those in your circle, do you? To quote our oresident - sad. "
Again, to try and refocus your mind on the topic at hand, your introduced topic; i.e., our polity and its purpose:
No one is preventing you from personally indulging your altruistic aspirations to your heart's content. You could no doubt declare that to your mind your own children have no more call on your solicitude or protection than an ISIS terrorist, or a Mexican drug cartel operative or gang member, and no one would gainsay your personal right to do so. No matter how undeserving of respect and counterproductive it seemed.
But what you are instead demanding, is that everyone else in this polity - their polity as well as yours, and their risked interests and futures within the polity as well as yours - adopt your [frankly, irresponsible] sensibilities as their personal and political commitment.
You are demanding that other people back the checks you chose to write; and in fact, also demanding that they protect your ability to do so ... while you float airily, if indignantly and unappreciatively, along.
Now, I do in fact "give a damn" to quote you, about others. I recognize a moral obligation and a duty to look after the welfare of the elderly and the young in my family as well my community of fellow citizens. And, unlike you apparently, I recognize that they do not exist merely as instruments through which one works out personal issues, but instead, as independent beings with rights and expectations of their own.
And I presume no right to smugly sell them down the river because of "feelings" which are expressions of a "work in process".
Your sense of entitlement vis-a-vis your "fellow" citizens (and once again I bracket the word 'fellow' in quotes) is, quite frankly, breathtaking.
It beggars the imagination to try and conceive of what sense of responsibility for the proximate physical security of your own offspring you might possibly have ... if that is, it mattered to you at all.
But you see no need to help others who are fleeing war, destruction and death caused at least in part by US actions. We on the US have been blessed with great material blessings. We are obligated if we call ourselves Christian to share with others.
DeleteYou are trying to come up with every reason why we should turn our backs and let people suffer and die. Please read Matthew 25.
"But you see no need to help others who are fleeing war, destruction and death caused at least in part by US actions. We on the US have been blessed with great material blessings. We are obligated if we call ourselves Christian to share with others. "
DeleteIf we gave them guns to fight back would that make you happy? I think not; and if you read on below I will suggest why: Your amazing sense of entitlement.
No, and on the contrary to your new framing, you, if you call yourself an American, need to be mindful of the sacrifices you are demanding of your fellow citizens in the name of an "America" as you envision it. Which, was of course, your original thrust.
Recall, that you started off positing this as an issue of liberty, justice, and American ideals; and decrying Trump's actions to ostensibly protect the people from terrorist infiltration, as racist and dictatorial. Making him worse in your remarkable evaluation than those doing the actual human slaughtering.
Whereas, I pointed out that there was plenty more, as many of us realized, to have decried in Obama's left-fascist power grabbing agenda aimed at the subversion of the rule of law. And, given the frequency of his legally questionable actions, you might have done so regularly in the past - had such categories of political overreach really bothered you.
What this has finally resolved down to, as you have continued to respond, is not about "America" the polity, or what Americans should do to maintain their security and political liberty with honor; but, rather, an issue of what you think Christians should think and do with the heritage of liberty and security they have been bequeathed, and are enjoined to preserve.
And what you are demanding be done, is that those who can, i.e., those who are capable of actually physically defending a rule of law polity, assist you in subverting it; so it potentially becomes infected by the Islamic hell which the putative "refugees" are fleeing in the first place.
Because, apparently, this will make you feel better, and comport with your idea of what the Scriptures enjoin.
Which notions of course, you could readily live out in any number of private ways, besides demanding the rest of us place our families on your altar of sacrifice.
Perhaps we should ask the Chaldean and the Assyrians and the Lebanese Christians who fled here what they think of importing their persecutors into this country wholesale.
No, Brooklyn, what you want is your fellow citizens to step up to the plate and shelve their agendas in order to accommodate yours.
Let's be clear about this. You do expect men with guns to come to your defense ultimately. They are after all what preserves this country as a refuge in the first place. You just don't want them to have the same say about it that you do.
If this were not the case, if your interests were purely spiritual as you now, with your second swipe at the issue seemingly contend, you would have already taken the habit and emigrated to Syria to preach, and defend, yourself.
I will let you have the last word.
DeleteCatholic in Brooklyn, check out the following link:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.patheos.com/blogs/davearmstrong/2016/05/catholic-churchs-wise-views-on-illegal-immigration.html
Catholic in Brooklyn, what do you have to say about what Jan Brewer did as Governor of Arizona in 2010?
ReplyDeleteI know she supported Trump, but I o really don't know much more about her.
DeleteChristians willing to disregard the values of the gospel because Dur Leader promises worldly gain and success. If he is THE Antichrist, rather just an antichrist, Christians just failed the Antichrist test--thinking he's good for them because he takes the Lord's name in vain in public. When God's justice is going to fall on the world many Western Christians will marvel at the rigor of God's justice against them. For their ancestors not only pillaged and raped much of the world in the name of Jesus, but even today they kill non-European people for material prosperity. They are not even aware of the fact that people in the Middle East have legitimate grievances against them for setting up dictators and fundamentalists for the oil pie, but when they are attacked they consider it just to fight and kill non-combatants as collateral damage but when they attack everyone should just shut up and accept it.
ReplyDeleteWell said. Nothing I can add to this.
DeleteCatholic in Brooklyn, check out the following link:
ReplyDeletehttp://townhall.com/columnists/michaelbarone/2017/01/27/america-first-is-not-a-threat-but-a-promise-n2277234
I could not disagree more. Check out this article regarding the possible effects of the immigration ban, a part o the America First campaign:
Deletehttps://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/28/us/politics/a-sweeping-order-unlikely-to-reduce-terrorist-threat.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=b-lede-package-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0
Catholic in Brooklyn, I know you don't have much respect for Raymond Arroyo these days. However, PLEASE check out the following link:
ReplyDeletehttps://youtu.be/K0T6v0mzsUo?t=4m15s
Catholic in Brooklyn, do you care much for EWTN personality Lauren Ashburn? If so, check out the following link:
ReplyDeletehttps://youtu.be/BeYSBu2419c?t=15m2s