Fr. Greeley – Immigration Bigotry “projects its twisted sickness”
I fear that Fr. Greeley may be displaying the ever popular phenomena of prejudice, projection and prejudgment (to which we are all susceptible) towards everyone who may have concerns over the immigration reform debate.
Bigotry never goes away. When it becomes unfashionable, it goes underground and waits until a new hate group appears into which it can project its twisted sickness. However, for pure irrational rage, the current crop of nativists are some of the worst to come along since the Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s or those God-fearing Protestants who burned convents in Boston in the 19th century.
Bigotry and hate? Why would the good father assume malicious hate upon those who have differing points of view or perspectives that differ from his? Unless …
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Father Greeley is playing the same card against those who have legitimate concerns about our government condoning and even rewarding illegal immigration as the petulant White House. Nothing coming from Father Greeley surprises me any longer. I hold him with the same regard that I do his fellow opportunists like Bill Clinton, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton.
Among the majority of Americans who voice concerns about illegal immigrants receiving massive amnesty are many legal immigrants including Latinos. The bills that are being pushed though Congress are as dangerous to the sovereignty and well-being of this county as any threat of terrorism–and are dangerous to illegal immigrants as well as to us all.
The fact is that we cannot afford to have porous borders and unaccounted millions of unassimilated people in this country whose primary allegiance is to Mexico and not the United States. If we cannot control immigration into the United States and reward those who have broken the lawes then we will soon cease to exist at the United States much longer. And that will impact most tragically upon poor, ill-educated illegal immigrants who will not find the economic opportunities here as they have done for the last forty years.
Comment by John Hetman — June 1, 2007 @ 10:11 PM
What I’m noticing is that there is a habit with the clergy to comment on social issues without feeling any need to look at stats of any kind. Ray Arroyo several days ago on EWTN had one person from the Heritage Foundation who gave stats as to how much illegals cost the taxpayer and he was followed by a spokesman for the USCCB who repeatedly criticized the previous person who had given such stats but who himself never once supplied stats to refute the Heritage person. Without stats, such people depend heavily on ad hominem approaches. John Paul II also made this mistake in regard to the death penalty when he implied that life sentences sufficiently protect society but he supplied no stats at all on the matter and Brazil, the largest Catholic country, has had no death penalty since 1855 and Rio has one of the worst murder rates.
In short somehow the clergy is getting used to commenting on social studies without doing the research that social studies requires. Hence the Church should have praised workers’ unions but later when unions abused their power at times, there should have been further encyclicals addressing that side of unions.
Comment by bill bannon — June 2, 2007 @ 10:30 PM
It’s time to haul out the old saw that statistics are damned lies.
Not all statistics are worthless – but they are more easily warped and abused than statiscicans think. Brandishing statistics isn’t a good argument, any more than slurring your opponent as a bigot is.
I’d say Greely’s essay is deep-adhominem-fried essay with a few valid points.
Comment by Histor — June 4, 2007 @ 11:52 PM
You know you wrote a bad essay when you make Mark Steyn sound like a Rhodes Scholar.
http://www.suntimes.com/news/steyn/393216,CST-EDT-steyn20.article
Comment by Histor — June 5, 2007 @ 12:02 AM