Elon Musk is an undemocratic disgrace

[Esquire Bertissimmo]

If a Christian politician has sworn to protect their people, does that duty override Christ’s direct commands to love without condition? If prioritizing one group of neighbors requires turning away another in need, isn’t that just a more respectable-sounding version of the priest and the Levite walking past the wounded man on the road? How does one square a moral obligation to fellow citizens with the much clearer moral obligation to “the least of these,” which Jesus explicitly tied to salvation?

If loving one neighbor must never come at the expense of another, should Christians have continued to just go along with slavery? Christian abolitionism materially harmed white Christians in the U.S. South, made them economically weaker, and arguably less safe—should Christians have ignored the suffering of enslaved people because helping them would come at a cost?

If open borders “don’t solve anything,” does that mean rejecting those seeking refuge is a better solution? If the argument is that governments should fix foreign nations rather than accept migrants, how does that square with the same nationalist instinct that says resources shouldn’t be spent on outsiders? The president you continue to support just callously slashed the entirety of USAID, when the option to instead reform and improve the institution was clearly available. If the real concern is cartels and crime, wouldn’t a Christian approach involve expanding safe, legal pathways rather than forcing desperate people into the arms of traffickers?

Of course, this concedes a point about illegal immigrants that's not exactly true. The very right-leaning CATO institute found that in Texas, from 2013 to 2022, illegal immigrants had a homicide conviction rate of 2.2 per 100,000, compared to 3.0 per 100,000 for native-born Americans (https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/illegal-immigrant-murderers-texas-2013-2022). White Texans with guns are killing more people than illegal immigrants. That itself isn't a reason to advocate for open borders - but it underscores how far your position is from "be not afraid".

The border is just one obvious moral quandry among many raised by the Trump era. I'm of course not arguing for Christian theocracy to dictate policy. But how is it that so many self-described Christians are eager to defend mass deportations, slashed foreign aid, and nationalist fearmongering? Isn't there at least some minimal duty for a Christian to highlight how such policies are far from Christ-like?

[CaptainFritz28]

If Jesus commands us to love the outsider, care for the poor, and reject fear are binding on individual Christians, why do they become optional for the state?

They don't. Within America, at least, and I know it's true elsewhere, we have hundreds of thousands of such people. They aren't being loved or cared for, and open border policy further neglects them.

If the state operates by different moral rules, and you support the state in its non-Christ-like activities, aren't you just using government to shield yourself from the personal cost of discipleship? You talk a big game about how you'd sacrifice yourself for a downtrodden person, but you're sure to vote in a manner that ensures such a situation will never happen.

On the contrary, what I am in favor of puts a larger responsibility on Christians, it doesn't take it away. If you think that immigrants are the only poor and needy in America then you're extremely naive, and if you think that Christians don't or shouldn't go to nations from which the immigrants come to actually try to help the people where their need originates then you're also naive. I don't think of you as naive, but the alternative is that you're purposefully manipulating what I am saying, which is honestly worse. So I'm just going to assume that you're naive.

If a Christian would be called to help an illegal migrant face to face, why should they feel justified in supporting policies that deny that same person mercy from a comfortable distance?

Christians aren't supposed to stay at that comfortable distance. That doesn't necessitate harming those around us by bringing the crime to us. We should go to them.

If justice demands protecting one’s own, how should Christians weigh the supposed injustice of increased immigration against the far clearer injustice of denying desperate people safety and a chance at a better life?

Doing what you say also provides the clear and present injustice of evils done to cotizens here, immigrants arriving here, and a lack of the ability to stop it. You love one neighbor and do evil to another, and oftentimes the other is one of the ones you just aided.

If the choice is between small inconveniences to citizens and profound harm to the vulnerable, which side of that equation aligns with Christ’s teachings?

What Bert apparently considers "small inconveniences:"
Theft
Murder
Human Trafficking
Assault
A general lack of safety
A plethora of other disgusting evils that I'd rather not list

I don't blame you for not seeing these things, because you live in Canada where you don't have to deal with the effects of what you're proposing, but that doesn't negate that they happen. DFW, my hometown, has become a major human trafficking capital because of the amount of trafficking that comes across out border illegally. Many more southern cities are rampant with crime, nonviolent and violent, and it is exceeding or has exceeded the ability of law enforcement to deal with it. Fentanyl-laced drugs are a threat higher than ever because so much comes across our border illegally.

You spit in the face of everyone affected by this and call the suffering of many a "small inconvenience." You have lost a great deal of my respect. What you support causes profound harm to the vulnerable and you disregard it as nothing.

Maybe you don't think it's your place to force this trade-off on others - fair enough - but wouldn't your Christian ethic demand that you at least try to convince others to be more Christ-like and compassionate in this respect?

Yeah. It's called preaching. It happens all the time in thousands of churches every Sunday. Many respond with their own personal funds. Many respond with a committing of their lives to go to these places and help them in the name of Christ.
The churches that don't preach action to faith are cowards. Evidently you don't read what I write.

And if a theological defense of nationalism requires selective parsing of scripture, shouldn’t that be a red flag? If what one supports contradicts the plain meaning of "be not afraid" and "love thy neighbour as thyself"—central pillars of Jesus’ teaching—does it really matter how many verses can be twisted to justify it? If scripture is being wielded to excuse fear and exclusion rather than to challenge them, isn’t that the definition of politically motivated heresy?

I've already responded to this but I'll do so again. You say I should love my neighbor far away. Yet you tell me to do so in a way that forces evil upon my neighbor here.
What I am saying is that I want to love my neighbor far away and not force my neighbor near to suffer because of it, and that there are ways to do so. I suggest we do so.

[CaptainFritz28]

If a Christian politician has sworn to protect their people, does that duty override Christ’s direct commands to love without condition? If prioritizing one group of neighbors requires turning away another in need, isn’t that just a more respectable-sounding version of the priest and the Levite walking past the wounded man on the road? How does one square a moral obligation to fellow citizens with the much clearer moral obligation to “the least of these,” which Jesus explicitly tied to salvation?

If loving without condition means forcing injustice upon those under your authority then I've sure been doing it wrong.

If loving one neighbor must never come at the expense of another, should Christians have continued to just go along with slavery? Christian abolitionism materially harmed white Christians in the U.S. South, made them economically weaker, and arguably less safe—should Christians have ignored the suffering of enslaved people because helping them would come at a cost?

Those who were economically harmed were, by and large, the ones perpetuating evil.
Those who were set free were also under the government's authority.

It came at a material cost to people doing evil to set free a far, far greater group of people from much more than merely material harm. It addressed the root cause of the issue.

In all of these ways it is far different.

If open borders “don’t solve anything,” does that mean rejecting those seeking refuge is a better solution? If the argument is that governments should fix foreign nations rather than accept migrants, how does that square with the same nationalist instinct that says resources shouldn’t be spent on outsiders? The president you continue to support just callously slashed the entirety of USAID, when the option to instead reform and improve the institution was clearly available. If the real concern is cartels and crime, wouldn’t a Christian approach involve expanding safe, legal pathways rather than forcing desperate people into the arms of traffickers?

Of course, this concedes a point about illegal immigrants that's not exactly true. The very right-leaning CATO institute found that in Texas, from 2013 to 2022, illegal immigrants had a homicide conviction rate of 2.2 per 100,000, compared to 3.0 per 100,000 for native-born Americans (https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/illegal-immigrant-murderers-texas-2013-2022). White Texans with guns are killing more people than illegal immigrants. That itself isn't a reason to advocate for open borders - but it underscores how far your position is from "be not afraid".

The border is just one obvious moral quandry among many raised by the Trump era. I'm of course not arguing for Christian theocracy to dictate policy. But how is it that so many self-described Christians are eager to defend mass deportations, slashed foreign aid, and nationalist fearmongering? Isn't there at least some minimal duty for a Christian to highlight how such policies are far from Christ-like?

I don't have time to respond to all this as I've got a busy day ahead of me, as much as I wish I could do so.

I'm saddened that you seem to have lost your ability to debate without gross manipulation of your opponent's points.

[Esquire Bertissimmo]

If I’ve riled you up, that wasn’t my intent. But you should take a fact-based approach to the harms caused by illegal immigrants, which are real but clearly overblown in your telling.

The idea that a handful of Christians spending 1/1000th of their lives on short-term mission trips is a meaningful substitute for misery-inducing U.S. policies is genuinely funny—something that likely only sounds reasonable within a very insular Christian community.

You’ve shifted the focus from the moral obligations of Christian governance to a fear-based narrative about crime and suffering, dodging the central question of whether Christian ethics should shape public policy. Instead of engaging with that challenge, your response leans on false dilemmas, redirection, and emotional appeals—without ever addressing the contradiction at the heart of your position.

I don’t think we’re going to get anywhere here. I understand your points but still disagree. I’m not advocating for open borders, but the Christian defense of mass deportations seems to rely an awful lot on fear over love. I remain broadly disappointed that US Christianity in general seems to be amplifying Trump's worst instincts rather than tempering them.

[CaptainFritz28]

If I’ve riled you up, that wasn’t my intent. But you should take a fact-based approach to the harms caused by illegal immigrants, which are real but clearly overblown in your telling.

I'm just shocked that you've called human trafficking a small inconvenience and seemingly aren't willing to rescind that statement.

The idea that a handful of Christians spending 1/1000th of their lives on short-term mission trips is a meaningful substitute for misery-inducing U.S. policies is genuinely funny—something that likely only sounds reasonable within a very insular Christian community.

If you think that that's anything close to what I'm talking about then you are more naive than I thought. In fact, I find that short term missions trips usually do more harm than good. No, I'm talking about people spending their whole lives devoted to helping the needy in a foreign land. Yet that's not the only thing I'm suggesting. There are governmental ways to get involved in aiding the nations from which the immigrants come.

You’ve shifted the focus from the moral obligations of Christian governance to a fear-based narrative about crime and suffering, dodging the central question of whether Christian ethics should shape public policy. Instead of engaging with that challenge, your response leans on false dilemmas, redirection, and emotional appeals—without ever addressing the contradiction at the heart of your position.

Perhaps your amalgamated assumptions of what I've said, which by all indication of how you've responded are nothing like what I actually have said, do so. But if you really think that then you're not reading what I say with an intent to have honest discourse, which is why I agree with your following statement.

I honestly don't see what you mean about fear over love. I am saying that Christians (certainly not all, but many more than currently do, and perhaps myself) should leave their homes, even their nation, and go to a foreign land with a foreign tongue, with far less securities than we have here, in order to aid the most destitute people there. I also believe that those who do not do so should actively seek out the poor and needy, be it safe or not, within their own communities to give them aid. What about that includes valuing fear over love? My position on the border is based in the fact that there are better ways to address the issue without the harms which occur with our current situation.

[Esquire Bertissimmo]

It seems relevant to me that more violent crimes are committed per capita by native-born Texans than legal or illegal immigrants (https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2014704117). It's fine to be concerned about crime in general, but hugely outsized fears about the crime committed by "outsiders" doesn't hold up.

I just don't understand a worldview that extols its adherents to dedicate their entire lives, at huge personal risk, to helping the poor and downtrodden, but gives them a pass in their civic lives to empower politicians who are nakedly pursuing the least-compassionate policies possible. You might join Engineers Without Borders or something, which would indeed be very admirable - but that would undue basically none of the misery caused by recklessly de-funding USAID with no backup plan whatsoever - something your vote supported.

If Christian ethics demand personal sacrifice, why wouldn’t they also demand asking hard questions about whether Trump’s border and deportation policies are maximally compassionate? Why wouldn’t a Christian at least advocate for better legal pathways to citizenship instead of defaulting to exclusion? For an individual migrant, immigration is a solution—the moment they step into the U.S., their labor is worth 10x as much and their safety improves. Doesn’t that individual act of mercy matter, even if it imposes some risks and material hardship on Americans (yes, only "some" risks if you look at the actual data rather than Fox News)?

Maybe you're comfortable with some strained theological logic that allows Christians to relax their ethics at the ballot box. I want to believe that Christian ethics are a force for good, but it's hard to feel that way when their practical politics enable needless suffering and the politics of retribution.

[Jamiet99uk]

Human trafficking gangs are enabled and encouraged by the lack of safe routes of migration. Do you understand that, Fritz?

[Octavious]

Human trafficking gangs are enabled and encouraged by the lack of safe routes of migration. Do you understand that, Fritz?

A nice idea, but complete bunkum I'm afraid. This is one of those lies that left wingers like to tell themselves because it makes it easier to support a flawed world view. The truth is that human trafficking gangs are fuelled by demand, and there will always be many many more millions of people who want to become Americans than America is capable of offering legitimate immigration routes to.

[Jamiet99uk]

Human trafficking gangs are enabled and encouraged by the lack of safe routes of migration. Do you understand that, Fritz?

A nice idea, but complete bunkum I'm afraid. This is one of those lies that left wingers like to tell themselves because it makes it easier to support a flawed world view. The truth is that human trafficking gangs are fuelled by demand, and there will always be many many more millions of people who want to become Americans than America is capable of offering legitimate immigration routes to.

What are the causes of that demand?

[Octavious]

America offering the perception of a far better better standard of living is the cause of that demand.

There will always be hundreds of millions of people who would want to migrate to America, and of those millions who are literally desperate to do so. Whether the US is offering a million legal immigration places or zero places won't make a significant difference to that demand.

[Jamiet99uk]

According to an admittedly quick search, the main places of origin for illegal migrants trying to enter the USA are Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

Mexico is not surprising I suppose, because they share a very large land border. I will come back to Mexico in due course. For now, let's think about the other three.

Do you think that Donald Trump's widely reported 2018 comments that El Salvador is a "shithole country" would make poor people in El Salvador more likely to want to emigrate, or more likely to continue living in a "shithole"?

El Salvador ranks among the top Western Hemisphere recipients of US aid. Do you think Trump and Musk's decision to halt all US foreign aid will improve living conditions there, and make people less likely to want to emigrate, or will it do the opposite and increase the migration "demand"?

In Guatemala in 1954, the CIA intervened to overthrow the democratically elected government and install a US-backed military dictatorship. This violently oppressive dictatorship reigned until the late 1990s, routinely murdering political opponents with America's blessing. Do you think that this made Guatemala a nicer place where people would want to stay? Or, do you think that this made Guatemala an unpleasant place which people would want to leave?

Note, I am not saying that America's imperialist adventures in Guatemala are Trump's direct fault. He was not President at the time. But they are America's fault and the buck stops at the President's desk.

In Honduras there was a coup in 2009, with the military intervening to depose a slightly left-leaning president, in favour of a violently oppressive right wing regime. America enthusiastically endorsed the new right wing regime and provided arms and assistance to the new regime's police and armed forces. America has continued to actively support a string of violent, undemocratic right wing governments in Honduras ever since. Do you think this will have tended to increase the flow of people attempting to emigrate from Honduras?

I put it to you that American imperialism, rather than the image of American prosperity, is a significant driver of demand in all of the cases mentioned.

[Jamiet99uk]

In summary, the USA has a history of going into Central and South American countries, violently overthrowing their democratic leaders, and installing violently oppressive right wing puppets in their place. These US puppet regimes routinely jail, torture and kill their political opposition, suppress trade unions, deliberately hold wages down, deliberately favour US interests over the needs of their own poor, and roll out the red carpet for unethical US corporations like United Fruit.

THAT is a key reason so many people want to emigrate from Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras. America has brought at least some of this on itself.

[Octavious]

I put it to you that American imperialism, rather than the image of American prosperity, is a significant driver of demand in all of the cases mentioned.

So, to summarise, it is your opinion that the people who leave these countries set their sights on a hostile imperial nation as their new home rather than the scores of Spanish speaking nations with similar climates and cultures? And it's not primarily because the US offers the promise of a vastly superior quality of life, but rather because of their hostile imperialism?

Well, that's an interesting view... I disagree

[Octavious]

Do you think that Donald Trump's widely reported 2018 comments that El Salvador is a "shithole country" would make poor people in El Salvador more likely to want to emigrate, or more likely to continue living in a "shithole"?

I think it would make literally no difference to their desire to leave. They either live in a shithole or not, and Trump's opinion doesn't change that. I suspect it will make some of them think twice about whether they want Trump's US to be their new home

[Jamiet99uk]

I put it to you that American imperialism, rather than the image of American prosperity, is a significant driver of demand in all of the cases mentioned.

So, to summarise, it is your opinion that the people who leave these countries set their sights on a hostile imperial nation as their new home rather than the scores of Spanish speaking nations with similar climates and cultures? And it's not primarily because the US offers the promise of a vastly superior quality of life, but rather because of their hostile imperialism?

Well, that's an interesting view... I disagree

My point is that fewer of them would be trying to leave their country of origin at all, if it weren't for the horribly damaging effects of American imperialism.

[Jamiet99uk]

According to most measures (such as human development index, average incomes, etc), Canada has a measurably higher standard of living than the United States, and they share a large land border with few physical barriers.

By your logic, Octavious, there would be a huge annual flow of migrants from the United States to Canada. However this is not the case.

You need to understand why people are fleeing their countries of origin at all. Why don't they stay at home? The disruption, poverty, and violence caused by imperialism is a major factor.

[Octavious]

According to most measures (such as human development index, average incomes, etc), Canada has a measurably higher standard of living than the United States, and they share a large land border with few physical barriers.

By your logic, Octavious, there would be a huge annual flow of migrants from the United States to Canada

The human development index of both nations is virtually the same, although Canada is slightly ahead. The average income in Canada is quite a way lower than that of the USA. I don't know where you're pulling your facts from, Jamie, but they're more than a little suspect. I fear you're talking bollocks

[Esquire Bertissimmo]

Seems obvious you're both right here.

Canada is indeed a coveted destination for many immigrants. We would have a US-style problem with illegal immigration if we happened to border countries filled with would-be migrants. We turn away millions of would be citizens and residents.

Relative economic development, freedom and security are obviously all draws for immigrants. There's two parts to that equation though. Many fewer Guatemalans would be desperate to leave home if there country were merely somewhat less affluent than the US and Canada, rather being destitute and unsafe, and the extent of their material deprivation and political instability is rather obviously at least partly a product of a US-led coup that was tailor made to erode the state capacity and economic development. Imperialism isn't a plausible explanation for all, nor likely even most, of the demand for migration to America — but it's clearly a relevant factor in many notable cases.

[Jamiet99uk]

Forgive me Oct, you're right, I was mistaken. I was looking at a source which confused Candian dollars and US dollars. Canada is ahead on HDI, but that's not as strong an example as I thought it was.

Still, I maintain that the point is why people are leaving their homes and making dangerous journeys, uprooting their whole lives. I contend that US foreign policy since the 1950s to the recent present has created large numbers of migrants.

[Octavious]

Fair enough, we all make mistakes. I have to admit being a bit surprised by this one, though. For someone who has such a keen eye for north American politics not having an instinctive feel for the USA's advantage in typical salaries is remarkable. Very much a not knowing the price of a pint of milk moment.

American foreign policy may well play a part in the reasons some people decide to leave their country (my feel is that it's a less important factor than you perceive it to be, and blaming the US for immigration from Ely Salvador because they didn’t give them loads of money seems beyond ludicrous.

But what seems beyond obvious is that not one of them would go anywhere near the USA if it wasn't for the fact it has a huge economy and high quality of life. If the USA had a standard of living typical of Latin America then the number of migrants trying to move there would fall off a cliff.