The pope died shortly after a brief (and awkward) meeting with JD Vance, so perhaps it’s also worth remembering his pointed and unambiguous response to Vance’s defense of mass deportations. The VP tried to invoke the doctrine of “ordo amoris”, arguing that “compassion belongs first” to one’s family and fellow citizens, and then — and only after that — “to the rest of the world”.
Writing to the U.S. bishops on the topic of migration, the pope wrote…“Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups.”
“In other words: The human person is not a mere individual, relatively expansive, with some philanthropic feelings! The human person is a subject with dignity who, through the constitutive relationship with all, especially with the poorest, can gradually mature in his identity and vocation,” he continued.
“The true ordo amoris that must be promoted is that which we discover by meditating constantly on the parable of the ‘good Samaritan’ (cf. Lk 10:25-37), that is, by meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception.”
As recently as Friday, Pope Francis sharpened his criticism of a certain style of politician. “Today’s builders of Babel tell us that there is no room for losers, and that those who fall along the way are losers,” he said. “Theirs is the construction site of Hell. God’s economy, on the other hand, does not kill, discard or crush.”
On Sunday, JD showed up for a brief photo-op with the pontiff but continues to be a shrill advocate for the deportations — including illegal renditions to prisons in El Salvador.
Happy Monday.
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This morning, as I was thinking about the legacy of Pope Francis, I was reminded of another transformative figure of faith, Mother Teresa. You may remember the poem that hung on the wall of her children’s home in Calcutta: “Do It Anyway.” Although it was often attributed to Mother Teresa herself, it was, in fact written by Dr. Kent M. Keith:
People are often unreasonable, illogical and self centered;
Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfish, ulterior motives;
Be kind anyway.
If you are successful, you will win some false friends and some true enemies;
Succeed anyway.
If you are honest and frank, people may cheat you;
Be honest and frank anyway.
What you spend years building, someone could destroy overnight; Build anyway.
If you find serenity and happiness, they may be jealous;
Be happy anyway.
The good you do today, people will often forget tomorrow; Do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have, and it may never be enough;
Give the world the best you’ve got anyway.
I know that some of you may think that it has become a bit clichéd, but I have always found it inspirational. And it seems especially relevant to many of the debates we are having — and the choices we have to make.
“Do it Anyway,” is a reminder that we should do the right thing because it is the right thing to do, not because its popular or politically savvy. But it turns out that this is an increasingly unfashionable notion in our hackified political environment. So we get the gibes from the smart set that it’s a political mistake for Democrats and other constitutionalists to continue to push the story of Abrego Garcia and the Trump Administration’s violation of the law.
This is, they tell us, politically unpopular.
On cue, pollster Henry Olsen once again veered from his lane to lecture us on the pointlessness of this sort of resistance. Perhaps reflecting his limited grasp of more recent popular culture, Olsen bases much of his argument on a movie released (checks notes) 54 years ago.
Trump, he tells us is demonstrating the “'Dirty Harry' theory of justice.” If you are of a certain age, you remember the movie. Starring Clint Eastwood, “Dirty Harry” tells the story of a cop named Harry Callaghan who takes, shall we say, a rather cavalier approach to civil liberties. He kills bad guys.
It’s a movie. And a rather entertaining one — if you resist the temptation to read some deep moral implications into Eastwood’s character. Olsen, alas, cannot resist, and so, we get this: “Callaghan was vindicating a deeper moral precept: namely, that when the law prevents justice, justice should triumph, all the same.”
Far, far, far out over his skis, Olsen then tries to explain why the constitutional objections to the rendition of Abrego Garcia are not “getting traction now.”
Team Trump is relying on this same principle to maintain public support for the rough justice of its immigration policies. People want to obey the law, and they revere the rule of law. But when the law no longer serves justice — when it systematically works to the advantage of scofflaws and criminals — their sympathies shift. They want justice first and foremost, not the rigorous adherence to procedure. The results can be, and often are, troubling. But once public opinion reaches this stage, arguing against it is like arguing against the weather: it is what it is….
Mistakenly deporting a “bad hombre” is exactly the mistake Americans today will tolerate, if it means undoing four years of Biden’s mess. That conclusion will outrage liberals and Democrats. But they should know better, as this is exactly the course the country took as crime rose between the Sixties and Nineties…
For the sake of argument, let’s pretend that “Dirty Harry” is somehow relevant here. But Harry did not kill innocent victims. He did not rendition immigrants to foreign gulags. He did not make common cause with smirking thugs. That would have been a different movie.
This piece argues that because most people want to get rid of bad hombres, there is no point opposing the executive branch’s violation of the law, abrogation of due process and defiance of the Supreme Court in the Garcia case. Dumb hill to die on this Garcia dude! Just let the Constitution take the hit and create a permanent exception for habeas corpus.
It is more intellectually contemptible than an outright defense of post-Constitutional government because it is masked under the weasel pretense of political realism, I.e. appeasement of the mob. Olsen even described an executive acting in defiance of the Supreme Court as like the weather. Just something to be accepted.
You realize that means we are no longer under the Constitution, Mr Olsen?
Back in January 2019, when newly-elected senator Mitt Romney penned an op-ed questioning Donald Trump’s character, Olsen lashed back with a piece headlined “Mitt Romney’s op-ed crystallizes all the reasons the old GOP establishment has been pushed aside.” Employing many of the familiar clichés of Trump world, Olsen claimed that Romney’s op-ed demonstrated all of the ways that the newly elected senator was “wildly out of touch” with Republican voters. Those voters, Olsen tells us, don’t accept the argument that character is more important than Trump’s “accomplishments or principles [sic].”
Most Republicans simply don’t accept this argument. Many instead see Trump’s pugnacious and sometimes crude talk as an essential part of his virtue—he fights while other Republicans cower. Others would prefer he tweet less and do more, but still prefer Trump’s fallen angel to a Democratic devil.
Of course, the problem with Trump is not his “pugnacity” or his “crudeness.” The problem with Trump is his grifting, bullying, chronic deceit, and lawlessness. (Also odd was Olsen’s description of Trump as a “fallen angel,” since fallen angel = Satan. But I suppose you can’t assume that a guy reads Milton just because he works at the “Ethics and Public Policy Center.”)
Olsen’s argument was that conservatives were positively obligated to embrace—or at least be silent about—Trump’s character, because that’s the only way to get what they want:
Romney would like you to believe you can have your cake and eat it, too — that you can be against Trump’s character but for his policies. But that doesn’t work in the real world. Railing about character hurts the president, and Republicans know that.
So as early as 2019, Olsen was providing intellectual cover to the argument that no criticism of Trump from the right should be tolerated. If you supported Trump’s policies, then you had to be silent about all the rest—the lies, the grift, the potentially illegal conduct. Everything.
Exit take: the smart kids may be right. Maybe polls will show that the public likes Trump’s lawlessness. Maybe it’s imprudent to spend so much time pushing back.
But sometimes we do the right thing, because it is the right thing. And sometimes the Constitution is worth defending, even if it is unpopular.
Vance claims that taking the position I’ve just outlined, the legal aggressive-enforcement position, is “giving the game away.” By that he means one who stakes out this position secretly “doesn’t want border security,” doesn’t “want us to deport the people who’ve come into our country illegally,” wants “a fake legal process,” and hopes for “ratification of Biden’s illegal migrant invasion.”
It’s not enough to say that is self-evidently untrue. I’d add, in all sincerity, that it is Vance who is giving the game away.
He says we who want the law enforced don’t have a plan for deporting 20 million people — and that’s true, for there is no such four-year plan; there’s just “do the best you can to materially reduce the illegal population, get on a trajectory for bigger reductions over time, and then manage illegal immigration like we manage other ordinary crime.” But to flip it around, Vice President Vance does not tell us what his plan is for rapidly deporting 20 million people. That’s because such a plan cannot include faithfully executing the law. And he knows it.
**
Unfortunately, some of the stupidest Americans are drawn to the lawlessness:
A moment of sadness today for the loss of this good man, the same sadness I felt at the departure of Barack Obama from office. I am not religious. Pope Francis was an uncommonly pure of heart leader of the Church and yet a very humble man.
“Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have. It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death-ought to decide, indeed, to earn one's death by confronting with passion the conundrum of life. One is responsible to life: It is the small beacon in that terrifying darkness from which we come and to which we shall return. One must negotiate this passage as nobly as possible, for the sake of those who are coming after us. “ - James Baldwin
A moment of sadness today for the loss of this good man, the same sadness I felt at the departure of Barack Obama from office. I am not religious. Pope Francis was an uncommonly pure of heart leader of the Church and yet a very humble man.
RIP, and so it goes.
“Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have. It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death-ought to decide, indeed, to earn one's death by confronting with passion the conundrum of life. One is responsible to life: It is the small beacon in that terrifying darkness from which we come and to which we shall return. One must negotiate this passage as nobly as possible, for the sake of those who are coming after us. “ - James Baldwin