+ + + Sign of the Crossing + + +

Who’s got extra beds?   Millions of people are on the road this year, as refugees or as economic migrants.   In the USA, opponents of immigration reform often ask why they should welcome strangers, and ask me if I would open my own home and my own bedroom to violent rapist strangers?   Leaving aside from the over-heated stereotyping, I’d like to ask a different question.   Who’s got extra beds?   The global population is about 7.2 billion wonderful people.   The land available for living space – that is, “arable land,” excluding Antarctica, Mount Everest, Death Valley, and other rugged and inhospitable environments – is about 20 million square kilometers.   So, globally, population density in arable land is about 360 people per square kilometer.   Hong Kong is denser – over 130,000 per square kilometer.   Who’s got arable land to spare?     Emphatically, this is NOT a policy recommendation.   It doesn’t make...

[I do not know Hebrew, and I am not a Scripture scholar.  But I know a little …] Last night (8/18/14), I was dragged into a debate about immigration.  (Dragged?  A friend of a friend said that liberal arguments for immigration reform are empty-headed nonsense, and he enjoyed exposing them.  I found that nigh on irresistible.) The host to the brawl was Tom Furtado, a good friend from decades ago.  Tom and I were arrested and jailed together.  And when I wrote my first book about eugenics (Roots of Racism and Abortion, once again available through Amazon or Kindle) Tom got me to write it as a textbook for a one-semester class for high school students.  Tom’s a great friend, with a big gentle heart, a beautiful wife, and a million kids. In the debate last night, I argued that current immigration restrictions are unjust, incompatible with the teaching of the Catholic Church (my opponent was a Catholic), and completely incompatible with the forceful tea...

August 6, 2014. Anniversary of Hiroshima, and the Feast of the Transfiguration Today Christians recall the incident in which Jesus invited three friends up a mountain, where they saw him changed (Greek: metamorphosed; Latin: transfigured).  His appearance changed: specifically, his face shone and his clothes turned white.  They saw him at home among friends focused on the Law and the Prophets -- that is, in conversation with Moses and Elijah -- although the account does not specify how the Peter&James&John recognized two men they had never met in person.  Peter offered to capture the moment, by setting up tents for everyone to hang around for awhile.  Then God spoke up, and the three were scared into silence.  Jesus told them to get up (to “rise”), and they looked around (“raised their eyes”), and found things returned to apparent familiarity.  Jesus told them not to talk about what they had seen until they had a context for the event (until he “r...

Dear Jeanne, I’m searching for my notes about Albuquerque, not to argue about the Latino vote there, but to make a point about our disagreement.  After your remarks about the vote there, I went to get all the data I could (not much), and I was convinced that the data available was inconclusive.  It did offer soft support for your conclusion, in the sense that I could follow your argument about the data; but there were significant holes, and I thought one could fit the data into a nearly opposite conclusion.  (The Latinos did not carry the day for life: true.  Also true: the vote became a partisan vote, and pro-lifers failed abysmally to reach across party lines: that was the most obvious lesson from the polls.)  I am disinclined to get near the same kind of fight about interpreting statistics about immigration and abortion in the way you propose.  I think that the data available shows that the abortion rate has been climbing rapidly all over Latin America...

I’ve been thinking about a friend's assertion that Latino culture is a threat to American (norteamericano) culture. I guess that immigration seems okay to me – emotionally – in part because of some specific accidental details in my history.  The first time I noticed an “inter-racial” marriage (cripes – there’s only one race – but that was what we called marriages between people of different ethnic backgrounds) was in high school.  I had a friend whose mother was Austrian, and whose father was Chinese.  Paula: she was lively, quick-witted, intelligent, funny, friendly, and head-spinningly gorgeous.  When someone called it to my attention that she was part-European, part-Asian, I thought we should establish an exchange program to make that happen a lot more.  When I was teaching at Rockville HS, there was a student who was very much like Paula.  This beautiful girl, Annie, never had a class with me, but she was in the National Honor Society, which I advised...

A large part of the pro-life movement has been taken over by Planned Parenthood.  In ignorance, hard-working and dedicated folks are killing far more children than they save. An intelligent pro-life friend pressed me the other day, asking for clarity about the destruction of the pro-life movement.  I had pointed out that support for immigration restrictions kills millions of children overseas, and thousands of “pro-lifers” who are saving children with one hand are killing far more children with the other hand.  They work hard in front of abortion clinics, saving thousands of children; then work hard to tighten the border, killing millions of children.  Explain, he demanded.  Why do I say that a large portion of the most pro-life movement today works for Planned Parenthood? I think he wanted a bumper sticker.  But I want him to understand the problem, thoroughly.  If I had betrayed a movement accidentally, I’d want to understand what happened, so I ...