Greek philosopher Socrates was one of the great fonts of Western Civilization. His philosophical method was mostly to raise thorny questions. His pupil and transcriber Plato claimed that Socrates was acting as a midwife, reaching into men’s minds to help them “un-forget” the truths of Being that already lay in their souls. To liberate that truth, one needed first to dislodge a series of obstacles, in the form of baseless opinions. You can’t worship the true God on an altar full of idols, and you can’t approach the Truth when your brain is cluttered with half-truths.

And this is a time for truth.

Immigration Decides Every Other Issue

I’ve written here before that the immigration issue decides all the others. I wish this weren’t true. The GOP in the 90s and 00s decided to pretend that it wasn’t. They bet that the “pro-family values” of Third World immigrants from Mexico and Somalia, Guatemala and Syria, would lead them naturally to the party that seemed (fitfully) to care about unborn life, traditional marriage and religious freedom.

That was a huge mistake. We learned some things about poor people entering a welfare state whose elites discourage them from adopting that nation’s values. They tend to vote for a bigger welfare state, and even more immigration. Not all of them, but an electoral majority, and that’s what matters. Nor do self-styled pro-life Latino immigrants seem to be supporting pro-life Democrats. That party has become even more intolerantly pro-abortion in the past 20 years, as such migrants became a key part of its base.

Tough Times Are Coming

Much as we discourage identity politics among white people, our elites positively feed that dangerous tendency among minority groups. They offer no real argument as to why it’s okay for one group to coalesce around tribal interests, but wrong for another. Except this one: We will label you as Nazis and destroy your lives if you try it. So far that has mostly worked. It probably won’t for much longer.

So we’re headed for rocky times. In times like these our thinking needs to be laser-focused and perfectly clear. We’re past the point where fuzzy rhetoric and damp-eyed virtue signaling can mask the deep divisions in our country. And we’re coming close to the moment where demographic realities will hand the pro-abortion, pro-socialist, gun-grabbing anti-Christian Democrats almost overwhelming power. If not quite forever, for the rest of our lifetimes and our children’s. We might well leave the next generation behind as hostages to our own moral cowardice and desperate desire not to be called unpleasant names.

As I said, it’s a time for truth. And the time-tested method for finding that is asking difficult questions. So let me pose some for pro-immigration Christians, one for each of the years Our Lord walked this earth. Feel free to (in fact, I urge you to please) copy and paste them individually, as Tweets or Facebook posts. Then send them to people you know whose minds are cloudy on this issue. Who knows? It might do some good.

A Dialogue for the Sophists

1. Do you favor absolutely open borders?
2. If so, then in every country of the world? The U.S.? Germany? Japan? Saudi Arabia? Israel?
3. If not, then which country’s citizens have the right to limit immigration, and which ones don’t?
4. Is it only countries with European majorities that don’t have such a right? Or is it Christian countries, including Ethiopia and South Korea?
5. If you do think citizens of every country have the right to set some limits on immigration, how should they express that? Maybe through laws?
6. If people keep flouting those laws, what should happen to them? Should they suffer legal penalties? Such as being sent home?
7. Should laws meant to offer asylum to those suffering political or religious persecution be routinely abused by economic migrants?
8. Should people who evade or flout immigration laws go to the front of the line? Ahead of people who duly obeyed the law?
9. Should churches collude with people pushing their way to the front of the line?
10. Should churches (such as my own Catholic church) profit from the violation of the law? Should they aid immigrants exclusively with government money, from which they take hefty commissions?
11. Should local governments defy the national government by refusing to enforce immigration laws? If so, may they also refuse to enforce civil rights laws? Religious liberty? Gun laws? Tax laws?
12. Should our country admit millions of low-skill workers, legally or illegally, even if this suppresses the wages of lower-income Americans?
13. Is it morally right for employers to prefer illegal workers to native-born black, Latino, or working class white workers?
14. Is it right for the government to allow such discrimination by not enforcing its own immigration laws? (For instance via E-Verify, and penalties aimed at such employers.)
15. Is it just for immigrants who came illegally, and then received amnesty, to enjoy affirmative action preferences over native-born white workers, including veterans?
16. Should we grant “birthright” citizenship to the children of people who flouted our laws, making it impossible to send them home?
17. Should legal immigrants who become “public charges” in violation of the law, and are dependent on welfare programs, be required to go home? Or at least made ineligible for programs they barely paid into?
18. Ought the U.S. government to seek out distant “refugees” from Muslim countries? Then fly them over half a dozen “safe” Muslim countries, to bring them here? Even though that costs much more than helping them closer to their homes?
19. Should our government aggressively impose “diversity” on traditional American communities in Minnesota and Maine, via refugee resettlement? Why?
20. Is such “diversity” really a source of strength? Please explain, with historical examples.
21. Leftists routinely celebrate the fact that America will soon have no ethnic majority. Why is this morally good, rather than neutral, or even dangerous?
22. List for me five countries which have thrived and remained peaceful and united, despite having no ethnic majority. As opposed to … Yugoslavia, Iraq, Syria, and the Ottoman Empire.
23. How does mass low-skill immigration benefit the poorest and most marginalized Americans (inner city teens, ex-cons, returning veterans, low-skill workers)? We already know how it benefits elites in search of house maids and “authentic” taco trucks.
24. How many more sharia-compliant Muslims who believe in the duty to wage jihad does the U.S. need? How many do we need in Congress?
25. Human trafficking cartels control the southern U.S. border, charging $5,000 to $9,000 for each immigrant smuggled. Is this better than the alternative, the U.S. government controlling that border? Why?
26. U.S. poverty programs, such as Medicaid, are cash-strapped. How many millions of non-Americans, who never paid taxes, should we import to compete with our native poor for limited resources?
27. If we see that most immigrants from a particular culture, upon arrival, vote against our values, may we take that into account in shaping immigration policy? If not, why not? Are open borders more important than unborn kids? Religious liberty?
28. Do we owe the same moral duties to poor people living in Honduras that we do to the descendants of American slaves?
29. We hear constantly about the rights of immigrants. But if we don’t acknowledge they also have responsibilities, that dehumanizes them. So what are the responsibilities of immigrants? If they don’t live up to them, what should happen?
30. Should we make public policy with the best interests of our fellow citizens, of every race and class, in mind? Or is there some other criterion?
31. Is it right to leave our children a poorer, more divided country than our parents left us?
32. Does “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s” only apply to paying taxes? Or maybe also to obeying other just laws, like not counterfeiting either currency or citizenship?
33. In light of the above, what would Jesus do?