PrintOctober 27, 2010
Attack-Dog Behar Picks Wrong Crusade
During the president's recent appearance on the televised female coffee klatch "The View," he suggested that Joy Behar become the "attack dog" she said he needs to fight back against conservatives. And Ms. Behar seems to have taken the idea to heart.
When the producers played a Sharon Angle ad which made moral mincemeat out of Harry Reid's illegal immigration-enabling positions, Ms. Behar responded with attack-dog fury. Behaving as the uncivil shrew that she has become more and more lately, Ms. Behar responded to the Angle ad by declaring the candidate a "bitch" who was surely "going to hell." The following day, when Angle graciously sent Behar flowers in thanks for the $150,000 raised in response to the slur, Behar thanked Angle for the flowers and repeated the b-word.
Unfortunately for Ms. Behar, she has picked the wrong crusade and stands herself in need of the confessional.
Illegal immigration is as counter to genuine social justice as any issue could get, and only someone completely lacking common sense could fail to see this.
In the first place, illegal immigration is just that: illegal. In order to meet social justice criteria for breaking the laws of a nation, one must be facing not just economic hardship or even a really bad life without ample medical services and other ameliorative benefits. In order to justify breaking the laws of a nation, one must be facing severe repression of one's Christian faith and possible torture in the hands of one's government.
Since most illegal immigration in this country is from Mexico, a predominantly Catholic country where one's faith is not in the least threatened, the conditions for breaking America's laws in order to flee Mexico are simply not there. Despite what President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, the President of Mexico, and now Joy Behar insist, economic hardship has never justified breaking America's laws -- especially on the basis of social justice claims.
But illegal immigration is a far more grave social justice issue for Americans than the simple breaking of a single legal code. And it is Americans, not Mexicans, who are the victims in the current huge debacle at our southern border.
As we have seen more and more, illegal immigration from Mexico, along with the federal government's refusal to deal adequately with it, have fostered organized crime in both illegal drugs and human smuggling rings that threaten the very lives of innocent American citizens on their own land and in their own schools, on their own streets and in their own backyards. Any government which willfully enables the murders, the vehicular homicides, the rapes, and other crimes which have tormented whole communities of law-abiding citizens in our southwestern states is as guilty on the social justice monitor as those actually perpetrating the crimes.
Not only has illegal immigration spawned death and misery for the citizens of those states overrun by human smuggling, but those states have also unjustly been forced to bear the burden of skyrocketing medical costs, social service costs, education costs, and all the rest, which directly impinge upon their constitutional rights to private property. Democrats Obama, Pelosi, Reid, and Behar demonstrate the most callous ignorance on these crimes against the social justice crusade they say they are waging. In fact, impinging upon one's lawful rights to private property and a safe environment in which to raise and educate one's children is one of the most prominent aspects of Catholic social justice doctrine.
The rights of the lawful citizens of a country supersede any and all rights of the immigrant -- legal or illegal -- within the social justice doctrines.
It is, according to social justice doctrine, the primary responsibility of those holding public office to secure the rights of lawful citizens before making allowance for any immigration at all. And anyone with an ounce of common sense should understand why this is so. If a family (or country) cannot provide all its own needs, then it is wrong for it to take in new members for which it will also be responsible. Officeholders seeking to serve the interests of social justice must always -- every single time -- put the rights of lawful citizens first and foremost, only giving greater opportunities to waiting immigrants once all citizens' rights and needs are satisfied.
So in the end, "Attack-Dog" Behar -- along with Obama, Pelosi, and Reid -- has picked the wrong crusade over which to take any sort of indignant, self-righteous stand.
That righteousness belongs to Ms. Angle and those like-minded public servants who understand genuine social justice, and not the counterfeit brand of it being sold to ignorant Christians by modern Democrats. When President Obama this week instructed Latino voters to get to the polls and "punish their enemies," the Republicans, he was shooting off his mouth in an anti-social justice tirade built on quicksand.
Legal American citizens, whether they be black, white, brown, or purple, are the victims in this wave of organized crime at our southern border, and Ms. Angle's ad simply brought this message into fuller, more righteous perspective.
Ms. Behar needs a muzzle. She also needs the confessional. And a little soap in her mouth wouldn't hurt, either.
Kyle-Anne Shiver welcomes your comments at www.kyleanneshiver.com.
