Banned Books, Corrie Ten Boom, And "Christian" Hypocrisy

In an age in which technology has made the spread of information and culture easier and wider than ever before, it would be difficult to imagine a more futile tactic to control political debate and thought than the banning of books in schools.  Almost every student, including many of very limited means, has access to a smart phone and/or a laptop, as well as Wi-Fi.  Any book that book-banners want to target, especially older ones that are more likely to be in the public domain, is available on the Internet.  That fact, combined with the reality that banning children from doing anything is the proverbial red cape in front of a bull, all but guarantees that the act of banning a book is perhaps one of the best ways to market it.

And perhaps that's a source of comfort in contemplating, as we unfortunately must, the current wave of efforts to do exactly that.  If book-banning is the worst thing they can throw at the rest of us, maybe democracy is in better shape than we think.  Perhaps there's a silver lining in this particular crowd:  by advocating the banning of books, they forfeit the moral authority to complain about what they decry as "cancel culture" coming from the left.  After all, lacking that authority won't stop them from whining about it.

But, in a way, that's the problem.  It's not the tactics they put into practice.  It's the sheer stupidity that lies behind their world view AND permeates the way they act on it.

What made me reflect on this just now was a Twitter post I saw several weeks back that contained a photograph of a newspaper clipping.  The clipping showed part of an article that listed books currently being targeted for school bans.  The usual suspects can be found on it:  "Of Mice And Men," "I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings," and that legendary target of targets, "To Kill A Mockingbird."  The reference to the latter, however predictable, was at least punctuated with a ludicrous misspelling of its author's name as "Lee Harper."  Isn't it nice when your opponents go out of their way to advertise their lack of credentials?

But that's not even the worst of it.  At the bottom of the list, at least what I could see of it from the posted photograph, was the title and author's name of a book I could not ever have imagined being on anyone's list for banning.

"The Hiding Place," by Corrie ten Boom.

If you are not a fundamentalist Christian, as I was in a former life, the odds are that you have never heard of this book, or the film version of it what was made by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association in the 1970s.  Nor is it likely that you have ever heard of Corrie ten Boom, or know anything about the remarkable life that she lived, or read any of the other books that she wrote.

But dwell on this thought for a moment:  most if not all of the folks behind these bans are fundamentalist Christians.  If they are at all like the ones I was associated with during the decade or so that I spent in that corner of reality, it is literally impossible for them to not know about the life of Corrie ten Boom, and especially the chapter in that life memorialized in "The Hiding Place."  Even if they had never read the book.  And in that world, the folks I know would have wanted to brag about reading it as much as they would brag about the time they spent reading their Bibles.

In "The Hiding Place," Ms. ten Boom relates the story of how she, her sister, and her father used space hidden by their father's timepiece shop to hide Jews in Holland fleeing persecution from the Nazis.  In the process of doing so, they saved many lives, but that effort came at a cost to the ten Boom family.  They were eventually discovered and taken to a German work camp, where Corrie's father and sister died.  She herself only survived as a result of a clerical error made by one of the camp's staff members.

As a record of one of the darkest chapters in human history, "The Hiding Place" contains some passages that might make for rough reading for teenagers, and perhaps a few adults.  But it is both morally and intellectually outrageous to suggest that the contents of the book are such that schools and students should somehow be "protected" from them.  All the more so because the book is, and was intended to be, a tribute to the core, sacrificial spirit of true Christianity.  For a believer to walk in Jesus' steps, that should include a willingness to include the willingness to walk in all of those steps, even the ones that require acting against our interests to give unto others.

Or so I was told, back in the day.

Maybe fundamentalist Christianity isn't what it used to be.  Or rather, what it used to aspire to.  As it has morphed from a faith based on the Bible to one that is based increasingly on white supremacy, maybe making sacrifices for people "not like you" is a message that frightens fundamentalists.

Maybe they have decided that the ten Booms were out of step with G-d.  Somehow, up in Heaven, I think the ten Booms, and the people they sacrificed to saved, are having the last laugh on that point.

But the rank hypocrisy of their fundamentalists that this exposes, combined with the racism that has infected the faith they claim to follow, just adds two more reasons to the list that all of us ought to have:  the list of reasons to fight the banning of books, and the attack on the human spirit that these bans represent.

No, We Don't Have Open Borders But Yes, We Need AND Can Handle More Immigrants

One billion Americans.  To listen to the conservative chattering classes, you'd think that's a landmark we've already reached.

Well, we're not even close to it.  We're only about one-third of the way there, in fact.  And yet, if you listen to the Rupert Murdochs and Alex Joneses of the world, America is being "invaded" on a daily basis by a criminal class of migrants who want nothing more than to take your jobs, assault your families, and generally live off of your hard-earned tax dollars.

But what if I told you that we don't have enough people here?

What if I told you that their are two nations in the world that are already at one billion people living within their borders?  Both of which are two of the oldest civilizations on the planet, in fact? 

And what if I told you that, while both nations have struggled with issues relative to population growth, both of them have been catapulted into the top ranks of the world's economies over the past several decades?

And what if I told you that, in order for the United States to maintain its current ranking among those economies as the largest, we might need to get bigger in a hurry?  And that the fastest way to do it would involve implementing an immigration system that welcomed people from all around the world at an accelerated rate?  Maybe we wouldn't reach a population level comparable to China and India, the two nations I was referencing, but we might be surprised by our ability to quickly expand the current population by as much as 50%.

And what if I added that, because of the hollowing-out of cities in every state of the Union, especially in the central states, there was already more than enough room to house these people?  Furthermore, what if I pointed out what should be an obvious fact to everyone:  people are an economic resource, with talent and financial resources?  The initial cost of welcoming hundreds of millions of new Americans would be more than repaid by the value of the goods and services these new arrivals would provide, not only to their neighbors but to family and business members overseas, who would now have a way to participate in the American economy.  It's been said by some that immigration is the most effective foreign policy the U.S has ever established.  It's been said, because it's the truth.

And, finally, what if I made the point that, in order for America to stay on top of the international economic pyramid, it needed to become bigger, perhaps even as big as China or India, in order to not merely stay on top but also to stay relevant to global commerce?

Well, it turns out I may not have to do any of this, because Matthew Iglesias beat me to it some time ago.  To be precise, 2020.

That was the year in which his book, "One Billion Americans," was published.  I bought a copy a while ago, and it has not yet risen to the top part of my reading pile that it deserves to have.  But it will get there.  In any case, I have practiced immigration law for more than twenty years with my wife, and both of us can speak to the truth of what Iglesias writes about in his book.

You can find a summary of its contents here, along with excerpted criticism (positive and negative) of those contents.  Essentially, he makes the points about the advantages of expanded immigration that I've already outlined.

Unsurprisingly, and despite the current polarization in American politics (on this issue especially), this book has, after a flurry of initial publicity, largely sank from sight.  Or, at least, it did not move to the central place in the immigration debate that its provocative thesis might suggest it should.  For my part, I think that this is an example of how our current polarization prevents us from having anything like a reasoned discussion of ideas, their merits, and the feasibility of translating them into policy.  

After all--and yes, this is not the first time I've made this point, but I'll keep making it until it sinks into enough heads that I can finally think about retiring--thinking about, debating, and translating ideas into reality is actual, honest-to-goodness work.  And work is something we've all become a bit allergic to in the age of ultimate personal convenience.  Far better to lie back and take potshots at each other.  Less wear and tear on brains we don't want to use anyway, and more visceral fun in our increasingly sensual, visceral world.

Immigration could, in fact, go a long way toward filling the empty neighborhoods that are the hallmark of far too many metropolises, suburbs, exurbs, regional centers, and small towns.  At a time when we seem finally, however reluctantly, ready to fix our crumbling infrastructure and modernize it for a digital age, we could put actual people into those spaces and set them free to live their lives and generate new wealth.  In my home town of Baltimore, the population has shrunk over 70 years from a peak of just under a million to its current level of just over 600,000.  Right there, room enough for more than 300,000, perhaps even more.

We could, if we wished, have a national debate about both the feasibility and the desirability of implementing a vision like the one Matthew Iglesias outlines.  But that would require a minimum of two major political parties with a commitment to issues and their resolution, and, above all, an overriding commitment to the national interest that was greater than the pursuit of political and/or personal gain.  It would, in short, require the pursuit of what we all have long taken for granted to be the American Way.

But the American Way can no longer be taken for granted.  We have only the two political parties that have domination the national landscape for the past 160 years.  And one of those parties, the Republican Party, is no longer a party of ideas.  This is so transparently obvious that it is no longer a partisan statement to make.  Even many longstanding members of the party, and its supporters in the larger conservative movement, many of them priding themselves on being people of ideas, will affirm that point.  It is a cult.  

It is a cult that worships Donald Trump not simply as a political leader, but as a quasi-religious (maybe not even quasi-) leader chosen by G-d to make America "great" again.  By which they mean "white, male, straight, and Christian."  This cult has been a key part of the Republican coalition for at least 75 years but, for most of that time, it has been suppressed and manipulated by conservatives whose politics runs to the protection of American business and military interests.  Those conservatives, in a world following two financial meltdowns and two disastrous wars of choice, no longer hold sway.  The bigoted bullies run the Republican playground, and all their games are ones of prejudice.

But prejudice is a pursuit that always wears a series of disguises.  In the 1960s, it cloaked itself in the mantle of "states' rights," and, in this guise, ran reverse Freedom Marches in which Black Americans were bused to northern cities, based on dishonesty and manipulation, in an effort to demonstrate to the liberal northerners that "these people" were nothing but trouble, and Northerners were rank hypocrites for advocating on their behalf.

And, just as they were afraid of people of color "ruining" their "American" way of life, so they are now afraid of Latin American people of color "invading" the sovereign territory of a nation that began when their white ancestors invaded this continent.  And so deprived are they of anything that could be called creative that they are, to act on their fears, compelled to trot out old tricks.

I am, of course, talking about the recent publicity stunts pulled by Republican governors in Texas and Florida to ship immigrants to northern states, again using fraudulent means to do so, including the use of money to pay for the needs of these people in their arrival states, and shipping them to blue states in the north where they expect liberals to be shocked, horrified, and otherwise expose the rank hypocrisy that wingers are convinced liberals possess in unspeakable volumes.

Indeed, the Murdoch press was so confident that this obscene use of human beings as political props was such a political winner for them that it openly bragged about the "success" of these efforts in Murdoch's first media purchase in this country, the perpetually money-losing New York Post.  Oh, did I mention that Murdoch was an immigrant?  Indeed he is; the sort of white, male, straight immigrant that Trumpers wish they could be.

When it comes to immigration, he's only too happy to use his sob sisters to billboard his hypocrisy.  This one is utterly laughable, especially the cheap shot at the not-so-cheap cost of housing on Martha's Vineyard.  As if a man who can afford as many wives as Murdoch has had can afford to sound like a Bolshevik on the subject of housing.  (And what does the last sentence even mean, anyway?)  On the other hand, this one is even worse, as though the author was on drugs.  It goes so far as to admit several of the criticisms of Republican governors--e.g., treating the migrants "like cattle," and not even telling anyone, including the migrants, where they were going--and basically says "SO WHAT!  WHO CARES?  IT'S ALL ABOUT OWNING THE LIBS, THEIR WEALTH, AND THEIR VIRTUE-SIGNALLING!"

See how easy it is to be a Murdoch employee?  I just gave you a one-sentence taste of the content, so you want have to drown in the sludge of reading, unless you're a gluttons for punishment.  I guess the idea is that, if you keep screaming about "the libs" over and over again, you can still make money by overlooking the facts.  Which, in Murdoch-world, is a cherished way of life.  No one earns money working for Murdoch; they just help him steal it.

Because here's what really happened on Martha's Vineyard.

Despite the effort to blindside them, the people on the island organized quickly to get their unexpected visitors oriented, welcome, and provided with what they needed in supplies and information.  Which, all by itself, is quite a bit more than they got from the supposedly "Christian" folks in the states from which they came.  You can find out more about the specifics of that effort here.  I think you'll find it to be more inspirational and, in any case, more real than anything you'll get from the New York Post.

Including this little tidbit:  part of the reason the effort on Martha's Vineyard was so spontaneous and so lacking in friction is the fact that the island, despite being synonymous with wealth, has a homeless population that it works to serve on a regular basis.  So much for clueless, out-of-touch "libs."  If they were "triggered" by anything, they were "triggered" by compassion, by understanding the needs of people from different backgrounds, by a willingness to use their own resources to make a difference in the lives of others, and by all of the above without regard to race, creed, or color.  Those are the things that makes liberals what they are.  Including me.  Murdoch and his "minions" are welcome to get over it.

Instead of doing that, however, when the facts blew up their coverage of their sadistic publicity stunt, they had the colossal gall to complain about the coverage of the detonation from other media outlets.  Priceless example:  Brian Kilmeade, Fox's media critic, going on "Fox and Friends" to complain (in his words that "[t]hey're not covering it the right way."  In other words, not the way Fox wants.

In fact, it is Fox, and the Murdoch empire in general, that isn't covering it the right way.  And that failure is by no means limited to the tone of the reception the migrants received at Martha's Vineyard.

It's also limited to the circumstances of the migrants themselves.

These are people fleeing political persecution, including persecution from Communist governments, like Venezuela and Cuba.  On foot, no less.  If they are not coming from there, they are coming from nations suffering from extreme poverty due to a combination of climate change and political/economic meddling by American conservatives.  In any case, I thought the good Republican thing to do with people fleeing Communist governments was to welcome them with open arms, and only then treat them like political props.  Why were these people shipped from, in some cases, Florida?  Why not transport them to Miami, where there is a prosperous Cuban exile community that should be ready, willing, and eager to welcome these people with open arms?  Or have I touched a third rail there that no one in the Republican Party wants to touch?  It's not as if the Republican Party is full of stand-up people who put their constituents first.  I'm talking about, among others, you, Ted Cruz.

And worst of all:  these people were systematically lied to.  By the Republicans packing them into the buses and the planes.  They were told that there would be jobs awaiting them.  And they were being systematically being given false information about who to contact regarding their change in venue.  This included people who were expected to appear before immigration officials the following week.  These were people doing exactly what so many immigration restrictionists claim they want immigrants to do:  work within the system.  Except for the fact that restrictionists only want to use the system to prevent people from navigating it.

There is no such thing as an "illegal" person, but the victims of this shameful political stunt are especially not so.  They are asylees. They are entering the United States under color of law.  Asylum is one of the most ancient forms of lawfully permitted immigration, recognized in international law which, like it or not, is recognized in American law.

And borders, for better or for worse, are not open.  Attempts by would-be migrants to enter the U.S. without inspection are actually being repelled at a higher rate under Joe Biden then they were under the crook that preceded him in office.  Take a look.  Don't believe it?  Here it is from someone living on the border.  Here it is from a real news outlet, one that doesn't engage in the kind of sucking-up that Murdoch does.  Like the meme says, literally the opposite of "open borders."  This is why Biden's words on the subject of immigration, and the Martha's Vineyard fiasco, should be heeded rather than derided.  He is doing a far better job than he is credited with doing.  And, in doing so, he is underscored an important truth ahead of the midterm elections:  Democrats work lawfully to solve problems, while Republicans work unlawfully to exploit them.

It's precisely because of that exploitation that more needs to be done, not only by Biden, but by Congress, which has for decades abdicated its constitutional responsibility to provide a fully resourced, safe, and orderly immigration systems that meets the needs of our nation AND fulfills the American dreams and hopes of millions of people around the worlds

And Democrats need to get out of their perpetual defensive crouch of this issue and help him.  Our obligation to that law, the traditions that lie behind it, the nations with which we mutually rely, and to the better parts of our own national history as a Republic that developed out of our status as a refuge for others, demands of both political parties that they make safe, lawful immigration for honest, hard-working future citizens not just a political priority, but a national reality that can renew thousands of empty communities all over America, while affirming our commitment to expanding the reach of freedom and justice for all.

Maybe the backfiring of the Abbott-DeSantis stunt will help.

Maybe we should take the money we give their states to help immigrants, and give it to the states that acutally help them.  Let's see them try to balance their budgets after that.  Guess they'll have to steal more from that pot of "welfare reform" money that they get every year.  But more on that later.

You want us to take your migrants?  Sure.  We’ll take your migrants.  And we won't stop there.

We’ll take your rape and incest victims, the ones that your draconian new abortion laws.  And the LGBQT kids you want to pretend don't exist.  We'll take all of the businesses you think are too "woke," (which, deep dark secret, is the overwhelming majority of them).  We'll take all of the educated people who will welcome the opportunity to not have to pretend anymore to be dumb.  We'll take all of the creative people whose work and points of view terrify you to death.  Best of all, perhaps, we'll take all of the jobs that come with all of these people.

We’ll take the people you seen as problems.  Because we see them as people.  Because that’s the American dream.  To see people as a source of promise, not problems.  And to put them, and not money, in charge of our future.

Personally, my hope is that, when Wes Moore is elected governor of Maryland, and this state once again finally has a real governor, he'll make a point of working with Biden to make Baltimore the biggest, best, most diverse, most prosperous sanctuary city in the nation.  As I have said, we've easily got room enough for at least 300,000.  At least.  And I'll bet we have room enough to welcome even more than that.  Just in time for the Orioles to become a decent team again!  Think of all the new types of ballpark food we'll be able to enjoy.

No, we don't have open borders.  But we do need to open up our system, our country, and our lives to the people who are ready, eager, and willing to help us build an even bigger, better America that we've ever had in the past.  And we need to do it before some other, less deserving and more politically nimble nation reads Matthew Iglesias' book, and takes his vision as seriously as we should.