Last week I commented on the group blog Wheat and Tares. This is a Mormon-themed blog that discusses issues unique to Mormonism like the Book of Mormon, and how Mormonism intersects with culture and politics. I commented on a particularly virulent and the most famous Mormon White Nationalist named Wife With a Purpose. Being an overworked writer, I adapted a piece from OpsLens which discussed Europeans giving elites the Trump treatment. My basic gist was that there are legitimate economic and security reasons to be concerned with unchecked immigration.
That is a pretty basic point among conservatives, but the site just about blew up and I had to delete numerous posts calling me a Nazi in between f-words. Before the news broke on the murder of Mollie Tibbetts, one of them asked: “Is their pain so different from that of people who lost loved ones from criminals born in the US?” This was my answer, which became even more vital after hearing the tragic breaking news that the missing student, Mollie Tibbetts, was killed by an illegal immigrant: Yes! When an illegal immigrant commits a crime it makes it seem doubly unjust. There are all sorts of feelings that come with being a victim of crime from a home-grown criminal. Our elected officials have a moral obligation to protect their citizens. They can’t do everything and put us in a bubble, but you think they would have saved people like Mollie Tibbets and Kate Steinle by at least making sure that people who shouldn’t be here, aren’t. But at least half our country’s policymakers seem to have lost their minds and care more about illegal immigrants than the citizens they represent and that too often become their victims.
I read an article today describing a person who, earlier in the week, was portrayed by the media as an innocent, pregnant woman on the way to the hospital who became a victim of evil Trump policies…with all of the ensuing outrage and moral condemnation. Then it turned out that the evil ICE agents collected an illegal immigrant (the pregnant woman’s partner) who was wanted for murder:
Before you apologize for entire groups of people, talk to the parents of Mollie Tibbetts who was killed by somebody who shouldn’t even be here in the first place, and then repeat the same arguments. “Well the odds say your brutally murdered daughter, or victim of a terrorist wasn’t really in danger from immigrants, and every group has their bad apples, so you shouldn’t oppose the doctors that come here because of that creep that raped and murdered your daughter. Here are some morally preening talking points about ethics and obligations, along with some implications that you’re racist (with a Nazi or two thrown in there) for not wanting tons of immigration.”
I didn’t plan on commenting again at all. In fact, I would much rather focus on my specialty of Chinese military history. But the tragic break in the Tibbetts case combined with the coverage of the poor murderer’s wife crystallized everything wrong in our immigration debate and really made me angry. The title of my post at the blog was “Reasons to Be Angry and Reasons Not to Be.” Most of people on the left find reasons to be angry with strict immigration positions pointing out legitimate concerns over the crimes of immigrants. But the needless deaths, crime, and excuses trying to explain away immigrant crime and calls for border security are reasons to be angry. Wife With a Purpose and some pathetic white nationalists, not so much.
