Safe Haven

No, I don't think I will join that political debate group, even if it is filled with Catholics. Maybe I should say, "especially". I know what right-wing Catholics are like right now, and I don't like it. If I'm frank about it all, I don't trust myself to be kind. I'm liable to say something outrageous just to make a point, and then have to correct myself later, and probably apologize. If I'm completely honest, I didn't have better luck with left-wing Catholics, either, when I was in one of those groups. Just to be specific, there is no universe where I will be attacking Raymond Cardinal Leo Burke, even if I disagree with him. And if it is the left-wing fashion now to attack everyone personally who does not agree with you 100%, I don't have time for that. I don't need to spend my time "discussing" things with people who are not actually open to changing their minds. I'm not necessarily open to changing mine; so what are we ...

I'm just going to speak from my own experience here; if it doesn't fit yours, that's fine. As the old saying says, "Take what you want, and leave the rest." I think what is interesting about having a more or less permanent stable disability is that I take steps to transcend the particular challenges that I face, and once I do that, to me, my experience is "normal". I don't deny my disability, but I've gotten used to it. I've also talked to several friends in a similar situation, and when we lose the ability to do things, we react very much like an able-bodied person would. Anger, denial, and all the other stages of grief. It's a human tendency to have expectations for how life is going to go, and then when we face a major disruption to that plan--at least as we visualize it in our minds--it's a challenge. In a certain sense, being a Christian at the same time as all of this is taking place is the worst, because we have these notio...

Or, I don't know . Is he Catholic? [It seems like it. Maybe we can have one fully Catholic person in the Op./Ed. section of the New York Times.--ed.] Oof.

Biden is winning. Although I think that Real Clear Politics is trying to hide the magnitude of the trouble that the president is in, it is becoming clear that the turf upon which the election will be fought is the wrong turf for an incumbent president. All the swing states are right-leaning states, and Biden is winning them. This is not exactly damaging my "Hillary Sucks" theory of the 2016 election. Trump is going to have to win back some actual moderates, in order to prevail. There are two problems with this: firstly, the electorate does not generally like President Trump. Secondly, they do generally like Joe Biden. He had a lot of goodwill before he was Obama's vice president, and a good deal of that remains, or has even increased. The middle of the electorate does not believe that Joe Biden is a radical. The only way that Trump prevails is to convince the electorate that only he stands between the country's certain destruction. I wish him more than a bit of sarc...

This is a fair warning that you may be the victims of a tortured analogy or two, drawn from geeky pop culture. One objection to a fairly open, porous border as I laid it out was that terrorists and sex traffickers could easily take advantage of an easier system to harm the people that they intend to harm. The problem with this argument as it is made in defense of the current restrictionism is that it is unfair to assume that many or most people that border agents would encounter are actually sex traffickers, or terrorists. I think a reasonable person could take steps to apprehend those engaged in such illegal activities, if they have probable cause to believe such a thing is taking place. It is not however appropriate to make the United States nearly impenetrable for legal immigration, simply for the sake of catching a few sex traffickers or terrorists in disguise. It is not difficult to make a superficially plausible argument for a flagrantly unjust policy position. No one would deny-...

And I'll tell you why. This immigration system is still a brutally unfair racial quota system, that basically doesn't allow very many people in general to come to the United States legally. If that weren't enough, I have to somehow take Donald Trump morally seriously, when he wants to make it even harder to legally immigrate to the United States. If I were running from drug gangs in Mexico or Central America, or trying to escape crushing poverty, yeah, I might sneak across the border. If we had any sort of sensible immigration policy that was generous, just, and fair, I might be more inclined to take a more hard-line position. Also, to treat asylum-seekers the same as those who illegally cross the border, is unconscionable and indefensible. I know it's a right-wing party game to make fun of "international" anything, but if I were in charge, the United States would not even be contemplating breaking international law. I don't think we should act like pariah...