WWDD: What Would the Devil Do?
This article was first written and published June 15, 2018
The left has been using the Establishment Clause and their cry for a “separation of church and state” for years to remove every fiber of Christianity from the public square. They sue to stop students from praying in school, or before a high school football game. They sue to remove the Ten Commandments from the Courthouse. In my hometown of San Diego, California godless liberals spent decades suing to remove a concrete cross from a hill where it has been for 100 years. In many cases they have been successful, but in many others they have been unsuccessful. That’s because this culture war is a tug-of-war and the courts are continuously being tasked with finding balance.
Religion, particularly the Christian faith, is at the core of this nation and it is impossible to create a total partisan between Christianity and politics. The Establishment Clause was never meant to do that. If it was, why would candidates campaign in churches? Why are churches allowed to lobby for issues? Why do civil servants take the oath of office on the Bible? Why do they pray in Congress? Why did the Pope address a joint session of Congress in 2015? Religion and politics have always gone hand and hand, from the earliest human societies and their worship of the stars. It is an illusion to believe otherwise, or that our society is different. Many on the left are starting to realize this and have changed their strategy. That’s why Nancy Pelosi was a featured guess at the National Hispanic Prayer Breakfast in Washington D.C on Thursday morning.
Nancy Pelosi is the minority leader in the House, but if Democrats win the House in November she will become Speaker again. That means a case can be made that she is the defacto leader of the Party right now. Nancy wasn’t the only sitting Politian at this faith event on Thursday; others included Speaker Paul Ryan and Vice President Pense. There was signing of religious songs, and praying, along with fiery political speeches. It was as much a political event as it was a religious one.
Pelosi has been very vocal about brandishing her “Christian faith” as of late, and she didn’t waste the opportunity to attack the President’s Justice Department on faith and immigration policy at the Hispanic Prayer Breakfast. “Cruelty and callousness by some have supplanted compassion towards our nation’s immigrants", she said. "The sanctity of family that is at the heart of our nation and its ideals is under attack. From the senseless end to DACA and the elimination of Temporary Protected Status for hundreds of thousands of law-abiding immigrants, to the barbaric and unacceptable policy of ripping children from their parents at the border. Barbaric – it’s not American, it’s not faith-based.”
She continued,
To the deportation dragnet that is being thrown over our cities, splitting apart families. We must have a call to action. People of faith must weigh in.
In recent history, all of our presidents have had a strong regard and respect for the value of immigration to our country: President Ronald Reagan, President George Herbert Walker Bush, President Clinton, President George W. Bush, President Obama. This is the first time in recent history where we have had a president who does not respect the dignity and worth of every person coming into our country, the recognition that immigration is the constant reinvigoration of America.
When newcomers come to America, their hopes and dreams and aspirations and optimism and courage to make the future better for their children – those are American dreams. Those immigrants – they make America more American and we must respect that.
America has always been a nation of immigrants, enriched and blessed by each wave of newcomers to our shores. We truly believe, as people of faith, that we are all God’s children, that we are all worthy of dignity and respect, that there is a spark of divinity that exists within each and every one of us and that spark of divinity must be respected, and we recognize our own spark of divinity, and have the responsibility to treat people as all God’s children.
When, in our Mass in the Catholic faith, during the mass, when we observe that Christ came down from heaven and became man, that’s a sacred moment in the Mass, he came down from heaven and became man. Christ’s participation in our humanity enabled us to participate in his divinity.
That spark of divinity demands that we, as people of faith, act upon our beliefs, our respect for every person.
Again, this was Thursday morning in Washington DC. A few hours later, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, answered this blatant attack in a speech he delivered in Fort Wayne, Indiana. He said,
Beginning in 2009, the previous Administration released most aliens apprehended at the border who requested asylum into the United States with a document asking them to show up for a hearing at some later date. Word spread quickly that by asserting a fear of returning to one’s home country, one could remain in the United States.
The results are just what one would expect. The number of illegal entrants has surged. Asylum claims skyrocketed, and the percentage of meritorious asylum claims— those actually granted— declined.
That’s because the vast majority of the claims are not valid. For the last five years, only 20 percent of claims have been found to be meritorious after a hearing before an Immigration Judge. In addition, some fifteen percent are found invalid by during the initial screening by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service.
In addition, in 2009, the Department of Homeland Security reviewed more than 5,000 initial asylum screenings. By 2016, only seven years later, that number had increased to 94,000. The number of these aliens placed in immigration court proceedings went from fewer than 4,000 to more than 73,000 by 2016—nearly a 19-fold increase.
This cannot continue.
Compounding this problem, the previous administration wouldn’t prosecute illegal aliens who entered the country with children. It was de facto open borders.
The results were unsurprising. More and more illegal aliens started showing up at the border with children. To illustrate, in 2013, there were fewer than 15,000 family units apprehended crossing our border illegally between ports of entry. Five years later, it was more than 75,000—a five-fold increase in five years. It didn’t even have to be their child—it could be anyone. You can imagine the horrible abuses that resulted.
The open borders, pro-amnesty crowd encouraged that—and they have the gall to attack those of us who want to end this lawlessness and the dangers these children face.
I should note that Session, being the nation’s chief law enforcement officer, was speaking to a group of law enforcement professionals at the event in Indiana. He continued,
Yes, we are pursuing a “zero tolerance” prosecution policy at the border.
Under the laws of this country, illegal entry is a misdemeanor. Re-entry after having been deported is a felony.
Under the law, we are supposed to prosecute these crimes. Accordingly, I have ordered our prosecutors to pursue 100 percent of the illegal entries on the Southwest border that DHS refers to us.
If you cross the Southwest border unlawfully, then the Department of Homeland Security will arrest you and the Department of Justice will prosecute you. That is what the law calls for—and that is what we are going to do. Having children does not give you immunity from arrest and prosecution. It certainly doesn’t give immunity to American citizens.
However, we are not sending children to jail with their parents. The law requires that children who cannot be with their parents be placed in custody of the Department of Health and Human Services within 72 hours.
We currently spend more than $1 billion a year in taxpayer dollars taking care of unaccompanied illegal alien minors. Most are in HHS custody. They are provided food, education in their native language, health and dental care, and transported to their destination city—all at taxpayer expense.
It should be noted the perils to which these parents subject their children. Hundreds of aliens die every year trying to make it to the border to illegally enter this country. In many cases, children are trafficked, abused, or recruited by criminal gangs. No one should subject their child to this treacherous journey—and yet the open borders lobby encourages it every day…
Our policies are discouraging people from making children endure that treacherous journey. Everything the open borders lobby is doing is encouraging that and endangering these children. It’s that simple.
It would have been a perfect response to Pelosi if Sessions would have stopped right there. He was concise, reasonable, and he had made some very rational points to address Pelosi’s purely emotional argument against the current policy. There was no need to continue. Yet Sessions continued, "Let me take an aside to discuss concerns raised by our church friends about separating families. Many of the criticisms raised in recent days are not fair or logical and some are contrary to law. First- illegal entry into the United States is a crime—as it should be. Persons who violate the law of our nation are subject to prosecution. I would cite you to the Apostle Paul and his clear and wise command in Romans 13, to obey the laws of the government because God has ordained them for the purpose of order. Orderly and lawful processes are good in themselves and protect the weak and lawful."
This attempt to use the Bible to justify the policy is where Sessions went wrong. This gave the media the excuse to ignore every rational and reasonable point he had previously made, and focus on the Bible passage he quoted. This led to CNN’s Jim Acosta asking Sarah Sanders in the following press briefing, “The attorney general earlier today said that somehow there’s a justification for this in the Bible. Where does it say in the Bible that it’s moral to take children away from their mothers?”
Sanders then answered, “I’m not aware of the attorney general’s comments or what he would be referencing. I can say it is very Biblical to enforce the law. That is actually repeated several times throughout the Bible.”
This just compounded the mistake made by Sessions. Nancy Pelosi and Jim Acosta where employing a political tactic to trap the Trump administration, and Sessions and Sanders fell right into the trap. Pelosi and Acosta don’t care about the Bible, or faith. Nancy Pelosi doesn’t care about her own Roman Catholic faith, as she supports several policies that put her at odds with her church and the Bible. She has for her more than 30 years in politics.
In June of 2006, when Obama was a new United States Senator, he was invited to give the keynote speech at the “Call to Renewal” conference, an evangelical Christian conference in Washington DC. In his speech Obama said, “Which passages of Scripture should guide our public policy? Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is okay and that eating shellfish is an abomination? Or we could go with Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith? Or should we just stick to the Sermon on the Mount -- a passage that is so radical that it's doubtful that our own Defense Department would survive its application? So before we get carried away, let's read our Bibles now. Folks haven't been reading their Bibles."
He was right about one thing. We’re two years removed from Obama’s presidency and his foreign policy can be described as anything but “Biblical”. Yet, his comments in this speech are a great example of how liberals view the Bible. They have no respect for it, and they don’t take it seriously. They know enough about the Bible to use it to their advantage in trapping people who do take the Bible seriously into a moral dilemma. Their tactic is much like that of the one whom Jesus met in the wilderness.
The reason Sessions was wrong to quote Romans 13 to justify his policy is because his highest priority as Attorney General is to the LAW! Nothing else. This put Sanders in a tough position having to answer Acosta’s stupid question. Although, her attempt to further justify the policy with the Bible only escalated the mess Sessions created, which is exactly why Acosta asked it. Now, every mainstream media outlet in America is booking the closest rent-a-collar they can find to come on and use their favorite verse to explain why the Trump administration is wrong.
The president had every right to assert the law and he had the high ground on the law. Unfortunately, they allowed Democrats to make it a debate about morality, and you can’t win a morality debate with people who have no set morals.
This tactic of trying to shame Christians into supporting radical liberal agendas or to wavier in support for the president, --- It’s a trap! You would be wise not to fall for it. I, for one, will not be lectured about the Bible by heathens who know nothing about the Bible; aside from the few select passages they can quote to support their political agenda. I won’t be shamed by the shameless, and I won’t be manipulated by Democrats that would use children and emotional arguments to push forward a policy of open boarders.
