Below is a piece I received from my dear friend David Franke.
David is one of the original founders of the Conservative movement, along with Saul Evans. He actually knew William F. Buckley, whose intellect and word-craft I greatly respected, even though I sometimes disagreed with him.
David is one of my favorite people for many reasons. He is the kind of person I'll seek out first and hang with longest if I see him at a party. He is warm, articulate, intelligent, and funny. He is a deeply caring man. And, even though he and I disagree on so many fundamentals, we are able to have intelligent, respectful discussions where each lets the other speak and both at least learn what makes the other tick.
Why can't my Tea Party evangelical friends be like that?
(Pardon the improper and absent punctuation in the piece below by Warren Coats. I decided to let it stand on its own [translation: I ran out of time!].)
David says, "Warren Coats has been active
as a libertarian/conservative in public policy almost as long as I have, and a
lot more productively. I am happy to forward his latest blog post. Unfortunately
it doesn’t come with a Valium for most of our Republican presidential
candidates."
My travels and economic and political reflections
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Warren's Musings
From time to time I have experiences or thoughts that I
think might interest some of you. You may already have spotted my
latest blog on Facebook or directly at wcoats.wordpress.com. But if not
I am letting you know with this email my latest topic.
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What
to do about Syrian refugees?
When frightened most people take or support steps to reduce risks to their
security even at the expense of their liberties or other normally valued
principles. Failure to do so might even be considered foolish if such steps
might actually increase their safety. On the other hand, we regularly accept
small risks in exchange for more interesting lives. The fact that 92 people
died every day on average in the U.S. in traffic accidents in 2012 (about the
same number who died from falling) has not kept most of us home, where we would
have faced the risk that an average of 7 people per day died of from home
fires.
I am prompted to return to this subject (for an earlier blog see:
https://wcoats.wordpress.com/2013/08/06/are-we-becoming-a-nation-of-cowards/)
by a recent Bloomberg poll in which the majority of adult American’s
surveyed (53%) following the recent terrorist attacks in Paris that killed 129
people said that “the nation should not continue a program to resettle up
to 10,000 Syrian refugees.” Leaving aside that this is an almost
unnoticeable share of the more than 3 million Syrians who have fled their
country and the 6.5 million displaced within Syria, and leaving aside the
causes of the horrors from which they are fleeing, are we justified in refusing
to accept refugees if it makes us safer? But before taking that on, we should
have a clear understanding of whether it is likely to make us safer.
The concern, of course is that among these poor desperate souls, terrorists
might pose as refugees in order to gain entry to the U.S. (or Europe) in order
to wreak havoc. Despite best efforts this possibility cannot be ruled out any
more that we can rule out dying by fire if we lock ourselves in our homes. But
the recent Paris attacks were carried out by French and Belgian citizens, not
refugees. “Then there was the curious case of the Syrian passport found
near the body of a suicide bomber. Who takes a passport to a terrorist operation?
Someone who wants it to be found.” (Frida Ghitis, CNN, November 18, 2015:
http://www.cnn.com/2015/11/18/opinions/ghitis-isis-self-destructive/index.html)
Gaining entry to the U.S. as a political refugee is a time consuming and
difficult process. I have written a number of letters in support of
applications by Iraqis and Afghans I have worked with and that is a very small
part of what is required. Ms. Ghitis’ very interesting article continues:
“The Paris operation had multiple objectives. The passport was a way of
provoking the West to turn against refugees. The attack sought to provoke
France, NATO and Europe to fight ISIS and the public to turn against the Muslim
population and against refugees. ISIS wants a war between Islam and the rest of
the world, with Muslims on its side, as a way of creating and expanding its
so-called ‘caliphate.’ ISIS wants the world’s Muslims to feel
they are at war with the modern world. It also wants to stop the flow of
Syrians to the West, because it’s more than a little embarrassing that
Muslims are fleeing its utopian Islamic ‘state.’”
In short, the risks of terrorist attacks (or attacks by deranged students at
schools, etc.) in the U.S. come almost totally from our own citizens, just as
do virtually all other crimes, violent or otherwise, in the U.S. We call
their perpetrators criminals and have vast and expensive programs to minimize
such acts and to protect us to the extent compatible with our values from the
crimes that nonetheless still take place. Aspects of these programs are the
promotion of respect for the rights of others and for law and order and
addressing and minimizing injustices toward individuals or groups that might
provide the basis for grievances and hostility. For the rest we rely on the
police to maintain order and arrest those who persist in crime (violent or
otherwise). Crime and its perpetuators have always been and always will be with
us. Some approaches to containing them have worked better than others and we
should continuously strive to find the most effective balance between our
freedom and our security.
So will ending the already negligible immigration of Syrians or Muslims
improve our safety? If anything at all, it will worsen it by alienating and
angering some of the almost 3 million Muslim’s already living here. The
cry by some Governors and Presidential candidates and others to close the door
to Muslims is much more likely to turn an American Muslim into a terrorist than
to prevent one from entering the country from abroad. Thus these ugly cries by
understandably frightened people fail on all counts (the promotion of American
values and the promotion of security).
We need champions of the “Land of the free, home of the brave.”
We have been the “Home of the free because of the brave;” not the
brave young men and women sent off as cannon fodder to fight wars all over the
place by deranged neocons but those brave enough to stand tall for the values of
human respect and freedom that have (and hopefully still will) define America.
