Indifference is a betrayal of America’s founding mission
Moral clarity is important because moral decisions are often difficult. The easy choices that pose no risk—one should contribute to charity, help old people across the street, and be kind to children—these are not moral dilemmas. Today, with an estimated 4 million Syrian refugees streaming across the globe, we see a genuine moral crisis in the capitals of the West.
What makes this a moral dilemma is not only a claim on resources. It is also the lurking suspicion that we might be admitting people who, arriving from a region where terrorism and anti-Western feeling is rife, will end up causing harm…
But America was founded on the ideal of refuge. Indifference is a betrayal of its founding mission. The words on the Statue of Liberty cannot be an empty promise if we are to remain the great nation we have been for close to 250 years.
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me.We cannot take everyone. We have to exercise caution when refugees arrive from a region that breeds anti-Western terrorists. But we remain that shining city on a hill. We must not close our arms to the world, or to the family on a raft, tempest-tossed, praying for safety. No country can afford to be all things to all people. Equally, this country cannot afford not to be America.
How many Islamic refugees would Rabbi Wolpe like on his block?
It’s a bad idea for Jewish elites such as Rabbi Wolpe to pervert the American idea to their own ends, claiming the mantle of Torah and of “universal moral values,” which can then be tossed aside whenever they’re inconvenient, such as in the application of these multi-cultural ideas to the Jewish state, which understandably does not want to import Islamic migrants who hate it (nor should any sane nation want such people).
No nation wants the world’s refuse.
This historic background and the continuing relationship between Jews and the national government help explain one of the most notable characteristics of Jews in American politics: their strong adherence to liberalism, and especially to the Democratic Party, as loyal voters, leading activists, and major financial contributors. Geoffrey Brahm Levey has ascribed Jewish liberalism to the inherently humanistic character of Jewish values and traditions. This explanation seems somewhat fanciful, however, since in some political settings Jews have managed to overcome their humanistic scruples enough to organize and operate rather ruthless agencies of coercion and terror such as the infamous Soviet-era NKVD. (p. 14)
