When preaching immigration leniency and lawlessness in America, immigration bleeding hearts should lay off the Hebrew Bible, Leviticus 19:34, in particular.
“The stranger that sojourneth with you shall be unto you as the home-born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt.”
One Rev. Ryan M. Eller, on Tucker Carlson’s show, gave a dissembling and misleading reading of the tract, in mitigation of the immigration status of Kate Steinle’s killer.
The reverend glibly translated the word “sojourn” to mean citizens living among you, the latter having created, presumably, an immutable reality on the ground.
In appropriating the Hebrew text to his humanistic ends, Rev. Eller left-out that Leviticus 19:34 is a reference to strangers who are temporarily in your country.
A “sojourn” is a “temporary stay; a brief period of residence.” The Hebrew word “ger” means alien, stranger, not citizen.
The Hebrew Testament is not the New Testament. It’s not the text you want to use in spreading the Christian, “We Are The World” dogma. For it revolves around distinguishing the Jews and their homeland from the nations of the world.
What is commonly called the Old Testament, I read in the Hebrew, free of the bowdlerization that often accompanies the Christianized translations. As I read it, our Bible was not meant to meld the Jewish People with the world.
The opposite is true.
While it evinces ground-breaking exploration of natural, universal justice—and a lot of not-so-merciful meting out of “justice”—the Hebrew Bible is something of a parochial document.
Undergirding what Christians call the Old Testament is a message of particularism, not universalism. The ancient Hebrews would have been appalled by many a modern, left-liberal Jew who has betrayed the nationalistic message underlying the 24 best-written books ever.
Mercy and justice are all Leviticus 19:34 exhorts. The tract reminds the Hebrews only that they suffered in Egypt as slaves to the Egyptians. Consequently, the people of Israel are to be kind to the strangers living temporarily among them.
Were the biblical author to have added a parenthetic statement, it would’ve been: “Fear not, the stranger will soon be on his way, or chased away.”
The Christian Saint Joan of Arc was certainly steeped in a sturdy nativism.
“Jeanne, does God love the English,” Joan of Arc‘s pro-English inquisitor demanded to know. Said Saint Jeanne d’Arc about the invaders of her homeland, France:
“Yes, God loves the English … but in their own land.”
Can you think of a hero in the distant past who galvanized his countrymen around the idea that their country was no more than an economy? Alas, there are oodles of them around, today.
Lite libertarians like Ilya Somin and Katherine Mangu-Ward, for example.
On Tucker’s too, Somin, professor of law at George Mason University, had stated that “free migration throughout the world could potentially double world gross domestic product.”
Relying on the GDP measure to motivate for open borders is typical of the arguments made by lite libertarians.
The GDP measure is itself a state-driven metric. Official GDP numbers are deceptive because they chart—and include—the growth of government debt. In order to come to grips with America’s real economic prognosis, one would need to tease apart the indubitably modest economic growth from the monstrous accretion of public debt.
Defined, tracked and manipulated by the D.C. political machine, GDP is a political construct. It statistically conflates the growth of debt with economic growth.
When it comes to alienating more than captivating potential adherents to libertarianism, Somin has nothing on Katherine Mangu-Ward, editor of the lite libertarian publication, “Reason.”
Ms. Mangu-Ward gets my award for the stupidest statement made to Saint Tucker Carlson, this year.
She told Tucker that, “If we had a billion people in America, America would be unstoppable. That would be amazing.”
There’s a method to the open-border religion, preached, invariably, from the alternate universe of the TV studio or creature comforts of a stately home.
According to the Somin and Mangu-Ward “a country is no more than GDP” theory, high population density is just dandy as it increases the division of labor—and with it, specialization.
Witness the densely populated Cairo is all its innovative productiveness! Another splendid model for squalor is Calcutta. So yes, do let’s continue densely packing our country with anyone who washes ashore.
If American history (circa 1894) is anything to go by, the scarcity and high cost of labor helped propel this country into its position as the world’s leading industrial power.
In a word, ignore the Svengali who relies on one statist scam, GDP, to promote another: the centrally planned, divide-and-conquer stratagem of mass immigration.
And beware of fools and knaves who appropriate ancient scripture for their own political ends.
