In Rod Douthat’s recent column in the New York Times he covers a lot of the ground on immigration that I’ve addressed here and concludes:
But the calculus is not simple, a middle ground is actually worth seeking, and recent immigration plays a role not only in America’s greatness, but in our divisions and disappointments as well.
Casting immigration or health care or or poverty or going to war or any of the other issues we face as grave moral issues oversimplifies them. They are moral issues but not solely moral issues and the pragmatic costs and secondary effects of policy cannot be waved away.
The United States has a low level of social cohesion to begin with and, as Mr. Douthat points out, mass immigration weakens already weak social bonds. It is possible that the carrying capacities of different countries for immigrants are different because of the different social conditions that prevail in those countries. Past history suggests that the United States is near or at its level of tolerance for immigration. Mass illegal immigration may reduce Americans’ tolerance for legal immigration; they may be in a trade-off position.
We can’t afford to give everyone all of the health care they want. No one can. It’s not a case of virtue—giving everyone all the health care they want—vs. vice—letting some people go without. In any foreseeable system some people will get less care than they want or even than they need. The questions are who gets what care, how much will it cost, who pays, and who decides.
I’ve expressed many times here that I think we’re too willing to go to war. I think that absolute security is impossible and we need to learn to live with some level of risk. There are grave moral issues in going to war but it’s not solely a moral question. There are also questions of responsibility, the implications of not going to war, and willingness to pay.
We must take the moral implications of our decisions seriously. With the declining agreement on standard of morality that will become increasingly difficult to do. In casting issues solely as moral issues we do ourselves a disservice. Practical considerations will always intrude themselves.
I just got back from a trip to Walmart, having spent most of the night watching a marathon of television, British show about Africa, wet and dry seasons, predators and prey, endlessly watching, circling, measuring, gathering and killing and dying, always in the end dying.
Walmart was just like that, suspicious glances, a dozen unfamiliar languages, strange and foreign modes of dress, tension, quick young men moving though the store on cellphones, not shopping, unknown language, barely missing collisions with the elderly.
And I could only think, who planned this? And why?