Bad Samaritans | Part 1

Part 1. A CRISIS OF PATRIOTISM

In his last book, Memory and Identity, Pope St. John Paul II reflected on what it means to love and defend one’s country. 

“Patriotism is a love for everything to do with our native land: its history, its traditions, its language, its natural features,” the pope wrote. 

“It is a love which extends also to the works of our compatriots and the fruits of their genius. Every danger that threatens the overall good of our native land becomes an occasion to demonstrate this love.”

St. John Paul II did not hesitate to place patriotism among the Ten Commandments – saying it was “covered by the fourth commandment, which obliges us to honor our father and mother.”

This was no mere sentimental gesture from the Polish pope. “The native land is the common good of all citizens,” he stated, “and as such it imposes a serious duty.”

Judged by these standards, the patriotism of the Biden-Harris administration has been questionable from the start. 

In contrast with St. John Paul II’s words – about the concrete realities of history, tradition, language, nature, and one’s fellow citizens – Biden often said during his 2020 campaign that “America is an idea.” Moreover, he stressed that Americans had “never lived up” to this “idea.” 

While not Catholic, Kamala Harris reportedly “practices the Christian faith she was raised in” and has been called a “dedicated Baptist Christian” – though of a clearly liberal stripe that matches Biden’s own loose relationship to his professed Catholicism. 

Unfortunately, Harris also seems to see the nation more in broad, idealistic terms than as a concrete homeland. 

In a past Democratic convention speech about the “American Dream,” she honed in on pet causes of her party – such as abortion (“the health and safety of women”), homosexuality (“marry the person you love”), and greater economic regulation – while professing to “firmly believe in the American ideal that our country should work for everyone.” 

Details aside, nothing in the substance of this speech connected it to the country she was supposedly praising.

In other words, Kamala Harris’ “American Dream” is simply the generic cosmopolitan liberalism of elites throughout the Western world, from Brussels to Ottawa. When she claims to “love our country,” what she really seems to love is this elite vision of social justice – and perhaps America’s potential to be its global standard bearer. 

Since 2020, Biden has continued to speak of America as an unfulfilled “idea,” while

Harris still touts an “American Dream” disconnected from American reality. 

After years of such talk, it seems this is the primary sense in which they love their country: not so much as a concrete homeland – with real citizens, a distinctive culture, and national borders – but rather as an abstract conception of equality and fairness. 

Biden and Harris may truly love the liberal ideals that they claim as the essence of America. But an abstraction is not what Christians love when they love their country. 

An America reduced to an “idea” or “dream,” is far removed from what St. John Paul II taught – about a shared homeland as the common good of all citizens, and the serious duty to defend that land from dangers. 

Simply put, the Biden-Harris administration has failed in that duty. 

Having sworn to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed” according to the Constitution, Biden now presides over a hemorrhaging southern border where millions of people – from all over the world – are crossing with impunity. His vice president and chosen successor Harris was notably unsuccessful in her assigned mission to help stem the tide of illegal immigration. 

A huge number of these illegal aliens are settling into the US to live and work, after being released on the questionable assumption that they will show up for immigration court dates years in the future.  

An October 2023 House Judiciary Committee report found that “with more than 99 percent of illegal aliens staying inside the United States after being released by the Biden

Administration, there is virtually no enforcement of our immigration laws.” A few weeks earlier, a UN agency named the southern US border as the world’s “deadliest land route for migrants.” 

One of Biden’s first acts as president was to appoint Vice President Harris as the “lead person” to address the so-called “root causes” of immigration from the Northern Triangle countries (Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador) – countries Biden believed needed “help in stemming a movement of so many folks, of stemming the migration to our southern border.” This assignment was her first chance to demonstrate leadership on the world stage. 

The results were unimpressive, arguably doing more to cloud the issue in public discourse than to resolve it in reality. Not surprisingly, Harris’ work yielded more talk than results, with one analyst noting that about six times more Hondurans, Guatemalans, and Salvadorans were caught by US border agents in each of the new administration’s first two years than during Trump’s final year. 

Apart from a notably awkward early interview, Harris’ doomed “root-causes” effort is perhaps best remembered for a 2021 press conference, an exercise in futility where she almost seemed to plead with illegal immigrants: “Do not come. Do not come.” 

But millions certainly did come – and many of them never left. 

Meanwhile, the Biden-Harris administration passes the blame, claims things are under control, and offers band-aid solutions to the ongoing disaster.

One can hardly imagine St. John Paul II giving this a pass. 

Indeed, as this report will show, the Biden-Harris border crisis violates Catholic teaching and Christian tradition on many points.

While the Church does not actually take any official position on the practical details of immigration policy, Catholic doctrine includes many principles of statecraft by which the Biden-Harris administration stands condemned. 

In other areas, such as abortion and transgenderism, it is widely understood that President Biden has scandalously betrayed the Catholic faith that he professes. But there is far less understanding of how the Biden-Harris administration’s disastrous immigration policies violate the teaching of the Church. 

Making matters worse, Biden now wishes to leave the country at the mercy of his aggressively anti-Catholic vice president, who has co-signed his failures and already has her own poor record on immigration issues. 

By comparing facts in the public record with the principles of Catholic social doctrine, this report will show how Biden and Harris together have failed in the “serious duty” imposed by the “common good of all citizens,” our homeland. 

Devoted to an abstract “idea” of America, the 46th president and his vice president have failed to protect the most basic feature of our country as a concrete reality: its borders. 

At the same time, the Biden-Harris border crisis violates Church teaching on the international level, by playing into the hands of some of the world’s worst criminal interests. It is a crisis for both America and the wider world, and on that note, we begin our survey.

Read Part 2 here.

About the Author: Benjamin Mann is a Byzantine Catholic and has written for several publications including Catholic News Agency, Catholic Exchange, and Real Clear Religion.

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