PunkAssBlog.com

Whenever an article starts out as follows, you know you’re in for a painful ride:

With a touch of divine providence, the debate about illegal immigration is heating up just as Jews prepare for Shavuot. The two-day festival starting the evening of June 1, called Pentecost in English, marks the anniversary of the giving of the Torah at Mt. Sinai. The holiday’s most sweetly recalled feature, though, is the reading of the Scriptural book of Ruth, Judaism’s favorite immigrant.

Her story challenges us to think more biblically about America’s 12 million illegal aliens, and the ancient narrative may be more contemporary than you realize.

I have no quibble with the holiday, just the part about divine providence, as though God somehow decided he’d spark a plague of immigrant fever to make the festival more fun, maybe spice it up a little with some current events. I’m also not so big on thinking biblically, but the bible’s got a bunch of stuff in there about lost peoples and compassion and junk, so maybe the author will take the time to remind his audience to be kind. Oh, did I mention the author was David Klinghoffer?

Klinghoffer recounts Ruth’s passionate rejection of her home country of Moab in favor of Israel and summarizes it thusly:

Having “converted” to Judaism with this passionate speech, Ruth then returned with Naomi to Israel. There she remarried and became a key ancestor in King David’s lineage. Rabbinic law to this day derives the basic laws of conversion from Ruth’s overwhelming devotion to the people of Israel.

So Ruth really meant it. She wasn’t ditching her crappy country for kicks; Israel was much more her speed. Davey thinks any foreigner ought to have to demonstrate similar zeal to draw the “get out of INS jail free” card:

Thoughtful advocates of amnesty recognize the need for some standards. To become a citizen, you should have to learn English. But that’s not enough.

On the Wall Street Journal editorial page, James Wilson of Pepperdine University and Peter Skerry of Boston College further suggested that as a precondition immigrants be required to do community service. That’s more like it. If we are to follow the spirit of the Bible, as amnesty advocates have been advocating, then every new American should, like Ruth, need to demonstrate a commitment to patriotism and civic spirit.

I don’t recall the part where Ruth had to pick up roadside trash or clean rest stop bathrooms to get into Israel’s good graces, but hey, why get caught up in the details? Ruth made a big ol’ speech back then and somehow Klinghoffer extrapolates the modern equivalent to be temporary indentured servitude to The Man.

I bet there was a lot more in the way of animal dung and general public dirtiness to be cleaned back in Ruth’s days, though, and if a speech was good enough back then, maybe we should just ask the same thing now.

I present to you the rough draft of the American Loyalty speech:
“I [insert your dirty foreign name] do solemnly swear that America is the most badass of all countries, way better than [insert your country of origin's dirty foreign name]. It is the Michael Jordan of nations, like if you combined Joe Montana and Bill Russell and Lance Armstrong into one super-state. Plus Jack Nicklaus. America pwns and the rest of the world can nary front to its hotness. [pop your shirt for effect] I pledge eternal loyalty to this, the greatest of the great, the Papa Bear of the world, the US of A.”

Surely that would be enough for Davey and friends, right? Nah.

Whether guided by Ruth or by the ger toshav, a truly biblical model for granting legal residency to illegal immigrants would set high hurdles. Many native-born Americans, however, seem unready to contemplate this — which brings us back to Shavuot, the festival of standards.

The other highlight of the holiday is the Torah reading from Exodus, narrating the revelation of the Ten Commandments — the 10 demands the Lord set before the Jewish people in the desert before they themselves became immigrants to the holy land. God knew what a self-respecting culture must demand of those who would join it, and what even the land itself may require of those who wish to live there.

Whether we in America also know what must be demanded of our immigrants, however, remains to be seen.

And here we see demonstrated the tendency for the wingnut to justify his position “because God says so in the bible.” We’ve been over why this is a bad idea before, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t remind David that doing anything because any book says so isn’t actually a moral argument. If the book makes a compelling argument, like _why_ Israel benefitted from an impassioned speech by Ruth as opposed to if she’d just offered a “what’s up” chin nod, then talk about those reasons, not the book itself. Otherwise, you just sound like a dunsky who relies on “my mommy said so.” Plus, the damn book says a lot of things, and plenty of them conflict. It’s kinda hard to decide what to do based on the bible when even the bible can’t agree. And let’s not forget that accepting the bible at truth isn’t (yet) a requirement of US citizenship, which means not everyone in our nation has to believe in it. That means that any laws put in place here have to be based on more than just The Word.

Deep down, though, like most people who back their claims in this way, Klinghoffer doesn’t care about following the bible here. He’s just trying to use it to justify his own sadistic desire to put people of heritages he doesn’t like (his piece is particularly whiny about Mexican-Americans) through the wringer so they’ll kiss his feet and stay in line. Believe me, if he thought he could get away with making these people state slaves for life, he’d advocate it. That’d show some real patriotism, right, Dave? Loyalty speeches are for suckers.

Suckers like Ruth.