Pope Francis holds mass in Juarez on the U.S.-Mexico border, February 17, 2016. Shortly afterward, Francis attacked then presidential candidate Donald Trump for his promise to build a border wall to prevent illegal immigration from Mexico to the U.S.
“We can no longer sustain unacceptable economic inequality, which prevents us from applying the principle of the universal destination of the earth’s goods.”
– Pope Francis
Of all political issues of our time, immigration has to rank among the most likely to trigger a viscerally emotional response. This is true regardless of which side of the debate one is on. Daniel McAdams – a Libertarian, former Congressional staffer for Ron Paul and current co-host of the Liberty Report – has said that immigration was his least favorite topic to discuss for this very reason.
On the other hand, there are few topics that this author finds more interesting and perhaps none on which he has written more extensively. Although immigration can bring out the emotions as few issues can, ultimately the immigration debate is not one of competing emotions, but of competing ideas. As such, it has been this author’s endeavor to keep the focus of this series on ideas, not on people. My hope in doing so is to make the case that, contrary to the propaganda one hears from the globalists, immigrants, migrants and refugees have no claim on the goods of the citizens of host nations. Further, there exists no concomitant obligation on the part of the citizens of host nations to meet the perceived needs of the migrants.
Anyone who makes such an argument has opened himself up to charges of racism, bigotry, xenophobia and selfishness. Such is the underlying assumption in nearly every article that appears in the mainstream press. All such assumptions are rubbish.
Rather than asking why those who oppose the sort of mass migration prompted by the globalists in general, and by the Pope and the Roman Church-State in particular, are such bigots, the proper question is to ask why those who promote mass, taxpayer subsidized, nation breaking immigration, migration and refugee resettlement are such thieves. For the sort of immigration programs supported by the Pope are in reality nothing less than an attempt to justify theft, and theft on a global scale at that.
As John Robbins noted in his lectures on economics, the concept of theft logically depends on the prior concept of property. The context for his remarks was his discussion of the famous maxim of French anarchist Pierre Joseph-Proudhon “Property is theft.” Robbins argued that Proudhon’s statement was nonsense. Theft, said Robbins, depends on the idea of property. If one believes that the idea of property itself is illegitimate, as Proudhon’s statement implies, it is pointless to talk about theft.
It may come as a surprise to many on both sides of the immigration debate – both those promoting Rome’s vision of unrestricted mass immigration, migration and refugee resettlement and those opposed to it – to hear that having a correct, that is to say a Biblical, view of property is the key to settling the issue of immigration. Yet this author is convinced that such is the case.
Lord willing, this discussion about property will look at the issue from two angles. First, I would like to recap some of what has already been written in the series about Rome’s antichristian, collectivist theory of property known as the universal destination of goods. Second, I shall refute Rome’s false doctrine of property with the words of Scripture, using John Robbins’ doctoral dissertation on Sir Robert Filmer to highlight what the Bible says on the subject of the origin and transmission of property.
To summarize what shall follow, it is this author’s contention that the Bible’s teaching on property represents a complete refutation of Rome’s false doctrine of the universal destination of goods. Since the universal destination of goods is the philosophical foundation of all Rome’s teachings on immigration, migration and refugee resettlement, by refuting it, one refutes the entire theoretical body of Antichrist’s teachings in these areas and exposes his practices of them as the enormous sins and crimes which they truly are.
Lux Lucet 