Debunking the Sanctuary Movement, Conclusion

This is the conclusion to my piece from 1985.  The points made include:  1) There is no right of or  justification for "civil disobedience.  Crime is crime, and treason is treason.  2) So-called "liberation theology" is only Marxist revolution with a false Christian gloss, 3) our primary moral obligations to family, community, and  nation take precedence over any imagined obligations to strangers, and, finally 4) the confusion of roles--national government dictating how children are reared while individuals and cities are making foreign policy--is a sign of a profound disorder in American life.

Although civil disobedients like to lump their activities together with the more traditional forms of conscientious objectors, their cases are different.  Since they object to the application of laws and regulations, they must, as Ronald Dworkin insists, "exhaust the normal political process . . . until these normal political means hold out no hope of success." It is not at all clear that the friends of the Salvadorans have exhausted the ordinary and routine steps of the legal and political process.  They have not even succeeded in putting debate on open immigration for Central Americans high on the political agenda.  It was not a major issue of the 1984 campaign, nor is it likely to be a hot item in the '86 congressional races.  But instead of lobbying and petitioning, they seem ready to break the law at the drop of a hat.

Unfortunately, the left has been battered in recent elections. The American people, given a chance to vote on their agenda, have rejected it decisively in 1980 and 1984. L ike the spoiled children of the 60's they once were, they refuse to abide by decisions arrived at by democratic process. Many of them, if given half a chance, would eliminate that process and substitute for "government of the people" a government in the name of the people—the dictatorship of the proletariat. It is not simply this or that policy they disagree with, but the American form of constitutional government.

Most of the clerics express their rebellion in the familiar terms of liberation theology, an enterprise in which the emphasis is definitely on liberation and not theology.  Stripped of its passionate appeal to the gospels, liberation theology calls for a violent overthrow of existing social institutions as the prelude to a reign of social justice, a formulation with which few Marxists would argue. Sister Darlene Nicgorski, one of the Tucson 12, has all the right credentials; she campaigns against "the dinosaur" Reagan, visits Nicaragua, and rants against U.S. "incursions" into Central America.  William Sloane Coffin is, if anything, more open. In his speech at the "Inter-American Symposium on Sanctuary" in Tucson last January, Mr. Coffin proclaimed that "a successful revolution in Central America would not only bring economic and social change there but would also cast a few hopeful rays in our direction." If Coffin means to imply that the "refugees" will bring the revolution home to the U.S. (a suggestion made by more than a few members of the movement), then his activities amount to more than a defiance of U.S. immigration policy, more than a protest against our foreign policy: If taken seriously, this active assistance to illegal immigration would have to be seen as part of a general program of subversion against the legal government of the United States.

By any ethical or legal standards, the sanctuary movement is on very shaky ground, but it is not surprising if most people are confused by questions of civil disobedience.  Even after dismissing all the possible justifications for the movement, a nagging suspicion remains. Christian charity, even if it is understood only in the attenuated Sunday school sense, obliges us to help the poor and unfortunate. How can we refuse to assist the Salvadoran refugees on political or prudential grounds alone?

It is a difficult question. Genuine charity is so rare a gift that we should avoid any attempt to limit it. On the other hand, most men and women have what philosopher James Fishkin calls primary moral obligations to family, friends, and community. These responsibilities take precedence over our merely universal obligation.  Man is, as we must never forget, a social animal, whose sociability is rooted in his experience of family life.

Older ethical systems took account of man's social nature. Charity, so the proverb used to run, begins at home. Aristotle wondered if a man could be accounted happy if his friends and family suffered affliction. The Aristotelian view of an ethics based on family and community is not simply a fine old idea to read about in books: it is descriptive of the way people actually live.

The older approach to the ethical dilemma presented by Central American poverty would begin by recognizing more than our "primary obligations" to our own families. Most people, in fact, see their ethical obligations as a series of rings radiating outward from the center, family and close friends, to the local community and the church, and to the nation. By the time it reaches "all mankind," it is a weakly felt obligation, like the magnetic force of the north pole, which is powerful enough to attract a compass needle almost anywhere on earth but too weak to move a carpet tack a quarter inch.

This does not mean that a resident of Dunn, North Carolina, owes no obligation to the people of Oregon or Afghanistan, but that there is an appropriate level for the exercise of moral commitments. Individuals ordinarily exercise them on a personal and familial level, families on the level of community, communities at the national level, and nations in the international sphere. Worrying about all the problems of the Third World is not only too much for the mortal flesh of one person to bear, it is an inappropriate and dangerous burden to assume. T hese are essentially questions of foreign policy, not private morality. They are national priorities to be established by consensus. The intrusion of individuals and churches into affairs of state is all the more dangerous, because it invites the continued encroachment of the state upon the rights of churches, families, and individuals.

There is a very real danger in this confusion of spheres of responsibility. Private citizens want to make decisions on the deployment of weapons or foreign policy commitments, and government bureaucrats are eager to champion the rights of children against their parents. If Catholic and Lutheran bishops (to say nothing of our great unlicensed diplomat, Jesse Jackson) want to play at being Secretary of State and arrogate the executive powers of the U.S. unto themselves, they can expect to find treasury department officials taking a keen interest in their tax-exempt activities. Government intrusion into church activities would be undesirable, but not entirely unjustified. It is increasingly evident that many church leaders and religious organizations see their role as primarily political. Their inability to keep religion and politics separate is compounded by an understanding of social ethics so incoherent and confused that in most circles it could pass for ignorance. What all this ferment over sanctuary brings home to us once again is the moral bankruptcy of so much of the religious leadership in America.

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Thomas Fleming

Thomas Fleming is president of the Fleming Foundation. He is the author of six books, including The Morality of Everyday Life and The Politics of Human Nature, as well as many articles and columns for newspapers, magazines,and learned journals. He holds a Ph.D. in Classics from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and a B.A. in Greek from the College of Charleston. He served as editor of Chronicles: a Magazine of American Culture from 1984 to 2015 and president of The Rockford Institute from 1997-2014. In a previous life he taught classics at several colleges and served as a school headmaster in South Carolina