For Those In Peril on The Sea

John McCain in his book, The Restless Wave, tells how he and Senator Ted Kennedy made two attempts to pass a bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform bill prior to Kennedy’s death in 2009.  The third attempt, after Kennedy’s death, also failed, even though there were big majorities in both houses of Congress in favor of it.  This was a deep disappointment for McCain for two reasons:  “it’s something that most Americans want, and most members of Congress know it is the right thing to do.”  Then he stated his own third reason, saying that our country needs to do this now, because in the present political moment, “old fears and animosities that have blighted our history appear to be on the rise again, exploited by opportunists who won’t trouble their careers or their consciences with scruples about honesty or compassion for their fellow man.”

McCain saw the rise of what he called “true believers in an exclusive America.”  These people fear that America is being contaminated by immigration from Mexico, the Caribbean, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia.  They are not only opposed to illegal immigration, they are opposed to all immigration from these areas.  These “true believers” must be confronted, not ignored or winked at, wrote McCain.  So when House Republican, Steve King, espouses ethnocentrism as the principle attribute of American exceptionalism and the foundation of Western civilization, or when he says that diversity and assimilation are incompatible, he needs to be called out.  When King says, “We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies,” McCain said,  we need to respond by saying, “We built the civilization he wants to restore—the world’s freest, most enlightened, and most prosperous civilization—with the help of babies whose parents came here from every corner of the world.”  We must speak up against this kind of  “Make America Great Again.”  America is already great and it is great precisely because of immigrants who came, assimilated, changed our civilization and were themselves changed by it!  

McCain says, “..All that’s needed to assimilate in America is to embrace our founding convictions…that all have an equal right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, to the protections of the law, to be governed by consent, to speak freely, practice their religion openly, go as far as their industry and talent can take them. That’s it, and it’s beautiful in its wise simplicity.” 

I sure hope John McCain’s daughter, Meghan, had it wrong when she said at her father’s memorial: "We gather here to mourn the passing of American greatness. The real thing, not cheap rhetoric from men who will never come near the sacrifice he gave so willingly, nor the opportunistic appropriation of those who lived lives of comfort and privilege.”  It is my fervent hope and prayer that American greatness lives on, and will continue to grow and thrive—that the “Eternal Father, strong to save, Whose arm hath bound the restless wave” continues to hold “those in peril on the sea!”