Conservatives Are Weeping Over the Plight of Britain's Baby Alfie. But Where Are Their Tears For Border Families Being Torn Apart by the Trump Administration?
Does their commitment to family values stop at the Rio Grande's edge?
Social conservatives in America have been appalled that the British government wouldn't let the Catholic parents of Alfie, the two-year-old boy
who was suffering from a degenerative neurological disorder, make a last ditch effort to save him despite the fact that the Pope was willing to fly them to the Vatican and cover all the treatment costs. Why did the government refuse the pleas of Alfie's parents ? Because medical authorities told it that this wouldn't be in the baby's interest. And of course they are rational and Alfie's parents are Catholic zealots and therefore incapable of putting the baby's well being ahead of the dictates of their own religion.
But the National Review's David French rightly pointed out there is something deeply "barbaric and tyrannical" —not civilized —about a society that entrusts life and death decisions to the impersonal instruments of the state rather than mothers and fathers with a vested interest in their child's well being. This ought to bother every decent human being of every political and religious persuasion, especially liberals who don't think any regulation is too onerous if it saves even a single life. Yet, as French's colleague, Ramesh Ponnuru noted, there had been no noticeable outrage from liberals over Alfie's parents not being allowed to save him even though it wouldn't have cost British taxpayers a single shilling.
But by the same token, where is the conservative outrage over what their own government has been doing to parents and children at the border, I ask in a column at The Week?
For months now, the Trump administration has been literally kidnapping children from parents arriving at the border in search of asylum and sending them off to prison-like detention camps thousands of miles away. In one particularly egregious case, authorities seized the 7-year-old daughter of a mother fleeing violence in Congo. Without offering her any explanation, they dispatched her little girl to a Chicago camp while holding the mother in San Diego.
Nor is this an isolated incident. A New York Times investigation a few weeks ago found more than 700 cases of parents and children separated just since October, including 100 under the age of 4.
Yet what have family values social conservatives said about this? Nada. Not a word.
National Review has never been crazy about immigration. In fact, hostility to immigrants has been its signature issue forever. However, even it should recognize that not everything is fair in its War on Immigration. Family values don't, after all, stop at the Rio Grande's edge. Or do they?
Go here to read the full piece. And weep.