Some problems transcend politics by going to the very root of things. These problems have nothing to do with ordinary party squabbling but involve the question of whether the reality we perceive contains actual truths.
In a healthy and functioning society, of course, language allows us to describe that reality and convey those truths. Thus, we cannot help but regard brazen attempts to distort language as anything less than assaults on reality itself.
With these stakes in mind, we can recognize the true implications of one Democratic congressman’s recent theatrics.
On Jan. 17, the House Oversight and Accountability Committee held a hearing on the Biden administration’s efforts to undermine immigration law. Among the topics discussed was House Resolution 2, also called the Secure the Border Act of 2023.
Should it become law, HR 2 would bolster border security by investing in new technologies and requiring the Department of Homeland Security to resume construction of a border wall. It would also place limits on asylum eligibility.
Last May, the House passed the bill by a narrow 219-213 margin.
Nations have borders. Everyone knows this. Americans, of course, could not walk into another country and simply stay there without breaking that country’s laws and suffering appropriate repercussions.
Most modern Democrats, however, have decided to make war on this part of our shared reality.
Enter Democratic Rep. Maxwell Frost of Florida, a first-year congressman eager to toe a party line that demands emotional manipulations and distortions of plain language.
Does support for legal immigration require support for illegal immigration?
During the HOAC hearing, Frost introduced a bill calling for the removal of the Statue of Liberty.
“Don’t welcome immigrants if you plan to reject them,” he said.
“If you keep pushing your bigoted HR 2 bill, then also pass this bill. I’ve taken the liberty of drafting it for you. It removes the Statue of Liberty, our largest symbol that tells people to come here,” he added while holding a piece of paper.
“This is who you are, removing the fabric of America. So I want to know which Republican who supports and voted for HR 2 will introduce this bill,” Frost continued before pausing for a full eight seconds for a phony dramatic effect.
Then — because Democrats offer nothing else — Frost returned to accusations of bigotry.
“If you’re gonna support HR 2 and these bigoted measures, the least you can do is not be a d*** liar. As Americans, we must reject hypocrisy and lead with love. And as long as Republican officials are more interested in peddling hate, the solutions to fixing this problem in our immigration system will only get worse.”
Frost’s assault on reality assumed two forms.
First, he weaponized compassion.
Americans, of course, have a long tradition of welcoming immigrants and celebrating their country as a refuge.
For instance, when asking Congress for a revision of naturalization laws in 1801, President Thomas Jefferson posed a question that Americans have always wanted to answer in the negative: “Shall oppressed humanity find no asylum on this globe?”
The Statue of Liberty symbolizes that Jeffersonian sentiment. It stands near Ellis Island, which once served as America’s principal gateway to legal immigration.
Thus, America has always welcomed immigrants who arrived — and then continued to live — in accordance with American laws.
In fact, that aspect of America’s history has made it special — if not unique — among nations. Becoming American, in effect, involves accepting a creed, i.e., the Declaration of Independence. It has nothing to do with birthplace or ethnicity.
Alas, bad actors like Frost have tried to distort these realities by playing on Americans’ compassion.
If you do not consent to illegal immigration, Frost said, then you are a bigot. You lack love and peddle hatred.
Remarkably, he also implied that supporting legal immigration but not the illegal variety makes you a hypocrite. In other words, if your compassion does not extend to legal and illegal immigrants alike, then you have no compassion.
Although this assertion defies reason, it nonetheless makes for a subtle assault on reality.
After all, moral philosophers at least since Adam Smith have argued that human beings have a natural inclination toward sympathy. Smith, in fact, regarded sympathy in the moral realm as akin to self-interest in the economic realm.
This means that compassion — or at least the appearance of it — makes for a powerful weapon in the hands of sophists.
And imagine the sophistry required to conflate legal immigrants arriving at Ellis Island with a border invasion. To celebrate the former, they say, you must accept the latter.
That is how tyrants weaponize compassion and make war on reality.
The second element of Frost’s assault involved the plain meaning of language itself.
Here one is tempted to cite Smith’s contemporary, the 18th-century French philosopher Voltaire, who once quipped that the Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire.
In other words, calling something by a particular name does not necessarily convey the truth about it.
In a post on Friday, X owner Elon Musk also cited 18th-century history while calling out deceptive language. Musk noted that a recent immigration bill concealed the truth by putting a disingenuous gloss on insidious motives.
“It sounds so reasonable at first, just like ‘The Committee of Public Safety’ actually meant ‘The Cutting Off Heads Committee’ in revolutionary France,” Musk wrote.
Here is the full text of the bill. It sounds so reasonable at first, just like “The Committee of Public Safety” actually meant “The Cutting Off Heads Committee” in revolutionary France.https://t.co/DCMTHHEIjM
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 3, 2024
For a more modern example, consider that in the People’s Republic of China, the people do not enjoy sovereignty. Thus, they do not live in a republic.
In short, history affords numerous examples of language conveying not only falsehoods but the opposite of truth. And in no case have those inversions produced either peace or justice.
The same, of course, holds true on the question of illegal immigration.
“Don’t welcome immigrants if you plan to reject them,” Frost said. That statement inverted the truth from the outset.
It implied that immigration laws reject immigrants when in fact they do the opposite. They set the terms under which immigrants may enter the country. In that sense, they facilitate actual immigration, as opposed to invasion.
Furthermore, Frost’s statement posited a false relationship between immigration laws and the broader sentiment of welcoming immigrants. A homeowner, for instance, may cheerfully receive visitors without welcoming intruders. None but a modern Democrat would charge that homeowner with hateful hypocrisy.
To make matters worse, Frost also called the Statue of Liberty “our largest symbol that tells people to come here.”
Lady Liberty, of course, does embrace the tired and the poor. But it does not suspend the will of the American people. And their will — at least theoretically embodied in immigration laws — sets the terms of the embrace. It always has.
The need for compassion constitutes a fundamental truth. But for Frost, compassion amounts to nothing more than a tool of manipulation. Either you agree with me and thereby show love, he said, or you have hatred in your heart.
Likewise, language allows us to describe the meaning of our reality. When distorted or inverted, however, the same language makes it impossible to perceive reality rightly.
Thus, Frost’s weaponization of compassion and language could have no other purpose than the subversion of all truth.
