Is the UAE a model for immigration?

I was recently in Abu Dhabi and learned that the population of the United Arab Emirates is about 90 percent foreign born. And it’s peaceful. Part of that has to do with surveillance, but I think there’s more to it.

Ireland had riots this past weekend over immigration concerns. But immigrants only make up about 20 percent of the Irish population.

Why is 90 percent okay in the UAE and 20 percent a problem in Ireland?

I’m not trying to pick on Ireland. We see the same problem in many countries. It’s just that Ireland is in the news right now.

I don’t know all the details, but it seems to me that it has to do with whether the leadership in the country believes in their national culture. The UAE has an unapologetic Muslim culture. They’re tolerant of other cultures, but they make no excuses for being Muslim.

Western countries, by contrast, don’t seem to know what they are, or what they stand for.

What does it mean to be an American, or an Irishman? We don’t seem to know.

The West seems to be suffering from an identity crisis, and I don’t think they’ll be able to come to terms with immigration issues until they decide what they are, and why, and what they want to be.

Objective vs. subjective religious obligation

I recently heard a sermon on the parable of the talents. (If you’re not familiar, here it is.)

“Talent” seems to be an unfortunate word here because in the parable it refers to money, while we think of a talent as an ability to do something.

The point of the parable is that people should “use their talents” in the service of God.

In the context of “using talents,” it’s almost always a question of a trade of one thing against another. For example, let’s say a person is a very good singer, but decides it’s more important to get an engineering degree in college, so he doesn’t pursue his singing. His friends say, “you’re burying your talents” (i.e., his singing).

Who’s to say which one he should pursue? Perhaps he’ll be a great singer. Or perhaps he’ll be a great engineer. Or perhaps he’ll be a middling engineer and provide for a family — which is a good thing. Nobody knows, but people are perfectly happy to lay a guilt trip on him on the basis of his “not using his talents.”

People can be wracked with guilt about such things. They agonize over it. They lose sleep.

Someone might say, “yeah, and all that struggling is evidence that God is pushing them to do the thing they’re not doing. If they ‘had peace’ about the decision, that would be fine.”

I strongly dislike that view of God and that view of moral obligation.

What if the person in question just gets obsessed about things from time to time? Or what if the people who are pressuring him are very persuasive? Is his subjective feeling supposed to be “the voice of God” to him?

I have always leaned towards the idea that we can only be held to account morally for things that are clear and objective. A commandment, for example.

However, I have to admit that there’s a strong tradition that makes conscience something like the voice of God, and I recall St. Martin Luther’s comment that it is neither right nor safe to go against conscience.

People pray about things and find some sort of peace about which way they ought to go. That’s not a commandment. It’s very subjective. And I’m a little uncomfortable with subjectivity — knowing how unhinged it can be, and how often it can lead people astray.

What do you think of this notion of personal moral obligations based on how people feel about things?

Who is more likely to get us into a war?

Unfortunately, it’s looking very likely that we’ll have to choose between Biden and Trump for president. Personally, I would rather we randomly select a CEO from a Fortune 500 company, and randomly select one of our governors to serve as VP.

One of the standard arguments from the left against Trump has been that he was going to get us into a war. He didn’t, but I’m sure we’ll see the same argument again.

Biden hasn’t gotten us into a war either. Yet. But we seem to keep creeping towards it.

It’s impossible to make a straight, head to head comparison between Biden and Trump because they faced different situations. Trump faced a different set of challenges than Biden, and whoever is president next time will face a completely different situation.

But based on what you know of these two, which one do you think is more likely to get us into a war?

What are the odds we’ll be in World War 3 in 12 months?

I thought escalating U.S. involvement in Ukraine was sufficient grounds to worry about WW3, but with the Israel-Hamas war, I think it’s looking worse. And the fact that we have a babbling, tottering, weak fool in the White House makes me even more concerned. I would pray for his quick removal except that it would put Harris in charge. She would cackle and talk to us like a simpering 2nd grade teacher while the world burned.

Since there’s no Speaker of the House, I think that means Sen. Patty Murray is next in line — if both Joe and Kamala were to leave office. I know nothing about her, but I suspect she can’t be worse than either of those two.

But I’m starting to wonder what kind of a war WW3 will be. The U.S. has the greatest military on the planet, which means that people who want to do us harm are likely to find other ways of fighting — like Hamas does against Israel.

That bumbling traitor in the White House has allowed millions of unvetted people to swarm our country. There’s no reason to doubt that a significant minority of them are foreign agents of one sort or another. If open hostilities break out, I suspect we’ll be seeing things like attacks on key infrastructure and terror attacks against the population.

Given what we’ve seen in Europe, I wonder how many college-educated morons would support them.