Call out the Crazy.
How excusing excess is destroying America.
Author’s Note: I started writing this article a few weeks ago, in Charlotte, NC where I live. Little did I know that we would become front page news with ICE officers flooding our streets arresting hundreds of individuals during their operations. This has only made the words below even more important.
If you want to read more about my specific thoughts on immigration policy click here. I also share one of my experiences visiting churches hosting migrants in Mexico here.
The U.S. Catholic bishops just did something they haven’t done in twelve years. They issued a “Special Message” (a designation reserved for matters of exceptional urgency) with unusual unity against what they called “the indiscriminate mass deportation of people” and the “climate of fear and anxiety” surrounding immigration enforcement.
I believe the bishops are right to speak against cruelty and dehumanization. But here’s what’s missing from their statement: any reckoning with how we got here.
The Pendulum Swings
All too often, when our interests align with those in power, we excuse their excesses. We stay silent about overreach and hypocrisy because of the ways it may be working in our favor, toward our interests, or even benefitting us personally (USCCB received as much as $455M from the federal government in resettlement contracts since 2021).
Inevitably, as the crazy radicals now unchecked continue in their abuse of power, the movable middle, disgusted, turn violently away from the party they just elected and the policies they so recently supported. Abruptly, the pendulum swings back to the other side of the political spectrum with so much force it overcorrects in ways that damage families, institutions, our country, and the world.
Nowhere has this become clearer than with immigration.
I say this as someone who has worked for the welcome and care of refugees. I’ve traveled to El Paso and crossed into Juarez to see the conditions for asylum seekers myself. I’ve personally helped with mobilizing churches to aid in the resettlement of Afghan families in Charlotte. I believe deeply (and biblically) in welcoming the stranger.
But when caravans crossed the border unchecked, when unaccompanied minors were lost by the system, when immigration law became effectively optional—where were the bishops willing to say the hard things?
The immigration advocacy complex (many of whom had the power and platform to speak) could have said: “We will help welcome the stranger, but this immigration policy is chaos and unjust. It is unsustainable. It will create backlash that will hurt more kids and families.”
This type of prophetic witness intervenes because it knows that all goodwill has limits. Including the generosity of the American people. It knows that even the most hospitable families will inevitably grown weary if they will their kindness is being abused. That if unchecked, there will come a day when people no longer see immigration as compassion. They will instead see incentives, overwhelm, and abdication. Unfortunately, that day arrived.
Even while Trump’s support among Hispanic voters in the last election surged, public deportations have begun and refugee immigration numbers have been slashed to their lowest levels ever. The power of the pendulum showed that even legal immigrant families can grow tired of lawlessness, opting instead for what they perceive to be security and stability over chaos.
The Vaccine State and What It Created
As another example, consider the public health establishment during the pandemic.
The mandates. The censorship. The firings of military members and everyday Americans for refusing the COVID vaccine. School closures destroying poor children’s education while wealthy kids Zoomed from second homes and private pods. Liquor stores stayed open while parks and gyms closed.
Public health officials and Politicians could have policed their own.
They could have said:
“We believe vaccines are effective but we respect your skepticism and religious objections.”
“We know the elderly and infirm need vaccines but we cannot in good conscience institute mandates for the young, healthy, or pregnant without better data.”
“We need to protect teachers but lengthy school shutdowns are just too costly for children.”
They didn’t. Too many were drunk on emergency powers and cultural authority.
The result? A wholesale rejection of institutional medicine and its professional class. In its wake, RFK Jr. led a movement that questioned everything about the health establishment.
I appreciate much of what the Make America Healthy Again movement represents: investing in restorative reproductive medicine, questioning the wisdom of lifelong birth control and synthetic hormones, exposing corporate capture of regulatory agencies, advocating for better nutrition and exercise as frontline health interventions, and demanding transparency about what’s actually in our food supply. These are conversations we desperately needed to have.
But spend 15 minutes online and you know we’ve also unleashed voices that went from questioning the COVID vaccine to blanket suspicion of every vaccine ever made, no matter what it’s for or when it’s given. The pendulum swung from “trust the experts unconditionally” to “trust no expert ever”. Public health officials created the conditions that made this inevitable.
USAID: Death by Ideological Capture
Finally, we have USAID. A relatively unknown agency to most Americans, but one active all around the globe distributing aid and saving lives. For years this agency had been viewed positively by both sides of the aisle.
Then the Biden administration decided to use USAID as an ideological slush fund. Under Biden, LGBTQ, abortion access, and climate ideologies were elevated, requiring that every foreign aid program promote a progressive ideology, even when it came to food aid and starving refugees.
When DOGE set its sights on USAID to search for evidence of ideological capture, they struck media gold. The agency had spent $47,000 on a transgender opera in Colombia, $32,000 on a transgender comic book in Peru, $70,000 on a DEI musical in Ireland, $1.5 million to advance DEI in Serbia’s workplaces, and $2 million toward sex changes and LGBTQ activism in Guatemala.
To be clear: this was a small part of USAID’s work. The agency provides vital food aid, disaster relief, and HIV prevention programs that save countless lives. These egregious examples don’t represent the thousands of good USAID workers who just wanted to help sick and starving children but thats also kind of the point.
These unquestionably outrageous examples sowed suspicion that USAID had been corrupted. The ideological operas and sex changes didn’t represent American people’s values and the taxpayers were rightly outraged to see their dollars go there. So why not see those distortions and departures from the USAID core mission as a risk and call them out? If they truly do not represent the heart of the agency, why did leadership tolerate and and in some cases promote them?
Where were the voices saying: “This is wrong. This will breed backlash and put life saving programs at risk.”
Instead there was silence. And when conservatives gained power, they didn’t reform USAID, they dismantled it (think more chainsaw than scalpel). Programs were cut indiscriminately. Thousands of pounds of emergency food expired in warehouses. Weeks of disruption and critical loss went by before some aid was quietly added back in. Vulnerable families went hungry. Sick people missed medication. The entire humanitarian aid profession was gutted not because aid isn’t good, but because of a knee jerk response to those in power who had failed to police the radicals and their ideological excesses.
Where Do We Go From Here?
To those who held positions of influence during the last several years: the politicians, the immigration advocates, public health officials, and humanitarian professionals here’s what rebuilding trust requires: humility, honesty, and a genuine willingness to reckon with the ways your institutions contributed to this backlash.
Admitting your contribution to creating this environment doesn’t excuse the unwise nature of the current administration’s response. It doesn’t justify the heavy-handed cuts or cruel implementation. But your reckoning is still necessary. Not to absolve the current administration, but to help win back the trust of those still movable in the middle.
Your honesty now (even in the face of an overcorrection you rightly oppose) is what begins to rebuild the credibility America needs you to have. It will also slow the pendulum’s momentum toward another devastating blow.
And Finally, A Word to Conservatives
You now wield the sword of government. You have the power, the mandate, and the righteous anger.
What are you tempted to excuse?
We would be wrong to dismiss the bishops message out of hand. Not because enforcement of our borders is wrong (it isn’t), but because when you do it in a way that celebrates the suffering of others and dehumanizes people made in God’s image, you hand your opponents the moral high ground and fuel a pendulum that will destroy what you’ve built.
Remember they, like you, can play the game. Every instance of deportation celebrated on the White House Instagram. The corruption of the Epstein flip flops (and bizarre defense of his actions), the hypocrisy of the abortion pill reversal. They will weaponize these moments to sow division, stir outrage, accumulate power, and enforce new policies that make the old ones look reasonable.
You can’t afford to squander your credibility by excusing genuine wrongs just because they advance your policy goals. Be more concerned with truth than tribal loyalty and the D.C. scoreboard. Police your own side precisely because you care about preserving your influence and your ability do good for your neighbor.
Let’s stop before we create the conditions for the next overcorrection.