News

My discussion with a woman whose husband was killed by a drunk-driving illegal immigrant

11 Comments
Net annual cost of illegal immigration
Net annual cost of illegal immigration

Before we get to my conversation with my friend whose husband was killed in a car accident when an illegal immigrant with NO driver’s license, NO auto insurance, who was intoxicated from alcohol, I wanted to show you a news story that shows how things like this are not so unusual.

Here’s the story from the Daily Caller:

A multi-vehicle crash last week that claimed the life of the son of a Knoxville, Tennessee fire department captain was the result of a “chain reaction” begun by an illegal immigrant driving in the wrong lane, investigators said.

Pierce Kennedy Corcoran, 22, the son of Knoxville Fire Department spokesperson Captain D.J. Corcoran, was driving a Honda Civic south on Knoxville’s Chapman Highway the evening of December 29 when a Chevrolet pickup truck driven by Franco Cambrany Francisco-Eduardo reportedly veered into their lane and struck the vehicle.

[…]44-year-old Franco Cambrany Francisco-Eduardo, an illegal immigrant, was arrested and charged with criminally negligent homicide as well as having no driver’s license or proof of financial responsibility, according to the News Sentinel, and was jailed without bond pending ICE action.

Since Tennessee is NOT a sanctuary state, the criminal will not be released to re-enter the United States illegally, and then commit another crime, and another, and another. This is what would happen in sanctuary states where Democrats govern. Instead, Tennessee handed the killer over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

People like to say that most illegal immigrants don’t commit violent crimes, but the real conclusion to draw here is that if this illegal immigrant had NOT been in the country, then that 22-year-old son would still be alive for his parents. He shouldn’t have been here. We can’t control the violent crimes of people who are supposed to be here, but that doesn’t mean that we should make things WORSE by letting in people who should not be here.

You can read the statement from the victim’s mother here.

It happened to someone I know

A friend of the blog had her husband killed by an illegal immigrant who was driving drunk, without a driver’s license. I had a call with her on Wednesday night to find out what happened. The illegal immigrant was driving in the wrong direction in their lane at full speed. Her husband was killed, she went into a coma, and her young child was injured. The illegal immigrant was drunk. He had no driver’s license. He had no auto insurance. When they caught him, he was packing his bags to go back to Mexico. And after serving his sentence, he was released without any kind of civil suit against him.

She was not able to get any restitution from the ranch that illegally employed him. She was not able to get any restitution from the strip bar where he became intoxicated before the accident. She was not able to get any restitution from the car dealer who sold him a car without requiring a driver’s license and proof of insurance.

After his release, it would be easy for him to re-enter the country illegally, and commit another crime. This happens all the time, for example, in the case of the illegal immigrant who just murdered a legal immigrant policy officer in California. That criminal had been deported FIVE TIMES, but he just kept walking through our border again and again.

I think it is very important to focus on the stories of the law-abiding victims of illegal immigrants who commit crimes. Not all illegal immigrants commit crimes. But all the crimes committed by illegal immigrants could have been deterred by tougher border security.

Whenever I hear Democrat politicians talking about illegal immigration, they are always silent about the law-abiding taxpayers who are impacted by illegal immigration. But those same Democrat politicians who like to spend YOUR money and risk YOUR lives are not liable for restitution if their lax immigration policies cost you your money or your life.

The cost of unskilled immigrants to taxpayers

Even if illegal immigrants don’t commit violent crimes, there is still a cost to taxpayers.

The Washington Times reports on the latest numbers from the Census Bureau.

Excerpt:

The latest Census Bureau numbers find that more than seven of 10 households headed by immigrants in California, and nearly the same amount in Texas, are on the taxpayer dole.

[…]According to the latest numbers from 2014, fully 63 percent of non-citizens are living off at least one welfare program. That translates into 4.68 million households.

[…]What’s most troublesome about the Census findings is the fact that the 63 percent of non-citizens on welfare actually grows to 70 percent for those who stay in-country 10 years or longer — meaning the entitlement mind only solidifies.

Meaning non-citizens on welfare don’t tend to get off welfare.

If we want to let in more people from other countries, then we should loosen up our process for admitting skilled immigrants who 1) have a job offer and are continuously employed and 2) pay taxes and 3) follow the law, 4) cannot collect one dime of welfare money, and 5) cannot bring in any relatives through chain migration. We should speed up the process for skilled immigrants to get their permanent residency. At the same time, we should build the wall, implement e-verify, prosecute businesses that hire illegal immigrants to the full extent of the law, and we should cut off all federal money for states that contain sanctuary cities.

Polemics

Is the definition of atheism “a lack of belief in God”?

6 Comments
I have a key that will unlock a puzzling mystery
I have a key that will unlock a puzzling mystery

First, let’s see check with the Stanford University Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

‘Atheism’ means the negation of theism, the denial of the existence of God.

Stanford University is one of the top 5 universities in the United States, so that’s a solid definition. To be an atheist is to be a person who makes the claim that, as a matter of FACT, there is no intelligent agent who created the universe. Atheists think that there is no God, and theists think that there is a God. Both claims are objective claims about the way the world is out there, and so both sides must furnish forth arguments and evidence as to how they are able to know what they are each claiming.

Philosopher William Lane Craig has some thoughts on atheism, atheists and lacking belief in God in this reply to a questioner.

Question:

In my discussions with atheists, they  are using the term that they “lack belief in God”. They claim that this is different from not believing in God or from saying that God does not exist. I’m not sure how to respond to this. It seems to me that its a silly word-play and is logically the same as saying that you do not believe in God.
What would be a good response to this?
Thank you for your time,

Steven

And here is Dr. Craig’s full response:

Your atheist friends are right that there is an important logical difference between believing that there is no God and not believing that there is a God.  Compare my saying, “I believe that there is no gold on Mars” with my saying “I do not believe that there is gold on Mars.”   If I have no opinion on the matter, then I do not believe that there is gold on Mars, and I do not believe that there is no gold on Mars.  There’s a difference between saying, “I do not believe (p)” and “I believe (not-p).”   Logically where you place the negation makes a world of difference.

But where your atheist friends err is in claiming that atheism involves only not believing that there is a God rather than believing that there is no God.

There’s a history behind this.  Certain atheists in the mid-twentieth century were promoting the so-called “presumption of atheism.” At face value, this would appear to be the claim that in the absence of evidence for the existence of God, we should presume that God does not exist.  Atheism is a sort of default position, and the theist bears a special burden of proof with regard to his belief that God exists.

So understood, such an alleged presumption is clearly mistaken.  For the assertion that “There is no God” is just as much a claim to knowledge as is the assertion that “There is a God.”  Therefore, the former assertion requires justification just as the latter does.  It is the agnostic who makes no knowledge claim at all with respect to God’s existence.  He confesses that he doesn’t know whether there is a God or whether there is no God.

But when you look more closely at how protagonists of the presumption of atheism used the term “atheist,” you discover that they were defining the word in a non-standard way, synonymous with “non-theist.”  So understood the term would encompass agnostics and traditional atheists, along with those who think the question meaningless (verificationists).  As Antony Flew confesses,

the word ‘atheist’ has in the present context to be construed in an unusual way.  Nowadays it is normally taken to mean someone who explicitly denies the existence . . . of God . . . But here it has to be understood not positively but negatively, with the originally Greek prefix ‘a-’ being read in this same way in ‘atheist’ as it customarily is in . . . words as ‘amoral’ . . . . In this interpretation an atheist becomes not someone who positively asserts the non-existence of God, but someone who is simply not a theist. (A Companion to Philosophy of Religion, ed. Philip Quinn and Charles Taliaferro [Oxford:  Blackwell, 1997], s.v. “The Presumption of Atheism,” by Antony Flew)

Such a re-definition of the word “atheist” trivializes the claim of the presumption of atheism, for on this definition, atheism ceases to be a view.  It is merely a psychological state which is shared by people who hold various views or no view at all.  On this re-definition, even babies, who hold no opinion at all on the matter, count as atheists!  In fact, our cat Muff counts as an atheist on this definition, since she has (to my knowledge) no belief in God.

One would still require justification in order to know either that God exists or that He does not exist, which is the question we’re really interested in.

So why, you might wonder, would atheists be anxious to so trivialize their position?  Here I agree with you that a deceptive game is being played by many atheists.  If atheism is taken to be a view, namely the view that there is no God, then atheists must shoulder their share of the burden of proof to support this view.  But many atheists admit freely that they cannot sustain such a burden of proof.  So they try to shirk their epistemic responsibility by re-defining atheism so that it is no longer a view but just a psychological condition which as such makes no assertions.  They are really closet agnostics who want to claim the mantle of atheism without shouldering its responsibilities.

This is disingenuous and still leaves us asking, “So is there a God or not?”

So there you have it. We are interested in what both sides know and what reasons and evidence they have to justify their claim to know. We are interested in talking to people who make claims about objective reality, not about themselves, and who then go on to give reasons and evidence to support their claims about objective reality. There are atheists out there that do make an objective claim that God does not exist, and then support that claim with arguments and evidence. Those are good atheists, and we should engage in rational conversations with them. But clearly there are some atheists who are not like that. How should we deal with these “subjective atheists”?

Dealing with subjective atheists

How should theists respond to people who just want to talk about their psychological state? Well, my advice is to avoid them. They are approaching religion irrationally and non-cognitively – like the person who enters a physics class and says “I lack a belief in the gravitational force!”.  When you engage in serious discussions with people about God’s existence, you only care about what people know and what they can show to be true. We don’t care about a person’s psychology.

Dealing with persistent subjective atheists

What happens when you explain all of that to a subjective atheist who continues to insist that you listen to them repeat over and over “I lack a belief in God, I lack a belief in God”? What if you tell them to make the claim that God does not exist, and then support it with arguments and evidence, but instead they keep leaving comments on your blog telling you again and again about their subjective state of mind: “I lack a belief in cupcakes! I lack a belief in icebergs!” What if they keep e-mailing you and threatening to expose you on Twitter for refusing to listen to them, or denounce you via skywriting: “Wintery Knight won’t listen to me! I lack a belief in crickets!”. I think at this point you have to give up and stop talking to such a person.

And that’s why I moderate and filter comments on this blog. There are uneducated people out there with access to the Internet who want attention, but I am not obligated to give it to them. And neither are you. We are not obligated to listen to abusive people who don’t know what they are talking about. I do post comments from objective atheists who make factual claims about the objective world, and who support those claims with arguments and evidence. I am not obligated to post comments from people who refuse to make objective claims or who refuse to support objective claims with arguments and evidence. And I’m not obligated to engage in discussions with them, either.

Related posts

News

Second black man found dead at home of wealthy LGBT Democrat megadonor

6 Comments
Wealthy Democrat Ed Buck and wealthy Democrat Hillary Clinton
Wealthy Democrat donor Ed Buck and wealthy Democrat Hillary Clinton

I’m not going to have a lot to say about this as commentary, because I just want to stick with the facts. Please be restrained with your comments.

Story from Fox News:

A man died early Monday at the West Hollywood home of prominent Democratic donor Ed Buck, his attorney confirmed to Fox News — 17 months after a male escort died in the same apartment.

[…]Buck, a well-known figure in LGBT political circles, has given more than $500,000 to a range of Democratic groups and candidates — including former President Barack Obama, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti.

In July of last year, prosecutors declined to file charges against Buck in the death of Gemmel Moore, a male escort whose body was found in Buck’s apartment in July 2017. According to a coroner’s report, Buck’s apartment was full of drug paraphernalia, including 24 syringes containing brown residue, five glass pipes with white residue and burn marks, a plastic straw with possible white residue, clear plastic bags with white powdery residue and a clear plastic bag containing a piece of crystal-like substance.

Moore’s death initially was ruled an accidental methamphetamine overdose, but the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office re-opened the investigation after writings in Moore’s journal implicated Buck in his drug use.

The well-known pro-LGBT web site The Advocate reported that the second man was also a young black man. And they had more about the diaries of the first victim:

“I’ve become addicted to drugs and the worst one at that,” Moore wrote in his journal in December 2016. “Ed Buck is the one to thank. He gave me my first injection of crystal meth.”

[…]Community activists like Jasmyne Cannick have accused Los Angeles officials of declining to prosecute Buck in 2017 thanks to his contributions to powerful politicians such as Hillary Clinton, California Gov. Jerry Brown, L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti, and numerous West Hollywood City Council members.

The Advocate reported that the second death is also the result of an overdose of drugs.

Not the first time

This is not the first time that a wealthy LGBT Democrat has gotten himself into trouble.

The far-left New York Times reports:

The mayor of Seattle, Ed Murray, said on Tuesday that he would resign after announcing in May that he would not seek a second term. Several men have comeforward to accuse Mr. Murray of sexually abusing them decades ago, when they were underage.

The announcement came just hours after The Seattle Times published a story with an account by a fifth man, Mr. Murray’s cousin, who said Mr. Murray had abused him in the 1970s.

[..]Mr. Murray, 62, a Democrat, is the city’s first openly gay mayor, and had served in the State Legislature for many years before being elected in 2013.

[…]The liberal Mr. Murray is generally considered a father of Washington’s same-sex marriage law, which he pressed in the State Legislature for years.

The radically-leftist New York Times isn’t about to tell you what this Democrat gay-marriage activist actually did – that’s not news that’s fit to print. For that you have to go to Life Site News.

This happens a lot

Here’s another story from the far-left CNN, of all places. Headline: “Obama backer, Democratic fundraiser Terry Bean charged in sexual abuse case”.

Excerpt:

A prominent supporter of President Barack Obama and co-founder of the Human Rights Campaign was arrested last week on charges of sodomy and sexual abuse related to what authorities said was an encounter with a juvenile male.

Terrence Bean, 66, a major Democratic donor and a celebrated gay-rights activist, was indicted on two felony charges of sodomy and a misdemeanor count of sexual abuse by a grand jury and arrested in Oregon Wednesday, according to a statement from the Portland Police Bureau.

[…]The charges relate to an alleged encounter the two had with a 15-year-old boy in Oregon last year, The Oregonian reported.

[…]Bean, a real-estate developer and co-founder of the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund and the Human Rights Campaign, is a powerful figure in Democratic politics.

The Oregonian reported that he helped raise more than half a million dollars for Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign, and Federal Election Commission records show he’s contributed thousands to Democrats, including former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and others.

Photos posted online show him with the Obamas, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and aboard Air Force One with the President.

In remarks at a 2009 Human Rights Campaign dinner, President Obama thanked Bean, calling him a “great friend and supporter.”

Again, a reminder to be careful with your comments. This is not the sort of content that the tech leaders at Google, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc. want to see, so we have to be careful to stick to the facts.