In brief, for those who aren’t familiar, the core of the show is four corrupt LA cops called the Strike Team. There are other characters around them with varying degrees of moral uprightness.

The Shield gets a lot of criticism from people outside of its fan base, in large part because it is violent, profane, grim and it’s told from the point of view of the “bad guys.”

I suspect many Christians would consider it a “millstone” for those reasons. But if you watch it from its beginning, what you see is long story of almost Shakespearian proportions. The Strike Team starts bad and gets worse and as time passes, their pasts haunt them, unravel them and become their undoing. The stories show, in unflinching candor, that actions can have far-reaching consequences. And as they struggle to escape detection and consequence, they only dig themselves deeper into their pit.

Someone who believes that the only proper “Christian” art is all sunshine and puppies would never give it a chance, but someone who wants to see an excellent dramatic illustration of the wages of sin being death would find few better examples.

To that end, paintings that depict darker themes of human nature — or songs or films or whatever medium — are not necessarily to be avoided. Human nature does have a dark side, and denying it does not make it disappear.

(Of course, some things are not approrpriate for children. I’m talking about adults here.)

From a Christian standpoint, I’d think the determining factor should be whether the evil is celebrated. Take a nihilistic film such as The Devil’s Rejects, which is entertaining and stylish but hardly uplifting. It doesn’t exactly celebrate evil, but it does portray it as a grim reality. Or consider Schindler’s List which is also about evil, and hard to watch in some passages because of the raw depravity shown. But it is about redemption.

Goya and Bosch, mentioned in #20, both explored these darker themes in their paintings. And they produced some seriously unsettling works. But does that mean they should be avoided? The macabre is appealing to many perfectly normal people, and I think it is because some are more accepting of the dark side and others are in denial. When you can take it out and look at it in the sunlight, it loses much of its power over us. Artists that express that know this.

(The aversion to mere nudity expressed in #20 just makes me laugh. There’s nothing wrong with the human body, but some Christians seem to be more accepting of a movie with 20 violent deaths than one naked butt.)

Just in case it doesn’t, though, the short version is that the solution to illegal immigration is to require employers who hire them to pay them the same wages they’d pay to citizens, and enforce that.

The reason is that right now hiring illegals is a win-win. The employer can pay them less than they’d pay Americans, but the immigrants can still earn more than they could at home.

By adding stronger penalties for paying them substandard wages, the employer loses the incentive to hire them. And without the ability to get hired, the immigrants lose their incentive to come.

Of course it’s already illegal to hire illegals, but enforcement seems to be spotty at best. Make the enforcement consistent and make the penalities substantial for paying them less, and the problem would largely solve itself.

There’s an easy solution: Require employers who hire illegals to pay them at least the minimum wage and give them benefits.

Why? Because the primary draw for illegals is that they can get work here at higher wages than they can at home, but U.S. employers can still pay them less than they do U.S. citizens. The labor is cheap by U.S. standards and lucrative by Mexican standards, so both the illegals and the employers stand to gain.

So why pay them even more, you ask? Because then the employer no longer has that economic incentive. If he has to pay them the same as he’d pay Americans, there’s no longer a gain in taking the risk of being prosecuted (or sued in order to hire illegals.

Enforcement is critical of course. It’s already illegal to hire illegal aliens, but prosecutions are rare and inconsistent. But if you add stronger penalties for hiring them at substandard wages and enforce it, the vast majority of people likely to enter the US illegally would no longer have much reason to, because their chances of getting hired at all would evaporate.

Did anyone read the recent TIME essay by Kinsley? If we oppose only illegal immigration, why not just make LEGAL immigration easier? Sounds simplistic from me but read the Kinsley article. So much for Parkinson’s clouding a man’s thoughts!!!

I dont oppose the teaching of evolution for the theory/opinion irreproducible “science” it is, but I’m always en guard about evo ideas in popular films. [When have you last watched “The Incredible Mr Limpett?” strong undercurrent of evo as Don Knotts morphs into a fish at the beginning]

Compassion for dope dealers, and not for the victims of their vile trade?

I don’t think compassion for the former precludes compassion for the latter, nor does compassion for the latter necessitate applauding the killing of the former.

Yeah,

The same generosity isn’t extended from Tony W. toward Tancredo when the latter decries the unfortunate effects of bending over backward to accomodate *illegal* immigrants

I’m happy to extend that generosity to Mr. Tancredo when he, as you put it, “decries the unfortunate effects of bending over backward to accomodate *illegal* immigrants.” But I was referring to, as I detailed in my earlier comments, specific instances where he does more than “decry unfortunate effects;” he was fostering meanspiritedness and bigotry toward Hispanics.

Train,

And when did “bringing the good news to the lost” become “let tens of millions of people into the America illegally, without checking their health, their criminal backgrounds, etc.? It sounds to me as if you don’t really believe the lost need Jesus, they just need to live in America.

I don’t think I was clear enough before. I want to distinguish between the national interest, which, you rightly note, extends to protecting homes from criminals and disease, and Christian duty, which at times calls us to risk our well-being. What troubles me is the complacency with which many of my Christian friends conflate their patriotism and their faith, as if the two have no conflicts. It is that attitude that troubles me, as evidenced by Christian support for people like Tancredo. What I’m asking is some introspection and hesitation, before we Christians jump on the anti-immigration bandwagon.

Given everything you’ve said and implied above, that not wanting tens of millions of Mexicans or others to move here is prejudice, bigotry, and unchristian, that Jesus wants us to welcome the strangers and love our neighbor as ourselves, and that opposition to mass immigration is ugly and mean spirited, then tell me: why should we even have separate countries to begin with?

I don’t intend to imply that not wanting “tens of millions to move here” is inherently bigoted and unchristian. One might believe, for example, that open borders would destroy the U.S. economy, limiting, in the long run, the ability of churches to spread the gospel, and therefore yielding a net negative, from an evangelistic point of view. A Christian who cares little for his own well-being, but everything for the gospel of Christ, might then conclude that open borders should be opposed. I have no quibble with reasoning like that, which begins with the assumption that my needs are secondary to the demands of the Gospel.

A great many people who oppose even moderate immigration, however, put their material and physical well-being first — which is entirely understandable. As Christians, however, we are called to at least consider whether our practical stances place us at odds with the gospel. I confess I don’t know the answer, when it comes to immigration, but I am troubled by the fact that few of my Christian friends care to consider the question.

Then there are people who seem to not only care about their own well-being first, but who have active dislike for, or even hatred of, all immigrants. Finally, there are those who reserve their hatred for illegals. Both groups are behaving in an unchristian manner, and ought to be denounced by Christians.

Since I’m being longwinded (again), I’ll point out that I have no firm answer to your question about why we should have borders. My sense is that they are absolutely consistent with a Christian worldview, because so long as there is evil in the world, there will be a need for citizens to combine to protect themselves from evil. That implies some constraint on admission. That constraint ought to be matched by compassion and mercy, however, and not be redolent of tribalism.

At the same time, Christians should be ever vigilant that we don’t let man’s borders create barriers between us and our brothers and sisters, wherever they happen to reside. My own worldview is that I will forever have more in common with a Christian in Mexico, or Zimbabwe, for that matter, than a non-Christian in my own city of Wichita.

Finally, I’ll note that I constantly struggle with what I believe my Christian duty to be, and how I behave. Because I believe in the resilience of markets, I am less troubled than others by an influx of immigrants. I’m also less skeptical about cultural differences. I would be hard pressed to favor immigration if I thought it meant my children might go hungry, or greatly escalate their chances of getting shot on the street. I have to struggle daily, like every Christian, not to let my personal fears and wants intrude on my understanding of the Gospel. That’s what I’m asking for here.