This is the first part of an edited speech, titled “‘Ordo Amoris’: The Hierarchy of Political Love,” delivered by Michael Knowles at the YAF Freedom Conference in San Diego, California.
* * *
It’s always nice to be in San Diego. I feel even better about it now that we have a functioning southern border again. We’re less than 20 miles from Tijuana. But since January 20, our odds of running into face-tattooed foreign gangsters in the Gaslamp Quarter has dropped precipitously.
The ones who are still here are most likely in hiding right now. They know that at any moment, Tom Homan might leap out from behind a corner with a big butterfly net and drag them all back to Mexico. This is a happy turn of events. But some on the Left seem not to realize it. Some of the Left argue — and even some on the squishy Right argue — that rounding up and deporting even the very worst illegal aliens in our country is somehow anti-American.
Now, whatever you think about mass deportations, it’s silly to argue that it’s anti-American. Deporting people is a tried-and-true American tradition, whether we’re talking about Indian Removal in 1830; the Palmer Raids in 1919 and 1920, which deported foreign communists; deportation of Japanese nationals after Pearl Harbor; Operation Wetback in 1954, which deported well over a million people in a single year; the deportation of Haitians and Cubans who had arrived during the Mariel boatlift in 1980; or any other number of deportations.
One can argue over the necessity or prudence of those various deportations, most of which, ironically, were carried out by prominent Democrat presidents. But no one can argue that deportations aren’t American. As a simple matter of history, mass deportations are as American as apple pie.
The “anti-American” charge vanquished, opponents of immigration enforcement will next argue that deportations are somehow “un-Christian.” This claim is contradicted by the plain text of scripture. Deportations or worse — usually worse — are frequently carried out with approval in the Bible. Just ask the Canaanites. (Or the Amorites. Or the Hittites. Or the Perizzites, the Hivites, or the Jebusites.)
Now, in fairness, scripture also instructs us not to oppress or mistreat foreigners who live in our lands. “Thou shalt not molest a stranger, nor afflict him: for yourselves also were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Exodus 22:21). Quite right. But what exactly does it mean not to “molest” or “afflict” the stranger? We are not left idly to wonder. Scripture tells us.
Just 10 chapters prior in the Book of Exodus, we read, “There shall be one law for the native and for the stranger who sojourns among you” (Exodus 12:49). Further, in Deuteronomy, we read, “Cursed be he who perverts the justice due to the sojourner” (Deuteronomy 27:19). To hear the open borders crowd tell it, it’s the enforcement of the law which oppresses the foreigner. But scripture says the opposite.
Scripture tells us that it’s lawlessness which oppresses the foreigner. The injunction not to oppress the foreigner does not run contrary to justice; rather, it is bound up in the execution of justice. God demands that the civil authority give the foreigner his due; He doesn’t demand that it give him more than his due. He tells us that there must be one law common to native and foreigner alike; he does not insist that foreigners be given a more lenient law, that foreigners be given special privileges over and above those afforded to citizens. Civil authorities must give appropriate care to foreigners, but they have to care for their own citizens too.
WATCH: The Michael Knowles Show
So how do we determine the right balance between hospitality to foreigners and the enforcement of justice owed to citizens and foreigners alike?
Our Vice President JD Vance took a stab at that question on TV, and his answer sparked a national debate. Vice President Vance said, “There’s this old school — and I think a very Christian concept, by the way — that you love your family and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens, and your own country, and then after that you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world.”
It’s a simple enough concept. Let’s say you’re walking by a public pool, and you see a random little kid drowning. Any decent person would immediately jump in to save the kid. (That actually happened to my father a few years ago at his apartment complex. He saw the kid, he jumped in, and he pulled him out of the water.) Everyone applauds. You’re a hero.
Now imagine you’re walking past the same pool — it’s a very large pool — and you see two kids drowning, each at a different end. One of the toddlers is that same random kid and the other is your own son. You, being a decent person, want to save both. But you help your own son first. In fact, if you did not — if you were to ignore the cries of your son and go to help the other boy first — everyone would not applaud when you climbed out of the pool. You would not be a hero. You would have made a moral error. Because you, as a father, have a greater responsibility to your own son than you do to someone else’s son.
This is common sense. But is it Christian? Immediately after Vance made those remarks, a former U.K. government minister and current Yale professor, Rory Stewart, said no. He wrote, “A bizarre take on John 15:12-13”— which is “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” “Less Christian,” Stewart wrote, “and more pagan tribal. We should start worrying when politicians become theologians, assume to speak for Jesus, and tell us in which order to love.”
This comment was ironic, of course, because Rory Stewart is also a politician presuming to speak for Our Lord, albeit with far less knowledge and seriousness than JD Vance. Vance shot back. He wrote, “Just google ‘ordo amoris,’” which means “order of love,” a concept developed most notably by Saint Thomas Aquinas.
Just a quick pause for a moment. Can we just take a moment to appreciate how beautiful it is that we have a vice president lecturing leftists on moral philosophy in Latin? I knew the second Trump administration was going to be good. I had high hopes. But even I did not have “vice president explicating scholastic philosophy in Latin” hopes. I remember in 2016 when many on the Right yelled at me for supporting Trump on the grounds that he wasn’t a “true conservative.” Now his vice president is invoking Saint Thomas Aquinas in Latin on X. How much more conservative do you want him to get?
But I digress. At this point in the conversation, after Vance had dunked on the U.K. politician-turned-Yale professor, another Yale figure — James Surowiecki, editor of The Yale Review — decided to chime in to claim that “ordo amoris is not in the Gospels.” He claimed, “It’s an essentially Aristotelian concept that Aquinas, cleverly if unconvincingly, imported into Catholic theology.”
Now, up until this point, I was aware that very few people presently associated with Yale had even a passing familiarity with the Bible. But with that comment it became clear that these Yale luminaries don’t even know their Aristotle! What is going on in New Haven? This is embarrassing.
The ordo amoris — or the ordo caritatis, as Saint Thomas would call it — is not “essentially Aristotelian,” and Saint Thomas — among the clearest thinkers who ever lived — did not import that or any other concept “unconvincingly” into Catholic theology. Aristotle touches on the concept broadly in Book IV of “Nicomachean Ethics,” where he writes that “the liberal man” — liberal in this case meaning “generous” — “like other virtuous men, will give for the sake of the noble, and rightly; for he will give to the right people, the right amounts, and at the right time, with all the other qualifications that accompany right giving.”
Early Christian writers, notably Saints Augustine, Gregory the Great, and Bernard of Clairvaux, also discuss this order of charity, all before Saint Thomas, who brings the concept to its fullest expression in the “Summa Theologiae,” Secunda Secundae, Question 26, where he writes, “There must needs be some order in things loved out of charity, which order is in reference to the first principle of that love, which is God.”
So, we are obligated as a matter of reason to love God before ourselves, then to love ourselves before our neighbors, then to love our neighbors more than our own bodies, then to love those neighbors nearer to us more than those further away from us, then to love those connected to us by ties of blood more than others, and so on.
[#item_full_content]
[[{“value”:”
This is the first part of an edited speech, titled “‘Ordo Amoris’: The Hierarchy of Political Love,” delivered by Michael Knowles at the YAF Freedom Conference in San Diego, California.
* * *
It’s always nice to be in San Diego. I feel even better about it now that we have a functioning southern border again. We’re less than 20 miles from Tijuana. But since January 20, our odds of running into face-tattooed foreign gangsters in the Gaslamp Quarter has dropped precipitously.
The ones who are still here are most likely in hiding right now. They know that at any moment, Tom Homan might leap out from behind a corner with a big butterfly net and drag them all back to Mexico. This is a happy turn of events. But some on the Left seem not to realize it. Some of the Left argue — and even some on the squishy Right argue — that rounding up and deporting even the very worst illegal aliens in our country is somehow anti-American.
Now, whatever you think about mass deportations, it’s silly to argue that it’s anti-American. Deporting people is a tried-and-true American tradition, whether we’re talking about Indian Removal in 1830; the Palmer Raids in 1919 and 1920, which deported foreign communists; deportation of Japanese nationals after Pearl Harbor; Operation Wetback in 1954, which deported well over a million people in a single year; the deportation of Haitians and Cubans who had arrived during the Mariel boatlift in 1980; or any other number of deportations.
One can argue over the necessity or prudence of those various deportations, most of which, ironically, were carried out by prominent Democrat presidents. But no one can argue that deportations aren’t American. As a simple matter of history, mass deportations are as American as apple pie.
The “anti-American” charge vanquished, opponents of immigration enforcement will next argue that deportations are somehow “un-Christian.” This claim is contradicted by the plain text of scripture. Deportations or worse — usually worse — are frequently carried out with approval in the Bible. Just ask the Canaanites. (Or the Amorites. Or the Hittites. Or the Perizzites, the Hivites, or the Jebusites.)
Now, in fairness, scripture also instructs us not to oppress or mistreat foreigners who live in our lands. “Thou shalt not molest a stranger, nor afflict him: for yourselves also were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Exodus 22:21). Quite right. But what exactly does it mean not to “molest” or “afflict” the stranger? We are not left idly to wonder. Scripture tells us.
Just 10 chapters prior in the Book of Exodus, we read, “There shall be one law for the native and for the stranger who sojourns among you” (Exodus 12:49). Further, in Deuteronomy, we read, “Cursed be he who perverts the justice due to the sojourner” (Deuteronomy 27:19). To hear the open borders crowd tell it, it’s the enforcement of the law which oppresses the foreigner. But scripture says the opposite.
Scripture tells us that it’s lawlessness which oppresses the foreigner. The injunction not to oppress the foreigner does not run contrary to justice; rather, it is bound up in the execution of justice. God demands that the civil authority give the foreigner his due; He doesn’t demand that it give him more than his due. He tells us that there must be one law common to native and foreigner alike; he does not insist that foreigners be given a more lenient law, that foreigners be given special privileges over and above those afforded to citizens. Civil authorities must give appropriate care to foreigners, but they have to care for their own citizens too.
WATCH: The Michael Knowles Show
So how do we determine the right balance between hospitality to foreigners and the enforcement of justice owed to citizens and foreigners alike?
Our Vice President JD Vance took a stab at that question on TV, and his answer sparked a national debate. Vice President Vance said, “There’s this old school — and I think a very Christian concept, by the way — that you love your family and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens, and your own country, and then after that you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world.”
It’s a simple enough concept. Let’s say you’re walking by a public pool, and you see a random little kid drowning. Any decent person would immediately jump in to save the kid. (That actually happened to my father a few years ago at his apartment complex. He saw the kid, he jumped in, and he pulled him out of the water.) Everyone applauds. You’re a hero.
Now imagine you’re walking past the same pool — it’s a very large pool — and you see two kids drowning, each at a different end. One of the toddlers is that same random kid and the other is your own son. You, being a decent person, want to save both. But you help your own son first. In fact, if you did not — if you were to ignore the cries of your son and go to help the other boy first — everyone would not applaud when you climbed out of the pool. You would not be a hero. You would have made a moral error. Because you, as a father, have a greater responsibility to your own son than you do to someone else’s son.
This is common sense. But is it Christian? Immediately after Vance made those remarks, a former U.K. government minister and current Yale professor, Rory Stewart, said no. He wrote, “A bizarre take on John 15:12-13”— which is “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” “Less Christian,” Stewart wrote, “and more pagan tribal. We should start worrying when politicians become theologians, assume to speak for Jesus, and tell us in which order to love.”
This comment was ironic, of course, because Rory Stewart is also a politician presuming to speak for Our Lord, albeit with far less knowledge and seriousness than JD Vance. Vance shot back. He wrote, “Just google ‘ordo amoris,’” which means “order of love,” a concept developed most notably by Saint Thomas Aquinas.
Just a quick pause for a moment. Can we just take a moment to appreciate how beautiful it is that we have a vice president lecturing leftists on moral philosophy in Latin? I knew the second Trump administration was going to be good. I had high hopes. But even I did not have “vice president explicating scholastic philosophy in Latin” hopes. I remember in 2016 when many on the Right yelled at me for supporting Trump on the grounds that he wasn’t a “true conservative.” Now his vice president is invoking Saint Thomas Aquinas in Latin on X. How much more conservative do you want him to get?
But I digress. At this point in the conversation, after Vance had dunked on the U.K. politician-turned-Yale professor, another Yale figure — James Surowiecki, editor of The Yale Review — decided to chime in to claim that “ordo amoris is not in the Gospels.” He claimed, “It’s an essentially Aristotelian concept that Aquinas, cleverly if unconvincingly, imported into Catholic theology.”
Now, up until this point, I was aware that very few people presently associated with Yale had even a passing familiarity with the Bible. But with that comment it became clear that these Yale luminaries don’t even know their Aristotle! What is going on in New Haven? This is embarrassing.
The ordo amoris — or the ordo caritatis, as Saint Thomas would call it — is not “essentially Aristotelian,” and Saint Thomas — among the clearest thinkers who ever lived — did not import that or any other concept “unconvincingly” into Catholic theology. Aristotle touches on the concept broadly in Book IV of “Nicomachean Ethics,” where he writes that “the liberal man” — liberal in this case meaning “generous” — “like other virtuous men, will give for the sake of the noble, and rightly; for he will give to the right people, the right amounts, and at the right time, with all the other qualifications that accompany right giving.”
Early Christian writers, notably Saints Augustine, Gregory the Great, and Bernard of Clairvaux, also discuss this order of charity, all before Saint Thomas, who brings the concept to its fullest expression in the “Summa Theologiae,” Secunda Secundae, Question 26, where he writes, “There must needs be some order in things loved out of charity, which order is in reference to the first principle of that love, which is God.”
So, we are obligated as a matter of reason to love God before ourselves, then to love ourselves before our neighbors, then to love our neighbors more than our own bodies, then to love those neighbors nearer to us more than those further away from us, then to love those connected to us by ties of blood more than others, and so on.
“}]]
