[NOTE: This is the text of the keynote address I gave on April 25, to AMIS, an immigration advocacy group in northeast Ohio]

On a snowy evening some weeks ago, I shared the stage of the Stocker Center of Lorain County Community College with David Bier of the Cato Institute. We were there to discuss Trump’s immigration policies. Bier, like the Cato Institute that employs him, is a libertarian, dedicated to the “principles of individual liberty, limited government, free markets, and peace.” I’m all on board with peace and can’t argue against “liberty.” In fact, Bier and I found ourselves in general agreement that the Trump administration’s policies toward immigrants were not just cruel and xenophobic, but a self-inflicted injury to the country’s future. But, unsurprisingly, we also disagreed on many issues, and the questions posed by our moderator guided us to address what stood at the heart of our differences.

“Do we owe anything to immigrants?” the moderator asked. “Do we have any responsibility to or for them?”

Bier’s unambiguous answer was “no.” Not only do we not owe anything to immigrants, we don’t owe anybody anything. As independent agents, jealous of our individual liberties, we should largely be free from government regulations, unbound by any mandates that would require our responsibility to others. For example, we should be able to hire whomever we want regardless of their immigration status; we should be able to fire anyone we no longer want, unbound by government restrictions. That’s the essence of a free market, he argued.

I disagreed and, in a few words, tried to express why I found his answer so disturbing. The question of what we owe to others, of the responsibilities that we must assume lest our world become even nastier and more brutish than it already is, seems even more important today, immersed as we still are in yet another war of choice which has already cost thousands of lives and will upend the future for millions in the region and around the world. Trump proclaims his right to end a “whole civilization,” Hegseth celebrates death and destruction, Vance lectures the Pope on theology, yet no one in this administration shows the slightest concern for the human suffering we leave behind. Only this week we learned that the administration is giving the Afghans who helped US forces during its interminable war in that country a choice: either return to face the Taliban or be sent to the Democratic Republic of Congo. Like Tom and Daisy in F. Scott Fitgerald’s The Great Gatsby, we have become the “careless people” who smash up things and creatures only to retreat back into our vast wealth while letting others clean up the mess we have made.

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