Refugees Ain’t Peanuts

Republican Presidential Candidate Mike Huckabee recently offered the following analogy to the issue of taking in Syrian refugees: “If you bought a five-pound bag of peanuts and there were about ten peanuts that were deadly poisonous, would you feed them to your kids?" he said. "The answer is no.”

This is, in a nutshell, the basic Republican approach to the refugee crisis, and by examining the many ways in which the analogy fails you can see the flaws in their thought process and understand what they’re really trying to do.

First off, the lives of human beings are not peanuts. Refugees are people. Bakers, plumbers, taxi drivers. Mothers, daughters, grandparents. A wide slice of everyday humanity whose existence is just as valuable as our own, regardless of the color of their skin or who they pray to. But the Republican view is only focused on us. We are the consumer and everything else is simply a commodity. Our lives matter. Other’s don’t. It puts fear before compassion and takes no account of the level of risk. If there’s any chance of any harm coming to a single one of ‘us’, then there’s absolutely no reason to help out any of ‘them’. Safety comes first.

But even that is a lie. Let’s grant that there are some poisonous peanuts out there. They want to withhold the five pound bag, but we’re at a picnic with many other foods. There’s some peanut butter cookies over on the dessert table, some Chinese chicken salad in the dinner line, and peanut butter sandwiches with the crust cut off everywhere. The Republicans either ignore all these other food dangers (like tourist visas, legal immigration, American-born Muslims) or they call for a complete ban on any type of nut whatsoever (Trump is really one step away of saying we should ban Islam from our country). The one approach does nothing to safeguard those worried about peanuts because peanuts are everywhere, and if we ban everyone from having any type of nut we’re getting rid of a lot of good food – and more accurately a lot of good and decent people who contribute to our society. It goes against the very nature our country was founded on of religious tolerance and diversity. But once again, religious freedom is important for ‘us’, not them.

Yet banning nuts still wouldn’t make us safe. There are lots of food allergies out there, lots of dangerous meals. They don’t really want to get rid of all the dangers, just the ones they know they didn’t bring. They don’t like peanuts so no one else can have them. Never mind the truth that right-wing Christian fanatics have killed more Americans than Muslims. Never mind that Americans have killed far more innocent civilian Muslims since 9/11 than the victims of that tragic day. Never mind that more American soldiers will die fighting the war on Islam they’re starting. Their rhetoric does not lead to safety.

Finally, the analogy assumes that our kids are eating peanuts at random. The truth is far different. That bag of peanuts Huckabee is talking about will get inspected. Each individual peanut will undergo a thorough review by a peanut expert. It’s past, from the day it was planted to the day it arrived in that bag, will be studied and questioned. It’s not a perfect process, but the chances of finding and separating out the poisonous legumes are pretty good. The same can’t be said for the chicken salad. The Republicans want to ban the one group of Muslims who are most rigorously vetted before they enter this country. French citizens pulled off the attack in Paris. Saudis perpetrated 9/11. The San Bernadino shootings involved an American and a Pakistani here on a visa. Refugees are not the danger.

It was never about safety, though. It’s about fear. They want us to be afraid of the peanuts. They want us focused on the foreign threat because it gives them an easy way to lay down the rules and prove that they are in charge. No peanuts. Listen to your parents. It’s easier to control your kid when they’re afraid. If you have to exaggerate a little and say that peanuts are going to kill them, well, it’s for their own good. You see, the Republicans think we’re children who turn to them for guidance. That they know best and we’ll like them more if we think they know everything and are protecting us. They want to be the good parent because we'll listen to them and let them remain in charge. Perhaps that’s also why they’re always promising us candy – lower taxes for everyone, no decrease in government spending, and magical four percent economy growth.

The saddest thing about the entire analogy is the fact that it works. That so many people who espouse a faith that specifically calls for welcoming the less fortunate are more concerned about minuscule threats to their own easy lifestyle than they are about helping others. That our fear of the radical Islamic terrorists half a world away out-trumps the true horror suffered by those who lived under their regime. It’s an appeal to our own weaknesses, the worst part of human nature that fears the other and responds to hatred with more hatred. Our country was founded to be better than that. We’ve had dark moments in the past - when we turned away Jewish immigrants fleeing Nazi Germany, when we placed Japanese Americans in internment camps – so it’s nothing new. We are all imperfect beings who suffer fear and react instinctively instead of intelligently.

But we can be better. What defines a person is not the mistakes they’ve made in the past but what they’ve learned from their actions and how they behave in the future. We have a chance to show our character. We can be that beacon on a hill and light the way for a better world. Or we can toss peanuts on the ground.