Citizenship is a privilege, not a right. Where one is born is not within his/her control. A nation's resources are limited---even in the long view that emerges in the wealthiest and most powerful. That there are limits is not always readily admitted by liberal progressives, who believe all ought to have access to a better life. And fundamental human rights. My view on this issue is not always well-received. This nation's reputation as saviour to the world is more mythical than practical. I just have the nerve to say so.

We can no longer welcome everyone's tired and poor, seems to me. That was several yesterdays ago. Now, due to many contingencies, we have more than enough of our own and barely the available resources to assist them towards becoming rested and gainfully employed. But, lip-service aside, such is not;was never a priority anyway. Philanthropy spins a good yarn and shores up reputations which have been tarnished by personal aspiration. In short, it makes people look better than they deserve.

That's very interesting, --the nexus between appearance and desert, I mean (cf. the 5/18/21 post above). So if someone buys two ice cream cones and gives one to someone else who can't afford one, she/he looks pretty good; -until it's discovered that the money used to buy them was stolen from a donation box at a local charity. Then she/he looks pretty bad or, continuing your framing of the matter, they would appear no better than they deserve to appear. What's so interesting here is that you seemed to have solved a very old philosophical puzzle about the correspondence between the respective objects of theoretical and practical reasoning, insofar as one's appearance can be calibrated to one's actions by the notion of deservedness, with the result that no gap occurs between them, on the condition that all the details of how the appearance came into being can be specified. But how far does this seamless nexus extend? When the recipient of the ice cream cone in the above example finds out about how the purchase was funded, for instance, would it have any effect on its taste and the pleasure of consuming it? Could one assert that because it was purchased with ill-gotten gains, whoever eats it doesn't deserve to enjoy it? The fates of entire civilizations may well have turned on matters of less import. As its burgeoning profundity can be borne by only the most nimble of spirits, to withhold expression of gratitude for its occurrence could amount to nothing else but neglect, undeserving of favorable appearance.

--This expression of gratitude is of course directed towards the author of the 5/18/21 post, for solving Kant's problem of the famous "gap" between the principles of practical and theoretical reasoning. This latter consists of, for summary purposes, an apparently irreconcilable difference between two kinds of causes for explanation: a descending series, moving from diverse effects to maximally few causes (theoretical), and an ascending series, going from singular causes to multiple effects (practical). The first refers to a causal continuity associated with a presumed lawfulness of nature, the second to a discrete causality which describes deliberate action. Deserved praise and justified reward only make sense in the latter case, as attributable to an action's causal deliberateness, independent of determination by its real effects. What the author points out, however, is that an agent's external appearance carries with it both interpretive categories for potential observers. In applying the notion of desert to the only apparently moral agent, by this, the observer constitutes a third element which not only combines the two categories of reasoning, but is exactly adjusted to any shift in knowledge of an effect's cause. Would the post's author concede to this analysis? If so, it receives my recommendation for inclusion into the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

--So instead of undeserved praise for its recipient which occurs by a misapprehension, as participant Neuman describes in the 5/18/21 post, what's the result in the case of deserved blame which is withheld by one who could give it? For one who receives undeserved praise is obliged to reject it, but whoever is deservedly blamed could only demand its retraction if blaming constitutes a kind of harm to the blameworthy which would in turn make the blamer more blameworthy than the blamed. And both what one is blamed for and the actual blaming must be understood as actions with effects in the causal chain of appearances whose inception is understood as having discrete causal grounds which appear spontaneous. Withholding blame for the blameworthy therefore denies a distinct representation of it while retaining the coterminous status of its two parts. An agent's blame-desert derives, then, from the absence of any demand not to be blamed, whereas no such demand applies to the obligation to blame, which must be adjusted in accordance to any blameworthy harm which might result from the blaming. As applied to withholding blame for the justifiably blamable on the basis of the blamer's blameworthiness were the blamable to be blamed, the statement "if a is b, then a is not not b" need not be understood as a strict tautology. By restricting the antecedent to the concepts of the respective subject and predicate together with the consequent's remaining open to experience-contents in blaming and the blamed, it remains possible to withhold blame compatibly with absence of any claim of blamelessness on the part of the blameworthy, while a demand not to be blamed could still be made if the blamer's blame for blaming overrides blame-legitimacy by the blamer's harm to the blamed. Does that sound about right?