The migrant crisis has presented us with a moral duty that is impossible to fulfil

The migrant crisis raises the largest questions about our basic public creed, our ideology, secular humanism. Normally we pay little attention to this creed. Yes, yes, we affirm the ideal of universal human flourishing, the equal worth of all human beings, human rights. But do we believe it? This crisis forces us to wonder.

As Matthew Parris says here this week, we simply do not know what our moral obligations are in relation to these people. Should we love our neighbour as ourself, and rush off to help them? How can we reconcile our universal humanism with the need to prioritise the welfare of our own tribe? Isn’t Western morality just too demanding? Its excessive demands on us leave us without a sensible, moderate, realistic sense of our moral duty.

Left-wing pundits tend not to notice any such problem. They suggest that secular humanist morality just needs to be implemented, in the face of right-wing opposition.