The advantage of being both a historian and an old guy is that I’ve studied many violent revolutions and experienced a political one up close, the “Republican revolution” of 1994. Both kinds are relevant to the current immigration debate and the choice before MAGA Christians now.
Many revolutions become so vicious that the old regimes—or at least the old abuses—make a comeback. The idealism of French revolutionaries turned, just a few years later, into murder by guillotine in Paris and mass murder in the area southwest of it known as the Vendée. Five years after that, Napoleon engineered a coup and became dictator.
The experience was similar, with varying timetables, in Russia, China, and dozens of other postrevolutionary countries: from czar to Stalin to Putin, from emperor to Mao to Xi, from rages to revolution to rags.
The exception has been the United States, where revolution was very deliberately followed by moderation. The rule of law led to incremental rather than catastrophic change. Maybe extremism in the defense of liberty, to use former presidential candidate Barry Goldwater’s phrase, is no vice in principle, but it’s certainly bad in practice. Moderation, less thrilling, tends to be sustainable.
One indication of such sustainability in recent American history is the dog that is not barking: welfare reform. In the 1980s, rhetoric about “welfare queens” was rampant, and by the 1990s, welfare was an issue as massive as immigration is now. Bill Clinton in 1992 ran as the person who would change “welfare as we know it.” Many Americans knew that billions of dollars in federal spending helped some but did not give others what they most needed: personal help, spiritual challenge, and the incentive to work.
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In the 1994 midterm elections, after the social services bureaucracy weighed in and Clinton backed off from his welfare reform pledge, the GOP won a smashing success, taking control of the House of Representatives for the first time in 40 years in what was called the Republican revolution. Some fire-breathers exulted: This is the moment to annihilate welfare.
Happily, evangelicals took the lead in a congressional education project. Part of the moderation of 1995 and 1996 emerged from political reality: The US still had a Democratic president, so Republican aspirations had to be tempered by what he would sign. But part was also biblical teaching. Jesus in chapter 5 of John’s gospel neither turned his back on an invalid nor helped him to get quickly into the pool of water thought to provide a miracle cure. Instead, Jesus said, “Take up your bed and walk” (ESV, v. 5).
I saw firsthand the effect of biblical teaching, combined with political calculation, three decades ago. Newt Gingrich, in January 1995 the new speaker of the House, loved a book I had written, The Tragedy of American Compassion, and made it mandated reading for the new GOP members of Congress. (Many foisted it on their abused staff members). I met with many of them, some one-on-one, and had my most fulfilling tutelage ever.
My message with Republican pols was this: Moderation. Work incentives. Time limits. Allow for exceptions. Look at individuals, not masses. Don’t make the work of Democratic opponents easy by creating poster children. I talked back to Newt at times, but he was reasonable, usually unconsumed by irrational exuberance, and always aware that Bill Clinton was not someone he could push around.
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I’ll break one of my rules and quote a little from my own book, because Republicans quoted me on how previous generations “refused to settle for the feed-and-forget principle or its equally depersonalizing but harsher opposite, the forget-and-don’t-feed standard.” The emphasis was on treating all among the poor as human beings rather than “zoo animals at feeding time—some as carnivores who need cuts of meat thrown into their cages, and some as cute-looking pandas who feed on bamboo shoots.”
It sounds obvious, but it often wasn’t before 1984: Republicans largely orated about wasted money. The problem, though, was that welfare programs needed to be changed “not because they are too expensive … but because they are inevitably stingy in what is really important, treating people as persons and not animals.” As CPR can revive an otherwise-dying person, so CPS—challenging, personal, and spiritual help—makes a difference among the poor.
Sometimes informed by the Bible and often recognizing political reality, congressional welfare reformers in 1996 did not slash and burn but instead instituted work requirements—“Take up your bed and walk”—with exceptions for moms with young children. They set up time limits for receiving benefits. They increased the Earned Income Tax Credit, which had been around in stingier form since 1975, and made it a powerful incentive.
The political result is that welfare has been off the table for almost 30 years. Does it work well? No. Does it work better? Yes, and one indication is that the agitation of the 1990s is gone. Since politics abhors a vacuum and Congress now adores polarization, immigration has taken the controversial seat in which welfare reform long sat. Two decades of denial have increased exasperation to the point that in 2024 Something Had to Be Done.
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But while rhetoric on welfare generally improved in the late 20th century, my sense is that rhetoric on immigration has gone the other way in the 21st. “At its core, immigration is a sign of a confident and successful nation,” then-president George W. Bush said in 2006. “It says something about our country that people around the world are willing to leave their homes and leave their families and risk everything to come to America. Their talent and hard work and love of freedom have helped make America the leader of the world.” He welcomed refugees and asylum seekers, sought to keep out criminals, and called for “reasonable legislative solutions.” That didn’t happen.
Ten years ago, Donald Trump launched his campaign for the presidency with generalizations about they, they, and they: “They’re sending people that have lots of problems and they’re bringing their problems. They’re bringing drugs, they’re bringing crime, they’re rapists, and some I assume are good people.” Good to know that last part, but at rallies Trump orated about “sons and daughters, husbands and wives … viciously killed by illegal immigrants.”
Ten years of hearing that almost all immigrants are bad has made crowd forcing—mass arrests rather than case-by-case examination—acceptable to some. Cruelty in 2025 has similarities with what could have happened with welfare reform had a megalomaniac been unchecked and surrounded by sycophants and had many Americans seen welfare recipients as subhuman rather than merely below the poverty line.
Many, happily, saw those on welfare as a great crowd of witnesses to either compassion or callousness. And despite all the discouraging rhetoric, many see immigrants the same way. A Gallup poll that probed hearts regarding immigration found 78 percent of Americans remain “sympathetic … toward people from other countries who travel to the U.S. border” in a search for safety and opportunity.
A Pew Research Center poll showed only 15 percent of Americans support deporting immigrants living in the US illegally if they have a job. Only 14 percent favor exile for those who are parents of children born in the US. Americans complain about government moving with the speed of a brontosaurus, but most do not want it to react like a raptor, tearing at the flesh of anything in its way.
I lived through a decade of diatribes about “welfare queens” and believe GOP political success was the result of changed perspectives. My pragmatic sense is that Trumpist overreach, unless checked, will lead to a decade of Democratic domination beginning in 2026—and although I voted for Republican presidential candidates every time from 1976 to 2012, I’d agree with many others that voting in defense of autocracy is no virtue.
Realistic Republicans should see that Make America Great Again extremism will Make America Democratic Again. I’d prefer a reliance on biblical principle, but after seeing hardworking fathers seized from their families, I hope that, one way or the other, Americans will see El Salvador prisons as a dumping ground too far.
Marvin Olasky is executive editor of news and global at Christianity Today.
