The post-apocalyptic movie Star Trek: First Contact concludes with a challenge to humanity's higher attributes. The film imagines a community in the American Northwest that has survived a devastating, planetwide conflict. While its members work to revitalize space flight, they see a UFO land, and from the alien spaceship's lightening-white door emerges one of Gene Roddenberry's enduring creatures: a Vulcan. The biggest question is, how will the humans receive the strangers? Will they greet them with hostility or hospitality, ferocity or trust? Which choice better defines being human?
Of course, First Contact is set in the mid-21st century, some 40-50 years hence, and pre-supposes a world war we have not met. Yet fear is mounting as immigration and terrorism swell. Hospitality may seem dangerous, costly and counterintuitive to government leaders and homeowners because many immigrants come from the same place as the people responsible for blowing up the Bataclan theater and...
