Lux Lucet

 

“In a short while, I will sign a bill to open our government for three weeks.”

– President Donald J. Trump

 

Today’s post is the third and final installment of this series titled The Wall, The Donald and the Democrats, the purpose of which has been to analyze the debate over the border wall.

This post was written last weekend, before President Trump’s decision to temporarily end the government shut down without first securing funding the border wall.

This is a deeply disappointing development from the perspective of those, this author included, who had hoped, for once!, that the Republicans would stand up to the Democrats and actually do something about border security.

Perhaps the wall still will be built, but I’m less optimistic today than I was before Trump’s announcement on Friday 1/25 when he indicated that he was bringing the government shut down to a temporary end.

But even if the wall is built, Trump’s decision to fold on the shut down raises an important question. Namely, even if the wall gets built, will the political price be so high as to strip it of all benefit to the American people?

The word is that Jared Kushner is floating the idea of giving green cards to the DACA recipients. Who knows, Kushner may even offer them citizenship. If either of these two options occurs, then we’re right back to the same situation where we’ve been in the past: The Democrats get the immediate benefit of new Democratic voters via immigration amnesty while Republicans get promises – promises which somehow never seem to materialize – of future border security.

In other words, once again Lucy will have tricked Charlie Brown by pulling the football away.

The Astounding Arrogance of the Elite Classes

One of the big picture lessons of the 2016 presidential election was the rise of the populist movement of which Donald Trump represented the leader.

In the view of this author, such an event was long overdue. The leadership of both major parties – Jeb Bush representing the Republican establishment, and Hillary Clinton the Democratic – had for many years been out of touch with the concerns of ordinary Americans.

Jesus rebuked his disciples when they argued about who was the greatest, telling them that lording it over their fellows was the mark of Gentile rulers, not officers in the church of Christ. But many of today’s political leaders have more in common with Marie Antoinette and her “let them eat cake” mentality than with the servant leaders Christ commended.

This problem is not limited to politicians either. CCN’s Ana Navarro recently took to filing her nails during a TV interview when a guest brought up the topic of illegal immigrant crime. By doing this, she showed her utter contempt for American victims of crime by people who have no legal right to even be in the United States. Apparently, the rapes, robberies and murders committed by illegal immigrants at a rate sufficient that such persons make up a quarter of our prison population mean nothing to her.

Part of this arrogance can be chalked up to the fact that American business, political, and intellectual elites simply do not have to bear the costs associated with illegal immigration. Illegals from Mexico are no threat to the six figure (or more) salaries paid to national TV personalities. They represent no threat to business elites. In fact, not only do immigrants – both illegal and legal – not represent a threat to business elites, they are a source of profit, since by expanding the labor pool, immigration tends to lower the cost of labor, meaning native-born workers tend to earn less. Essentially, mass immigration tends to shift corporate profits toward business owners and managers and away from workers.

And what about the social costs? Well, those are picked up by the general taxpayer. For example, the Center for Immigration Studies recently released a report detailing the impact of immigration on the Los Angeles Unified School District. Some startling numbers emerged in the study, causing the authors to conclude “that immigration’s impact on the school system is enormous.” For example,

• Public-school students from immigrant-headed households comprise 58 percent of public-school students in Los Angeles County.
  
• Of all students in the county, 22 percent are from illegal-headed households and 36 percent are from legal immigrant households.
  
• The poverty rate for students from both legal and illegal immigrant households is more than 50 percent higher than that of those from native-headed households.
  

The large number of immigrant households combined with their significantly higher than average poverty rate implies that the enormous cost of educating these children falls substantially on native-born Americans. In other words, native-born Americans are being forced to subsidize the cost of immigration through higher taxes while at the same time having their wages lowered due to the increased labor pool brought on by mass immigration.

Talk about a one-two punch.

Tenured professors can sit in their ivory towers and virtue signal with nothing to fear. The illegal immigrants coming up from Honduras in the caravans pose no threat to them.

Maybe an occasional politician falls victim to changing demographics caused by mass immigration – legal and illegal – in his district, but that seems to be rare enough that most of them aren’t too worried. In fact, since immigrants tend to vote Democrat – according to a 2012 study, 62 percent of naturalized immigrants identified with the Democrats, while 25 percent identified with the Republicans – this explains why Democrats are so pro-immigrant – if present trends continue, America is importing a permanent Democratic electoral majority.

No, it’s not elites who pay the price for America’s current immigration mess. It’s ordinary Americans. It’s ordinary Americans who have their wages lowered, their housing costs and taxes raised, their opportunities to advance closed off, and find their neighborhoods, towns and cities permanently altered as a result of policies put in place by elite interests for elite interests.

To add insult to injury, when ordinary Americans complain about any of this, they’re dismissed as lazy, xenophobic deplorables who are just getting the comeuppance they so richly deserve.

And pundits wonder why we have growing social unrest in this country?

In truth, there is in this country a bi-partisan consensus that happily sacrifices the well-being of actual American citizens for cheap votes and cheap labor.

If nothing else, the arrogant refusal by Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer to do the right thing and fund the wall clearly demonstrates that the Democratic leadership has no regard for ordinary Americans.

Much the same can be said for establishment Republicans.

It is high time the American people gave Chuck, Nancy and the rest of our out-of-touch political, intellectual and business elites a good comeuppance of their own.

Build that wall.

Can the Wall Be Used against Americans?

Some libertarian commentators have argued that the wall is not meant to keep illegals out, but rather to keep Americans in.

The short answer to this question is, yes, the wall could be used against the American people.

This is an especially concerning argument considering it’s been made by some people – Ron Paul for example – whose opinion I regard very highly.

But while the possibility that the wall could become weaponized against the American people is something that needs to be seriously considered, it’s not the slam dunk refutation of the wall that some suppose.

Why do I say this? Because the same thing could be said about any facet of government, including things that Constitutionalists such as Ron Paul would support. Providing military defense of the nation is one of the few legitimate tasks of civil government, yet how often in history have armies been turned against their own people?

Most people, unless you’re a Murray Rothbard-type anarchist, would say the police are a legitimate part of government, yet the police can abuse their power. Should we then have no police.

The Constitution provides for a republican form of government on the federal and the state levels, but republican governments are quite capable of abusing their power as Americans should well know. Are we to eliminate all state and federal legislatures?

Thomas Jefferson famously said that the price of liberty is eternal vigilance. Being a citizen of a republic is not a spectator sport. As I attempted to demonstrate last week, there is nothing, as Nancy Pelosi would have us believe, inherently immoral about a wall. It is defensive, not offensive in nature.

If anything has become weaponized against the American people it’s our immigration system that appears to be set up, not only to replace the American people with foreigners, but to force American citizens to pay the freight for their own dispossession.

In light of the current state of affairs, if the wall can help stabilize our out of control illegal immigration problem, building it is the prudent thing to do.

Antichrist Really Hates It

I have to admit, it hard for me to believe that anything that gets the goat of Antichrist as much as Trump’s proposed border wall does could really be all bad.

During the 2016 US presidential campaign, Pope Francis arrogantly went held Mass in Juarez, Mexico, a town just on other side of the border from El Paso, Texas.

In his homily, he hit all the usual tropes about the human tragedy that forced so many to migrate, commemorated migrants who had died while attempting to violate US immigration law and reminded people of families who were separated.

Absent was any concern or compassion for the American people whom Antichrist was more than happy to stick with the bill while he paraded before the cameras as if he were some sort of moral authority.

Not satisfied with injecting himself into American politics by holding Mass on the border, on his flight back to Rome Pope Francis was quoted as saying “A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian,” an obvious shot at then presidential candidate Donald Trump.

Trump, not one to take things lying down, shot back, quite correctly calling Jorge Bergoglio, dba Francis I, “disgraceful.”

For my part, that’s when I started seriously thinking about hopping on the Trump train. No one, and I mean NO ONE in American politics in my lifetime ever publicly pushed back against the pope like that.

In the ensuing three years, Trump has called out Antichrist’s hypocrisy, noting on several occasions that the Vatican is surrounded by walls. Trump was quoted in Newsweek earlier this month saying, “When they say the wall’s immoral, Well then you got to do something about the Vatican, because the Vatican has the biggest wall of them all.”

Don’t you just love it. Antichrist has the gall to pompously preach about how horrible Trump, and by extension, the American people are for wanting to build a defensive wall all the while hiding behind a giant set of walls.

But what I love far more is having a president with the courage and intelligence to do what no other American politician has done: point out the obvious hypocrisy of Antichrist.

Are There Better Options Than the Wall?

For my part, I’d prefer if Trump had taken a different approach to addressing immigration and putting his efforts into building a wall. The wall is something of a bandage but it does not go to the heart of the matter.

What really needs to happen long-term to fix our immigration mess – both illegal and legal – is to disincentivize bad behavior. In other words, we need to ask the question, Why do so many people work so hard to violate our immigration laws?

The answer is that the US creates incentives to crash the border illegally mainly through a combination of the welfare state and birthright citizenship.

In essence, we say to people don’t come here illegally, but if you do happen to successfully sneak in and have a child on American soil, we’re going to shower you with fabulous cash and prizes.

Further, we have a perverse legal immigration system that seems to be intentionally designed to encourage immigration from areas of the world having as little in common as possible with American culture.

To really begin to address the immigration issue in a serious way will involve both rolling back the welfare states and ending birthright citizenship for the children of non-citizens.

A thorough examination of the legal immigration system, not to mention our policies as touching refugee resettlement on asylum seekers are needed as well.

In the opinion of this author, all of these issues are more important than building a wall.

That said, bandages can be useful to stop the bleeding. And if building the wall can provide us some relief from the current unsustainable situation with illegal crossings along our southern border and signal that America is finally beginning to address its immigration problem, then one could argue that it’s a good start.

Should Trump Declare a National Emergency?

This is an interesting question. On one hand, it’s tempting to argue, as Pat Buchannan does here, that Trump should go ahead, declare a national emergency already, and build the wall using Pentagon funds.

Buchannan argues that the current situation on our southern border is an existential threat to the United States. Therefore, Trump should seize the day and build that wall whether or not Congress appropriates funds to that end.

But before we jump in and agree with Buchannan, it’s worth asking what, if any, downsides there could be to Trump’s declaring a national emergency.

Ron Paul and Chris Rossini addressed the dangers of a national emergency in a recent video which you can watch here.

The strongest argument they make is that if Trump declares a national emergency over the wall, what will stop a future Democratic president from declaring a national emergency to implement some massive, socialist program rightfully opposed by conservatives?

Never take power for yourself that you would not want your worst enemy to have, that’s a pretty sound political maxim.

In the video, Ron Paul makes the point that it would be far better for Trump to pull troops out of places such as Syria and use the savings to build the wall. I agree, this would be much better.

That said, Trump has been thwarted by the Deep State at every turn when it comes to reducing America’s overseas military commitments.

I also agree with the argument presented in the video that it would be far better to remove the welfare incentive that the US dangles in front of illegal immigrants. But does anyone think the welfare states is going to be reduced, let alone eliminated, anytime soon?

My own stance on the national emergency is that it should be used only as a last resort. By all means Trump should attempt through other channels to fund the border wall. But if, as it seems, there are no other options, declaring a national emergency is a legitimate option.

In my view, the seriousness of our current immigration problems combined with the absolute refusal of the Democrats to budge on the wall funding warrants Trump declaring a national emergency.

It’s Now or Never

This one’s for all the marbles.

From a political standpoint, the wall has become a must win for Trump and his supporters. The wall was Trump’s signature campaign promise in 2016. If he fails to deliver, there’s no reason to think he would be reelected. For that matter, he would not, at least in my book, deserve to be reelected.

Perhaps of even more pressing from Trump’s standpoint is the distinct possibility of his impeachment. If Trump folds on the wall, his supporters will be demoralized and his enemies emboldened. Were Trump to lose on the wall, it’s doubtful his would even remain in office long enough to lose the 2020 election.

On the other hand, if Trump wins the wall fight, I have every confidence that he will win the 2020 election and enjoy a second term.

Further, it is my hope that if the wall is built, this will be a sign that the American people are taking the first steps to regaining some measure of control over their government.

Perhaps it would open the door to additional reforms such addressing the birthright citizenship fraud. Trump mentioned this issue during the campaign and as recently as last fall.

But future legislation aside, Trump needs to win the fight over the wall. It’s now or never for immigration reform.

Closing Thoughts

To sum up, it is my studied opinion that building the wall is the right thing to do for America. The wall is not the answer to every immigration problem facing our country, but it is at least a start.

The wall has potential downsides, such as the possibility that it could be used against the American people to keep them in rather than being used for its stated purpose of keeping illegal immigrants out. But then, there’s not one power government has, be it ever so legitimate, than cannot be abused.

The wall is not inherently immoral. It is defensive, and right now American finds itself under assault in a different sort of war. It’s not columns of soldiers pressing the attack, but columns of migrants imbued with the philosophies of Antichrist and financed and organized by radical globalists.

If America is ever going to have a sane immigration policy, it’s going to have to start somewhere. As things have turned out, the wall is our best chance of making a stand.

It’s now or never.

Build that wall.