Why President Trump’s Border Wall Matters

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer pose for pictures after delivering a response to President Donald Trump's televised address to the nation on border funding at the Capitol in Washington D.C. on Jan. 8, 2019. NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images

Commentary

“Normal politics” usually consists of disagreements about policy proposals, while disputants remain in fundamental agreement about the basis of their democratic system.

However, recent partisan clashes have displayed such virulent animosity that resolving any issues on such a basis seems impossible.

That’s the problem with the border wall. It can’t be equated with just another squabble in Washington’s fetid political atmosphere, or seen as an issue solvable by “normal politics.”

President Donald Trump insists on building the wall to deliver on a campaign promise, but more importantly to safeguard national security and fend off a burgeoning humanitarian disaster. Meanwhile, the Pelosi–Schumer–Hoyer triumvirate fulminates about the wall’s expense, morality, and perhaps the threats it poses to yet-to-be-discovered endangered spotted rodents, or something.

All of this is shadow-boxing, reflecting fiery realities giving life to public-relations images dancing in breathless media accounts, like puppets bopping on strings and playing before a national audience.

Unfortunately, the realities in question couldn’t be graver or more consequential to the future of the Republic. In fact, if Trump loses this fight, he’s done for, and so are the Republicans. And, eventually, so is the United States.

Why is this the case, especially since the money involved—$5 billion to $10 billion—is not that great? Answers center on the wall’s broader implications for the United States’ survival as a sovereign Republic, based on conducting rational political argumentation by its leaders and their commitment to truth. If this foundation collapses, the country is finished. Here are the stakes:

Constitutional Order Versus Lawlessness

Article Two, Section 3, of the U.S. Constitution states (in part) that “he [the President] shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.”

The relevant law deals with legal and illegal immigration, specifically, 8 U.S.C. §1365, which defines an illegal alien as “any alien who is any alien convicted of a felony who is in the United States unlawfully and—(1) whose most recent entry into the United States was without inspection, or (2) whose most recent admission to the United States was as a nonimmigrant and—[other provisions].” In other words, the term illegal alien is clearly defined in the U.S. Code—no ambiguities, no wriggle room.

But Democrats have plunged discussion of illegal aliens into a thick fog of palliative nonentities—terms that have no legal existence or any bearing on how immigration officials do their job, which is to protect the borders and security of the United States. Thus, the terms “undocumented immigrant” and “sanctuary city” pepper phrases saturated with gooey dollops of unwarranted compassion, at the expense of U.S. citizens forced to pay for mammoth lawlessness, while frequently finding themselves victims of illegal aliens’ additional crimes, such as theft, assault, and murder.

Still, illegal alien criminals enjoy the vociferous support of their allies in academia, think tanks, Congress, and, especially, the elite media, who place their agendas above loyalty to their country. All of this is tantamount to celebrating lawlessness and parading contempt for legal immigrants, U.S. citizens, and the American constitutional order. End of story.

Truth Versus Lies

If the true dimensions of illegal aliens’ invasion were disseminated as widely as lies surrounding their circumstances, public outrage would likely result in shutting down the border and crippling the effects of the foreigners’ criminality industry.

James Simpson, who’s studied the problem intensively, concludes, “The migrant caravans now storming our borders were not spontaneous. They were highly organized and assisted by multiple agencies of the United Nations and numerous illegal alien advocacy groups [in America and abroad].” So much for the helpless-refugee-seeking-asylum argument.

The apocalypse-like journey argument doesn’t fare too well, either; this isn’t a Cormac McCarthy “The Road” experience on steroids. The vast majority of caravan trekkers are men who made the 1,000-mile journey by bus, and who use women and children as human shields, Simpson points out, while they heave rocks at border officials. A good time is had by all, because caravan foot soldiers, like their sponsors, relish “poking Trump in the eye.”

This is fine with America’s elite media, who loathe Trump and get all giggly and beside themselves at the prospect of putting him down. Thus, airwaves are filled with chattering noggins sporting furrowed brows and enflamed visages, fervently croaking about “mostly women and children” filling caravan ranks, with nary a criminal in sight. “No evidence!” they scream. Trump’s “got this fantasy of this caravan,” CNN political analyst Jeff Toobin whined.

Not so, averred Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, who pointed out that Democratic leaders “didn’t want to hear about criminal aliens, drug smugglers, smuggled and abused children, or violent caravans trying to breach the border wall.”

Nor did Caravan Confederates in Congress want to learn about officials apprehending nearly 3,000 invaders with terrorist ties and 17,000 convicted criminals last year. The best that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi could blurt in defiance was “I reject your facts.”

Nielsen reportedly responded, “These aren’t my facts, these are the facts.” Which doesn’t matter, of course: Caravan criers have never allowed the facts to get in their way.

This speaks to a much larger problem in the United States, which is dealing with determined minorities committed to rejecting law, truth, and their country in efforts to advance their agenda. No civilization on Earth can survive such assaults on its right to exist, unless responsible leaders grasp what’s at stake. Which brings us to our last point.

Civilization Versus Barbarism

“Enemy at the gates” is a familiar phrase to depict life-threatening situations faced by an army or a country struggling to survive against formidable odds. In the United States, enemies are not only at the gates, but within them, and they all have the same relentless goal—to wage war against American civilization until its defenders have lost the will to preserve and protect the greatest country the world has ever seen.

In short, the border wall controversy must be understood in light of the larger cultural assault waged by permanently entrenched interests against the American civil and constitutional order. One can’t make sense of the countless Pelosi’s and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s in our midst without this in mind.

In his fascinating review of the Middle Ages, scholar Morris Bishop asked the question, why did Rome fall?

“We have far too many answers,” he said, and then proceeded to summarize a dozen categories that addressed the topic, and over the past millennium have filled many libraries. “Whatever the cause,” he concluded, “the later days … were marked … by what has been well termed ‘a failure of nerve.’” In the final analysis, this is the situation the president and the United States finds itself in.

We must not let “a failure of nerve” be our epitaph.

Marvin Folkertsma is a retired professor of political science and a fellow for American studies with The Center for Vision and Values at Grove City College. The author of several books, his latest release is a novel titled “The Thirteenth Commandment.”

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Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.