Breaking Point

Has the US government finally crossed the line? Why not? Everyone else is.

After more than a century of printing and plundering…bombing and bribing…requiring and restricting…has the US government finally gone too far?

After decades putting its boot on our neck and its foot in its mouth, maybe enabling an invasion is the final straw? It’s too soon to be sure. But the camel’s back is beginning to bend.

Along the southern border, the Biden Administration isn’t merely ignoring illegal “immigration”. It’s actively encouraging it, and threatening anyone who gets in the way.

Millions of “migrants” pour in not only from Mexico, but thru it. Their points of origin are around the world, including many places the U.S. government has repeatedly riled up by stationing troops or lobbing bombs.

But we don’t really know where the intruders are from. And the administration doesn’t seem to care. It just wants to get them in and scatter them around.

Fast.

Invasion Accomplices

And it looks like airlines may be in on the act. Commentator Ashley St Clair recently described the scene at the Phoenix airport. Having frequently visited the border and nearby processing centers, she immediately recognized something was wrong.

During an interview with Michael Malice, she recalled that boarding her flight to New York were a “line of people all carrying bags from the processing center” where she’d recently been.

According to St Clair, she asked an airline representative if these were migrants and whether they’d been medically screened. Condescending and dismissive, the agent gave a response that wasn’t an answer:

“What do you care? They’re humans too.”

As if St Clair didn’t know that. If they weren’t human, as Malice put it, she wouldn’t have worried they might spread disease.

After further investigation, St Clair learned every airline is likely flying illegal aliens around the country, accepting arrest warrants as valid ID. It’s as if airlines are doing what they’re told by the entity that repeatedly bails them out.

Is this true?

I don’t know. But, like official malfeasance in general and most of the migrant mess in particular, if the government denies something and the corporate press is reluctant to report it, it’s probably happening.

Much of the mess stems from abusing “Asylum” status, which many immigrants fraudulently claim when they enter the country.

Legitimate asylum seekers are rare. What “rape and incest victims” are to abortions, “asylum seekers” are to illegal immigrants: a negligible percentage exploited for emotional impact and political leverage.

Even valid asylum requests must be approved in court. But most cases are scheduled years…in many cases more than a decade…in the future. Almost none of the alien “petitioners” will ever face a judge. Most will be shipped elsewhere to blend in.

And airlines aren’t the only outfits abetting the influx. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are among the most egregious accomplices. Many NGOs enabling this deluge aren’t merely exempt from taxes. Like favors from a mob boss, they also receive them. And they do their part to preserve the racket.

Various non-profits (often in the vestment of religious organizations) hand out maps, debit cards, legal counsel, and cash as they coach illegals how to claim asylum. Since the U.S. government demands no ID from those flooding in, migrants are advised to discard whatever documents they needed to pass thru other countries comprising their pipeline to the States.

Fed Up

The entire “process” is a coordinated fiasco, and the state of Texas seems to have had enough. Last week, as it’s constitutionally authorized to do, it took matters into its own hands.

For years, US border patrol has been keeping the frontier as open as whiskey taps at an Irish wake. So Texas replaced US agents with its own troops, who installed razor wire to keep intruders out.

To no one’s surprise, the Biden Administration objected to Texas defending itself from invaders the Administration invited. In another development that shouldn’t be a shock, the US Supreme Court (sort of) sided with the government of which it’s a part.

But the Supreme Court isn’t the final arbiter of what the Constitution says. It’s merely one of three co-equal branches of a government created by the states. Each branch has an obligation to interpret the Constitution.

But so do the states. And they take priority.

The states are the sovereigns; the central government is their agent. Since Lincoln, and particularly after Wilson and Roosevelt (both of them), the agent became a wild dog that’s escaped its leash.

It’s not like we weren’t warned. The Constitution came from a convention intended to “amend” the Articles of Confederation. It wasn’t supposed to replace them.

Yet that’s what it did.

Unfortunately, the states ratified it. But only under certain conditions. By starting a “national” bank and sending troops to Pennsylvania, the new government began almost immediately to ignore them. Within a decade, things came to a head.

Thomas Jefferson takes Texas’s Side

Amid a litany of brilliant writing, the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798 are among the best things Thomas Jefferson ever composed. The resolutions were written in defiance of the Alien and Sedition Acts, and are perhaps the most eloquent defense of interposition and nullification in American history.

Regarding the “Alien” section of the acts, Jefferson noted that the Constitution left authority over immigration (as with almost everything else) to the states, and that the Tenth Amendment reinforced these prerogatives:

“Resolved that Alien-friends are under the jurisdiction and protection of the laws of the state wherein they are; that no power over them has been delegated to the US. nor prohibited to the individual states distinct from their power over citizens: and it being true as a general principle, and one of the Amendments to the constitution having also declared, that ‘the powers not delegated to the US. by the constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people,’ the act of the Congress of the US. passed on the day of July 1798. intituled ‘an Act concerning Aliens’ which assumes powers over Alien-friends not delegated by the constitution is not law, but is altogether void & of no force.”

Regarding the US government (among other obtrusive organizations), “altogether void & of no force” is a phrase we need desperately to resurrect. The 10th Amendment…what Jefferson called “the foundation of the constitution”… affirmed the states’ responsibility for dealing with illegal aliens.

Even the dubious the 14th Amendment didn’t override this cornerstone of the Constitution:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof [illegal aliens obviously aren’t], are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States [illegal aliens obviously aren’t]; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law [aliens receive “due process” of laws when their status in the state is assessed]; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws [every person in the state is subject to the same consideration].

It’s obvious this amendment referred exclusively to freed slaves. Nothing in it denies states the power to protect their border from foreign trespassers.

Many might whine that the Supremacy Clause overrides what Texas is doing. But that clause only applies to laws passed “in pursuance” of the Constitution. No state is bound to observe unconstitutional edicts. They’re obligated to defy them.

And invoking the Supremacy Clause in this case is particularly absurd. Unlike in 1798, or the “Nullification Crisis” of 1832, this isn’t the U.S. government passing an unconstitutional law the states refuse to observe. Texas is trying to enforce a US government law that the US government wants to ignore!

All For Show?

Or is it? Or is this “stand-off” all for show? Eagle Pass is the center of attention. But that town is a small sliver of an extensive border, most of which remains wide open. On either side of this single city, hordes continue to come in unimpeded. No one cares.

As Matt Smith mentioned earlier this week, the stories of which we should be most skeptical are the dominant narratives we want to believe. In front of the cameras at Eagle Pass, passion is high, politics are prominent, and groups of “patriots” travel toward the border - inviting incarceration by defying the feds.

Yet neither the US nor Texas is doing anything to seal the bulk of the frontier that no one is focusing on. Nor are the couple dozen other states chiming in with sentiments that sound nice, yet mean little…what Smith aptly likened to “thoughts and prayers” from opportunistic governors seeking cheap applause from a safe distance.

So while Thomas Jefferson might side with Texas, he’d doubtless prefer to see Texas do more to side with itself.

But normalizing notions of nullification and secession is an encouraging development. Even forcing opponents to say it’s illegal is a good sign. A few years ago, they would’ve laughed without addressing the argument at all. Many still think secession is crazy, but they’re now compelled to explain why.

The Humane Solution

And the case against separation is getting harder to make. In modern America, half the people hate the other half’s guts. Persuasion is impossible. Even conversation is futile. Expressing an opposing political opinion evokes anger and revulsion, even among family and friends.

How can such disparate, unreconcilable perspectives co-exist? And why should they?

What immutable law says California and Texas must live the same way? Who says Mississippi and Massachusetts have to have the similar rules? Are New York and North Dakota really that much alike? Why should Washington and Wyoming see eye to eye?

Top-down, one-size fits-all “solutions” that lord it over everyone are unjust, doomed to fail, and deserve to disappear. As in a business deal gone bad, the humane solution isn’t to force antagonists together, but to let them wish each other well, and to go their separate ways.

There’s no reason parting can’t be peaceful. Separation isn’t synonymous with armed conflict. Secession is inherently an amicable act. Violence stems from those trying to stop it. The Soviet Union split apart without going to war. So did Czechoslovakia.

And if problems persist within states (as they obviously would), they’re much easier to solve at a smaller scale. If that meant further division, so what? Was the Holy Roman Empire that much worse with a hundred principalities than the Third Reich under a single state?

Resistance and secession were how American states initially attained independence. There’s no reason to think they couldn’t do so again.

JD