The Main Thing
Peter Lord said, “The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing.” The main thing our Federal Government was established for was defense. Defending national borders is the main thing defense is for. All other responsibilities are secondary to this. When any government in history could no longer defend its borders, then its time was short. Without a major change of direction very fast, our time as a Republic will soon be over.
The collapse into lawlessness on our southern border is the result of a leadership that either does not want to defend our borders or is not competent to do so. If this is the result of our leaders not wanting to defend our borders, it is treason and a most basic renunciation of their oath of office. If this chaos is the result of incompetence, they are in violation of U.S. Federal Law that requires anyone who takes a position in the U.S. Government to be competent for the responsibilities of that office. Either way, the refusal to defend our borders is not only an impeachable offense, it is a criminal offense.
Justice is not just about punishment, but also about accountability. The three branches of our Federal Government were intended to be counterbalancing. For this to happen, there must be strong enough leadership in the positions of government that were designed to be the counterbalances to the one that goes awry. Our Republic was designed for the House of Representatives to be the strongest, because it most basically represented the people and was answerable to the people every two years. To maintain this power, the Congress was given the power of the purse. The weakest of the three branches was to be the Executive because that is where the tyranny was most likely to come from. Now these positions have been reversed, and we are paying the consequences with increasing tyranny.
However, every branch of our government is unraveling into increasing dysfunction, so even their function as counterbalances to each other is beginning to break down. Without a major change in their trajectory, we are headed for increasing chaos and lawlessness, or tyranny.
So what do we do? First, never lose hope. All is not lost until all is lost. There is still time to change our direction, recover our losses, and become better and stronger than ever. However, if we do not understand what got us into this crisis, we will not have the wisdom to get out of it, or stay out of it in the future.
The Children
Everyone seems to be touched with the plight of the unaccompanied children, except the President. How could he ever claim to really care about them if he will not go to see for himself what is happening to them, or even visit the border? He said he didn’t want to go just for a photo op, but that is not the reason for going—it is to see the crisis firsthand. Every leader will tell you that you cannot really understand a crisis without seeing it with your own eyes. Without firsthand knowledge, your solutions are not likely to be wise ones.
The President’s startling aloofness is obvious, but to the rest of the country this is one of the most heart-wrenching problems we have faced as a nation. These children have likely all been abused, raped, and in some cases tortured, while getting here. Some we know were killed. The number of those who did not make it to the border is hard to ascertain, but it could be a very big number. Others were likely sold into slavery before they could get to the border.
This is a terrible human crisis. One thing America will always do is respond to a human crisis, regardless of where it is in the world, so we can be sure we’ll deal with this one. Without question we should do all that we can to protect these children. However, the fastest and most effective thing we can do for them is to secure and defend our borders so that those nations will not send their children on such a dangerous journey again.
