Without borders, we’re not a country

If I listen to the liberal mantra as it relates to resources, we are running out of everything. We are running out of industrial resources, food, water, affordable housing and other necessities. At the same time, according to the left, everyone is entitled at birth to food, clothing, shelter, health care, a college education and anything else they can think of.

All of it will somehow just appear, out of nowhere.

Considering that scenario, how will it be possible to eliminate our borders and give everything to everybody? 

Margaret Thatcher was right when she said sooner or later, you run out of other people’s money. Think: $20,000,000,000,000 debt.

This brings us to immigration. 

Our immigration laws have been a disgrace from the beginning. If they weren’t racist, they were certainly exclusionary and exploitative to the point where today, they are outright paranoiac.

Thank heavens we can blame Donald Trump for everything bad that has happened in America for the last 250 years. That won’t solve any problems, but by gosh, by golly, it does feel good to put the blame on one person, and not centuries of historical shortsightedness, doesn’t it?

Speaking of presidents, here are two quotes to consider regarding our future as “one nation under God with liberty and justice for all,” a nation where everyone came from somewhere else.

Theodore Roosevelt said in 1915 when he denounced “hyphenated Americans.”

Roosevelt said, “There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. When I refer to hyphenated Americans, I do not refer to naturalized Americans. Some of the very best Americans I have ever known were naturalized Americans, Americans born abroad. But a hyphenated American is not an American at all. This is just as true of the man who puts ‘native’ before the hyphen as of the man who puts German or Irish or English or French before the hyphen. Americanism is a matter of the spirit and of the soul. Our allegiance must be purely to the United States. We must unsparingly condemn any man who holds any other allegiance. But if he is heartily and singly loyal to this Republic, then no matter where he was born, he is just as good an American as anyone else.

“The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities…

“The men who do not become Americans and nothing else are hyphenated Americans; and there ought to be no room for them in this country. The man who calls himself an American citizen and who yet shows by his actions that he is primarily the citizen of a foreign land plays a thoroughly mischievous part in the life of our body politic. He has no place here; and the sooner he returns to the land, to which he feels his real heart-allegiance, the better it will be for every good American.”

Consider what Abraham Lincoln said in 1838, at the age of 28, in a speech that he called “The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions.”

Lincoln said, “All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth in their military chest; with a Bonaparte for a commander, could not by force take a drink from the Ohio or make a track on the Blue Ridge in a trial of a thousand years. At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”

As you think about the above quotations, remember we are a nation of laws.

If the legislature legally created U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), then ICE must enforce the laws.

Only in large, one-party cities is following the law followed by a “wink, wink.”

We don’t get to pick and choose which laws to obey. That will lead to anarchy and ultimately totalitarianism.

There is only one thing to do.

Change the laws. 

Change the laws through open discussion, honest and intelligent debate; change the laws through legislative action taken of the people by the people and for the people.

That is how America remains free and strong. It takes hard work and effort, but it has worked better than any other governmental system in history.

Keep in mind, a country without borders is not a country.

Jim Hofmann is a resident of Moab. He is a retired educator, corporate trainer, program developer, operations manager and engages in a variety of volunteer pursuits.