By Alan Keyes
Wednesday, June 27, 2007
Many Americans are deeply outraged about the federal government's failure to secure our southern border and enforce our immigration laws.
Thanks to this outrage, efforts to pass a so-called immigration reform bill through the U.S. Congress have thus far stalled -- despite the fact that leaders in both parties are determined to force the issue. The rank and file politicos in Congress fear for their political lives if they cast a vote that is perceived as supporting amnesty for illegal immigrants, or continued acceptance of the government's dereliction of duty with respect to border security.
This is an issue that clearly reveals the political elite's abandonment of any allegiance to the sovereignty of the people. In fact, our current political leaders appear to have embarked on a strategy of demographic subversion that will dethrone the American people as presently constituted and replace them with a majority more easily dominated and controlled by wealthy or bureaucratically powerful elites. They are working toward the day when the American people look and behave more like the people of Mexico -- who have never achieved sovereign control of their government, despite the outward forms of democratic self-government.
My own conviction about this strategy of demographic subversion has gained strength as a result of the work I have done in support of the Minutemen, the grassroots effort to focus government attention and action on the issue of border security. In many respects, this movement is typical of the spirit of democratic self-government that has characterized the American people ever since the Founding.
Moved by their firsthand experience of the border security crisis, some Americans were looking for a way to call public attention to the issue -- as well as highlight and demonstrate the gravity of the problem and the means to an effective solution. They organized a corps of volunteer observers to provide firsthand confirmation and evidence of the hundreds of illegal immigrants crossing our southern borders without let or hindrance. In a disciplined and responsible fashion, they sought to share this evidence with law enforcement authorities, to help direct the efforts of a border patrol force stretched beyond effective limits by the magnitude of the crisis.
Now, political leaders genuinely committed to defending America's sovereignty would have shared the citizens' dismay at the magnitude of this invasion of our territory and welcomed the help and support of the people in documenting and dealing with it. To be sure, they would want to guarantee that citizen involvement took a constructive form, one that respected the requirements of law, constitutional rights and public order.
In this spirit, they would sit down with the leaders of the citizen effort, perhaps proposing that it be formally organized as a volunteer auxiliary to the border patrol, so that uniform standards of conduct could be established and enforced. Leaders who wanted to serve and preserve the sovereignty of the people would see the border crisis not only in terms of national security in the physical sense, but in terms of the opportunity once again to demonstrate that self-government welcomes and relies on the responsible initiative and participation of the people.
Instead, the actual response of our current political elite has been just the opposite. From the beginning, they have sought to discredit this citizen initiative, using derogatory terms like "vigilante" to describe the people involved, and ominously warning against their potential for bigoted violence toward the rights or persons of illegal immigrants.
At first, they scoffed when the citizens suggested that more effective physical barriers (e.g., a border fence) would help in managing the situation. When it became clear that the actions and proposals of the Minuteman organization reflected a widespread concern of the American people, the politicos passed sham legislation intended to create the appearance of action, while making sure nothing effective was done. Meanwhile, members of the border patrol who actually tried to enforce security have been arrested, tried, and jailed, sending a clear message that the political elite will not tolerate any real border security efforts.
The details of this elite betrayal are increasingly well-known to many Americans, and it is not my intention to rehearse them here. My aim is to focus for a moment on the foregone opportunity-cost of this betrayal -- particularly in terms of renewing and strengthening the spirit and capacity of the American people for self-government.
I believe that our political elite care nothing for the integrity of our borders, because they have no moral commitment to our identity as a free people. Some of them betray us because they are already "citizens of the world," intent on putting in place supra-national institutions that will replace our system of constitutional self-government. Others betray us because they serve economic interests that see huge profit in a result that cheapens labor in America through wholesale importation of foreign workers. All are willing to sacrifice -- rather than encourage -- the special spirit of initiative and involvement that has been characteristic of the American people, because it gets in the way of their agenda of worldwide elite control and domination.
For these people, the American dream of liberty has been replaced by the age-old dream of global empire, the dream that animated conquering despots like Alexander, Augustus and Marcus Aurelius, Napoleon, and the architects of far-flung British hegemony. The arrogance of military prowess has been replaced by the arrogance of superior technology or organizational know-how, but the domineering premise of this elite imperialism is depressingly familiar. The people cannot govern because the elites know better than they what is to be done. Elections and other outward forms can be tolerated, but only as outward shows intended to make the people more submissive to the will of the elites.
Because the issue of border security involves an open assault on the sovereignty of the people, this outward show is falling apart. Events are revealing the naked reality of powers who intend to have their way no matter what, shoving aside the sham of representative government.
Will they succeed? Not if the American people themselves are still committed to self-government, despite years of corrupting miseducation and media-engineered manipulation. Will we give priority to the issues that involve our character and our sovereignty (issues of moral principle that define our capacity for freedom, issues of national integrity that defend our identity as a free people) -- or will we continue to offer ourselves for easy manipulation through the media-imposed priority given to issues that focus on how our benevolent elite masters will care for us, provide for us, and regulate us for our own good, while giving license to selfish passions intended privately to console us for the loss of our true liberty?
Will our choice in 2008 be a decision about whose name and face will mask our submission to elite control, or a decision to reassert once again the true spirit of constitutional self-government? As we shall see, border security is not the only issue that involves this critical alternative.
The 2008 presidential election cycle is well under way, hurried along by decisions of more populous states like New York and California to move their primaries to February 5, 2008...
Because our understanding of politics has been corrupted, we cannot discuss what threatens our political sovereignty until we free ourselves from the effects of that corruption. It's as if we are looking at our political life through lenses or panes of glass that obscure and distort everything we see, including the nature of our own actions...
Abraham Lincoln described the American Constitution as "government of the people, by the people, and for the people." He recognized the sovereignty of the people as the essential characteristic of republican self-government.
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When poor policy produces bad results, it's often painfully easy to recognize inadequate leadership.
2007 Alan Keyes
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