OPINION:
Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly went on national television recently and made this somewhat chilling remark: “If [Americans] knew what I knew about terrorism, [they’d] never leave the house in the morning.”
It’s just that kind of frightening head thump on reality that makes one wonder: So why are so many leftists in this nation heck-bent on keeping borders open — the very borders terrorists themselves would seek to breach to commit their in-country acts of evil?
That Kelly’s comments, made on “Fox & Friends,” came on the heels of the ISIS-tied terror attack on mostly women and children at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, England, was an underscore.
That they came right around the same time more than two dozen Coptic Christians — men, women and children — were being targeted for their faith and fatally gunned down in Egypt by masked attackers is another underscore.
That they came a day after the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, in all its left-leaning wisdom, shot down yet another attempt from the President Donald Trump administration to secure America’s borders and halt, temporarily, travelers from six known terror hot spots from entering the country could be very well be the underscore that kills.
Just what is it about the left that so, so, so hates to secure national borders?
The Fourth Circuit upheld a previously imposed court injunction on Trump’s executive order, which temporarily halts travelers from six countries — Sudan and Iran, both of which are recognized state sponsors of terrorism, along with Libya, Syria, Yemen and Somalia.
Syria, half the equation of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, ISIS, should be a no-brainer ban. And Libya?
Well, if any country should serve as a classic red flag reason to tighten border controls right now it’s Libya.
It’s the country of birth for the parents of Salman Abedi — you know, the guy who just blew himself up in Manchester, along with innocent kids as young as 8 years old, in the name of Allah? That’s also the country authorities say Abedi just visited, days before he embarked on his terrorist bombing mission.
Coincidence?
I think not. A possibility for similar terror-type attacks here, in America?
I think so.
Yet Democrats, leftists, special-interest lobby groups like the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and now — distressingly — several courts, it seems, would have it believed that Islam, as it relates to terror, and terror, as it relates to Islam, is all in the head.
When ten of the judges on the Fourth Circuit ruled that Trump’s travel ban was, in essence, hurtful to Muslims, they basically said: There’s no link between Islam and terror.
They in essence said: There’s no connection between border controls and those who come stealthily across borders, to do citizens harm.
That’s highly irrational. But then again, so were the Fourth Circuit judges who inflicted their majority decision on the rest of us.
Chief Judge Roger Gregory, for instance, wrote this in his ruling: “[Trump’s order] speaks with vague words of national security, but in context drips with religious intolerance, animus and discrimination.”
How so?
Because Trump, during his campaign run, made some comments about banning Muslims from America. Yet his order says nothing of the sort. So his opponents, the open-border peeps, have been waving a magic wand to put forth the notion that Trump’s orders are religious discrimination in disguise — that the words of the orders contain deeper, darker, hidden meanings that are discriminatory in nature.
The courts that agree? Why, they’re simply peering past the text of the orders to gaze into a heart of a president, and upon that conjecture, make their rulings.
This is the maddening truth of the court’s determinations regarding Trump’s travel bans.
“[Trump’s campaign remarks] provide direct, specific evidence of what motivated both EO-1 and EO-2,” the Fourth Circuit said, referring to the original and revised executive orders issued by Trump, the Los Angeles Times reported. “President Trump’s desire to exclude Muslims from the United States.”
Of course, saner minds know that if Trump really wanted to cast out all Muslims from America, then he’d include Indonesia, with a dominant Muslim population, or even places like India, with a sizable Muslim demographic, on his travel ban list.
But sanity, along with both Trump’s orders, has been tossed to the side in these highly charged politically partisan times. Even courts aren’t reliable gate guards to the Constitution any longer. They’re enablers of the left.
Minus the last couple years, when Republicans took over the Senate and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell orchestrated a mass slowdown of judicial confirmations of Barack Obama-named appointees, Democrats have been especially apt at stacking the district and appellate courts, taking over about 51 percent of the seats, according to one recent survey.
Trump now has a chance to fill 100 or so federal court vacancies. And he’d do well to get cracking in this process.
Democrats may be the minority voice on Capitol Hill right now. But they’ve been putting in overtime to get their agendas forced into reality, open borders being at the top of the wish list. And if it means compromising national security — if it means dancing with the devil himself and turning blind eyes to the terrorists at U.S. doors — well then, in the minds of Democrats, so be it. Their view? Let the dancing begin.
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