OPINION:
The days of fair play, wait your turn, play by the rules, work hard and reap the results are over.
In its place? In its place stands a rush of bodies at the U.S. border pleading, nay demanding, entry.
“Over 1,000 migrants have stormed past riot police to get to the US border through the Tijuana River,” tweeted one NBC News producer, Annie Rose Ramos.
The natural thing for America’s border authorities to do when so many non-Americans try to rush into this country is to stop them. And so they’ve done; after being hit with rocks, U.S. officials fired tear gas at the scores of migrants who tried to scale border fences or slide past gaps in patrols in the areas between Tijuana and San Diego.
But left-leaning politicians, sensing a political sensation and the chance to score big points against this administration, have responded with swift criticisms — as if border patrol agents were the aggressors and the poor innocent migrants the poor innocent law-abiding citizens.
“Activists, Politicians React With Horror At Border Scenes Of Tear-Gassed Children,” the Huffington Post wrote.
The story went on to report how “mothers carried sobbing children away from tear gas fired by U.S. officers at the Mexican border”; how The Associated Press noted “children screamed and coughed amid the gas”; how Reuters noted that “one woman collapsed unconscious amid the chaos, and two babies sobbed with tears running down their faces from the gas.”
Well, what did the migrants expect would happen when they tried to illegally cross into America — a red carpet rollout?
It’s not as if President Donald Trump has done a Barack Obama and telecast to the world that U.S. borders were free and open to all who would cross. It’s not as if Trump hasn’t warned, repeatedly, that those who try to storm across America’s property lines would be treated as usurpers. It’s not as if Trump hadn’t sent U.S. military members to the border to protect American interests — and that the world knew about it.
This president’s determination was widely known, widely forecast.
So let’s can the shock — shock! — over the tear gas.
“Anyone uncomfortable with spraying tear gas on children is welcome to join the coalition of the moral and the sane,” tweeted Sen. Brian Schatz, Hawaii Democrat.
Nice spin. But the children were not the target. If their parents — their law-breaking parents — truly wanted to keep them safe, they wouldn’t have brought them into the known danger zone called America’s Border in the first place.
They wouldn’t have tried to bring their children along with them into their illegal escapades.
Once upon a time, even Democrats understood the concept of law and order, right and wrong, truth and lies — legal immigrant versus illegal stormtrooper. Even Democrats understood the idea of proper border processing, of studying hard to pass the citizenship test, of assimilating into American society and expressing patriotic love of the flag, the country, the citizenry.
Nowadays, chaos rules.
This border war just shows how far our country has strayed from its constitutional roots, moral compass and just course. It’s bedlam and madness. Lawlessness has replaced law. And if the brutish types are allowed to win — to open the floodgates and let in the looters — then mark these words, this will be just the beginning of a long line of copycat caravaners, bringing an end of U.S. borders, an end to U.S. sovereignty.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley.
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