OPINION:
President Donald Trump said yes to the budget bill to keep open government, but then bypassed Congress and declared a national emergency to free up funding to build his long-promised border wall.
And on the other side of town, Beto O’Rourke — Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke — says let’s go ahead and rip ’em all down.
The campaign lines for 2020 and beyond couldn’t be any clearer.
“Would you, if you could, would you take the wall down here — knock it down?” asked MSNBC’s Chris Hayes to O’Rourke, in reference to existing border fencing.
“Yes, absolutely,” O’Rourke said. “I’d take the wall down.”
Go ahead and put that on a bumper sticker, because, in a nutshell, that’s the left’s entire political platform: “Take the wall down.”
The Democrats of just a few years ago who voted for the Secure Fence Actof 2006, authorizing construction of 700 or so miles of border fencing — Democrats who included Sens. Chuck Schumer, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton — have been supplanted by socialist-minded Sen. Bernie Sanders, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and, coming like a freight train on the presidential trail, O’Rourke.
There is no reasoning with this new batch of Democrats.
They have designs on destruction — and not just of the border, but of the country’s roots, the nation’s DNA: our constitutional system of governance that has guided us since the founding.
After all, it’s only common sense to say that you can’t have a country, can’t have a culture, without national borders.
This new batch of Democrats are not so much concerned with service to the people or protection of the country as they are with making names for themselves as global movers and shakers, as saviors of mankind even. They think of themselves as glorious problem solvers, capable of spreading justice and wealth and equality throughout the planet — if only their resistors would pipe down and get out of their way. They see the likes of murderous Che Guevara through adoring eyes and romanticize the horrors of communism.
And they see borders, all national borders, as bad — as the ultimate absolute in a world they believe should be free of any absolutes.
“More than 4,000 human beings, little kids, women and children, have died [while attempting to cross the border],” O’Rourke said, Fox News reported. “They’re not in cages, they’re not locked up, they’re not separated — they’re dead, over the last 10 years, as we have walled off their opportunity to legally petition for asylum, to cross in urban centers like El Paso, to be with family, to work jobs, to do what any human being should have a right to be able to do, what we would do if faced with the same circumstances they were.”
These are dangerous times for America.
Trump’s declaration of national emergency to build a border wall will certainly bring lawsuits, even as it energizes the left for robust, angry, outraged politicking.
The deeper theme is this, though: Does America have a right to exist as America any more?
The open border-advocating left will say — has said — no. As for the ideological right? The right has been fighting its own ranks on this point. The right has been even fighting its own president on this point.
Sadly, that’s left an opening for the left to exploit.
So here comes Beto, here come all the Beto copycats, riding hard to offer up a white flag of America’s surrender to the world.
“Take the wall down,” O’Rourke says.
This is the signature issue of our times — and think hard: once lost, borders cannot so easily be regained. America is indeed facing a national emergency.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley.
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