By Selwyn Duke

With the federal government’s abdication of its responsibility to secure the border, many local governments have stepped into the breach.  These cities and towns are fed up with the feds and are starting to enact laws designed to rid their jurisdictions of invaders. 

Not surprisingly, this is provoking outrage among the Invasion-USA enablers, who will seize upon any excuse to paint such measures as bad ideas.  One favorite excuse is the notion that such actions just don’t lie within the scope of localities.  But this is absurd.  And to entertain such an idea is to betray a complete misunderstanding of proper governance and that upon which this nation was founded. 

Alexis de Tocqueville, the great French philosopher who toured the US in 1831 and wrote Democracy in America, once remarked about how Americans would voluntarily join together to tackle projects or problems that couldn’t be handled individually.  What he observed was the American way: The marriage between the principles of solidarity and subsidiarity.  The former pertains to a sense of unity and fellowship that inspired them to feel responsible to the wider community, the latter to the understanding that common responsibilities should be undertaken by the smallest unit of society that can handle them.  In other words, they felt obligated to help their fellow man, and when aid was required, they jumped in with both feet.  There was no expectation that impersonal federal hands could or should do what was well within their capacity. 

This was reflected in our constitution, which limits federal power and delegates most rights and responsibilities to the states.  This brings us back to immigration.  For localities to take the initiative with most anything — including combating the problem of illegals — is completely in accordance with the principles of good governance and with American historical norms. 

It also places pressure on other cities to follow suit.  After all, as more localities crack down, illegals will gravitate toward the places that will still tolerate their presence; this will cause a more severe illegal alien problem in those areas, thereby creating more of an incentive for them to crack down.  Obviously, as this process continued over time, the pressure on the remaining sanctuary localities would steadily increase until few would be able to resist common sense.

As they say, think globally, act locally.

Then, I don’t often sing the praises of other pundits, but Pat Buchanan has a great piece at Real Clear Politics on the folly of deifying democracy.  It’s titled "Ideology Was Bush’s Undoing," and Buchanan’s analysis is spot on.  Of course, and I feel compelled to point this out, I would say that because I have treated the same topics and have made all the same points in the past.  Nevertheless, his piece is extremely well written and is a home run from start to finish.  It’s worth a read.

Lastly, transitioning from the sublime to the stupid, on Monday, Real Clear Politics ran a piece by Arianna Huffington under the title "How Much Lower Can the Bar Get?"  As you may know, Huffington is the gal with the heavy foreign accent who married her way to success.  She is in journalism because she wedded multi-millionaire Michael Huffington, a former politician who lost a mega-expensive Senate race to Diane Feinstein in California, divorced, declared himself a homosexual (I wonder why), said he wasn’t sure if he was still a Republican and, I suppose, began the first day of the rest of his life. 

Not surprisingly, Huffington’s piece is a criticism of Iraq war policy — it’s one of the only things leftists totally bereft of insight can write about.  I know, I know, this is where it’s customary to actually link to the article you’re discussing, but I can’t do it.  I just can’t.  Sorry, but if you’re a masochist, you’ll have to use a search engine and find it yourself.

Oh, I might as well answer the question, though.  Can the bar get any lower?  Well, Arianna Huffington is getting paid handsomely to render her opinions.  So I guess not.