On January 22, a 5-4 US Supreme Court vote allowed US Border Patrol agents to cut razor wire installed along the US-Mexico border (which also happens to be the Texas-Mexico Border) in the vicinity of a local park that the Texas Military Department seized earlier in the month. Eagle Park verges on the Rio Grande river, and the idea of the razor wire is to deter (or injure or kill) migrants crossing from the Mexican side.

The order is a temporary measure, put in effect until the court hears and rules on the entire dispute over state versus federal authority at the border.

While there are a number of factual claims in dispute, it’s worth reviewing what the law — specifically the “supreme law of the land,” the US Constitution — has to say on the matter, and whether or not that law is morally justifiable.

Put simply, Texas actually has a constitutional hook to hang its deter/injure/kill program on.

Article I, Section 9 of the US Constitution clearly and unambiguously forbids the federal government to regulate immigration — and strong implies a state power to do so:

“The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight …”

Article V of the same Constitution forbade amending that provision before 1808.

The Tenth Amendment requires such a post-1808 constitutional amendment to create any federal power over immigration. No such amendment has ever been proposed or ratified.

And, as Chief Justice John Marshall noted in the 1803 case Marbury v. Madison, “an act of the legislature, repugnant to the constitution, is void.”

There are, in other words, no valid federal immigration laws, despite an activist Supreme Court’s decision magically miracling up a federal immigration power out of nothing in Chy Lung v. Freeman (1875).

But that “States now existing shall think proper to admit” verbiage does imply that the ratifiers of the Constitution thought such a state power existed by default. So if Texas wants to deter people from coming across the Rio Grande (or kill or injure them for trying to do so), then as a constitutional matter, if handled honestly, this whole thing boils down to a more mundane question: Whether the Rio Grande is federal property, state property, or some other kind of property.

But, then, there’s the moral side of the question, and both the US and Texas governments are on the wrong side of that one.

Peacefully traveling to, moving to, or working at wherever one darn well pleases is a human right, and none of Greg Abbott’s or Joe Biden’s business. Using force or violence to impede the exercise of that right is a crime.

That’s true whether the criminals involved work for the Texas Military Department, the US Border Patrol, the China Immigration Inspection branch of the People’s Police, or for that matter, the now-defunct East German Stasi.

Immigrants don’t belong in cages. Abbott and Biden do.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

Yes, folks, it’s that time again. Each year, the final week of January features a campaign of punditry, analysis, and cheerleading centered around “National School Choice Week.”

What is “school choice?” In theory, it’s a utopian something-for-nothing scenario in which every student gets the education he, she, or other pronoun “chooses.”

In fact, “school choice,” as promoted, robs most stakeholders — most students, most parents, most educators, and all taxpayers — of meaningful choice.

The usual vehicles for “school choice” are vouchers which can be used to pay tuition, or tax credits that can be used to defray tuition at, approved schools, or in some cases to buy approved homeschooling curricula.

The key word there is “approved,” which is where choice gets shut down.

“Public” — that is, government-run — schools, including “charter” schools, are naturally “approved.” Sending a student there is usually characterized as parents taking “their” tax money to the “magnet” school down the road instead of the “troubled” school nearer their homes, but in both cases they just get the government-approved courses of instruction for their children.

“Private” schools and privately sold homeschool curricula are only eligible to enroll students using that voucher or tax credit money if they also teach the government-approved versions of the government-approved subjects.

Educationally, “school choice” turns every school/curriculum into a single McDonald’s combo meal . You can have anything you want to eat as long as it’s a Big Mac. No matter where you go, you get the same burger, cooked and served the same way.  Unless you have a strong preference for one school’s football team or architectural style over another’s, you might as well just flip a coin. Whee! “Choice!”

As for those taxpayers who don’t happen to have children in need of education, they get no “choice” at all in the matter. Their job is to cough up and shut up.

The usual argument from libertarians who’ve fallen for the “school choice” scam is that it’s “at least a step in the right direction.” It isn’t.

Turning every “private” or home educational option into a uniform,  standardized, government-approved educational option, the only real difference being how the books are kept, reduces actual choice.

It also caps educational quality, and therefore potential student achievement, at whatever dismally low level politicians and bureaucrats can agree on.

Real school choice requires separation of education and state. Anything less is just screwing around … and screwing the kids.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

“A progressive who stays home on Election Day — or backs Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Cornel West, or No Labels,” reads the tag line on James Risen’s latest column at The Intercept, “is voting for Donald Trump.”

Well, no.

A progressive (or anyone else) who doesn’t vote isn’t voting for Donald Trump or for any other candidate.

A progressive (or anyone else) who backs Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Cornel West, or No Labels is voting for Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Cornel West, or the No Labels candidate (if there is one), not for Donald Trump.

Risen’s column is part of America’s quadrennial narcissism-by-proxy guilt trip: Your vote is all about him and the candidate he wants to win (Joe Biden).

You owe him that vote, by gum. Casting it your way instead of his way is “stealing” it from his chosen candidate.

If you don’t do as he says, you’re no smarter than (and could suffer the same fate as) German Communist Party leader Ernst Thalmann, who ended up getting shot at Buchenwald because he wouldn’t abandon his own party to stop Hitler.

Yeah, Risen goes THERE.

Don’t fall for it.

You don’t owe your vote to Joe Biden, Donald Trump, RFK Jr., Cornel West, or anyone else. Least of all do you owe it to James Risen.

Your vote is yours to cast for the candidate you most support, or against the candidate you most oppose, or for no candidate at all.

Even if it was true, as Risen insists, that only Biden or Trump “can win” — it isn’t, since America’s millions of voters are all free to make different choices — you’re not morally obligated to disgrace yourself by going along with the crowd and supporting either of the major parties’ corrupt, addled warmongers.

If past results and current polling are at all predictive, Donald Trump will carry my state (Florida) by several percentage points this coming November.

Even if he doesn’t, the chance of my vote deciding the outcome, and thus the disposition of the state’s electoral votes, are nowhere as good as my chance of winning a big Powerball jackpot.

Why should I bother voting at all? Maybe I shouldn’t. But if I do vote, how can I increase the value of my vote where my own goals are concerned?

The only thing my vote is good for, if anything at all, is “sending a message.” I’m not interested in “sending the message” that I support Joe Biden or Donald Trump, since I don’t support Joe Biden nor Donald Trump.

If I see a pro-freedom, pro-peace candidate on my ballot this November, I’ll vote for that candidate. If I don’t, I’ll write in my own name or just not cast a vote for president. There’s more, and better, “message value” in that, and I won’t feel like I need to take a shower and scrub with a wire brush afterward.

Either way, regardless of the election’s outcome, I won’t let James Risen guilt-trip me over it. Neither should you.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY