Monthly Archives: March 2016

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“Secure the Border”: Politician-Speak for “I’m a Tyrant Who Thinks You’re an Idiot”

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East German construction workers building the ...
East German construction workers building the Berlin Wall. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

About 30 years ago, in southern California, US Border Patrol officers pulled over the vehicle I was riding in to search for “illegal immigrants.” They carefully checked the ID of each occupant in the vehicle. Yes, all 30 or so of us. The vehicle was a bus marked “US Marine Corps” on the side. All its occupants were Marines in uniform.

That was during Ronald Reagan’s first term; in the Republican primary debates in 1980, Reagan and his eventual vice-president, George HW Bush, had worked diligently to outdo each other in their support for open borders. My, how times have changed.

Given the widespread moral panic and bedwetting security theatrics over “illegal immigration” that characterize the last two decades,  I shudder to think how much worse life must have become on the southern US border since then, especially for Americans and immigrants of Hispanic descent.

When I hear a candidate for office quack about “securing the border,” I dismiss that candidate as unworthy of my vote or support. So should you.  At best, that candidate is an idiot; more likely he or she is a demagogue who assumes YOU are an idiot.

The United States has more than 100,000 miles of border and coastline, across which more than 500 million people (350 million of them non-citizens), 118 million vehicles and 22.5 million cargo containers travel each year. No, I didn’t make those numbers up — I got them from the people in charge of “securing America’s borders,” US Customs and Border Protection.

It’s true that the US border with Mexico is “only” about 1,950 miles long, but it’s also irrelevant. Even if that border could be sealed — and it can’t be — unauthorized traffic across it would just take to the seas. If you don’t believe me, go ask a Cuban or Chinese “illegal immigrant.”

Attempts to “secure the border” can only have two consequences:

First, they can increase the likelihood of terror attacks and so forth by creating a sea of “illegal aliens” and a lucrative industry based on getting them into the US. Actual terrorists and other evildoers become invisible in that sea and have at their disposal an illicit travel industry that would not exist absent the large demand created by “border security” nonsense.

Second, they can turn the US into a police state like East Germany. In fact, they have arguably already done exactly that to the southern border zones. It’s worth remembering that the East Germans were never really able to “secure their border” either, thank God.

And yet candidates of both major parties for all elective offices continue to publicly pay obeisance to the dumb and evil notion of “securing the borders.” Why? Because they think you want them to.

Prove them wrong. Vote Libertarian.

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.

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Election 2016: Hillary Clinton is a Bad Hand in the World Series of Political Poker

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Hillary Clinton in Hampton, NH
Hillary Clinton in Hampton, NH (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When I see a firefighter or EMT in uniform out and about in town, I think little of it. Maybe she’s on her way to or from work. Maybe he’s doing a routine fire safety inspection for a local business. Whatever, no biggie. On the other hand, when I pull to the side of the road to let eight or ten emergency vehicles pass me with their sirens wailing, and hear other sirens in the distance converging on a specific point, I assume there’s some kind of calamity in the offing.

The Washington Post reports that “[o]ne hundred forty-seven FBI agents have been deployed to run down leads” in the matter of Hillary Clinton’s homebrew email server. The aide who maintained that server, Bryan Pagliano, receive immunity in return for his cooperation in the probe. According to the Los Angeles Times, the FBI plans to interview other Clinton aides — and Clinton herself — in the near future.

That’s quite a few sirens and klaxons. It’s getting harder and harder to make out Clinton’s “this is nothing” and “this is just a routine security review” and “this is just a Republican fishing expedition”  and “bad judgment but no crime” explanations over the din.

I hold no brief for the Democratic Party in general, or for Hillary Clinton in particular, or for the Republicans. I’m a partisan Libertarian and a pox on both their houses. But I tremble at the prospect of one party exercising absolute control over both the executive and legislative branches of the federal government — especially with Donald Trump or Ted Cruz at its head.

Those are the stakes in this year’s game of presidential poker. Do Democrats really want to go all in on Hillary Clinton’s narcissistic sense of self-entitlement, especially when it’s looking more and more likely that the next card the dealer turns up will be grand jury indictments?

Apparently they do, but I can’t for the life of me figure out why. It’s politically just completely nuts. Even if Clinton herself escapes prosecution, it’s worth remembering that Richard Nixon was never indicted either, but was forced to resign after several of his closest aides were.

After such a gloomy forecast, I suppose the next step is following up with some brilliant advice. But I have none to offer. Absent an unexpected surge in the Libertarian vote, the forecast changes to four years of stormy  and capricious weather.

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.

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Election 2016: The X-Files/Napoleon Dynamite Factor

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As we come around what may be the final curve of the 2016 presidential election, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton look positioned to be the two horses who break free of the pack and make a neck-and-neck run down the final straightaway toward 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. That pairing and the likely outcome tell us some interesting things about America’s voters and their chosen candidates.

Specifically, it tells us that many voters are the political equivalents of Fox Mulder and Dana Scully from Fox’s long-time fan favorite show The X-Files: They want to believe.

Believe in what? Well, that varies.

Trump’s supporters want to believe that, working with him, they can “make America great again.” Nobody seems to really know how that might come about, except that it will involve getting Mexico to pay for a wall. But not to worry: It will be yuuuuge. It will be very nice. They’ll like it a lot, winning so much that they get bored with winning. They want so intensely to believe this that, as Trump himself says, he “could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters.” They don’t care whether or not he’s a “conservative” or about his actual policy positions. They don’t even demand that he make any sense from day to day.

Clinton’s supporters want to believe not only that she can win, but that she’s the only Democrat who can. They want so intensely to believe this that they’re willing to ignore her mediocre past electoral record, her dismal performances in elected and appointed office, her yuuuuge (like Trump’s) public disapproval numbers, the significant chance that she’ll be indicted over her mishandling of classified information, and the fact that she’s only been a “progressive” for about a minute, because it came to her attention that that’s what people like about Bernie Sanders.

If the voters resemble Mulder and Scully, the candidates remind me of the candidates in Napoleon Dynamite: Summer Wheatley, the “popular” student the regular kids actually love to hate but apathetically assume will win the student body presidency in a walk, and Pedro Sanchez, the upstart new guy who promises that if his fellow students vote for him “all of your wildest dreams will come true.”

I love The X-Files. I enjoyed Napoleon Dynamite.  But I’m not sure I can take eight more months of watching e-run marathons. Can you?

Maybe it’s time for a crisis of political faith. Maybe it’s time to crank up Netflix and find a new show to follow or a new movie to watch. So, two recommendations:

First, pull up Doug Stanhope’s comedy special Beer Hall Putsch on Netflix.

Second, if you must vote, vote Libertarian.

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.

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