The Heights of Progressive Ignorance, Irony and Sanctimony in “No Kings.”

Letter to the Editor sent in by Mathew Lengyel

A few boomers gathered this weekend to demonstrate their own ignorance of how a constitutional republic functions by protesting an American President fulfilling the duties of the executive branch and enforcing US immigration laws that were drafted, debated, voted on and passed by elected representatives of Congress. The Democrats accuse President Donald Trump of overstepping his bounds and acting as an authoritarian when he deployed ICE to major American cities to arrest criminal illegal aliens and deport them. Violent, radical domestic terrorist groups have attempted to intimidate and prevent federal agents from executing their official duties so the US government has responded by federalizing and deploying National Guard units in support of these agents so they can do their jobs.

It is these measures that leftists reference to support their characterization of Donald Trump acting more like a king than an elected member of the US government and they couldn’t be more wrong. Leftists haven’t clued into the fact that they are the ones who are ignoring the popular will of a vast majority of the American electorate. They don’t understand the concept of “a nation of laws” which are literally written by these people the American people elect called “lawmakers.” The laws these “lawmakers” (see: Senators and Representatives) write and pass are, in general, a reflection of the sentiments and represent the interests of the people who elect them. This is how a Constitutional Republic like the USA functions.

The American Immigration system was first established in 1790 to define naturalization and these laws have been supported and refined by every session of the US congress. The policy of not enforcing American Immigration Laws (so called “open borders” and “sanctuary cities”) is so niche that it is not a seriously debated policy position exactly because there are a grand total of zero other nations on this planet who maintain “open borders.” Even (and especially) communist nations, who literally no one is trying to immigrate to (like North Korea), enforce tight restrictions on movements of people and goods across their borders because it is a legitimate national security interest for the state to control this access.

A curious parallel exists between the progressive push to prevent the federal government from enforcing federal immigration laws in “sanctuary cities” and the practice of jury nullification from a darker time in our history immediately following the conclusion of the American Civil War. Jury nullification was when white Southerners would use their position on a jury to effectively prevent the prosecution of white Southern men when they were brought up on charges for committing crimes against former-slaves. Progressive initiatives to establish “sanctuary cities” is a lawless adaptation of this practice with the local government looking to obstruct the federal government from fulfilling its legally-perscribed role.

Unlike many other politicians, Donald Trump clearly articulated what he would do in office when he was on the campaign trail and then did exactly those things he promised to do after he got elected. One of the major planks that he ran on was fixing the mess we had on our Southern border with Mexico. Elections have consequences and Donald Trump was elected to his second term in office by a clear majority of the American people. It is only those with an actual authoritarian mindset who believe they can simply dismiss or nullify or obstruct what a conspicuous plurality of the American electorate voted to pursue on enforcing federal immigration laws because they think they “know better” or “feel some kind of way.”