Progressive-Democrat from Texas, Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke gave a wide-ranging, disjointed, somewhat confused interview to The Washington Post. Here are some highlights.
Beto on the wall:
[It would] cut off access to the river, shrink the size of the United States and force the seizure of privately-held land.
[He] noted that most undocumented immigrants who arrived in the United States in the past decade came not over the border but on visas that then expired.
WAPO: So what should be done to address visa overstays?
Beto: I don’t know[.]
What cut-off? What river? Walls aren’t contemplated, anymore, for the Rio Grande, just stepped up patrols and tech detection means.
Shrink the size of the US!? Huh?
Seizure of privately-held land? Has ol’ Beto read the Constitution? The 5th Amendment has something to say about that.
Illegals come in via overstaying visas, so nothing should be done about curtailing their illegal entry across our border? Apparently. Because if a water pipe leaks over there, also, there’s no point in fixing it here and reducing the leaks’ flow. All because he doesn’t know how to fix the leak over there.
O’Rourke insists the thorny immigration answers will come from everyday Americans. It’s an approach that puts off specifics that might define him or narrow his appeal in a presidential race….
Or, it’s an approach that allows Beto to virtue signal on the subject without offering anything concrete—or without exposing his ignorance on the matter, as his overstayed visa and his property seizure bits expose.
And this, larger, question:
Can an empire like ours with military presence in over 170 countries around the globe, with trading relationships…and security agreements in every continent, can it still be managed by the same principles that were set down 230-plus years ago?
Aside from our obvious lack of an empire—we don’t occupy anyone anywhere, we have no colonies, we have nothing of the trappings of empire—he’s badly mistaken about all of that.
This Progressive-Democrat is saying that the principles of limited government, individual liberty and responsibility, of morality are not universal, nor are they timeless. He’s saying they’re matters of convenience and political expediency, and that convenience and expedience have evolved.
Watch out, and hold on to far more than your wallets when individual rights and obligations become what the men of government say they are and not what is permanently endowed in us by our Creator.