By Don Schmitz

Operation Lone Star State, launched by Texas, is the state’s desperate effort to protect its citizens from the largest illegal migration of humanity in the history of the world.

Over 6 million people have poured into America in the three years of the Biden administration, from Latin America, Asia, and Africa, more than the population of Montana, Nevada, and New Mexico combined. Those caught are released into the country with a promise to appear at a deportation hearing months later. Most don’t show up and disappear. Millions more are never apprehended. Neighborhoods are turned into third-world slums, American homeless are turned away from shelters now housing illegal immigrants, while schools are closed to house them as well. 

Texas has found torture houses where the cartel thugs rape victims and cut off limbs demanding ransom from families, while lawlessness permeates our nation. The Walk Free Foundation reports that there are 400,000 modern-day slaves in the U.S. in the sex trade and doing forced labor. Over a quarter million Americans have died from fentanyl since 2018, which pours across the border. That’s more than double the deaths of every war since World War II, combined. 

On Jan. 17, 10 former FBI senior executives, including former Terrorist Screening Center Director Timothy Healy, FBI assistant directors Kevin Brock and Chris Swecker, and Mark Morgan, the former acting commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, wrote Congress stating this crisis is “the most pernicious ever to menace the U.S.,” stating, “Military-aged men from across the globe, many from countries or regions not friendly to the United States are landing in waves on our soil by the thousands — not by splashing ashore from a ship or parachuting from a plane but rather by foot across a border that has been accurately advertised around the world as largely unprotected and with ready access granted.”  

Imported poverty, devastated cities, slavery and drug devastation is now amplified with a real national security risk. Their letter went on to state “In its modern history, the U.S. has never suffered an invasion of the homeland, and yet one is unfolding now. It is stark to say so, but having a large number of young males now within our borders who could begin attacking gatherings of unarmed citizens, in imitation of 10/7 (The Hamas attack on Israel) and at the behest of a foreign terror group, must be considered a distinct possibility,” the officials wrote. This is an invasion.

President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have told us the border is secure, while we watched massive waves of people ride the trains, rush the fences, and walk into our country. They are either delusional or untruthful, but either way the administration is untrustworthy. Texas, no longer willing to sit idly by and watch its state destroyed, sent its National Guard to erect barriers and concertina wire, turning away migrants. Federal Border Patrol agents cleared the barriers and escorted migrants through. Frustrated, Texas barred them from the border area. 

Biden sought and obtained a temporary ruling from the Supreme Court that Texas had to allow federal agents to remove the barriers, and we now stand on the precipice of a constitutional crisis. Section IV, Article 4, of the Constitution specifies that the U.S. shall protect each state against invasion. Clearly, our federal government has utterly failed to do so, and accordingly, Article 1 Section 10 Clause 3 of the Constitution’s State Self-Defense verbiage guarantees states the sovereign power to defend their citizenry from an imminent danger should the federal government be unable, or unwilling, to defend it. Twenty-five states have signed a joint statement pledging solidarity with Texas, some sending their national guardsmen, and caravans of state troopers are on their way to help. They intend to stop the invasion at the border, and ostensibly stop federal agents from allowing them through. When half the state governments defy the federal government invoking the constitution and declaring an invasion, you should pay attention. A lot of attention.

Some on the left will provide platitudes about compromise and debate, ignoring the fact that our federal government is ignoring and breaking existing law. We already had those debates and adopted laws, which the Biden administration blatantly disregarded and circumvented. They say if we pass a new compromise the border will be secure but few trust Washington D.C., and there is no excuse for failing to enforce existing laws. 

Millions of Americans have watched in helpless horror as our country is overwhelmed. The genius of the founders was that they gave great power to the states, and to us, “We The People.” We hold sacred our laws, Supreme Court rulings, and due process, but clearly the states are no longer willing to sit idly by and watch a dysfunctional federal government abandon our country. If they won’t protect us, the states will. 

By Lance Simmens

Voltaire, the famous French writer and activist is known for divining the phrase “l’ennemi du bien est le bien,” which in English roughly translates to “don’t let the perfect become the enemy of the good.” I have often used this quote when writing articles about the seeming futility of reaching accommodation, compromise, or meaningful progress that is less than perfect but preferable to solving whatever issues were being discussed. 

We are currently in an era of sharp division that is pitting two oppositional philosophies over not only severe issues, but digs down deep into the core of even the most trivial dilemmas. So critically confrontational positions have risen to a level where there is talk, beyond bluster, of the prospects of civil war. No clearer illustration than the Jan. 6, 2021, attack upon the Capitol — in what can only be described as a truly vicious insurrection that questioned one of the most sacred and cherished gifts forwarded by the founding fathers, namely the peaceful transfer of power from one presidential administration to the next — captures the state we find ourselves in today. 

There is little doubt that we are in the midst of a bona fide partisan split over the benefits of democracy versus authoritarian power as we enter our next historical phase and it is becoming exceedingly more difficult to implement forward thinking as we prepare future generations for a roadmap to potential success. 

But this is where we find ourselves in the contemporary political environment and regardless of the angst that fuels our differences seeking compromise is the order of the day.

That is how democracy works, you fight hard for your position, but in the end you settle for the best that you can possibly achieve and live to fight another day. It can be messy and painful but it is the cost of freedom.

Today, we are in the critically treacherous arena pitting immigration and refugees against American citizens (ironic given we are all descendants of immigrants and refugees) in a battle that contains differing levels of hope and despair among the two major political parties and that tests the ability of seasoned political operatives, conservative versus liberal, Democrats versus Republicans, urban versus rural, geographical entities spread throughout the lower 48 states, and state versus federal political, legislative, and administrative authorities in a chaotic scramble to implement a myriad of often contradictory and explosively contentious political solutions. 

Throw in the dynamic infusion of conflicting impacts created by linking the border crisis with funding for two separate wars in Ukraine and Gaza and it boggles the imagination that solving the issues facing not only the nation, but the world itself, seem beyond reach. It is absolutely absurd and defeatist to simply shrug one’s shoulders and accept that there appear to be no resolutions to the crisis facing our nation. There is always an answer, some better than others. I will not even presuppose that I have the answers to the border problem or its impacts upon foreign struggles. However, I do know that it will require the most strenuous application of will and resolve in order to sort our way through the pending crisis.

A bipartisan solution is currently under consideration, stressing that yes, we can manage to look past our differences and do what is in the best interest of the populace at large. It has prompted Republican South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham to remark “Here’s what I hate: I hate when people won’t try, but just criticize.” It is hard work and requires a genuine commitment to sacrifice one’s ego for the benefit of the nation and its citizens. But to toss potential solutions to the garbage heap of imperfection because they do not comport with political gains directly conflicts with our heritage as a beacon of liberty and is unacceptable. 

J. G. Saxe was a 19th-century poet known as the originator of the maxim: “laws, like sausages, cease to inspire respect in proportion as we know how they are made.” Legislative sausage-making is democracy at work. 

To jump from Voltaire and Saxe to Mick Jagger, “You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometime, you just might find, you get what you need.” Ladies and gentlemen, it behooves all of you involved in solving these issues to swallow your pride, work together to the best of your ability and accept that which comports closest to your thoughts, knowing that the weight of the world, at least for this particular issue rests upon your shoulders and the fate of our future generations is dependent upon your ability to plan for the future.

To allow simple political justifications to dictate your responsibility to solve problems is the most serious example of critical malfeasance that will follow you around the rest of your life, and those who follow you will scorn you and eliminate any trust they may have misguidedly garnered for you. Buckle up and fulfill your obligations to the people you represent — quitting is not an option.