all or nothing

A great Tancredo quote from that interview I linked a few posts back:

Here's the thing: if this nation does not believe in the importance of borders and we simply want to become a place where people reside and not a place where they are in fact citizens, then erase the borders, abolish the border patrol, eliminate the ports of entry, and let people simply come and go. Because the worst of all worlds is when you pretend like you have an immigration policy, you make coming into the United States without our permission illegal, and then you actually don't enforce it. That's when you end up with people dying in the desert, dying the back ends of semis, and you end up with border control agents being jumped. Why put everybody into harm's way if you really don't have the intent to secure your own border?

Very good point. If we don't actually want to have a border it makes absolutely no sense to pretend there is one and put on a charade every so often at the expense of lives and resources. If we still believe in having a distinct country with distinct laws and values, then we have to protect the damn border to protect everything inside of it. This is black and white, cut and dry; why people can't understand that or are in denial of it I just don't know. But it sure is frustrating living in a country with so many idiots. Not that I'm going to make an Alec Baldwin pledge or anything--by the way has he left yet?--but the whole overseas thing sure is tempting sometimes. When it comes to the border we lack the commitment as a whole to go either way, and being stuck in the middle is the worst position to be in.

The same could be said about a lot of situations we're in today. For example, if we're going to fight a war in a foreign country, we fight to win. As Herman Edwards so eloquently put it in one of my favorite quotes of all time, "you play to win the game." Not to look cute or to avoid stepping on toes, but to win. It's stupid to be there for any other reason. And yet, our military continues to try to play nice with a bunch of murderers and avoid anything that would provoke the [lots of expletives] press into another tantrum. But if we're not there to win outright and rout an unreasonable, fanatical mob of terrorist barbarians into submission, why do we have so many troops in harm's way? And why do we continue dumping so many resources into the effort? If we don't really want to win let's just get out and instead prepare for the inevitable outcome of another terror-friendly state. If we are over there to win, let's turn our guys loose and tell them to do what they're there for. We sent the military over there, not the freakin' peace corps. Forget about outside opinions and political soapboxing and all that; just kick ass and eliminate as much opposition as fast as you can. Then start rebuilding and setting up a lawful country. But you can't do both at the same time. No sense trying to build a house without clearing out the rubbish and setting your foundation first--it'll never stay and we'll just have a bigger mess to clean up later. Same with this nation-building crap. Uh, yeah, build a democratic government only to have it controlled and strong-armed by a bunch of terrorists? Shouldn't we subdue the terrorists first? Morons.

Or, closer to home, look at the game politicians and especially judges play when it comes to the supposed law of the land, the Constitution. Today's countless beaurocracies and hand-outs fly in the face of the limited government and states' rights principles laid out by our founding fathers, and our once-constant rights and boundaries seem to change with every new court decision. Yet very few ever raise an eyebrow about these obvious conflicts. People only seem to care or even pay attention when an idea they hold dear gets trampled. So if we're not going to actually obey our own founding document, why should we constrain ourselves by pretending to? That only creates a mess because we're trying to twist laws and powers to do things that were never intended or anticipated in the writing of the rules.

If we won't follow the constitution we have we ought to just scrap it, hold a new constitutional convention to come up with something that is more agreeable to today's way of doing things, and make that our foundation. We'd have something that might actually resemble the current structure and it'd certainly take some of the kinks out of governing. And if we want to stick with the Constitution as it's written, then let's stop contorting our current system beyond repair and start playing by the rules we claim to abide by. This would simplify government a lot and give states much more space to work with to fix their own problems. But the current contraption only serves to create a pile of twisted reasoning that nobody really understands and thus we're being guided only by the whims of the day.

One has to stand on his ideas and either go all in or stay out of the way. Otherwise we end up with situations of the likes we know too well today. If we're going to run ourselves into the ground, let's at least do it efficiently and save ourselves some pain and headache.