How Our Stupid Drug War Helps Cause Our Stupid Border War

Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – Former Congressman Ron Paul posted this yesterday.  I talked about this last week.  I’m glad to see Congressman Paul add his voice to it, “What’s Missing in the Current Immigration ‘Crisis’ Debate.Neither side seems interested in considering why is this happening in the first place. The truth is, this latest crisis is a consequence of mistaken government policies on both sides of the border. In fact much of the problem can be directly traced to the US drug war”  Check out today’s transcript for the rest…

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  Former Congressman Ron Paul posted this yesterday.  I talked about this last week.  I’m glad to see Congressman Paul add his voice to it, “What’s Missing in the Current Immigration ‘Crisis’ Debate.”  Paul writes, in part:

[reading] Most liberals and conservatives miss the point, however, making the same old arguments we have all heard before. Liberals argue that we need to provide more welfare and assistance to these young immigrants, while conservatives would bus them to the other side of the border, drop them off, and deploy drones to keep them out.

Neither side seems interested in considering why is this happening in the first place. The truth is, this latest crisis is a consequence of mistaken government policies on both sides of the border.

In fact much of the problem can be directly traced to the US drug war [Mike: Gee, where have I heard that before? Wait a minute, wait a minute. I can name that show in three notes.], which creates unlivable conditions in countries that produce narcotics for export to the US. Many of those interviewed over the past several weeks have cited violent drug gangs back home as a main motivation for their departure. Because some Americans want to use drugs here in the US, governments to the south are bribed and bullied to crack down on local producers. The resulting violence has destroyed economies and lives from Mexico to Nicaragua and beyond. Addressing the failed war on drugs would go a long way to solving the immigration crisis. [Mike: You people want solutions? Here’s another one being thrown your way.]

I understand the argument of some libertarians that there should be no limits at all on who comes into the United States, but the reality is we do not live in a libertarian society. We live in a society where healthcare is provided — often by over-burdened emergency rooms that cannot legally turn away the sick — “free” education is provided, and other support via food stamp programs is also made available for “free” to illegal immigrants. Many even argue that they should be allowed to vote!

In a free society where the warfare-welfare state ceased to exist, immigration laws would be far less important. A free market would seek workers rather than immigrants to add to its welfare rolls. Voting itself would decline in significance. If 20 people lived on a privately-owned island, for example, one owner could decide to have a guest on his property without bothering the other 19. Were we to move in this direction in the US, the current immigration crisis would be a thing of the past.

You want more Ron Paul!? Mike has interviewed him over 2 dozen times, here are a few of the most recent HERE and HERE (with VIDEO!)

[end reading]

Mike:  What he’s referring to, this is precisely what I have been arguing going all the way back to 2008 or so whenever this issue comes up.  Now we have this crisis here.  If we had actual, true, robust federalism, and if we were truly dedicated and devoted — you people want solutions; I’ll give you another one.  If we were truly devoted to the constitutional order, which is to put into concert sovereign state entities in very certain, very limited, very well-defined instances where each of them has, in a prior manner, agreed to be bound by a common law — we call it Article I, Section 8 or Article I, Section 10 prohibitions, or just the Constitution.  Under this written constitution, this is the owner’s manual, if you will.  You are only responsible to uphold and abide by the things that you have agreed to, nothing more, nothing less.

Under that, and under the way I understand the way the framers understood alien friends and alien enemies — I’ll just go over this again for new listeners.  Unless there is a declaration of war against the country of Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, name your source from Mexico or Central America from whence the diaspora of these children come, unless there is a declaration of war, and then there would need to be a communal or union-wide policy to fight the war successfully, then aliens — that’s what someone who is not the resident of a state — would then fall under municipal law as it is understood and written and adjudicated and enforced in each of the several states.  [mocking] “Mike, that’s not one nation under God, buddy.  I read my Constitution.  I read the Pledge of Allegiance, too, pal.  That ain’t what it says.”  No, you’ve read propaganda.  You haven’t read it correctly.

We have very good evidence that what I’m telling you is correct, or at least once upon a time it was correct.  It may not be correct today, but that doesn’t mean that it’s constitutional by any stretch of the imagination.  We know this because on or around 1797 and 1798, and into 1799, all the way into 1800, the administration of John Adams believed that there were spies in the U.S. and that they were working for Robespierre and the French Revolutionary nutjobs, the Jacobins.  They believed that they were here to try and start a war.  Adams never asked Congress for a declaration of war against France.  He didn’t want a war.  What he wanted to do is he wanted to be able to try and police the populations of alien friends in the several states, thus we get these laws — they’re very famous and I’m sure you’ve heard of them.  I’m going to take a moment to explain this.  We get these laws called the Alien and Sedition Acts.

 The president’s $4 billion supplemental request to address the issue is a costly mix of welfare and enforcement that will do very little to solve the problem because it treats the symptoms instead of the cause.

When you heard about this in high school or junior high, what did you think the alien part meant?  Did you think it was to deal with ET?  What did people think that the alien part of the Alien and Sedition Acts dealt with?  I’ll tell you what it dealt with.  It dealt with what James Madison properly called alien friends.  As Madison and the State of Virginia determined in their protest against the Alien and Sedition Acts — which you know today as the genesis of nullification and interposition in the State of Virginia — what Madison said was that alien friends were not covered by the Constitution.  Alien friends were covered by the municipal laws of the states.  If your state required that you had to care for an alien friend, as Representative Gutierrez claims, then that would be the law of that state.

Many of you are familiar with what are called “sanctuary cities.”  A lot of you have big hang-ups about sanctuary cities.  I think Denver, Colorado, once upon a time, was a sanctuary city.  I believe that San Francisco still is.  There are a couple out there in Connecticut that are sanctuary cities.  You don’t see very many libs and federal judges saying that cities cannot become sanctuary cities.  In a rare instance, they’re actually correct.  Why are they correct?  Because they’re exercising their own municipal authority.  They’re saying that these people are alien friends and we open our arms to our alien friends.  They may have very dastardly, very diabolical motives for doing so, but they are certainly not precluded from doing so, not by the Constitution.

So if the State of Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, or California wants to deal with this problem and they want to deal with it on their own, they are certainly entitled to do so.  We would all be better off if they were doing so because the people in those states would probably decide that they have no interest in having their government have an open-door policy where any orphan that can make its way to their borders then becomes a ward of their state regardless of what country they came from, no questions asked.  We have to finance it; we have to pay for it.  As I said before, it doesn’t make any sense.  That’s what Congressman Paul is talking about here.  That is the policy that we should be following and should be pursuing.  Of course, then again, you can’t do that if you’re trying to fight a war against drugs, now, can you?  Not with a giant, national, tyrannical police state apparatus that is required to do so.  Former Congressman Paul concludes:

[reading]

Over many years while I was in Congress, I met with scores of employers in my district who faced terrible red tape just to be allowed to bring in temporary agricultural workers who would willingly return home once the work was finished. How ironic that Americans willing to provide jobs for immigrants seeking honest work were thwarted by the same government that has now opened the door to a flood of immigrants seeking welfare and other assistance.

One thing we can be sure about: as Republicans and Democrats tussle over “reform” bills, more money will be thrown at the symptoms produced by past bad policies instead of addressing the real causes of the current crisis. The president’s $4 billion supplemental request to address the issue is a costly mix of welfare and enforcement that will do very little to solve the problem because it treats the symptoms instead of the cause. Real reform means changing a failed approach, and until that happens we can count on more expensive mistakes.

[end reading]

Mike:  Wonderful.  Great.  I can’t wait.  How about you?

End Mike Church Show Transcript