January 11, 2018

Pelosi’s ‘Immoral, Ineffective and Expensive’ Argument

A wall is neither moral nor immoral any more than a baseball bat is moral or immoral. What matters is the purpose for which it is used.

If you try to attend next month’s Super Bowl at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis, you better have a ticket or some other type of pass that allows you to legally enter the facility. If you don’t, you won’t get in.

They have built a great big beautiful wall around that field, which, according to the stadium’s website, was constructed with $1.129 billion in private and public money.

To enter, you will need to pass through a gate, where people will verify whether you have the right to do so.

Because of this, you can bet almost no one will migrate from other parts of the country or the world to see if they can illegally penetrate the security around the Super Bowl and attend the game for free.

They know they cannot succeed. So, they will not try.

That will also spare them the misery of standing outside in Minnesota in February.

The NFL may not be serious about players standing for the national anthem, but it is more serious about border security at its stadiums than Congress has been in recent decades about border security in the American southwest.

This column has used before a comparison of the barriers that keep people out of sporting events and those that could keep people from illegally crossing our borders. It may be a reductio ad absurdum, but it does clarify some basic points: Physical barriers can be used to stop people from going where they have no right to go; they are not inherently immoral; and, given a cost-benefit analysis of what it is you are protecting and how much it costs to protect, they can be well worth the cost.

This brings us to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s fatuous argument against President Donald Trump’s commonsensical proposal to build walls along the U.S.-Mexico border.

At a July 27, 2017 press conference, Pelosi fretted that a spending bill the House Republicans were then considering would “squander” money on “President Trump’s immoral, ineffective and expensive border wall.”

Pelosi did not go on to explain why she believes Trump’s proposed wall is “immoral, ineffective and expensive.” But here is why she is wrong:

A wall is neither moral nor immoral any more than a baseball bat is moral or immoral. What matters is the purpose for which it is used.

If Bryce Harper uses a bat to fairly hit a home run, that is a perfectly moral act. If another batter takes the same bat and deliberately hits an umpire over the head, that is an immoral act. If yet another batter, in a moment of unfettered rage, throws the bat into the stands — thus injuring a child watching the game — that is an immoral act.

The Berlin Wall, which imprisoned people in a tyranny, was used by a Communist regime to immorally deprive people of their God-given rights.

Walls constructed by the U.S. government at our Mexican border would aim at achieving a goal even Pelosi’s Democratic Party now claims to favor: securing that border.

This is a just cause.

A physical barrier at the frontier of a free country — which generously allows people to come and go legally through orderly processes — and that is designed to stop people from evading those processes to illegally convey themselves and contraband into the country is comparable to Bryce Harper’s use of the bat.

It is a home run.

It not only protects people on this side of the border, it also protects those tempted to make the dangerous illegal crossing (through desert territories and in the likely company of alien smugglers and drug dealers) by deterring them from doing so.

Does the United States not have the engineering skill to make a wall that achieves these moral purposes?

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York tried to argue that border walls are ineffective in an April 24 floor speech.

But, while ridiculing the idea of a “wall,” he called for building “fences” in conjunction with other “more sophisticated means.”

“In reality,” Schumer said, “a combination of drones and fencing and other more sophisticated means would be a much more effective way to secure the border.”

Of course, it depends on what the meaning of “fence” is.

A “fence” that effectively stops both pedestrians and vehicles is synonymous with a “wall.”

But border security based on technology that merely detects illegal crossings — rather than stopping them — would require Border Patrol agents to personally intercept those crossing in potentially dangerous encounters.

Who can doubt that most members of Congress would personally prefer to have a wall between themselves and a group of drug-cartel smugglers than a drone watching overhead that needs to call for a group of Border Patrol agents who are 30 minutes away?

And the cost of protecting America with Trump’s wall? The proposal the administration sent Congress last week asked for $18 billion over the next 10 years.

That equals 0.034 percent of the $53.128 trillion the Congressional Budget Office estimates the federal government will spend over those same 10 years.

It is also just 16 times as much as it cost to build one NFL stadium in Minnesota.

COPYRIGHT 2018 CREATORS.COM

Who We Are

The Patriot Post is a highly acclaimed weekday digest of news analysis, policy and opinion written from the heartland — as opposed to the MSM’s ubiquitous Beltway echo chambers — for grassroots leaders nationwide. More

What We Offer

On the Web

We provide solid conservative perspective on the most important issues, including analysis, opinion columns, headline summaries, memes, cartoons and much more.

Via Email

Choose our full-length Digest or our quick-reading Snapshot for a summary of important news. We also offer Cartoons & Memes on Monday and Alexander’s column on Wednesday.

Our Mission

The Patriot Post is steadfast in our mission to extend the endowment of Liberty to the next generation by advocating for individual rights and responsibilities, supporting the restoration of constitutional limits on government and the judiciary, and promoting free enterprise, national defense and traditional American values. We are a rock-solid conservative touchstone for the expanding ranks of grassroots Americans Patriots from all walks of life. Our mission and operation budgets are not financed by any political or special interest groups, and to protect our editorial integrity, we accept no advertising. We are sustained solely by you. Please support The Patriot Fund today!


The Patriot Post and Patriot Foundation Trust, in keeping with our Military Mission of Service to our uniformed service members and veterans, are proud to support and promote the National Medal of Honor Heritage Center, the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, both the Honoring the Sacrifice and Warrior Freedom Service Dogs aiding wounded veterans, the National Veterans Entrepreneurship Program, the Folds of Honor outreach, and Officer Christian Fellowship, the Air University Foundation, and Naval War College Foundation, and the Naval Aviation Museum Foundation. "Greater love has no one than this, to lay down one's life for his friends." (John 15:13)

★ PUBLIUS ★

“Our cause is noble; it is the cause of mankind!” —George Washington

Please join us in prayer for our nation — that righteous leaders would rise and prevail and we would be united as Americans. Pray also for the protection of our Military Patriots, Veterans, First Responders, and their families. Please lift up your Patriot team and our mission to support and defend our Republic's Founding Principle of Liberty, that the fires of freedom would be ignited in the hearts and minds of our countrymen.

The Patriot Post is protected speech, as enumerated in the First Amendment and enforced by the Second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, in accordance with the endowed and unalienable Rights of All Mankind.

Copyright © 2024 The Patriot Post. All Rights Reserved.

The Patriot Post does not support Internet Explorer. We recommend installing the latest version of Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, or Google Chrome.