Would the American left suborn an invasion? By Robert Arvay
Sometime in the 1960s, as I recall, a prominent person in the news made the sarcastic statement that if an enemy invasion army were to land on our shores, the ACLU would meet the soldiers on the beaches to protect their rights. The ACLU quickly protested, averring that, patriots all, they would do no such thing. Being a parody writer myself, I once wrote a fictional piece about the Japanese air raid on Pearl Harbor (Dec. 7, 1941) in which an ACLU lawyer sought an injunction against American armed resistance. He stated, “As soon as those Japanese aircraft entered American airspace, their pilots were entitled to the full protections of the United States Constitution, including the presumption of innocence until proven guilty in a court of law.”
Today, we are living parody. A massive parade of foreign nationals is marching toward our border, its members openly proclaiming that they intend to illegally enter our country. They have already stormed and breached the southern border of Mexico in a glaring preview of their defiance of law, so they are clearly to be believed.
And where is the American political left? Are leftists decrying the violation of our national sovereignty? Are they demanding that our government protect its citizens from encroachment? Of course not. They are the parody. They of the left are seeking ways in which to prevent the administration from doing any of that.
This is President Trump’s PATCO moment. Remember that? Soon after President Ronald Reagan took office, in 1981, members of the unionized left organized a strike of the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization. They were adamant that their demands be met, or else PATCO would shut down all air traffic in the United States. Reagan gave the union members 48 hours in which to return to work or be irrevocably fired. You can’t do that, the striking controllers jeered. Twenty-four hours later, they were all fired, and not one of those who continued the illegal strike has been rehired. Shortly afterward, PATCO ceased to exist.
Reagan’s bold stance was noted by the USSR, our deadliest enemy at the time, and the Soviets were reminded of his tenacity when he walked out of the nuclear arms reduction talks, an act that the left screeched would start a nuclear war. Instead, the Russians relented, and the talks were concluded in our favor.
Now it is Trump who is being told by the left that he has no right to defend the nation against invasion. Leftist lawyers are coming to the aid not of their country, but of the invaders. They are claiming that Trump is violating the Constitution, or at least their twisted interpretation of it.
A former member of the Supreme Court, the late Justice Robert H. Jackson, in his dissenting opinion in Terminiello v. Chicago, made a statement that ranks among the most powerful ever made from the bench. He said, “The Constitution is not a suicide pact.”
Those on the left most assuredly disagree.
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