The security of the nation and how to achieve it has been a very large and active public debate for years now, especially since the terrorist attacks reached our homeland in September of 2001. We have many thousands of troops stationed all over the world, we are building a system to knock missiles out of the sky, we have in the last decade alone deployed our troops to more conflicts than pretty much the whole rest of the century previous. We are taking steps to pressure foreign governments to cooperate in hunting down terrorists and cut off their financial backing and we are actively opposing and dismantling governments that refuse to cooperate in our efforts to shut down terrorist organizations in their territories. I have no problems with any of this, except for the fact that none of this keeps our borders safe from terrorists. The Canadian border and the Mexican border are not adequately patrolled and haven't been since I can remember, not to mention the coastguard patrolling the Florida coastline for desperate Cubans and Haitians.
To put the sorry state of affairs that is our nation's border policy in perspective I'll give you a couple stories to think about. The Press here in the US for quite a while after September 11th ridiculed Canada's border policy and their loose immigration policy that let just about anybody in their country if they could get there. Many Middle Eastern peoples had flown to Canada and just walked across the border into the US and we were up in arms over it. Canada's reaction to the tragedies in New York and Washington DC was to beef up their restrictions on travel and to be much more vigilant and strict on who traveled both directions over their border. Many Americans traveling north and then coming back home were subject to extensive questioning sessions and car searches. When they got to the customs officers on our side of the border, typically they were waved on with a nod. And understandably Canada got a little miffed at us for saying they weren't doing enough to ensure the border between our countries was patrolled properly. The reality is that there is still a very small number of border patrol officers available to patrol the Canadian border. The last number I heard was that there is only one officer for every 20 miles of open border between Canada and the US. That is about 200 to 300 patrolling the entire border not including the major roads in and out.
There is no secret that the Mexican border is a problem both in terms of illegal immigration and the terrain that is very often quite remote and rough. There are many things that are happening on our southern border which disturb me but a symptom that characterizes the problem are the spontaneous militias that are forming to patrol the border in places like southern Arizona. The small towns that the illegal immigrants have been coming through on their way to the good life up here have been continually trashed. Crops have been destroyed, people are threatened by armed illegal immigrants and sometimes the occasional house or business has actually been burned down by the tens of thousands of illegal aliens who annually plod through these little border towns. As a result the people in them have finally given up on the federal government to provide the security the Constitution mandates and they have taken the very dangerous step of patrolling the borders themselves - armed. Several small militias have formed in the border states in small towns that no matter how vocal they are they cannot get the attention of Washington. This is a very dangerous situation, and it is a very visible symptom of the problems that continue to be ignored regarding the Mexican border. Smugglers bring illegals across the border all the time and they aren't picky about who they bring as long as they have the cash. There have been reports that Islamic terrorists have crossed the border with the help of Mexican smugglers. And yet we ignore the situation. Why is that? The explanation that I keep hearing from the politicians is that for the Republicans the Mexicans are a cheap source of labor for the jobs that many Americans consider beneath them. From the Democrat point of view Mexicans are a burgeoning new voting block that is ripe for the entitlement train. And neither side wants to do anything to offend the Mexican segment of the population for fear they might not be reelected. So we have a huge problem on our hands.
Its not so much the economic impact that millions of people demanding state and federal services when they have never put anything into the treasuries they are taking money out of can have. Rather it is the potential for Political radicals and violent criminals to come into our country and carry with them a dirty bomb, or more terrorists just coming here to await new orders from whoever is plotting against us. And while they are here they'll visit their local government social service office and help themselves to the generosity we supposedly don't have.
What I want to know is why we haven't stationed the National Guard on our borders while we hire and train new officers to patrol that border? Why have we let this problem grow for decades while doing nothing about it? It has gotten to the point now that it might be political suicide for someone to do something meaningful about the problem and I'd like to know why we let it get this far. Armed men from the Mexican army have been caught well north of our border and have been shooting at our border patrol officers. Mexican nationals are suing the federal government for the wrongful death of people who died in the desert trying to get across the border. They had no right to be there, we gave them no permission and they blame us for making them go through the desert. There are student groups and radical groups forming in the southwest that claim the states of California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Texas, Arizona and New Mexico as Mexican territory. They plan to make a new country called Aztlan and beyond that the Mexican government and our 'friend' El Presidente Fox is encouraging them to do this. The situation is beyond ridiculous. It is time to confront the Mexican government with the hard cold facts and to make it clear that our borders are sovereign. We need to put the National Guard on our southern border so that we can control the influx of illegal immigrants, thousands of who are violent criminals and dozens of who are terrorists from Middle Eastern nations. I just can't figure out why it hasn't been done by now.

I am increasingly disturbed by the apparent strategies that are being employed by the Bush administration in an attempt to get a more solid majority in Congress. It seems to me that 'Compassionate Conservatism' is nothing more than a rehash of liberalism and the ultimate promotion of the programs conservatives have been against for generations. A good example of this would be the Farm Bill that was passed soon after Bush took office. It was a huge subsidy of large businesses of which few at all resemble the quaint little farm that great grandpa owned out in the country. Most are multinational and multimillion to billion dollar entities which need little in the way of subsidies especially when you consider that the government controls the price of the food they sell anyway so that the farmers won't have to sell at actual market costs. Heaven forbid the farmers be competitive businessmen. And this is happening in many sectors such as education, prescription drug benefits, the new tax bill being considered in the House now, the multi-million dollar give away to the Victims of September 11th, the airline bailout shortly thereafter, etc. (Please note that although the victims of the September 11th attacks are a group of people most deserving of our support as a nation, the Constitution does not allow the government to spend money for the purpose of benevolence. That is our individual responsibility as citizens, and I support giving to them wholeheartedly.)
The Bush administration is trying to gain seats in the Congress by compromising on issues that are core conservative beliefs. The biggest one that comes to mind right now is the push towards universal health care and prescription drug benefits for seniors. Although I don't believe this should be necessary at all. People should be responsible for themselves and their families without expecting everyone else to pay their way through life. Nevertheless if it is to be at all, Bush had it initially right when he proposed that the seniors be allowed to join private companies and get their coverage that way. This would have lessened the size and intrusiveness of government as well as creating jobs in the health industry because of the new clients they would be receiving. The Democrats however, in typical socialist style, are demanding that it stay within the Medicare system and that the government provide these benefits through an inefficient and bloated bureaucracy. The very idea makes conservatives in this Republic of ours cringe. More government spending when the spending has already grown to 24% of the GNP. Instead of creating jobs that will infuse revenue into the treasury we will hire more people to bloat out the government offices even more and take money out of the treasury. This is going to cost Billions.
The strategy seems to be to gain a larger slice of the electoral-pie through compromising on social issues and taking the issues out of the democrat's hands. Democrats whine, Bush gives them what they want and supposedly this will give the Republicans a broader majority in the Congress. My question is this: What good could this possibly do? Isn't this a detrimental exercise from the start? Here is the scenario I see: We as the GOP 'convert' democrats to our cause by adopting many of their core issues and then when we have a big enough majority in the Congress to get the Judicial nominees through without a hitch, and enact the policies that will shrink the government and basically head back towards the conservative end of government philosophy. That is what I see as the Bush strategy as it is being put into practice. Okay, say we've gotten that far, what will these new republican voters think? Will they just automatically be champions of conservatism and cheer the changes on? No, they came to the Party through the ruse of compromise on issues that they hold dear. So the next obvious question is whether or not they will stick with the Republican Party and George Bush when they realize that what Bush and the Congress are doing is exactly the opposite of why they voted for them in the first place? I don't think any reasonable person would conclude that.
Bush is selling them the big government that Clinton campaigned against but instituted anyway. Bush, in his efforts to be compassionate has compromised to the point that many of the things that are passing Congress look as if they were sponsored, developed and passed by democrats - and in many instances they are. He is doing the old Clinton triangulation dance and it is disturbing to me because it cannot possibly work.
Say things do go according to plan and the GOP wins a huge majority in both houses of Congress with Bush in the White House to boot. What then? We just implemented some of the largest social spending increases in the history of the nation. And all of a sudden the country is going to support cutting the size of government? How fast can we possibly do this when we have gotten to the size the government currently is by incremental steps over a period of 90 years? From the point when the Federal Income Tax was enacted - some say by illegal means - to now the size, scope and power of government over our lives has steadily increased from 3% of the GNP to the current level of 24%. Yet we are supposed to significantly change all that in one 4-year period with the help of ‘converted’ democrats who intellectually agree with and support the very institutions we as conservatives would love to see the demise of. It just doesn't make sense.