For Immediate Release Contact: Andrew Horning Libertarian candidate for IN08
16 October, 2022
Horning publishes “Relighting the Torch”
Freedom, IN – From the description on Amazon.com: “We The People and our government avatar, are a hot mess. But we can fix it whenever we set our minds to it.
‘Relighting the Torch’ presents a historical and moral picture of our founders’ better ideas, where we failed those ideas, and some proposals for setting things right…for the first time.
In this book are Horning’s almost-famous and now updated annotated Declaration of Independence and USA Constitution, along with numerous (and sourced) authoritative quotations by key historical figures.
We can, at long last and in the midst of all today’s troubles, realize our ancestors’ dreams of peace, prosperity, security, liberty and justice, for all.
…But the unconstitutional and contemptuously divisive Two Party System our founders warned us about really has to go.”
The paperback is available now, and the Kindle edition will be coming soon.
When I shared this on Facebook after the tragically fumbled (but otherwise correct) withdrawal from Afghanistan, I wrote: “Well, #7 is a little less true today, even though we’ll still have wars going on once we’re finished blowing up charity workers in Afghanistan. Thanks, Joe!
But the others are much 𝙢𝙤𝙧𝙚 true today.
What I thought was pretty funny when I said some of this two years ago, is less funny now.”
I should add, however, that the tribal rhetoric varies greatly depending on which tribe has the government’s keys. For example, Republicans talk a good story against spending, debt and the inherent inflation of the Fed’s money presses when the Democrats are in charge. And Democrats talk a good story against the anti-USA-citizen militarization of our government when Republicans are in charge.
And I should add a third #9 (or maybe a #11): That THIS PARTICULAR ELECTION IS TOO IMPORTANT to vote for anything different.
Anyway, you can see that this is now tearing us up, apart, and down right now. Maybe it’s not yet too late to turn this around before this becomes history-making catastrophe. Maybe it is. But I sure wish we’d try…
I want very much to enjoy the feelings of pride and mystic oneness with untarnished heroes of yesteryear. I’d like to sing our anthem with joy. I’d be delighted if I could feel that nationalism was about righteous unity and a shared experience of liberty and justice for all with my fellow citizens. I wish I could hoist a flag and feel I’m expressing equality under constitutional rule of law, with truth, transparency, peace and prosperity now and forevermore.
Our nation is a corporate abstraction not so different from other corporate identities, tribes, corporations, clubs or clans. We should be acutely aware that the difference between crime rings and nations is often more matter of scale than culture or law. When Mexico’s Sinaloa drug cartel beat the Mexican government in a straight-up military engagement, wasn’t there at least a little confusion about who’s really running the country?
Governing is always by force. But very, very rarely, a government rules by some authority higher than just brute force. The USA’s national government was created, authorized and very literally delimited by constitutions, state and federal…that, unfortunately today, nobody reads, and most dismiss as outdated.
Yet it’s to constitutions that soldiers, police, politicians and new citizens are to pledge their support and defense against all enemies both foreign…and domestic.
And it’s to those constitutions that we all turn at some point when we want at least the parts we like (maybe a few of the Bill of Rights) when we feel we need defense from…our own government.
Yes, our government. You know…the people with the flags on their uniforms, “Under God” on their money, and big bald eagles topping flagpoles guarded by soldiers.
I get that flags are powerful. Anthems are powerful. Slogans are powerful.
But carried through generations, they become a religion unto themselves. Tribal/corporate membership identity is powerful right down to our DNA. We crave the feeling of belonging to a pack…often most when opposed to some other clique, clan, club or country. Historically, and today, that tribal fervor becomes violent at the whisper of a rumor.
We actually tend to WANT usversus them, with all the emotions, symbology and triumphant, martyr-making images that go with that scenario.
My dad was a decorated WWII pilot and POW. He weighed just over 90lbs when freed, and I believe all of his kids were deeply affected by his unspoken trauma. The triangle of flag presented after his death means a lot to me. But that particular flag is about my dad and not about our imperiled nation.
A lot of people see the flying flag more like a disgraced celebrity than a proud aspiration. Others have good reason to see it as a symbol of class struggle and injustice. Those who see it as a physical embodiment of virtue are history-whitewashing romantics…which must be pleasant – but is ultimately a destructive self-delusion.
But it may also be a dangerous red-herring bait-and-switch. “When Fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.” *
I have a suggestion.
I believe we should drop the abstract, arbitrary symbols associated with our ungoverned, corrupt and dangerous government, and make this really, really simple.
We should make sure that what we espouse and pledge to support is written in black and white constitutions that we’ve read and actually do support, and not to feelings inferred from symbols no longer related to those words.
We need to be, in my opinion, razor-sharp in focus, and completely serious in our dedication to truth, justice, and …something better than what is now the American Way:
I propose we pledge our allegiance not to a bit of cloth made in China, but to constitutional rule of law under our existing state and federal constitutions as written and amended, full stop.
*Some say Sinclair Lewis said or wrote this. But this has been pretty-well debunked. Others ironically claim that Huey Long said it. But that’s even less-likely.
But it doesn’t much matter who said it, because it’s turning out to be embarrassingly, damnably correct.
I don’t like the way it looks as an eBook, but I’ll likely publish that, too, in a couple of weeks or so. It’ll be cheaper, of course.
But since some stuff gets lost in the eBook version, I’m resisting it as long as I can.
The blurb is, “Far more than the usual fanciful tale of precocious children, fire-breathing dragons, disastrous monetary policy and World War, “The Truth about Excelsior” offers a unique perspective on today’s cultural madness, and a glimpse into a world of peace, prosperity and …freedom.”
I mean it to be fun, but you know me…I had to insert some serious stuff in there, too.
Anyway, let me know what you think of it…and if you like it, tell everybody, and leave a review!
Unless you wear a MAGA hat to bed, you know our government is headed in the wrong direction. Unless you’re crazy, you know our government is corrupt. Unless you’re a genuinely rotten person, you want much, much more peace, prosperity, security, and doggone it…freedom, for both yourself, and all your fellow citizens.
But unless you’re in the less-than-10% (typically more like 3-4%) who ever vote for third party or independent candidates, you chose this complicated, legalistic/ rule-fraught, unfair, dysfunctional and globally violent corruption. All of it.
I don’t mean to be an insulting knowitall, but this is very simple in a nation with elections:
Now you may not disagree with that last paragraph. That may be while you’re still reading.
But there’s also simple logic in determining just who the bad guys really are.
And that is likely where 90% of voters will disagree.
Our constitutions were written in large part to prevent politicians from granting “to any citizen, or class of citizens, privileges or immunities, which, upon the same terms, shall not equally belong to all citizens.” (Indiana Constitution Article I Section 23)
This applies to everything political; from fair trade, housing and corporate laws to …ballot access.
Yet everyone with a living brain cell knows that our political scheme is all about special deals for special people. Politically favored corporations get special rules that ensure protected profits without fear of competition. Politically favored people get special legal/tax exemptions, or Get Out Of Jail Free cards.
I contend that a fundamental part of the problem is the recent, self-appointed, tribal, monopolistic and genuinely stupid “Two Party System.”
Since WWII, and mostly since the 1970s, and varying state-to-state …ONLY Democrats and Republicans can be on election-related commissions, and have special election status that grants them more money, more ballot access, and more power in government.
Not only have these private clubs granted themselves special powers, but they have also imposed special hurdles and handicaps on any group or individual who’d challenge them.
Most of us understand that if there was by law only one manufacturer of coffee, or shoes, or cars, that costs and quality would be horrendous. Most of us could imagine that even with two options, there’d soon be so much collusion and price-fixing to squeeze out any other competition that, in effect, there’d really be only one option with two faces. Many of us disdain the rapidly clotting mergers of media, pharmaceutical and healthcare empires just the way many thought it right to bust up the old monopolies in telephone and power service.
And all of us benefit from the profusion of choices in food, clothing, electronics and other, relatively lightly-regulated industries.
So what’s up with the “Two Party System?”
Not only is it not ordained by constitutions, the Bible or physics, it’s actually anti-constitutional, by both state and federal constitutions.
You’ve got to be blind and deaf to miss the collusion and corruption of this monstrosity. You’d have to be either part of their crony crime ring, or crazy, to actually like this almost-universally-detested tribal ruling class.
But you’d be a rare and precious person to actually vote against it.
I’ll just say it. If you vote for any part, any candidate of the Two Party System, you’re at least sustaining the problem. Even the best (D) and (R) candidates represent the false hope of fixing a tribal system that doesn’t want to be fixed, and is well-organized against anybody who’d try.
More to the point – if you never vote for any alternatives to the status quo power structure, you ARE the problem.
All the issues of incumbency – entrenchment of power and money, influence of monied connections, corruption – that goes double for political parties. While politicians eventually die, their power structures too-often live on…and on…and on.
Come one, my fellows and friends. We’ve all but ended institutional slavery. We’ve extended the vote to every citizen (both living and dead, along with non-citizens, too…but that’s another story).
Nearly everybody says, “I don’t vote for the party, I vote for the candidate,” and up to now, they’ve mostly been lying.
Nearly everybody says, “Yeah, but look at the choices they give us…” as if we have no choice in that.
Well-over 90% of us keep doing the same stupid thing and never see the connection between bad choices and bad outcomes.
What’s really sad is that there are just as many great people as ever. Many could be Founding Fathers (and founding mothers and/or non-binary whatevers) of a new and better age; learning lessons of the past and creating a better future.
It’s just that now such people are pushed aside in favor of body-painted tribal savages and criminal clowns. Too few ever throw their own hat into the ring, and yet love to complain.
So let’s snap out of that and finally use our votes as intended…as weapons of peaceful, orderly revolution, and end the rule of clans and tribes and gangs at last.
I am just about to give up trying to convince people that most of the various -isms are divisive bunk, and that, really, the spectrum of -isms from authoritarianism to libertarianism boil down to a very simple principle: primacy of the state, versus primacy of the individual.
But let us at the very least put to rest the idea that Nazis weren’t socialists.
First of all, they called themselves socialists! The Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiters Partei, NSDAP or National Socialist German Workers’ Party claimed to be an anti-capitalist, socialist party, and its party platform certainly reflected that. But I’ve been told many times that what they called themselves and how they acted and what they said was not real socialism, so…
Here is a ten-year-old article, which is, I think, just about the correct distance from the present to be more clearly separated from today’s tribal hysteria and concomitant “Democratic Socialism” blindness.
The core argument is that Hitler called himself a socialist of a sort derived from Marx, and that his deviation from the USSR’s variety of socialism (“Jewish Marxism” in Hitler’s words) was in two key forks that made it, in Hitler’s opinion (as well as that of Mussolini, who wrote much on the subject) more workable.
National Socialism relied on geography and race to avoid the needlessly divisive self-destructive civil war as the Russians had suffered. Hitler felt that Germans shouldn’t fight Germans (like the way USA citizens are increasingly divided and opposed), so he elevated race above pure socialist dogma in an effort to unite more to his general cause. In Hitler’s words, “…find and travel the road from individualism to socialism without revolution.”
Recognizing private property rights is necessary to economic success and social unity. In Hitler’s own words (not from the article), “Socialism is the science of dealing with the common weal. Communism is not Socialism. Marxism is not Socialism. …Socialism, unlike Marxism, does not repudiate private property. Unlike Marxism, it involves no negation of personality, and unlike Marxism, it is patriotic.” So Hitler socialists, like today’s Prius-driving, iPhone-toting, mocha Frappuccino-sipping Democratic Socialists, can have cool stuff.
I can understand some confusion, as Hitler had over the years said many things that could, in isolation, fuel the notion that he was anti-Marx; certainly he was anti- “Jewish Marxism.” But I believe that’s only when viewing Hitler through a partisan lens. Because he made it abundantly clear in his own words that he was a socialist with rhetoric that should seem very familiar today.
In a long critique of Mussolini’s newly-coined “fascism,” Hitler wrote of his own economic plan, “Point No. 13 in that program demands the nationalization of all public companies, in other words socialization, or what is known here as socialism.”
So let me be clear on this… Mussolini was the fascist. Mussolini coined the term and defined it exhaustively. Hitler disagreed with many key parts of fascism, and called himself a socialist.
As of 1936, the German government dictated wages, prices, products, distribution channels…everything. The “owners” of corporations were allowed to keep a percentage of profits as a motivator (a key reason their industries worked better than the soviets’), but, really, the “owners” were government employees. …Just like everybody else.
The principle behind it all was that the “common good” (as defined by Hitler) was everything, and the individual was just a cog in the government machinery. Or, as Spock said, ““The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.”
Doesn’t that sound good to modern socialists’ ears?
The way people are redefining socialism and fascism along Democratic Party and Republican Party lines (or worse…”Right Wing” and “Left Wing.” Both are on one bird, right?) is absurd. Both of our entrenched, corrupt and anti-constitutional crony parties are increasingly authoritarian …and that should concern us all.
To more or less summarize my argument, as well as that in the article and referenced book, I’ll end with Hitler’s own words, and let you think on where we are today, and why so many Americans admired the man back in the day:
“The Germany of today is a National Socialist State. The ideology that dominates us is in diametrical contradiction to that of Soviet Russia. National Socialism is a doctrine that has reference exclusively to the German people. Bolshevism lays stress on international mission. We National Socialists believe a man can, in the long run, be happy only among his own people. We are convinced the happiness and achievements of Europe are indissolubly tied up with the continuation of the system of independent and free national States. Bolshevism preaches the establishment of a world empire…”
Yeah, well, OK…like today’s socialists, Hitler was also fine with changing the terms and rules as he went. And like today’s socialists, and socialists everywhere forever, he also silenced opposition.
The Land of The Free has been surrendering freedom hand-over-fist because the Home of The Brave is scared of its own shadow. Almost literally, its own shadow.
Though China is rapidly becoming a contender, We The People are the most heavily-armed, most globally nannying and bullying, domestically intrusive, imprisoning and militarized nation of all time.
It is our own shadows that both terrify and genuinely threaten us now, and, surprisingly, in the past, too.
Rational people can look at the USA’s past mistakes reasonably. Our government made horrible, murderous, costly mistakes when it was far smaller, less powerful, less secretive, less snooping, and vastly less heavily-armed and militarized both globally, and domestically, than today. But ironically, the closer we get to the present, the more wrong we call right, and the more we justify today’s wrong by yesterday’s wrong.
We all know that slavery and native genocide was bad. Only the more educated among us know that the wars against Mexico and Spain were motivated by greed and desire for empire, and had nothing whatsoever to do with protecting American liberties and land. But very few consider how Teddy Roosevelt stimulated the Empire of Japan and the USA helped create the Soviet Union, however, so we tend to think of WWII as a wholly Good War, where the USA wore white and saved the world for liberty and justice for all.
The point is that, the closer we get to the present, the more our views of USA government become disconnected from reality.
Even after we learned that the Vietnam War was justified on, at best, a screwup, we tend to think of USA government as a benevolent god of peace and love, incapable of wrongdoing (though we keep seeing new wrongdoing every day).
This is a freakishly weird phenomenon. But it’s also the nature of tribalism and idolatry. We love our team, and we hate the other guys. We can’t see the wrong in our idols, teams, champions and leaders, but we know that the other peoples’ idols, teams, champions and leaders are pure evil.
And it’s also just human: People of the past were THEM. People of today are US. We can easily admit that our ancestors did horrible, stupid things; but we sure don’t want to admit that, today, right now, WE are screwing up. We’re blind to our own errors.
In other words, we see the past more clearly than the present. And we see other sinners more clearly than we see ourselves.
So, as a result, we exemplify, even if unintentionally, the exact opposite of The Golden Rule.
This is self-immolation. We have so many impending disasters of fiscal, social, monetary and military nature (will it be WWIII when China takes Taiwan and Russia takes Ukraine on the same day?), that we desperately need an epiphany and revolution of heart and mind.
You can’t be the Land of The Free if you’re not the Home of The Brave. But no nation can survive at all with this kind of stupid.
All of the most self-defeating things I ever hear begin with something like, “Realistically…”
At least in a political context, whenever I hear words and phrases like “pragmatic,” “the way things are,” and, of course, “realistically,” I know what comes next is a lame rationalization of wrong.
Right?
Instead of saying, “That’s a great dream! Let’s make it happen,” the “realistic” person’s got to say, “realistically, you must choose the ‘lesser of two evils;’” or, “Whoa there; these things take time. Realistically, you’ve got to ‘take baby steps,’ ‘work within the system,’ and ‘you can’t fight city hall.’”
Even so-called “third parties” concentrate on “winnable” races, even if that means that they sacrifice a statewide televised platform to discuss real differentiating issues. It also means the most visible races go unchallenged or are contested by lesser candidates who put their party in a bad light. And, of course, when they do win a “winnable” race, that means it’s such small potatoes that nobody will ever hear about it anyway.
“Realistically,” they’ll say, “you don’t stand a chance.” “You have to,” they tell me, “play the game.” “Start at the bottom and work your way up,” they say.
I am pretty certain this is why human civilizations have a 100% failure rate. There are too many unwitting servants of the status quo, and far too few revolutionaries. Too many people think like plodding, duty-bound bureaucrats, and too few think like passionate, principled visionaries.
I am sure we have a sufficient number of dreamers; it’s just that the dream-squashing Powers-That-Be puppets outnumber them, parrot the officially-approved talking points, run the media, and are currently in charge of pretty much everything on the planet.
This so unnecessary, so sad, so self-destructive.
To cave in to odds is to shuffle toward societal collapse. To accept even mediocrity, let alone “lesser evil,” is to voluntarily, actively, choose failure. (see aforementioned failure rate)
And that, is a denial of our very real power and accountability to do better.
I’ve spoken to more than a few voters. I see what they do every Election Day. Collectively, we really did choose exactly what we’ve got. We’ve chosen badly, and keep re-electing the badly-chosen.
We can’t blame anybody else for that. But we sure try to. The “Two Party System,” corruption, lobbyists, and “there ought to be a law” all get blame. And those things are, granted, terrible. terrible.
But we chose it. All of it.
And it looks like we’ll do it again this November.
We do this over, and over, and over again.
We never learn.
My enduring hope (and I believe our culture’s only hope) is that we’ll snap out of our madness and choose better.
Now, I do understand the roadblocks.
There’s a vast, nearly-diametrically-opposed difference between a good candidate, and a good politician. We expect a good candidate1 to be a market phenomenon; sort of like a movie production with a cast of hundreds. The very “best” candidates are usually much less impressive as individuals than they are as a puppet figurehead/mascot of a team. You rarely hear or see the politician as a person, actually. You see a managed message crafted by professional staff. A good politician, on the other hand, must be an honest, scrupulous statesman; hardly the sort of performance artist who’d be a media hit in this climate…amiright? The job of a candidate is to get elected and reelected. The job of a statesman is to serve his fellow humans by holding a leash on that dangerous abstraction we call “politics.” And that apparently doesn’t sell well today.
The best candidates are bought. We all know it. But we never follow the money and come to the correct conclusions, do we? In fact, we do the opposite. We see our candidates in order of odds and money, not in order of principles and actions. We treat this more like pro sports, and less like real life with you as a key actor. And that’s at least partly because…
All the major media are bought, and not just by the best candidates. The major media are wholly owned and operated by the same military industrialists, financial services moguls, “information” regulators and political kingmakers that own and operate all the best candidates. Look at how media and search engines cover campaigns. Look even at the order in which they list candidates in articles. It’s not alphabetical, is it? And try to look for what doesn’t even make it to your eyes and ears. Almost all of the very best statesmen are rendered invisible and voiceless by our incessant, loud and omnipresent media – both old and new. Your senses are overloaded by theirchoices such that you may never get to hear what would be better choices. That leaves you too numb and worn-out to scour the fine print, rumors and internet threads for better choices.
The rules we now call election and campaign finance “laws” were written by all the best candidates, so of course they’re unconstitutional, corrupt, and serve to stifle better options.
We don’t want to admit that we’re responsible for our choices, and that our choices really do matter, and that we could change our choices, because that’d be the same as admitting that we’ve screwed up for years! I get it. I’ve been there, done that…and in ways I still don’t want to admit.
But now let me describe your opportunity.
You get what you choose. If you choose better, you get better. If you decide to vote against evil entirely, what’s “lesser” or “greater” won’t matter. You really do get what you, personally, choose, because you are not as alone as you’ve told yourself. Not everybody else is an idiot. More people than you likely think, are thinking, and acting, just like you. Most people are just looking for somebody else to make the first move.
It doesn’t take a majority to change things. In fact, it has never worked that way. The passionate few have always determined the course of history. Always. The “masses” follow the leader. That’s how our species, and most others, work. You want to be among the passionate few? Then choose to be. Be a Political Alpha that others can follow. It’s just another choice.
Politicians hire themselves if you let them; we do NOT have elections to hire politicians. Our founders and prior generations bequeathed all of us (all races, all creeds, all genders…even the new ones) the hard-won right to vote not as a numb approval of the status quo, but as a weapon of peaceful revolution. You are SUPPOSED TO vote AGAINST some things (evil, entrenched incumbents, bad choices). You are SUPPOSED TO vote to FIRE the best candidates, and replace them with the best politicians.
Picture this. On a single day in November, you upset the status quo. Instead of reelecting almost everybody (over 98% of House Reps were reelected last time, you know), you fire almost everybody, and replace them with people who’ve not sold you out. It’s a choice. Your choice. Imagine how bright the sun would shine on that next day when the gobsmacked media pundits realize that you figured it out, and won. Just picture it.
Would it be so scary to, just for once, use your vote more like a sword than a poker chip? Wouldn’t it be invigorating and wholesome to walk into a voting booth with the Spirit of ‘76?
Realistically, we’re all going to die, and our culture and nation will collapse. It’s a certainty, actually. Sooner, or later.
But we choose how we live our precious lives. We don’t have to keep doing the same things over and over again. While history demonstrates very well that we humans keep screwing up over and over again, we personally don’t have to.
We can choose.
Don’t we want to strive for a really great life in a great country? I say let’s dream on that, and make it so.
1A candidate is a corporate abstraction consisting of a figurehead, several key executive members, and a bunch of supporting staff all dedicated to winning elections…often as a full-time job for many campaigns, year after year. A politician is, when done right, an actual, moral, honest-to-goodness human being who’s trying to make politics the noble art of getting along.
I’m not an “open borders” libertarian. And borderless anarchy isn’t possible with humans (see I Samuel 8:6-20). So at least for some degree of control over communicable disease (we’ve been lucky so far), human trafficking, etc., we need to have some border security. If you allow that you’ve got a political government, and other states/nations have theirs as well, there have to be borders and jurisdictional limits to politicians’ rules. And I’m more about actual law and order than 99.999873% of the planet.
So don’t get me wrong.
But our current problems aren’t with illegal aliens, immigrants, or any of the laws and policies thereof.
We are luring illegal aliens here with free stuff. Free healthcare. Free education. Special rights, privileges and immunities unavailable to even legal citizens. There are lots of reasons why we’re doing it…but I propose we stop doing this.
We’ve made “legal” labor so expensive, complicated, legalistic and impractical that “illegal” labor is a very attractive option, or sometimes the onlyworkable option. I propose we reverse this.
We’ve been tormenting and destroying other nations with our “War On Drugs”, CIA crime rings and coups, oppressive policies/embargoes and direct attacks, such that We The People have, both directly and indirectly, made some $#!+holes that don’t need to be $#!+holes. In other words, we’ve made other people’s countries practically uninhabitable, driving them here for survival. I propose we stop doing allthis.
Our ever-changing, unpredictable and absurdly unfair immigration laws and policies force illegal aliens to lay low, force employers to keep secrets and break laws, and generally force the realities of illegal aliens under the rug. I propose we make our immigration laws and policies fair, consistent, and focused on our domestic security, health and interests…and then just enforce them!
Do you know how hard it is for potential immigrants to get visas? Pretty much impossible. So smugglers make a great business getting tens of thousands of dollars for every person they get to the border illegally. But if it were easier/possible to get visas, then the sort of people we want here, the ones who’re desperately wanting to build a better life for themselves and their loved ones, could hop a plane for tens of thousands less, go through controlled checkpoints with drug sniffing dogs and people wearing blue gloves, and go legit. I propose we make it much easier and cheaper to come here the right way. That’d welcome the good folks and put the squeeze on only the bad ones.
There actually is, since the 14th Amendment, a constitutional stipulation that anyone born in the USA is automatically a USA citizen. “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” So, really, there’s a powerful incentive for pregnant women to dive over the national goal posts to deliver a baby in the citizen end-zone. It’s not their fault if they succeed. However… Think about how the rules of monitoring “documented” citizens and trans-border “security” would be enforced. Given the sort of nazi/commies we continuously re-elect, this could get really ugly. “Your papers please” is already a problem. Spying on us all is already a thing.
Besides…if you know you live in a $#!+hole, can’t make it better, and want a better life for you and your loved ones, you’d be a fool not to find a way here, where you’ll find life better than you’ve ever known. Right? Wouldn’t you do the same?
The first four bullets above exist only in breach of the federal constitution. In other words, those problems would be solved if all we did was affirm and enforce the Constitution for The United States of America against our government.
In other words, if we’d just quit making “legal” labor so costly, quit making illegal entry the only door, quit giving away freebies to illegal aliens, and stop messing up other countries, we’d not likely even talk about a wall.
In fact if we were to just DO the constitutions, state and federal, as written and amended, we’d not likely be constantly fiddling with our immigration laws, and we might even legally, legitimately welcome people looking for a better life as our friends, coworkers and neighbors.
While The US of A is no longer the freest, wealthiest or healthiest nation on earth, we are among the most accommodating to foreigners.
Is that really a bad thing? We can discuss that.
Of course, if you’re one of those “‘Merica – Love it or Leave it!” people, you’ve got a little ‘splaining to do…
Sure, there are the “Reconquistas,” the criminals, the terrorists. But their numbers are tiny compared to the home-grown murderers, rapists and thieves (even outside the DC beltway); and their numbers are tiny compared to the regular human beings trying to do better for themselves and their loved ones. They didn’t love what became of their country, and they left it.
The discussion we’ve been having over illegal aliensin major media and political discussions is stupid. We play word games, divide ourselves against ourselves, and place blame and propose punishment for our screw-ups on people who’re doing the best they can to get by in a world gone mad.
Think of the people you know that annoy or plague you the most. Think of the worst people you can think of. Are they immigrants? Illegal aliens?
Probably not. Illegal aliens actually comprise a much lower per-capita percentage of crimes and criminals than native-born citizens represent. Most don’t want trouble. Most just want a better life than they had, and they get it here.
So, let’s try to think both in context of reality, but also think as if we’re all just humans trying to do our best. OK?
But we already know this game. Politicians say that “government is too big,” but then make it bigger. They trumpet the need to cut spending, but then spend more.
Every single one of the other 2018 primary election candidates for Indiana’s US Senate seat are promising more government. Every one of the others promise more fear-aggression-syndrome foreign policy, more domestic militarization, more intrusions into our privacy, trade and personal interactions.
I want very much to enjoy the feelings of pride and mystic oneness with 
Our nation is a corporate abstraction not so different from other corporate identities, tribes, corporations, clubs or clans. We should be acutely aware that the difference between crime rings and nations is often more matter of scale than culture or law. When Mexico’s Sinaloa drug cartel beat the Mexican government in a straight-up military engagement, wasn’t there at least a little confusion about who’s really running the country?
But you’d be a rare and precious person to actually vote against it.
We’ve for generations been the 
We Declare 