In the run-up to the election of 1864, Abraham Lincoln observed “there is no program intended by the Democratic Party but what will result in the dismemberment of the Union.”
As it was then, so it is now.
The Democrats in 1864 proposed to end the Civil War by giving the rebelling states what they wanted. In fact, it is likely that the Democrats would have given the South even more than they could have won through mere military victory, much as Barack Obama’s “negotiations” with Iran gave the mullahs everything they wanted and more.
Lincoln’s point was that a Democratic Party victory on Election Day in 1864 would have changed America fundamentally. America would have had a new southern border. On the other side of that border would be an unfriendly, slave-holding country carved out of the American nation.
As it happens, the southern border is again at the center of the controversy in the election of 2018, and once again a Democrat victory in November threatens to change America fundamentally—and perhaps even more radically than in 1864.
In 1864, the Democrats would have transformed America, as Lincoln put it, by dismembering it. Today, the Democrats want to transform America simply by putting an end to it. The Democrats want to replace American citizens with voters more to their liking. Open borders, sanctuary cities, abolishing the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service, welfare for illegal aliens—all these policies and more, which the Democrats embrace, are about creating a post-American America. By re-populating America with people from South America and elsewhere, this new America the Democrats desire would for all practical purposes eliminate America’s southern border, making us over time more and more like what lies to the south of us now.
A borderless world is not to your advantage. If you aren’t certain about that you might consider crossing America’s southern border (legally, please!) to discover for yourself the difference that border makes in your daily life.
I learned an unsought but powerful lesson about the importance of borders in the 1960s. My wife and I were visiting as many of Europe’s great museums as we could crowd into three months of travel. One of the museums we planned to visit was in East Berlin, and so we had to go through Checkpoint Charlie. We were totally unprepared for what happened to us there. The border guards made certain to frighten and humiliate us (I would prefer not to go into the details of that humiliation) before proceeding to rob us while laughing at us by requiring us to change U.S. dollars for nearly worthless East German marks at the official exchange rate. The museum in East Berlin was not worth what we went through crossing that border.
As it happened, a government job the previous summer had resulted in me making several deliveries to a federal prison in the good ol’ USA. The contrast between going in and out of a U.S. prison and crossing into East Berlin was staggering. The prison guards, of course, carefully searched the delivery truck both entering and leaving. To me they seemed typical Americans, doing a professional job in the friendly manner we associate with, say, the customs official who checks your passport and welcomes you home from a trip abroad. And are you surprised to hear that the American prisoners were without question much happier than any of the people we saw in East Berlin?
The Berlin Wall, of course, was to keep people in, to keep them from escaping. President Trump and the Americans who voted for him want a secure southern border to keep America America. A wall on the southern border is necessary to save America from the Democrats’ post-American future. Once the wall is in place, deporting illegals can mean something more than simply giving them another opportunity to walk across the border again.
Because it saved the Union, the election of 1864 was arguably the most important election in American history. A victory for the Republicans in this election just might rise to the same level of importance. If a Democrat-controlled Congress can prevent the President from building the wall and keep him tied up long enough for them to get their demographic transformation of America past the point of no return, it might well be game over for the regime of liberty that is the Founders’ gift to us.
Lincoln’s bid for re-election defied the odds. We are told by the experts that the odds this year are against the kind of victory President Trump must have. So, here is the question of this historic moment: can American voters rise to the occasion, defy the odds and the experts, and save the Union once again with their votes?
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