We Can Only Bond Within Them
By J. Jeff Toler for Shenandoah Christian Alliance j.toler@sca4christ.org
Ronald Wilson Reagan once said, “A nation that cannot control it’s borders is not a nation.” By contrast, Barak Hussein Obama once said. “We are defined not by our borders, but by our bonds.” It shouldn’t require a social scientist to point out how these two US presidents held a very divergent—even polemic—view of the reason for borders.
In the days and months following the slaughter of the innocents in Israel by Hamas, much has been said and written. Even though it was not surprising to encounter vastly differing reports and the inevitable opinions following the attack, the contrast between people’s emotions with the indisputable truth has proved stunning. Indeed, it’s almost beyond belief. This is the age of the mobile smart phone, and so it’s no longer possible for any event, large or small, to escape the eye of the smartphone camera. Everyone has one in their pocket.
But to deny what the Hamas murderers recorded and released requires a disconnect from reality that simply beggars belief. Yet, that’s exactly what’s happening. For the generations immediately following the second world war—a little over twenty years after the war to end all wars preceding it was the war that saw an estimated six million Jews die at the hands of a madman: Adolf Hitler and his Nazis.
For many years, everyone knew the phrase, “never again” was associated with the holocaust.
And yet, “After a gunman took the lives of 17 students and staff at their high school in Parkland, Florida, students there launched a national campaign to promote gun control. They called for a major protest in Washington, DC.” [https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/never-again-from-a-holocaust-phrase-to-a-universal-phrase-544666] On March 24, 2018, the students named their campaign, #NeverAgain. Another phrase associated with the holocaust is, “Never forget, never forgive.”
For too many, never is apparently not all that long anymore. If we are simply being honest when we admit there has always been a hatred of the Jews among the nations of the world. Indeed, it’s actually biblical. So, really, are we amazed? We are because we have assumed a quiet hubris regarding our social sophistication. And, if we are amazed, it’s because the animus is so horribly vitriolic. For Hamas—and all Palestinians—the hatred is demonstrably demonic. But what then can we say about the hatred by our college professors, their students, and a large swath of America’s most vaunted of sophisticates: our entertainment celebrities—both young and old? Deluded?
We can argue that the October Israeli massacre and the invasion of illegal aliens though America’s wide-open southern border is connected. Is it not deliberate that our southern border, which can be closed immediately but isn’t? The events leading to the “Mexican standoff” between the Biden administration and the Republic of Texas are unique in the entire history of both regimes.
Why are borders so important? What irony that the subject is so divisive since the very definition and purpose of any border is precisely that: to divide. The world has operated with this definition since the abandonment of the Tower of Babel.
In his essay for The Claremont Review of Books, “Germany, Growing Desperate: War, terrorism, immigration, and America,” Christopher Caldwell (pictured) writes, “A lot of European governments were thrown into confusion in October when Hamas’s coordinated massacres and abductions sparked war between Israel and Palestinians in Gaza. Germany’s ruling coalition of Social Democrats, Greens, and free marketers was not among them. In early November, economics minister Robert Habeck, a leader of the Green party, issued a ten-minute video warning over the internet to German Muslim supporters of Hamas and to various homegrown leftists and rightists. In gauging its response, their country did not enjoy the luxury of relativism.” [https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/germany-growing-desperate/?1=1&]
The Germany of former chancellor Angela Merkel should be, and judging from Caldwell’s article, is now becoming increasingly anxious regarding their porous borders. Although Germany and America have very divergent cultural and political distinctions, they are now similarly experiencing a rapidly developing immigration crisis. Caldwell writes, “Well before the events in Gaza, Germany was nervous over migration. Today, 24 million of Germany’s roughly 80 million people—almost 30%—are of “migrant background,” 2.7 million migrants settled in the country in 2022 alone. The demographic transformation of the West that began slowly with European decolonization and American civil rights has accelerated over the past decade and a half.”
The effects of that kind of massive population shift from Germany’s indigenous people to a people comprised of foreign-born, non-German speaking people—with most recently predominantly Muslim migrants—portends dangerous, yet all too predictable social upheaval. Traditionally and historically, emigrants from other countries have sacrificed much to make the journey to America, and then to pass through the immigration process. It was usually a source of great pride for them to become American citizens.
Today, the same process is still in place, with the citizenship process taking an average 18 to 24 months. To naturalize, the immigrant must file Form N-400 with USCIS. Importantly, to apply for citizenship, he must first have his green card for as much as 3 to 5 years before applying for citizenship. [https://citizenpath.com/citizenship-requirements-5-year-permanent-resident/#:~:text=The%20continuous%20residence%20requirement%20helps,filing%20N%2D400%2C%20Application%20for] Contrast this with simply walking across a bridge and declaring asylum—as if that was some a legal right, which it isn’t.
Assimilation? Don’t expect it. There is no better example of how bad things have become than when elected members of Congress—particularly one Ilhan Omar—who show little or no allegiance to the country she should be representing. In a recent speech to a gathering of her Somali constituents in the Minnesota district she represents, Omar declared, “[T]he U.S. government will do what we tell them to do… As long as I am in the U.S. Congress, no one will take away in [sic] the Somali sea or water. And I will not support the U.S. government in supporting other people to rob us.” [https://www.dailywire.com/news/calls-grow-for-ilhan-omar-to-be-expelled-from-congress-after-she-says-shes-advocating-for-her-homeland-of-somalia]
- For this is the will of God, that by doing good you should put to silence the ignorance of foolish people. Live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover-up for evil, but living as servants of God. (1 Peter 2:15-16)
America used to be a God-fearing, God-honoring nation. A nation is first a place with definable borders that encompass a people who will only be united in purpose and allegiance because of their shared desires, aspirations, and love for their fellow man. This is only really true if they are living under common grace.
Photo by Barbara Zandoval on Unsplash
