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WHITE HOUSE REALITY ALERT! A Fence for Me, Not for Thee

Over the past few weeks, reality has boorishly crashed the delusional party which Leftists have been throwing for decades. Not one, not two, but three uninvited guests have attempted to breach White House grounds, one individual actually reaching inside 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue’s East Room before being apprehended.

The response of the president’s protective detail has been deliciously instructive: CBS News relates, “[T]he Secret Service late Monday night erected a second fence line across the first family’s Pennsylvania Avenue residence …the provisional cordon creates a security zone about 12 feet from the actual finial-topped fence … to create a more effective level of obstruction for tourists and would-be intruders”.

You see, these recent White House interlopers presented Barack Obama with a potential problem of such undismissability, such immediacy — almost literally “on his front doorstep” — common sense remedies had to be applied. Note: there apparently wasn’t much debate or academic theorizing about the solution. The White House fence was toughened up because, manifestly, a physical obstacle to mischief will make said mischief harder to execute. The Chief Exec will thus be that much safer.

All this, suddenly, is flaring up in media reports in contrast to the tedious, dishonest or block-headed gabbling mounted by Liberals and some derelict or gutless Republicans against any suggestion of erecting a fence along America’s southern border to rebuff the sizable illegal immigration problem. A stiffened barrier will decrease violations of White House territory? Mitigating the concern of what Senator Ted Cruz puckishly defined as “undocumented White House visitor[s]”? Looks like that’s a given. But, inexplicably, the same can’t play a role in safeguarding our nation’s geographical boundaries?

Have “security barriers” proved effective elsewhere in the world? Illegal border crossings plummeted measurably in San Diego where fencing was erected. Similarly, Israel and India experienced starkly favorable results where they hoisted “separation barriers” against infiltrating terrorists.

Fences as measures against encroaching danger or unwelcomed intruders have been routinely implemented all through history – the Great Wall of China, anyone? Hadrian’s Wall? Not to mention white-picket-fenced neighborhoods, stone-walled New England properties and farmlands and homesteads seamed with split-rail arrangements the world over.

In most contexts, this would fall into the “yeah-so-what’s-the-big-deal”, horse-sense category.

But, when it comes to shielding the United States, it’s not so axiomatic to Lefty, some Libertarian, and even some “conservative” elitists.

On this front, we’re accustomed to the illogicl insistencies and semantical dodging of the open-borders brigades: Barack Obama, Luis Gutierrez, most Democrats, frankly; John McCain and company.

What’s brow-furrowing (and heartbreaking) is when normally reasonable folks on the pro-American, law-and-order, Constitutionalist side start coughing up the fences-don’t-work mantras. An irksome cadre of them sometimes turn up on Fox News‘ Saturday morning “Business Block” programming. When the topic of our southern perimeter crisis is raised, they begin shifting uneasily in their seats, sniping defensively, “A border fence won’t solve the problem!!”

Solve it? Okay, let’s concede physical barriers by their lonesome won’t erase, one-hundred percent the predicament of border-jumping lawbreakers. It can’t be denied, however — at least not with straight face — a stout fence between the contiguous fifty and our Latino neighbors will render dramatically more manageable the current, intolerably anarchic situation.

At minimum: it’d be a non-negotiable, sina qua non first step.

The “Open Borders” bunch’s muleish refusal to acknowledge the obvious serves as handy stand-in for major slabs of contemporary Liberalism. From their addle-pated pacifism, to goofy, fails-almost-everywhere-it’s-tried socialism, to sterilely hollow secular materialism, to the “non-personhood” of pre-born children, to the across-the-board interchangeability of the sexes, to the wonderfulness of the welfare state — in the long run Liberalism sputters, then collapses, because reality, eventually and remorselessly, steamrolls it. Human nature and the icily unflinching structure of the universe make clowns of Progressivism’s unhinged-from-the-actual-world conceits.

We’ve lately, for example, been subjected to the garish spectacle of Barack Obama’s cherished anti-war pieties crumbling in the face of the ugliness of ISIS and the “Khorasan Group”. These ghouls’ on-the-ground atrocities have put paid to our glib Commander in Chief’s — and his votaries’ — preposterous confidence in his ability to smoothly speechify this world into a better place.

The “No military solution to radical Islamism” line – just like the “Fences won’t help defend our borders” shibboleth – is nothing more than hare-brained boilerplate from reality-dismissing, irresponsible and/or cynical ideologues. War-making measures alone won’t erase the scourge of jihad, certainly. That concession hardly means the application of massive and lethal force by the non-barbarian world against Koran-spouting cutthroats doesn’t play some crucial role in safeguarding civilization.

Refusing to tip the hat to the way things are in these matters doesn’t create an escape-hatch from dealing with their fall out. “Reality,” reminded novelist Philip K. Dick, “is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.”

It’s mildly heartening that, when reality squeezes them, Leftists – including, it seems, our Theoretician-in-Chief – respond by occasionally meeeting its unforgiving demands. Sometimes it acts as a check on, even a temporary chastening of, the Loopy Left. Unhappily, “sometimes” and “occasionally” mean Liberals just as often put their heads down and press on, bone-headedly bucking life’s unyielding bottom lines.

Of course, the rest of us are forced to wallow in the wreckage wreaked by their denials. Except the President, mind you – he gets his own refurbished fence to keep reality from bothering him.

Image: http://www.flickr.com/photos/perspective/8678447087/

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Steve Pauwels

Steve Pauwels is pastor of Church of the King, Londonderry, NH and host of Striker Radio with Steve Pauwels on the Red State Talk Radio Network. He's also husband to the lovely Maureen and proud father of three fine sons: Mike, Sam and Jake.

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