Trump Is Right About the Shutdown

I submit that we—Republicans, conservatives, those on the political Right—should be happy to shut down the government in service of attaining political must-haves, like control of our porous southern border. Without a strong border, sovereignty is a farce: “A country without borders is not a country at all,” as President Trump is fond of saying.

The U.S. government exists at our sufferance to secure our rights. You can read all about it in the Declaration of Independence. When it fails to do so or actively undermines the will of the sovereign American people, then it deserves to be shut down.

The government “derives its just powers from the consent of the governed” and exists to serve us, not the other way around. It’s really that simple.

If Republicans truly believe their copious rhetoric about federalism and how America is not synonymous with Washington, D.C., then a partial shutdown of the federal government is not “Apocalypse Now.” It’s just a way for We the People to reassert our sovereign prerogative to have a government that looks out for our interests and gives us what we overwhelmingly support: a strong border and sensible immigration system that benefits us as a polity.

... Once again, President Trump’s plain-spokenness is shattering congealed illusions and faux norms—constructed over many decades by those who despised the original Constitution bequeathed to us by the Founders. He is saying what everyone knows at a gut level to be true but, for whatever reason, refuses to acknowledge in public as the truth....

As anyone with eyes and a bit of common sense knows, the bureaucracy is dead-set against the GOP as a matter of course and in a manner wholly consistent with its nature; it cannot be otherwise. The administrative state was a progressive creation, and, fundamentally, it serves only its progressive masters’ progressive ends, ratcheting one way—to the left—in perpetuity. Anyone who tries to tame it or even just redirect its energies becomes its sworn enemy, and it reacts savagely when threatened by those even remotely hostile to its power and prestige, let alone its existence.

Lawless as it often is and as alien as it is to the tripartite federal structure of our constitutional republic, it nonetheless remains formally under the president’s control since it is housed in the executive branch, of which the president, per Article II, is the sole head: “The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America” (emphasis added)....

... the office of the president has all of the executive power. Period.

So, if the American people don’t get what they want—if the country’s immigration policy doesn’t advance the national interest—from a federal government completely controlled by Republicans until January 3, 2019, then why shouldn’t some basically unfireable federal employees with plum jobs feel the heat?...

Republicans, Mr. President: We sent you to Washington, D.C. to build the wall, government shutdown be damned. So do it.

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