President Donald Trump has declared a national state of emergency in relation to the conflagration at our Southern border. Many past presidents have declared states of emergency, yet the media – and pundits on both sides of the so-called “aisle” – have turned out in droves to denounce the move as “unconstitutional,” an “overreach,” “authoritarian,” and so forth. This article is intended to set the record straight on the legality and constitutionality of President Trump’s decision.

As my readers know, I love the U.S. Constitution and consider it an inspired, sacred document. I consider it a very serious thing to violate its straightforward instructions and injunctions. However, President Trump’s decision to declare a state of emergency in order to once and for all secure our nation’s borders is not a violation of the Constitution or any moral law with which I am familiar. Indeed, President Trump’s decision to secure the border is actually a fulfillment of one of the most important of the Constitution’s promises to the states.

Article 4, Section 4 of the Constitution promises: “The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion.”

The phrase “The United States” here refers to the federal government, of which the president is the chief officer – particularly in times of crisis and war. It is therefore a part of the president’s duty to defend the states against invasion, as well as insurrection, rebellion, and so forth, such as when President George Washington sent the military to put down the Whiskey Rebellion during his presidency. And please note that the Constitution does not specify what type of invasion is to be defended against.

Invasion is defined by Google as “an incursion by a large number of people or things into a place or sphere of activity.” The trusty Webster’s 1828 dictionary gives us this more complete conception: “A hostile entrance into the possessions of another; particularly, the entrance of a hostile army into a country for the purpose of conquest or plunder, or the attack of a military force. . . . An attack on the rights of another; infringement of violation.”

Under either of these definitions, the crisis at our Southern border absolutely qualifies as an invasion. The influx of tens of millions of foreigners who do not speak our language, who are not here to assimilate, and whose first act in our country is a violation of our laws, cannot be considered anything other than an invasion. It is certainly “an incursion by a large number of people” into our territory. It is also a “hostile entrance” by foreigners and strangers “into the possessions” of American citizens. This hostile foreign element is invading both the private and public property of Americans and the states. And in far too many cases, American blood is spilled, American tears are shed, American property is stolen, and American citizens suffer.

Placing military forces on the border with either non-lethal deterrents or shoot-to-kill orders would halt the problem over night, making a wall unnecessary. But a wall is the order of the day. While I do not like the idea of living in a walled-in country, I would prefer to have a secured border with a wall than an unsecured border without one. In order to consider ourselves a truly independent, sovereign, and free nation, we must secure our borders and defend our People against the tidal wave of invaders flooding in from around the world. These invaders are changing the ideological, political, social, religious, and racial makeup of this nation – and not for the better.

It almost goes without saying that the president cannot willy-nilly declare anything an “emergency” and then assume the power to “fix” it.  That would be a violation of the concept of enumerated and limited powers. It would be the very epitome of tyranny. However, what we are talking about in the present situation is not an arbitrary case. We are discussing the very security of the Republic.

As noted, the U.S. Constitution – the supreme law of the land and that sacred document which our elected representatives have sworn oaths to defend, uphold, and enforce – authorizes and directs the federal government to defend each of the fifty states in the Union against invasion from without. Since our Constitution directs the government to “protect each of [the states] from invasion,” and the influx of millions of foreigners which includes many criminals, rapists, human traffickers, and drug dealers meets every criteria to be called an invasion, the discussion should end there.

There is a faction in our society, however, that is anti-American and wishes ill to our country. They want to bring about the disintegration of our Republic, the corruption of our culture, and the destabilization of our unique system – the only system that poses a threat to their bid for global domination. This hostile group is a fifth column of Marxist traitors that are supported by Russia, China, and an international cabal of bankers, businessmen, and intellectuals. The domestic wing of this faction is aided in their attempt to weaken America by legions of dupes and brainwashed citizens.

For the record, the Republican Party has sold out the United States regarding illegal immigration, too.

This dangerous group disregards the U.S. Constitution either because it stands in their way of converting America fully into a socialist state or because they have fallen for the carefully-concocted lie that the Founding Fathers were racist, bigoted, and primitive. When they consider the Constitution at all, they think of it as outdated and not applicable to today’s situation. So, for those who disregard the Constitution’s plain mandate to the federal government to defend the states against invasions such as those being launched from south of the border, as well as for those who misunderstand the Constitution, I cite one additional argument in favor of President Trump’s actions.

The great Thomas Jefferson, the most brilliant political mind in history, gave us an ideological gem when he wrote the following to John B. Colvin in 1810:

“The question you propose, whether circumstances do not sometimes occur, which make it a duty in officers of high trust, to assume authorities beyond the law, is easy of solution in principle, but sometimes embarrassing in practice. A strict observance of the written laws is doubtless one of the high duties of a good citizen, but it is not the highest. The laws of necessity, of self-preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation. To lose our country by a scrupulous adherence to written law, would be to lose the law itself, with life, liberty, property and all those who are enjoying them with us; thus absurdly sacrificing the end to the means.”

According to Thomas Jefferson, situations sometimes arise which demand a solution not strictly covered by law, or, indeed, in which no man-made law is sufficient. These include crisis situations – situations that threaten the fabric and stability of a nation. During these climactic events, a “scrupulous adherence to written law” would be suicide. Rather, the “laws of necessity, of self-preservation, of saving our country when in danger” are the laws which must govern us. Indeed, obeying these unwritten laws is a “higher obligation” than obeying written laws, no matter how well-crafted, well-established, or popular.

To reiterate yet again, I love the U.S. Constitution and witness that the God of Heaven inspired the Founding Fathers to write it. It is the greatest political document in the world. And, thankfully, it covers situations such as that which faces us; namely, the dangerous blaze of chaos that is scorching America because the federal government has refused to uphold its end of the constitutional pact to protect the states from invasion. Yet, for argument’s sake, we also have the “laws of necessity” on our side.

Let me be clear, immigration is a great thing. But when a person immigrates, he must leave his former allegiances behind. When someone comes to America, he must do so with the intention to become an American and only an American. President Teddy Roosevelt once said:

“There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. When I refer to hyphenated Americans, I do not refer to naturalized Americans. Some of the very best Americans I have ever known were naturalized Americans, Americans born abroad. But a hyphenated American is not an American at all. This is just as true of the man who puts “native” before the hyphen as of the man who puts German or Irish or English or French before the hyphen. Americanism is a matter of the spirit and of the soul. Our allegiance must be purely to the United States. We must unsparingly condemn any man who holds any other allegiance. But if he is heartily and singly loyal to this Republic, then no matter where he was born, he is just as good an American as any one else.

“The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities, an intricate knot of German-Americans, Irish-Americans, English-Americans, French-Americans, Scandinavian-Americans or Italian-Americans, each preserving its separate nationality, each at heart feeling more sympathy with Europeans of that nationality, than with the other citizens of the American Republic. The men who do not become Americans and nothing else are hyphenated Americans; and there ought to be no room for them in this country. The man who calls himself an American citizen and who yet shows by his actions that he is primarily the citizen of a foreign land, plays a thoroughly mischievous part in the life of our body politic. He has no place here; and the sooner he returns to the land to which he feels his real heart-allegiance, the better it will be for every good American. There is no such thing as a hyphenated American who is a good American. The only man who is a good American is the man who is an American and nothing else” (Roosevelt, 1915, in David M. Kennedy and Thomas A. Bailey, The American Spirit: United States History as Seen by Contemporaries, Vol. 2, 268).

In this case, we are not even talking about citizens – but subjects of foreign lands who have no right nor legal permission to be here. And it is clear by the actions of illegal aliens that their allegiance does not run to the U.S. flag. Rather, they come here in droves hoisting aloft the Honduran, Guatemalan, or Mexican flag. They speak their own language and huddle together in groups rather than assimilate. They trespass and break our laws as a matter of course. And why wouldn’t they? After all, they have no allegiance to our nation, our People, or our Republic. We must sympathize with those who desire to come here to escape the unrivaled plague of violence, drugs, and poverty that afflicts Latin America, yet, nonetheless, their actions prove that they are illegal, and often hostile, invaders who care nothing for our laws. And if they do not respect our laws, how can we allow them to come here? To do so is national suicide.

Furthermore, how can a nation respect itself and maintain its honor when it cannot defend its own people and protect its homeland? The American People are falling victim to savage drug cartels, human traffickers, and violent criminals for no other reason than that the Marxist clique in Washington, D.C. has deliberately prevented the enforcement of Article 4, Section 4 of the Constitution. We are suffering because we have also disobeyed the basic laws of necessity and self-preservation, higher laws even than those codified in the Constitution.

One of the things our founding generation understood was that owning property is a sacred right. Personal private property is absolutely essential to Liberty. Without property there is no Liberty. But a nation’s home territory is also a special thing. If a people’s land is being invaded and taken over by foreigners who have not been welcomed in, who have not paid for the land, who have not made agreements to be there, whose ideology and worldview is contrary to the native population’s, and, whose intentions, in many cases, are hostile, then that people may take extreme action to defend itself and property.

By any honest metric, illegal immigration is a massive crisis – a true national emergency. It is de facto setter colonialism aided and abetted by American traitors and foreign governments like the communist regime in Mexico. Let’s cite some basic facts to convey in a small degree the problem facing us.

According to many sources, Illegal aliens are three times more likely to commit crimes than American citizens. These invaders commit literally hundreds of thousands of crimes annually and at a higher rate than the native population. The number of illegal immigrants as well as Americans who are kidnapped, sold into slavery, and trafficked across the border is also staggering. Nearly 1/3 of immigrant women who attempt to enter the United States illegally are sexually abused, and thousands of American women are raped by illegals. For instance, in Oregon – which is certainly not a state bearing the brunt of the violent crime flooding across the Southern border – some two hundred immigrants (nearly 90% from Latin America) are currently incarcerated for rape. Multiply this across fifty states and you begin to see the problem.

From stealing $4 billion in tax refunds they are not entitled to, to facilitating the drug scourge that afflicts our nation, to bolstering the ranks of criminal gangs, to being the carriers of infectious diseases, to committing violent and non-violent crime by the hundreds of thousands, illegal immigrants are assaulting and deteriorating our nation. The crisis is so terrible that we are seeing anarchy and lawlessness in numerous locations. And though money is the least of our worries, illegal immigration costs hundreds of billions of dollars each year.

In light of these few facts, we must ask ourselves some hard questions: When is enough enough? When will we enforce the Constitution? When will we mobilize against the horde of foreigners invading our nation? When we will obey the laws of necessity and self-preservation? When is enough enough?

Thankfully, President Donald Trump is trying to stop the flow of chaos across our borders. It is an already uphill battle further hampered by false allegations of Russian collusion, sabotage by members of his own government and cabinet, and a lack of comprehension of the problem by the American People. If we are serious about honoring our Constitution and protecting the states, we must enforce Article 4, Section 4. We must defend each state from invasion, including the invasion of tens of millions of illegal aliens who spit on our laws, dishonor our traditions, bring drugs and diseases into our land, abuse our People, and, all too often, act like parasites that drain the lifeblood out of our Republic.

Whether we bury our heads in the sand or open our eyes, a state of emergency in reality exists. It is not going away. That is, it is not going away unless we demand that it be fixed immediately. Whether we cite Article 4, Section 4 of the Constitution and demand that the federal government protect the American People and the states they inhabit, or whether we cite the laws of necessity and self-preservation Thomas Jefferson spoke of, the border must be secured or we will lose our nation. And we will lose it to those who do not care enough about our laws and heritage to come in the front door. Instead, like criminals they sneak through the back door, lie to get free goodies, and team up with cartels and coyotes to swindle us out of our birthright. This dangerous group of invaders must be stopped.

I applaud President Trump’s attempt to secure our border. He has blundered his way into it and has allowed what he calls “the swamp” to nearly engulf him, yet his intention is correct. And he stands on “solid legal ground” in terms of his ability to move to defend the nation. Whether out of legal obligations or the dictates of necessity caused by legitimate crisis, the border must be secured one way or another. If feelings must be hurt and foreign blood must be shed to save American lives, property, and wealth, and the integrity of our nation, so be it. God grant us the fortitude to do what must be done to plug the open sieve that is our Southern border that we may defend our People from foreign invaders. Secure the border. Stop the invasion. Save America.

Zack Strong

February 21, 2019