Both sides in this presidential election claim there is an existential threat to our republic should the other side win. Democrats point to things like Donald Trump’s actions and inactions during the attack on our Capitol on Jan. 6, while Republicans point to things like Joe Biden’s management of migrants, particularly at our southern border; Biden possibly taking bribes related to business dealings of his son, Hunter; and Biden’s age. (He’s 81, while Trump is 77.) Let’s compare threats.
Biden’s management of migrants
Republicans complain that Biden is attracting migrants to our southern border who would not otherwise risk the journey, because his policies are too migrant-friendly. Treating migrants without compassion or dignity, however, might provide partial relief in the short-term, but it creates justifiable long-term hatred and distrust not just at the border, but on a global scale that will surely increase unless underlying problems are addressed. It also demonstrates to the world that our claims to a moral high ground are hogwash, which, in the long term and maybe the short, makes us more unsafe, at increasing expense.
FactCheck.org estimates that in 2018, when the Trump team enacted their policy of separating children from their families as a deterrent to asylum seekers, almost 400,000 people still crossed our southern border undocumented. Those people can’t be feeling very loyal to a country that could act so cruelly. The anger will be generational.
A compassionate solution may be more costly in the short term, but has both short and long-term potential for creating a robust next generation of defenders of our Constitution. Treating migrants with basic human dignity is the minimum we should do, but if we manage them based on the American principles proudly displayed on our Statue of Liberty, where it says, “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” our strength as a nation will grow.
Article 1 of our Constitution provides for a Congress where the union’s issues are solved peacefully based on cooperative compromise. Challenges related to migrants arriving at our borders are manageable, but require all hands on deck working together to get it right. Policy differences can only become a threat when one side or the other takes a “my way or the highway” attitude. Mob rule, on the other hand, such as what was attempted by the Jan. 6 attack on our Capitol, is the very definition of an existential threat to the Republic.
Biden taking bribes
To date, the judiciary and the oversight committees in the House of Representatives have found no smoking-gun evidence of bribes facilitated by Hunter Biden to influence his father for the benefit of anyone. In fact, it’s recently been reported that Alexander Smirnov, a witness Republicans point to as crucial to their case, was actually passing on Russian disinformation when he accused Biden of taking bribes.
But let’s pretend there is something to these claims: The fact that the House of Representatives is holding hearings for a potential impeachment, should they find proof of a crime, demonstrates there is no existential threat to our republic; the system is working in that the weapons of battle are limited to arguments and votes. The violent attack on our Capitol on Jan. 6, on the other hand, directly threatened the Republic.
Biden’s age
Article 2, Section 1 of our Constitution specifies a chain of succession should the president be unable to fulfill the duties of the office. This process for a peaceful transfer of power preserves the will of the people through their elected representatives, with all the safeguards of our Constitution still in play. Our Constitution sustains the republic. Mob rule is how republics are lost.
Some argue that Trump can’t be held responsible for inciting the Jan. 6 attack on our Capitol. Maybe, but no playing with words about First Amendment rights can cover for how he sat idly by while the mob attacked. With his inaction that day, he broke his oath to “protect and defend the Constitution,” and no amount of flag-hugging by Trump can erase that fact.
Our forefathers created our Constitution to sustain our republic through peaceful resolution of issues based on the will of the people loyal to the union. Patriotism based on blind loyalty to a person or party is the true existential threat to our republic.
Michel Rottmann is a retired engineer from Bently Nevada in Minden; a retired math professor from Western Nevada College and Truckee Meadows Community College; and a volunteer for KNVC, Carson City Community Radio. He lives in the Virginia City Highlands, supporting a rescue cat that seems to have many more than nine lives.