"You can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs." The idiom's been attributed to Napolean, Lenin and even Robespierre who ended up with a heck of a broken egg at the hands of an angry French mob and the guillotine. Regardless of the origin, we're seeing a lot of broken eggs on our Southern border right now, so the omelet of virtue can be enjoyed by our political and cultural elite.
Let's be clear: Everyone on the political Left in America feels a lot better about themselves since the November election, and that's all that really matters, right?
From the archaic, legacy media to the halls of academia, to the power structure of the Democrat/Socialists to the writers' rooms at late-night television shows, they've all agreed with the basic premise that our country is a much better place now that the Biden Administration (and whoever is really calling the shots over there) is now in charge of the Executive Branch of our federal government.
In fact, to suggest that this is merely about the Left "feeling good" is understating the case. They don't just feel good; they feel virtuous. Their virtue (which they've signaled to us at every possible opportunity during the Trump Administration) is now fully satisfied and fulfilled with the systematic purging of every racist, sexist, xenophobic, and homophobic policy that the Bad Orange Man instituted through his fascist stormtroopers.
The problem for anyone still interested in looking at doing good instead of just feeling good is that the cost of virtue, absent a clear, cohesive plan for governance, is chaos.
Look no further than our southern border with Mexico. The Trump Administration's policies toward halting unfettered migration across our porous, unsecured border were target number one for the champions of virtue when they took the reigns of power under their figure-head, Mr. Biden. And they wasted no time in reversing what had eventually become stable and functioning policies for asylum and immigration processing for those attempting to enter our nation from Mexico.
Biden's team immediately reversed what Trump had finally gotten to work in this tangled mess of laws and procedures. Ironically, the first major change the new regime made was to ignore existing law. White House spokesperson Jen Psaki let that slip in one of her increasingly inconsistent appearances last week.
Take a look at this language (emphasis added):
We rescinded the 2018 MOU between DHS and HHS, which we believe will encourage families and sponsors to come forward without fear of additional immigration enforcement. And we’ve seen this as an issue, where family members or even sponsor families are worried that this will mean they will be tracked. And this over- — rescinds that.
The "MOU" is a Memorandum of Understanding between the two federal agencies with regard to how they would execute immigration laws regarding children placed with sponsors in America. But the details of the MOU are unimportant. Psaki reveals why the new administration rescinded it: So illegal immigrants in this country wouldn't have to "fear additional immigration enforcement."
For their own personal, virtuous fulfillment and satisfaction, they've made several decisions to stop enforcing the law. No new laws are needed, just stop enforcing existing laws and then figure out a way to deal with the results. That's their policy.
From the aforementioned MOU to halting border wall construction to allowing illegal immigrants entry with no actual court date for a legal proceeding, to ending existing arrangements with Mexico to allow for asylum processing outside the US border and American facilities, the Biden Administration has merely stopped enforcing existing laws and operating our immigration process within the orderly system they inherited.
Multiple Border Patrol agents confirmed the new process to Fox News, revealing that they have been directed to use prosecutorial discretion (PD) to forgo the hours-long process of paperwork required to issue an NTA amid the surge of migrants at the border.
Instead, migrants are registered into the system with biometrical data taken and largely released into the public - in one instance - at a bus station in McAllen, TX. The processing is being done mostly at a temporary outdoor processing site. Border Patrol agents emphasized that this does not apply to unaccompanied children.
And it was all to make them feel so much better about themselves and their country.
And now, they are seeing the cost of this virtue. They are witnessing the chaos that ensues when laws are merely ignored with no plan in place to respond to the predictable repercussions.
The chaos may be uncomfortable and, eventually, politically untenable for the wise men and women who dreamed up this unsustainable scheme from their new offices in the alabaster fortresses of Washington, DC, but tragically the chaos is much more severe and devastating for the exploited children and families who understand they are being encouraged by the tens of thousands to embark on the criminal excursion across the badlands of Mexico at the hands of human smugglers and drug cartels.
It's also chaotic for the Americans (remember them?) who live on or near the border. They are now expected to "deal with" the anarchy brought about by their own government.
The absence of law and order brings chaos, danger, and, eventually, the instinct to suspend or ignore other laws to compensate for that chaos. We're already seeing that develop with the temporary suspension of the unfettered access of First-Amendment-protected journalists who merely wish to document and report the situation.
Getty photojournalist John Moore took to Twitter to sound the alarm on the Biden administration's decision to bar media outlets from reporting on conditions in Border Patrol facilities. According to Moore, there is "no modern precedent for a full physical ban" on allowing reporters into facilities.
This is how it works. When laws mean nothing and a government can "use prosecutorial discretion" (which really means picking and choosing which laws to enforce and which laws to ignore), chaos ensues, and the lack of second or third step thinking catches the government flat-footed. The only logical next step, in full reaction mode, is to continue down the path of lawlessness where every arbitrary decree is justified to rationalize the original lawless decision.
If the pictures and stories of the chaos undermine the original, virtuous intentions of the policy, you merely cut off access to photojournalists and reporters so the virtuous policy can continue without pesky little facts and criticisms getting in the way.
Chaos breeds more chaos and more justification for new decrees, which breed more chaos. And so it goes.
At the end of the day, the only thing the policymakers have to show for their reckless destruction is their own personal virtue. Academia and pop culture and most news media will look the other way because they're the better people, don't you know? And even if some eggs are getting broken, the virtue omelet sure tastes yummy.
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