Who would trade liberty for security?

  Benjamin Franklin famously stated, “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

  Who would do that? Who would be willing to give up a life of freedom in exchange for being kept “safe,” even temporarily or permanently?

  What if every American citizen today were confronted directly with this question: Are you willing to sacrifice your freedom in exchange for temporary safety?

Hate groups reach record high

  The number of hate groups operating across America rose to a record high – 1,020 – in 2018 as President Trump continued to fan the flames of white resentment over immigration and the country’s changing demographics.

  It was the fourth straight year of hate group growth – a 30 percent increase roughly coinciding with Trump’s campaign and presidency – following three consecutive years of decline near the end of the Obama administration.

Donald Trump - America’s elected dictator

  After losing his battle against Congress to secure funding for his wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, President Trump is declaring that that the congressional rebuff is irrelevant anyway. The reason? Trump is declaring an “emergency” under the “National Emergencies Act,” which, he says, authorizes him to spend U.S. taxpayer money on the wall without congressional authorization. He’s going to have the U.S. military, which will dutifully follow his orders, construct his Berlin Wall.

  Trump’s action is the very essence of dictatorship. Check out other dictators around the world — Maduro in Venezuela, Ortega in Nicaragua, Diaz-Canel in Cuba, Kim Jong-Un in North Korea, el-Sisi in Egypt, and Zi in China. They don’t have to jack around with congresses. They have the authority to just act or order. That’s what makes them dictators.

Suffering from Trump's eminent-domain tyranny

  In my blog post, “Stealing Land to Build Trump’s Wall,” I explained how a system of immigration controls, in general, entail tyrannical enforcement measures and how Trump’s wall, in particular, entails the use of eminent domain to steal people’s land on which to build the wall.

  Coincidentally, Global Village Space published an article detailing one family’s fight against the eminent-domain stealing of their land to construct a portion of Trump’s wall. U.S. officials are using their power of eminent domain to steal land belonging to 69-year old Jose Alfredo Cavazos and his sister Eloisa, who live in Mission, Texas, which is located in the Rio Grande Valley. The Cavazos family has lived on their property their entire lives.

We already have a border wall. It’s an environmental disaster.

  As of Friday, the U.S. government has been partially shut down for 14 days due to the Trump administration’s demand that a new funding package include money for a border wall with Mexico. The new House Democratic majority intends to vote on a bill to re-open the government that doesn’t include such funding soon after it’s sworn in. The administration and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) have called the bill a non-starter.

  But ask anyone living along the U.S.-Mexico line, and they’ll tell you: We already have fences and walls, drones and helicopters, surveillance towers, checkpoints, and border patrol agents speeding their ATVs across the fragile biotic crust of the desert.

Questions the Trump administration needs to answer about the border wall

  In the U.S.-Mexico border region, an area that stretches nearly 2,000 miles, decisions about border security affect the daily lives of roughly 12 million people. The United States already has 653 miles of border fencing, and much of the rest of the border is comprised of the Rio Grande or located in some of the country’s most inhospitable locations, where a wall would be impractical and unnecessary. In addition to fencing, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, or DHS, uses an array of surveillance and technology to monitor the border in real time.

  Yet both as a candidate and as president, Donald Trump has repeatedly called for the construction of a “big, fat, beautiful wall” along the entire U.S.-Mexico border. The administration recently concluded a request for proposals from firms to construct the wall, and it has already started to send out notices to landowners along the border notifying them that the federal government will likely be seizing their private property.

Jacob G. Hornberger: The wall of a dictator

  On Wednesday President Donald Trump ordered the construction of his much-ballyhooed wall along the U.S-Mexico border to begin. Obviously Trump doesn’t see any need to go to Congress to seek approval for his gigantic, socialist, public-works, multibillion-dollar edifice. He’s the president. He can issue “executive orders.” He can do whatever he wants. Who needs congressional approval? Anyway, Congress might turn him down. Or they might delay construction by deliberating and debating the issue. Who needs all that when one can simply issue an executive order to get the wall built?

  This is how dictators have always operated — simply by decree. They don’t need legislatures and, therefore, they either ignore them or they abolish them. And they expect the judiciaries to fall into line and support whatever they do.