No. of Recommendations: 5
Its possible to agree that stronger border controls are critical (agreement about policy direction) and that the current administration is destabilizing. If all we were debating was which policy is better for the country, that is one thing. The heat in any discussion is because the reshaping of decision rights allocation in the government goes far beyond that. We have a three part government with a balance of power constitutionally. The current executive branch has decided that being president doesn't require paying much attention to the other two branches, and one of those branches has been happy to cede power to the executive branch. That is pretty unprecedented.
The history of US government is that even presidents who espouse limited government (e.g., Reagon, Nixon) actually spend their time in power aggregating power to the executive branch. Typically Congress is fighting to avoid that, but not this time. The executive branch is aggregating unprecedented decision rights as a result, including taking control over the branches responsible for law enforcement. In a short time, they have already demonstrated a willingness to use all of this power to squash dissent, threaten opponents, exclude free press in order to enable the establishment of something akin to state media (Fox news). If the law enforcement branches report to the executive with people who feel responsible to an individual, not the constitution, then the judicial branch can make all the judgement they want but there will be no one to enforce them.
I am not right wing, but I have a lot of agreements with some of the policy direction. But the fundamental risk of becoming China or Russia in terms of how the government runs is off the charts. That is the destabilizing thing, not whether people agree or disagree that immigration policy is wrong.
