Trump’s Victory & the True Border Crisis

The triumph of Donald Trump was simply the triumph of the majority of Americans who saw their society slipping into anarchy and chaos without borders. I hope that in the next Trump years, the renewed, common-sense desire for proper borders in every area of life will prevail and will be balanced by that other great American virtue—the rights of individual freedom.

The recent American election was dominated by two key issues which the Trump campaign pushed to the foreground: the economy and the border crisis. “It’s the economy, stupid!” was Bill Clinton’s famous rejoinder and it was echoed effectively by Donald Trump. The border crisis highlighted American concerns about illegal immigration and the sometimes criminal elements who were taking advantage of America’s open border under the Biden administration.

While both issues were winners for Mr. Trump and J.D. Vance, the border crisis is interesting because it is a metaphor for the deep divisions in American society. The 2024 election, more than any other, revealed the existence of two Americas which may be characterized by the border crisis. One America is without borders. The other America values borders.

What am I getting at? It’s this: For decades now American culture has been besieged by rampant relativism—the idea that there is no such thing as objective truth, or if there is, it cannot be affirmed and articulated in any definitive way. This philosophy was summed by Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy’s notorious sentence, “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” In other words, “No borders.”

The progressive half of America might take Kennedy’s statement as their ideological creed. You and your girlfriend have a pregnancy you did not plan? You should not have any borders. Instead, complete “reproductive freedom.” You or your child have the notion that they were born into the wrong biological body, and you want to chemically and surgically alter that reality? No borders because “at the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence.” You wish to “marry” someone of your own gender? No borders. Love is love. You want to cheat on your spouse? Divorce your spouse? Break up your family? No borders. You feel compassion for poor people in another country? No borders. Let them all come in no matter if they are criminals, diseased, foreign terrorists, or violent gang members.

The conservative half of America, on the other hand, believe that borders are necessary for an ordered life and an ordered society. Marriage has borders. Education has borders. Government jobs have borders. Countries have borders. Existence has borders. The conservative half of the country believes in borders, and that borders define and channel our existence and they need to be understood, affirmed and, if necessary, enforced.

The triumph of Trump was simply the triumph of the majority of Americans who saw their society slipping into anarchy and chaos without borders, and the artificial joy of a chuckling candidate who offered the artificial freedom of no borders.

But there is an ominous side to the need for borders that the triumphant Trump majority need to remember. History reminds us that when a society slides into the borderless region, citizens respond in a predictable manner. Instinctively aware of our need for borders, we search for an authentic voice of authority, and that voice of authority will usually come in the form of an authoritarian leader. The man of the hour steps forward and offers borders to the borderless, and in an age like ours that values instant solutions and the quick fix, the authoritarian leader who offers not only to fix the border, but to restore order and borders in every other way, will be hailed as the triumphant savior.

There are many signs that American culture is precisely at this tipping point. The influence among young men of “border czars” like Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson and podcaster Joe Rogan and the surge of conservatism among college aged young people are signs that the borderless are seeking borders. They want truth. They want timeless values. They want them explained and endorsed. They want something solid to grasp and believe in.

As the pastor of a Catholic parish, I am witnessing a similar trend. Every week I receive two or three emails from young men asking to meet with me to explore the Catholic faith. Each year we receive an increasing number of people into the church—many of them young people in their twenties and thirties. They too are looking for an authentic voice of authority: looking for borders.

Trump’s triumph and the fact that the progressive establishment, the legacy media, and the Democratic Party were blind to this phenomenon and unable to understand it is all the more evidence of its power.

I hope in the next Trump years that the genius of the American system of checks and balances will curb any overly authoritarian tendencies of our new president, and I hope the renewed, common-sense desire for proper borders in every area of life will prevail and that the innate need for borders will be balanced by that other great American virtue—the rights of individual freedom.

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The featured image is President Donald J. Trump walks along the completed 200th mile of new border wall Tuesday, June 23, 2020, along the U.S.-Mexico border near Yuma, Ariz. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead) Date 23 June 2020. This file is in the public domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.