In Anglo-Scottish history, border reivers were members of families and clans that lived along the border region of northern England and Lowland Scotland and participated in cross-border raids.  The historian George MacDonald Fraser tells us that, while young Shakespeare was writing wonderful plays, respective monarchs in both England and Scotland ruled in two mostly secure kingdoms.  Their kingdoms were nevertheless separated by a “narrow hill land between … dominated by the lance and the sword.”  The area between kingdoms, i.e., the border region was often violent.  Indeed borders tend to separate distinct nations and peoples almost by definition.  While political lines now and again might be established in an arbitrary, gray, ambiguous, disputed fashion, in the case of nation-state borders along identifiable geographic features, say, like the Rio Grande River, well it’s pretty darn clear in any language. 

 Political lines separate much more than sovereignty and law, which some still regard as matters of high importance, by the way—they also separate differences involving race, religion, culture, custom, language, worldview and economy.  No doubt it’s great to vacation south of the border if you’re gringo and north of the border if you’re Mexican.  It’s exciting and frequently profitable to conduct business and trade involving mixed labor forces, as well as the import/export of goods and services.  Exchange rates at banks allow you to collect and spend your dollars in pesos or your pesos in dollars.  The scholar and future historian will marvel from a safe distance, at how energetic and talented both sides of any given border really are! 

 Yet borders represent lines of demarcation twixt sides involved in competitive interaction, if indeed they interact at all.   If left uncontrolled, border regions are tense, uncomfortable places where each side potentially poses a threat to the other.  If borders are left unsecured or under-secured, large differences between the sides inevitably lead to violence.  A primary purpose of any government is to secure its borders therefore, and it is impossible to overstate the level of gross negligence and malfeasance on the part of the American federal government in terms of insecurity along the U.S.-Mexican border. 

 Robert Krentz, a third generation Arizona rancher was recently gunned down on his own property by an illegal alien.  While the incident touched off renewed calls for National Guard troops to secure the U.S. southern border, few politicians connect the dots or bother to bring up the fact that literally thousands of murders occur each year that are committed by illegal aliens in this country, including some of the most vicious sex crimes.  Moreover, overcrowded state and federal prisons are stuffed full of illegals—literally one-third of the entire prison population are illegal aliens.  The liberal solution is to abolish borders and legalize “undocumented” immigrants, and then give them Obamacare at taxpayer expense.  Liberals say the sweetest stupid things (hey, if the amber waves of grain are set ablaze, at least the night sky looks pretty).  Progressives in the administration and Democrat party in Congress are pusillanimous petty tyrants who, like Nero fiddle while American cities burn and ranchers in fly-over country lay dead. 

 What is needed is the political will now to employ the technology, men and equipment needed to keep illegals out and to use deadly force if necessary.  If the federal government will not militarize the border, states can and must take independent action and enlist assistance of local militias and citizen groups if deemed expedient.  State borders are every bit as sovereign as federal borders.  Failure to take responsibility for action at one level of government is no excuse for another level of government to be as inept.  Indeed failure at one level of government, in this case the federal government, may necessitate interposition by states.  The use of the National Guard for defense and protection of the state and national borders is not a local law enforcement issue and does not pertain to state internal policing per se, so this could be done by Congress in full respect of the post-Reconstruction Posse Comitatus Act of 1878. 

 Senator John McCain too has changed his mind on the point, largely because thesituation along the border has worsened so badly over the past ten years—and because he faces a conservative primary challenge in his bid for reelection.  He did not originally support use of National Guard troops along the border, apparently favoring their extensive use abroad instead, as an active element in the United States armed forces.  Since Krentz’s murder, however, he has joined Arizona’s state governor in a formal request to President Obama for National Guard troops to be stationed in the State of Arizona to defend its border.  More reliable conservatives have called for this for years.  In his new book Bringing America Home (2010), Tom Pauken not only calls for the National Guard to be used in securing borders, he also addresses the importance of rewriting immigration laws to restrict immigration from countries with predominantly Islamic populations.  He simply states the obvious, which escapes most federal bureaucrats in Washington, and that is, that “our own national interests should be our highest priority.”  That’s true in foreign policy or domestic policy, and whether or not the Mexican president or Osama bin Laden likes it very much. 

 States, however, do not have to rely on Congress for protection.  For the Founders, the militia arose from the original posse comitatus, that is, as constituting the whole people or citizenry—in practical terms, all those who might receive an official message and answer the call; and thus attendant, to constitute a constabulary.  The idea of posse comitatus embodies the Anglo-American idea that the citizenry is the best enforcer of the law.  At state level it may be recurred to whenever the federal government shirks its duty or fails in its responsibility to secure borders.  At state level it must be recurred to today, in order to repel invasion and put down border reivers crossing from the south. 

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Wesley Allen Riddle is a retired military officer with degrees and honors from West Point and Oxford.  Widely published in the academic and opinion press, he ran for U.S. Congress (TX-District 31) in the 2004 Republican Primary.  Email: wes@wesriddle.com