Our only hope: Jan Brewer, Joe Arpaio, and the 10th Amendment

By Bryan Fischer

Here's hoping that Jan Brewer and Arizona legislature ignore Judge Susan Bolton and start enforcing their new immigration law today as scheduled. They have every constitutional, legal and moral right to do so.

Bolton's ruling tramples the Constitution, federal law, and the inalienable right of Arizonans to act in collective self-defense through their elected representatives.

Arizona officials, starting with Gov. Jan Brewer and Sheriff Joe Arpaio, can and should say to Judge Bolton, "We can read the Constitution and federal law just like you can, and you're just flat wrong. You are ordering us to ignore federal law and leave our citizens unprotected against a wave of illegal immigration, and we cannot in good conscience do that.

"We are a nation of laws, not men, and we are going to exercise our right to follow duly enacted federal and state law and carry out our solemn duty to protect our citizens from harm whether you like it or not. We're not going to allow a petty tyrant like you to deny us our right to govern ourselves and to rob us of our ability to enforce good laws. To paraphrase President Andrew Jackson, you've made your ruling, now go ahead and try to enforce it."

Bolton's ruling is a monstrous display of judicial activism, arrogance, and tyranny.

Her ruling has left Arizona utterly defenseless against the tsunami tide of illegal immigration that has left its citizens helpless in the face of the violence, social disruption, and enormous cost imposed on taxpayers by illegal aliens.

Judge Bolton has left Arizona worse than when she found her, for her ruling, in blatant defiance of existing federal law, prohibits Arizona law enforcement from checking the immigration status of any illegal alien, and orders Arizona to let illegals, again in defiance of federal law, go anywhere they want, work anywhere they want, and do anything they want without carrying with them the documents that demonstrate their legal right to be in this country.

This is particularly offensive, since it has been the law since 1940 that legal aliens must carry their documents with them at all times. That law, which has been upheld by the Supreme Court, was passed by a Democratic-controlled Congress and signed into law by a Democrat president.

This is an astonishing thing, that a federal judge would prohibit a state from following the law. She is ordering Arizona to ignore the federal law that requires immigration authorities to check the immigration status of anyone when they receive a request from state and local officials to do so.

And it's equally astonishing that she has told illegal aliens that they have her permission to violate federal law with total impunity.

It should come as a surprise to no one that she is a Clinton appointee, a representative of a party that more and more appears to hate this country, its traditions, its laws, and even its founding documents.

For the re-makers of America, the law and the Constitution are simply inconveniences that may be swatted away like pesky flies.

We have reached a point now where as a culture we are on the verge of civil unrest for one reason: the ruling class is determined not to let us govern ourselves.

We are on the verge of collapsing into violence and vigilante justice, as more and more Americans come to realize that the ruling class is their enemy and not their friend. More and more of them are becoming convinced that their government will not protect them and will not punish the guilty, and they will conclude that they must now protect themselves not only from criminals but from their own government.

The only thing that stands between us and social chaos is representative government. If our elected officials at the state and federal level will not do the job God has entrusted to them — "to punish those who do evil and praise those who do good" (1 Peter 2:14) — then more and more people are going to decide they are going to have to fend for themselves.

This is a recipe for the total breakdown of society. I do not support citizen violence against government and I do not support vigilante justice. I oppose it with every fiber of my being. No one who desires an orderly society could ever want that.

What I am saying is that it is inevitable that people, whether rightly or wrongly, will begin taking the law into their own hands if their own government will not protect them from the bad guys and "punish those who do evil."

Government, according to Romans 13, has been designed by God to protect us from neighbors who violate our inalienable rights to life, liberty and property. Government is to be our protector, and a source of fear to those who have evil intentions toward us.

We are already at a place where more Americans are afraid of their government than they are of criminals. Our government in many ways is now a terror to those who do good and a protector of those who do evil. This state of affairs cannot long endure.

The only hope we have left for representative government to shield us against a total social meltdown is state government. Our elected representatives at the state level have the 10th Amendment right to exercise every power that is not expressly granted to the federal government in the Constitution.

It's time they began to exercise that authority. Some say this whole states' right business takes us back to 1860. I say, Nope, the 10th Amendment has been around a lot longer than that. It goes all the way back to 1789, and is now our last, best hope of preserving what remains of representative government.

I hope and I pray that the elected representatives of Arizona will maintain the courage of their convictions and defy the unjust and unconstitutional ruling of Judge Bolton. A lonely and increasingly desperate nation lifts its eyes to you, Arizona. What will you do?

© Bryan Fischer