Minutemen: vigilantes or watch dogs?

Vigilante n. A member of a volunteer committee organized to suppress and punish crime summarily.

Gathered at our southern border are several volunteers, bringing their concerns to the attention of their hired help in Washington.

Hired help is exactly what the Senators and Congresscritters are; hired to do a job, which they are not getting better at as the years go by. The American Civil Liberties Union is having a snit fit. They are accusing the Minutemen of being vigilantes, or worse --Republicans.

The members of the Minuteman group aren't vigilantes, the best description available is that they are a large neighborhood watch organization. These guys aren't trying to be like a Charles Bronson movie character, blowing away the bad guys with ever more violent means. They observe and report violations of the law to law enforcement personnel, nothing more. If they are vigilantes and something to fear then every neighborhood watch in the nation should be closed down.

The liberals and left-wing organizations that make sure murderers have better health care than the ordinary taxpayer can afford is aghast. How dare someone help law enforcement?

The ACLU looks at this situation as if the Minutemen are trying to deprive 'undocumented workers' jobs. Nothing could be further from the truth. Most of the Minutemen are on record as not caring about jobs but about border security.

As I have said before I'm a Libertarian. I believe in open immigration. The thing is I also believe in border security, the two aren't mutually exclusive.

What the Minutemen are doing is to bringing the lax border security to the forefront of discussion, where it needs to be. Here in Nevada thousands and thousands of dollars in homeland security grants have been allocated and spent, this is a good thing. However, all that money and equipment is useless if we allow anyone and their brother to cross into this country without proper security checks.

We need to have tight borders for our safety and security, it has nothing to do with immigration. Immigration is a separate issue that can be addressed in a different manner. Border security is about knowing who is coming into our country and what they are doing while they're here.

One solution, border fences, are common, despite what the United Nations says about Israel's defensive fence, and they are a fairly low cost way to secure the borders but we don't even have fences along much of the border. Our border defense for many years was concentrated on the seacoasts because we felt, foolishly as it turns out, that having two friendly countries abutting us also protected us.

Those days are gone with the dodo. Mexico has no security to speak of and Canada is little better. We need strong protection along both the northern and southern borders. Terrorists know that they can sneak into the country through these porus borders. They would rather sneak in across our unprotected borders than come in by ship or plane and go through the security at our ports and airports.

We need strong borders, they are our first line of defense. They keep the terrorists and others who would harm our country at a distance. Who in their right mind throws away an advantage like that?

Let the Minutemen alone, they bother no one and they do a good thing. If you want to bother someone go tag along and keep an eye on the ACLU, now there's a group of troublemakers that need watching.