Open borders constitute a change of regime from the original founding belief in republican self-government and natural rights to the belief in an open society, which is justified by the cosmopolitan belief that “nobody is illegal” and we are all “citizens of the world.” This humanitarianism is often informed by the passion of compassion, an idea of human rights, and an aspiration toward some vague, peaceful, socialist world order.

In our particular case, open borders are said to flow from our identity, because we are “a country of immigrants” and a country of “openness”, as distinct from a country of citizens endowed with unalienable natural rights. Compassion, human rights, and immigrant identity eventually turn into hatred and a project for social reform, because the immigrants in question are victims of Western Colonialism and are owed a share of the American pie.

These are powerful sophistries in a rich, flabby, commercial society that has lost contact with its own first principles and its own political raison d’etre.

The American founding is not a mere palimpsest to be covered over by cosmopolitanism. Our principles are indeed universal, because they are founded in “the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” and........

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