War is a staple of human life, with men savagely destroying each other since the days of tribes. Genocide is a development in warfare, a more catastrophic and calculated way of eliminating enemies. For all of human history, there have been tales of entire civilizations disappearing, men and children being killed, and mothers raped to cut off their father’s bloodlines. Before we can take action, it is important to realize that genocide has always been and always will be. “Never again” is a false promise because of its premises. It’s tragic, but it’s the truth.

So what can we do in a world where evil is a constant? Go to the government? No! Governments start wars, they don’t stop them. Governments fight wars, they don’t end them. In fact, governments are more often than not the perpetrators of genocide. While “humanitarian warfare” and “humanitarian intervention” are becoming popular calls and battle cries, never before in human history has a military been able to prevent genocide.

During the Holocaust, 11 million people were slaughtered. 6 million Jews were annihilated and over 5 million Catholics, gypsies, and homosexuals destroyed. At the same time, 300,000 people were massacred in China, an amount very much akin to the current loss in Darfur. Looking at the sheer magnitude of these numbers alone, there is no military in existence that could have prevented this. There never will be.

Germany declared war on the United States in World War II, with Congress constitutionally exercising its authority to declare war in return, but what should the United States currently do about Sudan, a foreign nation that has not declared war on us but continues to slaughter its own people in a ruthless and scorched earth-style civil war? It may sound complicated, but the answer is very simple.

The United States can get out of the way. Our government can get out of the way by no longer preventing people in genocidal regions from seeking asylum on our shores, and then trying to pretend that its actions are somehow compatible with liberty.

The current world policy in regard to genocide is fundamentally a policy of isolationism and containment, which is both baffling and horrifying to me. I think most people today would agree that it would have been best for people to have escaped during the Holocaust while they still had a chance, not that they be penned into protective enclaves that eerily remind us of ghettos and concentration camps while Hitler was being theoretically pacified. I am not one to lightly play the race card, but it seems that the acceptable approach differs depending on the continent.

Containment can be compared to the following analogy:

The house is burning, so the fire should be put out.

Simple enough, but it is a flawed analogy because it is oversimplified. It ignores that the people need to be taken out to safety first—and not just enclosed in a fireproof area, but taken out of the flames entirely. It also ignores that their houses and communities have already been burnt to the ground, with nothing for them to return to.

Although containment’s effects are felt more strongly in today’s world, especially in Africa, the United States was already way ahead on these sorts of policies during World War II. In atrocious affronts to human liberty, the United States would turn away European Jews seeking refuge on our shores. While it is one matter to not get involved in the internal affairs of other nations, as the Founding Fathers had wisely advised, it’s another to send those nation’s victims back when they finally escape and are beckoning on our shores. This country was founded by persecuted people escaping tyrannical governments. The engraving on the Statue of Liberty proclaims,
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

From Rwanda to Darfur, it is obvious that containment has been a failure. Have any of you seen the movie Hotel Rwanda? So many people could have been saved! No government wanted them, not even their own, it being bent on destroying them. What they needed was not more UN peacekeepers. What they needed was more compassion. The UN is a failure because it is based on a contradiction. Apologists for the world watchdog lament that it would be successful only if its member states showed some real initiative for once. I can’t tell you how ridiculous this is, because if the member states had real initiative there would be no need for a UN in the first place. It’s like complaining that the members of Alcoholics Anonymous are alcoholics!

We need to adopt a policy of internationalism, integration, and most importantly, a foreign policy of freedom. The United States can lead the way by eliminating immigration quotas on genocide-ravaged regions of the world. There is no future for the Darfuris in Sudan. How can the United States tell another country to stop driving out its people when we are not even willing to take them in ourselves? It makes you wonder why the politicians most vocal about sending troops and employing peacekeepers otherwise want nothing else to do with them. If immigration was allowed, private charities and relief groups would jump to the cause. Their donations would skyrocket when people found out they are actually saving people instead of throwing them firewood to hopelessly hang on to for hope. It is also more likely that the world would follow our lead in this, than sending their often undersized and inferior troops into war torn regions alongside ours.

Instead of rampaging around the world, seeking purpose like a country that has lost its soul, we can start building a righteous republic here at home.

“Peace at home, peace in the world” is a famous Turkish proverb by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the legendary liberator of modern-day Turkey. Although he was right, ironically enough Turkey was founded in the aftermath of a historically-disputed Armenian genocide during World War I.

Only by creating a better America domestically, can we provide any solace to the wider world. We don’t have to spread democracy through the use of force as much as the war hawks and the pacifist-imperialists would like you to believe. I advocate a Sanctuary America, not a Fortress America. By making America more prosperous and free, we become the hope for the world and the destination of its sufferers.

Some people will say that it’s impossible with out-of-control illegal immigration and broken borders, when all we have to do is enforce the law instead of sending our national guards and military overseas in pursuit of greater goods and superhuman endeavors. That isn’t even at the heart of the matter! The real reason people illegally cross our borders are because of more failed policies, including a broken welfare system that subsidizes illegal immigration, and an irrational foreign policy that motivates terrorists to fly planes into our buildings.

Some people will say it will destroy our economy, when in fact a healthy, prosperous, and free market economy would swallow up immigrants like there’s no tomorrow. Immigrants are too often used as the economic scapegoats of their times. An economy incapable of assimilating immigrants is more a reflection of a dying, non-expanding, and totalitarian one.

Some people will say that the immigrants will be impoverished and dependent on welfare, when this is more a reflection on the failures of the welfare-state than on immigration itself. The federal government could relieve refugees of the income tax for a few years, giving them a real chance to pull themselves up. They would then only have to pay state taxes, which include those that go towards the community and schools. The oppressive income tax can be eliminated for all Americans if we return to 1990 federal spending levels, God forbid that ever happens!

Some people will say that the immigrants will be a burden on our healthcare system, not being able to afford treatment and bankrupting our emergency rooms, but this is more of a reflection on the shortcomings of an already socialist and overregulated system. A healthcare system based on regulated regulation and laissez-faire capitalism would be both cheap and innovative, like anywhere else government is not involved. Many doctors, not strangled by excessive liability and government chokeholds, would voluntarily treat them out of charity or at discounts. I know I would!

Practical? I think it’s a lot more practical than thinking we can eliminate all the evil in the world with bombs and bread. It is a matter of the righteous republic versus the restless empire, a philosophical punch-out for the soul of America.