CHAUTAUQUA–As Paul Mauro looks beyond America’s borders he cites four countries nipping at America’s heels.

One of them is Iran.

A second is Russia with its ransomware.

A third is China with its synthetic drugs.

A fourth is El Salvador with its gangs.

Mauro–the Aug. 12 guest of Advocates for Balance at Chautauqua, or ABC–can leave audience members astonished at the depth of his knowledge and the depth of the challenges facing the United States.

In his roles with the New York City police department and as a lawyer, Mauro has seen what the gangs have done and how it started.

“We’ve let them into this country,” he said. “Ultimately, this policy comes from the top.”

Yet support for overall crime policy extends beyond the White House.

“Blue-city mayors” couldn’t stand success against crime, he said. They’ve moved beyond “broken-windows” policies for fighting it.

He also cites troubling state-level changes in criminal law, including bail reform, discovery reform, and raising the age of criminal responsibility from 16 to 18.

And he contrasts raising the criminal-responsibility age with allowing minors to have “irrevocable surgery” without parental consent.

In other words: How can anyone absolve 16- and 17-year olds of criminal responsibility for their actions, yet allow minors–including even younger minors–to decide for themselves, without parental consent, to have “irrevocable surgery”?

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Speaking of criminal law, Democrats have tended more than Republicans to support defunding police and to oppose the southern-border wall. However, for Democrats’ 2024 national convention in Chicago, both police and a border wall surrounded the convention site.

In short, some get the full protection of police and a border wall, yet the rest of us don’t. As southern ladies say, “Isn’t that nice?”

Meanwhile, the Biden administration’s border czar–whom the convention nominated as the party’s presidential candidate–has said what she’d do “on day one” of her presidency.

Yet Kamala Harris has been vice president for more than 1300 days, so some have asked why she’s waiting.

One answer to this clever question may be that she’s not really waiting at all. What Joe Biden and she have done since Jan. 20, 2021, is what she’d continue doing.

There’s no mystery in that. No mystery at all. Indeed, she’d expand on what they’ve done for four years, including:

— Curtailing American energy production, thereby stoking inflation.

— Opening America’s borders, which has led to, among other things, the surreptitious entry into the United States of criminals and terrorists.

— Appointing liberal activists to the federal bench, and

— Signaling American weakness to enemies of ordered liberty throughout the world. You, faithful reader of this column, have long since understood that America need not be the world’s police department to project strength to enemies of ordered liberty.

More on such subjects in September and October. For today, let’s recall that we’ve already seen the beginning of what such criminals can do in this country. Just ask their victims, if they’re still living. When it comes to those who aren’t, ask their families and friends who are serving a life sentence of grief.

What such criminals do is bad enough. Just wait until we reap the fruits of the poisonous trees that such terrorists plant on American soil, having walked in through a border at which Biden and Harris have said, “Open Sesame.”

Then they want to give healthcare to those whom they incorrectly call “immigrants,” including, but not only, such criminals and such terrorists.

Please ask yourself: Do you get free healthcare from Uncle Sam?

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Of course, none of this changes what you read here two weeks ago: The 2024 American presidential election is almost entirely Donald Trump’s to win and Donald Trump’s to lose. If Trump follows his own advice to “stay on message,” then, barring something unforeseen, he’ll win. And yes: Without relitigating 2020, it will be good to win not just beyond the margin of error but also beyond the margin of theft.

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On its website, https://www.abcatchq.com, ABC posts videos of most of its speakers.

ABC was formed in 2018. Its mission is “to achieve a balance of speakers in a mutually civil and respectful environment consistent with the historic mission of Chautauqua” Institution. ABC is its own Section 501(c)(3) organization, legally separate from the institution.

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Dr. Randy Elf’s Aug. 20, 2020, ABC presentation, on “How Political Speech Law Benefits Politicians and the Rich,” is at https://works.bepress.com/elf/21.

(c) 2024 BY RANDY ELF