ANALYSIS/OPINION:

Rarely in modern politics have the battle lines been so clearly marked between two political camps.

According to Democrats: Thousands of undocumented foreigners storming the border and throwing rocks at Border Patrol; millions of aliens living in the United States illegally; criminal aliens violently attacking, raping and murdering Americans … it’s all a “manufactured crisis.”

According to President Trump: The lawlessness at the border is a real “humanitarian and security crisis.” It is a “crisis of the heart and a crisis of the soul.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats have flatly declared that building a wall to fix the broken border is “immoral.”

“The fact is,” Mrs. Pelosi said after Mr. Trump’s Oval Office address, “the women and children at the border are not a security threat, they are a humanitarian challenge.”

No mention, of course, of all the unattached, able-bodied men at the border. Even as she so dishonestly mischaracterizes the truth of the border situation, Mrs. Pelosi accuses Mr. Trump of “malice” and “misinformation.”

Democrats say it is dangerous, immoral and dishonest for Mr. Trump to block funding for the federal government unless it includes all the tools he needs to finally seal the border once and for all — something politicians in both parties have promised the American people for 32 years, yet have refused to actually accomplish.

If basic national security is not a valid reason for “shutting down” the federal government, then what is?

To be sure, if Thomas Jefferson were alive today and penning the Declaration of Independence, the federal government’s refusal to carry out the simple wishes of the governed that the border be secured would be among the first and most egregious in his new Bill of Particulars against this government and its long train of abuses and usurpations.

And what are all the wizards in Washington fretting about these days? Federal workers.

Indeed, it is a sorry state that so many good and valuable federal workers would be treated so shabbily by such an incompetent and derelict federal government.

But folks around here would be wise to remember that the federal government does not exist to provide jobs to federal workers. It exists to serve the American people. And no such service is greater than the basic enforcement of laws and protection of our borders.

Oh, the shame and arrogance of these people!

The truth is, Mrs. Pelosi, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and the crazy leftist Democrats are the ones shutting down the government, to keep it from securing the border. And they are using federal workers as human shields in this indefensible iniquity.

During his winning address from the Oval Office, Mr. Trump batted away hysterical claims that securing the border is somehow “immoral.”

“Then why do wealthy politicians build walls, fences and gates around their homes? They don’t build walls because they hate the people on the outside, but because they love the people on the inside,” he said, charitably.

“The only thing that is immoral is the politicians to do nothing and continue to allow more innocent people to be so horribly victimized.”

Mr. Trump ticked off the number of criminal illegal aliens arrested for violent crimes. He listed the number of Americans who will die overdosing on drugs pouring across the broken border. And he highlighted some of the more despicable murders and crimes carried out against American citizens in recent months.

Indeed, the problem Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer have is not with Donald Trump.

It is with the American people.

⦁ Contact Charles Hurt at churt@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter @charleshurt.