Campus Reform’s Cabot Phillips posted a video today in which he asked students on the UC Santa Barbara campus what they thought of President Trump sending National Guard troops to the southern border. As you would expect, the mostly left-leaning students were against it. Some suggested it was a waste of time, with one student pointing to airplanes as an easy way to overcome border guards.

Of course, most illegal immigrants coming across the southern border are walking across. Buying a plane ticket would be expensive and would also create a paper trail showing that someone had entered. Walking across illegally (assuming the individual isn’t caught) allows them to move around the country without creating a record of any kind.

One individual suggested the troops sent to the border were there to “shoot to kill.” In fact, while most of the National Guard troops will be armed, none of them are authorized to make arrests or engage people along the border. They would, of course, be allowed to defend themselves if attacked, i.e. if someone started shooting at them, they could probably shoot back.

In any case, when Phillips pointed out that President Obama had done the same thing during his tenure, the students seemed confused. One woman responded “I did not know that,” but other students either didn’t say anything or said they didn’t really keep up with politics.

The most interesting response came from a young woman who said, “When President Obama did it, I felt that there was different coverage as to what the intentions were.” She added, “So I guess I would have to read up more about the intentions behind Trump’s versus the intention behind Obama’s.” Well, I can help with that. Here’s Associated Press coverage of Obama’s move from 2010:

Sounds to me like Obama called up the troops so Border Patrol agents could arrest more illegal immigrants. But I think the young woman’s answer reveals something more fundamental about how many people think about politics. She’s operating on a simple premise: Obama is good and Trump is bad. Therefore Trump sending troops to the border is a bad idea. And if Obama did the same there must be some hidden difference in intentions to explain it. That must be true because: Obama is good. Only, as you can see above, there’s really no difference in intenions because real life isn’t that simple.

I don’t mean to attack these particular students because I think they’re probably very representative of students (and a lot of adults) everywhere. As we’ve seen recently, there are high school students who know even less who have become leading lights on the left. No one cares so long as the simplistic underlying assumption (left good, right bad) is the operating assumption. Here’s the clip.