Democracy depends on borders

The Left has found its response to the idea that Syrian refugees should be carefully screened to make sure they aren't Islamic terrorists.

As though catching a whiff of something unpleasant, it dismisses the idea as unfit for polite conservation. Contempt is a useful substitute of cogent argument. Even with 129 dead in Paris, some murdered by a terrorist disguised as a refugee, the thundering voice of the Left says it's unacceptable to start talking about tighter border control.

France has already reimposed controls, and other countries are likely to do the same. Candidates for the Republican presidential nomination and a slew of GOP lawmakers in Congress argue that the jihadis' assault on western civilization last week should prompt a rethink about President Obama's plan to accept 10,000 refugees from Syria.

The Islamic State has long said it would sneak killers into Europe under the cover of mass migration, and it has. So it is reasonable and humane to insist on checking carefully before refugees are let in.

Yet the New York Times editorial board wrote last weekend, "The sort of attacks the Islamic State, or ISIS, has launched are hard to anticipate or prevent, yet in Europe each one intensifies the raucous xenophobia of far ­right nationalists ever ready to demonize Muslim citizens, immigrants and refugees, and shut down Europe's open internal borders."

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