Victor Davis Hanson’s new column asks an interesting question: if the president is willing to take risks abroad, why won’t he do it at home? The Bush Dilemma.

We are folk of emotion as well as reason, and we simply don’t like seeing our gas prices soar while we borrow money to pay billions to illegitimate regimes who recycle those dollars in ways that often hurt the United States. Every time an American fills up at the pump, he is reminded not that it is a good deal compared to prices in Japan or Europe, but that the billons we send abroad for $55-a-barrel oil are insults to our pride as well as to our pocket books — and so we wish it all to stop, pronto.

Everyone from the Wall Street Journal to the National Council of La Raza assures us that open borders offer a cure for the demographic crisis of an affluent West, ensure cheap laborers, and reflect a confident multicultural society. Once again: Perhaps.

But a growing number of Americans simply doesn’t like the idea that their laws are not enforced but mocked. They bristle at lectures about national security’s not applying to a porous 1,500-mile border. And they go ballistic when a failed Mexican president hectors Americans about how insensitive and callous they are to be concerned about their own sovereignty — and all this from a corrupt government that can neither feed nor house its own people, depends on billions from U.S. worker remittances to stay afloat, and publishes illustrated guides for its emigrating population on how to thwart American laws.

In short, the president’s critical strength — his bravery in the face of bitter status-quo invective, his worry more over history’s verdict than polls of the hour, and his concern over the honor, rather than the mere happiness, of the American people — is either being untapped or is dissipated here at home.