On Sunday, Trump’s US government temporarily closed the US/Mexico border at San Ysidro between Tijuana and San Diego. He ordered the use of teargas to disperse the crowds, colloquially and pejoratively described by some as the “migrant caravan,” many of whom include children, some young enough to be in diapers. The photograph above is already being shared worldwide as acknowledgement of American esteem falling one rung lower on Trump’s watch (while it still stands many rungs higher than it’s deserved in my 38-year lifetime).

There’s a lot to be said here and many folks are saying it. America turning its back on immigrants is not just a fundamental moral transgression, but a particularly hypocritical one, even for a state that makes its bread and butter using the word “freedom” while distributing death-robots to obliterate people without due process. “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,” is something almost as many people can recite as the Pledge of Allegiance, adorning the Statue of Liberty which stands as such a vital beacon of our self-image that we closed it for almost eight years after 9/11 (we had planes back in the air after three days). America rejecting immigrants is a fundamental abrogation of our values. It’s Brazil banning soccer. It’s prohibition in France, Germany, and Russia. It’s Egypt bulldozing the Pyramids, China knocking over the Great Wall, Peru rolling boulders on top of Machu Picchu.

And yet, the would-be “resistance,” the Democratic leaders hoping to contrast themselves with Trump, along with their thought-leader allies across many elements of the press and punditry, they were not content to plant their flag on the United States of America as a nation of immigrants. That stance was somehow, largely, deemed too risky or edgy or left-wing. Instead, the almost immediate snap stance, one that almost all contours of debate on immigration in the US have hinged on since, was that asylum seekers were the main issue. Oh sure, illegal immigrants, we’re not here to argue with you on them, this argument went. But asylum seekers, they’re the ones with rights! Let’s argue about that.

I understand the temptation behind this move. It feels clever and deft, right? “Illegal immigrants are hard, they’re a non-starter for some people, they’ve got that nasty unpalatable word ‘illegal’ right there in the name! Who’s going to go for that? And we don’t want to look like extremists, do we? But asylum seekers, now they’re the ticket. No one could blame someone for leaving the violence and oppression of their homeland, could they? And besides, every country in the world agrees they have a right to find American soil and claim asylum!” I see this argument and I see why it feels logical, unassailable, and correct. But it’s destroying any chance of resisting the notion of Trump’s attempt to essentially fully close the borders (and deter anyone else who might challenge such closure in the process). Just like has happened with every similar dive toward the middle that Democrats have enacted under similar pressures.

There are several problems with this move. First, it gives up a huge chunk of the argument. It’s hard to track down reliable data about what percentage of immigrants to the US are asylum seekers in any given year, but it’s a slim minority. By immediately conceding a large majority of the argument, you’re making a philosophical concession that you agree with the principle of tough, stringent border laws and that most immigration is bad, but you just want to draw the line for a small number of super-legit people.

Second, it makes the entire debate about the legitimacy of those people rather than the question as a whole. Emboldened by immediately winning so much of the argument, opponents of immigration get to go on the offensive and question the validity of asylum claims as a whole. And given that some people do claim asylum who don’t meet the definition of deserving it, now the line of seeming last-resort legitimacy gets breached by minority counter-example. Focusing the argument and battle-line here, rather than an inclusive or realistic immigration policy writ large, ensures that we will be debating individual cases of asylum-seeking perfection and the entire principle of immigration, inclusion, or our economy’s reliance on “illegal” immigrants flies out the window.

Finally, of course, it legitimizes horrendous tactics like family separation at the border by discarding the majority of people experiencing these issues and only focusing on the perfect few who are legitimately provable asylum seekers. Rather than decrying the entire practice as awful, this obsession with only defending the line at asylum seekers makes the general practice seem acceptable and focuses the outrage on a handful of people experiencing it. This leads to further concessions and piecemealing away of the argument, because it becomes one of detail and specific example instead of idea and broad ideal.

As a standalone incident, this grand concession would be unfortunate but, again, perhaps understandable. Unfortunately, it’s emblematic of a whole system of Democratic/centrist moves over the last few decades, often epitomized by the Obama administration itself. The logical explanation has to be either a breathtaking naivete that presumes compromising more than halfway upfront will be taken as a sign of goodwill rather than an opportunity for exploitation or a cynical attempt to resist conservative corporatist policies that one secretly wishes to largely support. Either is disturbing and devastatingly self-defeating to a movement that would fancy itself an alternative to Trump and his predecessors.

To wit: Obamacare. I trot out this example a lot, but it’s salient. Not only was single-payer never on the table, but the public option modifier to Obamacare was yanked from the table before Republicans even had time to really criticize it. (You know, the Republicans who were in the scant minority in both houses of Congress at the time and thus were irrelevant to the policy’s passage.) So we were left trying to tout as a left-wing achievement a law that was drafted by the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation and pioneered by Mitt Romney to save corporatized, private-profit health insurance as we know it. And what happened since? Obamacare, once a hail-Mary from the right to avert the implementation of globally standard non-profit healthcare, became the leftmost fencepost in the discussion. Suddenly, not repealing this conservative standard became an act of radical liberalism. And so we are left gaslighting ourselves into believing that Obamacare is helping save healthcare (it’s not, it’s less than the least we could do) while fending off right-leaning proposals that would make the 1990s Heritage Foundation blush.

This move happens over and over again. It’s DACA becoming the standard bearer of immigration reform, a policy so milktoasty and watered down that it was believed that no sane person could oppose it because it only granted rights to a tiny, most innocent fraction of immigrants. (Guess what? That’s gone and now labeled as far-left-wing communism.) It’s the Afghanistan War still going on (longest American war by at least five years and counting) because Obama didn’t want to say all the Bush wars were a mistake, so let’s compromise and say “Iraq bad, Afghanistan good.” It’s talking about background checks and bump-stocks in the gun control debate instead of policies that actually make it difficult to get guns. It’s marijuana legalization without retroactive pardons for those serving time for marijuana offenses while empowering young “entrepreneurs” to get rich growing pot domestically while refusing to engage in the larger mechanisms of the Drug War and addiction.

The product of center/left gradualism has only been more radical extremism from the right wing, emboldened by how much gets conceded at the opening of any argument. And the Republicans are no closer to seeing this as a goodwill gesture or reciprocating with in-kind compromise than Lucy is ready to really truly hold that football for Charlie Brown’s next place kick.

There have been a few bright spots where this level of self-sacrificing gradualism has not dominated the discourse and impressive results have been achieved. The primary one in recent memory was gay marriage, a victory achieved through the courts rather than political machinations. Fortunately the flag had been planted for gay marriage early enough that rolling back this aspirational standard wasn’t really an option and thus the measure was achieved in full. We could imagine a contemporary look at this issue, were the courts ten or twenty years behind the status quo, just trying to argue that gays didn’t deserve jail time instead of arguing that they deserved marriage. Or perhaps that celibate Christian gays could marry… as long as they promised not to consummate.

We are told, repeatedly, often angrily, that politics and compromise and gradualism are the only hope for progress. No matter how much progress is achieved exclusively by radicals, no matter how little is gained and how much is lost by obsessively clinging to concession for concession’s sake, we hear shouts and defamations of adhering to hard-line principles in every corner of contemporary American discourse. And yet, who do you see succeeding out there? Sure, the Democrats gained some seats in Congress, but if they use their new power and platform to hold the line only at asylum seekers, only at Iraqis and not Afghans, only at Jamal Khashoggi and not all of Yemen, only at half-repealed Obamacare, then what are they even fighting for?

The left needs to be willing to stand up and rally around principle, stand up and defend all immigrants as America intended, stand up and espouse the boldest and best versions of arguments that represent the idealized version of America. That’s the kind of leadership that excites people, that attracts followers, that makes people believe in the possibility of the future. The other side certainly isn’t building its support by advocating half-measures and moderation. By blindly compromising and conceding without any hope of return, we’re only becoming poorer, more moderate versions of that we hope to overcome.