The assertion that the charge of an electron is more real than the border between the US and Canada, for instance, is pretty compelling. What is the former assertion? I would suggest its most reasonable interpretation is that there exist a set of rituals which, when performed, regardless of who, where, or when throughout the observable universe and the vast majority of time, will always produce the same results and that these rituals furthermore imply a compelling ontology which is consistent, with maniacal precision, with a large number of non-ritualized phenomena throughout time and space. That is to say, less poetically, that an electron is a particular realization of the essential character of the universe, or, as physicist like to put it: particles are unitary representations of the Poincaré group.

A border is, in comparison, next to nothing. Transient in time and nearly meaningless in space. Surely of consequence to human beings but only via other human beings. Indeed, the very fact that armed men are willing to kill for the transgression of such a pitiful thing is a brutal absurdity which does little to recommend us as a species.