What the Left and Right Have in Common
Left & Right each hope to ban large group (Gun owners & Muslims, respectively) from US because 0.1% of them might be dangerous @instapundit
— Coyoteblog (@Coyoteblog) December 11, 2015
Dispatches from District 48
Left & Right each hope to ban large group (Gun owners & Muslims, respectively) from US because 0.1% of them might be dangerous @instapundit
— Coyoteblog (@Coyoteblog) December 11, 2015
You're still misunderstanding trespass, which is a property owner's right to exclude. The government doesn't own all the land, and no individual American owns all the land. The government merely exerts a territorial jurisdictional claim. This is in no way an act of trespass.
Immigration laws infringe on the private property rights of Americans. An American can't invite a foreigner onto his land, an American can't spend his money hiring a foreigner, an American can't rent to foreigner, an American can't sell to foreigner, an American can't live with or marry foreigner. Immigration laws don't just exclude foreigners from your private property or the government's property holdings, but instead tell other people what they can do with their property.
I'm sorry, but we're not debating what the law is. I fully concede the law is against me. I know that when people run out of good arguments, they just default to "well, we're doing it my way, so nah-nah." Yes, congratulations, you have a bad law on your side. I thought we were debating the ethical justifications behind these laws.
What's the justification for keeping them off public property? Implicit in this argument is that the government is still just in excluding foreigners, but only when properties are publicly held.
I love how you say "debunked" and then completely fail to debunk it.
If "we as a group" can infringe on the private property rights of individual Americans, then Americans don't have private property rights. You're just arguing that property rights should be subservient to democracy or the public will, which is another way of saying the right doesn't exist at all.
Rather than focusing on what powers the government has, maybe you should be asking what the ethical limitations of those powers should be.
Adriana, I guess I need to spell it out for you. A nation that does not control who crosses its borders is a nation that is not defending itself. This dates all the way back to the Treaty of Westphalia.
In today's world, open borders is suicidal. There are maybe 5 billion people who would love to come to America, even if they could only subsist in our welfare state. Most of those people do not share our values - the reason they want to come here is the poverty in their countries, a poverty caused by a culture and resultant political system that does not work nearly as well as ours. Muslims are an especially troubling case, because Islam, unlike other religions, *requires* that the government be controlled by a religious leader who enforces Sharia law. If you care about freedom, you do not want Sharia law!
As I say, modern Libertarianism is a suicide pact, partly because the ideology does not allow even necessary restrictions on the freedom of foreigners.
Beyond that, what did I say about restricting the freedoms of Americans?
Who said America wasn't free? I am saying that, in the current world situation, open borders is a suicide pact.
Before the 1920s, we had no welfare state. We didn't have a standard of living infinitely greater than that of a large mass of people in the world. We also had a government that felt free to discriminate against people on whatever grounds it felt like, including ethnicity.
No, conservatives don't "conflate border-crossing with trespass." We object to open borders for other reasons. The word "trespass" may appear in the rhetoric, but it isn't meant the way you object to.
Which is why we have a constitutional republic, with a Bill of Rights.
By your argument, any government is wrong, because any government can justify whatever it wants. Justification isn'
t the issue.
You didn't need to spell it out, as I fundamentally reject your premise. Defending borders against hostile invaders is not the same as prohibiting peaceful people from entering your country to live and work.
Do you really believe five billion people would relocate to the United States? Or that, even if that were probable or even possible, that we'd have the money to pay them welfare - even if we wanted to do so?
Immigrants don't bring their political systems and dysfunctional economies with them, otherwise this country would be as oppressive and backward as Eastern Europe, Ireland, and Italy. The good news is that immigrants are much less politically participatory than Americans, so even if you abhor their politics, be comforted in the fact that they don't vote much. I'm also not proposing we give them citizenship, just that we give them the right to take a job here.
Did you not read what I have to say about it?
You are restricting the rights of Americans to invite these foreigners onto their properties, to hire them, to sell to them, to buy from them, to rent to them, to live with them, to marry them. Do you think free markets apply within borders, but when an American wants to do business with a foreigner, that an American's rights no long matter?
I don't really understand the mentality that you can create a large border patrol bureaucracy that restricts and interferes in the economic activity of American citizens, as well as the comings and goings of Americans through border checkpoints, all for the purpose of catching illegal immigrants, and that somehow these policies won't curtail the rights of Americans, too. If you think that, then frankly, you're either very naive or selectively blind.
You've set up the false dilemma that we can only have the freedoms libertarians espouse if we restrict the rights of foreigners, but I don't accept that at all. You necessarily have to infringe on American rights in order to do this, firstly, so your position is completely contradictory. But secondly, you haven't presented a good case for believing that dastardly foreigners pose a threat to our liberty, especially more than other Americans do.
You're simply asserting that the law is bad without making any argument that would even slightly appeal to someone who doesn't already agree with you.
You're also pretending rights are absolute; they aren't. Your liberties are constrained by the interests of others. You may wish to offer refuge to a group of Syrians of unknown moral character and ability to support themselves. My concern for my welfare, the welfare of my family, friends and fellow citizens gives me a large stake in the decision, and thus, justly, a good deal of say in your legal choices.
Your literally true but simplistic argument of "Immigration laws infringe on the private property rights of Americans. An American can't invite a foreigner onto his land, an American can't spend his money hiring a foreigner, an American can't rent to foreigner, an American can't sell to foreigner, an American can't live with or marry foreigner," no matter how often you repeat it does not demonstrate the moral or rational strength of your position. Of course it does; and....? You can't have an atomic bomb on your property either.
BTW, my notion of what a (criminal) trespass is based on what I learned in a criminal law class, and I'm going to rely on that over your say so until you provide a credible source that supports your use.
I'm not saying well, "we're doing it my way, so nah-nah." I'm saying that you haven't made a case for the law being immoral or counter productive or for your preferred policy being moral or in the interest of the country, and that, on its face, it is harmful to the country.
Glad to hear this concession - it makes me think there might be an agreeable, but unstated view behind what you are advocating.
I have a large problem with breaking the law in a constitutional democracy like ours. We all have ways to freely advocate for different laws. Where we don't (think MLK), law-breaking is fine - but only where you are willing to accept the punishment as part of your effort to draw attention to a bad law. The people who broke our immigration laws should be deported. If you're ok with that, let's move to the meat of your argument instead of wasting time drinking the finger water.
I don't have a problem with large immigration, as long as we choose who comes in. Happily, we have a wide pool of willing immigrants to choose from. We could easily pull in millions of people who are persecuted in other countries, find a willing sponsor to guarantee they don't become a public burden, have no communicable diseases, and don't pose a security threat (example: Nigerian Christians or Iraqi Yazidis), We could easily find people who are rich/talented and would quickly be a net positive for our country. Why do we select on illegality instead?
If your argument is for more temporary work visas, I'm also ok with that. We used to regularly bring in Mexicans as seasonal farm labor to California. Both the farmers and Mexicans benefited. But the system is obviously completely beyond the control of the legal authorities.
Is there any common ground here? Are you advocating for a system that allows for differentiation between Americans and foreigners or something else entirely?
Not sure exactly what you mean. American democracy is tempered by the Constitution, which affords us some protection against mob rule.
Yes, much of sharia violates the US Constitution. But, during the past seven years, many of the "executive actions" taken by Obama also violated the US Constitution. When the Congress does not use its power to check the Executive, the Rule of Law has failed at the highest level. Certainly you cannot then expect it to prevail at lower levels.
"Immigrants don't bring their political systems and dysfunctional economies with them"
I highly disagree with this, at least the part about political systems. (The economics is more of a 2nd order effect) We don't even have to look outside our borders to know this is not true. What about The Free State Project? Admittedly, not all migrations are that overtly political. Yet, whether it is the Mayflower, the Irish Potato farmers of the 1800s, Jewish scientists and intellectuals of the early 20th, or the syrian refugees of today, they all import a culture and belief system with them. The question is how miscible that culture is with the prevailing one, and if proper dilution (assimilation) can be achieved. From previous comments I know you assign very little weight (zero?) to this sort of cultural argument, but nonetheless it should be obvious that most people consider this to be a significant factor and it shouldn't be simply dismissed with the usual epithets (irrational xenophobia, racism, petty trade protectionism)
"...create a large border patrol bureaucracy that restricts and interferes in the economic activity of American citizens..."
Not all restrictions and interferences in economic activity are irrational or immoral. For instance, border control does a number of things toy help prevent invasive species coming in (not always successfully) with agricultural products. Border agents are rationally curious if you have been spending an inordinate amount of time in terrorist hotspots. I am willing to say the idea of anchor babies is overblown, but not unheard of by a long shot. The problem is, whenever someone brings up valid reasons for border control we are treated to dismissive moral gamesmanship of the "you are more likely to be hit by an asteroid than to die from terrorism, how can you deny people their freedoms" variety. As to the curtailing of freedoms, what if the answer is not naivete or blindness, but a willingness to strike a different balance between freedoms and security, or between individual and community interests.
I would argue that it is frequently the anarchocapitalist that sets up the false dichotomy by saying that either we have absolute personal freedoms or we have utter immorality. It is a pretty severe strain of philosophy, but it is internally consistent. However, because it is so unyielding it doesn't seem to be pragmatic* to me and it doesn't seem to understand that the contradictions of our policy largely come about because we are trying to balance 300 million wildly different ideas on how to organize society (for lack of a more neutral term.) I tried having this discussion previously in another post, and got called a relativist and collectivist for my troubles. Even the minarchists aren't really part of the club, it seems. (I always wonder how they expect things to change when they are out burning potential allies as heretics. It seems to me being a libertarian of any stripe is hard enough.)
*While I largely subscribe to ethical pragmatism, I am not sure I completely agree with wikipedia's "contrast with other normative theories" in that I believe both individuals and cultures strive for morality, but that the endpoint of those journeys may not necessarily lead to the same place. (how would societies be able to change over time otherwise?) I wholly endorse the 2nd point under that section though.
but the welfare state and attendant social encumbrances didn't exist before then... The Milton Friedman video in the last post that touched on this pretty much called this one out
A fair point, I think. I wish more people would do this sort of exercise when talking about racial issues as well. I always felt that if you couldn't transpose [black] and [white] (or the appropriate equivalents) into your phrases and end up with equally acceptable statements, perhaps it may be a good time to rethink the moral foundations of your assertions.
Where did this 0.1% number come from? Sounds a lot like the BS of 97% of scientists ....
No, I don't agree. I just concede that the law isn't what I want it to be. Similarly, when people break drug laws, I can admit they have broken the law and still say I don't think they should be sent to prison.
I also feel the need to remind you that we all break the law. If breaking law is that great of a sin, then this righteous anger should be directed just as much toward yourself and your fellow Americans (if not more so) than illegal immigrants.
This is precisely the opposite of what I am arguing. While I'm fine with background checks or tests for dangerous communicable diseases (it's worth noting that we don't check Americans after returning from overseas travel, but I digress), I am specifically advocating that we shift the burden off the immigrant onto the government. People should be able to move anywhere, take a job anywhere, and the government must demonstrate why it's such a bad idea that interference is necessary.
If the government can prove, for example, that the person is a dangerous terrorist or is carrying a virulent strain of tuberculosis, then fine, that might be grounds to stop immigration.
Think of this like a warrant. Is it always wrong for the government to enter your property? No. If the government can show that you have likely committed a crime, then it can go onto your property without permission from you. Likewise, the government has no business interfering in the market and infringing on the rights of individuals (American or otherwise) without making the same appeal.
And just on a fundamental level, I don't see good reason to leave these decisions up to the government. They don't know how many stalks of wheat we need to grow or how many cars we need to manufacture every year. For some reason we think we can trust the government to sit on high and just know the number of immigrants and the type of immigrants we need that will result in some sort of perfect economic harmonious balance. Maybe, but I highly doubt it. Every restrictionist conservative and libertarian suddenly becomes a believer in central planning when immigration is concerned. How about the number of immigrants the market can bear?
Actually, I did. Most of my post was spent telling you why immigration laws violate the property rights and liberties of Americans and foreigners alike.
I didn't realize that you wanted my full and complete argument for why immigration is good, or that I have been derelict in my duty because I didn't do so.
Okay, so rights don't exist. What you can and can't do it subject to the whims (sorry - interests) of others.
So, you believe we get to engage in collective decision making regarding who moves into a neighborhood? When I moved into my place, I didn't need permission from the city council or my neighbors or block captain. I just sort of dealt with the landlord and move in.
But I was moving in from out of state and I could've been dangerous or sick. I had no one to vouch for me. So, is this not a risk we get to avoid among other Americans, but when it concerns a foreigner, we do? What would be the rational distinction there?
Moreover, I'd say that if you can demonstrate somebody is likely dangerous, then you'd have good cause to interfere. But if your argument is that your anxiety about Syrians generally justifies your interference, that's hilarious to me.
Sorry, what? Is an immigrant like an atomic bomb now?
If you can show an immigrant is dangerous, then by all means, stop him from immigrating here. I am only suggesting that we let people do what they want unless the government can prove that they are dangerous in some way. That's a far, far cry from our immigration laws now.
Time to go back, then, if you don't understand that the government and Americans don't own all the land.
I absolutely have made a case for the law being immoral, but it's based on first principles about individual rights, which you don't share, so that might be the problem at hand.
Again, if you want other arguments from me about why immigration is great, that's reasonable, but up until now our discussion has been relatively focused on a couple of areas of disagreement. You should ask rather than fault me for not having presented arguments that would have been rather unrelated here.
Remember that you wrote a couple sentences on trespass and then you defaulted to "no intrinsic legal right to be here." We're not debating the law or the content of it, except the concept of trespass, so I don't find this "no intrinsic legal right to be here" to be especially convincing. We can in theory make the law whatever want it to be, so this really does amount to no more than "nah-nah" or - worse yet - a failure to understand that pointing at the law is not an argument.
If you think you have a really good reason to interfere in a peaceful immigrant's life, or between an American and an immigrant who are just trying to work together, then I want to know what the reason is. Immigration laws presume that moving here and taking a job here are wrong until permission is granted. They don't state a reason or need a reason. They just say "no, until yes." I am saying "yes, until no."
Prove an immigrant is dangerous or dangerously sick and I'll call that a just interference. If you want me to say that "community interests" are good enough to mass discriminate against foreigners and violate the liberties of Americans, even to all of their detriment, then that's not going to happen.
I think it's odd that you view the situation this way. We're never going to balance the diverse interests of 300+ million people. You are complaining that anarchocapitalism isn't pragmatic or yielding, but then you have such a strange, almost utopian and unyielding view that this is an effort worth undertaking - imposing a top-down arrangement that attempts to balance all of our ideas and interests. Anarchocapitalism is such much more practical and yielding, at least in this single regard, because it doesn't attempt to impose a vision of how to live and it doesn't attempt to understand why you want to live the way you want to.
Sure, they do contribute culturally. They change our culture to some disagree and then they assimilate usually. I think that's good. Somehow it escapes everyone's notice that the culture we're desperately trying to preserve today from unwanted foreign influence is fundamentally an amalgamation of foreign cultures from periods of mass immigration. There's strong evidence that immigrants today do a good job of assimilating, maybe even more so in the past, especially in terms of learning English (I've been going back to census data from the 1900s to 1930s, as well as from 2000-2010, and it looks good).
But you'll have a harder argument to make that our political system will be irreparably damaged from immigration. The research doesn't bear that out. Immigrants aren't as politically interested as native-born Americans for whatever reason. And we know that we survived mass immigration without scrapping the Constitution and instituting a King of Italy or an Irish Catholic papal state that oppresses Protestants.
Pew: 8% of U.S. Muslims Say Suicide Bombing, Violence Against Civilian Targets ‘Often’ or ‘Sometimes Justified’
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/michael-w-chapman/pew-144000-us-muslims-say-suicide-bombings-civilian-targets-often-or
You know that about legal gun owners. I know that. I could quote statistics showing that legal gun owners are less violent than the average American citizen, and that Americans with concealed-carry licenses are more abiding than cops - even without attempting to count all the times cops successfully cover up for crooked cops. But the half of the country that votes Democrat won't admit any of that. If you leave rights up to democracy, you might have a political majority, but you don't have any rights.
OTOH, the data also doesn't support the claim that Muslim immigrants are so dangerous in the USA. (It's quite different in many European countries, where they have been allowed in but NOT allowed to assimilate.) There's a quite large population of Muslims of Middle Eastern origins around Dearborn Michigan - but Michigan's worst terrorists have always been of quite different origins: Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols were white Christians, as were most of the bomb-throwing radicals of 40 and 50 years ago. You can probably find some Black Muslim terrorists (and lots of criminals), but those were converts from Christianity, with ancestry in this country going back for centuries. The Dearborn Muslim populations aren't perfect, but the vast majority are working to get ahead just like the rest of us. They do sometimes vote to impose their tribal superstitions on others - but so do the Dutch on the west side of the state.
A few of this new batch might be different - but you can't prove it.
Your comment isn't really relevant, as my comment wasn't about the people who are already here. (But they aren't as pure as the riven snow either: http://www.catholic.org/news/national/story.php?id=66079) Fourteen % is a nontrivial number.
That said, you did make a few good points earlier in your comment, but I'm disappointed that one who can make those points would resort to a couple of assertions you made. Your comparison of the behavior of Amish in the US with that of a lot Muslims is laughably absurd (unless thee are a lot of Amish going around shooting and blowing people up or threatening to if the entire population doesn't conform to their religious and moral beliefs).
As for "a few of this new batch might be different but you can't prove it," that is an even more absurd statement. First, 50% to 90% of Muslims in every non European country with over 25% Muslim population say the think violence is justifiable to bring about shira in their home country. Second, ISIS has said they are using the refuges to get their people into the US. Third, proof is irrelevant: the mere reasonable suspicion that a real threat exist is enough to justify keeping them out. They have to intrinsic legal or moral right to come.
Who's trying to ban gun owners? Come on? We're just arguing for reasonable laws to keep criminals and the mentally ill from getting guns and killing people with them. Stop the hyperventilating about proposed gun laws. Even your favorite SC justice, Scalia, acknowledged there's nothing preventing the implementation of reasonable laws regulating guns.
Milton Friedman - Illegal Immigration
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eyJIbSgdSE
At least two fundamental principles of Western law had their origin in Mosaic Israel. The first principle was the rule of law itself: every resident was to be protected equally by the civil law. The second principle was open immigration. The nation’s treatment of the immigrant served as a touchstone in Israel of the nation’s faithfulness to the first principle.
https://mises.org/library/sanctuary-society-and-its-enemies-0
The right to travel is an individual personal human right, long recognized under the natural law as immune from governmental interference. Of course, governments have been interfering with this right for millennia. The Romans restricted the travel of Jews; Parliament restricted the travel of serfs; Congress restricted the travel of slaves; and starting in the late 19th century, the federal government has restricted the travel of non-Americans who want to come here and even the travel of those already here. All of these abominable restrictions of the right to travel are based not on any culpability of individuals, but rather on membership in the groups to which persons have belonged from birth.
Nativism is the arch-enemy of the freedom to travel, as its adherents believe they can use the coercive power of the government to impair the freedom of travel of persons who are unwanted not because of personal behavior, but solely on the basis of where they were born. Nativism teaches that we lack natural rights and enjoy only those rights the government permits us to exercise.
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2013/01/andrew-p-napolitano/immigration-and-freedom/
Birthright citizenship should be ended
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2009/02/laurence-m-vance/beyond-open-and-closed-borders/
The President and Immigration
In 1882, Congress gave itself the power to regulate immigration
Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which limited the number of immigrants from China
In 1924, Congress passed the Johnson-Reed Act
In 1952, Congress passed the Immigration and Nationality Act, which expressly authorized the president to suspend the immigration of any person, class of people or group of people into the United States for public health, public safety or national security reasons.
In 1979, President Jimmy Carter exercised this presidential power to bar anyone from Iran from entering the country until the hostage crisis was resolved.
In 2011, President Barack Obama used this presidential power to bar anyone from Iraq from entering the country for six months.
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2017/02/andrew-p-napolitano/president-immigration/
In Switzerland, localities decided on immigration, and immigrants or their employers had to pay to admit a prospective migrant.
In this way, residents could better ensure that their communities would be populated by people who would add value and who would not stick them with the bill for a laundry list of “benefits.”
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/11/lew-rockwell/open-borders-assault-private-property/
So much for freedom of movement. If you don’t pay up, you’re stuck. This is not an exaggeration. Try crossing the border without a passport. Watch what happens. You will not be allowed out. Let me repeat: You will not be allowed out! Resist, and you’ll be thrown in a cage. Resist well, and you might be shot. The only way you are getting out is by paying up. And only when you’re done paying can you purchase your government-inflated airline ticket.
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2012/07/william-jackson/another-lost-freedom-the-freedom-tomove/
The freedom to move does not include or imply the freedom to trespass.
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/12/laurence-m-vance/differences/
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2006/09/stephen-cox/the-fallacy-of-open-immigration/