Libertarian ping! To be added or removed from my ping list freepmail me or post a message here.
Posted on 12/11/2006 11:27:25 AM PST by neverdem
libertarianism bump for later.........
I agree, and add the obvious: libertarians advocate ending all government welfare programs, medical care, and schooling.
Enact these parts of the libertarian program first, and the attraction for the wrong kind of immigrant declines.
bump for later.........
The Derb is pretty accurate about libertarianism only being a semi-force with US citizens. The only other place is maybe Australia.
All libertarian talk of "open borders" is predicated on these reforms having been made. No libertarian advocates open borders with our existing set of social programs.
What about Libertarians? I haven't looked at the LP's platform recently.
The Portland Plank Massacre of 2006 - What really happened at the Libertarian Party convention?
Unless the narrow soul is a member of an arbitrarily designated "non-Western" group who therefore possesses "otherness." The same liberals that demand that Americans be "citizens of the world" always seem to defend the sovereignty ot places like North Korea and support every "national liberation movement" in the world. Sometimes the movement in question is actually white, European, and chr*stian (like the IRA or Basque ETA).
The other day the Sundance Channel had an adulatory documentary on the Franco-ist Falangist Boricua movement of Puerto Rico. When are we going to apologize to Japan for defeating them in WWII? Why, we might as well have been allied with Hitler mach shemo!) to do such a terrible thing!
And remember, folks, the Africans are the true culture-creating "aryans" who invented civilization. I'm just trying to figure out where Marx ever said this.
Agreed. It'd be one of the faster way to commit cultural suicide. We have plenty of ways we are doing that already. No need to add another. Bush's Shamnesty program will do exactly that though...
So far as the first of those questions is concerned, I confess myself baffled. I think that what is going on here is just a sort of ideological overshoot. Suspicion of state power is of course at the center of classical libertarianism. If the state is making and enforcing decisions about who may settle in territories under the state’s jurisdiction, that is certainly a manifestation of state power, and therefore comes under libertarian suspicion. Just why libertarians consider it an obnoxious manifestation — well, that’s where my bafflement begins. (That some exercises of state power are necessary and un-obnoxious is conceded by nearly all libertarians.)
Actually, many professing "libertarians" belong to the racialist and anti-Semitic "palaeolibertarian" movement. These nut jobs (Ever hear of Lew Rockwell? Remember "Tex-Oma?" Ever taken a look at "Liberty Forum?") somehow mix in anti-statist rhetoric with rants against "world Zionism" and "the muds." I must confess that I've come to think of these people first whenever I think of libertarians rather than the hippie doper variety.
Perhaps not. The problem is, issues like immigration are a side show where libertarianism is concerned.
It's more valuable to focus on a place where libertarianism reigns supreme in our society: Hollywood. The poster people for "maximum liberty" are Paris Hilton and the rest of the celebrity trash pack.
The lesson of Hollywood is simply this: it's what happens when libertarianism exists without concepts of civic virtue and civic duty. The slavish devotion paid to the moronocracy of Hollywood are evidence of a societal rot that is far more troublesome than illegal immigration.
"All libertarian talk of "open borders" is predicated on these reforms having been made. No libertarian advocates open borders with our existing set of social programs."
Thank you for finally saying that, when I say "open borders" conservatives automatically accuse me of wanting to let in hordes of poor mexicans to use up our welfare.
Me neither, and I'm a libertarian. I'd vote RAT before LP, most libertarians aren't LP anyway (use the term "small l"
I think your speaking for yourself. Ive seen Libertarians make the case for open borders as a means of breaking the welfare state.
Excellent post by Derbyshire. He is really a great commentator, one of the best.
Libertarian ping! To be added or removed from my ping list freepmail me or post a message here.
So what. Republicans advocate open borders too.
Libertarians are stronger on illegal immigration than Republicans. The socialist programs, government interference in the free market would cease, which means employers won't have to hire illegals under the table because able-bodied workers (previously on welfare) would be doing these jobs. And that would discourage illegals from coming here.
Still, there should be a wall and border security, and if the LP wants to win elections they should come out strong on this as this is part of national security/sovereignity issue that's already part of the LP platform.
Maybe so, but plenty of libertarians seem to hold the bizarre belief that you can dismantle these programs while at the same time importing millions who would take advantage of them. This is, as Derbyshire says, nuts, because mass immigration (legal and illegal) results in more voters for the party championing these programs.
Derbyshire's assuming libertarians are just conservatives in disguise. But that's not always the case. A libertarian may be a determined cosmopolitan and may have an active hostility against local beliefs and norms. If that's true, there's nothing irrational in libertarian support for mass immigration.
As to why I think libertarians are nuts to favor mass uncontrolled immigration from the third world: I think they are nuts because their enthusiasm on this matter is suicidal to their cause. Their ideological passion is blinding them to a rather obvious fact: that libertarianism is a peculiarly American doctrine, with very little appeal to the huddled masses of the third world. If libertarianism implies mass third-world immigration, then it is self-destroying. Libertarianism is simply not attractive either to illiterate peasants from mercantilist Latin American states, or to East Asians with traditions of imperial-bureaucratic paternalism, or to the products of Middle Eastern Muslim theocracies.
Except that once they get here those immigrants have already been uprooted. Some may very well support the kind of policies they had at home, but others are happy to escape conditions abroad, and many adapt to conditions here whether they want to or not.
Pro-immigration libertarians are making a gamble that may or may not pay off. It sounds like they're trusting flux and change, and that's a different mentality from Derbyshire's. He may be right about the consequences, but he hasn't quite captured what those he criticizes are about.
If decades of libertarian proselytizing have only achieved that much success with a population rooted in the traditions of Pericles and Magna Carta, of the Renaissance, Reformation, and Enlightenment, of Washington, Jefferson, and Madison, how well should libertarians expect to do with the political descendants of emperors and caliphs, of Toussaint L’Ouverture and Mao Tse-tung?
There's a lot to be said against mass immigration and Derbyshire's point is valid, but I wonder if that bit about Toussaint isn't a cheap shot.
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