DebateGate

Return of Patriarchy
by Philip Longman

Across the globe, people are choosing to have fewer children or none at all. Governments are desperate to halt the trend, but their influence seems to stop at the bedroom door. Are some societies destined to become extinct? Hardly. It’s more likely that conservatives will inherit the Earth. Like it or not, a growing proportion of the next generation will be born into families who believe that father knows best.

“If we could survive without a wife, citizens of Rome, all of us would do without that nuisance.” So proclaimed the Roman general, statesman, and censor Quintus Caecilius Metellus Macedonicus, in 131 B.C. Still, he went on to plead, falling birthrates required that Roman men fulfill their duty to reproduce, no matter how irritating Roman women might have become. “Since nature has so decreed that we cannot manage comfortably with them, nor live in any way without them, we must plan for our lasting preservation rather than for our temporary pleasure.”

With the number of human beings having increased more than six-fold in the past 200 years, the modern mind simply assumes that men and women, no matter how estranged, will always breed enough children to grow the population—at least until plague or starvation sets in. It is an assumption that not only conforms to our long experience of a world growing ever more crowded, but which also enjoys the endorsement of such influential thinkers as Thomas Malthus and his many modern acolytes.

Yet, for more than a generation now, well-fed, healthy, peaceful populations around the world have been producing too few children to avoid population decline. That is true even though dramatic improvements in infant and child mortality mean that far fewer children are needed today (only about 2.1 per woman in modern societies) to avoid population loss. Birthrates are falling far below replacement levels in one country after the next—from China, Japan, Singapore, and South Korea, to Canada, the Caribbean, all of Europe, Russia, and even parts of the Middle East.

Fearful of a future in which the elderly outnumber the young, many governments are doing whatever they can to encourage people to have children. Singapore has sponsored “speed dating” events, in hopes of bringing busy professionals together to marry and procreate. France offers generous tax incentives for those willing to start a family. In Sweden, the state finances day care to ease the tension between work and family life. Yet, though such explicitly pronatal policies may encourage people to have children at a younger age, there is little evidence they cause people to have more children than they otherwise would. As governments going as far back as imperial Rome have discovered, when cultural and economic conditions discourage parenthood, not even a dictator can force people to go forth and multiply.

Throughout the broad sweep of human history, there are many examples of people, or classes of people, who chose to avoid the costs of parenthood. Indeed, falling fertility is a recurring tendency of human civilization. Why then did humans not become extinct long ago? The short answer is patriarchy.

http://acuf.org/issues/issue58/060422news.asp

Ethics theory often misunderstood
(http://www.suntimes.com/news/otherviews/233232,CST-FIN-Milton29.article)

January 29, 2007

BY ALEXEI M. MARCOUX

Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman died on Nov. 16, and this week at the University of Chicago, where he taught for 30 years, friends, colleagues and admirers will gather to honor his positive contributions to the world in which we live.

And there are many.

We owe our escape from the stagflation of the 1970s to the embrace of Friedman's monetary policy ideas. We owe the creation of our highly professional, all-volunteer military in part to his vigorous efforts to end the draft.

But there's one contribution that will likely go unnoticed: his contribution to the field of business ethics.

Perhaps the most reprinted article ever published on corporate social responsibility -- the belief that corporations have a responsibility to address social concerns -- is Friedman's 1970 New York Times Magazine piece, "The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits."

It is also the most maligned and misunderstood.

A staple of business ethics textbooks preaching corporate social responsibility, Friedman is generally presented as a foil, a what-not-to-believe.
Friedman's view is simple, straightforward and largely contained in his title.

Business firms are purpose-built entities, well-suited to creating wealth through market exchanges, and ill-suited to other purposes -- like solving the myriad social and environmental problems that corporate social responsibility advocates demand.

Friedman said there is a place to address those problems, and that place is the political arena.

The social responsibility of business is to increase profits -- not to boost the stock price by what-ever means are convenient, or to ensure that stock analysts are duped or co-opted into giving a healthy "buy" recommendation. Consistent profit-making is virtually impossible without disciplined, ethical conduct.

Many of the longstanding aphorisms of business support this: "Make the customer, not the sale" and "Don't sell a man one car -- sell him five cars over 15 years." They reflect the importance of making good on promises to customers. Profitability -- like that coming from repeat business -- is a rough but reliable barometer of ethical conduct because the cheated rarely come back for seconds.

However, because he does not pay obeisance to the enthusiasms of business ethicists, Friedman is often cast by them as inspiration for the worst excesses of corporate America -- his views characterized as leading invariably to the scandals the corporate world has so recently suffered.

And yet, nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, Friedman's views provide a much clearer, more straightforward and more intuitive critique of wrongdoers like Enron than the corporate social responsibility crowd can muster.

Before its fall, Enron was Wall Street's darling. But it was also much celebrated by the social responsibility crowd. Named repeatedly to lists of the best places to work and the best-run companies, Enron was also the winner of several social responsibility awards.

It issued regular reports on its social and environmental performance, and even embraced the so-called "triple bottom line" (social, environmental, financial) much adored by advocates.

Why would Enron executives concern themselves with social and environmental performance? Because they recognized that corporate social responsibility initiatives bring freedom from accountability. Complex, multifaceted mandates to achieve social, environmental and financial goals are the self-serving executive's best friend.

Charged with a complex mandate, the manager will have to trade off some goals against others. Because some goal is almost invariably aligned with the self-serving manager's interests, that manager is essentially free to do as he or she pleases.

Belatedly, some business ethicists are starting to see service to shareholders' interests in profitability as a solution to problems of managerial accountability.

A recent article by University of Montreal business ethicist Wayne Norman captures the problem with multifaceted mandates: "How could the board of directors judge whether the CEO was doing a good job of managing the firm effectively?

"If the firm's profit margins were lower than its competitors', the CEO could claim that this is because he or she was trying to improve, say, benefits to employees or relations with local communities."

Much has been made of the harmful effects Enron's collapse had on its employees. But as employees they lost only their jobs. However, as Enron shareholders, the employees lost much of their net worth. Why?

Because Enron wasn't profitable. The shares they were urged to buy and hold were worthless.

Excessive allegiance to shareholders didn't bring Enron down. Instead, it was management's willful disregard of their bedrock responsibility to increase its profits.

In business ethics, as in so much else, we owe Milton Friedman a word of thanks.

Alexei Marcoux is an associate professor at Loyola University Chicago's Graduate School of Business and a policy adviser to the Heartland Institute. He can be reached at amarcou@luc.edu.

Iraqis: At Least 200 Insurgents Killed
Email this Story

Jan 29, 11:42 AM (ET)

By SINAN SALAHEDDIN


BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - Iraqi officials said Monday that U.S.-backed Iraqi troops had targeted a religious cult called "Soldiers of Heaven" in a weekend battle that left 200 fighters dead, including the group's leader, near the Shiite holy city of Najaf. Two U.S. soldiers were also killed when their helicopter crashed during the fighting.

http://apnews.excite.com/article/20070129/D8MV285G0.html

Interesting how this story is evolving. Yesterday, they claimed 250 insurgents had been killled. Earlier this morning they revised it to 300, and at the time of this post, it's been revised to "at least 200".

Let's see what the numbers look like by this afternoon.

January 11, 2007    
 
As I watched President Bush Tuesday night, for the first time I felt pity for him, in the same way you can’t help feeling sorry for any man at the end of his rope, even if he has brought it on himself. It isn’t a matter of desert; it’s beyond that.

I felt a similar emotion when Saddam Hussein was hanged: A man was finally being crushed by the natural result of his own acts. He was cornered at last, with no way out. It was painful to witness.

For once Bush spoke without conviction. He was trying to salvage a desperate position. The message was no longer that we are winning in Iraq; it was that all is not quite lost.

Which way is the wind blowing? In controversies like the debate over this war, I have a simple rule of thumb: I step back and ask which way the conversions are going. The war has been losing supporters; it has ceased acquiring them. You might expect the Democrats to solidify against it, but the really telling fact is that the Republicans who used to back it are scattering.

After the severe shock of the 9/11 attacks, our natural impulse was to strike back. But at what? At the killers who had killed themselves along with their thousands of victims? That was obviously impossible, but we were so outraged that we were disposed, like a lynch mob, to take revenge on the first plausible suspect presented to us.

And while we were in that mood — after all, the lynch mob may be sincerely indignant about a crime — some men around Bush and in the media saw their opportunity. They had been waiting and planning for years for a new war on Iraq, one that would “finish the job” they felt Bush’s father had left incomplete in 1991. All that remained was to connect Iraq, in the public mind, to 9/11.

Over the next few months, a concerted effort was made to shift public attention from Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda to Saddam Hussein and Iraq. For a while the War Party tried to find, or at least posit, ties between al-Qaeda and Iraq, as if the terrorism of the one had something to do with the tyranny of the latter. The hypothetical nexus was Saddam’s supposed “weapons of mass destruction,” which, we were told, he might hand off to al-Qaeda, which actually regarded him as an apostate, a traitor to Islam.

Many Americans, mostly Bush voters, couldn’t distinguish clearly between bin Laden and Saddam; some thought the two were the same man. This made them receptive to the administration’s warnings that an even greater shock than 9/11 might be forthcoming, in the form of “a mushroom cloud.”

Bush made another false connection when he asserted an “axis of evil” comprising not only Iraq and Iran — which, in truth, were bitter enemies — but also, absurdly, North Korea. Far from being a working alliance, this was a mad miscellany. More recently Bush has been blaming the chaos in Iraq on Iran and Syria. Now Iran is said to be the great threat to American security.

Meanwhile, of course, the United States has become almost isolated in the world. Our traditional friends in Europe have resisted Bush’s attempt to rope them into backing his war. He has indeed spent the political capital he boasted of having after the 2004 election. His most reliable ally, Britain’s Tony Blair, is finished, along with Bush’s own Republican majority at home. Has any president ever gone so swiftly from seeming invincibility to near-disgrace?

And does anyone still think our freedom depends on military victory in Iraq? Bush got the “regime change” he coveted, but what has it gained us? Those who doggedly support the war are now reduced to vain recriminations against the liberal media who have been skeptical of it, though many conservatives are (at last!) just as skeptical.

Bush’s dream of a peaceful, democratic Middle East now seems as insane a misreading of history as the old Marxist dream of a Workers’ Paradise. He sounds like an arsonist trying to convince us that the blazing city can still be saved. Has he forgotten who lit the match?

Joseph Sobran

http://www.sobran.com/columns/2007/070111.shtml

Quote from: Religious Dick on January 15, 2007, 09:22:23 PM

But effectively, what would be the difference between opening the border and actively busing people in?

What is the difference between unlocking a door and bringing someone into your house?

Again, you've managed to avoid the point of the question, so I'll rephrase it again. Whether massive immigration is accomplished by busing in the immigrants, throwing open the border and yelling, "Come on in! It's Art Linkletter's house party!" or immigrants are transported by UFO to Area 51, opening the borders would result in a massive influx of immigrants.

Now, for the 3rd time, what would the practical political consequences of a massive influx of immigrants to the United States be?

This isn't rocket science. You already have any number of examples to look at. None that I'm aware of, either in the United States or Europe, have resulted in a political climate that facilitated greater liberty in the aggregate.

Quote

I just want to stop unfairly and needlessly getting in people's way.

I still don't see where  you get "unfair". It's not like any aspiring immigrant is being deprived of anything that is legitimately his.

Except his liberty to trade.

Really? I have a house full of stuff made in China, Mexico, Korea and other countries, presumably made by people who, for the most part, have never set foot in the US.

Doing business with Wal-Mart does not necessarily imply I have the right to set up camp in their warehouse.

The right of a nation to define who may enter or who may not enter exists on exactly the same basis as any individual property right.

You're equating individual property rights to the "right" of a nation, more accurately the government, to define who may or may not enter. So, you're saying the government owns the entire nation? Upon what do you base this idea?

I didn't say the government owned the entire nation. The government does have certain prerogatives regarding the territory it governs.

Your property rights are not absolute. Look at the deed to your house. It's doubtful you own the mineral rights, and you certainly don't own the air rights to your property. Your rights to your property don't include the right to declare it a sovereign state and implement your own body of law. For example, you can't declare it legal to molest children or commit serial killings on your property. So yes, the government does retain certain rights with regard to even private property.

The right of a nation to define who may enter or who may not enter exists on exactly the same basis as any individual property right. That is, on custom and concensus. If it comes to that, where is there any inherent right to individual property? What makes one man's assertion of his right to property any more axiomatically correct than another man's assertion that all property is theft?

Okay, and now you're saying that rights exist only on the basis of custom and consensus. In other words, you do not consider rights to be unalienable. The answer to your questions is based in a concept often called natural law. You apparently do not accept this concept. That's fine, but I do. In my opinion, it starts with a person owning himself. From there, because a person owns himself, he also owns his life, his time, his labor, and his mind. In our society that means people may exchange their time, labor, et cetera for other things of value, like money. That money can then be exchanged for other things. So if a person owns himself, then he owns that for which he has exchanged part of his life.  This is an extremely simple presentation of the idea, but there are whole books that attempt to answer the questions you asked, and I have not the time to write one here now. Not that it matters, because you apparently do not hold to the idea that rights are inherent and unalienable. So someone could decide for you that property is theft. That's too bad.

I'm very much familiar with natural law, thankyouverymuch. And natural law, like every other theory of law, relies on axiomatic assumptions. You own yourself? Sez who? For most of history, and even today, there have been people owned by other people.

The point here being that simply because you accept the axiom that your rights are unalienable doesn't necessarily mean everybody else accepts your particular set of axioms.

So yes, the set of axioms a society accepts will largely be a consequence of custom and consensus.

Does a Mexican coming to work in America directly violate your rights? No. But given a sufficient influx of voters who don't recognize those rights as existant, guess what? At some point, government will cease to recognize them, too.

Which is one reason for Rothbard's belief in anarchy. A government cannot abridge one's rights if it does not exist.

That's all very nice. Now, how do you hope to achieve this stateless society when you propose to facilitate the entry of a terrific number of people who are supporters of the state?

What I do not understand is why you're willing to fight to close the border to protect your rights based on consensus, but not willing to fight the political choices that immigrants would make that would cause the abridgment of your rights which are built on the sand of custom. If socialists native born and raised here in America started a national campaign and began to influence policy, would you want them thrown out? Would you try to fight their ideas at all? Just where do you draw the line?

Quite simply, because allowing aspiring immigrants participation in our political process is not an obligation I owe them. I do owe it to other citizens.

Where I draw the line is "citizen". C-I-T-I-Z-E-N.

Again, my relationship to my fellow citizens has a moral priority over my relationship to non-citizens.

As per your example of migrations from New York to South Carolina re your rights, that's a pretty horrible example. Why do you think native residents of New Hampshire refer to migrants from Massachusetts as "Massholes"? Why do native Colorodans and Nevadans hate migrants from California? Why are natives of Indiana starting to hate the migrants from Illinois?

For the very reason that when those populations reach critical mass, they skew the local politics such that government violating the rights of the citizenry is exactly what they do.

So if the people within states of the U.S. have the same concerns about their rights under threat from immigrants, then why don't state governments have the same responsibility to protect their citizens from immigrants as the national government does?

It might be nice if they could, but per the constitution, they agreed to allow free migration of United States citizens as a condition of admittance to the Union.

Again, that's an obligation owed by state governments to citizens of the United States. It is not an obligation owed by the United States to non-citizens. You keep trying to obscure the distinction between what obligations a government owes to it's citizens, as opposed to obligations it owes to non-citizens. It is, in fact, a rather large distinction.

You support open borders in the name of liberty, but liberty for who?

Everyone.

Really? I've lived in the southwest, and I assure you, few people there are feeling liberated by the federal government's failure to secure the borders.  Anything but.

Certainly, it will be more liberty for the aspiring immigrants. But will the result of that policy result in an increase of liberty for American citizens? I think that anyone who was paying any attention to the actual consequences would say not. See my signature - I chose it for a reason:

Quote

When I am the weaker, I ask you for my freedom, because that is your principle; but when I am the stronger, I take away your freedom, because that is my principle.

So which one is your principle? To give or to take freedom.

Both and neither. It's a reminder that not all appeals to freedom are necessarily legitimate. Do I find it a contradiction that I propose to limit the freedom of people who propose to use it to restrict mine? No, I don't.  Let me put it this way - would a respect for life inhibit you from killing a murderer who meant to kill you and your family? Obviously, contingent on your choice, somebody's life will be lost. From where I'm sitting, I prefer the murderer lose his than I lose mine. Likewise, if I have to chose between restricting the freedom of migration for non-citizens, to whom I have no obligation whatsoever, or sacrificing the freedom enjoyed by myself and my fellow citizens, then the non-citizens are just SOL. Sorry.

Based on your arguments, I think your principle is to take freedom. You seem unwilling to fight against socialist policy, and yet you want to keep out people who might promote more of it. You seem less concerned with liberty than you are your own sense of security, and in that cause you are, apparently, willing to abridge the liberty of others. So how are you different from those who promote socialism?

So now you're equating any law at all with socialism? Exactly, what is "socialist" about border control?

Further, I submit that your assertion that the freedom to trade == the right to migrate has a rather dubious libertarian lineage. Of all the libertarians of consequence I can think of, that is, Rothbard, Mises, Friedman, Ron Paul, Hoppe, Hayek et al, not one of them ever endorsed open borders.

This is where libertarianism, at least of the modal variety, falls apart. Yes, laws and government can be overbearing and intrusive and inhibitors of liberty. Unfortunately, they are also the tools we have available to ensure what liberty we've got. Absolute liberty is possible only on a desert island.

Who said anything about absolute liberty? I did not. Anyway, how can government be a tool for protecting liberty if you are unwilling to fight against government abridging your liberty? You are opposing immigration of those who might hold socialist ideas, but you seem to believe fighting socialist trends that already exist in your government is useless.

Which socialist trends in government am I endorsing? I'm all for rolling back socialist practices of our government.

I just don't think increasing the strength of their supporters by adding to their numbers is a particularly effective way to do that. Do you?

How can you expect to stop ideas by stopping people? If you are unwilling to try to stop the ideas themselves, you have a futile double standard. Futile because the ideas will come to dominate the customs and consensus that you believe form the basis of your rights eventually because you tried to stop the people but not the ideas. You speak of libertarianism falling apart but frankly your position is so weak that it is falling down around you though you seem to not see it.

Well, guy, my defense against ideas largely consists of what is called "culture". It appears to be a foreign word in the libertarian vocabulary. In India, eating insects is a common practice. While the idea may well spread, I do not think it will find much currency in the United States because our cultural conditioning is such that we find eating insects revolting. Now, import a billion Indians to the United States, and my money says that a fairly substantial portion of the population will be eating insects.

A writer name Karl Jass once wrote that the problem with libertarianism is that no libertarian had ever proposed anything that would actually have the consequence of increasing anyone's liberty. I'm beginning to see what he means.

Much depends on what you consider increasing one's liberty. You seem to be proposing the unhindered progress of socialist trends within our government while opposing immigration of people because they have, you say, socialist values.

Again, unless you're asserting that laws are by definition socialist, I'd like to know what socialist trends I'm promoting.

None of this will result in the increase of anyone's liberty. So I am doubting your ability to judge what would be the consequences of libertarian ideas. And of course, much of the time when people say libertarian ideas would not result in increased liberty, what they mean is libertarian ideas would not result in increasing their sense of security. And your arguments are basically about that. Due to the nature of America's political structure, open borders leaves America vulnerable to the influence of those who come into the country with ideas you don't like. This makes you feel unsafe. So you ignore that this is a problem with your political structure and object to the immigrants.

And again, you're proposing altering the political structure of the country while endorsing a policy that will have the most likely result of creating a political environment that will be hostile to that alteration.

I could grow oranges at the south pole if it were 80 degrees year round. Except that it isn't.

You are essentially proposing a political order that would self-destruct. Why even bother?

You seem not to comprehend the basic nature of what I'm talking about. You're trying to isolate this one concept of open borders and say, it will ruin everything for us because it will result in socialism. To isolate it, you dismiss that the actual nature of my position, that the socialist policies are the problem and not the immigrants. And then you say, I am proposing a political order that would self-destruct. No, I am proposing that we address the real issue, the socialist policies. Reduce the socialist policies and the risks you and others bring up about the dangers of immigration will also be reduced. Reducing the number of immigrants does nothing to reduce the socialist policies or to stop the progress of socialist ideas.

Tell that to the Californians. When I lived in California in the '70s, it's political climate was largely a libertarian leaning conservatism. I don't  think "libertarian" is a word many people would associate with California today.

If you want to know how immigration will effect our political climate, that is your test case. You are giving me pious platitudes. I am giving you real-world examples. When you can show me a counter-example to bolster your case, you might actually have a case.

I understand the objection, I just think you're blaming the wrong people. It's ridiculous to offer handouts to the public and then be offended when people you don't know want some too.

We must be reading different forums. The problem isn't that we just have people showing up at the picnic for the free beer, they're also demanding the turkey dinner be made available for their consumption as well. Even the Reasonistas were (finally) forced to concede the point.

People trying to get by via less effort on their part is a natural tendency in humans. And to say but we can't stop the handouts so we have to stop the strangers is exactly that tendency in action. It is easier to try to stop the symptom than it is to try to stop the source of the problem. If everyone who said they believed the problem was the handouts would stop trying to punish the immigrants and move that effort and outrage to the problem, then maybe we might see some progress. But most of them won't. And so we're left with the ugly issue of trying to stop immigration. Or just to make immigration really hard, if you prefer.

Here's the part you need to explain - how do you propose to stop the handouts while importing a population that supports handouts? You sound as if you think a nation's political system is extraneous to it's population's values and culture. Politics doesn't occur in a vacuum. You can quote me all the fine-sounding theories of liberty you like. But as a matter of practical politics, you're proposing two mutually exclusive goals.

In any event, explain what's so "ugly" about controlling or managing immigration?

My problem with the objection to immigration on private property grounds, as I believe Rothbard objected, is that if you're going to argue that immigration from nation to nation should be restricted to invitation only, then don't you also have to argue that immigration from state to state within the country also should be restricted to invitation only? Seems to me you would, but I never see any American libertarian making that argument.  Most them would no doubt object. If you don't believe me, look at their objections to a national I.D. card. (Just for the record, I don't like the idea of a national I.D. card either.) It's okay to stop those people, but don't get in my way, apparently.

People travel everyday all over this country. I live in South Carolina, and I can drive down to Atlanta, Georgia if I so please, and no one will stop me at the border to check my papers or to make sure I'm just visiting. If I were to buy a house in, say, Wyoming, I could do so with little worry that the state government would try to stop me. And I could move myself and belongs to that house in Wyoming with little to no concern about being prevented from entering Wyoming. Is this a great wrong in our country? Should we start limiting immigration from state to state? What about from city to city? Shall we have checkpoints on all roads to make sure no one is violating this supposedly private property based objection to immigration?

Probably because it's a disingenuous argument. You might as well be arguing that because I have an obligation to support my wife and children, I also have an obligation to support your wife and children. All wives and children are equal, aren't they?

They may very well be, but my relationship to them is different. I owe obligations to my family, my religion and my community I don't owe to your family, your religion and your community. Likewise, the relationship between the states is different than the relationship between the United States and other countries.

Your analogy works only if you ignore that different relationships have different moral priorities. The relationship between the states is spelled out in the Constitution. No such relationship exists between the states and any foreign country. The governments of the states owe the citizens of the United States obligations they don't owe to citizens of other countries.

No, I think we should not. I think that would be an abridgment of basic liberty and result in a massive growth of both size and power of government.

Why? When and where has there ever been any such right to go wherever you want, whenever you want been recognized? And why is a sovereign nation's right to exclude non-citizens from it's territory any less legitimate than a private property owner's right to exclude non-owners?

By that same measure, I believe people from Mexico or wherever should have very little to stand in their way of coming to America to find work or trade. The more we demand the government do something to hinder immigration, the more power we have to hand over to the government to make that happen. So on this issue, I have to disagree with you and Rothbard.

Even most libertarians will concede the first and foremost duty of government is defending the shores and the borders. If the government isn't even going to do that, then there's not much point in having a government at all. Which might be all very well, but...

And due to the nature of this thread, I feel I should point out that an anarchist society would not have a central government to oppose immigration to the nation.

It isn't the central government that's opposing immigration. The central government is permitting it over the wishes of the states and the citizenry. If the federal government abdicated it's role in controlling the borders to the states, and the people, per the 10th amendment, I suspect the Texas National Guard would be a lot more efficient about putting boots to butts than the INS has been.

You're damn right there wouldn't be a central government controlling immigration in an anarchist society. If the anarchists felt strongly enough about it, I suspect they'd be chasing the aspiring immigrants off at the ends of pitchforks and burning torches, no government required.

In that situation, then there would be private property issues involved in immigration because pretty much all land would be privately owned. But even then, I think one would be hard pressed to make a libertarian argument that someone from Mexico should be barred from freely trading with someone in America for work or for property. He might have to travel on private land to get there, but are you then going to argue that he should be any more hindered in that than you would expect to be?

All very well. Except that is not the situation that exists.

There is one more thing I want to add. The notion that we ought to stop people from coming to America because of what they think ("when you let enough of these clowns who think you owe them something just for getting born on the same planet into the country") is something with which I am extremely uncomfortable. I don't want this country to get into that kind of gatekeeper/thought police mentality. That is a frightening path, and I would rather not go there, thank you very much. I know you probably did not mean your comment in that way, but I am bothered by the apparent emphasis many people seem to put on keeping immigrants out because of the political/societal philosophies of the immigrants. It seems a short step from there to another version of "yellow peril" nonsense.

Let me ask you this - would you be equally uncomfortable about excluding a population that you knew to be largely composed of communists, white supremacists, or Nazis or just plain violent criminals if they were immigrating here in sufficient numbers to skew your political system?