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.
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:
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.
