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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   35744 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 9, 2025

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I have contact with illegal immigrants every day at work, they mostly seem like hard-working and friendly people. I respect their willingness to defy arbitrary rules.

A lot of words are abused in modern discourse but "arbitrary" is certainly one of the most abused words. Citizenship and borders are not arbitrary. They could be otherwise of course, but that isn't what arbitrary means. The modern world order would fall apart if we did away with borders and citizenships, one can imagine a different world order but we don't live under that world order.

Borders are a perfect example of something arbitrary. They have no physical significance, them being set up the way they are has no justification other than historical precedent. We are all entitled to go wherever we want.

You can say you dislike territoriality as a national interest but it's not without reason. I think you're confusing arbitrary with contingent. Borders could have been different if circumstances had gone differently but they were reasoned and fought for with blood and statecraft for various very real purposes.

They're neither arbitrary in that they were set up for no reason nor arbitrary in that they make no difference. It's like if you insulted some guy and he punched you in the gut, you wouldn't call his actions arbitrary even if the response could have been a wide variety of actions. He had reason enough and it certainly matters to your gut that he decided on punching rather than harsh words.

Borders are a perfect example of something arbitrary.

Ok. Now do human rights.

I agree, human rights are arbitrary in a sense, but I think there are certain rights that enlightened humans converge upon as being worthy of protection. They are much less arbitrary than borders, which are the result of random initial conditions, geography, lines drawn randomly on maps by politicians, etc. Borders could be very different and society would still work fine.

but I think there are certain rights that enlightened humans converge upon as being worthy of protection.

Can you name a few? Are you sure you're not going to make the word "enlightened" carry all the weight, and make it conveniently align with your moral principles?

Unless I'm missing something big, your argument for why human rights are different from borders feels like actually arguing for why they're the same, particularly the mechanism for "convergence".

I respect their willingness to defy arbitrary rules.

This one sentence has done more to help me clarify my thoughts on illegal immigration than everything else written in this thread. To the extent that there is an "American spirit" that has been consistent over the past 500 years, it has been the desire to defy arbitrary rules.

Enforcing borders is not at all arbitrary as that famous wolfpack range map shows. It's as arbitrary as childbirth.

I straight up don't believe you. Many are friendly enough (to the limited extent they can be, without a common language), but an illustrative experience was spending fifteen minutes trying to use translation software to explain to a woman the difference between a square and a rectangle while she just looked at me sadly and said "no comprendo..." Then she asked me to help her commit welfare fraud.

There are immigrants and then there are immigrants. Mexicans are pretty harmless. But open borders means taking in every random Indian, African, and Arab that wants to come in; that's a problem.

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