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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   29343 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 6, 2025

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Throwing in a quick post because I'm surprised it hasn't been discussed here (unless I missed it!), Mayor Brandon Johnson of Chicago sets up "ICE-free zones" in Chicago.

This comes on the heels of Trump sending in the national guard after Chicago PD apparently wouldn't help ICE agents under attack. I haven't read all the stuff about this scenario, but on the surface level it seems pretty bad, I have to say.

There's a video clip where that mayor is saying that Republicans want a "redo of the Civil War," amongst other incredibly inflammatory things. The Governor of Illinois is apparently backing the mayor up.

This refusal to help ICE and even outright claim that you're fighting a war with them I mean... I suppose Democrats have been doing it for a while. This seems... bad. I mean sure you can sugarcoat it and point to legal statues and such, but fundamentally if the local governments of these places are going to agitate so directly against the President, I can't blame Trump for sending in the national guard.

Obviously with the two party system we have a line and such, but man, it's a shame that our politicians have fully embraced the heat-over-light dynamics of the culture war, to the point where they really are teetering on the brink of starting a civil war. Not the social media fear-obsessed "civil war" people have been saying has already started, but real national guard vs. local pd or state military type open warfare. I just don't understand going this far, unless the Mayor of Chicago thinks that he can get away with it and Trump will back down.

Even then, brinksmanship of this type seems totally insane!

I suppose Newsom in CA has been doing it too, now that I mention it. Sigh. I hope that we can right this ship because man, I do not want to have to fight in a civil war I have to say. Having studied history, it's a lot more horrible than you might think.

Good. ICE officers have, in my mind, about as much legitimacy as federal officials enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act and it is every red-blooded Americans moral duty to resist them.

  • -30

and it is every red-blooded Americans moral duty to resist them.

Below is an aside to @Gillitrut 's comments. It looks like he/she/they (idk pronouns) have decided to flame out in this thread.

Regardless of what "it" is, a blanket statement asserting the "moral duty" to react in any way to whatever "it" is ... is something close to the antithesis of the Motte, I think. People get to voice whatever strongly held beliefs the have here without censure, which is a good thing. The requirement for that is to then explain why they have such a strongly held belief, or, perhaps, their assumed likely outcome should people not share their strongly held belief.

Stopping after asserting "it's a moral duty!" is one of the worst things a person can do to discourse or conversation. You're inviting people to disagree with just so you can then perform all of the complex dance steps of moral outrage, probably, mostly, in order to support your own feelings of moral superiority.

I am the Steven Segal of Traditional Catholicism a practicing Catholic and so a lot of my beliefs boil down to "because God said so." But even in those cases (check out some of my posts on porn from earlier today - and smash that like button) I try to, at the least, outline the doctrinal teachings / cathechesim standard response on why and how "God said so." I don't smash and run, I don't think anyone out to either .... for the reasons stated above :-).

It is every red-blooded American's moral duty to resist and repel invaders.

The Fugitive Slave Act was 100% legitimate, and in fact there would be no United States without the federal authority to pass such an act and enforce it.

It's literally right there, Article IV, Section 2:

No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, but shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due.

Without this clause, we don't get a United States, we get whatever else could have come from the Articles of Confederation when the South broke from the North (and likely the West from the North, too).

It's my opinion that if you make concessions to your partners that they require as a basis for partnership, you cannot then renege on those concessions simply because you don't like them.

For the most part yes, you shouldn't renege on agreements "you" made (I'm not fully aware of the history here, but the people who made the agreement, and the people who refused to enforce it aren't completely the same people).

But also it was slavery. In today's day and age the moral question is settled - it's abhorrent, and free societies should do everything practical to stop it. Breaking the agreement is much less morally reprehensible than actually keeping slaves.

In today's day and age the moral question is settled

Ah yes, appeal to universality. At the time, this wasn't the case. Applying our knowledge or morals to them is fine if that's what you want to do, but it doesn't illuminate anyone's decision making, and it doesn't make sense of the past.

it's abhorrent, and free societies should do everything practical to stop it

You've already smuggled in something that's nowhere near universally accepted. Slavery abounds, in today's day and age, and I feel no need to stamp it out in Arabia, or Africa. I think you're making the personal universal.

Okay, so I'm treating the fact that slavery is bad as a given here, and that certain societies can have correct or incorrect views on it. If you disagree on this we're not going to get anywhere. I'm not really interested in arguing this point, I'm sure many many others have done it better than I could.

With the benefit of hindsight, the North was correct on slavery, and the south was incorrect. This justifies many of the North's actions, such as the refusal to enforce the FSA.

Individuals living during that time are mostly blameless for going with the mainstream view, but they were still incorrect.

Note my caveat of "practical". Political pressure, or sanctions, or wars could be be required to fully stamp it out, but cause more damage than the slavery itself. That doesn't mean islavery is okay! It just means it's too difficult to fix or that free societies are more selfish than they'd like to admit.

It's my opinion that if you make concessions to your partners that they require as a basis for partnership, you cannot then renege on those concessions simply because you don't like them.

Yeah, a person I otherwise respect used to have a saying "accept compromise, but keep fighting", and boy I sure have a lot to say about how I hate the very idea of it.

I think it depends on the manifestation.

If you accept the compromise today but in 6 months still want to push the terms more in your favor (and you're complying by the terms of the compromise in the meantime) I don't think it's totally unreasonable.

ICE is even worse than the ATF in terms of how much freedom it destroys, if you hate the ATF you should hate ICE even more.

  • -24

Whose freedom?

ATF agents' main job is violating the Second Amendment to the US Constitution. ICEs main job is enforcing immigration law, and there's no "open borders" provision to the US Constitution, so no, one does not imply the other.

The only freedom at threat is the freedom to be an illegal immigrant, which is what Americans voted to see persecuted.

Living and working in America is not a universal human right.

This extremely basic concept that a very large majority of American voters agree with was painstakingly sidelined in all major institutions by the elite of both parties during my entire lifetime, to keep the tap of virtually unlimited cheap labor flowing.

Seeing people cry tears of blood at the enforcement of very basic immigration law is hilarious, but also a sad reminder of how far collectively we have strayed into decadence and away from the foundational job of a functional state; providing territorial integrity.

The question of who is a member of a community and who is not is so fundamental, it’s what is known as the “pre-political”; it’s the primer of a common political identity that allows for political action to be taken and sustained without violence from opposing parties.

There are people who decry the crumbling of taboos and polite conventions in politics and point their finger to this person or that person, but this is the very heart of it, and no return to civility is possible without resolving this issue because civility is based on group solidarity and group solidarity cannot survive past a certain threshold of diversity, because past that threshold there simply is no “group” to have solidarity with.

The same argument applies equally well to supporting Prohibition, however I'd wager you see the fight against Prohibition and its reduction in freedom as a good one.

  • -18

I think there is a significant difference due to which population gets impacted; prohibition impacts citizens, ICE doesn't. Certain rights are determined by whether you are a citizen of the country or not. I don't think it's inconsistent to want less freedom for foreigners than for fellow citizens.

No, I'm disappointed it failed.

Fair enough, points for consistency.

I would have opposed prohibition, and perhaps violated it wantonly. I don’t think I would have tried the stunts we see in reference to ice.

| ...however I'd wager you see the fight against Prohibition and its reduction in freedom as a good one.

Really depends on how we're defining "fight against Prohibition".

If you mean the political efforts to generate support for and pass the 21st Amendment - yeah, totally.

If you mean the efforts of smugglers and criminals to violate the law, sometimes violently - absolutely not, no.

Unfortunately, you don't get the former without the latter. A law that is not being violated will not be repealed.

Probably true empirically but that doesn't mean you should therefore support those breaking the law*. Consider Prohibition smuggling gangs or drug cartels. You could frame them as supplying a product that consenting adults want to use and have a natural right to ingest. That is not untrue. But these laws were put in place using the pre-existing processes within a system that generally (albeit imperfectly) works to promote human flourishing.

We live in large, complex, diverse environments. It is true and unfair that there will likely always be some subset of laws that any given person doesn't agree with at some time. Becoming a civilized person requires acceptance of that fact. It is simply not currently feasible to allow each person to craft their own legal code that conforms to their individual morality. Many people fervently believe that idolatry is immoral - they cannot break into a Hindu temple to destroy statues. Many others believe that it's morally right to punch someone who could be characterized as a Nazi - that is still assault.

So even laws as broadly unpopular as Prohibition (or, hey, immigration) are legitimate to be enforced. Attempts to circumvent them should be policed and anyone using violence or other force against their enforcement is, even if they think the law is bad according to their personal "higher ethics", scum. I support the state coming down on them with significantly higher intensity and organized violence. This is not because helping people take a chemical or cross an imaginary line between countries is depraved, it's because they are chipping away at the machinery that drives organized, peaceful, advanced societies.

It's about results; morality ain't got nothing to do with it.

  • Yes - Nazi Germany, the USSR, and many other examples of oppressive governments have and do exist. There is obviously some fuzzy line that varies by individual where a government is sufficiently oppressive that resistance, including violent resistance, is justified. No, there is no objective standard; this is the Politics department, the Physics classroom is down the hall if that's the sort of thing you're looking for. And no, just because that line exists does not mean that the United States government at any level is on the wrong side.

Probably true empirically but that doesn't mean you should therefore support those breaking the law*.

It means I must choose between acceding to every bad law or supporting lawbreaking in some instances. I won't give politicians that blank check.

(and no, I don't accept "We live in a society therefore suck it up and obey", no matter how many words you put behind it).

This is not because helping people take a chemical or cross an imaginary line between countries is depraved, it's because they are chipping away at the machinery that drives organized, peaceful, advanced societies.

Sometimes, I want some of that machinery chipped away, so the organized, peaceful, advanced society can be less regimented.

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I would appreciate an in-depth defense of this claim. I'm a big proponent of following the law as it is, but working to change bad laws. If changing the law requires violating it then I would have to rethink my stance.

  • Speed limit is too low → mayor continues to enforce speed limit → convicted speeders get angry and complain to their municipal councilors → municipal councilors change speed limit

  • Speed limit is too low → mayor stops enforcing speed limit → there are no convicted speeders to get angry → no municipal councilors have any reason to care about the speed limit

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…no? Prohibition was totally legitimate, attacking random police officers during prohibition would’ve been very wrong too.

How is this not literal treason? I guess fuck having borders and laws and shit.

Shooting at the National Guard would almost certainly qualify, but that’s not what the city of Chicago is doing.

See Nybbler’s explanation here.

Edit: I thought this was a response to the top-level.

Treason is making war against the United States or adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. Despite some attempts at stretching this to call illegal immigrants in general "enemies", that doesn't cover opposing ICE. But it does imply an full open borders position, which is not very popular in the US.

"...moral duty to resist them" can definitely stretch to treason. I don't think the recent attacks on the convoy or facility count (they're regular crime instead), but scale it up by 100x and it would.

It could also mean something as milquetoast as refusing to volunteer information and help, which is completely protected conduct.

Maybe it is but morality does not require "never do a treason." The founding of America was substantially treason against the British crown and they were right to do that.

Seriously, is it just the scary masks or do you actually think it's a crime against humanity to expect anyone to live in Mexico?

Surely part of this is that a certain side of the political aisle seem to believe that America is the land of milk and honey and that every less-developed country is literally Pol Pot's Cambodia.

The funny part is that this set of people is almost identical to the set of people that think America is irredeemably evil and everybody from a less-developed country is automatically morally superior to every American by the virtue of not being tainted by the evil that thoroughly permeates the American society.

You seem to imply treason is inherently loathsome. Personally, I see it as one of the crimes against states which are morally different from crimes against men. Morality cannot exist between entities that are so different in power and nature.

Morality cannot exist between entities that are so different in power and nature.

… which of course is why there can be no possible moral objection to wantonly torturing puppies and kittens just for laughs (/s)

Well, yes, that's the contractarian view. Certainly, I oppose laws against people behaving cruelly to their own* animals, with a few exceptions for the animals that legitimately are capable of engaging in reciprocity.

*Cruella de Vil is still not okay, as while I don't see the puppies as having inherent value and being ends-in-themselves, they're valuable to the Dearlys/Radcliffes in both economic and sentimental ways, and she conspired to steal and destroy them.

We do that, in a sense. We keep them as pets in strange dwellings, feeding them strange food, castrating them and arranging their entire lives around our enjoyment. Were an alien do that to humans we'd probably consider it torture.

you know, it doesn't make you less admitting when you fucked up and didn't think things through. Torturing logic like you are doing does.

The opinion on pets is pretty much my actual opinion, I didn't make it up just now to win this argument. To elaborate, we do of course cherish our pets and do our best to not do what we think of as torture to them - but it's still our morality and done for the sake of ourselves - and certainly we expect no reciprocity from cats and dogs. We do not expect them to be good cuddly pets because it would be the right thing to do of them, but because they're here for that purpose. Hence "morality does not exist between humans and pets".

It should be needless to say that the relationship between humans and states is usually far less amicable. So the comparison of treason and torturing kittens doesn't quite land for me, I'm afraid. You could compare how similarly to the torture of kittens having impact on the surrounding humans, so too can treason have an impact on the surrounding humans. I don't specifically advocate selling out your country to evil cannibal aliens for that reason. But going "literal treason, yikes!?" as if treason is automatically something bad amuses me.

I have plenty of complaints about the conduct of ICE but the legitimacy of their official mission seems fine? Even if you think having open borders is a moral imperative the US is clearly not set up to support flipping a switch from 0 to 100% on that without lead time.

Unless this is bait, in which case can you please not or at least choose better bait?

the conduct of ICE but the legitimacy of their official mission seems fine?

I really thought this was the whole point of this thread / argument but everyone really loves to conflate the two

I mean, I think that's the motte and bailey.

I think a majority of leftists believe that their official mission is illegitimate, and borders in general are basically unethical, but outright saying that is still a bit outside the Overton window of mainstream political discourse (insofar as you still care about trying to convince conservatives and "centrists" and put on good optics for them).

borders in general are basically unethical, but outright saying that is still a bit outside the Overton window of mainstream political discourse

I don't think this is a particularly common view among leftists, but I've definitely heard statements to that effect in far-left media spaces (i.e., from people publishing, not just random comments).

https://old.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2F8s58fo0kjrtf1.jpeg

The manager/franchisee of a Lush store in Chicago put this sign up. AFAIK the entire Chicago subreddit agrees with this sentiment.

I don’t think that’s what mainstream dems think, especially in places like Chicago which are dominated by the black political machine. I think some of them are confused about the asylum seeker thing but most of them believe that being on US soil entitles a person to rights and that illegal immigration just isn’t such an important problem to violate those rights.

I think a majority of leftists believe that their official mission is illegitimate, and borders in general are basically unethical

Does anyone on this site think this? I meant like this argument in this thread.

I think that the concept of borders is more than a little bullshit, but I’m under no illusion that more than a tiny minority of the country agrees with me on this.

I think a majority of leftists believe that their official mission is illegitimate, and borders in general are basically unethical

Does anyone on this site think this? I meant like this argument in this thread.

Yes, in this very thread:

Good. ICE officers have, in my mind, about as much legitimacy as federal officials enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act and it is every red-blooded Americans moral duty to resist them.

Isn’t that just MLK-ism? The whole “unjust laws” bit, how it doesn’t challenge the legal legitimacy but rather the moral legitimacy, and despite the time worn temptation is to conflate the two they are not the same. I’d want to see more elaboration of this point than jump to that assumption. Unless you have an actual issue with MLK-ism?

What was illegitimate about the Fugitive Slave Act other than the flagrant and duplicitous disregard for the law by free states?

It was morally abhorrent to enslave people and to return them into slavery. Legitimacy does not consist in "whatever the state says is legitimate."

Iis morally abhorrent to cross border without permission and to overstay a visa. To impose yourself in a place you don't belong and doesn't want you.

If we are talking about well-behaved gainfully-employed illegals in blue cities like Chicago (which is where the ICE raids causing the fuss are focused), then nobody is imposing. The illegals are in a place where their landlords, bosses, butchers, bakers etc. as well as a super-majority of the community are perfectly comfortable to have them there. The people who don't want them are the people (almost entirely from outside said blue cities) who voted for Trump.

Now as a matter of positive law, this particular group of intermeddling non-Chicagoans and the federal government they elected do in fact have the legal right to send goons into Chicago to round up and remove the illegals. But that only affects the morality of the immigrants' behaviour if you think there is a moral obligation to obey permissibly-dumb-but-not-evil laws in a democracy. I do, but my impression is that most Motteposters subscribe to the libertarian view that there there is no such obligation. Even if breaking laws is immoral, peacefully breaking immigration laws is immoral on the level of filesharing or handling salmon suspiciously*, not on the level of victimful crimes like burglary, so "abhorrent" seems excessive.

* "Handling a salmon in suspicious circumstances" is, somewhat notoriously, a crime in the UK. The purpose of the law is to make it easier to prosecute blatantly guilty poachers like this guy without needing to litigate the provenance of a specific salmon.

If we are talking about well-behaved gainfully-employed illegals in blue cities like Chicago (which is where the ICE raids causing the fuss are focused), then nobody is imposing. The illegals are in a place where their landlords, bosses, butchers, bakers etc. as well as a super-majority of the community are perfectly comfortable to have them there. The people who don't want them are the people (almost entirely from outside said blue cities) who voted for Trump.

I am a white American. My neighbors here in Japan like me well enough. I perform community service and pay taxes. I have children here and am well-integrated into the community. If I had come here on a tourist visa 5 years ago and the Japanese immigration services finally caught up to me and deported me, would you find that outrageous and unjust? For consistency's sake, you may respond to me in this thread saying that you would. But if your eyes passed over a headline reading "American man deported from Tokyo over illegal visa violations" would you immediately be shocked and upset by this? Or would it pass beneath your notice as a mundance "dog bites man" story? The outrage over punishing immigration crime really seems like an isolated demand. It's only bad when America does it, for some reason.

Arbitrary and capricious enforcement of paperwork offenses (and illegal immigration is a paperwork offence) is an injustice, though a minor one in the grand scheme of things and I certainly wouldn't call it an outrage. I think tolerating well-behaved illegal immigrants for decades and then rounding them up for deportation counts as arbitrary and capricious enforcement, although I understand why the people voting for right-populist parties don't*. It definitely isn't shocking given that almost every 1st-world government - especially the ones that don't actually believe in immigration enforcement - now engages in occasional bouts of arbitrary and capricious immigration enforcement as a form of reality-TV prolefeed.

As a separate issue, I think deporting well-behaved established members of communities harms those communities. If your neighbours like you, then the Tokyo government is hurting them by deporting you, and they are entitled to treat a government that does so as hostile, just as Chicago is treating ICE as hostile.

The median voter seems remarkably sane about immigration - people want system of managed legal immigration operated in the national interest, with criminals, scroungers, and radical Islamists deported asap and well-behaved productive immigrants on a 5-10 year path to citizenship. The "Why can't we have an Australian/Canadian points system?" discourse. There are multiple reasons why this does not happen in the UK or US, and the most annoying one is that the whole debate is poisoned by the completely broken humanitarian immigration system. It doesn't help that two-party systems in the social media age shut out the median voter, such that the public debate is between leftists who favour de facto open borders through a trivially abusable humanitarian system and rightists who want a near-zero immigration system that would have deported Elon Musk and Jensen Huang's parents.

* If you think that the 30 years of broadly-tolerated illegal working was a conspiracy by the Dems, the GOPe, and their corporate supporters against the American people, then the American people (and the Trump administration as their agent) aren't acting arbitrarily and capriciously - they are doing what they always wanted to do and always said they were going to do at the first reasonable opportunity. The comparable argument in the UK is similar but more complex because most of the low-skilled working immigrants in the UK entered using (possibly deliberately) easily-abusable legal routes, not illegally.

Arbitrary and capricious enforcement of paperwork offenses (and illegal immigration is a paperwork offence)

Illegal immigration is not a "paperwork offense", except in the case of those illegal immigrants who could have cured or avoided it by doing the right paperwork. Most of them, no matter what paperwork they would have filed, would not have been lawfully admitted to the US.

I think that if my neighbors had learned I had broken the law, they would like me less and would (rightly) regard me as a criminal. Japanese take the law very seriously, they don't have any of the American-style anti-authoritarian animus. And although I'm loathe to admit it, I'm also not sure how me getting deported would harm them. This house would probably be vacant for a few months before another polite and quiet middle class family moved in with whom they would get along just fine. And they'd probably be relieved to no longer be living next to a lawbreaker. My friends here would be sad, but they'd probably think I made some pretty stupid choices and got what I deserved.

I'm tired of hearing about Elon Musk and Jensen Huang. America went to the moon and back before we opened the immigration floodgates, we can clearly do just fine without mass third world immigration. The idea that America "needs" a bunch of immigrants to stay competitive is IMO a revisionist historical narrative promoted by those same recent immigrants. I don't even really blame them for pushing the narrative; doing so helps them fill a psychological need to write themselves into the American story. The Ellis island generation did the same thing ("America is a nation of immigrants!"). But it's also fair play for heritage Americans to call it what it is, revisionist propaganda.

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peacefully breaking immigration laws is immoral on the level of filesharing or handling salmon suspiciously

This is, of course, the load-bearing item of contention. To me, and to many, peacefully breaking immigration laws is some combination of trespass, home invasion and squatting. If I come to your house, and I eat your food and I tell you I'm never leaving, and the police back me up, it's not really your house any more. If 100 people like me do they same, it's definitely not your house any more. You are vestigial. Maybe there are photos of your family on the dresser - what do those people mean to me and mine? My children's photos will look much better there. Your furniture is ugly and doesn't represent my culture - let's throw it out, sell it, burn it for warmth.* It doesn't matter how peaceful illegal immigrants are, or if they do odd jobs around 'your' (for now) house. Demographic change is demographic change.

That's ignoring the face that lots of illegal immigrants actually turn out to be neither nice, peaceful or helpful, of course. But is it any wonder that voters react badly to breaking immigration law, or helping others break immigration law, when seen from this perspective?

*You might feel that this is catastrophising, or at least very pessimistic. I think that anyone pro-immigration must feel that way, but post-woke I can't agree. The outbreak of statue-vandalism, proposed name changes to get rid of all the old English names on parks and streets (most of which didn't get pushed through because there was no yet enough support), the direct import of specifically American racial grievances post-Floyd, the constant drumbeat of 'X is no longer appropriate for Modern (Multicultural) Britain' moved me heavily on these issues.

This is, of course, the load-bearing item of contention. To me, and to many, peacefully breaking immigration laws is some combination of trespass, home invasion and squatting. If I come to your house, and I eat your food and I tell you I'm never leaving, and the police back me up, it's not really your house any more.

If you are a Republican voter in Alabama, I don't see how Chicago is "your house" in any morally relevant way. If you are a Reform UK voter in Lower Snoring, I insist that my house in London is not "your house" in any morally relevant way, and politely suggest that you show some gratitude to the people whose taxes fund your lifestyle rather than insinuating that our friends, neighbours, colleagues and servants are somehow "eating your food". That it is your country is legally relevant, but the only moral claim that gives rise to is the one that upholding the law is generally good. My claim that illegal immigration is morally trivial is restricted to the situations where the community the immigrants are moving to does not, in fact, object to their presence.

That's ignoring the face that lots of illegal immigrants actually turn out to be neither nice, peaceful or helpful, of course. But is it any wonder that voters react badly to breaking immigration law, or helping others break immigration law, when seen from this perspective?

Yes - there is supermajority support essentially everywhere for curtailing abuse of the humanitarian and family-based routes to immigrate to first-world countries, based on the accurate belief that the people who get in that way are, on average, bad neighbours. We should do so. But public opinion on this point is downstream of immigrant behaviour - people who have experience of well-behaved immigrants don't want to kick them out.

the direct import of specifically American racial grievances post-Floyd

I remember the pictures of the pro-Floyd march in London. I haven't seen a London crowd that close to all-white since before Blair opened the immigration floodgates, and I doubt I will ever see another one. I think it was whiter than the recent Tommy Robinson rally. Wokism isn't being pushed by immigrants or their descendants - unless you count the Milibands.

If you are a Republican voter in Alabama, I don't see how Chicago is "your house" in any morally relevant way. If you are a Reform UK voter in Lower Snoring, I insist that my house in London is not "your house" in any morally relevant way

For the obvious reasons:

  1. There is free movement within borders. Open borders for one part of the country means open borders for all.
  2. There is continuity of government within borders. Imported voters in London can and do vote on what people in the oh-so-condescendingly-named Lower Snoring are allowed to do, think and say. They also exert cultural control through more indirect means (quangos, pressure groups and so on).

Are you proposing allowing individual US states / UK counties to have their own legally-enforced borders and government?

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Yes - there is supermajority support essentially everywhere for curtailing abuse of the humanitarian and family-based routes to immigrate to first-world countries, based on the accurate belief that the people who get in that way are, on average, bad neighbours. We should do so.

And yet, it doesn't happen. Curious!

A lot of the failure comes from the fact that European countries could not really fathom a guest worker program with NO route to permanent residency. There was a need for guest workers, but we should just have used the Kafala system. No family members. No route to citizenship. Mandatory return home for a 6 month period every 5 years.

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If you are a Republican voter in Alabama, I don't see how Chicago is "your house" in any morally relevant way.

CDL holders issued in California killing people in Florida says otherwise.

Look, I'd love for there to be a larger argument for States Rights(for my own safety's sake, if nothing else), but it's clear by this point that it's been well done and buried, and we have to live with the consequences.

If you are a Republican voter in Alabama, I don't see how Chicago is "your house" in any morally relevant way. If you are a Reform UK voter in Lower Snoring, I insist that my house in London is not "your house" in any morally relevant way,

Okay, whose house is it then?

Open borders proponents always say "well, it isn't yours, so you have no right to exclude anyone". It's someone's. Who does have the right to exclude? It may be an individual, it may be a government, but that right didn't just go away because you don't personally own the country. Where did it go and who has it right now?

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So now existing in Mexico is equivalent to slavery? Are we going to liberate Mexico and rescue them all, then? Can we put them where you live?

No, more precisely, having no access to the benefits of US welfare state is equivalent to slavery.

Wut

  • -35

Federal officials enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act were returning people to slavery. ICE agents are returning people to Mexico. If you're going to have such a precious little time making the comparison, it would help if the two were comparable in some way.

They are comparable in that the state's actions are equivalent in their lack of moral legitimacy. I thought I was pretty clear about that.

  • -30

No, that's not clear at all.

"Proactively provide evidence in proportion to how partisan and inflammatory your claim might be.".

It's unfortunate that it seems like you have chosen to flame out, but taking your argument at face value - are you arguing for something to the effect of "A (enforcing the FSA) is immoral, and B (preventing federal agents from enforcing it) was an appropriate reaction to it; therefore if C (enforcing immigration restrictions) is immoral, then B is likewise an appropriate reaction to it"? In that case, setting A=9/11, B=the commando raid on Osama's compound, C=illegal immigration, under the reasonable assumption that the majority of US citizens agree that A and C are immoral and B was an appropriate reaction to A, are you arguing for commando raids to kill all illegal immigrants (and/or even those involved in planning their immigration)?

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They are comparable in that the state's actions are equivalent in their lack of moral legitimacy. I thought I was pretty clear about that.

Yeah except you completely left out the part where you explain why they're, you know, comparable. You just walked out on stage and said "Slavery. There, now that I have moral legitimacy, I don't like ICE."

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And why are those actions morally illegitimate? What is the source of moral illegitimacy in those two cases?

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...and your stated reason slave officers were immoral is because they were doing their jobs, and their jobs are bad. Drawing the parallel that you believe ICE officers are immoral because they are doing their jobs, and their jobs are bad is the most obvious reading IMO.

I can't see how you could miss that. In fact, I can't see what else it could possibly be, so I'll ask directly: What is the connection between ICE officers and Fugitive Slave Act enforcers, that it's appropriate to compare their moral legitimacy?

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Is it morally abhorrent for Mexicans to live in Mexico instead of becoming illegal aliens? Do you believe that every illegal alien has a right to your personal property in the same way that slaves have a right to their freedom? Do you believe that the law saying that have property and rights and not stripping them away from you to give them to illegal aliens is also illegitimate?

You are comparing two wildly different things; if your only response to this being pointed out is blank confusion, you should perhaps consider the properties of slaves and illegal aliens in more detail.

I do not think all actions of the state which lack moral legitimacy are factually equivalent. Hope this clarifies things!

  • -34

You are aggressively ignoring every poster asking you to clarify why enforcing immigration law is equivalent to enforcing laws on slavery. This is just trolling.

Do they lack moral legitimacy because you don't believe borders should exist? Should the hypothetical Slave Catchers have instead of returning the escaped slaves to slavery, elected to take them back to Africa or to Mexico, wouldn't that have been less immoral than if they returned them to bondage?

Cool. Now imprint this feeling in your mind, so that you can recall it in detail when the shoe is on the other foot.

I think it is every red-blooded American's moral duty to do a lot of things you probably would not approve of. moral clarity is a rush but it does not keep the peace.

Is it the peace that is the absence of tension or the peace that is the presence of justice?

  • -18

Neither. It is the peace where "they" get away with it for another day, for whatever definition of "they" we each prefer.

“For children are innocent and love justice, while most of us are wicked and naturally prefer mercy.”
-G.K. Chesterton

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