This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
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.
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.
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.
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.
For the obvious reasons:
Are you proposing allowing individual US states / UK counties to have their own legally-enforced borders and government?
The fact that doing X (which is morally unproblematic of itself) makes it easier to do Y (which would be immoral) doesn't change the moral character of doing X-but-not-Y. As a matter of practical calculation, it might change the wisdom of banning X. Law and politics, not morals.
In the case of immigration, where X is migrating to a place where you are welcome, and Y is migrating to a different place in the same country where you are not welcome, there are good practical reasons for granting permission at the level of the sovereign state. But you absolutely can run a regime where legal immigrants can travel freely within a wider freedom-of-movement area while only enjoying the right to reside and work in the state that granted their visa - this is how Schengen visas work in the EU.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
And yet, it doesn't happen. Curious!
More options
Context Copy link
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.
I'm pretty sure they existed within my lifetime.
Not really. Sure, modern Germany only allowed immigrants to naturalize in 1991 (and large numbers of Turks only started actually doing it more recently), but there was no large scale deportation and so in effect they had de facto ‘permanent residency’ since the 1950s. Kohl considered trying to deport some but it was considered too much effort so they didn’t. Even after recruitment of Gastarbeiter stopped in 1973 family reunification continued and had always been allowed even if it was ‘discouraged’.
That is kind of the story of mass immigration to Europe, especially around family reunification. Once you have that, you have children in public schools, the whole system breaks down and some degree of naturalization is seemingly inevitable because you’ve created a class of de facto permanent residents (in the Gulf only wealthy expats send kids to (private) schools; kafala migrants have no family reunification rights).
The German Turks existed in this state (huge extended families and many children living in Germany) for 30+ years without getting citizenship, but it didn’t really matter because no effort was made to remove them and they were comfortable, their kids attended public schools, they had access to welfare and social housing etc etc.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
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.
More options
Context Copy link
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?
My house is my house. Your house is your house. The nation isn't a family, and the national territory isn't a house. Avoid Mummy Party and Daddy Party frames where possible. If the Mummy Party was a real mother, it would be a divorced wine mum with four different mental health diagnoses. If the Daddy Party was a real father it would be a deadbeat dad with a DV restraining order.
Sovereign states have the legal right to exclude people - that isn't in doubt here. The question I was arguing with @Lizardspawn is whether this is a matter of ethics, such that illegal immigration is a malum in se crime and possibly even, per Lizardspawn, an "abhorrent" one, or whether it is a matter of politics such that illegal immigration is a malum prohibitum crime.
The basic argument for why illegal immigration (assuming otherwise well-behaved, gainfully employed immigrants) is malum prohibitum rather than malum in se is:
That argument seems to apply to ordinary trespassing as well.
Yes - trespassing often involves a malum in se crime like breaking and entering, breach of privacy if you get too close to the house, or trampling crops, but non-destructively taking a shortcut across someone else's field is one of the textbook examples of malum prohibitum and the law in most places reflects this.
Land Law 101 is that there are no legally cognisable natural rights in land and you only "own" land because the State says you do.
The catch is that a single person taking a shortcut may "cause no damage" but if a lot of people all take the same shortcut, all that "no damage" can add up to damage. We're not in a situation where there's just one illegal immigrant, analogous to allowing one trespass.
The single-time, single-person trespass also doesn't include an analogy to the illegal consuming social services or anything like that.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link