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Can we just deport him? And no I am not talking about a Somalian, but Alexander Ovechkin. He just appeared in a Russian political ad. When asked why he did that he replied, “I’m Russian, I support my country”. But here’s the thing the west and to a lesser extent the US is at war with Russia. Undeclared and without ground troops, but we are contributing financing, seized Russian assets, and have and probably still provide intelligence to the Ukrainian side. I think supporting a foreign government at war with America is perfectly fine grounds to deport someone.
The counter argument and I think a reasonable opinion for letting him stay is that cultural exchange makes peace easier. So there are solid grounds for letting him stay. I probably take the opinion that letting him play hockey in the US is better for US foreign policy than deportation.
From a cultural war perspective I would love Trump to deport him and make the lefties who “support Ukraine” make arguments for why Ovechkin in ICE shackles is a bad thing. Meh “free speech”. I did the AI thing and it sounds like he doesn’t have US citizenship but if he did he would make a perfect test case for denaturalization. Declaring yourself to have loyalties to a foreign government at war with the US seems absolutely perfect for denaturalization.
Also, nice culture war on Trump is a Russian agent by deporting a Russian. And it fits with the meme “we need them for the sports ball team”.
He’s just a perfect test case for deportation since his politics are against the US left instead of their Hamas adjacent friends who a broad swath of the left supports.
No,
Unfortunately the "native" people who tirelessly attempt to destroy the country are far worse and far greater in number than a few foreign celebrities running their mouths. And taking a side in a proxy conflict that the US is mostly phoning it in on is the least of our worries.
Yes we need mass deportations and the destruction of foreign tribal blocs. Even more we need the death of all native traitors and enemies. But going after a foreigner who supports his own country, that we are not even technically at war with, who is here on temporary work visa and doesn't show any intention to immigrate, is really not it. We should celebrate foreigners loving their own country, especially if they love their own country enough to go back.
If you remove the foreigners who support foreign interests then they wouldn’t be campaigning for things some silly natives fall for.
Lefty(Bryan Caplan): We should have open borders and let in infinite migrants.
me: many of them support interests against American interests or loyalty to their home country. They will cause problems in domestic US politics
Lefty: our magic dirt will solve this problem. We can give them full political rights.
Bryan Caplan is not a lefty. He is for open borders. He would be happy to get rid of the welfare state as well.
Immigration and population replacement is what defines leftism in 2026. He is a blank slatist who believes in magic soil. So it makes him a leftist.
The fact that other leftists would happily line him up against the wall for his heretical beliefs? Well, that's leftism for you.
I do agree that unlike Bernie Sanders, who pivoted hard on immigration to stay relevant, Caplan is a principled leftist. Put him in the useful idiot category.
I don't know how this can possibly apply to Caplan, given his stated views on IQ.
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No, it's not. It's what defines the obsession of extremely online white supremacists.
Leftists - actual leftists - in American politics are people like Zohran Mamdani, Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, or Bernie Sanders. While they're generally pro-immigration, that doesn't really set them apart from left-of-center people more broadly. The definitive aspects of leftist politics:
Federal jobs guarantee for people with Master's DegreesTo speak in broad terms, their political core is an ethnically diverse, college-educated cohort with a history of underemployment. This is why, for example, despite a fairly radical agenda overall, their most prominent political goals tend to revolve around shoring up the economic security and political influence of college grads.
Bryan Caplan is a libertarian. He's just... actually a libertarian, not "I hate taxes and love guns" libertarian or an embarrassed conservative.
...
Sounds like the extremely online white supremacists were correct all along.
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That's conservatism too, there is always some heretic that needs to be burnt. Some ideological bent, political position, or spiritual disease, that threatens the christian souls of our community!
It must be nice to see everything in a binary black and white partisan position, the one drop rule of political alignment. The 1D political axis truly is the malaise of the soul, the ultimate mindkiller. The devil ever sits on the shoulders of the self righteous.
You can do purity spirals in a 2D framework as well. There was a presentation at a Libertarian Party event (I think by David Brin) that spoofed this by showing a mockup of the WSPQ version of the Nolan Chart (unlike Political Compass, Nolan oriented the chart like a diamond with libertarians at the top) with a tiny triangle labelled "Libertarian" in the top corner and the rest of the chart market "dirty fucking commie" - this accurately describes a certain tendency within libertarianism.
It goes without saying that you can do pragmatic big-tent coalition politics in a 1D framework as well. RINOs, DINOs, Blairites etc. earn a good living doing so.
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Clearly, rightist moments have had that failure pattern, the Nazis being the most obvious example.
In the current epoch, the right, being the weaker party, calls for tolerance while the left bays for blood. And so it will go until the shoe is on the other foot. When that time comes, I'll probably become a leftist.
Physician, heal thyself.
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Bryan Caplan is not a blank slatist. "Let's Ban Discrimination: A Socratic Dialogue" makes it clear that he at least thinks HBD is "a distinct possibility." More like he believes in indestructible institutions.
The West is great, even shitty people become much more productive when they come here, let's bring as many of them here as possible and let them earn their keep by finding their comparative advantage. Worried they will go on welfare or vote for communism? Let them come without eligibility for welfare or the right to vote.
It's completely delusional (how long did blacks remain slaves, again?), but it's not leftism.
If he wants A and B, but B is impossible, then he is no different than any other supporter of A. He clearly doesn't think of himself as a leftist, and he didn't choose to become one. He just stood still while the Overton window moved to where he was standing.
Glad to hear that he thinks HBD is a "possibility", although how you could be anything other than a fervent believer in HBD in 2026 is puzzling.
I don't think he's a bad guy. He's just wrong about the things that matter, and the things he's right about don't matter.
Caplan is one person I just can’t develop a theory of mind for him. He seems smart. He doesn’t seem to have any interest that would prevent him from understanding this issue since he’s tenured at GMU in their Econ department. And GMU Econ is known for probably being the most intellectually tolerant department in any US university. Garret Jones similarly blogs and writes books for the masses and Garret Jones is fairly racists. All the arguments for why Caplans arguments on immigration are unworkable are probably discussed in the GMU Econ faculty lounge.
I can understand when a Harvard guy plays down some unfortunate truths because Harvard is a political place but GMU is not Harvard.
In Caplan's eyes immigration is undoubtedly good for the migrants themselves, to a massive degree, while also benefiting the receiving country.
Imagine that Caplan believes that the benefits to the natives of avoiding immigration are not so great as to outweigh the damage done to various peoples who could be living better lives or the foregone economic growth , and is anything in his behavior incongruent?
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I've tried. The best I can come up with is that he is driven more by contrarianism than anything else. There seems to be almost an aggressive refusal to think through the details of his 'invite the entire world but abolish the welfare state I guess' positions. Every post on his blog where he visits another country ends with him saying 'this country's successes prove that libertarianism plus open borders is great' or 'this country's failures prove that it should embrace libertarianism plus open borders' and then ignoring the dozens of commenters pointing out how this wouldn't work and him ignoring them.
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