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He Gets Us, my
lord and saviorfavorite blogger Scott Alexander has written a piece about love and libertyScott is somewhat famously (formerly?) not a libertarian. Reading a piece by someone that understands my base impulse and aversion to state power was very refreshing. I feel like I have to bury that emotion deep down to have discussions with most of the people around me. The revulsion you might feel about someone proposing a government enforced redistribution of the benefits of beauty, is something I feel about most redistribution schemes. The revulsion you might feel about a government licensing scheme for dating is the revulsion I feel towards nearly all government licensing schemes (I only say nearly all, because I leave myself room to be surprised in the future, not because I can think of an exception in the moment).
As a libertarian I tend to end up arguing with everyone (even fellow libertarians). In the last few years the most important argument I keep having with the left is about the nature of corporations and the shared marketplace. I think money is the one value nearly everyone shares, so making it the center piece and main value of the market allows the maximum number of people to participate in it. Once they have their money, they can take it out and go spend it on other things they value (and being able to spend it is why so many people value money!). I think DEI initiatives, environmentalism, certain parts of the labor movement, and social justice have been trying to undermine this for many years. I also don't think too many people on this forum disagree with me there.
No, as the always arguing libertarian, my disagreement with the right is on the topic of nationalism and immigration. Due to the recent wipe I lost one of the posts where I laid out some of my specific disagreements with nationalism. I have a much longer history on this forum of arguing in favor of immigration. Usually only for a day at most, and only a few responses deep, since I encounter a great deal of disagreement. I don't think I have ever laid out an "ick factor" argument about immigration, or in other words why immigration restrictions kind of disgust me. Mostly, I don't think it convinces anyone, but as Scott's article points out it is as close as possible to the true reason why I support open immigration and open borders. And in the future if anyone ever bothers to say "you want immigration for bad reason X" I can refer back to this post, and say "no these are my motivations".
I'll choose my own friends, thank you very much.
Growing up you might remember a time when you had friends not because of who you liked, but because of who your parents liked. Before age 7 it felt pretty common. Most of the time this was ok for me. I didn't have strong preferences for the kind of people I wanted to be around, and I was at the whim of whatever my parents wanted to do anyways. Having a kid to play with at least seemed better than just being in a kidless situation while they hung out with adults. But I specifically remember one time when it was not ok. One of my mom's best friend's from college had two boys, nearly matching in age with myself and my older brother. One of those boys who was a year older than me had a kind of roughness in play that I always hated. If we wrestled it was never really as friendly as it was with other boys. He'd distract me and steal my halloween candy. He'd show me "fun" like how it felt to have your wrist skin twisted in opposite directions. None of these sound too bad in retrospect, but at the time he was literally the worst person I knew. My dad was drunk one time, saw the kid picking on me a little too much and spanked the kid. The parents didn't like that, they didn't believe in spanking, and that kind of ended the friendship between the moms. I assume other people have their own sorts of "forced friendship" stories.
I am lucky to not have many of the opposite types of stories of "forced non-friendship". Where some authority figure in your life doesn't like one of your friends for a reason that you don't care about. Maybe that friend's parents aren't rich, or aren't the right color, or they where in the wrong neighborhood. I think I would have rebelled mightily against this, and sometimes when I got a whiff of my parents doing it for my own good with bad friends, it would sometimes make me want to interact with those people more.
In general humans are social creatures and we like to make our social groups as much as possible. We like to pick our allies and close friends, and we like to exclude those we don't get along with. This is the equivalent of "dating" to me. So when people come in and intrude and insist that I must be friends and allies with some set of people, and enemies with another I feel reactively disgusted with their impositions.
The Policy Implications of choosing your own friends.
Some of the anti-immigration people reading this have already picked up on the first story and shouted "aha! you agree with us, I don't want to be forced to associate with immigrants, but that's exactly what progressives are doing with open borders". To some extent, I sympathize, I really do. When every media property must have a diverse cast, when every college insists on affirmative action, and when government positions at the very top are filled based on race and gender. It certainly feels like an example of some of the forced social interactions I hated as a kid. I like to tell progressives to stop doing that, and I do! Stop affirmative action, stop race based quotas, they are bad for just about everyone involved (they are often only good for the charlatans that gain money and influence by peddling race politics).
But doing the opposite of a bad thing, doesn't make that a good thing. The progressives say you must interact and be friends with these people, but the nationalists say you must not interact or be with these people. I chafe at both rules, or the single rule of "I get to decide your friends". Since we cannot have unlimited friendships, and we don't have unlimited options, the rules are two sides of the same coin.
And for all their many advantages, in this one area the progressives are often at a disadvantage. Because enforcing friendships is actually incredibly difficult, and forbidding them is easy. Progressives might want you to be nice to immigrants, but that process can be sandbagged and slowed down at all levels (if you don't think this is true, then I guarantee that you do not know anyone who has tried to legally remain in the united states. It is a pain in the ass.)
The nationalists have had much more success in enforcing non-interaction. Physically getting into the US and other counties has only gotten easier in recent times, simply re-enforcing natural barriers was one of the main ways of forbidding entry in the past. But lately the US government has started to forbid interaction with the people that are already here. E-verify systems for workplaces have popped up everywhere, and e-verify for renting has also started to pop up in some places (its rarely required by law currently, but I'm an eternal pessimist about the expansion of government powers).
E-verify is one of the largest impositions on the market in recent times. DEI rarely says "hire 100% [our favored people]", but e-verify says exactly that. It doesn't matter how much better a foreigner might be as an employee or a renter. You can't hire them. "Can I pay double the cost and pay two employees for the work of one just to satisfy you?" DEI says yes, e-verify says no. And I know e-verify isn't required everywhere for every job currently, but again I'm a pessimist about the expansion of government powers, and so far e-verify has only expanded in scope not shrunken.
Open borders libertarianism is a modern instantiation of the adage "capitalists will sell us the rope with which to hang them".
Who wrote "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore" on the statue of Liberty? A jewish socialist. Democrats are keeping the border open for their own dark purposes, obviously not out of love for freedom.
Pretty much just paraphrasing our founder:
OG approved.
Why cut off the end of the quote?
There's a big laconic If there, one that doesn't apply to all nations or all religions equally, since they are not equally meritorious. At the time of that letter, the law of the land was this:
Yes, the infamous Free White Men of Good Character. That's who he was addressing, not Indians and Africans crossing half the world to be given free housing, food, communications, and travel, paid for by the sweat of the native American man.
That's the form I got the quote in. It doesn't change it though, this is the standard pro-immigration stance - ever hear people argue that we should prioritize indecent people known for their bad conduct?
Significantly, the 1790 Act placed no restrictions on immigration whatsoever, from white or nonwhite nations, which feels like the opportune chance to have done so if they wanted. Either way this is not a particular contrast with our late 19th century poet. A mostly white crowd is who Lazarus was addressing as well, writing during the era of mass European immigration. It is well known that Washington was himself a racial supremacist and I think it's good we've moved past his bad ideas (he himself felt that the slavery he profited from was immoral and hoped that it would be done away with). My point is that being welcoming to poor immigrants isn't some commie Jewish revisionism, it's been an attitude present in political tradition from the very start - many of our other founders expressed similar sentiments.
It absolutely does, especially since your source probably left it off deliberately to change the meaning, a meaning you repeated, a meaning not meant by G. Washington.
No, it placed no restrictions on immigration, just restrictions on citizenship, restrictions which I would like to see revived and reimplemented.
I mean no, not really, for the reason I described. If someone said "I want oppressed and persecuted people to immigrate here," which is a more natural interpretation?
"I want oppressed and persecuted people to immigrate here, and I want them to be moral people"
"I want oppressed and persecuted people to immigrate here, and I hope they're really bad"
Yes, that is what this conversation is about.
Sure I didn't ask.
"I want them to be immigrate and I want them to be moral" carries the connotation that enough of them aren't moral that you need to take that into consideration rather than just assuming the opposite. It doesn't just mean its literal words.
I mean, he could have made immigration law take morality into account but didn't, suggesting it wasn't really that important to him as a matter of policy. Is the claim "not everybody in the world is equally awesome" really relevant to anyone but Bryan Caplan? Few people genuinely imagine the entire earth should move into their country.
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