Harry Binswanger on Open Immigration


Roger Bissell

Recommended Posts

A monarchy--just like the old days!

--Brant

Whatever it takes.

If there is one message the Israelis have been sending out strong and clear it is this --- Do Not Fuck With The Jews.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Ba'al Chatzaf

Link to comment
Share on other sites

A monarchy--just like the old days!

--Brant

Whatever it takes.

If there is one message the Israelis have been sending out strong and clear it is this --- Do Not Fuck With The Jews.

Ba'al Chatzaf

So you keep telling us morons. Since I'm a moron there's no point in a detailed reply--since it would be from one to--whom?

--Brant

morons to the left, morons to the right--into the valley of intellectual death rode--more morons!

the "City on a Hill": MoroniCity?!?! (put some sauce on that!)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

For the most part, cultboy vermin Harry Binswanger is too foolish and depraved to argue with. That's why he never discusses the issues with real Objectivists, or with persons who are at least partially well-informed about libertarianism and Objectivism. He always hides inside his weirdo cult compound and behind his mommy's filthy bathrobe -- where he belongs. He only "debates" with fellow zombies and hapless, defenseless, ultra-ignorant, conservo-progressive dolts.

But even in a purely libertarian world, Binswanger would be wrong about immigration. It's far worse now that America and the Western nations are all democratic and welfare statist.

Gov'ts are private organizations based upon a social compact or joint contract. State founders and on-going citizens have the right to create a nation with few or no immigrants. It's their country. Anyone who doesn't like it shouldn't live there. Foreigners have no right to abrogate their constitution or laws relevant to immigration. Freedom of association forbids it.

Moreover, political rights aren't civil liberties. Foreigners have no right of trespass or invasion. Once a foreigner visits he necessarily comes under the monitoring, protection, and authority of the local gov't, whose laws he must obey, and whose functioning he must fund. He has no freedom or right to decline either.

And by Binswanger's open-immigration logic, how is keeping out "criminals" not a violation of their rights, since they presumably already paid for their crime? And having a disease isn't a crime for which people should be made to suffer or lose rights protection. And would-be jihadis haven't done anything wrong yet and shouldn't be convicted of "thought crime." So why does he advocate violating the individual rights of these three groups?

Binswanger would flood America with socialists, altruists, religiosos, and third-world barbarians. He favors virtually limitless trespass and invasion by merciless and powerful enemies -- by hordes of freedom-haters, America-haters, and ruthless destroyers of civilization. Nice!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I read a story recently that said 30% of Mexicans would come to the US if they could. With children that is around 40 million of people. I assume the same is true with many other countries in the world.

Binswanger believes they should all be let in, without any background checks.

Even the legitimate functions of government would be overwhelmed. But Binswanger won't even talk about this. I have asked him if Israel should have open immigration and he didn't respond. (Dr. Diana said recently that she exempts Israel from open immigration but no other country apparently.)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

HB seems to be working off an imagined "should be" instead of a hard-nosed understanding of what is going on--right now. Philosophers who don't get a true liberal arts education--good college (where?) is only a start--end up spouting worthless or dangerous policy recommendations. For instance, I was against the invasion of Iraq in 2003 based on my understanding of the general extant situation, not just my philosophy, though part of that philosophy was don't do dangerous, expensive, unsustainable, worthless stupid. Now? I might support sending in a division or two, not to wipe out those crazy jihadists, but just to stop them and block them and trap them and keep the government forces from collapsing. Etc. The country should be broken up into three pieces, too.

--Brant

the question of the American geo-political footprint in the world is another question--I only know it's much, much too big and should be and can be greatly reduced out of present-day context--then the powers that be or would be powers that be can go from there after knowing, after understanding, the effects of what had been done to that time

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Neil -- You write that:

"Binswanger won't even talk about this. I have asked him if Israel should have open immigration and he didn't respond."

But when do the religious "Objectivists" ever discuss the issues, or answer various questions, from knowledgeable interlocutors? It seems rare or non-existent. They avoid and evade competent disputants like vampires fear the sun and cockroaches flee the light. There seem to be zero cultists and ARIan-types on Objectivist Living, Rebirth of Reason, and Solo Passion. They seem to find the relative lack of censorship intolerable, and personally unbearable. I recently posted comments on the blogs of the pathetic religiosos Peter Schwartz, Robert Tracinski, and Ron Pisaturo. All were deleted. These vermin censor ("moderate") to an extreme. When have you ever had a proper or legitimate discussion with them, Neil? I never have. And I've tried to infinity, employing faultless courtesy, respect, and friendliness (none of which they actually merit). I'd be interested in hearing if you, or anyone else, has ever had any success with any of the cultists discussing anything.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Neil -- You write that:

"Binswanger won't even talk about this. I have asked him if Israel should have open immigration and he didn't respond."

But when do the religious "Objectivists" ever discuss the issues, or answer various questions, from knowledgeable interlocutors? It seems rare or non-existent. They avoid and evade competent disputants like vampires fear the sun and cockroaches flee the light. There seem to be zero cultists and ARIan-types on Objectivist Living, Rebirth of Reason, and Solo Passion. They seem to find the relative lack of censorship intolerable, and personally unbearable. I recently posted comments on the blogs of the pathetic religiosos Peter Schwartz, Robert Tracinski, and Ron Pisaturo. All were deleted. These vermin censor ("moderate") to an extreme. When have you ever had a proper or legitimate discussion with them, Neil? I never have. And I've tried to infinity, employing faultless courtesy, respect, and friendliness (none of which they actually merit). I'd be interested in hearing if you, or anyone else, has ever had any success with any of the cultists discussing anything.

They're just gloaming off Ayn Rand who would have had the same attitude. Inertia. If there had been an Internet in the 1940s she would have had a completely different and better public persona--or none at all. It's no longer Promethius bringing fire to mankind; it's mankind having a discussion with him about making fire and how to use it, etc. On the old Atlantis list there was a now deceased poster named Ellen Moore, a Randroid to beat all Randroids but who would post, argue, respond and pig-headedly maintain all her positions, impregnable to any logic and anything she didn't already think she knew. These present-dayers have the same problem, except, being smarter than her, they keep themselves above us underlings. It's really all about status and they be giants among children, not the ideas but keeping the kids down and in their place. I call this the Giant ad Hominem in Objectivism that's turned the philosophy thus embraced into a piece of indigestible lead.

--Brant

Link to comment
Share on other sites

We need an alchemist...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Kyrel,

But when do the religious "Objectivists" ever discuss the issues, or answer various questions, from knowledgeable interlocutors? It seems rare or non-existent. They avoid and evade competent disputants like vampires fear the sun and cockroaches flee the light. There seem to be zero cultists and ARIan-types on Objectivist Living, Rebirth of Reason, and Solo Passion. They seem to find the relative lack of censorship intolerable, and personally unbearable. I recently posted comments on the blogs of the pathetic religiosos Peter Schwartz, Robert Tracinski, and Ron Pisaturo. All were deleted. These vermin censor ("moderate") to an extreme. When have you ever had a proper or legitimate discussion with them, Neil? I never have. And I've tried to infinity, employing faultless courtesy, respect, and friendliness (none of which they actually merit). I'd be interested in hearing if you, or anyone else, has ever had any success with any of the cultists discussing anything.

I agree. I don't think I've ever had a pleasant conversation with an orthodox Objectivist.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

"I don't think I've ever had a pleasant conversation with an orthodox Objectivist."

I think calling Peikoff, Schwartz, Binswanger, Brook, etc. "orthodox" surrenders the argument and philosophy to these deviants. I find them immensely unorthodox -- mere Nazi and Talibani perverts in their "philosophic" approach.

And "unpleasant" hardly describes the phenomenon. They can't or won't converse at all. I'm unfailingly courteous, respectful, and friendly to them, yet they flee. I'm perfectly willing to let them win all the arguments, and agree with them on everything, if only they won't run away.

But no such luck. All I ever "do" to them is modestly decline to self-censor or veer off-topic. But that seems to be enough.

For all my soft, hesitant, genial conversation, and encouragement of them to continue on, they seem to regard me as a relentless destroyer who slowly but surely picks them and their arguments to pieces until there's nothing left of them, intellectually or spiritually. What the hell?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

"I don't think I've ever had a pleasant conversation with an orthodox Objectivist."

I think calling Peikoff, Schwartz, Binswanger, Brook, etc. "orthodox" surrenders the argument and philosophy to these deviants. I find them immensely unorthodox -- mere Nazi and Talibani perverts in their "philosophic" approach.

My goodness!!! You do lay it on heavy, don't you?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think calling Peikoff, Schwartz, Binswanger, Brook, etc. "orthodox" surrenders the argument and philosophy to these deviants. I find them immensely unorthodox -- mere Nazi and Talibani perverts in their "philosophic" approach.

Well. I guess they are better called Orthodox Peikovians. Ayn Rand would have had Peikoff's head for slapping his name on her books and rewriting her material.

BTW, how do you get the user's name and time in a quote box?

NEIL

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Rand Paul's Imaginary Libertarian Immigrants - by John Bennett.

Money quote:

When Paul talks about what “immigrants are drawn to,” he does not cite to any research or even provide an anecdote. Neither he nor any other Republican can name asingle city or state that became more conservative/market-oriented because of mass immigration or racial pandering. Even more disturbing, these people can’t name a single conservative party in any Western nation that has won more elections because of non-Western immigration. Paul’s only citation is “nation of immigrants.”

-Neil Parille

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Immigrants are drawn to the idea and possibility of material wealth and, I suspect, once they--or more likely their children--get it, to the keeping of it. Kind of liberal to conservative attitudes, but many don't make that transition, usually because they get the wealth by taking it more than producing it. And it can go backwards when people retire on government benefits of sundry sorts, etc.

There are other significant cultural factors in play, of course. The United States is now in its upper middle age where it might stay for considerable time--if it doesn't get nuked, for instance. It will never be young again. Because of the inertia of freedom and not so unfavorable demographic outlook, this stage is theorectically sustainable for the rest of the century--also, ironically, because the present gross fulmination in government spending and activity may cause inadvertent rational redressing of the general situation if only to save the functioning of the Unafordable State.

--Brant

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I wasn't familiar with Bennett, but I find his articles quite good.

Compare his factual reporting

The state has even witnessed the indignity of ostensible Americans booing our national anthem in the 2011 USA-Mexico soccer game, played in Pasadena. TheL.A. Times reported that U.S.A. "fans were vastly outnumbered" by Mexico's fans, "many of them being U.S. residents whose lives are here but whose sporting souls remain elsewhere."

The U.S. "national anthem was filled with the blowing of air horns and bouncing of beach balls," reported the L.A. Times. The U.S. coach said that the game was "a home game for" Mexico.

One California resident, a Mexico fan, said, "I love this country, it has given me everything that I have, and I'm proud to be part of it," but added, "I was born in Mexico, and that is where my heart will always be." As ever, the revealed preference is the one that counts.

Along with their hearts, many of the immigrants have brought with them low education levels, low skill levels, and overwhelming support for big government, which cannot be a coincidence, given the massive levels of leftist state controlfound in Latin America.

To Binswanger's faith-based approach

The vision of American freedom, with its opportunity to prosper by hard work, serves as a magnet drawing the best of the world's people. Immigrants are self-selected for their virtues: their ambitiousness, daring, independence, and pride. They are willing to cast aside the tradition-bound roles assigned to them in their native lands and to re-define themselves as Americans. These are the people our country needs in order to keep alive the individualist, hard-working attitude that made America.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Many Americans and their "manifest destiny" could be complete SOBs back in the day. This native atavism may resurface in a serious way and California metaphorically and practically set adrift as Mexican immigrants get the American Indian treatment. Such treatment, of course, will eventually be visited upon the citizenry generally by the ruling media-academic-government elite as everybody else not in prison lines up for chow and blankets.

--Brant

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I thought Binswanger sounded reasonable for the first eleven words. By the second paragraph, however, he shifted hard from the real world to a magical world of 'let's suppose.' In the magical world, what are mostly impractical or insane prescriptions for the actual world (wide-open borders/no quotas/no visa regime/no perks of citizenship) almost sound sane. Because in a perfect world, all is perfection.

I live about two miles from the US-Canada border. I have been crossing that border since I was five. I can just barely imagine what that border would be like if Binswanger were Mr Thompson. I guess that Mr T would somehow negotiate away the notion of a sovereign Canada entirely. What these dreamworld arguments leave out is the will of other parties to the deal. The other countries. By what moral principle can every person queuing at the border north force his way into a different realm of law? Well, grab the wand and wave it hard.

I immediately think of the power of the border agents on both sides to detain, question, examine each and every person and object which comes up to the gate. As a Canadian citizen, I want Canadian law to apply going north, I want experienced agents able to identify the citizenship of the person and the details of the goods and his or her plans. I want to be able to consult a book of rules and exceptions that tell me how we deal with every kind of applicant at the gate: refugee, visitor, temporary worker, student, tourist, businessperson, doctor, actor, oil-field worker and so on.

In Binswanger's world of dissolved borders and concomitant dissolved national sovereignty, our three countries would essentially give the full freedoms and privileges of citizenship to each other's millions sight unseen -- by some hand-waving, the North American free-trade treaties would also extend full freedom of movement, work, residence. Without discussion.

This magical Bizarro North America, Binswanger style, removes the very operation of jurisdiction that each country has built up. A little bit of Wite-Out and it's gone.

A couple of readers seem to get agitated about Third World persons and their presumed socialist bias infecting the USA with alien values and life-choices. Even infecting and killing a putative Libertarian States of American, also in the dream world.


I'd suggest the agitated look a bit further north, and consider the province of Alberta. It is as right-wing libertarian/reform/conservative/capitalist as it gets in Canada, and has accommodated many Third-World immigrants since our rules were liberalized in the sixties. The immigrants actually are slightly more Randian than the 'white' voters. Note Calgary's popular businessman-mayor (also notable for being brown, and for being Muslim).

I'm also thinking of the BC political scene. The descended-from-3rd-world-immigrant communities are split, but the majority votes right.

Consider the most multicultural cities of Canada, Toronto and Vancouver. In TO's case, the 'Ford Nation' is by no means a 'white' conservatism, much of his electoral support spawned from the middle classes of descended-from-3rd-world-immigrant communities.

These two cities are dynamos in the national economy, despite or perhaps because of their small majorities of 'third world' residents. Canada seems to have inculcated the rule of law successfully, encouraged free market participation, made it relatively easy to work hard and prosper, made a good stab at integrating newcomers into the full breadth of citizenship. We don't have the same extent of an ethno-racial underclass as the USA, unable or unwilling to bootstrap up.

Nationally, we are governed by the Conservative party. Although it is to the left of the Republicans, it conducts a very Republican foreign policy.

Mark brings up his favourite taboo factor, race, suggesting it is perfectly natural to prefer one's own race, as natural as sex. I don't know what this means over the long run. How natural 'types' of race select sexual partners, workmates, neighbours, friends, what does this taboo factor suggest, in terms of immigration? I don't know if 'racial preference' is as natural as sex (I suspect not, as both of our countries show increasingly numerous 'biracial' couplings).

As for the whitest neighbourhoods in metropolis, I am sure there are other criteria in play today. Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles are both racially-segregated in parts and racially-mixed in others. Moreover, their dynamic neighbourhoods are not 'all-white' ...


Neil suggests that Binswanger's open immigration dream would also open the doors to Muslim immigration. I think that is right, but outside the dream, American does not have any particular bar set against this or any other religion. Similarly, Binswanger's "crushing military defeat" of terror regimes comes from the same magical place as his disappearing national citizenships, and erased borders and controls. Hand-waving.

Francisco asks, What about ethnic character? In the US, residential segregation is greater now than it was before 'desegregation.' Most modern (post-reform) immigrant communities follow the same exact path as those who preceded, seeking both wealth and community support: work, business, community institutions, political engagement. Ethnicity tends to become less important as a set-off marker with each generation following immigration, I believe.

Folks will 'vote with their feet' in any case. In a racially-divided nation, exclusive enclaves may be given tacit blessing, and customary support in real estate practices. For those who don't really care about the race of other citizens to any great degree, they will live in mixed areas.

It is depressing to consider that Objectivists might be pining for a less-brown world in the USA. Or worrying about the consequences of a Binswanger Border. The one is going to happen regardless ... browner/darker people on average ... while the other is pure fantasy.


As for the Israel question, Binswanger is probably somewhere around Diana's Hsieh's position, that Israel (among Western nations) should racially/ethnically/religiously select its immigrants to maintain a Jewish ethnocultural/racial majority in Israel proper. The only possible way that Israel could agree to a non-racial immigration is if all its enemies who have expelled Jewish populations (all but Iran) agreed to redress, or otherwise made peace. That is a hundred-year project to my eyes. Almost as magical as Free America from the Arctic to Panama.

Kyrel raises the alarm that a Binswangerite open border would flood society with barbarian hordes who hate freedom and America and civilization. This seems like crazy talk, stressing the innate awfulness of those offshore.


Look north, Kyrel! It is so much worse; not only is the base population socialist/altruist/Canadian, we tend to instill the erstwhile "Canadian" values of tolerance and good government in our newly-arrived on top of their innate barbarian altruism. As is obvious then, you need only view Canada's climate of poisonous hate and its ongoing destruction of civilization to get really worked up.

Neil suggests that the Binswanger dream would overwhelm normal governance. Of course, but I would say that we can arrange any fantasy world to obey fantasy logic.**

Brant suggests Binswanger is working off a "should be" instead of a hard-nosed understanding the real world situation. I agree. I appreciate in a kind of thought-experiment his stand on principle, but the details sound nuts given the realities of the issue in the USA.

Brant also suggests that California may be set adrift in some future instance. What does this mean?

California is a modern industrialized state that exports all over the world. It is a world-leader in technological advances, an incubator of the information age, with outstanding educational institutions and research facilities. That it may contain a majority of brown, black, Asian and Hispanic-descent citizens this century tells us nothing about its prospects, economy, or its ability to generate wealth (in both knowledge and tech).

_______________________

** to see what happens in places with massive movement of human beings, consider what happens in Jordan, Turkey, Lebanon because of the war in Syria and Iraq. Ordinary government is not overwhelmed per se -- because the moving folks are refugees. They have few options for becoming citizens, most residing in camps, or listed with UN refugee agencies. They have not a hope of citizenship. In Lebanon, Syrian refugees are almost a third of its population right now.

Edited by william.scherk
Link to comment
Share on other sites

William.Scherk wrote:

"A couple of readers seem to get agitated about ..."

Hold it right there. Even without reading the rest of the sentence you know it's going to be a hatchet job. I'm not "agitated" I'm very concerned. I don't just seem that way I make it clear that I am that way.

"... Third World persons and their presumed socialist bias infecting the USA with alien values and life-choices."

I presumed nothing. I provided abundant evidence that asians, blacks and hispanics overwhelmingly vote socialist in the USA – much more so than whites.

"Mark brings up his favourite taboo factor, ..."

Again, hold the phone. William.scherk could have written "Mark brings up ..." and then what I said. Instead he jeers at what I said: "his," "favorite," "taboo."

"... race, suggesting it is perfectly natural to prefer one's own race, as natural as sex."

Just because you prefer the company of someone over someone else doesn’t mean you think the other is morally bad. And though you must judge an individual’s moral character by his own individual merits, you can favor or disfavor whoever you want for any reason.

Few whites want to be forever surrounded by non-whites no matter how good they are.

That is my preference. I do think it is natural. Partly it’s a question of different standards of human physical beauty, and goes deeper than that statistically if not universally.

"It is depressing to consider that Objectivists might be pining for a less-brown world in the USA."

Set aside the slur word "pining." As more and more Objectivists come to realize that open immigration is destroying our civilization, what William.Scherk finds depressing will become true for more and more Objectivists. Wanting -- and working to return to -- a predominantly white USA is the selfish thing to do.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Set aside the slur word "pining." As more and more Objectivists come to realize that open immigration is destroying our civilization, what William.Scherk finds depressing will become true for more and more Objectivists. Wanting -- and working to return to -- a predominantly white USA is the selfish thing to do.

consider that Objectivists might be pining for a less-brown world in the USA."

Ah, that poor black Objectivist over there in the corner . . .

"Working to return to" via deportations or paying them not to have children or out-breeding them or letting in more Sweeds or if-you-want-welfare-get-a-vascetomy-first (first door on the right). I mean, putting up a better fence ain't going to do it.

First America imported blacks on slave ships. Now America imports Hispanics with welfare--paying them to come here. The results are trying.

Just be glad America ain't Europe with what it's been importing.

--Brant

damn Cubans!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Not up to your usual standard of humor, Brant.

It's not your fault. I don't think there's any aspect of our immigration disaster that's funny.

About that black Objectivist in the corner, if he’s smart he too would see the advantage of a predominantly white America. It would be safer and more prosperous for him as well as for me. Anyway I care more about me and mine than being politically correct.

Speaking of humor and Cubans, if not immigration, here’s Rick Sanchez (who calls himself "a cuban from Miami") after being taken to the woodshed by Abe Foxman:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLEaiIq1sIQ#t=103

Link to comment
Share on other sites

First America imported blacks on slave ships.

I don't think that's historically accurate, Brant. It was English slavers sailing from Bristol.

I'm referring to the suction. Where people ended up. Same for the Hispanics.Taken literally, of course, my statement is wrong, but the Colonies were Bristish colonies. (They only needed slaves in England for warship impressment.)

--Brant

(two squirms, then I stopped writing)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now