Harry Binswanger on Open Immigration

[Mikee]

Marcus, you obviously get angry if someone argues with you. I thought your initial post was an obvious rehash of pretty much what any objectivist and Ayn Rand believes. Nothing new. But it didn't address what Mark said in your quote of him. I don't think the rubber's meeting the road here.

You say:

"You can distinguish groups that share similar values and beliefs and hence, criticize them. That does not mean she hated them but did want to make a point."

Not much different from Mark's intended point I think. You're just trying to pick fights.

[Marcus]

Marcus, you obviously get angry if someone argues with you. I thought your initial post was an obvious rehash of pretty much what any objectivist and Ayn Rand believes. Nothing new. But it didn't address what Mark said in your quote of him. I don't think the rubber's meeting the road here.

You say:

"You can distinguish groups that share similar values and beliefs and hence, criticize them. That does not mean she hated them but did want to make a point."

Not much different from Mark's intended point I think. You're just trying to pick fights.

First, I am not mad, but I will challenge racism where I see it. Mark, you and Neil Pareil can believe in tooth fairies, nazism or anything else you fancy. And I can call you on it.

Second, No Mark's point was that somehow, by criticizing Arabs and Native Americans as a group, she was a making a "collectivist" argument, thus giving Mark's tribal schtick sanction. When taken in context, it's not true.

[anthony]

... that somehow, by criticizing Arabs and Native Americans as a group, she was a making a "collectivist" argument, thus giving Mark's tribal schtick sanction. When taken in context, it's not true.

Ha - yes. I doubt Rand was down on those groups of people because of bigotry and racist prejudice or their skin colours - nor even because they had little or no civilisation. They hadn't ideologically evolved to individualism, that's all. What must have been most pertinent, was that THEY were collectivist (not her). Wherever ancient tribalism and patriarchy was still predominant, it is a sure bet she had little respect for the native people.

[Mark]

Marcus concludes his next to last post by mocking mine, and the copy-cat zinger doesn’t come off. He would have us stand quietly by while our country is turned into a combination of Brazil, Asia and Africa. If that long-range prospect worries you, you’re a racist, tribalist, etc.

In the immigration debate the cultural leftists – including the official Objectivists and their followers – have always claimed the moral high ground. Now they’re getting desperate because the old epithets “concrete bound” ... “tribalist” ... “racist” ... “collectivist” ... are becoming ineffectual. People are beginning to understand that there must be something wrong with how these words are being used even if they can’t identify the problem.

Immigration patriots – as those who oppose unrestricted immigration call themselves – no longer care about offending people. The cultural leftists’ trick nomenclature doesn’t work anymore.

I pointed out that preference and moral judgement are two different things. Marcus argues that you must have had prior experience in order to prefer one thing over another, therefore this is wrong – which argument is hard to follow. You can like a sunset without having seen one before. He puts scare quotes around the word “races” when he writes of “certain ‘races’ of people,” as if there were no such thing as race. Yet races do exist – otherwise we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Ayn Rand acknowledged that other races exist and that ab initio they are to be judged by a different standard of beauty, no experience necessary. This applies to every member of a race, not just an average.

Marcus asks, rhetorically, “Would you really deny someone their just due just because you don’t ‘like’ the way they look?” In this loaded question, complete with scare quotes around ‘like’, Marcus pretends to speak for me. To repeat what I already said clearly enough: You owe a man nothing when all you want is to be left alone. If you happen to choose not to deal with him – for any reason good, bad, or indifferent – you rob him of nothing he had before. If someone forces you to deal with him, the injustice is against you.

I pointed out that since passage of the Immigration Act of 1965, written by Norbert Schlei, introduced into Congress by Emanuel Celler and Philip Hart, championed by Edward Kennedy, and signed into law by Lyndon Johnson –

real adherents of Objectivism every one, LOL – not to mention the simultaneous and intentional breakdown of immigration law enforcement – whites have dropped precipitously. Marcus replies, asking rhetorically:

“.. so what if whites are ‘only’ 70% of the population?”

Just look around you, that’s so what.

I pointed to the vast under-representation of whites as perpetrators of stranger violent crime. Marcus replies:

“Violent crime happens all over the world in every society, everywhere. It's a fact of life.”

— talking right past my point. The subject here is not the Siamese in Siam, it is America and the color of crime. Marcus can have the rest of the world.

I mentioned a recent horrible crime. To Marcus it isn’t real. He mocks the victim by putting “atrocity” in sneer quotes! It wasn’t a real atrocity! It didn’t really happen! He asks rhetorically: “Why amplify this ‘atrocity’ over the others just because a person of a certain race is perpetrating it?” Over which others, the number of stranger violent crimes that whites commit against minorities, per capita whites? Compare that with the number of stranger violent crimes minorities commit against whites, per capita minorities.

The ratio of the first number to the second is a tiny fraction. The mainstream media pushes the former crimes for weeks on end and doesn’t mention the latter if they can help it, even the local news typically obscures the situation – “teens” did it, “youths” did it, etc.

I wrote that averages can be useful and Marcus calls that observation collectivist and tribalistic. How about self-defensive.

Marcus claims that “Guatemalans moving to America do not ‘take’ anything away from anyone in a fully free society.” Whether we live in a fully free society or not, masses of Third World migrants dilute and destroy American culture, which was once a great culture and still has remnants left.

You can read about the slow motion train wreck on Vdare.com, which contrary to some other posts on this thread is an excellent resource for immigration news and commentary. Of course it has an agenda, and a good one: deportation of illegals, ending anchor babies, a reinstatement of the Immigration Act of 1924 which Hart-Celler rescinded. You don’t have to agree with every last thing on Vdare – I don’t myself – to find it valuable.

If the current trend continues whites will soon be less than 50%, then drop ever more rapidly. According to the cultural leftists you aren’t supposed to notice. Concern for white demise is collectivist and racist!

If so then those words must have a good meaning. The point of my last post was that the definitions of these words are in urgent need of refinement because of this hijacking of epithets. There is a good (or at any rate morally indifferent) sense of racism and there is a bad sense. “Collectivism” – which was originally a purely economic concept – needs to be clarified as well. Sometimes it is right and proper when making a decision to consider the average of a group. And of course some things are common to every single member of a group, otherwise it wouldn’t be a group. I mentioned standards of beauty earlier because it is an important consideration.

[Brant Gaede]

American culture is not static. Never was. If what you think is American culture is choice to you then that's in your head reflecting your own values and it's your job to honor them. American culture has many facets, however.

The Klan? Well, that's history.

War mongering? That comes in waves.

Meritocracy? That's being corroded.

Moralizing? World War One and it really got out of the bag when those Japs attacked in 1941. Why did they attack?

Subjugation and domination? See it on the reservations.

--Brant

the Americano

-add on your stuff here-

-stop adding on your stuff here-

(think outside the box)

[Marcus]

Marcus concludes his next to last post by mocking mine, and the copy-cat zinger doesn’t come off. He would have us stand quietly by while our country is turned into a combination of Brazil, Asia and Africa. If that long-range prospect worries you, you’re a racist, tribalist, etc.

Mark, now you're starting to go in circles with your whining tone. We already know you don't like non-whites (because of how they look?). We already know know you think developing countries are stuck in time because you don't favor their demographics. Lets move on. And without all the whining.

Mark, no one is getting desperate. I call things as I see them. Your basic argument is collectivist ("Whites are somehow in danger! Our group is losing numbers as a percentage of the population! Immigrants are the culprit!). Realize it. Accept it. Who is "people" exactly? People who read VDARE.com?

I wasn't mocking the "atrocity" (that you never named), but you make it seem as if it was morally equivalent to the holocaust, with equal outrage. And again your anti- (insert minority) schtick shows itself because you seem to elevate this criminal act in seriousness above the others (many might be worse) that go on everyday and without your knowledge (often by whites!).

Mark I showed you direct FBI statistics of the 6 million recorded instances of crime by whites in 2011 and you go on and move the goalpost to a new criminal act that you say only minorities cause. Lol.

I repeat, merely moving to a new place (peacefully) and minding your own business, being self-sufficient, does not "destroy" anything. Only your collectivist notions of what that place was. If you want to live in an all-white country/community, I suggest you buy a one-way ticket to Iceland, where you won't be "bothered" by people who "look different" from you.

America is, was and will always be a country of immigrants. Deal with it or move to Iceland.

[Brant Gaede]

America is, was and will always be a country of immigrants. Deal with it or move to Iceland.

The women are beautiful because their Viking ancestors took their prettiest captive women and settled there.

--Brant

I hear the fishing's not bad either

[Mark]

After reading Marcus’s latest ...

My tone ain’t whiny, good grief.

The “nation of immigrants” cliché is addressed on ARIwatch right here.

If the FBI said that in 2011 whites committed six million violent crimes against stranger blacks then the FBI is on drugs. Hey Mr. Comey, just say no. In any case this is the wrong statistic to measure. In my last post I specified, precisely, the two statistics you need to measure and compare. As for just what the two numbers are, I don’t know because the FBI makes it hard to find out. But in the event, the comparison is so overwhelmingly lopsided that the truth filters through the mainstream media despite obscurantist efforts: one number is much, much larger than the other. You’ll never guess which. I mean Marcus won’t.

Or look at the mug shots, filtered for violent crime, on any police department’s website, e.g. that of migrant-vibrant Los Angeles.

[Marcus]

Mark, lets just agree to disagree. You have nothing really substantive to argue. You haven't really addressed my points above, only danced around them and moved the goalpost. Followed by whining.

Your argument is all over Stormfront and other related sites. Nothing new.

Iceland is calling.

[Jules Troy]

Chicks be freaking hawt in Iceland!

[Neil Parille]

A couple of weeks ago 2 people stabbed 3 people, killing 2 in Sweden at an Ikea store.

I had to search to find their identities. Apparently they were two immigrants from Eritrea.

More immigrants "self-selected for their virtue."

Sweden is no longer a low crime society, thanks to immigration.

-NP

[Mark]

Indeed, Google.com/search?q=Sweden+immigrant+crime .

About Marcus’s latest ...

Stormfront sounds like a neo-Nazi outfit. I’m not familiar with it but if somewhere they say 2 + 3 = 5 then at least so far as that I agree with them.

One could say Marcus sounds like Susan Sontag or Tim Wise but maybe that’s going too far.

Marcus would bring up the Nazis. To quote Peter Brimelow in his book Alien Nation:

“There is a sense in which the current immigration policy is Adolph Hitler’s posthumous revenge on America. The U.S. political elite emerged from the war passionately concerned to cleanse itself from all taints of racism and xenophobia. Eventually, it enacted the epochal Immigration Act (technically, the Immigration and Nationality Act Amendments) of 1965. And this ... triggered a renewed mass immigration, so huge and systemically different from anything that had gone before as to transform – and ultimately, perhaps, even to destroy – the one unquestioned victor of World War II ...”

I elided “quite accidentally” after “And this ...” because on the contrary it was on purpose, which Peter Brimelow came to realize (the Vdare website is now in a fundraising drive).

[Brant Gaede]

The libertarian-Objectivist model is no visas/passports or restrictions on international travel. In practical thinking this tends to break down for Objectivists, but not without confused exceptions. This model tended to work best for Europeans going abroad in the 19th century when non-Europeans tended to stay in place at home. (We can then call Americans Europeans for this context.)

Let's place this model into the "City on a Hill" category and describe it as ideal but not practical, at least for these times, but a proper reference point for choosing more freedom insofar as we (oops!--sorry Greg) can.

What we have is a world full of nation-states. Each with borders and sovereign. The working ideal is each is busy protecting the rights of its citizens. One way is maintaining the state as such to be an effective agent for that. There are pluses and minuses and we see them all about us. Thailand just experienced what seems to be domestic terrorism, likely out of an indigenous Muslin population influenced if not financially subsidized by foreigners or even a foreign state. This could be Saudi Arabia.

Islamic terrorism is on the rise. It's essentially fascism nurtured by a religion which justifies any atrocity including child rape and slavery. It has three nexuses: Saudi Arabia and Iran and the one of rising significance, the so-called, to be, Caliphate which has moved into the geo-political power vacuum created by the very unfortunate US invasion of Iraq in 2003. The fourth area of concern is Pakistan. Qua country Pakistan was a mess, but that mess was exacerbated by the US invasion and long time presence in next-door Afghanistan. Now it's more a mess than ever.

Out of all going on today, it is foolish to say that a country has no right to control its borders and who comes in. There's a war going on. It's not de jure; it's de facto. Because of this it is actually incumbent on the U.S. to generally exclude Muslim immigrants and heavily filter Muslim visitors. The principle of controlling borders would also be applicable to other types of would be immigrants for various reasons libertarian theory would be at odds with, for with them there is not a physical war going on except when some of those immigrants are criminals going to do classical, rights' violating--criminal things. That Hispanic immigrants tend to vote Democratic and bias the general culture more to Catholic than Protestant is mostly of concern to those who want to preserve "American culture" and who tend to vote Republican.

(As an interjection, not a dog leg, it would seem libertarians especially have a more positive and benign view of human nature and that it would flourish in a naturally positive way out of more freedom. Well, yes and no. You have to understand evil. Ayn Rand understood evil in a person and evil in a state. I suggest libertarians really only understand evil in and from the latter sense. So they grabbed on to her in that one way and mostly ignored the rest of the philosophy which was centered on the moral. If libertarians are water the non-political parts of Objectivism are oil. They don't mix. For Objectivists it's all oil, from top to bottom.)

In respect to Islamic jihad, a great deal of the world is at war with it, whether it knows it or not. This war is expanding geographically. As a practical matter a war against one of the world's two great monotheistic religions is stupid and completely impractical--certainly by secular states. Catholicism, anyway, no longer has the religious, moral, political and economic force to wage any such war--launch a crusade. A war against fascism, however--that's doable. If it isn't done then fascism will win until the victim countries have had enough. In this context note that most Muslims are oppressed by their religion, by its embraced fascism. They are not going to give up their religion any time soon, but--boy!--could they be induced to throw off the fascism!

This war against fascism must be recognized for what it is and fought. Physically. The sooner the better. In this context you don't let Iran get the bomb and you don't tolerate Saudi Arabia export of its extremist ideology. You smash ISIS (ISIP?) That's the foreign policy crux. You don't fight Russia or China, but you maintain yourself against them. Unlike Islamic jihad the communist ideology has been smashed when applied to all nation states except North Korea. Totalitarianism is basically an ideological doing the so called "right thing"--like visited genocide on Jews. This is why being any kind of ideologue is a no-no. This includes being an ideologue for freedom. Why? Because ideologism excludes philosophy as philosophy embraces freedom out of right reason. So if you are the right kind of ideologue embracing freedom you are embracing a contradiction and your ideological successors will embrace the ideology and discard freedom. Freedom is too much work--in the brain and within the person and within the state. This means that in several hundred years we might have an "Objectivist" advocating totalitarianism and even genocide under a banner with Ayn Rand's face plastered all over it--literally and metaphorically. There won't be a libertarian left to be found.

To sum up, a war against fascism is a war against a thing conducted through the nation-state with the sanction of its citizens in the name of freedom. A war against a religion is a war against people. There are hundreds of millions over a billion of Muslims. War against them is stupid, destructive and unwinnable insanity.

That leaves one more, domestic aspect of the war against fascism. It is waged by the citizens of a country against its own nation state. The state of the United States is more and more applied fascism using any pretext and rationale possible, such as security. This security is legit and not legit hence seductive to hoi, unthinking about it, polloi wanting to be safe and saved the way children want to be saved, embraced, loved and taken care of. They get the freebies of Homeland Security and bread if not circuses. If we channel George Orwell, war itself--perpetual unwinnable war--could be the circus. Since there are no great and powerful Muslim nation states for the great American nation state to throw itself against, maybe Muslims will have to do for that. That's why I hope to have achieved some clarity with this early morning exposition on war.

--Brant

[william.scherk]

If the current trend continues whites will soon be less than 50%, then drop ever more rapidly. According to the cultural leftists you aren’t supposed to notice. Concern for white demise is collectivist and racist!

I don't have any idea where the so-called 'current trend' is calculated or by whom -- and I don't know what this 'white demise' is supposed to be. As for the 'whites will soon be less than 50%' assertion, where does this notion arise? When is 'soon'? Is there a credible source of this assertion?

Thailand just experienced what seems to be domestic terrorism, likely out of an indigenous Muslin population influenced if not financially subsidized by foreigners or even a foreign state. This could be Saudi Arabia.

The commercial shrine in Bangkok was ostensibly Hindu. Thailand is majority Buddhist. There is a radical Islamist insurgency centred in the south of Thailand, which borders Malaysia, which is a majority Muslim nation.

Thailand is ruled at the moment by a military junta, which deposed the last elected government in a coup.

[Brant Gaede]

And you therefore conclude what in contradistinction to what I concluded? That there is a one in a million chance I'm wrong and that's significant? One in a thousand? Or were you just positing there may be other possibilities and that my example could be wrong? That my example could be wrong affects nothing significant about anything else I wrote, really, but your implicit pretense is (1) it does or (2) you like to honor more correct and complete data in principle or (3) both. (?)

--Brant

[william.scherk]

Thailand just experienced what seems to be domestic terrorism, likely out of an indigenous Muslin population influenced if not financially subsidized by foreigners or even a foreign state. This could be Saudi Arabia.

The commercial shrine in Bangkok was ostensibly Hindu. Thailand is majority Buddhist. There is a radical Islamist insurgency centred in the south of Thailand, which borders Malaysia, which is a majority Muslim nation.

Thailand is ruled at the moment by a military junta, which deposed the last elected government in a coup.

And you therefore conclude what in contradistinction to what I concluded?

Well, what did you conclude, actually? That the bombing in Bangkok was 'likely' to be the work of an indigenous Muslim group. That seems to me quite likely on balance -- there has been a long-running militant insurgency in the south of the country. The provinces of unrest were once part of Malaysian polities. Thailand seized the border provinces under an earlier kingdom, some hundreds of years ago. In some ways, the conflict is ethno-religious or separatist.

There have been bombings committed by the insurgents in tourist areas quite recently, within the last ten years.

That there is a one in a million chance I'm wrong and that's significant?

No. You could very well be right that this bombing was perpetrated by a separatist terror faction from the south.

One in a thousand? Or were you just positing there may be other possibilities and that my example could be wrong?

I added some elementary context. It tends to strengthen the main line in your argument that an Islamist separatist faction is probably responsible.

That my example could be wrong affects nothing significant about anything else I wrote, really, but your implicit pretense is (1) it does or (2) you like to honor more correct and complete data in principle or (3) both. (?)

I do not believe that Saudi Arabia is a prime actor or instigator of such bombings in Thailand. That is my opinion. It could be wrong. I think it more likely that home-grown elements want to do damage to the Thai state, economy, tourism industries.

The main actors of the insurgency are brutal, regressive, ideologically-rigid and committed to terror, disruption and a breakdown of state control in the southern provinces.

What you would likely agree with is that a particularly Saudi hand -- exporting Wahhabism -- is a lesser agent of Thailand's woes. That the insurgency is 'financially subsidized by foreigners or even a foreign state' remains to be demonstrated. To me, that seems a bit too essentialized, though we can obviously argue about the Saudi state's generous overseas funding of fundamentalist Islam over the years.

As for the rest of your disquisition on war, one of your better closely-argued pieces. I would like to see more of your considered thoughts on immigration stemming from the posited horrors in this thread, a faltering white supremacy, the incipient death of White America, and so on. But hey ...

-- so, added context for your contention, one small disagreement about essentialism, and the world grinds on inexorably.

Edited August 18, 2015 by william.scherk

[Brant Gaede]

In a thousand years, except for occasional albinos, all humans will be chocolate colored. Enjoy real white whitey while you can--and real black blackie. If that's your thing. I enjoy what's inside the skin, but have to bow to my esthetics too.

https://youtu.be/Wut2P6sgHos?t=37s

I'm pretty sure a lot of bombings are copycat across ideological and religious and nationalistic differences. After a while it will get old hat and boring enough to fall out of favor, especially if the bombers like to blow themselves up.

In the late 19th Century it was anarchial bombings. Some idiot blew up half an elementary school in the early 1920s. Killed a lot of children. The other side didn't get blown for its bomb was a dud. Lincoln got shot. Garfield got shot. Mckinley got shot. (Roosevelt did too but he wasn't President at the time, only running for.) Near miss for FDR. Puerto Ricans tried to get at Truman. Kennedy got shot. Ford got shot at. Reagan got shot but not killed. We can call it all "terrorism," but not productively. Now, let us see: The Civil War wasn't terrorism, nor WWI or WWII nor any of the other wars we (oops!--sorry Greg) fought since. Basically "terrorism" is pap for the masses so the rulers can do the warring. There is something to be said for that--for the sake of America. Just know what the fuck is really going on.

Not sure if I've addressed you main concerns. I tend to go off this way, forgetting from whence I came.

--Brant

so I'll go read you again (what a pain!)

edit: I think you understate Saudi influence in that that country has used tens upon tens of billions of its oil gotten dollars to ideologically export its fundamentalist, war making religion--and for that they should have been ruled by western oil companies who kept and keep most of the money even to the point of making that country an out and out vassal state to a western state (fuck 'em.)

I'm complicated, always stuck between facts and theories (or fact and theory or facts and theory or fact and theories [did I miss anything?--I just made myself dizzy.])

Edited August 18, 2015 by Brant Gaede

[anthony]

A passing comment from Thomas Sowell's recent column: "The endlessly repeated argument that most Americans are the descendants of immigrants ignores the fact that most Americans are NOT the descendants of ILLEGAL immigrants. Millions of immigrants from Europe had to stop at Ellis Island, and had to meet medical and other criteria before being allowed to go further".

There is a fine line sometimes between benevolence and sentimentalism. South Africa has big intermittent problems with what is called here "xenophobia" - "illegals" (some legal) from Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Somalia and others are every so often attacked by local mobs, shops destroyed and some injured and killed. I would wish we had a country in which immigrants tryiing for better lives could assimilate without "threat to S. African jobs", as the mobs' justification goes. Hell, I'd like a world like that. (Then, I can be sentimental about things). Nothing exists quite as it did once, like Ellis Island, and the freedom it represented. Benevolence and freedom can be be brought back, but not by re-living the consequences, allowing open borders--but by fixing the causes.

[Brant Gaede]

I think Sowell makes a bad argument here. The law can include and exclude and the system can include by doing neither. The law evolves over time. The economic and other impulses to immigrate tend to flow over too restrictive laws respecting the desire to come into this country. The main overall pull is always economic. Sheer survival too--as from the Irish potato famine. Putting the "legal" and "illegal" label on it to justify restrictions is semantical and not substantial.

--Brant

[Peter]

I think I will start a thread about The 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution. It recently became a controversy when SEVERAL Republican candidates and not just Donald Trump questioned its provision granting automatic citizenship to children born to illegal aliens within the borders of the United States.

[Brant Gaede]

Start it in part by quoting it in full.

[Neil Parille]

They are having quite the debate on immigration over at Amy Peikoff's blog:

http://dontletitgo.com/2015/08/20/a-response-to-ed-mazlish-on-immigration/#comments

I thought the comments of Ed Powell were quite good.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Neil,

I skimmed it and, from what I skimmed, Ed Powell's comments are excellent.

I intend to read that thread of comments later.

Michael

[Neil Parille]

Harry Binswanger had a post on his blog recently (I mentioned it before) saying that Objectivists support open immigration almost to a man. It's pretty clear that this is not the case.

I was surprised that Amy allowed posts that were flat out critical of Binswanger and his rationalism. (Well, I don't know Amy, let's just say this doesn't happen on a website run by someone who is associated with the ARI.)

The guy who debated Ed Powell was Stuart Hayashi. I've seen his name pop up on blog sites, but don't know anything about him. He did a good job, but it would have been nice to see Powell debate Brook, Binswanger or Biddle.

-NP

[Brant Gaede]

HB is right because if you don't support open immigration you can't be an Objectivist--that's right, he's right is that's not a tautology.

How can he in his little bunker know much of anything really worth knowing? Anything? His position qua Objectivism is let me be showered by what I want most: the warm and soapy comfort of confirmation bias.

--Brant

don't drop the soap, HB--reality is right behind you

endless contempt for moral and intellectual cowards exploiting and speaking for Objectivism (and "Objectivists")--it's okay to exploit Objectivism--that's what it's there for--it's pretentious cowardice soiling the linen I'm objecting to, not even the soiling the linen per se--hell, I soil it all the time: I have a washing machine built into my mind I make frequent use of, but won't for this post