I disagree with him (although I am not intending to pick on him), and here's why.
If you can't have Liberty without having those "borders", then you simply can never have Liberty, period. It means Liberty can never be. It's nothing more than an impossible fantasy that can never exist in the real world.
Maybe that is how it really is. If so, what's the point of even trying? Just batten down the hatches and shoot all who come after you. Which, I suppose, is what borderists are advocating in a way. Or, as the anonymous commenter advocates, "Kill them all and let God sort them out"- 7 billion of "them".
You can have Liberty, or you can have government-enforced "national borders", but not both. They are mutually exclusive. (And "secured borders", and all that goes along with them, are also unconstitutional, but that's another issue.)
If you believe a government's "borders" can protect your liberty by keeping out those who would violate it, you must also believe a person can only be raped by one rapist at a time.
As soon as you have a government large and powerful enough to "secure" those borders, you will have "taxes" being stolen to finance them. You will have the property rights of those along that border being violated as being inferior to the government's imaginary "rights" (some of those violated are fine with that, believing it the preferable violation- or totally blinded by nationalism). You will have the right of association violated. You will have the right to travel unmolested being violated. Where these things are happening, there is no liberty. There is no longer anything to protect.
The big fear seems to be that all those "immigrants" come here and end up v*ting Democratic, and against the right to own and to carry guns. And they might. Especially if they see angry gun owners talking about deportation, prison, and walls, while simultaneously saying they are lazy welfare parasites, and that they "take our jobs".
That is no excuse. You've got to strike at the root.
V*ting on rights, by anyone, is the problem. Rights are never legitimately up for a v*te nor subject to popular opinion. And if someone places your rights on a ballot, or allows a politician to live... I mean, stay in office after he has violated your rights, then that is the problem more than the idiots- regardless of where they were born- who support the violation of human rights through "majority rule".
Instead of making enemies, why not first try to be friends and help them understand why the right to own and to carry guns is their natural, individual right, too? And, if that fails, defend yourself from those who try to violate you without worrying about where they were born.
I can't see how anyone can imagine that being violated by bullies who were born in the same tax farm you were born in is somehow "better" than being violated by bullies born somewhere else.
You can't protect liberty by destroying liberty. No matter how much you wish the opposite were true. And anti-"immigrant" is just as anti-liberty as anti-gun.
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(This is my 4000th blog post here. I never suspected I had that many in me.)
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If you get any value from my labors, consider rewarding me with your financial support. This blog is in its 10th year now. If you believe I have contributed anything to the conversation regarding liberty during these ten years, and believe I have more to contribute, help me stay online.
"Maybe that is how it really is. If so, what's the point of even trying? Just batten down the hatches and shoot all who come after you. Which, I suppose, is what borderists are advocating in a way. Or, as the anonymous commenter advocates, "Kill them all and let God sort them out"- 7 billion of "them"."
ReplyDeletePeople are stupid. You cannot explain it to them. They persist in enslaving everyone. Serfdom is unacceptable. Kill 'em all. Let god sort them.
I equate it to trying to reason with a hungry predator. You cannot reason with it. It wants to eat you. You either satisfy it's hunger or kill it.
The best refutation of Kent's view (from a libertarian perspective) I've seen so far is here:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.lewrockwell.com/2016/05/bionic-mosquito/open-borders-real-world/
First off, I will say I am not an advocate of "open borders". I don't believe in government's "borders" at all, so to my mind, there is nothing to open. Either you respect private property rights, or you don't
DeleteAnd, as I said in one of the posted I linked to above: "If private property rights prevent individuals from going where they want to be, that is just too bad." In my view, respecting property rights makes this a non-issue.
Then, to address the article from LRC... "This is why Hornberger’s hypothetical doesn’t work in the real world of state borders – his example doesn’t work because the government will not allow discrimination by a property owner" ... and he goes on to keep listing ways in which the very existence of The State makes government "borders" "necessary". Again, government is the very root of the problem, and obviously you can't solve something by putting band-aids on it while ignoring the fundamental cause. Liberty works together, but can be very messy when you try to cling to some statism while implementing liberty piecemeal. That's just how it is, and is why the State must die. You simply can't use the problems created by the State as justification for keeping the State alive and expect to get anywhere.
Well put, Kent. And happy 4000th! This is an excellent column with which to celebrate it. I enjoy your writing. It is down to earth, and you never obfuscate by trying to dazzle the reader with big words to show off what an intellectual you are.
DeleteThe issue of immigration is central to distinguishing between true libertarians and others who like to march around flashing "I'm a libertarian" badges while writhing through endless contortions to justify forbidding people from moving about freely. As you state, once one accepts the presence of a special class of people who have the power to specify who may travel where, the war is lost.
Yes, Kent, but the state must die FIRST. Meanwhile, the borders must be enforced:
Deletehttp://enlightened-rogue.blogspot.com/2016/06/dismantle-state-first-then-its-borders_8.html
You’ll think different when Mein Fuhrer Obama or Queen Killary drops a couple hundred of these monkeys into your quiet, lil’ hamlet and FORCES you to accept them and FORCES you to feed, house and “educate” their mongrel offspring. You think you have money problems now?
Your local LEO’s will put you into a cage after you resist these monkey’s destroying and stealing your property and gang raping your daughter.
Search “migrant violence Germany” at YouTube. It will show you what you got coming. You’ll long for the days when you only had to deal with occasional, drunken white trash.
Again, there's government causing the problem.
DeleteBut, even then, even with government doing all you say they will do, do you honestly see yourself simply accepting that level of personal violation? Would the threat of prison or death really cause you to sit idly by and watch yourself and your family be violated that badly? Would you really obey like the government demands? I don't believe you would. Not for an instant. Not even under threat of "law" and the death sentence that always lies behind "laws".
And without the goons of the State holding a gun to your head (in other words, without "borders" or a State to impose them), can you honestly believe it would somehow be worse?
You obviously didn't even read my piece.
DeleteActually, I did. But after that last comment.
DeleteGermany isn't America- or even your town. I simply don't believe you would allow yourself to be violated in that way, "law" or not. Not until you prove me wrong.
"Again, government is the very root of the problem, and obviously you can't solve something by putting band-aids on it while ignoring the fundamental cause."
ReplyDeleteExactly.
Anything based on a false, faulty or incomplete premise will be false faulty or incomplete.
The statism problem is in the very core principle function of government, being the monopoly on the use of coercion, violence, and the initiation of force.
Remove that core fundamental function and government is no longer government, but instead functions as a service.
Once subject to the laws of supply/demand instead of force, borders disappear.