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My Immigration Essay
Submitted by edpowell on Wed, 2017-01-25 21:13
Thanks for the comments on my immigration essay. If anyone is a member of HBL (I no longer am), I would appreciate it if you could post the link there and tell them I encourage respectful comments. Thanks to all, and good luck to Linz on his upcoming evisceration of Brook on this topic.
https://objectivedissent.org/2...
edpowell's blog
Submitted by Elliot Temple on Thu, 2017-10-12 18:29.
Ed, I wrote a reply about IQ. I made it a new topic:
http://www.solopassion.com/nod...
Objectivism and IQ
Submitted by Neil Parille on Thu, 2017-10-12 13:28.
Rand said in her Q&A that you could raise your IQ from 100 to 130. Granted this was in the 1960s when such beliefs were probably widespread. In 1994, Hernstein and Murray came out with The Bell Curve. That year Binswanger answered a question on the book (I had the recording at one time) and he attacked its "racist premise" although he hadn't read it.
In 1996, the American Psychological Association issued a statement on TBC, "Intelligence: Knowns and Unknowns." It is an excellent discussion of the then state of the art in intelligence research.
http://differentialclub.wdfile...
A few months ago Yaron Brook said that IQ tests were "bullshit" (although he's backed off on the statement). A few years ago Leonard Peikoff said he didn't know if IQ tests were meaningful.
For whatever reason, there is quite a "disconnect" between what experts believe about intelligence and IQ tests and what the general public believes about IQ test. it isn't limited to Objectivists.
Two excellent brief introductions on intelligence were written Ian Deary and Stuart Ritchie.
Submitted by edpowell on Thu, 2017-10-12 00:16.
I have to get back to you on this. Since Sherman's army was explicitly appropriating property on the march to the sea (Lee paid for all the property commandeered in his march through Maryland and Pennsylvania) it is certain that numerous people resisted and were killed. Certainly the tradition in the South was that this happened. I'll have to look further to find a good source. Though the populace of Atlanta was told to evacuate before the city was burned, we all know that not everyone did so and many people died in the flames.
Note that I didn't allege rapes, though I'm sure they happened, since they happen whenever even the most disciplined army attacks civilians, e.g., the Soviet Army in Berlin.
I have caught Lewis in errors of interpretation before (his Fall of Rome lecture) where he twists the facts and cherry-picks to try to fit them into his thesis. I would not be surprised if he did that in his book (which I have not read). Cherry-picking seems endemic in the Objectivist community. Also, most histories of the war were written by the winners. It was not until the 20th century that more Southern-oriented scholars took pen in hand, and by then, most eyewitnesses were dead and much of the primary sources in the South had been destroyed. So it could be a case of the winners writing the histories.
John Lewis writes: But there
Submitted by Elliot Temple on Wed, 2017-10-11 23:39.
John Lewis writes:
But there were few if any murders on [Sherman's] march, and only a handful of rapes-all the sources agree on this.
This is one of many factual claims regarding Sherman in the book. If Lewis has his facts wrong, I'd like to find out and then change my mind about Sherman. So I searched the Shelby Foote book for information about rapes, to see if it would contradict Lewis, but I didn't find anything.
Could you tell me some specific factual claims Lewis is mistaken about, and where to find corrections? Or do you think Lewis has his facts correct but has evaluated or interpreted them incorrectly?
John Lewis on the Civil War
Submitted by edpowell on Wed, 2017-10-11 22:39.
Sherman has a great reputation among modern military scholars for his march through Georgia and South Carolina. I think the first person to really point him out as a great strategist was Basil H Liddell-Hart in his book "On Strategy" first published after the First World War. Other modern thinkers such as Victor Davis Hanson and Lewis have also pointed to Sherman's military genius.
Except....
From about the 1000s onward the Western Catholic Church has tried to reduce violence among Christians. Half the reason for the crusades were to focus the violence of the Western nobility AWAY from their own peasants and competing nobles and TOWARDS someone who deserved it, i.e., the Saracens. And in fact, this mostly worked. The crusaders were known for truly monumental and appalling murderous rampages (the sack of Jerusalem, the sack of Constantinople) and further wars of a religious character (the crusade against the Cathars in Southern France, the Wars of Religion from 1618-1648), but the idea of war made for political reasons among Christian princes should remain between armies only and not involve non-combatants had pretty much taken hold as the "ideal" in the West over the centuries, and especially after the peace of Westphalia in 1648 that created the modern political order of nation-states. Obviously there were exceptions and massacres here and there, but the NORM was that wars are not fought against non-combatants. When Napoleon marched over Europe, he didn't engage in mass slaughter against civilians in Germany, Poland, or Russia. Neither did the Duke of Wellington massacre huge numbers of French peasants to prevent Napoleon from getting food or popular support. IT JUST WASN'T DONE. Civilians were killed, of course, one can't stop that in wartime, but CIVILIANS WERE NOT TARGETED in the West as legitimate targets of war-making.
Until Sherman.
Sherman explicitly broke this moral rule that had held sway in the West (with exceptions) for 800 years. He made war on civilians deliberately. Large numbers of civilians (including women and children) were killed in his March to the Sea, and any attempt to claim otherwise goes against the obvious facts of history. Any history book--I recommend Shelby Foote's "The Civil War, a Narrative" in three volumes--will discuss this. "Pillaging", obviously, was his explicit goal. Sherman prove that making war against civilians "worked" in exactly the pragmatist version of the word "worked", and directly led to the mass slaughter of civilians in the First and Second World Wars. Sherman opened that pandora's box. He violated the norms of centuries and thus gave us the current norms of explicitly targeting civilians, from gas attacks, to mass bombing of cities to Mutual Assured Destruction. We have all grown up with the idea that mass slaughter of civilians in wartime is okay, normal, usual, expected. IT ISN'T. It is certainly not normal against your own countrymen, your brothers.
Sherman was a "good" general in explicitly pragmatist terms. I expect William James and John Dewey to praise Sherman as a model of their philosophies applied to military matters. But an Objectivist? Sherman was a moral monster, and along with the Radical Republicans during Reconstruction, did more than anyone to alienate the defeated South and cause the 100 years of Jim Crow and the KKK. People blame the KKK on Nathan Bedford Forrest. They should blame it on William Tecumsah Sherman.
Simple Test
Yes, the crime data in "The Bell Curve" and "Crime and Human Nature" show criminality is mainly concentrated in the 80-90 IQ range. This finding is primarily the result of the obvious observation made by many people that criminals do not think long term about their actions, and long-term thinking is a characteristic of general intelligence. Excluding all people with IQs less than the American mean (roughly 100) would basically ensure that all these criminals would be excluded. Or, in the context of the solution I presented in my essay, a potential immigrant with an IQ of less than 100 would have to meet a higher standard of demonstrated lawfulness in their behavior historically to be eligible for entry (or the proposed "insurance").
There are many confusions in the general public about IQ and IQ tests. IQ is not a particularly good indictor of the life success of any given individual; however, in a large enough group, IQ is an EXCELLENT predictor of success of the whole group. That's why all wannabe college freshmen have to take an IQ test before they get in. (At least in my day, the SAT was a fairly good IQ test, though because it obviously shows group differences in IQ, it has been watered down a little since 1995 and is no longer strongly correlated with general intelligence). To illustrate this with a made up example, let's say a college knows that 95% of incoming freshmen with IQs above 115 eventually graduate, but only half of incoming freshmen with IQs above 100 graduate. Colleges that are interested in student success instead of just money--a small minority of colleges, obviously--would set an IQ minimum of 115 (or the equivalent SAT score) so they do not allow in lots of students who won't succeed. But what if you are one of those students with an IQ of 100 or even 95 who WOULD succeed, isn't it unfair to be excluded from that particular college? Well, yes and no. No one is ENTITLED to a place at the college of their choice, and so so that hypothetical person with a 95 IQ who would succeed is not losing something they deserve. This applies to immigrants, as well. No potential immigrant has a RIGHT to immigrate, and so screening techniques that are accurate 95% of the time are perfectly acceptable even though they are "unfair" (not!) 5% of the time. That's just the breaks.
One of the obvious characteristics of IQ tests that generally goes unremarked upon is that they themselves have some sort of uncertainty in their results due to the fact that the test is not a perfect surrogate for general intelligence ("g"). To get a true picture of one's IQ, an individual must take a number of IQ tests and see the average and spread of the results. I personally have taken eight IQ tests from age 8 to last year, and the spread so far is 12 points from the lowest score to the highest.
An excellent surrogate for IQ is the pre-1995 SAT and the GRE tests (as well as the LSAT and MCAT). If you have taken the pre-1995 SAT or the GRE and remember your scores, you can go to this site and convert the score into an IQ value:
http://www.iqcomparisonsite.co...
If you want to take a very quick IQ test, take the Wonderlic, a 12-minute timed test at this site:
https://samplewonderlictest.com/
As this is a timed test, be in a good mental state, alert and calm, in a quiet place. Do not agonize over questions for which you do not know the answer. You WILL NOT get all 50 correct, and you almost certainly will not finish the test. The test will tell you how many questions you got right. The mean of this test (corresponding to an IQ of 100) is 21.06, and the standard deviation in this test is 7.12. So to calculate your IQ from the number of correct questions X, subtract 21.06, divide by 7.12, multiply by 15 (the standard deviation of IQ by definition), and add 100, that is:
IQ = ((X - 21.06) / 7.12 ) * 15 + 100
What this translates to in practice is that if you score 21 correct, your estimated IQ is 100. If you get 28 correct, your IQ is 115, 35 correct means 130, 42 correct means 144, and 50 correct means 161. Scores above 160 are generally not very meaningful (as are, obviously, scores below 40). If my scores over the years are any indication, the uncertainty in these tests is of the order of +/- 5. So if you score 130, your actual IQ is PROBABLY in the range 125-135. If you are ever asked, you can say, "my IQ is X +/- 5 points".
While the IQ test is supposed to be normed so that 100 is the average and 15 is the standard deviation, the IQ score measured among WHITE Americans using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (pretty much the gold standard of data, used in "The Bell Curve") is:
White American Men : Mean 103.9, Std Dev 14.58
White American Women : Mean 102.7, Std Dev 13.57.
These numbers, especially the difference in standard deviations, mean that in the American population, there are 8.2 million white American men with IQs over 130, but only 4.9 million white American women. That is, 63% of the white American population with IQs above 130 are male. (In comparison the number of black men AND women with IQs above 130 is 52 thousand.) This result in itself--again these are measured in a large multi-tens-of-thousands population--explains all of the "disparate impact" of both sex and race in the high-powered professions, doctors, lawyers, professors, businessmen, etc. Similar studies can be done at the low end of the IQ spectrum and these studies explain almost all of the "disparate impact" in the prison populations. Note that reading beyond about 4th grade level (again, ON AVERAGE) is not possible with an IQ of 70 or below. The mean IQ in Somalia is about 70, so this means that HALF of the refugees from Somalia transported to Minneapolis will never be able to read beyond the fourth grade level IN THEIR OWN LANGUAGE, forget English. Since between 60% and 80% of IQ is heritable, it means that their kids won't be able to read either. Jordan Peterson in one of his videos claims that studies show there are no jobs at all in the US/Canadian economies for anyone with an IQ below about 83. That means 85% of the Somalian immigrants (and their children!) are essentially unemployable. No immigration policy of the US should ignore this fact.
It is certainly true that some other traits, such as conscientiousness and energy, can make up for a low IQ to some degree. But both of these traits are highly correlated with IQ. Very few mistakes would be made if immigrants were required to have IQs above 100.
All of the above is quite openly available in non-controversial literature. I didn't include any of it in my immigration essay because the intended audience of the essay (well-meaning Objectivists pissed off at Yaron and Company's open borders mania) are probably completely ignorant of the IQ data, and have almost certain been trained by endless government, school, and Organized Objectivist propaganda, to treat any discussion of IQ as ipso facto racism. It is almost impossible to red-pill someone who has not been exposed to IQ data with this information, they basically have to discover it on their own. Thus I left out all mention of IQ, but put in that footnote as a hint to alert readers that I am aware of the literature and agree with it without explicitly stating it. You caught the reference.
General Sherman marched
General Sherman marched through Georgia and South Carolina during the Civil War, murdering and pillaging along the way, and exactly zero Confederates changed their minds about the war's righteousness because of the terror.
I believe this is historically incorrect about all the murdering, pillaging and terror. My information on this comes primarily from Nothing Less than Victory: Decisive Wars and the Lessons of History.
About right to contract:
About right to contract: you're welcome to contract with whoever you want (in general – you can't help Iran build nukes).
So what? You can deal with them over the internet or teleport them directly onto your property (and teleport them back again without them straying off your property onto the property of anyone who hasn't given them permission to visit). But your right to contract with them doesn't suddenly give them egress rights to travel over other people's property to visit you.
You don't have a teleportation device? Not my problem.
Right to contract isn't a problem. It's just that having a contract with someone doesn't automatically mean a non-US-citizen can travel using US government owned roads (or border crossing stations). A contract doesn't mean the other person gains any additional privileges to allow them to fulfill the contract.
Anyway, when you get into libertarian and anarchist type arguments about principles and rights and freedom, the whole immigration debate can be answered with one main point: property rights (including land ownership).
You think you have a right to travel? Sure. On land you own, and land you contract to be able to travel on. Not on land I own, without my permission. And not on land the US government owns, without its permission.
I don't think the right to travel (on your own property, and on property you contract with the owner to be able to travel on) or right to contract (with no automatic additional privileges to help you fulfill that contract) are problems at all – when properly understood.
Those of you who have
Those of you who have researched this issue probably already know that there is such a simple test, administrable in less than 15 minutes, that would screen out almost all potential troublemakers. Figuring out what I am referring to is left as an exercise for the reader.
What test? IQ? I haven't researched what sort of cutoff number you'd need, but I doubt many potential troublemakers have 130+ IQs. And training people to lie about their values won't work on an IQ test.
Tired and I haven't read much
Submitted by Elliot Temple on Tue, 2017-10-10 06:45.
Tired and I haven't read much of this yet, but a comment:
"Does an individual have the right to cross an international border?"
Isn't Binswanger taking the anarchist position on this? Basically that governments aren't legitimate and can't control geographical regions. Which gets into anarcho-capitalist ideas of subscribing to the protection agency of your choice, going wherever you want, and if you have a conflict your agency can negotiate with the agency of the person you had a conflict with, and your geographical location isn't important. Anarcho-capitalism has an idea of law sorta following individuals around and being determined by the individuals (and their agents like protection companies) involved in a conflict, not by the the geographical location, and so it's basically incompatible with borders. (The closest thing to a border, for an anarcho-capitalist, is that your protection agency might say they won't send any armed men with guns to help you outside of a certain service area.)
Why would Ayn Rand have defended having a single government for a region, which makes the rules there, if we were going to have totally open borders? It doesn't make sense to set the rules for a region but have no control over who enters. And anyway, if you'll merely acknowledge the right of our government to defend our borders against threats in order to protect our citizens from violence, isn't that enough to keep out MS-13, Muslims and unassimilated third worlders? People without American values, who aren't going to assimilate quickly, are an outright danger to Americans and are in fact killing us. And they are plenty of reason to build a wall.
And has Binswanger forgotten about property rights? All the land in the U.S. is owned either privately or by the government. So any Mexican coming in is either trespassing or else is on government land. Shouldn't the government have the right to control the use of its property..? If the government can limit travel within the whitehouse, why not elsewhere it owns? Binswanger says it violates the rights of the innocent if they can't go wherever they want, but that makes no sense if you think of land as having an owner.
And if the government is the only owner not allowed to keep unwanted persons off its land, can we solve all our problems by having the US government sell all the land around the border to Exxon and then Exxon can say "sorry, no trespassers on our property" (as can our privately owned airports)?
I think there's a lot of anarchism behind the libertarian open borders people in general. One of the things I find really unreasonable about it is they don't seem to care about the order we do things. Can we get rid of the welfare state (and get our assimilation mechanisms operating smoothly!) before opening up our borders? I don't want to have tax money taken from me by force to support Mexicans and Muslims. It's the same thing with drugs. Can we please stop subsidizing druggie lifestyles (in many ways, at taxpayer expense) before legalizing drugs? The order you do things is important, but libertarians don't want to hear it.
reply to Ethno-nationalism
Submitted by Mark Hunter on Tue, 2017-02-28 18:14.
"High Noon" (1952) was a great movie. Everything clicked: story, production, screenplay, music score, direction, casting. There were many memorable scenes.
Background: Years before the action the town marshal, Will Doane (played by Gary Cooper), had been instrumental in sending Jordan to prison. Now inexplicably Jordan has been set free, and he and a couple of cohorts are waiting at the depot for another man to arrive to complete the gang and then they are going to murder Doane.
At first Doane flees the town but turns around and returns.
He tries to get various townspeople to help him but to no avail. People get worried about what's going to happen and finally a selectman, Jonas Henderson (the mayor I gather), holds a town meeting in the church.
Uninvited Doane shows up. Henderson and Doane are standing side by side facing the seated group of townspeople. The camera is on the pair of them, with occasional brief shots at the townspeople.
Various arguments are heard and everybody seems to be against helping Doane fight Jordan's gang. Finally Henderson begins making a speech seemingly in defense of helping Doane.
Alright, I say this. What this town owes Will Doane here, you could never pay him with money, and don't ever forget it. Yes, he is the best marshal we ever had, maybe the best we'll ever have.
[Doane listens gratefully.]
HENDERSON (continuing)
Remember what this town was like before Will came here? Do we want it to be like that again? Of course we don't! So Jordan's coming back is our problem, not his.
[The townspeople listen intently. Doane looks at them thinking that Henderson is on his side.]
It's our problem because it's our town. We built it with our own hands, from nothing. And if we want to keep it decent, keep it growing, then we got to think mighty clear here today – and we got to have the courage to do the right thing, no matter how hard it is.
Alright. There's going to be a fight when Doane and Jordan meet, and somebody's going to get hurt, that's for sure. Now, there's people up north who've been thinking about this town, and thinking mighty hard. They've been thinking about sending money down here – to put up stores, build factories. It'd mean a lot to this town, an awful lot. But when they read about shooting and killing in the streets, what are they going to think then? I'll tell you. They'll think this is just another wide open town, that's what. And everything we worked for is going to be wiped out in one day. This town is going to be set back five years, and I say we can't let that happen.
[Doane begins to see something has gone wrong.]
Mind you, you know how I feel about this man. He's a mighty brave man, a good man. He didn't have to come back today, and for his sake and the town's sake I wish he hadn't. Because if he's not here when Jordan comes in, my hunch is there won't be any trouble, not one bit. Tomorrow we'll have a new marshal, and if we all agree here to offer our services to him, I think we can handle anything that comes along. To me, that makes sense. To me, that's the only way out of this.
[Almost without exception, the people are persuaded.]
HENDERSON (turning to Will)
Will, I think you ought to go while there's still time. It's better for you – and better for us.
[Doane is staring at him, stunned. Then he looks out at the silent people, reads the answer in their eyes, in their averted or guarded faces. He turns from Henderson and walks out of the church.]
That scene comes to mind after reading Ed's post. He begins as if he's on the side of immigration patriotism and weirdly ends up telling us that Americans have decided to give their country to the chinese.
There's a lot wrong with that slippery post. I'll focus on this:
... If the Poles want Poland to be Polish, that's fine with me. If the US wants to be the country organized on ... ["a few important philosophical principles"] that's great too.
Just who in the U.S. wants the U.S. to be a proposition nation and let in non-whites? As Doug observed it wasn't the Founders (except for the slavery idiocy). And it sure wasn't the American people. Kevin MacDonald recently put it very well:
The top-down nature of this revolution cannot be overemphasized. There was never a demand by a majority, or even close to a majority, from any Western country for a complete transformation, to the point that white people will soon be minorities in societies they had dominated for hundreds and, in the case of Europe, thousands of years. This top-down revolution has never been supported by a majority of white Americans. There is anger, resentment, and fear for the future.
By the way, the cross-posting is a mess. Perhaps the SOLOP administrator can delete one of them and consolidate the replies.
How many people like me?
Submitted by edpowell on Mon, 2017-02-27 03:00.
Very few. Note that I am an American patriot, and I'd love someone to give me a solution to the problems the US faces that doesn't end in dictatorship (most likely), civil war (second most likely), or dissolution (third most likely). I just can't think of any, and like a cancer patient, I'd rather lose a limb than the whole body, especially if that limb is California.
Submitted by Doug Bandler Th... on Mon, 2017-02-27 02:32.
I'm glad that you've reached the conclusion of dissolution. That I think is the only sensible option. A number of Austrians are coming to the conclusion (Jeff Deist for example) that the United States government just can not continue as a humane institution given the direction that the country is going (and it can be argued that it hasn't been human in over a century). Objectivists however have the view of, what I call, libertarian supremacism. They want to use legislators and Judges (including the Supreme Court) to enforce Randian liberty on the entire country (and by implication the world given some of their views on foreign policy). This is not in line with the original system of American Federalism but it is also not realistic.
I also agree that the totalitarian impulses of the Left can not be contained. I think that that movement needs to be punished Pinochet style (actually much worse). Leftism is a repository of some of the worst and most evil views on human nature and politics. I think it has reached the point where it is a disease. Its interesting that the Left is calling for secession, ie Cal-Exit, where for years they mocked the Paleo Right for holding secessionist views; ie "Neo-Confederate" (a smear term Objectivsts also use). But I don't think that even if the Left got California that they would stop. Leftism is about domination and mastery. There is an inevitable showdown with them in the future of the West I fear. What so frustrates me with Objectivists and most libertarians is that they still hold the "left boot right boot" view as if the left and right are equivalent. God how I hate that crap.
I'm glad that there is a phenomenon like Ed Powell in the Objectivist movement. Let me ask you Ed, what percentage of Objectivists, or Randians as a broader term, are like you? Are there even 5%? I've become so bitter with the movement even though I really do admire Rand and still have agreement with her in a number of areas (especially metaphysics and epistemology where I think she is strongest). Its just that, as Neil can attest, the on-line Objectivist movement is god-awful. Lindsay's "Obleftivst" term barely does it justice.
Submitted by Kyrel Zantonavitch on Sun, 2017-02-26 15:12.
Ed -- Your remarks on governmental dissolution are important. People have an absolute right to freedom of association. This includes along grounds which are intensely foolish and depraved. No-one forfeits any rights just because they are low in intellectual or moral quality. They only lose their rights when they violate Natural Law by attacking people or property. People have a right to join and form their own groups. Also to quit them. The right of secession is absolute.
Submitted by edpowell on Sun, 2017-02-26 04:22.
Doug, I've written elsewhere (which I may post to my blog one of these days) that I believe dissolution is the only peaceful solution to the problems facing the United States. I don't know whether race and language are the best ways, rather than culture, which crosses racial boundaries more than I think you realize, but some sort of red state/blue state or regional dissolution would be in the best short-term interests of everyone. In the very long term, though, the totalitarian impulses of the Left would mean inevitable war between the more lefty areas and the more free areas. But you are right, in the long term, reverting to a free country is low on the list of possibilities.
Stock up on ammo. Especially if you're only in your forties.
Submitted by Doug Bandler Th... on Sun, 2017-02-26 04:06.
"It's good to see that Rothbard changed his mind, but I think his views are still a little naive."
I agree. I'm not endorsing Rothbard's anarcho solutions. I was just showing that Rothbard at least understood that racial demographics was a legitimate concern. As Ed said somewhere else, Hoppe has improved on Rothbard's views on immigration. But barring any anarcho-capitalist system, I think the best we can hope for would be if America was peacefully broken up into different sections that were largely determined by race and language with maybe some NATO type arrangement for defense. In that decentralized set-up maybe a multi-ethnic limited government republic could form. But I see now way of turning America as it is now into the Minarchist utopia Randians dream of.
"One thing, I imagine, is the Objectivist opposition to "intrincism.""
Yeah. Intrincism seems to overlap with the Blank Slate.
The Improvement of Man
Submitted by Kyrel Zantonavitch on Sat, 2017-02-25 19:21.
Ed -- Traditionally the rival nations of England and France definitely seem to have made each other better over the centuries. General Motors and Ford seem to improve each other, via competition, as do The Atlas Society and The Ayn Rand Institute. There's a strong argument to be made for keeping this healthy competition, and not having everyone be a part of just one group, organization, or nation. The more social group divisions there are, the more harmony and ultimate human unity there will be, I think.
Just for the record, I carefully read all 69 pages of Ed Powell's high-quality, very well-researched essay about a week ago. His argument against border anarchy is passionate and strong.
Ethno-nationalism
Submitted by edpowell on Sat, 2017-02-25 19:01.
[Sorry for the cross-posting]
There are about 200 countries in the world and no prominent Objectivist has ever discussed the phenomenon or tried to tease out any ideas about what makes a good country or not. While Rand (and perhaps others) explicitly rejected the idea of global government (since it is such a manifestly bad idea), the approach of Brook and others seems always to point in that direction, in the direction of open borders and thus population mixing and thus increasing homogeneity among populations. But I don't see necessarily how this follows at all from the objective facts on the ground.
I have nothing against ethno-nationalism as the organizing principle for a given country. I don't see why Britain can't be British, France French, Germany German, Poland Polish, Egypt Egyptian, Iran Persian, India Indian, China Chinese, or Japan Japanese. I don't see any reason why these countries can't create immigration policies centered around this idea. There is no universal principle requiring the homogenization of populations against the will of the people involved. Thus I find the idea of Israel as the Jewish State perfectly reasonable, despite all the problems that were manifested in its creation. I find it can be defended simply on this basis.
The question then becomes, do I thin the USA should be an ethno-nationalist state? My answer is no. The fact that I don't see anything wrong with ethno-nationalism in principle, does not mean I find ethno-nationalism to be required. The United States was founded on a few important philosophical principles--rooted it is true in the English experience--but as long as a person agrees with and works toward these principles, I personally see no reason why he can't be as American as any DAR member. Secondly, the facts on the ground have long since prevented the US from exercising ethno-nationalism as its organizing principle--that ship has sailed. Only violence on a large scale--we're talking Stalin-level violence--could ever transform the US into an ethno-nationalist state, and obviously I find that abhorrent.
So, do I support Poland or Israel or South Korea as ethno-nationalist states? Yes! Do I support the US being one? No. This is not a contradiction, because I don't think there is any "categorical imperative" demanding one or the other. If the Poles want Poland to be Polish, that's fine with me. If the US wants to be the country organized on the principle that "all men are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights," that's great too. If "diversity is strength," as we are told endlessly as if we are in the novel 1984, then why can't countries be diverse between themselves, rather than being globally homogeneous but internally so "diverse" that it leads to global chaos? (Also, remember, the pushers of diversity only want to destroy the English-speaking and European countries. They never urge China or Singapore or Saudi Arabia to allow in huge numbers of Syrian migrants).
In the other thread, Doug mentions Rothbard's change of mind on the idea of "open borders" being consistent with libertarianism. I think Hoppe has refined Rothbard's work in this area in a really good couple of essays in his book "Democracy, the God that Failed," which I highly recommend.
Rothbard On Immigration
Submitted by Neil Parille on Sat, 2017-02-25 17:34.
It's good to see that Rothbard changed his mind, but I think his views are still a little naive. What happens if all the land is privately owned and George Soros or the UN pays some land owners to open their property to a flood of immigrants? They aren't then going to be able to move around the country? Who is going to deport 50,000 Somalis who settle in Minneapolis? You'd get de facto open immigration.
Rothbard's point about Estonia and Latvia is interesting. OrgOists probably don't know about this or, perhaps more likely, don't care. The only country that can't get flooded with immigrants is Israel to hypocrites like Brook and Binswanger.
One thing, I imagine, is the Objectivist opposition to "intrincism." To say that (as I do) it's nice for Iceland to remain Icelandic with their unique language and culture is mysticism to someone like Brook.
From Rothbard's Essay
Submitted by Doug Bandler Th... on Sat, 2017-02-25 01:26.
I began to rethink my views on immigration when, as
the Soviet Union collapsed, it became clear that ethnic Russians had been
encouraged to flood into Estonia and Latvia in order to destroy the
cultures and languages of these peoples. Previously, it had been easy to
dismiss as unrealistic Jean Raspail's anti-immigration novel The Camp
of the Saints, in which virtually the entire population of India decides to
move, in small boats, into France, and the French, infected by liberal
ideology, cannot summon the will to prevent economic and cultural
national destruction. As cultural and welfare-state problems have intensified,
it became impossible to dismiss Raspail's concerns any longer.
Think abut "The Camp of the Saints" and how relevant that has become today. Have OrgOists even heard of that book?
However, on rethinking immigration on the basis of the anarchocapitalist
model, it became clear to me that a totally privatized country
would not have "open borders" at all. If every piece of land in a country
were owned by some person, group, or corporation, this would mean
that no immigrant could enter there unless invited to enter and allowed
to rent, or purchase, property. A totally privatized country would be as
"closed" as the particular inhabitants and property owners desire. It seems
clear, then, that the regime of open borders that exists de facto in the
U.S. really amounts to a compulsory opening by the central state, the
state in charge of all streets and public land areas, and does not genuinely
reflect the wishes of the proprietors.
Put aside Rothbard's anarcho-capitalism and read the bold part of that. He wrote that in the mid 90s I think. Objectivists still haven't caught up to him. For me it is dead set certain that "open borders" libertarianism and Objectivism is both wrong and destructive. It is also pro-statism.
Its a disgrace that the overwhelming majority of Objectivists embrace it "as a matter of principle". If a movement has those types of principles what can be said about that movement?
Submitted by Neil Parille on Sun, 2017-02-19 16:34.
https://mises.org/system/tdf/1...
The Other Side Of Immigration
Submitted by Neil Parille on Mon, 2017-02-13 13:27.
From the neo-con National Catholic Register, of all places
"Luanne Zurlo, an assistant professor of finance at The Catholic University of America's Busch School of Business and Economics, told the Register that tighter border control needs to happen in tandem with reforming immigration policy. Zurlo has seen firsthand how illegal immigration has distorted the social organization of sending countries, having visited communities in Mexico largely devoid of their men, who send back remittances to towns filled largely with elderly, women and children. In El Salvador, remittances are the biggest driver of an economy that has few options. But Zurlo explained this arrangement has "debilitating" social effects.
"Young people are growing up without fathers," she said. The more men feel stranded on one side of the border, unable to visit home, the more likely they will just settle in the U.S. and start new families, even as they support the ones at home, she explained.
Magnificent. If you want to submit this as a blog post, I'll happily blue-sticky it atop the pole.
I specifically avoided intelligence in the essay for a number of reasons. The purpose of the essay was to convince readers who might be on the fence between the open borders position and the limited immigration position. The usual conversation with someone who has not read anything about intelligence goes about like the following:
"I'd like to bring up the overarching explanatory power of intelli-"
"RACIST!"
People like Hayashi, Tracinski, or Brook, or anyone who believes all human brains are identical and interchangeable, or if they are different, the difference was solely caused by choices made by the person, such a discourse causes them to shut down immediately. Since this sort of intellectual "hardware egalitarianism" is rampant in the government education system, even relatively innocent people who might be swayed by my arguments might simply stop reading were I to delve too deeply into intelligence, or especially if I were to present evidence that intelligence distributions differ in different populations, and the evidence strongly suggests that this difference is primarily heritable. (I avoid using the term "genetic" since the gene complexes that may be responsible for intelligence have not been discovered yet. "Primarily heritable" is true. "Primarily genetic" is speculation, though with much circumstantial evidence behind it.)
I did mention intelligence twice in the essay, once in the section on economics and the other in footnote 144, which was placed there as a indicator for those who have read the literature on intelligence that I was not ignorant of the literature, but had made a conscious decision to omit that argument in this essay.
I cover four primary reasons to oppose open borders: welfare, politics, culture, and crime. Of these, welfare, culture, and crime can be explained in part (a great part) by intelligence. Clearly there are other parallel explanations as well. Taking welfare benefits was once though to be disgraceful and shameful, and so few people took it, despite the fact that they weren't that bright. Only when the left convinced them welfare was their "right" and "payback" for previous discrimination did welfare use take off into the stratosphere. So, yes, intelligence explains part of welfare, but bad philosophy explains a great part as well.
Politics, on the other hand, in particular identity politics where in multicultural societies people vote based on their ethnicities rather than ideology, is not explained by intelligence, and indeed is a universal experience in human existence. High intelligence societies tend to have less of it than low intelligence societies, but even the Chinese and the Jews (105 and 115 average IQ respectively) practice identity politics. Politics based on ideology is peculiar to Western Civilization, which is one of the reasons that the Left wants non-Western immigrants to swamp the US, not necessarily because they are mostly "brown" and the US is mostly "white" (though some of that), but because non-Western people don't vote based on ideological difference between freedom and statism, but on bringing home the bacon for their particular ethnic group. That is, they overwhelmingly vote for statism. There is absolutely nothing in Chinese culture that is a priori opposed to economic freedom--just look at China--and the Chinese have strong "family values", strong love of education, strong sense of personal responsibility, yet Chinese-Americans vote overwhelmingly for the party of socialism, destruction of the family, teacher's unions, and welfare. Identity politics trumps both intelligence and culture in multicultural societies. Lee Kwan Yew, the founder of modern Singapore, when asked why he did not found a more democratic state, responded, "The British came here, never gave me democracy, except when they were about to leave. But I cannot run my system based on their rules. I have to amend it to fit my people's position. In multiracial societies, you don't vote in accordance with your economic interests and social interests, you vote in accordance with race and religion. Supposing I'd run their system here, Malays would vote for Muslims, Indians would vote for Indians, Chinese would vote for Chinese. I would have a constant clash in my Parliament which cannot be resolved because the Chinese majority would always overrule them. So I found a formula that changes that..." That's a very first-handed take on the subject, something Brook could learn from. Singapore average IQ 108.
Another reason I avoided intelligence was simply practical, I didn't have enough time to do the topic justice. And even if I did have the time, and wrote another 20 pages, how would that even help? If people won't read the 900 pages of The Bell Curve, or after reading it still don't get the thesis, not to mention the other half-dozen excellent books that cover this subject extremely well, why would they listen to me in 20 pages?
The other thing is that intelligence has great explanatory power, but is not by itself sufficient to screen immigrants. George Soros is a very smart person, as are many college professors--that is, they would score well on IQ tests--and they are some of the most monstrously evil people in the US today, and do far more damage to liberty than Brook's phenomenal gardener. We have to screen out the George Soros's as well as the dummies. (Screening out the Brooks, Ghates, and Journos would also have been a blessing too, come to think of it). The effect of low intelligence can be welfare use, a corrupt culture, and crime. The effect of high intelligence combined with evil philosophy can be The Open Society Foundation, The ACLU, and The Southern Poverty Law Center.
So you see why I didn't wade into this subject. I certainly don't think we should admit any immigrants with IQ below 100, that would be ridiculous. But on the other hand, reversion to the mean might produce a bunch of dumb kids from smart immigrant parents as the children revert to the population mean (on average). The average IQ in Syria is 72. If we allowed in only those Syrians above, say, 100 in IQ (my estimate is that would be 1% of Syrians), they still would, on average, produce children in the 85 range (down one standard deviation), as they reverted to the population mean. [This is the "second generation Mexican immigrant " problem I mention in my essay, but with intelligence used as an explanation. Maybe the first generation of Mexican immigrants really are smarter and more go-getters. But their children revert to the mean.]
Similarly, since Islam encourages cousin marriage, which drops IQ fairly rapidly by 15 points or more, but Christianity bans cousin marriage, and inter-religious marriage in Syria is very rare, the population mean for Syrian Christians is probably substantially higher than the Syrian population as a whole. So one would have to understand not just the mean and standard deviation of the country as a whole, but of the different culturally different sub-populations. One of my doctors is a Syrian Christian immigrant, and she's really, really good. We've had some discussions of the Syrian Christian population, and they are quite distinct from the Syrian Muslims. I'm glad she was allowed to immigrate, not so much for the other illiterate refugees.
A discussion of intelligence has to involve all of these things: what intelligence is, why intelligence varies among populations (evolutionary pressures PLUS culturally dysgenic practices), and how that affects a society. I didn't have time, and it's a subtle topic, because as with Soros, elements other than intelligence are at play too.
Finally, on the issue of an immigration hiatus. I think that is a respectable position, one taken by both Brimelow and Coulter, that can be defended. Given that I work with a lot of immigrants, know a lot of immigrants, meet a lot of immigrants, I personally am less amenable to that approach. Of course, I don't fall into the trap of the seen and the unseen. The fact that most of the immigrants that I see are both employed and productive (else why would I see them?) doesn't mean that a substantial fraction of immigrants (Brimelow estimates over 50%) are neither. Maybe I'm naive in thinking we can take the good and exclude the bad. I would welcome a discussion of this from someone else's perspective.
For those of you who wish to play with numbers, this site, which translates a point in a given distribution with a given a mean and standard deviation into a percentile is particularly useful.
http://www.danielsoper.com/sta...
This immigration essay was
This immigration essay was the best thing that any Objectivist has written on the subject. Largely because it was the first non-rationalist attempt at addressing immigration. I also see that Hans Hoppe was cited. Hoppe is imo one of the best of the Austrians. Put aside the anarchism. He addresses what left vs right means and he shows that it is not individualism vs collectivism or capitalism vs socialism. It is equality vs hierarchy and even deeper it is a world view based on socio-biology vs a worldview based on the blank slate view of human nature.
Sadly, Rand herself held a blank slate view of human nature which we can forgive her for because she did not have access to the ton of information we have on the related subjects now. Hoppe explains how one of the most important events for humanity was that the northern peoples, ie lighter skinned people, developed greater cognitive skills because of the selection pressures from dealing with the harsh winters from the last mini-ice age (glacial minimum). This changed both the IQ and the reproductive strategies of the various races. This has consequences. Hoppe is the most hated of the Austrians because he has gone down the path of race and sex realism, ie hereditarianism, and included it in his approach to libertarianism. He has gone beyond Rothbard here. Objectivism at large refuses to do this because it has such a commitment to Rand's blank slate view of individualism that it just won't recognize group differences for fear that it would destroy the entire movement and liberty itself.
The reality though is that liberty will have no chance if people refuse to recognize group differences AND to recognize that the Left's ultimate aim is the ELIMINATION of the white race itself. If you don't understand what the end of the road is for the egalitarianism of the Left, if you don't understand that the racial and gender egalitarianism of the Left will mean the elimination of whites and the liberty, property rights based societies that they have built, then you just don't understand the world in which you live.
Ed's immigration paper is good for a start. But he has yet to go down the road that Molyneux and Hoppe have gone down. I don't know if he will although I can see who he is reTweeting on his Twitter account. He's been influenced by some alt-right people. Once that starts, the bunny hole goes deep... For me, while I think Ed's solutions are on the right path, I would hope for an all out moratorium on immigration for a generation or more. The only people we should want are Europeans and no European country has a surplus of people given the terrible fertility rates. If we don't stop immigration, whites will eventually become minorities in their former homelands, something all open borders advocates are apparently ok with. At least we won't be racists...
Imagine what will happen if whites are only 25% of the US population. How would blacks, Meso-Americans, Arabs, etc treat us? Imagine 'Atlas Shrugged' in that scenario. Rand gave us the all white version which is not the reality of what is happening as we now know. Rand published her great book before the '65 Immigration act. Update that book with whites living in a South Africa version of Rand's dystopia and realize the nightmare future white people could face; the children of Objectivists if Objectivists had any children (gee, there's that whole atheist white people not having any children thing).
But Yaron Brook and Amy Peikoff do not want you to make any "sweeping statements". That would be "uncivil". The Left is rioting in the streets and beating their opponents with bats and Objectivists thinks they will "capture the culture" with such delicate sentiments regarding "civility". Such precious snowflakes. The movement has become a farce. How does it think it will compete with the alt-right for the hearts and minds of the young white people that are now being deliberately targeted because they are white? "Hatred of the white because they are white" is really where we are at although don't tell that to Stewart Hyashi or he will call you a "white supremacist" and a "eugenicist". lol
But Israel has its walls, its Jews-only settlements in the West Bank, and its never ending blood money from the United States. That should make Yaron happy...
Perusing
Submitted by Kyrel Zantonavitch on Fri, 2017-02-10 06:00.
Greg and Lindsay -- I'm an amazingly slow reader in many respects. I try to understand the writer thoroughly. I seek desperately to learn from him. I also tend to print out, and annotate, all high-quality pieces, such as this one by Ed Powell. I'm currently up to page 12 of 69.
I'm grateful that his essay is so well-researched! I'm impressed Ed knows about Ron Pisaturo. And that Yaron Brook on his radio show seems to have contradicted himself on immigration almost 100% from 2008 to 2015. I think the Randroids like Amy Peikoff and Yaron Brook produce decent-enough video commentaries and radio shows (but long-winded, smug, pat, clichéd, dull, uninspired, enervating, debilitating, etc.) but I find them viscerally repellent and so generally prefer not to listen. Better to read their robotic, torpid semi-thoughts!
Rand quote
I've placed that quote atop my essay. Wish I'd remembered it. Never thought to consult the Column. Dug it out just now. Wotta treasure trove!
Incidentally, I suspect I'm the only one here who was alive when Hugh Gaitskell was.
Rand in a MAGA cap
Submitted by Sam Pierson on Fri, 2017-02-10 05:30.
Neil, good find that quote.
'Nationalism' sure gives people a few worries, as its main association in the collective mind is with that failed Austrian artist. 'Internationalism' has been the acceptable way since WW2. Revolution underway..
I don't know what Rand would have concluded if she decided to write an essay on immigration. But she would have looked at the issue from not just an abstract individual freedom perspective but from national self interest.
Robert Tracinski might call Ayn Rand a xenophobe!
Quotes From Ayn Rand
"While the American people are being urged to surrender their freedom, their rights, their wealth and even their military defense to the mercy of the majority vote of the savage tribes of the whole world - Mr. Gaitskell declared that the British people would not submit to the majority vote of a European federal parliament, if such a vote went against them."
"For decades, the 'liberals' have regarded 'nationalism' as an arch-evil of capitalism. They denounced national self-interest—they permitted no distinction between intelligent patriotism and blind, racist chauvinism, deliberately lumping them together—they smeared all opponents of internationalist doctrines as 'reactionaries,' "fascists' or 'isolationists'—and they brought this country to a stage where expressions such as 'America First' became terms of opprobrium." Ayn Rand, "Britain's 'National Socialism'" in the Ayn Rand Column
He got up to page 4 in Atlas too. Thought it was quite good.
Sorry, Kyrel.
Well done Kyrel
Galt knows how many years it took you to get through Atlas..
High-Quality Essay
Submitted by Kyrel Zantonavitch on Thu, 2017-02-09 06:35.
Ed Powell's essay on immigration looks great! I've read the first 4 of 69 pages and it seems very formal, careful, elaborate, well-written, well-documented, and high-quality.
Submitted by Neil Parille on Wed, 2017-02-01 16:38.
There are middle eastern countries that don't even have laws against domestic abuse. I hope you ask Yaron how he proposes to screen such people.
Brook even once said that it's not true that Islam is anti women religion.
What pisses me off ...
... about Trump's Muslim ban is that it isn't one. It should be. Not One Muslim! But I'll settle for it. He's magnificent!! I truly never imagined I'd see anything like this. Ayn Rand couldn't have made him up. She made up plenty of his opponents, though. Wesley Mouch, Peter Keating ...
Daniel Pipes on "Extreme Vetting"
Many, many good ideas in this article about how to smoke out Islamic Supremacists.
http://www.danielpipes.org/171...
I was wrong about Trump
A Cruz man in the primary, I thought Trump might be a fraud. But with the appointment of Gorsuch tonight, I think we can no longer hold the idea that Trump's campaign was an act, that he didn't mean it, that he was just saying stuff to get elected.
He campaigned on renegotiating trade agreements and he unsigned TPP (which was doomed from the left anyway) and won the effusive praise from the private sector unions for doing so.
He campaigned on keeping refugees out implementing an "extreme vetting" regimen, and while the roll-out was rocky (since you can't legally deport a green card holder if they are on American soil without a hearing), overall the plan is good, and the American people are responding positively (despite the protests).
He campaigned on lowering regulations, and he signed an order saying that no regulation can be implemented without two being repealed. How this works out in practice will be interesting to see. He utterly stopped all regulatory makings of the EPA cold.
He campaigned on loosening up America's energy industry and he just today ordered the Army Corps of Engineers to approve the final part of the Dakota Access pipeline. He also approved the Keystone XL pipeline.
He campaigned on law-and-order and he's told Rahm Emmanuel that he better stop the bloodshed in Chicago or he will send in federal troops. Emmanuel, while protesting mightily, is frantically implementing new policing policies to bring the carnage to an end because he knows Trump is serious.
He promised to appoint one of the 21 judges he listed during his campaign, and now he has appointed a particularly good one. Not a perfect one, there are very few perfect lawyers. But a damn good one who is being praised by people from all over, even Judge Napolitano, who hates most judges.
He promised a negotiated solution to the Syria debacle, and reports indicate the Saudi King has agreed to both pay for and potentially host a safe zone for Syrian refugees, thereby perhaps saving European civilization with a single phone call.
Now reports indicate he will crack down on welfare usage by immigrants.
And for a bonus, he called out Chuck Schumer as a crybaby the other day.
I was wrong. Trump is the real deal. He is doing what he said he was going to do. Not everything he said he was going to do is good, mind you, but he's not a liar or a fraud as we suspected early in the campaign.
It's Trump vs entire world
Submitted by Sam Pierson on Tue, 2017-01-31 10:55.
..and Trump's looking pretty solid for the win.
There won't be no real fighting... SJW's are boring entitled cowards, and all the gun owners are with their President.
Trump's main threat will come from within the GOP. The weak will want slow him down.
I think civil war lies ahead. This is Trump vs the entire Establishment, including the irrelevant but self-important elitists of ARISIS. They have all gone more mental than even I would have imagined. They will stop at nothing to restore their hegemony, and many of The Filth are openly calling for Trump's assassination. Question is, where, if push comes to shove, will the military's loyalties lie?
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!!!!!!!!!!!!
I've already gone half-blind reading your primary text! Footnotes as well and I'd need a dog.
This is a very accurate concept, though. And gratifying for once to be able to know where it came from. I wonder where such hideous abominations as "so," used entirely gratuitously at the beginning of sentences, "narrative," "around" as a generic preposition when much more specific and accurate ones are available and have traditionally been used, "going forward," "pushing back" and other moronic contemporary cliches started? Not to mention, of course, the habit (now universal among women), of "speaking" through one's nose, vocal fry and mindlessly upward-inflecting—the unidentified testament to the impending end of civilisation—who started all that?! A side-bar for a different thread. I think I did one on "fry-quacking = cultural terrorism."
Virtue-Signaling
Submitted by edpowell on Tue, 2017-01-31 06:14.
Gotta read my footnotes!
Taking a public position at no personal effort cost just to show how virtuous (e.g., leftist) you are. Reference:
http://www.spectator.co.uk/201...
Most enjoyable moment yet!
Trump firing the bitch. Best moment yet in a thrilling 9 days.
I sent him a tweet:
Lindsay Perigo
‏@LindsayPerigo1
@realDonaldTrump Fire the bitch! Oh wait, you just did. Bravo! A Reagan/air traffic controllers moment!
Quite a few likes and snark already!
Ed, what is "virtue-signalling"? I noticed it in your essay, and guess I can infer its meaning from the context, but it's new to me.
You're Fired!
Just a reminder for all non-Americans on this list. Every cabinet secretary, indeed, every political appointee (and there's about 4000 of these in the US government), including the Attorney General, serves at the pleasure of the president, and can be removed at any time for any reason, or for no reason at all.
This person, Acting Attorney General Sally Yates, was going to lose her job next week anyway, when the new Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, was approved by the Senate. Everyone expects a wholesale housekeeping of the Justice Department after Sessions is sworn in. So Yeats wasn't being "courageous," she was virtue-signaling to her fellow leftists.
My expectation was that she believed trump wouldn't dare to fire her, and she could set up a rogue DoJ for the week or so she had left in the job. She underestimated Trump, who fired her within 2 hours and 20 minutes of her statement. Why she underestimated a person who was made famous for his catch-phrase "You're fired!" is simply incomprehensible to me. But I guess she believed that since every other Republican was a push-over in slave to Leftist good sentiments, Trump must be one too.
Of course, I would have gone one better than Trump did and fired every single political appointee in the Justice Department along with Yates. It was when Reagan fired all the illegally striking air traffic controllers that people finally realized Reagan meant business, and wasn't the usual GOP fool. But in Trump's defense, he did openly mock Chuck Schumer over his crocodile tears, and that sort of mockery is one of things desperately needed in this fight.
Trump Fires Acting Attorney General Who Won't Enforce The Law
Submitted by Neil Parille on Tue, 2017-01-31 03:39.
Yep, an Obama nominee:
http://www.foxnews.com/politic...
Yaron Again Backs Open Immigration of Muslims
Will be discussing the ban and the wall later today. Maybe yet another position.
EDIT: Here it is: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/y...
At 1:20, "Once you declare war . . . now you can ban immigrants from all Muslim countries . . . ."
Again, open immigration of Muslims until war as declared and fought (3 weeks). Open immigration for all but 3 weeks is open immigration, at least in my world.
Yaron Back To Open Immigration Of Muslims
At 15:26, Brook explains his position of Islamic immigration, which he claims has been consistent since September 12, 2001.
If we declared war on Islamic terrorism and named the countries behind it (Saudi Arabia and Iran and a few others) we could end immigration from those countries "for the duration of the war." Once the war is over we would allow properly screened Muslims in. Since Brook has repeatedly said the war would take no more than three weeks, this is de facto open immigration of Muslims.
Which Yaron?
Well he's on twitter getting all worked up over Trump keeping Muslims out, so maybe he's back to open borders. His main source is open immigration fanatic at Cato Alex Nowrasteh.
https://twitter.com/yaronbrook
Yaron's never unleashed a twit storm about Islamic crime in Europe.
Yaron did a show on this (sorry for the length of the link)
https://scontent.fzty1-2.fna.f...
Linz: Add "Really?, Really?" to the list.
EDIT: Above link is dead. Here is a new one: https://www.facebook.com/ybroo...
Yaron? Condescending?? Neeeeeveeeeer!!!! Just hear the superlative listening skills he demonstrates when, once in a blue moon, someone calls in!
I'm getting ready for what seem to be his two favourite words (Galt help me, I've listened to all his recent blogtalk thingies in preparation), uttered at high decibel level: "nonsense" and "BS."
I'm even hoping for an actual argument!
The condescending one will show up, of course.
It would be nice if Yaron and Amy come here to defend their support for open immigration, but of course they won't.
Ed points out in his opus that Yaron has said seemingly contradictory things over time. I'm as interested as anyone to see which Yaron turns up for the debate.
I echo Greg: Rand is proud. Even if that means I have to believe in Heaven! Let's call it Heroven!! She's there, and, a long time from now of course, you'll join her!
Immigration Essay
Ed is also an excellent writer:
If we fixed the economy first, maybe Objectivists would have credibility enough to argue for more expansive immigration policies without negative economic consequences for those in the bottom half of the wage distribution. Unfortunately, by arguing for open borders now, before the welfare state is eliminated or drastically reduced, before the economy is fixed, before our voting system is made much less vulnerable to illegal aliens and dead Democrats voting, before we have a good understanding of the effects of culture and total numbers on assimilation, and before we say "No!" to both Islamic Supremacism and La Reconquista, all the open borders Objectivists are doing is demanding immediate cultural and political suicide, the end of the United States of America.
Total passion for the total height.
It's long but it's an important topic. It could even have been longer.
This is the lengthiest essay I know of from an open immigration Objectivist (Biddle).
https://www.theobjectivestanda...
Ed's piece is much better.
I do apologize for the length. As I wanted it done before Linz's debate, I was rushed and as either Pascal or Franklin once said, if I had more time, I'd have made it shorter.
Many thanks for writing and posting this, Ed! Also for joining Solo Passion! Your essay is a brutal 69 pages long. But I'll give it a shot at some point, hopefully. I printed out all 69 pages a few days ago.
Wow, Greg, Thanks.
I can't imagine a better compliment. Thank you so much.
Brilliant thinking
Excellent piece Ed. This will prove to be influential. I'm no longer on HBL. And I not that long ago was 'unfriended' on F**ebook by Klaus Nordby for posting some of Harry's wilder stuff without permission. Funnily Harry some time afterwards 'friended' me. And since Hillary's defeat some other ARI blind followers have been noticeably aggressive against those who would suggest Trump stood for the good.
I will read this a few more times. It's a classic. Congratulations. Rand is proud.
I hope everyone reads this closely. It's really good. It would be nice if Yaron and Amy come here to defend their support for open immigration, but of course they won't.