Natalie writes,
That loss of trust is one of the things that has made me much less pro-immigration than I once was. If that means the loss of my Libertarian purity certificate, so be it.
Amen to that. For years I have been trying to reconcile my belief in freedom with my doubts about immigration and have totally failed.
I would prefer not to lose my Libertarian purity certificate. I want a political philosophy that is simple and has universal application. That way I don’t have to think too hard. For the last 30 years libertarianism has been that philosophy. Name an issue of the day and I can give you the answer. Sluggish growth? Privatise, lower taxes and de-regulate. Busy roads? Privatise. Inflation? Abolish the Bank of England or re-introduce the Gold Standard, or, er… privatise the Bank of England. OK, some issues are not quite that easy but usually they are. Until we get to immigration. Because if libertarianism means open borders then libertarianism is wrong because open borders are a disaster.
The Real Problem with Immigration
Most commentators and almost all libertarians regard immigration as a purely economic question. A lot of anti-immigration types tend to concentrate on crime or the pressure that immigration puts on state-dominated sectors of the economy like health, education and housing. For libertarians the response is obvious: get the state out of health, education and housing. And drugs for that matter which are responsible for a huge amount of crime.
But this is not the real issue. Immigration represents a much greater threat than mere waiting lists. If it is mishandled it means war.
What Ulster can tell us
My ancestors were immigrants; part of a mass migration. They arrived in Ulster as conquerors. Whatever they may have done for local prosperity – and it may have been quite a lot – they did nothing for community relations. Ulster has been plagued with outbreaks of inter-communal strife ever since.
But not everywhere.
In 1922, the Irish Free State, later the Republic of Ireland, came into being. And with it a border, 15 miles from where my grandmother lived. I have good, personal reasons to be very grateful that that border was where it was. The Troubles lasted the best part of 30 years and led to the deaths of some 3,000 people. But for the most part it left “us” in the South alone.
My grandmother’s neighbours were Catholic. I used to play with their children when I visited my grandmother in the holidays. How was that possible if Protestants and Catholics are supposed to despise one another? Was there some sort of Gaelic Exceptionalism at play? No. It was because in the Republic we Protestants were only 3% of the population. Probably lower by now. We didn’t count. We weren’t a threat to anyone. There are advantages to being part of a small minority. Meanwhile, 15 miles away, the IRA were happily killing Protestants for the crime of being, well, Protestants. Or – more accurately – British. Why? Because there was a war on. Why was there a war on? Because the Irish population of Ulster was about 40%. That meant and means doubt. Doubt about the future. And when you have doubt, war becomes an option.
[If you are finding the flitting between British/Protestant and Irish/Catholic a bit confusing, part of that is because I am not quite sure what nationality my grandmother was. I think she preferred not to think about it and just get on with her neighbours.]
You could argue that there is a difference between immigrants who come as conquerors and those who come peacefully. But Ulster history has got that one covered too. Before 1800, Belfast was an exclusively Protestant/British town. As its industries expanded they needed more labour and so the Irish were drawn in from outside. This may have worked out just fine for the industrialists but it did not work out well for anybody else. The first riots took place in the 1850s.
Britain today
The obvious failure of mass migration in Ulster does not seem to have deterred our masters from inflicting it on the mainland. We are now beginning to see the results. Muslim immigration has been a disaster. It has led to rape gangs, terrorism and de facto blasphemy laws. It may even end up as the ultimate disaster with the destruction of western civilisation. Along with the ethnic and cultural differences there is another: you cannot be Muslim and British. It’s one or the other. There may be an ethnic dimension to the British nation but there is also a philosophical one. There are such things as British values. And I can’t think of one – whether it be freedom of religion or women’s rights – that Islam supports.
Non-white immigration has not been as disastrous as Muslim migration but it hasn’t been a great success either. And things are getting worse. You would have to have been wilfully blind not to notice the rise of anti-white racism in recent years.
One of the reasons is that it is much harder for a non-white person to become British – they are, after all, visibly different. But it is not impossible. It’s a lot easier if you marry in. Whatever you may be, your children – because they have been raised in British culture and have British blood – are British.
Some libertarians believe that if we just get rid of race relations acts and the welfare state everything would be OK. I am not so sure. I am sure it would help but when you have communities that are roughly the same size whether it be in Ulster, the Balkans or Fiji, conflict is always the result. The Troubles broke out when discrimination was entirely legal. By the way, discrimination was made illegal by the mid-1970s. It didn’t make any difference to the war.
Can we have borders and freedom?
So far, I have assumed that borders and libertarianism cannot be reconciled. But is that true? It is worth considering what immigration actually is. Immigration is the right to use the roads in a particular geographical location. That would be government roads. But we libertarians don’t believe in government. Roads should be privately owned. And the owner would have the right to grant access or not on any basis he chose.
So, how might that work? We can never be sure but I think most road owners would want to avoid ethnic or sectarian conflicts. So, I suspect they would take a great interest in making sure that the users of their roads were part of the majority nation, or, if members of a minority, in small enough numbers that they could never represent a threat.
That’s perhaps one to debate over a glass of whiskey. In the meantime we are in a mess. We have re-created Ulster on the mainland. There are millions of people who are living in Britain who are not British, do not wish to be British and are increasingly antipathetic – sometimes genocidally so – to the British. Meanwhile official Britain – bizarrely – encourages them. I am not quite sure how they think this is going to end for them or their descendants but that is beyond the scope of this post. Getting out of this mess will in itself be messy and not very libertarian. It will be replete with the most appalling injustices. I would like a solution which protects the non-white British – those who think of themselves as British – but I fear they will be swept up in a terrible backlash.
The United Kingdom had an open door immigration policy in the 19th century – yet few people came (one of the ones that did being a certain Russian Jewish wrestler whose first action was to throw a docker in the river Thames for pulling his beard – the immigrant was my great grandfather), why did so few people come to a country that, then, had one of the highest per capita incomes in the world?
Well there were no anti discrimination laws in those days (or up to 1965 for that matter) – if people did not like you they did not have to pretend to like you, no one was going to fine them or throw them in prison for not renting you a room or giving you a job.
Nor was there any welfare – other than the Workhouse. True – “out relief” was available if the local Poor Law Guardians thought you merited it – but for an immigrant it was very much “the Workhouse or starve”.
As for being “homeless” – there was no such status, you were not “homeless” you were a “vagrant” – and that could send you to prison (which it still can, for example, in China).
Given all the above conditions you can have an open door immigration policy – as few people who do not share your culture, or really wish to join it, will turn up.
As for the present situation in many, although NOT all, Western countries – “immigration” on the scale we have seen in recent decades is NOT really immigration – this mass population replacement in many cities and towns (not a “Conspiracy Theory” – an empirical fact), nothing on this proportionate scale has been seen since the “Age of Migration” – the 5th and 6th centuries A.D. when (as genetics confirms) the population of the eastern parts of this island was utterly transformed. The collapse of the Romano Britons – and the rise of the Germanic tribes (the Angles, Saxons and Jutes – who created England, or Angleland).
Only a deeply dishonest person would claim that what has been going on in recent decades is not fundamentally different in scale than “the arrival of the Huguenots” at the end of the 17th century, or East End of London Jews in the 19th and early 20th centuries.
I repeat – this island has seen nothing like this (what has been happening in recent decades) since the 5th and 6th centuries A.D. it is not “immigration” it is something far more extreme, so different in proportionate scale that it should not be called “immigration”.
Do you think that one of the reasons people didn’t come in in the 19th century was because it was expensive?
With government (both national and local), the judiciary, law enforcement and not least importantly the media leaving zero doubt about where their priorities and loyalties lie I am sceptical about the likelihood of an effective backlash materialising.
However I am certain that any attempt will result in those involved, who will probably not be the non-white British, being themselves swept up a in terrible backlash albeit from the state. Think January 6 on steroids.
If anyone can give me cause for optimism I’d be most grateful.
By the way – please do not say Gold “Standard” as the “Standard” bit confuses the issue – either the gold is the money or it is not.
Protestants in the south of Ireland – they were a lot more than 3% before the First World War. As were Catholic Unionists – (such as my maternal grandfather, Catholic, Irish, and a British soldier – a bit of a problem in Waterford especially if they remained true to their salt – that made them “traitors to Ireland” you see).
Private property rights and immigration – excellent point Mr Westbridge and one that is not made enough.
If you want to protect your privately owned land in the United States from migrants (who will loot or destroy anything they can) the “Justice Department”, specifically their “Civil Rights Division” will turn up – and drag you off to prison (to be abused), if the FBI do not shoot you first.
Tyranny by the “Justice” Department and the thugs of the FBI does not seem very libertarian to me.
And why should the attitude of migrants shock anyone – after all land reform has been a big thing in many Latin American countries for a very long time, as has “Social Justice” – MS-13 and other well armed gangs (which have thousands of members) are very much into “Social Justice”.
If someone has more land than you this is unjust (it is against Social Justice) – so you use your AK47 to take that land from them, ditto if they have more money than you, or a daughter you want to use.
If that is your attitude in your home country why should you suddenly have a different attitude if you cross over into the United States. After all everyone tells you that United States is “stolen land” anyway – these wicked capitalists stole the land from people like you (they did NOT – but that is what the “Progressives” constantly tell you, including Progressive Priests).
In reality there were not many Hispanics in Texas in 1845 (or California or….) and the ones that were there were NOT robbed of surveyed land (surveying was difficult – a lot of people died doing it) – and the “Native Americans” were people such as the Comanche who had come down from the north (no they were not “native”) and tortured to death folk (of whatever race) they could lay their hands on. They lived by plunder (and they were very good at it – especially under the full Moon, the Comanche Moon).
But the Progressives of the education system, the media (including the entertainment media) and the churches (yes them to) will tell you none of this – they will spin you a story of happy egalitarian communities, without “capitalist” ideas of property ownership, destroyed by evil white men.
Although how anybody could be “white” in the baking sun is never explained. Nor is it mentioned that many of the Americans of the old days were of mixed racial heritage – they would not have been exactly “white” even if they had lived in Iceland. And the “American Eagle look” did not come from mating with birds.
What defined an American, as opposed to a member of a tribe, was how they choose to live (whether they rejected tribal membership, not compatible with being a U.S. Citizen till 1924 – under the old “a man can not be loyal to two different polities” idea, and supported private property in land) – not their exact skin tone. If people had really hated folk such as Indian Charlie Curtis (whose first language was not English and who was certainly not a pale man) it is odd they voted for him to be Vice President of the United States.
Anyway – cut-to-the-chase, kill the “capitalist” men, steal their land and stuff, and use the woman – that is “Social Justice”, justified by endless lies.
MS-13 and so on have all this to back them up – as well as their dear friends in the bureaucracy (State as well as Federal – the gangs have a lot of power already in States such as Arizona).
Good question Brendan Westbridge.
But it was not that expensive – not if you did not mind discomfort.
Remember it was a lot cheaper to come to the United Kingdom from Russia than it was to go to the United States – because it was a lot less far to go.
Of course it was a lot colder and wetter here – and the air could choke you in London once upon a time (New York did not have as much lethal smog – coal dust mixed with fog, on a bad day that could cripple your lungs, or just kill you).
London was called “the smoke” for a reason – and the cockney way of speaking has been described as gasping-for-breath.
As for towns like Kettering “what is a foreigner?” would have been a way of describing the normal English town even in the 1960s.
I think I was the only non Anglo-Saxon at my Secondary School – and that was not centuries ago (even I am not that old).
Further north there was lovely rickets – caused by lack of sunlight meaning lack of Vitamin D, I think it was the 20th century before the cause of rickets was understood (but I could be mistaken).
By the way – the doctrine that is now being being pushed is that Europeans were dark skinned before the evil Yamnaya (no doubt working for Putin – via a time machine) spread their evil whiteness.
There are a couple of problems with this doctrine – firstly the Sardinians are NOT Indo Europeans (their genetics is clearly pre the expansion of the people with horses and chariots) and yet the Sardinians are not particularly dark skinned. Indeed a lot of people in Africa (both the far north of Africa, such as what used to be called the Berbers, – and the very south of Africa) were not particularly dark skinned a couple of thousand years ago – but discussing that would really get me into trouble. The Sardinians are certainly different genetically – but the difference does not seem to involve very dark skin (and the genetics of the Sardinians is much the same as the genetics of the Ancient Egyptians and so on).
The other problem is that dark skinned people in northern Europe would have died from lack of Vitamin D – unless they got lots of oily fish.
No doubt some informer is carefully noting what I write – and it will make my prison sentence longer and longer.
Such is life.
By the way – dark skin is a good thing for avoiding sunburn and skin cancer, that can, of course, be the difference between life and death.
And the Bantu peoples of Central Africa are just as physically robust as the old Yamnaya culture people (of what is now Russia and the Ukraine) were – that has helped the Bantu speaking peoples spread in Africa – to become the successful people they are today. That and a farming lifestyle (the cultivation of yams and so on) – which enabled the Bantu speaking peoples to sustain much greater populations than people who depended on hunger-gathering (such as what used to be called the pygmy people – but I believe there is a new word now, and what used to be called the Bushmen).
If you are both physically larger and stronger than your rivals – and you outnumber your rivals, you are likely to be a success.
Well this was one of the main reasons I stopped being a libertarian about 15 years ago. Admittedly there are some libertarian scholars who are against open borders like Rothbard, Hoppe, Sean Gabb, Tom Woods, Jeff Deist, even von Mises was against open borders etc that I can appreciate the work of (although I don’t agree with them on everything) but the majority of libertarians believe in the whole Ellis island mythology and are crazy and evil.
One must be careful not to confuse culture and genetics – and things change over time.
For example, although the Yamnaya people came from what is now Russia and the Ukraine the modern Norwegians actually have a higher proportion of Yamnaya DNA than Russians and Ukrainians do (and even the Norwegians are nothing like pure Yamnaya). Little men like Hitler and Putin (and NO I am not saying that Putin is Hitler) may think they are great big fellows like the Yamnaya – but the empirical fact is that they are NOT. The reconstructions of Yamnaya faces, from buried skulls, that I have seen look nothing like Mr Putin – they are very robust indeed, “square jawed” does not begin to cover it – and the brow ridges…
The Norwegians are not known for riding around in war chariots (the Yamnaya, and an off shoot culture that used to exist at the southern end of the Ural mountains – the “Sintashta” culture that lived in walled circler towns and engaged in a lot of metal working, rather different from the nomad pastoralists that their Yamnaya ancestors were, invented the spoked wheel and domesticated the horse) and having twisted-sun (swastika – yes it goes right back) symbols.
Indeed Norwegians are known to be peaceful people with no interest in conquering others – although their ancestors were rather different in their culture.
Open immigration is certainly not viable if the immigrants are exempt from law enforcement, and law enforcers who attempt to restrain them face having their careers destroyed for being “racist.” Even if a minority of the immigrants are abusive, that situation will encourage destructive behavior. And it’s worse if the immigrant ideology holds that they are conquerors who are entitled to coerce others.
Some years ago, I said this to a group of friends, and they found my comments appalling. In fact one of them ended up telling me that I should understand that the people I was talking about came from a different culture. I found it ironic that, in a world where people sound off about the “rape culture” of fraternities, confrontation with a literal rape culture brought demands for tolerance and understanding, but people believe strange things.
William H. Stoddard – sadly yes.
An American man had his daughter raped and murdered by a migrant and he rushed to tell everyone how much he loved “tacos” (very much ethnic stereotyping – not all Hispanic people like tacos) – his daughter had been raped and murdered, but his great fear was that someone would call him a “racist” (his child came way down on his list of concerns).
A German politician reacted to the rape and murder of his daughter by, very publicly, giving money to a “charity” (one of these government and corporate supported “Non Government Organisations”, NGOs, that work hand-in-hand with international governance) to bring in more migrants – it was, of course, unfortunate that his daughter had been raped and murdered, but his chief concern was that no one think him a “racist”.
An Australian tourist who came to see the games in Paris was gang raped by five migrants (in this case from Africa) but this has already gone down the Memory Hole – and anyone who talked about it too much in France would find themselves declared an ist and a phobe, and would be fined and sent to prison.
Germany is much the same – an underage girl was gang raped by migrants, and only one of them was sent to prison. A German woman wrote an “abusive” e.mail to one of the migrants – and, of course, was sent to prison.
The West, or those who control the West, has a Death Wish – it, or those in power in it, wishes for the West to be destroyed – and anyone who speaks against death and destruction will be declared an ist and a phobe and punished.
I do not believe there is anything we can do about this – at least I can not think of anything.
All cultures eventually die – this seems to be turn of the West.
There are a lot of political positions that look great on paper that fall apart when subjected to reality. It isn’t just a failing the left or the right suffer from and the Libertarians (big and little l) aren’t exempt for them either. Immigration is a great example. It isn’t simply the whole “you can have a welfare state or open borders” either; you also have aspects involving cultures clashing, integrating the newcomers, a willingness or reluctance to assimilate, crime, religion, languages, demands on infrastructure, jobs, transportation, pressures on food supply, power, housing, water, so on and so forth that all need addressed. And we haven’t even gotten into what if the people showing up actively hate the people already here and have an agenda? Every country in the west is seeing essentially unrestricted immigration and we’re all rapidly facing a “The Camp of the Saints” future.
The bottom line is immigration works when the people showing up are essentially the same as the locals and share the same basic ethnic and cultural and philosophic background.
I’ve tried to reconcile the libertarian position with mass migration, and have only come up with this:
I don’t mind people coming over borders into my country. What I mind is, people coming over those borders and then acting in ways that people inside my borders have decided are wrong and unacceptable and hostile and divisive.
And so I want vetting of entrants such that I am confident that those admitted will not only show up, but will join my country’s culture willingly. I want them here only if they want to be here in every aspect.
Migrants need to adhere to the NAP just as much as I do. Failing that, I see no need to allow them to stay. And, failing that in a high enough proportion of entrants, we can generalize and pre-discriminate and shut the borders.
The NAP ain’t a suicide pact. It assumes good faith on all sides. Absent that, stay away. I have no wish to associate with you.
And let’s not forget that immigration isn’t a cookie-cutter “one size fits all” idea. People come for different reasons. Some want a new start and to forget their past, some want to build a better life for their family, some want to escape tyranny, some just want to have a chance to build a fortune, some want to come for criminal reasons such as drugs or human trafficking, some want to show up for a free ride and to bleed the host country for as much money as they can, some want to be there illegally and send their money back home and out of the hos country, some want to use the education system and then never leave, some detest the values of the host country and want to destroy the host from the inside, some are spies or sleeper agents waiting for the word to come down to do things, and some want more than one of those categories.
As Paul Marks points out early on, open borders only work if no one uses them.
I also think libertarianism fails in the face of ‘cheating’ by powerful state actors like the CCP.
The underlying issue seems to me whether one adheres to “deontological libertarianism” or “consequentialist libertarianism”. (Somebody probably used terms with fewer syllables to denote these 2 concepts.)
If your libertarianism requires you to adhere to NAP (or a similar principle) irrespective of consequences, then it is difficult for you to object to open borders.
Except if you believe that all land ultimately belongs to the State (which is not a very libertarian proposition, but then libertarianism does not preclude shared ownership). And even if you believe that the State is the ultimate owner of all land, that does not imply, by itself, that the State should stop immigration.
But if your libertarianism consists in pursuing libertarian ends, then you should be open to pursuing such results via non-libertarian means, if such means are the best way (by a significant margin) to reach the ends.
For instance, it seems to me that, empirically, a multicultural society is incompatible with freedom of speech. If that is the case, then it makes sense to reduce immigration from very different cultures to a minimum, until & unless we find a way to maintain freedom of speech in a multicultural society.
Snorri: I’m reminded of a passage in Graydon Saunders’s The March North, an interesting world of military fantasy, where the spokesmen for the soldiers of the defeated army of a military dictatorship is petitioning to surrender to the winners and gain entry to their country, pleading that they will even consent to earn their women, not win them. The viewpoint character says to them that the law permits them to come without arms and petition for entry, but ““I tell you as surely as death comes to all living, if you believe women are given in trade or purchase you shall not be admitted nor could you prosper.” And he reflects that there would be a lot of harm before they were all hanged.
There’s one thing that the Muslims are right about: A society needs one supreme law, to which all other laws have to be subordinated. But for me, that supreme law is the Constitution, and the principles of common law that it’s rooted in; and if Muslims can’t accept the subordination of their religious law to that, there can’t be peace between us. And libertarian principles can’t apply, or not in the same way, between two societies that are at war.
Libertarianism says your house belongs to you, not to everyone who can shove in through the door.
One of the things I detest about socialism is that it is so damned attractive, to the weak-minded. You get to applaud yourself for having a helpful nature… which you blithely fortify with the force of the state, to the eventual power concentration corruption side-effect detriment of all. Libertarianism has the same sort of attractiveness, embedded in the NAP. You get to embrace a damned attractive moral principle, which seems universal but ain’t. Like socialism, where it fails, it fails miserably. I’ve never held a libertarian purity card, as I’m a minarchist. In saying that, I admit that there are existential problems that the NAP can’t address. Sociopolitical fiction aside, pure free market solutions for national defense, local police, and judiciary functionality just won’t happen. So I shoot for the best approximation of pure freedom I can support, in the real world. It’s often ugly and unsatisfactory, but it’s the price of getting real about existance in an inimical world.
I was first exposed to Libertarianism as a pre-teen. Didn’t make sense to me then, doesn’t make sense to me now.
The essential flaw in the Libertarian argument is the same as the one you find in socialism and communism, in that the entire philosophy is fundamentally against human nature. Observably so.
You get right down to it, the essentials of Libertarianism could be summed up as being damned close to the philosophies of one Aliester Crowley, and just about as workable. “Do as you would be done by” is a nice philosophy, but an impractical rule for dealing with other people, who very often ain’t going to do by you as you do by them…
All of these millennialist philosophies lack the one key ingredient, which is pragmatism and common sense. Sure, I think you ought to be able to spend your life as you will, navel-gazing and doing all the dope you can, while screwing everything in the household, to include your cat. The problem is that while I really don’t care about all that, the mess you create eventually impinges on my life, and I’m forced to clean up after your profligacy.
I once said that all drugs ought to be legal; I’ve changed my mind, in that I’ve observed that the vast majority cannot “handle their shit”, and yet expect to have the rest of us clean up after their mess. If I’ve got to clean up said mess, then I’m afraid I’m going to have to come down on the side of not letting you make it in the first damn place… Which means that your little free-love drug-addled game will have to stop.
Espousing a Libertarian ideology and mindset basically means demanding others clean up after the mess you make, and I’m not playing that game. I’ve always distrusted the sort that go in for this crap, and I still do. Nothing I’ve seen coming out of the movement strikes me as being at all workable, and most of the adherents are utter and complete fools.
@Kirk,
Well, the libertarians would argue that in theory any cost incurred in cleaning up the mess would have to come from those who made it in the first place.
But… that would also mean a strong enough bureaucracy capable of enforcing this, which goes back to having a strong (enough) state.
Furthermore, in practice many of these people have no capacity to bear the costs, so what’s left? Indentured servitude? Imprisoned slavery to pay off the costs?
So yeah, I agree totally with you, apologies for beating around the bush.
While it is tempting to discard all attempts at political philosophy and economics as fool’s errands, it is likewise unwise to discard what organizing principles do exist. IMHO, the free market, with its incentivizing feedback loops is the greatest means of conflict resolution ever invented by mankind, unshackling creativity and lifting billions out of poverty. Of course it depends on the existence of a rational judicial function to mediate issues that price cannot plumb, which addresses the irrational tendencies of humanity. But it is a mistake to side too blindly with utilitarianism. So far, the best systems seek to unburden the market by reserving judicial intervention for the management of those irrational tendencies. Purely utilitarian utopias suffer the same sorts of ills that we decry in socialism.
Any utilitarianism that solves for “we” instead of “me” is going to yield a socialist solution. So I just have to set up my own one-man utopia, and it will work fine.
Then, after everyone sets up their own utopia, we negotiate some handshake protocols between us that make us safe and polite, and we have . . . a libertarian-ish society. Sort of an armed but goodfaith truce between sovereigns.
Yeah. See… Here’s the thing with all of this BS: It’s the same as the principle that in order to become a good leader, one must first become a good follower…
The problem with big-L Libertarianism is that they want to skip out on that step, and eschew all responsibility and accountability.
Fine; you want to have a society wherein free love and drugs are just hunky-dory? You have to live with the consequences of that, and be willing to let others live with them, as well.
The flaw in all this BS is that the usual followers of Libertarianism don’t want to accept the nastiness that accrues from following their philosophy to its natural and highly illogical end stages: They want all the benefits with none of the actual results. They’re a lot like the usual lot of idjit following anarchism as a philosophy… They are fine with it all, so long as the anarchy allows them to do as they please, but the minute that they have to deal with the fact that others get to do as they please with them in return, then they want the cops involved…
Nobody wants to live out the logical conclusions of their own favorite philosophies. That’d just be too painful…
The issue with immigration simply entails property rights in the broadest sense. A nation belongs to the people that live there and if the people don’t want certain trespassers they should be kicked off the propetry. If they refuse to leave jail them to teach them a lesson.
Marius – large numbers of people emigrated to the United States in the 19th century fairly successfully, it is a matter of whether people want to join the culture or not. Although as old Mr Le Pen used to point out “did the mass immigration work from the point of view of Sitting Bull?” (and one can respond to that by saying that the Dakota people took the Black Hills from the Crow and they took the Black Hills from…).
In recent decades large numbers of people have entered Western countries who do not wish to join these cultures – they have made no secret of the fact, but the “liberal” (whose “liberalism” is just about the opposite of the liberalism of Gladstone or John Bright) elite refuse to listen to these people (who they claim to respect) or to the children (who say the same thing as their parents – often in blunter language) – the “liberal” elite basically have their fingers in their ears and are going “la, la, la” to drown out any warning – and when they do hear a warning they respond by PUNISHING the person warning them (screaming that the person is a “Nazi” or a “white nationalist” or whatever).
The recent withdrawal of the Free Speech in higher education Bill indicates that the British government is determined to destroy what is left of Freedom of Speech – as I have warned before, the days of this blog (samizdata.net) may well be numbered.
Still if I do end up sharing a prison cell with Perry – I apologise for snoring.
On immigration – if Israel had “open borders” the Jewish population would be wiped out, but this is NOT a special thing just applying to Israel.
For example, if Australia had “open borders” it would become part of Indonesia (which has ten times the population) and would have Islamic law.
If a theory does not work in practice – there is something wrong, fundamentally wrong, with the theory.
Open Borders clearly would not work in practice, at least if by “works” one means “is good for the existing nation-people – rather than destroying the existing nation-people”, so there is something wrong with the theory.
“This medicine is, in theory, good for you – so ignore the fact that the medicine kills everyone who takes it”.
Anti assimilation policy goes back further than the 1960s.
In the case of the tribes in what in the United States it could be said to have started when the American government (in the 19th century) started to copy the practice of the Mexican government (and before them the Spanish colonial authorities) of handing out free food to members of tribes.
Many Hollywood films show corrupt “Indian Agents” not handing out all the food and other stuff to members of tribes (stealing some of the stuff to sell themselves) – but no Hollywood film asks the obvious question “why was the government handing out free stuff in the first place?”
If an Indian (or “Native American”) renounced their tribe – they were no longer eligible for free stuff, so this was an incentive to NOT assimilate into the culture of the United States.
In 1934 the policy became much more extreme….
Before then it was expected that Indians (or Native Americans) would, eventually, assimilate into the culture of the United States – and some DID, for example look at those members of the Dakota people who became famous U.S. Navy flyers at the Battle of Midway.
But the 1934 Act established the principle that communalism should be practiced on the Reservations (again why were there reservations?) – some Reservations already had that, communal ownership of land and so on, but the 1934 Act massively pushed it.
The doctrine pushed by the 1934 Act was that land should be owned in common, by the tribe, and that “free” services should be provided by the tribal government.
The 1934 Act (pushed by the New Dealers) seems to have been based on the Soviet Union – but with the difference that the socialist (tribal) government was to be democratically elected.
Well there has been 90 years of this democratic socialism in places like the Pine Ridge Reservation (South Dakota).
After 90 years no one can honestly say that democratic socialism needs more time – or can honestly deny that democratic socialism, the communal ownership of land and so on, has been an utter failure.
Yet both the education system and the media still support the principles of the 1934 Act – indeed, quietly, want to enforce these principles on American society.
They want to turn the United States into a giant Pine Ridge – communal ownership of land, “free” services, and-so-on.
This is one of the things that leads me to conclude that, whatever was true in the past, the modern left are not honestly intellectually mistaken – they are evil, yes evil.
No one who was not evil could look at 90 years of communalism at Pine Ridge and declare it a success – and wish this to be applied generally to the United States.
Kirk: As I understand it, the libertarian position on addictive drugs is not at all, “Oh, sure, fine, go ahead and use them.” The libertarian position is, “Using this is bad, but the effects of prohibition are worse, so we aren’t going to outlaw them. It’s your life and you’re free to destroy it by making bad choices.” But there are two harsh corollaries of that: that if you destroy your life, no one has the legal obligation to rescue or help you or shield you from the consequences, and that if your self-destruction makes you a threat or a nuisance to other people, you can be forcibly restrained. The policy of subsidizing people who have self-destructive lifestyles, which we now have, and especially of spending tax revenues in doing so, is very far from libertarian.
I favour of easy borders with the nation being robustly integrationist. But the latter is an absolute prerequisite. Sadly we do not have an integrationist approach in UK, we have multiculturalism.
In my opinion, utilitarianism is incompatible with libertarianism at a fundamental level. If your only goal is to maximize utility, then you have to sacrifice liberty, sometimes. You can compromise between utility and liberty, but such a compromise is neither pure utilitarianism nor pure libertarianism.
If Bentham and the Mills favored the free market on purely utilitarian grounds, then they were not libertarians.
Please note that
1. When i advocated consequentialism in my earlier comment, clearly the consequence that i considered relevant is liberty, not utility.
2. I am enough of an Austrianist to believe that the concept of ‘utility’ does not even make sense.
you cannot be Muslim and British.
It’s even explicit in the language. People from the Carribean are described as Black Britons, people from HongKong are HongKong British. mumble mumble adjective mumble British. Muslims in Britain describe themselves as British Mulsims. mumble mumble adjective mumble Muslim. It’s explicit.
You control people coming into your country in exactly the same way and reason that you control people coming into your house. If you advocate open borders, you also advocate ripping off the doors to your house, and being prosecuted for objecting to people entering freely.
What I have not seen addressed in ‘libertarian’ positions to any degree at all is the concept of ‘domicile’, which is generally paternally-acquired at birth but which can change, and in terms of ‘attachment to a legal system’. Thus an English person born in England to English parents starts off with English domicile, but may renounce it or acquire a different domicile, e.g by moving to Scotland and adhering to the distinct legal system of Scotland. The issue is this, if you think of ‘domicile’ not in terms of ‘residence’ but ‘attachment to a legal system’ and taking this further, you cannot be ‘domiciled’ in a country if you do not accept the legal system, in England ‘the Common Law’, the law that is common to all within it, be they King or Kitchen Porter. Applying methodological individualism, on a case-by-case basis, if you maintain adherence to a different legal system (whether by word or deed), or disavow the legal system you profess to have adhered to, (as an ‘outlaw’), then you cannot be said to be part of that society or belong to it, not to say that you cannot be resident there, but you do not ‘belong’.
In a ‘competing legal system’ libertarian utopia, this may be problematic for them, which might by why it does not seem to be discussed much. But then again, I suspect that many libertarians are driven by a compulsion to be ‘contrarian’ and nothing more, and take on the ramblings of Rothbard as if it were canon, to satisfy their insurmountable urge to be contrarian, and have no regard for any consequences or consideration for any difficulties once they have achieved a contrarian position. Or put short, they can tend towards being insufferable dickheads.
Mr Ed – as you know the late Murray Rothbard was often just plain wrong, for example his claim that Britain had a “drive to war” against Germany in the 1930s. Yes, gentle reader, you read that correctly – according to the late Professor Rothbard it was the British government, the government of that macho-man Neville Chamberlain, that was the aggressor against nice Mr Hitler – so the charge of being “contrarian”, saying that are obviously wrong in order to be “different” is a charge that sticks. “Everyone says that fire burns, so I am going to say that it does not, and everyone says that ice is cold – so I am going to say it is hot” that sort of thing.
Perry – it is no good a nation having an integrationist policy if the immigrants and their children and children’s children, have no desire to integrate.
We can see this just a few miles away in FRANCE – it has long rejected multi culturalism and tried to make people from the Islamic world, and from Africa, French. And, as Charles De Gaulle predicted it would, the policy has failed.
The policy has not worked, the parrot is dead, the parrot has ceased to be, it is a dead parrot.
The fact that a person can be fined or sent to prison in France for telling the truth, does not make it not the truth.
It is indeed possible to have a multi ethnic, indeed multi racial society, if people come to a place to join a society because of its principle of liberty – Florida (NOT the United States in general – Florida in particular) seems to be an example of that (people, of all ethnicities and races, come to Florida specifically because of its relatively small government ethos – even with the nice weather of Florida welfare benefits and public services are NOT going to be enough to maintain immigrants, and that they do NOT is good, indeed vital thing), although even in Florida some groups just do not want to assimilate – but in the situation that Western Europe finds itself, of mass immigration from the Middle East and Africa, the policy can not work. The people who are coming do not, in the main, want to join existing societies – they want to REPLACE them.
Many of the people arriving in Western Europe come from cultures that are many centuries old – they are intelligent and cultured, but their values (their principles) are incompatible with those of Western societies – something they know very well, even if Western “liberals” (whose “liberalism” is just about the opposite of Gladstone “bag and baggage OUT of Europe” and John Bright) keep punishing people for mentioning it.
It is ironic, indeed rather worse than ironic, that people are today denounced as “Nazis” for having the opinions, on immigration, of Winston Churchill, Eisenhower and Charles De Gaulle – the leading ANTI Nazis of the period when Mr Hitler was alive, but such is the “Woke” (Frankfurt School Marxism – “Critical Theory”) distortion of reality.
The historian David Starkey has long suggested that Parliament is the last institution left in the United Kingdom that is not “Woke” – i.e. is not dominated by the ideology of the far left.
That may, perhaps, have been true when Dr Starkey said it – but, sadly, since July 4th 2024, it has NOT been true.
Now the House of Commons is as “Woke” (as Herbert Marcuse and co) as the other institutions. “Why is the government dropping the freedom of speech in higher education Bill” – well because they do NOT want Freedom of Speech in higher education, or anywhere else. The Conservatives were half hearted (at best) defenders of liberty – but the new Parliament is the enemy of liberty, although many people still have not fully grasped just how big the leftist majority is in the House of Commons.
There is nothing to appeal to in the United Kingdom – the game is (or at least appears to be), basically, over.
It is, in the United Kingdom, “game-set-and-match” to the late Herbert Marcuse and co. For such Marxist academics did not just exist in California – some were, for example, advising the British bureaucracy as far back as (at least) the 1970s.
And anyone who opposes the leftist establishment too openly faces the increasingly strong possibility of being arrested for “Hate Speech” or even “terrorism” (“terrorism” now appears to be even peaceful opposition to the doctrines that dominate all institutions – including the courts).
As a certain man from Luton is finding out – yet again.
Still might as well go on opposing the death of liberty – to the bitter end, if bitter it must be.
For me, it keeps coming back to several issues, in no real order of importance:
One assumes most immigrants want to build a better life for themselves and their loved ones. Moving a long way from home, with all that this involves, is a wrench, even if you are leaving for mainly financial, not other reasons;
Immigration, of anything other than a small amount, does not comport with a Welfare State. From a point of view of natural justice, taxpayers who have lived in a country to which folk are migrating are rightly entitled to be annoyed at this potential “free rider” issue. As Milton Friedman said, you can have immigration, and you can have a Welfare State, but you cannot have both;
The Lump of Labour fallacy remains a thing that opponents of immigration can cling to (not all of them do, to be fair). People who immigrate to a more prosperous country with higher capital tend, other things being equal, to be more productive than if they stay in a poorer, less capitalized country. Ergo, the total sum of production on the planet goes up if people can go to places where they can earn and save more than where they cannot;
In my experience, most if not all current worries about immigration are about culture, and specifically, the movement of Muslims to the West and their willingness/lack of said to integrate into a broadly liberal order. While there are issues, we just haven’t seen similar angst about, say, Chinese, Sikh/Hindu, East European, West Indies (mostly Christian, bear in mind) groups. Yes, there are nuances, but these groups have done pretty well. In the case of Hugenot French and Russian Jews centuries past, they did extremely well.
Some of the complaints about pressure on infrastructure, etc, are capacity issues that are fixable, even in a relatively small place such as the UK. One way to fix it is to charge an entrance “fee” to immigrants – you want to live in crowded Blighty, then it will cost. The same issue now applies, I notice, to tourism in very popular places where the numbers are angering the locals (Malta, for instance, where I am some of the year, or Santorini in Greece, Majorca, Barcelona, Venice).
For the case for open immigration, I still think this Bryan Caplan book is the most persuasive. Given the serious issues with the ability of the UK state to unravel welfarism, etc, however, I don’t see his views as viable. https://www.amazon.com/Open-Borders-Science-Ethics-Immigration/dp/1250316960
Decisions on immigration come down to methodogical individualism, what is the net benefit/dis-benefit of the individual? For any country, at any time, permitting Charles Manson to immigrate would be a dis-benefit and indeed a public nuisance, something likely to cause ‘annoyance’ (in the civil legal sense) to more than a small number of citizens.
Whereas a surgeon, architect or engineer is likely to be a benefit.
One more point: If immigration makes a country wealthier, might it not be the case that it makes the ‘losing’ country poorer, as this does sound like a ‘zero-sum’ game, and why should rich countries impoverish poor ones, as the Left often remind us.
One more point: If immigration makes a country wealthier, might it not be the case that it makes the ‘losing’ country poorer, as this does sound like a ‘zero-sum’ game, and why should rich countries impoverish poor ones, as the Left often remind us.
Depends. If the country from which one is emigrating is in the grip of a mad ideology, or is hostile to enterprise, then those who emigrate are voting with their feet, rather like parents taking their kids out of a crummy school run by fools. Also, if people are able to achieve more by emigrating than staying put, then arguably this still leaves everyone better off than had they stayed. After all, the folk who haven’t moved are displaying the revealed preference that they aren’t upset enough to hit the exits. Another thing: a country that suffers a bit of a brain drain, as it were, might realise that it needs to change course, in the same way a firm has to do so if its customers leave. Exit can be superior to “voice”. (We might already see this as wealthy people get out of the UK.)
Being one of those individualists, I also am wary at trying to use some sort of utilitarian mass calculus here. For me, the burden of proof is on those who want people to stay where they are, consequences and all.
So, should 80,000,000 people from Red China, all CCP loyalists, move to the UK, the burden is on me to prove why that ought not to be permitted?
No further questions, M’Lud.
“Immigrants” migrants are NOT a blank slate – they are human beings with their own principles which they pass on to their children. Most of the people coming into Western Europe now, and their children and children’s children, have their own principles, their own culture – they have no desire to be part of (dying – at least so it appears) Western culture, they wish to replace it. This is a very simple point, but one that often gets missed.
But having attacked “the left” it is also fair to attack “the right” – in the persons of Neil Oliver (of GB News) and his friend and ally Colonel Douglas McGregor, what is their reaction the Islamic Republic of Iran chanting “Death to America!” for 45 years and organising terrorist attacks around the world – as far away as Argentina, and much closer to home.
Their reaction is to talk about an American and Israeli “drive to war” with Iran – the Islamic Republic of Iran, which has been chanting death-to-the-West for 45 years (and has launched endless attacks), is, somehow, the innocent party – it is not launching attacks, it is the victim, according to Neil Oliver and Douglas McGregor – and much of “the right” agree with them)
The spirit of Murray Newton Rothbard lives on – the enemy are always right, Britain and the United States are always the bad guys.
In fairness to Rothbard he moved away in his late years from autistic open borders libertarianism to something less crazy. Partly this seems due to influence from nationalists and conservatives like Paul Gottfried, Sam Francis, Pat Buchanan and Russell Kirk that Rothbard became close to in the late 80s/early 90s. But this switch may have been partly at least due to contrarianism too. From what I know by the late 1980s he was sick of the Libertarian Party and institutions like Cato and Reason magazine, and maybe he became anti-immigration at least partly to annoy these people. If he did do it to piss off the very autistic libertarians, he goes up in my estimation.
A good deal of the problem with Libertarianism is that it is, at the core of it all, a movement designed by college sophomores for other college sophomores. There’s not a hint of actual real-world experience involved; the usual Libertarian immigration philosophy you hear them espouse tells you that, quite clearly.
Their ideal is that culture and nations do not matter; everyone is the same, under the skin. This is a philosophy that can only have been come up with by an American, who thinks that everyone in the world is just an American that hasn’t arrived inside our borders as of yet… They do not understand that there are different cultures, different worldviews than theirs. Ones that are inimical to and oppositional to the requisite policies and procedures necessary for anything like Libertarianism to be a “thing” in the world outside the college dorm room.
Practicalities matter. Pragmatism has to rule; you cannot allow theory to outweigh your observation of the effect of your policies. The Libertarians I’ve known, who are still “true believers” are about as blindered as the usual run of socialist and communist; they are incapable of rational unbiased observation, nor can they reason from observed effect to grasp that their oh-so-beautiful theories don’t work. Every time you point that out to them, they’ll double-down on things and insist that their ideas just weren’t tried “hard enough”, or “pure enough”.
The majority of the movement is populated by childish malcontents who don’t want to be told what to do, or recognize that their ideals don’t work, when applied to other human beings. Hell, most of them don’t even honestly follow their own belief system, dealing with others. Mr. and Mrs. Doasyouwouldbedoneby always seem to find a rationalized excuse for not living out their own philosophies, the moment it becomes inconvenient or in any way unpleasant.
Mr Ed, I guess if you pick an absurd example you can arrive at the view you want.
By the way, many people in Communist China did indeed flee: to Hong Kong when it was under British rule. The result, in terms of Hong Kong’s wealth surge, was instructive.
Since HK has been screwed over by Beijing in recent years and many Hong Kong folk have come to the U.K., I am struck by how little attention this has generated among those who typically get exercised by immigration.
You set the parameters and appear to complain when they are tested.
No further comment is required.
Martin, Rothbard was a contrarian almost as an end in itself. A pity: good on economics, debatable and often nuts on things such as foreign policy. His apologism for Stalin’s invasion of Finland being a case in point.
Mr Ed, very petulant. You can do better.
If 80 million ( your example) Chinese communists want to live in the U.K. they’d have not much chance if the U.K. scraps its welfare state and insisted on work as a condition if a visa, and that’s assuming that even a fraction would want to make such a move given the lack of housing.
Prices: they’re important. A huge influx from anywhere would send prices of many things in a destination country, particularly a small one, through the roof.
Stuff like that is hard to keep quiet. Far smaller population shifts have come unstuck because a place became madly expensive.
Mr Ed, very petulant. You can do better.
If 80 million ( your example) Chinese communists want to live in the U.K. they’d have not much chance if the U.K. scraps its welfare state and insisted on work as a condition if a visa, and that’s assuming that even a fraction would want to make such a move given the lack of housing.
Prices: they’re important. A huge influx from anywhere would send prices of many things in a destination country, particularly a small one, through the roof.
Stuff like that is hard to keep quiet. Far smaller population shifts have come unstuck because a place became madly expensive. When that happens the influx stops.
I repeat the point though that it’s wrong to just assume that people should stay where they are if there are options they can peacefully take.
Small-l “libertarian”, to me, simply means “less government and fewer governmental rules tends to equal more liberty.” It’s a direction, a vector, and not a destination or a discrete point. I can be “more libertarian” than someone else, but I doubt there is an actual spot on the gov/nogov continuum that can be labeled “libertarian.”
I’d guess all the rest is simply added on by people who want to open chapters and orgs with their own names in the titles.
Big-L Libertarianism, of course, is just NORML with pretensions.
Beijing sent plenty of fifth columnists to Hong Kong so it’s not absurd to think China would use immigrants as weapons (plenty other countries already do!).
The Tories just got blasted electorally and lost half of it’s voters, many due to mass immigration. Some Tory apologists tried to mitigate the immigration numbers saying many came from Hong Kong and Ukraine. The fact that the Tories still got battered is telling.
“For years I have been trying to reconcile my belief in freedom with my doubts about immigration and have totally failed.”
That is because we are at war.
This is true and the excuses are often just a few changes of words or exactly the same for communists and libertarians.
‘That’s not socialism/capitalism, that’s state capitalism/corporatism!’
‘We don’t have real socialism/free market!’
Steven R @ July 27, 2024 at 8:09 pm:
No. Immigration works when the immigrants and locals are both high-trust cultures that value civility, diligence, and rule of law. There are numerous cases of successful immigration when those conditions applied, even though ethnicity and religion differed wildly (e.g. Jewish immmigration to the US).
And there are cases where immigration was a bloody mess despite shared ethnicity and religion because migrants and locals were both low-trust cultures with propensities for violence.
Uhhh… Singapore doesn’t have a welfare state, but there are still throngs of people who would wish to come anyway.
So we have tight border controls and harsh punishments for offenders. 3 strokes of the cane is a pretty effective deterrant.
Our diverse salad mix would only get even more diverse if we open up the floodgates… which is why we aren’t doing it.
The price of our diversity is already very high – special agents keeping tabs on our religious bodies, limited speech and a de facto cancel culture because we can’t afford unfettered free speech on our tiny island.
The tradeoffs we live with.
Open borders simply means no more sovereignty.
Martin,
My point about HK immigrants is that they’ve arrived in the U.K. with little fuss or friction.
Which contrasts with cases of people coming here with a passive-aggressive entitlement mindset.
Rich Rostrom has it right. If immigrants have a high trust culture, and one focussed around work, family and accomplishment, the integration can be relatively easy.
If not, then there are problems.
Do libertarians believe in property rights?
Stuart Noyes – yes libertarians believe in private property rights.
As for the influx of people into European countries, including the United Kingdom – they and their children, and children’s children, have made it very clear that they do NOT wish to become part of the Western culture, they wish to replace it.
They have been honest about this – so the fault is that of the Western “liberal” elite (whose “liberalism” is the opposite of that of Gladstone or John Bright) who refuse to see the truth – and PUNISH people who try to tell the truth.
It is much the same in the United States – people who say that the tidal wave of migration over the border is of “people who want to be Americans” are either cretins or blatant liars.
Immigration policy should be as follows – the gates of the town should be open to friends, but closed to foes.
But the Western establishment elite does not even believe that the town should have gates – they wish Western societies (nations) to be destroyed.
That this would mean their own destruction, and the destruction of their own families, either does not occur to them (because they think that they are special people – that reality does not apply to them) or they do not care – because they have a death wish for themselves and their families.
Either way the mansions of the rich in Los Angeles (Beverly Hills and so on) will burn – they will burn because of the policies that the rich “liberals” in those mansions have pushed so hard for so long.
You could try warning them – but they would just scream “racist” and have you driven from your job, and have you “debanked” and so on.
As for the United Kingdom.
Given the educational background of judges, and the training (on racial and other matters) they receive as lawyers and as judges, the legal system is going to have a built in pro EDI (Equality, Diversity and Inclusion – as pushed by major institutions, NOT just Marxist groups such as “Hope not Hate”) bias – and people who challenge these assumptions, for example about a “refugee” from Syria, are likely to have a hard time in court, no matter how much evidence or how many witnesses they produce.
The left used to complain of a built in conservative bias in the legal system – now there is a built in bias in the other direction. And one must remember that conservative legal groups, such as the Federalist Society, are much less developed in the United Kingdom than they are in the United States.
As the late P.E. Moore, the tutor of T.S. Eliot, used to say – everything is a battle in the United States – including judges in the courts. Whereas in the United Kingdom (Scotland as well as the England and Wales) everything is the fashion that the establishment has accepted – accepted without really thinking about it.
So if you do not accept the beliefs of the establishment in the United Kingdom and find yourself on trial (in criminal or civil law) then you are really in terrible trouble – regardless of how much evidence or argument you think you have on your side.
The Lawrence Fox case (in Civil Law) showed this very clearly – for the left to insult him “racist” was fine, but for him to insult them back “paedophile” was NOT fine, not fine at all.
This is because, due to judicial training, the judges will believe that someone who does not agree with the doctrines of the left is, by definition, a racist (indeed a general ist and phobe), whereas rhetorically insulting leftists is, according to the judges, making a specific “claim” about them – which, according to the judges, was meant literally.
As for someone like “Tommy Robinson” (Stephen Yaxley-Lennon) someone with his accent, and general aggressive manner (his body language and so on – at least in the eyes of someone from a very different social background), and political beliefs (yes political beliefs) is very likely to have lost any legal case (civil or criminal) before it starts – partly on cultural grounds.
Such a person may think they have overwhelming evidence in support of what they are saying – but that does not really matter. The judge will NOT be a member of a far left group such as “Hope not Hate” – but they might as well be.
As stated before the historian Dr David Starkey has long suggested appealing to Parliament as the only “non Woke” institution left in the United Kingdom.
But on July 4th 2024 that situation changed – the House of Commons is now overwhelmingly “Woke” i.e. far left.
I would go so far to say that the present House of Commons has more in common with the Marxist beliefs of my half brother “Tony” Marks (if he is still alive) than it does with my political beliefs. This is NOT to say that the House of Commons is formally Marxist, they are NOT, but they are closer to him than to me.
So a person appealing to Parliament to save them from the courts (or save them from some other institution) is now wasting their time.
I suspect that “the right” (for want of a better term) in the United Kingdom still has not grasped how extreme, extremely bad, the situation now is.
Someone puts up little “far right” stickers – admittedly of an Anti-Semitic type that both myself and Stephen Yaxley-Lennon (“Tommy Robinson”) would dislike – but in no way advocating violence. And they get two years in prison.
Someone puts up great big “Revolutionary Communist Party” posters (I took two down in my home town just last week – I still have them if anyone doubts me) – would they get two years in prison?
Of course NOT – in spite of Marxists being responsible for the deaths of more than a 100 Million people and in spite of the posters saying “Revolutionary” (so this is not “reform by the ballot box” stuff – this is a call for Revolution).
That is the nature of the structural bias that now exists in the legal system – and all other institutions, including, since July 4th 2024, the House of Commons.
A legally learned friend of mine noted a change of “tone” that appeared in statutes concerning the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands (both areas traditionally considered very Conservative) – a new “bullying tone” and general leftist language in the statutes, the idea being that the law was there to tell people how to live and even what to think.
This really got out of control in the Blair years – yes as far back as that, as did the other developments.
The changes can be traced back to the 1960s if not long before – but it really all got utterly insane under “Tony” Blair, and now the long march through the institutions is complete.
And mass immigration was a planned part of the process – it did not undermine the nation (and other Western nations) by some accident, it was intended to undermine the nation. What has happened was what powerful people wanted to happen.
As for resistance to the consequences of mass immigration – the courts deal with such resistance.
The taxpayers of Texas did not want to pay for the education of illegal immigrants – but in 1982 (yes as far back as that) the United States Supreme Court declared that they must.
In California the taxpayers voted to deny illegal immigrants some welfare benefits – but the California courts (much the same courts who invented “Gay Marriage” against history, logic and the will of the voters – before the education system and media, including entertainment media, conditioning campaign changed the public, just as they are now trying to do on child sexual mutilation) overruled the voters.
There is no real Constitutional basis (in either the United States Constitution or State Constitutions) for what the judges do – but they do not care.
The establishment elite, including the judicial class, are determined to destroy Western nations such as the United States (and the United Kingdom) and they will not be denied.
“But if they destroy the nation they also perish”
So said the frog to the scorpion – “but I am carrying you across the river – now we will both die!”
To which the scorpion replied “it is my nature to sting you”.
It is the nature of the establishment elite in America, Britain, France, Germany…. to destroy the nation, even if, by doing so, they die as well.
Yes they have free will, moral agency, but they might as well not – as they are not going to use it.
If i have to be honest — and even if i don’t have to — this comment is a note to myself, rather than a reply to Paul Marks.
The quote above seems to imply this philosophy:
The nature of the establishment is to choose Evil over Good.
The benefit of “””free will””” (ie randomness in the choices) of the establishment is that it might happen that, randomly, the establishment chooses Good over Evil.
But only randomly: not because it is Good.
— Not a note to myself, but to whoever might read this:
It goes without saying that i reject this philosophy.
Paul, I just said “property rights”. How about public property rights? Do the British people have the right to deny entry to any person to the UK? Do we have the right to say there’s enough people in the UK and we don’t want our numbers to increase? Is that our honest desire?
Maybe we are all racist? What does that term mean? Some people say they don’t like scousers for example. Is that racism? My Hampshire market town home had many thousand people from London brought in. That changed the character of the town. Admittedly large industrial estates were also built and half the town centre demolished for modernisation but the result was irrevocable change. My father campaigned to stop overspill. Was he racist? I don’t allow all and sundry from the street entry to my home. Does that make me racist?
I think a far wider debate needs to explore the desires of us humans. In some ways I at least agree with some of the more recent debates on colonisation of other lands. I don’t agree with trying to correct history. We can’t move the descendents of the english back here.
I think human freedom and posterity should be our biggest goals. I don’t mean the freedom of one at the expense of another. I abhor all tyranny over the minds of people. That happens far too much from our politicians and others who require lies and deceit to get what they want. Minorities.
Stuart Noyes.
Everything is “racism” and nothing is “racism” – depending on the needs of the left at any given moment.
For example, a certain Gentleman in Arabia was known to be rather pale, it was how he was picked out in a crowd – and he also said rather unkind things about black people (there were very few in the area back then as the slave trade from Africa was in its early days – it went on till the 1960s) calling them “raisin heads” and saying they looked like Satan.
Yet anyone calling this Gentleman a racist would, today, be punished – indeed to oppose the deeds and teachings of the Gentleman is to be “racist”, the establishment (including my dear friends at Central Office) are very clear on this point.
So race does not seem to have any connection to skin colour or anything else that is physical – apart from when the left decides that it does.
As for towns changed for the worse by ill judged “development” – as a boy the late Tony Ireson lived a few yards from me (although I did not really know him – too much of an age difference, I was not always old).
His book “Old Kettering and its Defenders” is a classic of its type – in that it shows how a typical English town was greatly harmed, but also that the original plans were much WORSE – so the resistance to the Modernists was not without some relatively good results.
No Snorri – moral agency, free will, has nothing to do with “randomness”, you are making the same mistake as Epicurus.
Choice is neither random nor predetermined – choice is choice, it is itself, it can not be reduced to something else.
Just as the human mind, the “I” – the person, can not be “explained” in the sense of “explained away”.
The establishment do not have to do evil things – just as every concentration camp guard had a choice.
Anyone of them could have applied for combat duty on the Eastern Front, rather than carry on guarding the extermination camp.
Moral choice may have unpleasant consequences for the person who makes the moral choice – but that does not mean that moral choice does not exist.
In the case of a the modern British establishment – speaking out, for example about the Covid injections, may cost a man a lot (as it did with Andrew Bridgen) – but, again, making a moral choice may have unpleasant consequences for the person making the choice.
For an establishment person to act in a moral way means that they will be kicked out of the establishment – that they will no longer be part of the establishment. Indeed they may end up unemployed and so on.
Aristotle seemed to argue that the knowledge that one had done the right thing makes up for everyone showing contempt for you, and for hunger and pain and for death – which is sometimes the consequence of making a moral choice.
But, as Harold Prichard replied a couple of thousand years later, it is a rather bold contention of the Classical Philosophers that being morally right, making the choice to do the right thing, leads to happiness – if it leads to being despised by most people, to hunger and pain, and to death.
But certainly without free will there is no ethics, no morality, by definition.
Water gushing from a dam killing people is not doing anything it can be morally blamed for – as the water had no other choice.
If the actions of humans are predetermined (if the can not do other than they do) then they are NOT human beings (they have no personhood) and can not be morally blamed – as they could do no other than they do.
Britain, Germany, and so on tried multiculturalism – it did not work.
France tried integration (making the new people French) – it did not work either.
The experiment of mass Third World immigration has not been a success – unless the intention was to do harm, to help undermine society, it which case the experiment has been a success.
It will soon be illegal to say the above – if it is not already illegal.