I think you could take this argument even farther. Suppose I steal $1,000 from you and 999 other people and I use it to buy a $1,000,000 farm. When I am caught, who does the farm belong to?
Common sense says that it belongs to the 1,000 people whose assets were stolen to purchase the farm.
Open borders proponents would say that the farm belongs to everyone, so anyone on Earth can move there.
American legal systems land acquisitions and public infrastructure were built with the taxes paid by ourselves and our ancestors.
You don't even need social contract theory. The argument against immigration boils down to "stop stealing my stuff."
The argument becomes even more absurd when you take into account the fact that this is not 50+1 percent imposing their will on the minority, but a minority imposing its will on a nativist majority.
Ahh, but you see: they don't view rights as universal principles. The Left standard for freedom is whether oppressed people can do it. Step one is always grant the oppressed person whatever right can be thought up. Then step two is everyone else can have whatever rights don't conflict with the rights previously granted in step one. Define "oppressed people" as needed.
What happens if the fourth roommate pays the rent, eats your food, uses your dishes, but makes some bomb ass tacos on Tuesday. Like the best you have ever eaten in your life.
Plus he washes the toilets and takes out the trash, and doesn’t cringe like a bitch when a cockroach shows up. Takes care of things you and the two other roommates don’t want to do anymore.
We can explore this, assume Joe Denver is the fourth roommate and he just sucks big booty, which he does. He does everything that was listed above, but for some reason, he just sucks ass in my eyes.
It doesn’t change the fact that roommate 2 and 3 can suck just as much as roommate 4. Should I be able to kick out roommate 2 and 3 because they suck in my eyes?
No, and I'm not sure where the example is going. Although it's worth pointing out that if roommates come to despise each other, they generally don't renew their lease together and move out to live in separate spaces.
This is your analogy, I’m just trying to understand exactly why you don’t like this fourth roommate.
If it is just, I don’t like this person because I don’t like this person. Then sure, but the issue arises to, a person sucking can apply to roommate 2 and 3.
So what is it that makes roommate 4 horrible to have? If you want to move away from the analogy, feel free to do so.
So you're trying to re-assert the liberal frame that the burden of proof is somehow on me to demonstrate why I *shouldn't* have a fourth roommate.
I refuse. I signed a contract to have two roommates, not a third one who sleeps on the couch. I therefore have the right to enforce the contract--to say "no" to the fourth guy on the couch--for any reason that suits my fancy or for no particular reason at all. This is how contracts work.
If you have any further difficulty understanding the nature of contracts, then I'm afraid I can't help you.
I missed the part that it was already a contract written ahead of time, that no four roommate be added.
In which case, you are the aggrieved party, it won’t be illegal for you to leave because they broke the contract.
You leave and you find better roommates next time that will stick to said contract. The fourth roommate becomes the third roommate, and everyone is happy.
Tacos...pretty easy to make, I’m sure ethnic cookbooks are out there. Sure, everyone would like someone to do grunt work, but his kids will likely yell about chattel and racism and vote against your descendants’ interests. These things are not without long term consequences. Those taco’s aren’t worth it.
Sure, cookbooks are nice but it will never beat the real thing. Your taste buds know it, and every time Tuesday rolls around, it makes you happy.
Also, this fourth roommate, at his/her/their core has your values. They even vote for your interests. Their kids, even more so, they start complaining about the fifth roommate.
No because I know it’s bullshit. Tacos are tortillas with spiced meat filling that is all, not some elaborate explosion of culinary expertise on your buds. They don’t vote my interests they vote their interests. Dreamers are a prime example; I saw so many become indignant and act like they had every right to be here. They take every advantage and we have to have every fed document printed in two languages. They undercut American workers. I don’t have anything against them but we are not simpatico. They are mostly (not all)here to make money and send it back home. Trump should have done like he promised and forced a tax on every payment sent out of the country. They are usually on benefits upon arrival and they use emergency rooms because they can’t be turned away from care for inability to pay. California is a prime example of how they vote depending on country of origin.
Why ever would they be on Medicare? It’s not a problem what they do with their money but if it isn’t going back into circulation in the USA it isn’t a benefit to the country. ER use for regular medical care is also a problem because it’s generally more expensive. They didn’t vote for Trump by half and they haven’t ever voted majority republican as far as I know. If you love tacos so much why not take a permanent vaca to Mexico?
So as long as there is a sufficient amount of economic benefit, this roommate can stay.
The average poor and uneducated people in the United States seem to provide less than an immigrant. Do you feel like we should kick the poor out of this country?
The immigrants are poor and uneducated, but at least there was a barrier to entry, and they work. They struggled for it, whereas the poor and uneducated citizens were just born with a federal aid gilded spoon.
You can't vote your way out of immigration. Its a top down decision and conservatives will continue to print h1bs even when 80%+ of their voter base doesn't approve of it.
Great analogy, although I would contend that in the real world, most citizens do not approve of the kind of immigration we’ve been seeing in the west.
You are 100% correct that most western governments and their satellite organizations (academia, legacy media, NGOs) do not take into account what you think or want. They have pre decided the outcome (more immigration, more funding for intermittent electricity, etc.) and if you disagree openly, they’ll simply smear you (racist, climate denialist).
>Great analogy, although I would contend that in the real world, most citizens do not approve of the kind of immigration we’ve been seeing in the west.<
This is correct, but it keeps happening anyways. Most liberals think this is a morally legitimate outcome--to have more mass migration even if the majority opposes it. My purpose in this article is to demonstrate that the opposite is true.
Hm, I admit this is not actually stupid, you are basically saying contracts should not be changed unilaterally, and that includes social contracts. The problem is you think immigration started yesterday. Please look up what Irish immigrants in the 19th century US were like and then figure out what the real social contract is from that.
The core problem is that we don't own our nations so of course we don't get to limit immigration. It would be nice if all we had to do was vote and our politicians would serve us but reality is much more complex. Businesses and other NGOs seem to be able to actually get good stuff from the government no matter what political party is in power. That seems to be how power works rather than the populist democratic delusion. It is a good thing that men on the right are starting to organize into fraternities that can start to build responsible power and ownership.
The analogy breaks down because the immigrants are not sleeping on my couch, using my dishes.
A new roommate invades my physical space in my own home, A better analogy to this was what happened in 1774 with the Quartering Act in which Americans were forced by their government to take in foreign boarders into their own homes. This and other things precipitated revolution and a new constitutional government. The 5th Amendment of that constitution specifically forbade this very thing.
Immigrants moving into your town are not invading your private space. They are entering public space, something any of us does when we move, which Americans do all the time. There are real effects if foreign immigration that do not arise when Americans move, which are quite real. But the analogy you use does not capture these and ends up arguing against your message.
I did not address this question. All I was saying is your analogy was not a good one. It's an apples and oranges thing.
But in response to your question, citizens do own public spaces. But your argument is even if a majority agree to let them in, this should not happen if a minority disagrees. As justification you provide an analogy that does not apply.
Okay, so then my analogy applies perfectly. A nation's territory/public spaces and its citizens are analogous to the apartment and the roommates who occupy it; a majority of citizens simply voting to let in a bunch of foreigners is thus exactly like the two roommates "outvoting" the one to let in a fourth guy.
Except one is public space while the other is private space. A new roommate affects me in my home. New people in public need not affect me at all. It is far more dilute.
A better analogy would be to government policy forcing business owners to serve customers they don't want to, or public schools having to enroll students they did not want to.
Here it is government policy forcing intruders onto unwilling subjects in a public space, but in close quarters where they do "mix".
In your analogy, this would be something like your new flatmate coming from another flat where he is a victim of domestic violence, and he is regularly physically beaten. There is an urgent need for him to find another flat - any flat - where he is safe. But the local rental market is extremely tight and his options for the moment are his current flat, homelessness, or being invited into your home.
Wouldn't this change the moral calculus just a little bit?
The question is specifically *if someone asked you.* You've changed the scenario to proactively seeking people out - in immigration terms that would be like the west going to like Mali or wherever and finding people who they think would do better in the west and insisting they emigrate. Obviously that's insane and nobody supports it.
The short answer is, no. Even those circumstances don't mean you have a general ethical obligation to take that person in. Perhaps you have a Christian duty to do so, but it depends on a lot of things -- for example, a devout Christian with young children should almost never take such a person in out of the higher duty of safety and stability owed to their children. Thus, it is a matter of personal conscience, and not legal or ethical duty. Even if I felt strongly that my faith compelled this example of extraordinary charity, I would have no grounds to demand that an atheist participate in it.
For the longer answer, I think your example requires a few additional facts to make it analogous.
1. It is well known that a common scam in your city is that people who are not being abused but just want to live somewhere else claim to be victims of abuse.
2. The scam is so common that, once they've moved in and you ask them to show you proof that they were abused, the vast majority don't even bother showing up.
3. There is a small but not insignificant chance that this particular person is actually the one committing violence against the people in his current apartment.
4. By agreeing to take him in, you are also committing to hundreds of such cases to be taken into neighboring apartments, so that the small chance that any of one of them is a violent abuser increases to a virtual certainty that one of them exists in the group coming to live near you.
So, based on this more complete analogy, the longer answer is that, even if we raised the special Christian duty of extraordinary charity to a civic duty, it would still be highly conditional.
On one hand, it would still be reasonable for the home resident to conclude that the entire project has been made too unsafe because of the rampant fraud. The people wanting relief have no authority to compel anyone else to weigh the risks differently. For example, what if one of the many unsolicited emails, phone calls, and texts I get during a week is actually someone who genuinely needs my help? I don't think anyone would say that my Christian duty of charity requires me to change my standing policy that I don't even open potential scam emails, even if that means someone in genuine need, to whom I might otherwise owe a duty according to my faith, gets ignored.
On the other hand, if he finds the risk tolerable, he is still more than reasonable limiting it to cases that are both genuine and can be proven as as genuine with competent proof before he allows the person into his home. This was a lot more text than I anticipated just to say: there is no civic duty of charity of this kind and even a religious duty of charity doesn't mean a blanket obligation to take in anyone who claims to be a victim.
If we want to make it a Christian thing, I would argue that one's Christian duty to render aid to the suffering is generally contingent on their character. I don't think you have a Christian duty to provides handouts to those who are ungrateful and just looking for a free ride. Generally speaking, the more that the person seeking charity conforms to Christianity itself, the more worthy they are of aid. I could probably be convinced to accept large waves of immigrants if it could be guaranteed that they are all devout Christians of unquestionable moral character.
It's simple - hypocrisy of the liberal is only matched by the fervour of the communist, as the two are on a sliding scale of leftism. To argue honestly with them would require them to accept your moral premise, which they never do and force the debate on their own terms. The only way to debate the topic is to go for the jugular every time - if every people are entitled to their own home and customs, them the same must apply here in the West. If it goes contrary to their wishes, I want them to establish a moral base that doesn't frame the West as owing anyone anything - moral obligations exist within a community between specific people in here and now, they cannot be abstracted out across time and space, otherwise they create unlimited obligations between unrelated parties. They cannot also be built upon unlimited culpability of one side, as it also creates unbalanced relationship between the parties and becomes a bond held in place by power (which is the left's ultimate goal).
"What about war reparations" I hear them say - what about them? Most if not all are agreed in the immediate aftermath of a conflict between affected countries and most states limit their liabilities by agreeing treaties and settling these arrangements in time.
I mean, I could see this logic applying to the West, but less so to Israel. I don't see why exactly a hypothetical bigoted majority of Israeli Jews should restrict immigration to Israel only to halakhic Jews by repealing the Grandchild Clause, for instance. I certianly don't appreciate being spat in my face like that (though I personally already hold Israeli citizenship) and in any case I strongly believe that halakha deserves a change and an update in regards to this issue.
Fantastic article.
I think you could take this argument even farther. Suppose I steal $1,000 from you and 999 other people and I use it to buy a $1,000,000 farm. When I am caught, who does the farm belong to?
Common sense says that it belongs to the 1,000 people whose assets were stolen to purchase the farm.
Open borders proponents would say that the farm belongs to everyone, so anyone on Earth can move there.
American legal systems land acquisitions and public infrastructure were built with the taxes paid by ourselves and our ancestors.
You don't even need social contract theory. The argument against immigration boils down to "stop stealing my stuff."
The argument becomes even more absurd when you take into account the fact that this is not 50+1 percent imposing their will on the minority, but a minority imposing its will on a nativist majority.
Ahh, but you see: they don't view rights as universal principles. The Left standard for freedom is whether oppressed people can do it. Step one is always grant the oppressed person whatever right can be thought up. Then step two is everyone else can have whatever rights don't conflict with the rights previously granted in step one. Define "oppressed people" as needed.
What happens if the fourth roommate pays the rent, eats your food, uses your dishes, but makes some bomb ass tacos on Tuesday. Like the best you have ever eaten in your life.
Plus he washes the toilets and takes out the trash, and doesn’t cringe like a bitch when a cockroach shows up. Takes care of things you and the two other roommates don’t want to do anymore.
Does that change things?
What if he's Joe Denver?
We can explore this, assume Joe Denver is the fourth roommate and he just sucks big booty, which he does. He does everything that was listed above, but for some reason, he just sucks ass in my eyes.
It doesn’t change the fact that roommate 2 and 3 can suck just as much as roommate 4. Should I be able to kick out roommate 2 and 3 because they suck in my eyes?
No, and I'm not sure where the example is going. Although it's worth pointing out that if roommates come to despise each other, they generally don't renew their lease together and move out to live in separate spaces.
This is your analogy, I’m just trying to understand exactly why you don’t like this fourth roommate.
If it is just, I don’t like this person because I don’t like this person. Then sure, but the issue arises to, a person sucking can apply to roommate 2 and 3.
So what is it that makes roommate 4 horrible to have? If you want to move away from the analogy, feel free to do so.
So you're trying to re-assert the liberal frame that the burden of proof is somehow on me to demonstrate why I *shouldn't* have a fourth roommate.
I refuse. I signed a contract to have two roommates, not a third one who sleeps on the couch. I therefore have the right to enforce the contract--to say "no" to the fourth guy on the couch--for any reason that suits my fancy or for no particular reason at all. This is how contracts work.
If you have any further difficulty understanding the nature of contracts, then I'm afraid I can't help you.
I missed the part that it was already a contract written ahead of time, that no four roommate be added.
In which case, you are the aggrieved party, it won’t be illegal for you to leave because they broke the contract.
You leave and you find better roommates next time that will stick to said contract. The fourth roommate becomes the third roommate, and everyone is happy.
I hope you’re being ironic
Some libs unironically think like dis... trvke
Tacos...pretty easy to make, I’m sure ethnic cookbooks are out there. Sure, everyone would like someone to do grunt work, but his kids will likely yell about chattel and racism and vote against your descendants’ interests. These things are not without long term consequences. Those taco’s aren’t worth it.
Sure, cookbooks are nice but it will never beat the real thing. Your taste buds know it, and every time Tuesday rolls around, it makes you happy.
Also, this fourth roommate, at his/her/their core has your values. They even vote for your interests. Their kids, even more so, they start complaining about the fifth roommate.
Does this change things?
No because I know it’s bullshit. Tacos are tortillas with spiced meat filling that is all, not some elaborate explosion of culinary expertise on your buds. They don’t vote my interests they vote their interests. Dreamers are a prime example; I saw so many become indignant and act like they had every right to be here. They take every advantage and we have to have every fed document printed in two languages. They undercut American workers. I don’t have anything against them but we are not simpatico. They are mostly (not all)here to make money and send it back home. Trump should have done like he promised and forced a tax on every payment sent out of the country. They are usually on benefits upon arrival and they use emergency rooms because they can’t be turned away from care for inability to pay. California is a prime example of how they vote depending on country of origin.
Latinos voted in favor of Trump by a significant margin. What they do with their money is their problem, assuming it was attained legally.
They are on Medicare, so they shouldn’t be turned away from emergency rooms. What is your issue with Pablo then?
He works, he pays taxes, he is on federal aid programs, and he makes bomb ass tacos.
What is wrong with Pablo?
Why ever would they be on Medicare? It’s not a problem what they do with their money but if it isn’t going back into circulation in the USA it isn’t a benefit to the country. ER use for regular medical care is also a problem because it’s generally more expensive. They didn’t vote for Trump by half and they haven’t ever voted majority republican as far as I know. If you love tacos so much why not take a permanent vaca to Mexico?
Brown lives are worthless, that's the problem.
Oh yeah, super gross. I agree with you, but what about brown people is the problem?
The pigment of their skin? How they talk? Their exceptional taco making abilities?
If a brown person is exactly similar to you, what is the issue?
Sounds like you never had a life changing taco. I won’t make fun of you for not experiencing taco heaven.
However, let me ask you, what would change your mind about it then? What happens if they worked for free?
So as long as there is a sufficient amount of economic benefit, this roommate can stay.
The average poor and uneducated people in the United States seem to provide less than an immigrant. Do you feel like we should kick the poor out of this country?
The immigrants are poor and uneducated, but at least there was a barrier to entry, and they work. They struggled for it, whereas the poor and uneducated citizens were just born with a federal aid gilded spoon.
You can't vote your way out of immigration. Its a top down decision and conservatives will continue to print h1bs even when 80%+ of their voter base doesn't approve of it.
Aged like fine wine. Elon and Trump will print H1Bs like hot cakes.
Great analogy, although I would contend that in the real world, most citizens do not approve of the kind of immigration we’ve been seeing in the west.
You are 100% correct that most western governments and their satellite organizations (academia, legacy media, NGOs) do not take into account what you think or want. They have pre decided the outcome (more immigration, more funding for intermittent electricity, etc.) and if you disagree openly, they’ll simply smear you (racist, climate denialist).
>Great analogy, although I would contend that in the real world, most citizens do not approve of the kind of immigration we’ve been seeing in the west.<
This is correct, but it keeps happening anyways. Most liberals think this is a morally legitimate outcome--to have more mass migration even if the majority opposes it. My purpose in this article is to demonstrate that the opposite is true.
Hm, I admit this is not actually stupid, you are basically saying contracts should not be changed unilaterally, and that includes social contracts. The problem is you think immigration started yesterday. Please look up what Irish immigrants in the 19th century US were like and then figure out what the real social contract is from that.
The core problem is that we don't own our nations so of course we don't get to limit immigration. It would be nice if all we had to do was vote and our politicians would serve us but reality is much more complex. Businesses and other NGOs seem to be able to actually get good stuff from the government no matter what political party is in power. That seems to be how power works rather than the populist democratic delusion. It is a good thing that men on the right are starting to organize into fraternities that can start to build responsible power and ownership.
The analogy breaks down because the immigrants are not sleeping on my couch, using my dishes.
A new roommate invades my physical space in my own home, A better analogy to this was what happened in 1774 with the Quartering Act in which Americans were forced by their government to take in foreign boarders into their own homes. This and other things precipitated revolution and a new constitutional government. The 5th Amendment of that constitution specifically forbade this very thing.
Immigrants moving into your town are not invading your private space. They are entering public space, something any of us does when we move, which Americans do all the time. There are real effects if foreign immigration that do not arise when Americans move, which are quite real. But the analogy you use does not capture these and ends up arguing against your message.
Who owns a nation's public spaces, if not its citizens?
I did not address this question. All I was saying is your analogy was not a good one. It's an apples and oranges thing.
But in response to your question, citizens do own public spaces. But your argument is even if a majority agree to let them in, this should not happen if a minority disagrees. As justification you provide an analogy that does not apply.
Okay, so then my analogy applies perfectly. A nation's territory/public spaces and its citizens are analogous to the apartment and the roommates who occupy it; a majority of citizens simply voting to let in a bunch of foreigners is thus exactly like the two roommates "outvoting" the one to let in a fourth guy.
Except one is public space while the other is private space. A new roommate affects me in my home. New people in public need not affect me at all. It is far more dilute.
A better analogy would be to government policy forcing business owners to serve customers they don't want to, or public schools having to enroll students they did not want to.
Here it is government policy forcing intruders onto unwilling subjects in a public space, but in close quarters where they do "mix".
Let's extend this case to refugees.
In your analogy, this would be something like your new flatmate coming from another flat where he is a victim of domestic violence, and he is regularly physically beaten. There is an urgent need for him to find another flat - any flat - where he is safe. But the local rental market is extremely tight and his options for the moment are his current flat, homelessness, or being invited into your home.
Wouldn't this change the moral calculus just a little bit?
No. People just like that exist in every society--when was the last time you sought one out and offered them your flat?
The question is specifically *if someone asked you.* You've changed the scenario to proactively seeking people out - in immigration terms that would be like the west going to like Mali or wherever and finding people who they think would do better in the west and insisting they emigrate. Obviously that's insane and nobody supports it.
I mean, I answered the question with no. The rest of the comment was just me trying to explain why the answer is no.
The short answer is, no. Even those circumstances don't mean you have a general ethical obligation to take that person in. Perhaps you have a Christian duty to do so, but it depends on a lot of things -- for example, a devout Christian with young children should almost never take such a person in out of the higher duty of safety and stability owed to their children. Thus, it is a matter of personal conscience, and not legal or ethical duty. Even if I felt strongly that my faith compelled this example of extraordinary charity, I would have no grounds to demand that an atheist participate in it.
For the longer answer, I think your example requires a few additional facts to make it analogous.
1. It is well known that a common scam in your city is that people who are not being abused but just want to live somewhere else claim to be victims of abuse.
2. The scam is so common that, once they've moved in and you ask them to show you proof that they were abused, the vast majority don't even bother showing up.
3. There is a small but not insignificant chance that this particular person is actually the one committing violence against the people in his current apartment.
4. By agreeing to take him in, you are also committing to hundreds of such cases to be taken into neighboring apartments, so that the small chance that any of one of them is a violent abuser increases to a virtual certainty that one of them exists in the group coming to live near you.
So, based on this more complete analogy, the longer answer is that, even if we raised the special Christian duty of extraordinary charity to a civic duty, it would still be highly conditional.
On one hand, it would still be reasonable for the home resident to conclude that the entire project has been made too unsafe because of the rampant fraud. The people wanting relief have no authority to compel anyone else to weigh the risks differently. For example, what if one of the many unsolicited emails, phone calls, and texts I get during a week is actually someone who genuinely needs my help? I don't think anyone would say that my Christian duty of charity requires me to change my standing policy that I don't even open potential scam emails, even if that means someone in genuine need, to whom I might otherwise owe a duty according to my faith, gets ignored.
On the other hand, if he finds the risk tolerable, he is still more than reasonable limiting it to cases that are both genuine and can be proven as as genuine with competent proof before he allows the person into his home. This was a lot more text than I anticipated just to say: there is no civic duty of charity of this kind and even a religious duty of charity doesn't mean a blanket obligation to take in anyone who claims to be a victim.
If we want to make it a Christian thing, I would argue that one's Christian duty to render aid to the suffering is generally contingent on their character. I don't think you have a Christian duty to provides handouts to those who are ungrateful and just looking for a free ride. Generally speaking, the more that the person seeking charity conforms to Christianity itself, the more worthy they are of aid. I could probably be convinced to accept large waves of immigrants if it could be guaranteed that they are all devout Christians of unquestionable moral character.
You don’t own the country tho like you own a house
Yes and no. People get to set boundaries and determine who they admit in both.
And what if the majority of people allow immigration?
Let’s have a referendum on illegal migration and expansion of the basis for asylum claims.
A simple 50% + 1 person doesn’t cut it here. Mass migration requires a higher percentage like constitutional amendments do.
It's simple - hypocrisy of the liberal is only matched by the fervour of the communist, as the two are on a sliding scale of leftism. To argue honestly with them would require them to accept your moral premise, which they never do and force the debate on their own terms. The only way to debate the topic is to go for the jugular every time - if every people are entitled to their own home and customs, them the same must apply here in the West. If it goes contrary to their wishes, I want them to establish a moral base that doesn't frame the West as owing anyone anything - moral obligations exist within a community between specific people in here and now, they cannot be abstracted out across time and space, otherwise they create unlimited obligations between unrelated parties. They cannot also be built upon unlimited culpability of one side, as it also creates unbalanced relationship between the parties and becomes a bond held in place by power (which is the left's ultimate goal).
"What about war reparations" I hear them say - what about them? Most if not all are agreed in the immediate aftermath of a conflict between affected countries and most states limit their liabilities by agreeing treaties and settling these arrangements in time.
I mean, I could see this logic applying to the West, but less so to Israel. I don't see why exactly a hypothetical bigoted majority of Israeli Jews should restrict immigration to Israel only to halakhic Jews by repealing the Grandchild Clause, for instance. I certianly don't appreciate being spat in my face like that (though I personally already hold Israeli citizenship) and in any case I strongly believe that halakha deserves a change and an update in regards to this issue.