Comments Elsewhere

Jason, I’m not insinuating that you’re a racist. “That’s mighty white of you” is an idiomatic expression that was once common among whites in the American South. It’s now used by some people, especially African-Americans, to sarcastically suggest that someone is being condescending or presumptuous (while presenting themselves as doing you a favor). The meaning is roughly equivalent to “That’s mighty big of you,” when uttered with a sarcastic tone of voice.

So what I’m insinuating is that pronouncements about who you’d “let … in” to other people’s property are condescending and presumptuous. I’m glad that you advocate measures that are less illiberal than those advocated by, say, Sandefur, but fundamentally it is not up to you to decide how welcoming or unwelcoming to be here. (To what are you “welcoming” people who aren’t setting foot on your property?) Much less is it up to you to decide whether or not to use violence against them to force them off of other people’s property (and then, having declined to, pat yourself on the back about how “welcoming” you are). Really, how dare you?

You could claim that you have some rights here because — as you argued in your reply to Kennedy — you have a right to use force against people who have harmed you or threatened to harm you. But I directly asked you what specific violations of your rights (threatened or enacted) you had in mind that would justify doing this to undocumented immigrants. And also whether arrest, confinement, and exile (“deportation”) was a proportionate response to whatever specific violation of your rights you had in mind. You haven’t answered either of those questions, but until you’ve answered them you haven’t provided any reason for claiming that you’ve got some kind of right to screen immigrants or enforce any immigration-restriction policy at all, as long as they are not trespassing on your own property.

As to the one serious question you do raise, forcing children to go to school is not a violation of anyone’s rights; it is fully proper that a society should do so. If kids don’t want to go to school, well, that’s too bad. They don’t have the full rights of a citizen until adulthood.

“Society” doesn’t force children to go to school. Their parents do; or their guardians do; or government truant officers do, depending on the breaks.

It may be that parents and guardians have a legitimate right to do that. If so, they get that right from the fact that they are, for some purposes at least, acting on behalf of the child for the purposes of contracts and legal decision-making.

Are you suggesting that government officials (legislators, school officials, truant officers, etc.) have the same rights to make decisions for children that their parents or guardians do? If you are, where do they get that right? (Do they have the right to make your children get braces or do their homework, if you don’t make them do it?)

Anyway, you didn’t suggest that your “civics lessons” would be limited to schoolchildren; you said that you’d “make everyone” take it. Since adult immigrants are currently forced to take civics classes as a prerequisite for naturalized citizenship, I took it that you intended to include adults as well as children. If that’s not what you meant, then I apologize for misreading you.