I didn’t suggest that freedom was “limitless,” whatever that means. All that I’m asking is whether you think that the government has a right to tell small business owners what kind of signs to post on their own property. And, if you do, then whether, since you think it’s so important to get this done, you would be willing personally to volunteer some of your own money to help cover this (rather expensive) task.

If you are willing, then you probably don’t need a law; many, probably most, shopkeeps would be perfectly happy to put up bilingual signs if it weren’t for the expense of changing out the signs or adding new signs.

If you aren’t willing, then why do you think that other people should be forced to cover the costs of the project to change the signs on their own property, when (1) they don’t care very much about it, and (2) not even the people who do care about it are willing to cover the costs?

Patri,

I overstated your position. My bad. On the other hand, you’re understating the position you expressed earlier when you gloss it by saying “If immigrants were more illiberal than residents, then my personal feelings about the costs and benefits of immigration would be different.” In the post above, you didn’t just talk about “the costs and benefits of immigration;” you talked about “how libertarians should feel about actual immigration laws in the real world.”

As I’m sure you know, establishing that unrestricted X is bad is not the same as establishing a case for a law aimed at prohibiting, minimizing, or controlling X. But when you say that “how libertarians should feel about actual immigration laws in the real world,” and then talking about “pragmatic tradeoffs” allegedly involved in one country ending up with a higher ratio of illiberal to liberal residents, or in using systematic government violence to stop that from happening, pretty clearly suggests that you think libertarians ought to at least feel more positively towards government force against would-be immigrants — e.g. violence to harass and restrain immigrants trying to cross the border, and/or violence to round up, confine, and then exile immigrants already within the U.S. who haven’t been officially approved by the government — even if, on balance, those more positive feelings are overridden by other considerations about the negative effects of the policy.

So, allow me to revise my position. Suppose it were discovered that native-born American children were, on average, more illiberal than Mexican immigrants. (This may or may not actually be true, for all I know.) Would you then think that this ought to affect how libertarians feel about proposals for mandatory sterilization laws, forced abortion laws, mass deportation of American infants to Mexico, or any number of other schemes that we might cook up to lower the ratio of illiberal to liberal residents in the United States? (Note that I am asking you how you’d feel about government laws to lower birthrates. Not just how you’d feel about lower birthrates happening somehow or another.)

Generally speaking, there are all kinds of statist methods of making one kind of people disappear from a stretch of territory, all of which you could go around evaluating for cost/benefit ratios. The question here is whether there is any policy so horrible that you wouldn’t even consider the necessary consequences of the policy a candidate for a “trade-off,” or anything that you would consider not yours to “trade,” even if the pay-off were right.

If there are any such, then it seems like you’re engaging in special pleading when you accuse Roberts of “taking the easy way out” by refusing to consider a coercive policy that he considers categorically unacceptable. Or if you’re not engaging in special pleading, it can only be because you think there is something special about Americans, or child-bearing, or American child-bearing, that allows you to refuse to consider population control laws that affect would-be American parents, but leaves the question of immigration laws open for consideration.

If, on the other hand, there is nothing (not even other people’s lives and livelihoods) that you would refuse to consider yours to trade off, and if there is no policy so monstrous that it wouldn’t be at least a potential candidate for achieving your demographic goals, then your position will, admittedly, be consistent. But consistency in ruthlessness is not something to take pride in.

My earlier remarks about the demands of justice also stand.

A good suggestion.

“Unsurveilled worker” might also help get at the heart of what the principled conservatives in the Know-Nothing Party are getting so exercised about, when their objections are colored by something other than overt racism or classism.

Look, if the owner of the business has a single-language sign up, and the city forces them to take it down and replace it with a bilingual sign, then they are telling them what kind of signage they can have; a bilingual sign is a different kind of sign from a single-language sign. And if the city forces the owner to put up a second sign in English, then they are also telling them what kind of signage they can have: specifically, they’re forcing them to add a sign that they didn’t think it was worthwhile to put up. You may think it is worthwhile, or important, or even necessary for the city to force business owners to use a particular kind of sign whether they’re willing to or not, but if so then you ought to be clear about what it is you support, and not hide it under euphemisms like “asking” or claims that they’re not doing what they are doing: telling small business owners how they have to identify their private business on their own private property.

Since you do support forcing small business owners to change their signage, are you at least willing to personally pony up some of the costs involved in changing all the signs out? Or do you expect them to not only be forced to meet the preferences of you and the city government, but also to pay the cost for those preferences even though they do not share them?

It may not be “too much to ask,” but a city ordinance is not a polite request. If you’re endorsing the use of an ordinance, you are endorsing small business owners being forced to change their signage, whether they are willing to do so or not.

So, just to be clear, do you believe that the government has a right to tell small business owners what kind of signage they can or cannot use to identify their own store on their own private property?

The woman you’re cheering on proceeded to physically attack the woman she was screaming at, beat her with a pump shoe, and scratched a police officer who tried to restrain her.

Just to be clear, are you endorsing violent assaults on women whose only “crime” is to be speaking their native language in a private conversation with their cousins? Or are you just endorsing screaming at them and berating them?

Here’s what happened, according to the story you link to:

“Ten years in this country, I never seen anything like this. The lady says ‘Speak English, I don’t want to hear Spanish!’ and big fight happens,” Win told the Herald last night. “There was blood in here and everything. There were a lot of customers in here. It (was) crazy.”

Police said one of the suspects, Sonia Pina, 20, was speaking Spanish to her cousin when another lacquered lady, Nakeisha Prichard, 20, attacked her Thursday night. Within minutes, at least four women were fighting inside the salon, police said.

“The two suspects began to argue and a fight ensued,” said BPD spokesman Officer Sharon Dottin.

Prichard allegedly pulled off her pump and began beating Pina with it. She explained away that action by telling cops, “I accidentally took my shoe off and hit her with it after she punched me.”

Prichard was charged with assault and battery, resisting arrest, and assault on a police officer – inflicted by her long, freshly manicured fake acrylic nails.

Just to be clear, when you say “You go, girl,” are you actually endorsing a violent assault and battery on a woman whose only “crime” was to be speaking in Spanish in a private conversation with their cousin?

Just out of curiosity, have you actually read any of the papers or commentaries on Dr. Norcross’s CV? Taken one of his classes? Talked with anyone who has taken his classes? Talked with him personally?

If so, why not actually discuss the content of his views, or the arguments he offers for them, or what you’ve heard about his classes, or what he’s like as a person? If not, then why are you talking about something when you have done absolutely nothing to find out whether you know what you’re talking about?

Ms. Schluessel,

Have you:

1. Taken one of Dr. Norcross’s classes?

2. Spoken with anyone who has taken one of Dr. Norcross’s classes?

3. Spoken with Dr. Norcross about his views on animal ethics?

4. Read “The Animal Ethics Reader”?

5. Read the “Killing and Letting Die” anthology that he (co-)edited?

6. Made any effort to discover (by conversation or by reading) how, as a co-editor of an anthology on the topic, his views relate to those of the contributors to the anthology?

7. Heard the presentation or read the paper on “Torturing Puppies, etc.”?

8. Read his comments in response to somebody else’s paper on “Disability, Marxism, and Ecofeminism”?

9. Noticed from the CV that those are in fact assigned comments on somebody else’s paper for a conference, rather than a topic Norcross wrote on himself?

10. Taken Dr. Norcross’s class on the Simpsons and Philosophy, or talked with anyone who has taken it, or talked with Dr. Norcross about it, or read the book by the same title, or, for that matter, heard of the concept of “humor”?

11. Noticed that the PhotoShop of his head onto President Bush’s body is actually a joke about Kantian ethical theory, not about the war in Iraq?

12. In general, done absolutely anything to discover what Dr. Norcross’s views are, or what his arguments for those views are, or what his courses are like, or what he’s like as a person, other than skimming very quickly over his faculty website and speculating on the titles of papers you found in his CV?

I’m just curious, because if you have done any of these things you offer no evidence of it here. But if you haven’t done any of these things, then you simply have no idea what you are talking about when you speculate on what his courses are like, what he demands of students, what he’s like as a person, what he believes, or what sorts of arguments he gives to defendthose beliefs. But if you don’t know what you are talking about, then why are you talking about it?

Sheldon: “The discussion has proceeded as if they have no rights in the matter but we do. We will let them come here if and only if we have a use for them. And “we” doesn’t refer to a group of free individuals, but rather to a collective Borg-like entity with rights superior to any held by its constituents.”

Yes. Thank you. Precisely.

A while back I had a discussion with Jason Kuznicki over his statements on immigration policy (which were more liberal than his interlocutor’s, but not in favor of open borders, and which spent a lot of time on the completely irrelevant subject of “assimilation”). I suggested, among other things, he was being presumptuous and condescending when he tried to talk up his willingness to “let nearly all of [the Mexicans] enter who wished” as if he were doing Mexicans some kind of favor.

He seemed pretty baffled about the suggestion, and since I was more interested in discussing other points I didn’t press the point. But I think this is a fine explanation of why the rhetorical posture grated on me, even from someone who favors a policy outcome that’s substantially more liberal than the current regime. Jason asked what he was “supposed to do with them, if not let them through?” I think the right answer is that you’re supposed to stop pretending like the American ambiguous-collective gives you some kind of authority to stand as a gatekeeper on property that doesn’t belong to you.