Comments Elsewhere

As a side note, just out of curiosity: how does forcibly keeping these alleged anti-freedom people in (say) Mexico help the prospects for freedom and smaller government in Mexico? Or do you just not care what happens there?

Patri:

Now, there is plenty of room for debate about the resulting net impact. But if immigrants truly are anti-freedom, then the real question is how to evaluate this tough tradeoff. Not whether libertarians can have their immigration and a small government too.

There is no tough tradeoff here unless you think that justice only demands that you try to reduce the net quantity of coercion going around in your neighborhood, or in the world at large. I don’t think that; I think that justice primarily demands that you, personally, not coerce anybody else. There are lots of things that I might do to try to stop myself or my friends from being plundered or assaulted; but plundering or assaulting unrelated third parties, merely on the basis of the political views they are demographically likely to hold, doesn’t even rise to being a candidate for consideration, let alone an attractive one.

Patri:

Cornelius – you are assuming that the children of current Americans have the same orientation towards freedom as the incoming immigrants. And the entire argument is founded on the claim that the immigrants have a different attitude towards freedom than the residents.

I think you may be missing the point.

Let’s suppose that we accept the principles you lay out in this post. Since you supposed, arguendo, that one hypothesis was true (viz. whether immigrants are substantially more illiberal than native Americans), in order to argue for a general principle, then we are entitled to do the same with a different hypothesis (viz. whether American-born children are substantially more illiberal than immigrants) in order to test the same principle. So the question is: if it turned out to be the reverse, and American-born children were, on balance, more illiberal than immigrants, would you then be willing to accept government eugenics, mandatory sterilization, forced abortion, et cetera on American citizens, as a means to getting a society with a lower ratio of illiberal residents to liberal residents? If you aren’t, then what makes child-bearing, or Americans, or American child-bearing, so special that you’re unwilling to allow coercion there but willing to allow coercion against peaceful immigrants? If you are, well, then, I suppose we know what sort of a political theory is yours.