A special, degenerate subspecies resulting from the crossing of the Copy/Paste and MRA Talking Points trolls is the Horror File Quote List Troll. This troll is too stupid to even copy and paste an argument related to the discussion at hand; it prefers to paste in endless lists of cherry-picked and wilfully misrepresented quotes allegedly penned by feminist authors. For an example, you can see one in action in three different threads on Feministing: [1], [2], [3]. The basic M.O. is to find some thin reed by which you can connect your favorite list of Evil Feminist Quotes to the current conversation (even the most tangential connection will do), and then you fire up the Cut-‘n’-Paste from a series of lists of dishonestly presented and wildly out-of-context quotes intended to prove the malicious, man-hatin’ intent of the monolithic conspiracy running The Feminist Movement.

The quote lists themselves are a sort of ever-mutating parasite that spreads through the trolls’ activities; they’ve actually been circulating among anti-feminist trolldom since the days of Usenet, and many of them can have their histories traced by the typographical errors, attributions errors, and other mistakes that have been endlessly replicated through their cut-n-paste vectors for over a decade now.

earlbecke:

I have to seriously question anyone who claims to be an ally who is willing to use gender-based, anti-gay, racist, ablist, etc., slurs. (Not in a reclaimatory sense, of course. Totally different discussion.)

Robert:

Translation: you’ll extend the courtesy of accepting intentionalism to people you like.

Except, Robert, that the difference between “reclamatory” and “non-reclamatory” uses of slurs doesn’t just have to do with the intentions behind them. It also has to do with substantive differences in how they are used. So treating “reclamatory” uses of slurs differently from more mundane uses of them need not have anything in particular to do with “intentionalism.”

I know how you love to fire off a good zinger over Lefties holding their comrades to lower standards than everyone else, but I’m afraid you’re going to have to try harder than this.

Jill: This will surely be an unpopular argument with some people here, but completely open borders would wreak havoc on both our economy and our national security, …

Why?

Jill: And like I said in the post, we really need to loosen up our asylum policies. When I said “anyone and everyone,” I was referring to immigrants in general, not just asylum-seekers.

Part of the problem with this is that not everyone agrees on legitimate reasons for granting asylum, and if you allow the politicians to pick and choose who to let in, then the kinds of people they recognize as “real” refugees are going to be limited by the political blinders that mainstream politicians or immigration bureaucrats happen to have on when they approach the issue. To take a real world example, it’s been like pulling teeth getting the immigration bureaucracy to recognize the threat of almost certain death as cause for granting asylum, if the threat comes from your abusive ex-husband — because wife beating is not considered a “political” issue by the immigration inquisitors or their political bosses, and so doesn’t really come into their worldview when they ask themselves who counts as a political refugee. People written off as “economic” refugees are routinely turned away, as if starvation were somehow less of a crisis for the refugee than near-certain murder. Generally speaking, political agencies respond to political incentives, and frankly I don’t trust politicians to pick and choose who counts as a “real” refugee, especially not when most of the candidates already come from marginalized groups that are routinely misunderstood and ill-served by politicians here as well as abroad.

“Now, I’m not arguing that we have to let in anyone and everyone…”

Well, why not?

It is criminal that there’s a single refugee in this world who cannot immediately find asylum and a new life for herself in another country. It is inexcusable that this system of international apartheid is maintaining the

• feministe

Randy:

This is no longer a debate about right and wrong. It is a debate about the will of the people, and the will of the people is to stop illegal immigration.

If political debate is not debate about right and wrong, then political debate must be changed. There’s no sense talking strategy until you’ve first settled on the right goal, and thus no sense talking practical politics except in light of principled convictions about how people ought to be treated. And while I’m a lot more dubious than you are that there are easy and reliable ways to determine what “the will of the people” is, I do know that if the will of the people demands immorality, in the form of an injustice against innocent people, the will of the people must be ignored, evaded, or resisted.

The best the illegals who are here can hope for is a legal path to citizenship through a guest worker program. Every other option involves their being forced to leave. Only the form of the force used differs from option to option. Deny them jobs and benefits or arrest them – its all the same. They have to go.

Don’t talk bosh. There is a perfectly valid third option:

Stop attacking peaceful immigrants.

ariadne:

I can’t believe how much we’ve all been duped into thinking it’s more important than, say, health care, securing nuclear materials, capturing OBL……

I think it’s pretty important to the immigrants.

PJGoober:

For all the libertarian commenters, you need to recognize the negative externalities imposed by tons of poor immigrants due to the welfare state, and then realize that the welfare state is probably never ever going away. I’m choosing my battles wisely, and ending massive unskilled immigration seems more doable.

The existence of the welfare state is not immigrants’ fault, and in point of fact they are able to take considerably less advantage of it (especially if they don’t have their papers) than any new brat born to upstanding U.S. citizens. So why are you willing to take it out on immigrants but not on elderly citizens drawing Social Security checks, suburban kids getting a government-funded education, American citizens drawing TANF, WIC, food stamps, SSI? American farmers drawing agriculural subsidies or American business owners taking grants and loans from the Feds?

All of these people are imposing “negative externalities” on their neighbors by means of government programs, yet I see no proposals for rounding up the urban poor, deporting the disabled, putting the elderly into “detention centers,” or building guarded barricades to block surburban kids from getting to the government schools. It is only immigrants that you’re willing to forcibly restrain, beat, shoot, confine, and exile from their current homes (all at further taxpayer expense, mind you; “enforcement” is not any more free than welfare benefits are), in order to make some inroads on the negative externalities being imposed by a welfare state that they played no role in creating. Why? Because, apparently, they are politically vulnerable and you have no trouble using government force against innocent third parties when you feel it’s more politically expedient to do so than working to change or resist the system that robs you in the first place.

That is, frankly, despicable.

… and that’s why I’ve given up on electoral politics as a serious means to social change.

If I spend 30 years’ worth of time and money that I’m never going to get back on organizing, and all I can expect to get at the end of it is a bunch of hang-wringing quasi-liberal Democrat politicos sitting in the existing institutions of power, then I may as well save myself the trouble and just bang my head into a brick wall for the same length of time. At least the brick wall won’t fill my mailbox with fundraising junk mail, too.

I don’t think that’s true. Can’t the border patrol arrest and restrain people crossing the border illegally?

That depends on what you mean by “can.”

They certainly have the power to do so. But they haven’t got any legitimate right to. Neither they nor anyone else has the right to harass or forcibly restrain peaceful people, who are, after all, simply trying to move into a new town to find work, and aren’t interfering with anyone else’s rights to person or property. Moving should not be treated as a crime.

Jim: Illegal immigrants violate the property rights of all Americans when they cross into our country without our permission.

No, they do not.

Illegal immigrants travel on roads open to everyone, live in places where they have been welcomed by a landlord or by their family, and work for employers who willingly hired them. Or, if they are not, then there is already a law for dealing with trespassers, regardless of nationality.

If an illegal immigrant is barging onto your private property without your permission, then I’ll gladly defend your right to have the trespasser removed from your own property. What I object to is the claim that you have a right to throw immigrants off other people’s property, even if those other people are perfectly happy to let the immigrants stay for love or money. Each American has every right to decide who does or does not stay on her own property. Only belligerent busybodies, on the other hand, think that they ought to have a say in who can or cannot stay on their neighbors’ property.

Jim: Is it considered “assault” to deport illegal immigrants back to their home countries?

Yes. Deportation doesn’t involve a nice man from La Migra walking immigrants back home. It involves using force, or the threat of force, to throw people out of homes that they have been welcomed onto, against their will and against the will of the property owner. Using physical force against people, when you are not defending yourself, is assault. Using assault or the threat of assault to take someone away from their home by force is abduction. The fact that the assaulters and abductors have badges on does not legitimize the attack.

Randy: 1850? Good point. And remember what happened in 1861 when the compromise fell apart.

The compromise actually fell apart in 1854. Not that the aftermath of that was any more pleasant.

Pleasant or unpleasant, though, the compromise fell apart because the terms of compromise were absolutely unacceptable. If your model for desirable political compromise is the god damned Fugitive Slave Act, then I think you need to think a lot harder about what it is you desire and why.

Randy: Peaceful people? That’s an interesting interpretation, but it entirely rejects the arguments of those who are opposed to uncontrolled immigration. The problem for you is that there are a great many such people.

The fact that many people have deluded themselves into thinking that they are being attacked by an Evil Alien Invasion is not my problem. It is theirs.

Randy: At this point in time, the only real alternatives are controlled immigration or mass deportation.

Why in the world do you think that these are the only alternatives? I’m not interested in either form of ethnic cleansing, thank you.

Dr. Althouse:

“I haven’t been reading PoliPundit or, really, any of the debate about immigration in the blogosphere. If I had been, I probably would only write about ‘tone and tenor of the debate.’ I consider immigration a complex policy problem, and I steer clear of ideologues spouting on the topic. I hear the President gave a speech on the subject last night and that he sounded moderate. Good. He’s fending off the ideologues — I hope.”

Dr. King:

“I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direct action;’ who paternalistically feels he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by the myth of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a ‘more convenient season.’ Shallow understanding from people of goodwill is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

“… You spoke of our activity in Birmingham as extreme. At first I was rather disappointed that fellow clergymen would see my nonviolent efforts as those of the extremist. … But as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a bit of satisfaction from being considered an extremist. Was not Jesus an extremist for love — ‘Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, pray for them that despitefully use you.’ Was not Amos an extremist for justice — ‘Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.’ Was not Paul an extremist for the gospel of Jesus Christ — ‘I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.’ Was not Martin Luther an extremist — ‘Here I stand; I can do none other so help me God.’ Was not John Bunyan an extremist — ‘I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience.’ Was not Abraham Lincoln an extremist — ‘This nation cannot survive half slave and half free.’ Was not Thomas Jefferson an extremist — ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’ So the question is not whether we will be extremist but what kind of extremist will we be. Will we be extremists for hate or will we be extremists for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice—or will we be extremists for the cause of justice? We must not forget that all three were crucified for the same crime—the crime of extremism. Two were extremists for immorality, and thusly fell below their environment. The other, Jesus Christ, was an extremist for love, truth and goodness, and thereby rose above his environment. So, after all, maybe the South, the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.”

—“Letter from Birmingham Jail”

Dr. King wins.