Roderick:

… by a “John J. Ray, M.A., Ph.D.” (Yes, he’s one of those.)

Maybe he believes that your post is part of the development of a tragic tale tending unswervingly to nothing less than a moral apotheosis. Had our demented diarist gone, in the fatal summer of 2011, to a competent psychopathologist, there would have been no disaster; but then, neither would there have been this blog.

Sartwell: "jefferson and madison and washington were all slave-owners who expressed their opposition to the institution of slavery and hoped that it would end."

Well, you know this is a different claim from the claim that 'the Founding Fathers "worked tirelessly" to end slavery.' Most people are aware of the idle wishes that some of the slaving founders expressed that slavery might end some day in the sweet by-and-by. (Although for Washington and especially for Jefferson even this is complicated; see Notes on the State of Virginia e.g.) Similar sentiments -- and similarly idle wishes -- are constantly used to make the (completely absurd) claim that General Robert E. Lee was some kind of abolitionist. But wishes are not the same as work. (*)

And it is not as if work were impossible; as you know men like Washington and Madison and Jefferson were all in positions not just to hope but to do some considerable things when they were, like, commander in chief of the continental army or writing the Declaration of Independence or writing the U.S. Constitution or being President of the United States of America. But they didn't. They just kept hoping. I'll bet Barack Obama hopes that some day Guantanamo will be closed, too.

(* It's not that none of the Founders actually worked instead of just wishing; Hamilton, e.g., and Rush were activists in northern manumission and abolition societies and played important roles in the abolition of slavery in New York and Pennsylvania. But the kind of "Founding Father" that folks like Bachmann typically want to claim as "working tirelessly" against slavery are always spectacularly bad examples, like Washington or Jefferson; probably mainly because that is the sort of "Founding Father" who went on to achieve executive power.)

Carlton:

I don’t think anyone gives two twits about illegals who aren’t selling drugs, robbing stores or collecting welfare.

There’s nothing wrong with selling drugs or collecting welfare. Neither selling drugs nor collecting welfare violates the rights of a single identifiable victim.

Selling drugs is in fact a productive activity which provides desired goods to willing customers, in defiance of the invasive prohibition of the state. Drug dealers are in fact class heroes, and deserve to be honored. Again, if the upshot here is that we should join Anarchists for State Drug Prohibition, fuck it, I want out.

Robbing stores is, of course, another matter. But I hear they already have some laws against that; I have no idea what it’s supposed to have to do with immigration status.

Incidentally, undocumented immigrants cannot collect welfare. Most documented immigrants can’t either. This has been the case for about 15 years now. I would have mentioned this earlier, but I don’t think it’s particularly relevant. (If all immigrants were collecting welfare, that might be an argument against government welfare programs, but it’s not an argument against free immigration.) However, if “anyone” is giving “two twits” about undocumented immigrants “collecting welfare,” then “anyone” is apparently not only wrong, but in fact an ignoramus who ought to look a couple things up before opening his yap.

Carlton:

Methinks the author not to be true to his anarchist hype. Perhaps a socialist in disguise?

For opposing state government laws and police surveillance?

If being true to one’s “anarchist hype” requires joining Anti-Statists for State Government and National Borders, then I want out. (Fortunately, I’m not sure that it does. But then, I am a socialist in disguise.)

Gene:

So, if we found some regime where anti-theft laws were enforced by summarily hanging starving people who stole a loaf of bread — and such regimes have existed! — then defending *any* laws against theft would be a “moral obscenity”?

I suppose you intend this as a reductio. But if so, you haven’t understood the argument you’re trying to reduce. My complaint had nothing essentially to do with the severity of the government violence inflicted on immigrants, or with the disproportion between the violence and the “offense.” If you’re wondering what it did have to do with, let me suggest that the bit about storming private homes and dragging people out of them; so is the bit about “political inversion of reality.” The appropriate question to ask in this context is, “Who are the real trespassers?”

Hope this helps.

Gene Callahan:

Property rights are social creation[s] in the first place….

As is systematic geometry. Does it follow that it is “ridiculous” to suggest that “society” may not “have a say” in whether the sum of the internal angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles?

In any case, what people here were discussing was not whether or not “society” should “have a say.” They were discussing whether governments should. I have quite a few friends and neighbors who are undocumented immigrants. They are admittedly no part of the United States government; but they are part of “society” ’round here. (A far more peaceful, productive and pleasant part of the society, as it happens, than Metro, ICE, or most other agents of the government.) If you intend to support government border laws, then your suggestion is that a substantial portion of society ought to be stripped of its “say,” and silenced by the dominating will of a tiny, politically-privileged minority of the population. If that’s how your theory of political representation works out, O.K., but you’ll need to actually provide some argument for accepting that theory, and you ought to drop the pretense that you’re talking about what “society” says or wants or does. What you’re actually talking about is drowning out a large segment of society with the amplified bellowing of political marching orders.

I should also mention that — since the real-world enforcement of border laws constantly involves government agents storming workplaces and homes, kicking in doors, demanding papers, dragging people out of their houses in the middle of the night, carrying their bound captives off to hellhole “detention camps,” and forcibly exiling them from the peaceful private enjoyment of their own homes — the attempt to defend this sort of hyper-aggressive political invasion of private property by appealing to people’s commonly-accepted rights to the privacy of their homes and to secure their own property against trespassers is a moral obscenity, and the worst sort of up-is-down, black-is-white political inversion of reality.

Gene:

A similar problem: There are millions of people here in New York City who are prevented from going and living in luxury townhouses on the Upper West Side, despite the fact they were no part of the agreement as to how the current “owners” got those apartments and never consented to the “agreement”!

That would sound like a “similar problem.” If all American territory were the property of the United States government, as those townhouses are the property of their owners. But it is not.

Your right to evict trespassers from your home is a right of unilateral command, not a right that derives from any contract with the trespasser or with third parties. I’m OK with that; I have a fairly straightforward reason why you wouldn’t need prior agreement to have the authority to give commands about that kind of thing (any minimally adequate theory of private or possessory property will do). Does Mullet have a similarly straightforward reason for asserting the right of a government to command tremendous numbers of people not to set foot on land which doesn’t belong to the government in the first place, or to assault, seize and exile people for being on private land even with the permission of the owner? If he or she does have such an account, then the appeal to “contracts” between governments is nugatory. If she or he does not have such an account, then the appeal to “contracts” between governments won’t help get closer to one. In either case, the appeal to “contracts” between governments is pointless, question-begging or both.

Yes, our national and state boundaries exist only as contractual agreements between governments,

If they exist only as contractual agreements between governments, then why are they enforced on millions of people who are not part of either government, and who never consented to the “agreement?”

I mean, if Felipe Calderon wants to sign a contract saying he won’t ever go to Texas without the permission of the United States government, I got no problem with him signing that contract, and I got no problem with him being held to it. But he has the right to sign for himself, not for everybody else in “his” country.

Of course, if you believe that governments can dictate non-negotiable, irrevocable obligations on people who were never asked for their consent, never agreed to the terms, and cannot opt out of the demand by any means, you’re welcome to hold that belief, and to try to defend it. But you are then obviously talking about unilateral commands, not about contracts, and you may as well give up the fiction that “agreement” has anything to do with it.

scineram:

If I pull a shipwrecked from the ocean can I just toss him back whenever I want or do I have to carry to the closest harbor?

This is doubly irrelevant. First, because the analogy of rescue is inappropriate. Whatever duties you may have to rescue those in distress, they derive first, from the condition that they were in before the emergency, and second, from the condition of distress that the emergency puts them in relative to that original condition. But there is no original condition in the case of a pregnancy — there was nothing at all before the conception — and afortiori no condition of distress to be rescued from. Second, because there are obvious issues of alienability and proportionality involved with someone who will be, quite literally, living inside of your body that are not issues with someone who will be riding on your ship. (Imagine that, in order to keep the shipwreck victim alive, you not only have to keep her on the ship; you also have to let her drink your blood every day for the rest of the voyage; or give her a kidney; or whatever you like. Suppose you agree to this in the beginning, but then change your mind. Well, maybe you should have thought things through more before you agreed to it. But I do not think that the shipwrecked has a right to hold you down and take the blood, or the kidney, by force. Not even if it’s just to tide her over until you reach the nearest safe harbor. Do you?

But I think you’ve been around long enough to know that this kind of “off-the-boat” or “out-the-airlock” example has already been discussed to death. Why raise it again now as if nobody had ever heard of it?