J. Croft,

I’m more or less entirely with you as a matter of principle. (Like you, I believe in an unconditional right to keep and bear arms; like you I believe that the Constitution was a tyrannical usurpation in its conception, and that appealing to one’s favorite interpretation of the Constitution to somehow safeguard liberty is a sucker’s bet; like you I believe that the standing army and the (increasingly overtly militarized) standing police forces are one of the most toxic political forces in America today. But there are a couple of historical claims you make along the way which utterly baffle me.

You write: See, the backbone of the nation’s defense was on each of us arising out of necessity with arms and the skills to handle them well. They certainly did rise-whether the threat came from British Empire during the Revolutionary War; Mexico when it tried to conquer the Midwest during the 1840’s; …

I’m not aware of any point during the 1840s when Mexico “tried to conquer the Midwest” or when a Mexican invasion was resisted by citizen militia. Are you referring to the U.S. invasion of Mexico (1846-1848)? If so, then what attempt to “conquer the Midwest” was there, at any point? There was fighting between Mexican and U.S. soldiers, after professional soldiers in the standing U.S. army were deliberately moved, as an act of provocation, into the disputed territory between the Rio Grande and the Nueces river; at most, the Mexican end of the fighting was intended to recapture a small strip of southern Texas. In response the U.S. government–with the nakedly imperialistic President Polk at the helm–launched a massive invasion of Mexico, carried out not by militia, but by professional soldiers in the standing U.S. Army (cavalry and infantry) and Navy, which proceeded to invade Mexico, conquer it, seize its capital, and to seize 1/2 of Mexico’s territory, most notably Alta California and Nuevo Mexico (now California, Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, part of Colorado, etc. The radical libertarians in America at the time — William Lloyd Garrison; Henry David Thoreau — opposed the war at the time, rightly seeing it for what it was — an imperial war, orchestrated by the expansionist Slave Power. This was no militia resistance; for the U.S.’s part it was no resistance at all. It was an act of military aggression, carried out more or less explicitly for the purpose of imperial conquest, and sold to the public with a combination of lies, equivocation, and by-jingo brutality.

Secondly, you write: Immigration was encouraged; millions of Europeans were shipped in who were pig ignorant of what Freedom is. Eventually their mentalities, formed by centuries of despots wielding absolute power over them, made more radical social controls a viable option. Controls… like the banning of guns in New York with the Sullivan Act in 1916.

This strikes me as bizarre. Have you read the editorials, speeches, etc. that led up to the passage of the Sullivan Act? The people arguing for the Sullivan Act were more or less universally anti-immigrant, and justified the gun grab quite explicitly as a way of keeping guns out of the hands of immigrants. For example, here’s the New York Times in 1905, on a forerunner concealed-carry licensing law, then being mooted in the state Assembly: “Such a measure would prove corrective and salutary in a city filled with immigrants and evil communications, floating from the shores of Italy and Austria-Hungary. New York police reports frequently testify to the fact that the Italian and other south Continental gentry here are acquainted with the pocket pistol, and while drunk or merrymaking will use it quite as handily as the stiletto, and with more deadly effect. It is hoped that this treacherous and distinctly outlandish mode of settling disputes may not spread to corrupt the native good manners of the community.”

The reason the Sullivan Act was passed was not because immigrants accepted or supported it. The reason it was passed was because the immigrants targeted (mainly eastern European and Italian immigrants) generally could not vote, and had no political power in the city machines; whereas the cities nativists, whipped up by anti-immigrant rhetoric, decided that they were willing to accept an unprecedented expansion of government power, government gun-grabs, and the beginning of police-state regimentation, as the price for government control over the demonized immigrant population.

I agree with you about the tyrannical nature of so-called “gun control,” and the tyrannical nature of the system which produced it. I agree with you about what needs to be fought for. But I think that it’s very important that, historically speaking, we keep the real enemy in our sights.

Or, in other words, to make my point a bit more explicit, the requirement to get an SSN before you start a job, whatever its merits or demerits, would not impose a “more involved process” on “coming into the US to work.” It would only be imposing a requirement on immigrants to work, after they had already come into the United States.

That may seem like splitting hairs. But it’s significant that the point at which the requirement would be imposed need not be the point at which the immigrant enters the U.S. And that the penalties for failing to do so need not have anything to do with the right to remain in the U.S.

I go to New York most summers to take a temporary teaching job, and when I do I have to fill out the requisite paperwork for New York state tax withholding. But I don’t have to fill out those papers ahead of time in order to enter or to stay in New York. And if I took a job off the books in New York without filling out those forms, then the penalty, if I got caught, would be the usual fines. Not being exiled from the state of New York and sent back to my old home state.

cfrost:

Is a lifeboat mentality ethical? Probably not, but that’s inevitably what you’re going to get with a sinking ship. With a world population of 6.5 billion and growing by the second, you’ll have a hard time convincing those who live in the few islands of prosperity to let the masses in.

This argument presupposes that the most privileged people in the world have some kind of business supporting themselves in the style to which they have become accustomed by forcibly interfering with the peaceful migration of the poorest and most vulnerable, and to use force to stop them from taking jobs for willing employers, or to live on property onto which the owners have welcomed them. The comfort of American natives is not worth more than the well-being of people from other countries, and Americans do not gain the right to maintain a particular standard of living on the backs of pauperized foreigners simply in virtue of being Americans.

Nativism is the progressivism of fools. Besides the fact that it’s a disgusting sentiment, it also has no basis in anything that could possibly be recognized as liberal values.

herbert browne:

Yes, there are 2 distinct issues here. Like rootlesscosmo & Rad Geek I support the former as an “open border” process, with this caveat: It only works with with citizens of countries with whom it is RECIPROCAL, ie the country has to be willing to allow ME to go there & work legally, if I want.

I don’t understand this restriction. Let’s say that you want to move to Ruritania, but the Ruritanian government has closed its borders to American immigrants. And let’s say that a Ruritanian citizen, who had nothing in particular to do with the Ruritanian government’s stupid decision, wants to move to America. Certainly the situation sucks for you, and the Ruritanian government deserves blame for treating you badly. But why should the sins of the Ruritanian government be taken out on some innocent would-be Ruritanian ex-pat, who played no particular role in forming or implementing the policy?

Lindsay:

The reality is that it’s going to be time consuming to process all the people who want to come.

What processing? Again, if we’re talking about entry to the country, rather than naturalization, then there’s no processing necessary: you let people come in via their port of choice and you leave them alone rather than demanding that they flash their papers whenever they try to get a job, try to go to school, etc. etc. I.e., you treat somebody moving from Michoacan to take a job in California the same way that you’d treat somebody moving from Michigan to take a job in California. No processing necessary.

You might say, “Well, what if the Michoacan@ isn’t ready to work and pay taxes?” Well, what if the Michigander isn’t ready to work and pay taxes? Why should the Mexican immigrant be treated with greater scrutiny and greater prior restraint than the American native? Simply because one is Mexican and the other is American? If not, then what other reason is there, besides discrimination on the basis of nationality? If so, then what possible connection could this have to anything like liberal or progressive values?

“Open borders” isn’t an accurate description of any progressive immigration policy or amnesty deal.

Depends on what you mean by “progressive,” I guess. The old-timey Progressives certainly were for all kinds of immigration restrictions. But then, the old-timey Progressives were for sedition laws and forced sterilization, too. I would hope that people who call themselves “Progressives” today have moved on.

“Open borders” makes it sound like society is just stepping back and letting events play out. That’s not what we should be doing at all, and it’s not really what anyone is proposing.

Of course it’s what some people are proposing. I’m proposing it right now. I believe that the government has no business whatsoever in choking off border crossings or in maintaining an internal police force for surveillance and deportation of undocumented immigrants. I think that both should be abolished immediately, and people should be free to move wherever they can find a home and make a living for themselves. Neither “society” (whatever that means) nor the government should be trying to micromanage freely adopted demographic patterns, or trying to exclude or screen people on the basis of their nationality.

We still have the right to manage the flow of new arrivals. For example, even if we agree that everyone who wants to work ought to be able to do so, it doesn’t follow that we are obliged to let in everyone who qualifies at the same time.

On what possible basis would you justify imposing these kind of discriminatory prior restrictions, screens, quarantines, dossier-gathering, etc. on Mexicans, Canadians, Guatamaltecans, Cubans, Haitians, etc., but not on U.S. citizens? How do you figure it’s “progressive” for the government to privilege one group of people over everyone else, when it comes to basic workaday activities like traveling, setting up a home, getting an education, or making a living, solely on the basis of their nationality?

Reform means taking control, and using that power more wisely and humanely, not abdicating.

Sure, which is why reform is a bankrupt goal: it leaves a fundamentally racist and classist system of power in place, even if it liberalizes the exercise of that power slightly around the edges. I’m not for immigration law reform. I’m for repeal.

“Open borders” is a straw man. Nobody advocates that.

Oh, really? I do.

The anti-labor and racist effects of giving government the power to discriminate against peaceful workers, based solely on their nationality, should be obvious. If self-identified Progressives are not willing to oppose, on principle, the government’s surveillance, stopping, stamping, recording, searching, restraining, beating, jailing, and exiling peaceful workers who have never done anything to violate anybody else’s rights, based solely on those workers’ nationality and an arbitrary government-imposed quota, then so much the worse for Progressivism.

Several people have claimed that flying another flag above the United States flag is a violation of federal law. Unless you are in the military or another agency of the government, this is not true. The Federal Flag Clode (4 U.S.C. §§ 4-10) is not binding on private citizens or private businesses. It contains no enforcement section and no penalties, and explicitly states that its purpose is to establish a set of VOLUNTARY GUIDELINES: “The following codification of existing rules and customs pertaining to the display and use of the flag of the United States of America is established for the use of such civilians or civilian groups or organizations as may not be required to conform with regulations promulgated by one or more executive departments of the Government of the United States.”

As for those who claim that this two-bit thug has some kind of First Amendment right not to be prosecuted need to think harder. Freedom of speech does not protect your right to grab a knife and destroy other people’s private property. If you don’t like how a private business treats the U.S. flag, you should feel free not to patronize that business. But you have absolutely no moral or legal right to deface or steal someone else’s property in order to get your way.