Jason,

Just so we’re clear, I certainly didn’t mean to suggest, in setting up my hypothetical, that I was under any delusions as to the motives of Lincoln or the other Federalis in the U.S. Civil War. I’m well aware that the liberation of the slaves was not in the least a war aim, at least at the beginning of the war. Part of the point of the abstractified hypothetical was to make an a fortiori argument: if anything could justify the reconquest and occupation of the South on libertarian grounds, it would be the liberation of Southern slaves. But the liberation of Southern slaves would not in fact justify the reconquest and occupation of the South, even if (contrary to fact) that had been the cause that the Feds went to war for. Thus nothing could justify the reconquest and occupation of the South on libertarian grounds. (There might be a legitimate case for something different — such as the use of armed raids to liberate slaves, when not followed by conquest and occupation — but what it might justify is different from what actually happened in the U.S. Civil War precisely to the extent that it doesn’t involve any attempt to forcibly override white Southerners’ decisions to secede.)

To the extent that the Feds engaged in a brutal war and occupation, killing, maiming, and ruining millions of people in the process, for reasons that had nothing to do with the liberation of Southern slaves, I think that that makes the Feds’ position that much more repulsive, and obviously indefensible.

As for the rest of your discussion, it’s interesting, and deserves a careful reply, but the reply will probably take more space than I have here. Perhaps soon, on my blog.

There’s no real trade-off between racism and statism involved in this scandal.

As far as I can tell, pretty much all of the nastiest things that were written about black people in the early-90s newsletter articles were said in the context of articles directly calling for more aggressive and violent police tactics. Or, sometimes, directly making excuses for actual acts of police brutality–among them the police beating of Rodney King (that was in the same article as the crack about the welfare checks, and also the line that about 95% of Black men in D.C. could be considered “semi-criminal or entirely criminal,” whatever that means).

So what we’ve actually got, in the case in question, is both racism and violent statism wrapped up in one vile package.

Keith wrote: “Also when I read that radical feminist literature the thought that kept going though my head was how similar it was to some KKK propaganda I had seen before. I wonder if you would be so quick to excuse pictures of people with grotesquely large lips being lynched.”

White supremacist caricatures of black men and women were forms of propaganda by the supporters and perpetrators of an actually existing pervasive system of violence (lynch law under white supremacy) that killed, maimed, and terrorized thousands of innocent people. Their purpose was to support and reinforce that system of violent domination in the name of race privilege.

Radical feminist caricatures of men are a response by the VICTIMS of an actually existing pervasive system of violence (male violence against women) that kills, maims, rapes, and otherwise terrorizes millions of innocent women. Their purpose is to PROTEST and UNDERMINE that violence in the name of sex equality.

This facile attempt to equate the two, while completely ignoring their contrary relationships to a context of actually existing violent domination, is grotesque. It also completely glosses over what should be a central issue for libertarians — whether the violence depicted is aggressive, or a defense against prior aggression.

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.

Even if we went back to the days of Ellis Island, we didn’t have open borders. In fact America has always had strict rules about how you go about becoming American, some well-founded and some outright racist.

If you mean federal laws that imposed restrictions on who could enter, live in, or work in the country, then it is certainly not true that the U.S. has always had such laws. There were no such laws prior to 1882.

If you mean federal laws that impose restrictions and define procedures for immigrants, once they have arrived and set up in the U.S., to achieve status as naturalized citizens, then it’s true that the U.S. has always had such laws. But naturalization laws aren’t the primary issue in debates over “open borders.” The primary issue is the right to cross the border freely and to live and work where you choose.

And we’d have to figure out rules to govern who could stay in the country while their application was being processed, and what kinds of things they could do during the waiting period (Work? Go home for a visit? Etc.)

What business does the government have subjecting a peaceful Mexican immigrant to a higher level of scrutiny or restriction in the right to engage in everyday activities such as working or visiting home, than they would subject an American citizen to, simply because the object of their scrutiny happens to be Mexican rather than American?

Isn’t that just institutionalized bigotry?

“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.

Here’s how Kinsella answers my question about immigration onto private property and the use of helicopter shuttle services:

I would not oppose immigration only onto private property, but as soon as he is caught on public [property] he would be jailed for trespass. Which is basically the same thing as today’s immigration polices.

No, it’s not. If you were arrested for criminal trespass you would be charged with either a misdemeanor or a low-grade felony (depending on the state and the nature of the offense). The likely punishment would be a fine. It would not be sustained imprisonment and it sure as hell would not be the solution currently favored by La Migra—deportation, i.e., exile and confiscation of property. If you’re seriously proposing that we treat undocumented immigrants like trespassers then simple considerations of proportionality would mean that federal immigration policy as it currently stands would have to be completely dismantled and reconfigured to look more like the issuing of traffic tickets.

That’s not to say, though, that the trespass-on-public-property argument works in the first place. It doesn’t. Quite frankly, it’s crap. Here’s what Kinsella used to back it up earlier:

Well. In my view the American people as taxpayers—or some of them—are true “owners” of public land.

Of course, the “or some of them” is necessary to do your mischief. Because, as you know, or ought to by now, immigrants pay taxes too. Among other taxes, they pay gasoline taxes more or less in proportion to their use of roads.

Ergo, it seems that as soon as an immigrant has filled ‘er up, he has (thereby) become an American taxpayer, and (thereby) gained as good a claim to access to the roads as anyone else.

You might claim:

1. That a driving (i.e., taxpaying) immigrant does own a share of the roads like everyone else, but the decision of the majority of the joint owners overrules the individual’s decision to allow herself to access the road. But it’s an awfully strange kind of joint ownership in which the majority of the owners can simply categorically exclude another owner from accessing the commonly-held property no matter what.

2. That once immigrants have paid taxes they have access to the roads, but all you propose is a policy that would close government-controlled property to people who haven’t paid taxes yet, and so do not yet have any ownership claim. But there are lots of ways that an immigrant who has never set foot on a government road could go about acquiring shares of ownership if that’s how it really is—for example, by paying an agent to purchase some taxed gasoline on her behalf, and then using her newly-bought shares in the government roads to drive out and get it. Or by buying it from someone else who’s willing to sell their shares. (I, for one, have no particular interest in owning or investing in highways, and would be glad to sell.)

That said, note that all of this is predicated on a particular theory about what the “ownership” of the roads amounts to in the first place. Even though I don’t think that theory proves what you want it to, I think it’s frankly ridiculous on its face, and ridiculous in ways that undermine the possibility of alternatives giving you the results you think you can get from this theory. In particular, to get the policy outcome that it’s licit for majority opinion to close down the entire road system (and all other government-controlled land) to immigrants, you have to hold:

1. That everyone in the shareholding class owns a share in the entire network of roads

2. That they own all the parts of the network of roads equally (so, for example, you have as much of a say as I do about how to dispose of the roads between my apartment and some place that an immigrant guest of mine might work)

3. That the terms of this joint ownership are such that a sufficiently large number of shareholders can overrule the decisions made by one of the shareholders for non-interfering use of any part of the network. (Such as, for example, driving an immigrant guest from my apartment to her place of work.)

If you don’t have all of (1)-(3), then the trespassing-on-the-roads argument never gets off the ground—since to get the conclusion that approximating the enforcement of private property rights on roads, you first need to show that the entire network of roads—not just this or that byway—can be closed to immigrants. But (1), (2), and (3) are all obviously false; insofar as there are any legitimate property claims that can be disentangled here, you’ll have a decentralized patchwork of claims over different parts of the road system, not a giant joint stock corporation in the road network as a whole. There are good reasons to think that I have some legitimate property claim to the street outside my house; some mootable reasons to think that I have some rightful claim in the major thoroughfares in my city; very little reason to think I have any claim on the interstates; and no reason whatsoever to think I have any claim to the roads in front of your house.

This is connected with your sympathy for monarchist immigration policy:

Almost every American would want SOME restrictions on immigration, and it seems clear that a private monarch-owner would also do this.

But why should anyone care what One Big Cartel on the whole goddamn continent-spanning network of roads and government-controlled property would do? That’s not at all interesting for the property rights that would arise in a free society (in which the OBC would collapse due to calculational chaos); it’s not at all interesting for the issue of property rights in this vale of tears (in which neither I nor the collective of American taxpayers nor any monarch has any just claim on the road in front of your house); and it’s not even interesting for the sorting out of utilitarian considerations (since the decisions of OBCs are not reliably efficient).

So why bring it up?

Regarding Switzerland:

I think this is just ridiculous. It is quite clear if Switzerland had open borders then it would radically change.

Of course it would radically change. Everything changes. So what? The question isn’t whether it would change or not but whether the change would be damaging. And why in the world would it be? Because the Swiss would have to figure out how to cope with enclaves of people who have a different religion or speak another language? Well, gee, the whole bloody country is nothing but a loose confederation of unassimilated ethno-linguistic enclaves. Of all the countries in the world to pick for your example of how large-scale immigration and “multiculturalism” would inevitably lead to catastrophe and civil war, Switzerland is so unhelpful to Hoppe that the choice seems downright perverse.

Are you saying that if you did believe this, you might agree with his conclusions? Is your difference only an empirical one?

No. Utilitarian considerations about the plausible effects of large-scale immigration don’t have anything to say to the permissibility of using violence against peaceful immigrants.

However, Hoppe is making a sociological claim in the passages that you quoted above, in addition to his claim about justice. Although I don’t think he would have made the case for immigration restrictions if he were right about the plausible consequences of large-scale immigration in a statist world, it’s also worth pointing out that he’s also wrong on what the plausible consequences actually are.