"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." ~ H.L. Mencken
What Part Of ''Illegal'' Really Matters?
Quick question: If you’re really opposed only to illegal immigration, then surely you won’t object if Congress changes federal immigration law to make it easier for people to come to the United States, right? If we just — voila! — make all “illegal immigrants” “legal” by law, then where does that leave your argument?
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By this logic. . . we should eliminate all trespassing laws as well. . .
I'd be willing to bet any amount of money I haven't got that most (bordering on all) people clamoring for eliminating immigration laws wouldn't even think about allowing just any yahoo to walk into their house or set up a tent in their back yard - but that's their expectation on a national level.
The purpose of immigration laws are to provide a vetting process. . . whether or not they've been hijacked for more nefarious purposes is irrelevant.
The US is the property of all citizens, nominally. . . and most of us want to know who is coming for dinner - If for no other reason than to make sure there's enough potato salad to go around. Aside from that, it's nice to have some way of knowing whether or not he's some freakshow who'll steal the silver, defecate in the cole slaw, chop down the peach tree, or simply decide never to leave.
Before one makes demands which affect everyone, perhaps they should try "open immigration" on a personal level - remove the locks from their doors and windows, take down the fence around their back yard, leave the keys in their unlocked car. . . and see how that works first. If they don't get beaten, robbed, and/or overrun and/or worse. . . then we can discuss doing so as a nation.
Until then - let's make sure we know who's coming over. And bust the Trespassers.
Ahem...Oh my my my....
To hear the Know-Nothings complain, you’d think that the US has a history of strict border control and that the federal government has only recently begun to lie down on the job.
Nothing could be further from the truth. For close to a century, the federal government exerted precisely zero control over immigration. People decided where they wanted to be and then they went there, with no need to request permission.
It was a quintessentially anarchic process — and it worked. Westward expansion and industrialization over the course of only a couple of generations would have been impossible without an unrestrained flow of immigrant labor. America’s resident population couldn’t breed fast enough to transform itself from an agrarian society to an industrial society...
Read on Dear Reader,
Immigration: Anarchy Worked
http://c4ss.org/content/2337
Can the Mexicans who installed your sprinkler system REALLY instill as much fear into your heart as the NSA, IRS and FBI?
...The take home message here is that America is already a gigantic economic and political toilet. Whether it is worth your time to keep immigrants from falling into this toilet is up to you. I, for one, welcome the *unpropagandized masses* from abroad, who work hard and don’t try to tell me how much I should love a government that threatens to murder me when I travel. Plus, *I value* the ability to leave this country as much or more than trying to keep out people who happen to speak Spanish.
Put differently, my advice to you [Dearest Reader], the next time you hear some hyperventilating, flag waving jackass going on and on about how we need to keep the "illegals" out of America (and all the other variations of "We"-ism), is to congratulate him for his sensitive humanitarian impulse to keep those innocent foreigners from falling into the reeking hell hole we call "America."
How Could Illegal Immigration Make America Any Worse Than It Already Is?
http://www.lewrockwell.com/crovelli/crovelli49.1.html
Hi Rev,
Great reply. Respecting Private property, life, liberty and the persuit of happiness. It would seem as if some "Skexes" in [Warshington] wants usens to move out and let some others more vulnerable come in to control seein as they kan't yet get full control of us. I think they are on their way with the U.N. and the Small Arms Trade Treaty. Once they got r guns we is finished.
NOTE: This is merely an observation not an argument or debate.
Moved to reply post.
I appreciate your linking to this article, Atlas. Knapp's last paragraph:
"...There is no smaller form of government than anarchy, and anarchy worked when it came to immigration. It would still be working today if not for the fact that an unrestrained government (and no government allows itself to be restrained forever) grows into every niche, and strangles every outgrowth, of human activity..."
I am a sovereign state. When I first began to make this declaration I think I did it rather tongue-in-cheek to get a rise from Knapp's "No-Nothings". But as I fielded the many rebuttals and arguments I came to believe what I was saying. I am, truly, a sovereign state. I have defendable borders, a governance with laws.
In order to compare "illegal" immigration with trespassing one must first accept agents of civil government as serving socially useful purposes and deserving of "our" support. If you can swallow that you are still basking in the instilled beliefs of your government ("public" ha ha) schooling days. Only then can you recognize any legitimacy in the fictitious lines in the sand referred to as "borders".
And only then can you ignore predators of state as the prime-ultimate trespassers.
Sam
It was pointed out to me as an incremental improvement to progress to "Sovereign Individual". There REALLY is no "sovereign state", it is just a We-ism. Hah! I am explicitly working on removing ALL slave-speak from my communication and relationships.
As for the rules by which a "Sovereign Individual" lives, may I recommend to you....:
The Covenant of Unanimous Consent
tinyurl.com/Covenant-and-Galts-Oath
Collected articles about the Covenant are found here:
tinyurl.com/Index-to-Covenant-Articles
AtlasAikido
"...It was pointed out to me as an incremental improvement to progress to "Sovereign Individual". There REALLY is no "sovereign state", it is just a We-ism. Hah! I am explicitly working on removing ALL slave-speak from my communication and relationships..."
I actually agree with your assessment that "sovereign state" is oxymoronic. As stated earlier, I often use the self-epithet to raise the ire of quasi-libertarians ("in theory only" types). And for some reason I perceive the use of "sovereign individual" (which, I'll readily agree, is what I'm saying truth-be-known) as sort-of kind-of aligning myself with some movement. I belong to no "movements". Movements get one singled out by statists and their followers, and are dangerous.
Stay away from movements.
"...I am explicitly working on removing ALL slave-speak from my communication and relationships..."
You and I are together on this undertaking. It sometimes seems cumbersome, but I will always try to say, "agents of government" or "state parasites" in the place of "government" or "state".
Delmar England insists that reification bestows upon abstract terms such as "country" the status in the speaker or writer's mind of living, breathing, godlike beings to which one must be subservient. I agree with Mr England on this.
He uses as an example often-heard statements like, "...the state always initiates force..." as being slave-speak. The state is the initiation of force. It is governmentalists who believe they have the authority of "state" who will always initiate violence.
I remain a sovereign state. But I initiate no violence by overt or covert action.
Sam
Hi Sam,
Great remark "Slave-speak". When you are told something over and over and over, you soon begin to believe what is said about you. This could very well be the beginning of a true seperation, a step that could very well be the first step of a 10,000 mile journey. "Slave-Speak"!
P.S. Still working on Harry Browne
The article centers around the question "What part of “illegal” do you not understand?" and as such is pretty good. I even have that question embodied in a CARTOON at - tinyurl.com/ILLEGAL-LAWS
What the article does NOT address is THIS ANSWER to that question...:
"Immigration control is UN-Constitutional! That means that all those "laws" are ILLEGAL!"
The ONLY things that are "illegal" about immigration and drugs are the Federal government "laws", rules, regulations and actions!
tinyurl.com/ILLEGAL-LAWS
[2007-06-10] "Immigration control is UN-Constitutional!" (And so is Drug control!)
* REALLY! Its TRUE! The US Constitution does NOT authorize immigration control!
* P.S., that goes for EXIT control & DRUG control also!!
* "An unconstitutional act is not law; it confers no rights; it imposes no duties; affords no protection; it creates no office; it is, in legal contemplation, as inoperative as though it had never been passed." - U.S. Supreme Court, Norton v. Shelby County, 118 US 425 (1886)
Perhaps it's age (I'm old). Maybe it's that I see things that nobody else on earth sees (I'm vain). Possibly it's that I simply cannot comprehend what's going around around me (I'm dense).
But there are mornings I log into places like STR, shake my head in amazement. I've gotten to where I don't even go to the Lew Rockwell page any more, and that used to be my first stop (sometimes taking all morning).
What's all this whining and hand-wringing? Thomas Pynchon is obviously correct as you've quoted, Dennis:
"...If they can keep you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers..."
My observation is that even hard-crusted libertarians fall victim to granting legitimacy to state -- if "those in charge... (often it will be stated in the statist mindset: "TPTB = the-powers-that-be") ...would just straighten their acts out!"
Lysander Spooner had the U.S. "Constitution" pegged over 150 years ago for pity sake! Our friend Jim Davies summed the situation up succinctly several years ago (I can't at this moment find a workable link to the original essay, but here's Jim's observation):
"...No government anywhere, at any time, has ever brought net benefit to any society, and there is no desirable function that any government performs that could not be performed better, or less expensively, by free people operating on a voluntary basis for profit or for charity..."
In my dotage I tend to want to jump urgently to the bottom line and skip all the wailing and gnashing of teeth:
ABSTAIN FROM BEANS!
Seems at times this is our only viable message.
Sam
Two times I have fucked this up and I aint going to go a third try. Fuck it!
G'day Glock27,
Write your comments out on MSWord, or OpenOfficeWriter (what I use), and when you are satisfied that you have it the way you want it, copy and paste it in the comment/reply box and "Publish comment". After it is posted it can be edited by clicking on the Edit tag at the bottom of your posted comment.
Hope that helped.