RoR: Forum

Don't forget to tip your waitress! Barry will be performing all week!

(What an a-hole)

Post 1

Wednesday, May 11, 2011 - 6:14pm

I like what Glenn Beck said, tongue in cheek, "Well, if that is what it takes to secure the border... when is he going to start digging the moat."

He is the Liar in Chief.

I've watching Newt Gingrich on TV and despite all the things I don't like about him... compared to Obama I'd be willing to do near anything to get him office.

Post 2

Thursday, May 12, 2011 - 3:11am

The first thing you could do for Gingrich is not tell anybody about this.

Post 3

Friday, May 13, 2011 - 5:57am

I understand the concept of private property. I also understand that by all the physics we know, two people cannot be in the same place at the same time. That puts a metaphysical foundation under property.

What I do not understand is "borders." I know how they evolved (recently), but they seem to lack physical reality. Back in the 1800s, after the invention of police departments, German cities required that visitors register with the police. Usually, the well-to-do traveler left that to the hotel as a courtesy for them.

Basically, if you read about the travels of Shelley and Byron or J. P. Morgan, they went wherever they wanted. People did that not even a hundred years ago.

During World War I, the nations of Europe were afraid of spies crossing from enemy territory, so they instituted "passports." But as late as 1920 millions of people - largely from Italy - came to America without passports: WOPs. (The price of the fair on the Cunard Line was one UK pound. Hence, they were also called "guineas.")

It is true that various letters of introduction - personal or anonymous - always made travel easier. Thus, the "diploma" was the folded paper awarded to scholars and ambassadors (diplomats) alike.

Short of that, though, it is not clear what the rational-empirical procedures and processes should be.

(Edited by Michael E. Marotta on 5/13, 5:59am)

Post 4

Friday, May 13, 2011 - 12:05pm

What I do not understand is "borders."

It is about identity, Michael. How can you have property without knowing where it ends and something else begins. One of the earliest lessons a baby learns is what is me and what is not.

Just as we think of a man as the king of his castle... that he is in a relationship to his home, a relationship we can think of as his "jurisdiction," so we can see that a national government must have borders - what is 'us' and what is not. Borders are a necessary component of jurisdiction.

I know that you understand all of this perfectly well... It is that you don't agree with it on several levels - the level of having a monopoly of law (which requires borders), or that anyone be able to control the crossing of the border.

Perhaps at the most basic level, anarchists rebel against the law of identity - felt as yet another restriction when all things should be free to be anything?

Post 5

Friday, May 13, 2011 - 3:56pm

SW: ... so we can see that a national government must have borders ...

That is true by definition. We have to consider the objective reality of these people crossing these borders. If they were armed, intending to harm others - or place themselves in the government - then there would be words for that. In the latter case, it would be an invasion.

To say that a man's home is his castle is medieval. We live in a bourgeois society with Welcome mats. Not everyone gets in. That is "property" from "one's own" - personhood as the basis for ownership. But our homes do not have dungeons. Our families are not serfs or servants. If we happen to have a disagreement with a neighbor, we do not launch rocks from catapults, capture and hold them for ransom. Moreover, our "commons" are not fields for grazing but roads for traffic.

Certainly you would not agree that the king owns all land by default and only grants title to it - which the king can and does revoke by eminent domain. The government in Washington does not own the nation, does it? Their employees only staff the border crossings as ports of foreign commerce because the states are prohibited from directly negotiating with other national governments, except by permission (see the details in Art 10. secs 1 & 3).

Has anyone - even the right wing nuts - claimed that the people from Mexico who come here to work constitute a Fifth Column seeking to overthrow the government? Certainly you do not think that these people coming here to work are bringing a parallel legal code with them, do you?

Glenn Beck apparently has the same view of borders as a 19th century German policeman. Do you really hold the same concept of property as medieval baron?

You say that this is about identity. I admit to identifying with the immigrants looking for work. Do you identify with those who want alligators in the moats?

(Edited by Michael E. Marotta on 5/13, 4:00pm)

Post 6

Friday, May 13, 2011 - 7:38pm

Michael writes, "To say that a man's home is his castle is medieval." And,"...our homes do not have dungeons. Our families are not serfs or servants. If we happen to have a disagreement with a neighbor, we do not launch rocks from catapults, capture and hold them for ransom. Moreover, our "commons" are not fields for grazing but roads for traffic. Certainly you would not agree that the king owns all land by default and only grants title to it - which the king can and does revoke by eminent domain. The government in Washington does not own the nation, does it?"

Do you serious think that is what I meant or implied? Give me a break, Michael. Don't expect me to answer that kind of nonsense. It is clear that I meant property rights require boundaries. The owner of a piece of property gets to say if people can come onto his property and that requires boundaries. Likewise, laws require jurisdiction and that requires borders. If you can't grasp that that is what I was saying, or are unwilling to forgo these meanders into unrelated trivia about medieval times, then why should anyone bother to answer?

Michael writes,"Do you identify with those who want alligators in the moats?" The campaigner in chief did his usual non-factual, full of lies, attack on others in place of a policy statement. I certainly don't identify with him. As to the alligators, well, if it were the only way to do what this and prior administrations have failed to do, then I'd suggest he quit telling lies, and enough with the endless campaigning and start looking for alligators.

Illegal means illegal. But I'm not going to argue that with someone that believes in some fantasy of competing laws.

Post 7

Saturday, May 14, 2011 - 4:36am

SW: "Illegal is illegal."

We have a duty to obey immoral laws? It could be a valid claim, even for a thinker of the Objectivist school. Ayn Rand herself identified Roman Law as "objective" because it was written, publicized, and uniformly enforced. She said, further, as I recall, that it was wrong in many respects, but objective nonetheless. So, I can accept as an assertion from an Objectivist that we are obligated to obey wrongful laws until they are changed, rather than just picking and choosing the laws we like or dislike. That is more of a conservative (Tory) claim, but you are certainly capable of giving it an objective foundation, if anyone is.

You cited the saying that a man's home is his castle. It is an easy statement for a defender of property rights to make. I only point out that you did not think through what that implied. You are not alone in that. I am sure that you specifically did not mean to endorse a world of neighbors at war, holding their family as servants, with the husband as their lord. But that is indeed what that phrase means, which is why Objectivists are better to abandon it.

I fully granted that the government's primary duties include protecting the nation from invasion and itself from overthrow. You ignored that to dredge up an old dispute recently buried by Tibor Machan's Pizza Analogy.

Myself, I think that the differences between your views and mine are cultural. I point to Deirdre McCloskey's "Bourgeois Virtues." In the original essay, she compared and contrasted Benjamin Franklin (bourgeois) with St. Francis (peasant) and Achilles (hero). In essence, virtue is the same for all of them, but expressed differently, and significantly so.

So, just to take one, the hero practices moderation, the peasant frugality, and the merchant thrift.

I mention this here and now because we seem to be expressing cultural differences. You seem to be more like Achilles and less like Benjamin Franklin in your personal preferences for the social expression of virtue as concretized by political issues. I see one planet with a lot of variation from place to place. You seem to see a lot of different places stuck on one planet.

"Obedience to law is liberty" might be the wrong cliche to summarize your political morality. Perhaps you can suggest another.

THE CLASSES AND THEIR VIRTUES

_Aristocrat_ _ _Peasant_ Bourgeois_
Patrician Plebeian Mercantile
pagan Christian secular
Achilles St. Francis Benjamin Franklin
pride of being pride of service pride of action
honor duty integrity
forthrightness candor honesty
loyalty solidarity trustworthiness
courage fortitude enterprise
wit jocularity humor
courtesy reverence respect
propriety humility modesty
magnanimity benevolence consideration
justice fairness responsibility
foresight wisdom prudence
moderation frugality thrift
love charity affection
grace dignity self-possession
subjective objective conjective

(Edited by Michael E. Marotta on 5/14, 4:55am)

Post 8

Saturday, May 14, 2011 - 7:00am

MEM: " So, I can accept as an assertion from an Objectivist that we are obligated to obey wrongful laws until they are changed, rather than just picking and choosing the laws we like or dislike. That is more of a conservative (Tory) claim, but you are certainly capable of giving it an objective foundation, if anyone is.

You cited the saying that a man's home is his castle. It is an easy statement for a defender of property rights to make. I only point out that you did not think through what that implied. You are not alone in that. I am sure that you specifically did not mean to endorse a world of neighbors at war, holding their family as servants, with the husband as their lord. But that is indeed what that phrase means, which is why Objectivists are better to abandon it. "

Wow, how timely. Read it, and weep:
Court: No Right to Resist Illegal Cop Entry Into Home

Post 9

Saturday, May 14, 2011 - 1:07pm

Michael,

You wrote, "I only point out that you did not think through what that implied."

Not true. The statement that a man is the king of his castle does not imply that his wife and kids are serfs, or that he is at war with his neighbor using a rock catapult. Your attempt to tranfer the legal, political and cultural conditions of the middle ages onto modern times is your strange form of argumentation. Everyone else know that in a man's home he has more say and is more in command of his home and his life than outside and that there is a rightness to that. I merely used a familiar phrase to preface the statement that property rights require borders - and that is the point you carefully avoid answering while going into trivia about the medeval times. Objectivists should not abandon the phrase as long as it is intended to mean that property rights are inalienable - that there is sovernty in the individual and in ownership.

This whole thread and my initial post was about borders and boundaries and the whole medieval thing has been your diversion. As is the business about classes and virtues.
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Michael, you wrote, I fully granted that the government's primary duties include protecting the nation from invasion and itself from overthrow. You ignored that to dredge up an old dispute recently buried by Tibor Machan's Pizza Analogy."

I was under the assumption that you are still an anarchist. If that's not the case, my apologies. I don't understand what Professor Machan's article means in this context.
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The categorizing of virtues by classes is interesting but not a proper approach to a reasoned discipline of ethics. I don't find any desire to identify with any of the classes.

And I don't think it is a good idea to try to assign people into categories via these antiquated classes. (Besides, it has much to much of a Marxist class-based approach to life to make me feel comfortable). The logic and principles are dropped and instead people are pushed into categories by similarities - ah, you are advocating virtues x and y and that means you are a Class C which means you are also Z. Substitute the terminology of astrology... same thing.

Post 10

Saturday, May 14, 2011 - 1:13pm

Joe,

I read that article. That's awful. I really hope that we are on the verge of a move back in the other direction before it is too late.

I was the one that used the phrase about a man being the king of his castle - Michael was quoting me and objecting to the phrase, saying it implied the wife and kids were servants and that one would use a catapult to attack his neighbor.

He can argue that I am being too literal to say that he actually meant this, but then I could say, he was being too literal to assume that phrase means an actual kingdom like those of the feudal period.

Post 11

Sunday, May 15, 2011 - 4:41am

The original discussion is about whether and to what extent the Federal government should control entry into the United States. I believe that Objectivism holds that emigration and immigration are private matters. The availability of public services (welfare) such as public schools and libraries as well as income assistance and medical care complicates certain specific arguments but does not change the essentials.

Unless someone wants to claim that people coming to American are a literal invasion or some kind of Fifth Column then all we have here and now is what we had all along when our own ancestors came here by the millions without permissions or passports.

The President's quip was on-target and identified the essentials of opposition to immigration.

To say that America is "our" property which the Federal government protects from "unlawful entry" by outsiders is to make the Federal government the monarch of America, to grant the government eminent domain - first right of property - over the entire nation.

Under the Constitution, the federal government is responsible for ports of entry only because the States are prohibited from making treaties with foreign governments. It is a matter of procedure only.

Also, I point out that the USA and Canada share a 3000 mile open border. Despite a potential claim that the Canadians are suffering under socialism, they seem not to be escaping in large numbers. Hence, no one forms vigilantes or militias to keep them out. So, this is not about the abstract (or objective) nature of borders between nations. It is about emigration from Mexico.

Any moat with alligators to keep them out will keep you in. You may not be making Mexico your final destination. Perhaps you would prefer to be on your way to any of the eight nations scoring higher on the Heritage Foundation's Index of Economic Freedom. What if the President declares that draining America of "resources" is a form of "economic terrorism." (See the case of Bernard von Nothaus and the Liberty Dollar.) When that man's home becomes his castle, he can pull up the drawbridge and drop the portcullis, and keep you from leaving.

(In Sinclair Lewis's It Can't Happen Here vigilantes closed the border to Canada to prevent Americans from leaving the new corporative state.)

(Edited by Michael E. Marotta on 5/15, 4:44am)

Post 12

Sunday, May 15, 2011 - 12:36pm

Sorry for the misattribution, Steve.

Post 13

Sunday, May 15, 2011 - 2:38pm

Michael,

Objectivists are divided on immigration. And this has been argued here at ROR before. And, I continue to maintain that an anarchist is NOT an Objectivist, and because anarchists don't believe there should be any, or at least a single government for a geographic area, that you really have an overriding and more fundamental position that determines this issue for you.

You wrote, "The President's quip was on-target and identified the essentials of opposition to immigration."

Only in the fantasy-like adoration of the far left would this be held as some kind of truth.
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You wrote, "To say that America is 'our' property which the Federal government protects from 'unlawful entry' by outsiders is to make the Federal government the monarch of America, to grant the government eminent domain - first right of property - over the entire nation."

Nonsense. America is a geographical jurisdiction. And yes, it does protect from unlawful entry by outsiders. But, no, nothing in that is equivalent to saying, or justifies the fantastic leap of illogic to say it means the government has eminent domain over the entire nation.
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You wrote, "It is about emigration from Mexico."

To be more precise, it is about illegal immigration streaming over the Mexican border by Mexicans and citizens of other nations in huge numbers - about 500,000 per year. It includes large numbers of criminals, and a smattering of individuals from states that sponsor terrorism.
---------------------------

"Any moat with alligators to keep them out will keep you in."

The government, under the current president, is already making moves to make it harder to leave the country, and to keep money outside of the borders. But that is a separate issue. Your argument here is like the argument against gun ownership - if we let the good people have a gun, then bad people will get one. If we keep people from entering illegally, then we will be kept in. Nonsense.

There is no way for a sensible Objectivist to argue with an anarchist on immigration without first settling the issue of anarchy and I don't see that happening.

When you equate my being able to protect my house from being invaded (by strong doors, windows, moats, alligators, etc.) with being able to lock some one in, you have made my point for me that these are two separate issues. (Have you taken anarchy so far that you believe that an individual should not be able to protect themselves? That I have no right to lock my doors to people entering uninvited?)
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Post 14

Wednesday, May 18, 2011 - 6:49am

Steve: "Objectivists are divided on immigration."

Why would that be?

If A is A and we follow the rules of logic, what would cause the difference of opinion?

Objectivists are also divided several ways on the subject of abortion. Does life begin at conception? If so, so what? If not, when? If then, then what?

What are the basic empirical problems here?

You say that they must enter "legally." ("Illegal means illegal." in Post 6.) You believe, apparently, that we must obey the law, even if we judge it to be morally wrong. That is a known conservativism with its own long history of thought. I said that if you want to put an Objectivist foundation beneath it, you are capable of doing so. Is tha the basic empirical problem, then, the existence of immigration laws?

If the laws were changed, would be willing then to accept open immigration?

Post 15

Wednesday, May 18, 2011 - 7:43am

If A is A and we follow the rules of logic, what would cause the difference of opinion?

Michael, why ask why people disagree on the facts, or on what is logical? Some questions don't work that well when they become to general.
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You believe, apparently, that we must obey the law, even if we judge it to be morally wrong. That is a known conservativism with its own long history of thought.

Michael, I believe that the law is of value as such. I also believe that the law should be objective and derived from individual rights. When a law is not then there is a conflict between the moral value of observing the law and the violation of individual rights created by a bad law. In this instance a person makes a choice. It is going to depend upon the person's personal context and the law in question. Sometimes it will be better (more moral) to ignore the law, other times it will be the other way.

The law is always a suggestion in the sense that we have choice. It is not for us, as programming is to a computer. That is not conservatism as you say... It is Objectivism.

The position that there should not be a single set of laws is anarchism or that they should not be followed no matter what they are is anarchism.

Is that the basic empirical problem, then, the existence of laws?

Post 16

Wednesday, May 18, 2011 - 1:08pm

I don't believe in completely open immigration. There can be many real problems with it. In theory, letting any good citizen in is fine, but theory is not reality. We have to deal with crime, disease, and even inimical cultures - and it is not false to say that your culture can be destroyed. This could result in, for example, an Objectivist culture destroyed by moochers and looters. Think of Galt's Gulch, they did not let anyone from the looting hordes just pop in and do anything they wanted.

Post 17

Friday, May 20, 2011 - 1:14pm

"This could result in, for example, an Objectivist culture destroyed by moochers and looters. Think of Galt's Gulch, they did not let anyone from the looting hordes just pop in and do anything they wanted."

Part of the problem stems from defining national borders, airports, and seaports as something owned by a state, rather than as private property. If there were no public property, if all the public lands in the U.S. were sold off by all levels of government, then entry would be contingent upon getting the permission of the owner(s) of the property(s) you wished to enter. The government wouldn't have any need to get involved in formulating immigration policy, because it would become a private matter.

"If A is A and we follow the rules of logic, what would cause the difference of opinion?"

Because to fix the massive amount of statism we have now requires rolling back the state in chunks, and a policy that sort of works with one degree of government won't necessarily work with a lesser or greater degree of government. Ending all welfare payments, or ending all involuntary coercive taxation, means that people who currently can use political means to seize your property no longer have so much of that power, and transform from potential looters into potential trading partners.

Also, you may have noticed a * slight * disagreement here about how much the state can be whittled back. Different sizes of government imply different levels of openness toward immigrants.

Post 18

Friday, May 20, 2011 - 2:07pm

I agree - it rather depends where we are now - and right now, with looting and mooching in full force, I would prefer some controls. I will worry about opening back up after we can bring our own house in order.

Post 19

Saturday, May 21, 2011 - 6:09am