Saturday, October 9, 2010

Open Borders Means Big Government

I am more than anything else, a classical liberal. Today, I’d be classified as a libertarian -- paleo, small “l,” something like that. One way in which I disagree with “libertarians” is about their support for open borders. I am absolutely against them. Why?

Because the only way a country can have open borders is if it has a huge federal government. Right now, we have a huge federal government, so we have open borders. It overrules the states, counties, cities, neighborhoods, and individuals.

One of the main reasons the federal government supports open borders is for cheap labor for wealthy people, who have captured the government and use it to enrich themselves at the expense of everyone else.

Many libertarians appear to be clueless about this exploitation, oftentimes not seeing it as exploitation, and instead see it as the “free market” (which it in no way is), just as they delude themselves that Wal-Mart, a State-supported corporation (as all corporations are creations of the State) is free market, instead of an exploitative corporation (I refer to these behemoths as Cosmodemonic Transnational Megacorporations, the kind that finance both sides of a war).

Under a purely libertarian, anarcho-capitalist, society (which will never exist), all property would be private. Contrary to the belief the borders would be open, the truth is the exact opposite. There would not be mass immigration, because the property owners would not stand for it.

I was raised in an area with a bunch of farmers who owned very large tracts of land. I learned at a very young age I was to never trespass on their property without permission.

All those old boys had shotguns. When the government doesn't interfere, people will energetically defend their property.

One guy I knew decided to steal watermelons from a farmer. I know that sounds like something out of a country-and-western song, but he actually tried it one night. He got a charge of rock salt in his butt. He told me later that for a year he thought he would never have kids, because some of that rock salt landed in a very sensitive area, and that area wouldn't work for that year.

Then there was the farmer who owned the land on which my subdivision was built. One night many decades ago he caught a burglar breaking into his home. Years later he mentioned the incident to the police. The cops shrugged. Why dig the guy up? He's still under the intersection near my grade school.

When I was a teenager I used to hike and camp a lot. I met other hikers, who did a lot more hiking than I did. I stayed off of private property. They didn't, but in every case they asked permission to cross the property.

One hiker told me once the owner met him in his truck with a shotgun across his lap. Once he explained why he was hiking up the guy's driveway, he got his permission.
It may sound like these country people are crazy, but they're not. I still occasionally eat dinner with these people. They're friendly in a way most people never see. Neighbors walk in and out without knocking. I've seen them fall asleep on the floor in front of the TV after eating. No one said a word. But they will defend their property from strangers.

Occasionally libertarians tell me, "Well, immigrants would pay to cross the property." Say what? Where are millions of poor immigrants going to get the money to pay for such a thing? It also assumes the owners place money above all, that all people are what incompetent economists call "economic man." The only people I've seen do that are people who don't have any money. People who have money have other priorities than standing outside all night with a flashlight to catch immigrants and make them pay to cross their land.

I've had defenders of open borders tell me they want to destroy neighborhoods and other voluntary associations. This is libertarian? It sounds more like leftism to me, because the essence of leftism is the desire to destroy existing institutions in the naive belief all the "goodness" in human nature will just pop up.

Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn made the comment -- and I agree completely -- that leftists don't merely misunderstand human nature, they don't understand it at all.That's why I get comments about millions of immigrants paying to cross private property. Such a belief is literally in orbit because of its ludicrousness.
I also get the comment, "I should be able to hire whom I want." True. But how are those people they want to hire going to get there, when they have to cross other's property, and the property owners won't let them? My experience has also been people who make such comments don't have the money to hire anyone.

Some of the comments to me have been astoundingly dense. One nitwit told me immigrants would use the federal interstate system,, not understanding the interstate system is federal, was originally built to transport the military, and without the federal government there would have been no interstate system. Amazing! A “libertarian” supporting the federal government and not knowing why the interstate system was built!

My stupid pug has enough sense to defend what he thinks is his property. It's mine, but if he thinks it's his, that's fine with me. Even a Pomeranian will defend its territory. Yet the defenders of open borders think thousands if not millions of people will allow mass migration across their private property? What planet do these people live on, to believe such a thing?

Pat Buchanan said it best: "The peril of ideology is that it rarely comports with reality and is contradicted by history, thus leading inevitably to disillusionment and tragedy."

What am I supposed to think, when libertarians who claim to despise the federal government above all, support policies that can only exist because of that same despicable government? They live in a fantasyland.

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