Yes, I Am Not a Libertarian

« Our European Future | Main | Charlotte Simmons Goes To Yale »

Yes, I Am Not a Libertarian

20 Jun 2007 01:27 am

But I thank Will Wilkinson for calling that to my attention.

More seriously, I think Will is slightly misreading my original post, in which I was setting forth what I think are many liberals' unspoken premises about policies that allow for large-scale immigration - namely, that they're a form of de facto humanitarianism, and thus to be supported. I do not believe myself that "voluntary trade between American employers and Mexicans workers [is] equivalent to 'humanitarian spending.'" Rather, I believe that many people on the left think this way, at least in some sense (at the very least, it seems clear to me that most liberals don't support immigration for the same "voluntary trade 4Ever" reasons as Will and the Wall Street Journal), and so I was trying to argue with them on those grounds.

But Will is of course right that I don't share his premises either. For instance:

That Ross is liable see the issue in this weird, mistaken way does indicate that he thinks some sort of nationalism is the legitimate moral baseline. The liberal (in the broad sense) presumption of freedom, on the other hand, has it that unrestricted voluntary cooperation between human beings is the moral baseline. Deviations from this require special justification.

I suppose I prefer to think that constitutionalism and Judeo-Christian ethics are the moral baseline where government action is concerned. That is, I believe that the government of the United States should strive to "form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity," and do so without trampling on any of the liberties enumerated in the Constitution; at the same time, I would prefer that America's leaders pursue policies that are broadly consonant with the Judeo-Christian tradition. (No wars of aggression, for instance.) And I'm pretty sure that "unrestricted voluntary cooperation between human beings" isn't a liberty that the Constitution protects, since the Congress is explicitly granted the power to regulate both interstate and international commerce. (In the final chapter of Atlas Shrugged, we encounter one of Rand's Supermen rewriting the Constitution to include a clause reading "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of production and trade," but I don't believe that amendment has been ratified.) I certainly prefer that this power be used prudently, and I'm open to persuasion that policing the borders of the United States is an imprudent application of government power. But preventing American businesses from importing their workforce from abroad simply isn't a "basic violation of liberty" under our political order in the way that, say, restrictions on religion or political speech would be. Of course Will is entitled to make "unrestricted voluntary cooperation between human beings" his moral and political baseline - he just isn't entitled to pretend that this principle is a baseline that everyone who participates in the liberal order is required to share.

The question of whether restrictions on immigration from poor countries to rich ones violate Christian teaching - since they clearly don't run afoul of the American political order - is a much more complicated one, touching on all sorts of debates too involved for this blog post. Suffice it to say I think that the answer is no; a rich Christian country should be favorably disposed toward immigration, I would argue, but I don't think Christianity provides any sure guide to exactly how favorably disposed it should be. There are all sorts of variables that the government of a Christian society should weigh when deciding how many migrants to admit, chief among them the effect of migration on civil peace and political stability, both of which are taken somewhat for granted in contemporary America but which have historically been rather fragile things. How to weigh these variables is a point on which intelligent people, Christian and otherwise, can disagree. The Economist's blog (or Maybe Megan McArdle) recently suggested, for instance, that America's foreign-born population could grow by 50 percent or more from where it is today without causing any unacceptable risks to the body politic; I'm not persuaded, but it's an argument worth having. What isn't an argument worth having is whether admitting, say, only 300,000 newcomers a year to our political and social order, rather than over a million, is the moral equivalent of Jim Crow.

As for whether I wish the U.S. to be "less Mexican," I would like to associate myself with Daniel Larison's comments and leave it at that.

Comments (45)

Ross:

Well, it seems clear that christianity has little to say on the issue of imigration (althought it seems to me that a proper christian understanding of the issue should encourage it, not push on artificial limits backed up by the state). That leaves us with the constitutions... And the question is "why have the constitution as the moral baseline" for such an issue? It may be a legal guide at most...but moral? Yes, you are not a libertarian, but I haven´t see you push for higher moral ground that the right of people to voluntary trade and cooperate...

Posted by Sergio Méndez | June 20, 2007 12:41 AM

voluntary trade and cooperate...

you can trade & cooperate without immigrating to this country. e.g., outsourcing.

if a "guest worker" who comes to this country is injured on the job and they are rushed to the emergency room and they have no ability to compensate the doctors for their time and the hospital for their equipment, will we just let this individual die? of course not. i suppose ross would say it was the un-christian thing to do, but be as that maybe, the law dictates that you can't turn away people from the emergency room. ultimately someone has to pay for this, either through higher bills for those who do/can pay or the government subsidizing these services. there's nothing voluntary about this, we as citizens of a republic enter into particular obligations in relation to our government. as it happens that government is not a minarchy, but is constrained and scaffolded by a great deal of obligate regulation and unending taxation to support that regulation. to speak of "rights" and "voluntary" capitalist transactions between consenting adults seem ludicrous when one notes that we don't live in an unconstrained public policy vacuum.

Posted by razib | June 20, 2007 2:23 AM

p.s. to clarify, it all seems so simply when reduced to the comparative advantage accrued between advantageous exchanges between worker x and employer y. but, then you cases where you have employer z, taking into account a little something called reality and encouraging its workers to get onto the rolls of gov. subsidized health care (in this case, wal-mart & medicaid). now, that instance isn't necessarily relevant to a guest worker caste shut off from the normal rights & responsibilities of being american, but by virtue of residing on american soil they do accrue to themselves certain rights and dignities, and we accrue to ourselves certain rights and obligations toward that individual. in a perfect libertarian work these external interactions which muddy up the worker-employee relationship could be "voluntary," but i see no possible future where this world is going to exist.

Posted by razib | June 20, 2007 2:28 AM

I think the problem is exactly that Wilkinson's does require "that [his] principle is a baseline that everyone who participates in the liberal order is required to share".

Its that libertarian paternalism that they claim is impossible, but then write books implying voters are too dumb to make up their own decision.

Posted by talboito | June 20, 2007 2:28 AM

Libertarians are just racists in disguise.

Posted by Tabloids | June 20, 2007 3:24 AM

I would prefer that America's leaders pursue policies that are broadly consonant with the Judeo-Christian tradition. (No wars of aggression, for instance.)

Just for the record, there is no "Judeo-Christian tradition" on wars of aggression. The Christian tradition is that Christian political leaders start wars of agression and Christian clergymen, applying just-war theory, later condemn them. I defer to Jews on this issue, but from where I sit it doesn't look like the Jewish tradition opposes wars of agression at all: the taking of the Holy Land sure looks like a war of agression to me.

Posted by Joe Magarac | June 20, 2007 8:56 AM

Libertarianism does presuppose that unrestricted voluntary exchange is a sort of moral baseline; this is supposed to follow from the nature of "rights".

Of course, this is why libertarianism is applied autism.

Posted by Maximos | June 20, 2007 9:09 AM

and do so without trampling on any of the liberties enumerated in the Constitution;

Except for the right to a fair hearing, which appeared to be fine with Bush supporters. That makes me more than a little suspicious as to whether there's any content to the quoted bit.

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | June 20, 2007 10:01 AM

Just for the record, there is no "Judeo-Christian tradition" on wars of aggression.

good point. i wonder if there should a movement to stop using the word "judo-christian tradition" when it isn't really describing anything coherent? what has the talmud to do with the gospels after all?

Posted by razib | June 20, 2007 10:14 AM

Tim, you lost me there. Is this a tu quoque on Guantanamo?

Posted by Ben A | June 20, 2007 10:14 AM

Except for the right to a fair hearing, which appeared to be fine with Bush supporters. That makes me more than a little suspicious as to whether there's any content to the quoted bit.

N.B. "Fair" does not equal "in the U.S. civil courts". Military hearings are perfectly fair for noncitizens engaged in combat against the U.S.

Posted by Mike S. | June 20, 2007 10:33 AM

Libertarian says something facile and self-aggrandizing, alert the media.

Posted by turkey | June 20, 2007 10:43 AM

Tim, you lost me there. Is this a tu quoque on Guantanamo?

Not if I've understood "tu quoque" properly. Using Wiki's example--""Reverend Bob claims that theft is wrong, but how can theft be wrong if Bob himself admits he stole objects when he was a child?"--as a baseline, I'm saying that Rev. Bob claims that he is against theft, but does not think that knocking a random stranger on the head and taking his wallet is theft. Either Rev. Bob doesn't much mean what he says about theft, or his definition of "theft" is very different from the standard definition. In either case, it's fair to say that the statement tells you very little about Rev. Bob's beliefs about what most people would consider theft.

Military hearings are perfectly fair for noncitizens engaged in combat against the U.S.

When did Padilla lose his citizenship?

Posted by SomeCallMeTim | June 20, 2007 11:40 AM

It's entirely possible that some of the liberal supporters of large-scale immigration view it as de facto humanitarianism. But for mine own part, I think the generally pro-immigration attitude on the Left stems from a particular vision of patriotism that is at odds with the one Larison expounds (and, perhaps ironically, at odds with European attitudes toward immigration.)

Namely, we generally consider it one of America's finest attributes that it is not, and has never been, a land of "cultural and national unity." We don't exist as a nation because our forefathers banded together against the Huns in a small geographic region, worshiped in the same churches, and intermarried with each other. We exist because large numbers of people from many different countries left the Old World and banded together to build a new nation that doesn't share a common religion or ancestry.

My sense of patriotism is almost entirely tied up in pride for living in a unique country that ISN'T built on ethnic nationalism. It's built on freedom and opportunity. It's a place where anyone can come to build a new life.

Of course, all of this sentiment occasionally blinds some people on the Left to the fact that assimilation, even to such an inclusive culture, is a slow process that can be overwhelmed by volume, particularly when the immigration process is as horribly unregulated as it has been in recent years. Also, the likelihood that immigration drives down wages has not been taken seriously enough. But I do agree that supporting a moderate level of immigration can't be construed as a desire to make the country "less American," since immigration itself is quintessentially American.

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | June 20, 2007 3:29 PM

I used to be a libertarian, but then I grew up.

Posted by Steve Sailer | June 20, 2007 7:17 PM

Razib:

Your argument certainly does not adress the moral principle of people cooperating and trading voluntarely. It seems to engage the idea of a public health care system and the costs of it. From a libertarian point of view, there will not be public health care system founded by the state, for immigrants or for natives...You can claim of course (as you do), that such event is unlikely to happen, that the goverment regulates social and economic life, and that we don´t live in a minarchy or anarchy; and while things change, imigrants may "profit" from the public health care system. That is a good argument against the state in my opinion, not against imigrants.

Still, immigrants pay taxes (property taxes, sale taxes and even income taxes), while they perfom low paying jobs and recieve less benefits than the average native. So is not that they recieve free atention in hospitals for free in emergency cases (that are, by its nature, rare). So what is your beef?

Posted by Sergio Méndez | June 20, 2007 7:27 PM

Ross's citation to Larison made me realize something about the entire immigration debate, and it gets to why those on my side of the debate (i.e., in favor of amnesty and pretty open immigration) think that so many on the other side of the debate are motivated by some form of racism or xenophobia.

Larison posits an "American" culture that he wants to preserve, which requires that we not let in so many Mexicans so as to change the culture and make it more "Mexican" than "American". This is a discourse that I am not used to, and I react pretty strongly against it. But when I think about it, it isn't categorically out of bounds to express this sort of concern, so let's unpack it.

The reason I say it isn't categorically out of bounds is because one could certainly come up with scenarios in which cultural customs of America were under assault from other customs that were rightly considered barbaric and inferior. For instance, no American needs to or should stand aside and allow the practice of female genital mutilation to take hold in this country. The same could be said about Muslim or fundamentalist Mormon polygamy, or any number of other really bad cultural practices.

But the thing is, that isn't usually what happens. Rather, American culture continuously absorbs quite a bit of culture from other places and from the immigrans that come here (and, I might add, other cultures have absorbed quite a bit of American culture). Yes, the culture changes, but no, it doesn't get worse-- or at least, if it is getting worse, it's getting worse for other reasons than immigration. (For instance, a conservative might not like the sexual revolution. But that doesn't have anything to do with immigration.)

And here I am, living in Los Angeles, where all these Mexicans are supposedly changing the culture in all sorts of negative ways, and, I am sorry, but I just don't see it. I hear a fair amount of Spanish conversation and read a fair amount of Spanish signage, and I can certainly get excellent food from just about any Latin American country, and I can listen to Latin pop or regional Mexican music on the radio, and I can watch several channels of television in Spanish, but I don't see the great negative influence of Mexican culture. I certainly don't see anything along the lines of the type of thing that would actually make me WORRY about immigration changing the culture, e.g., the female genital mutilation example.

(Los Angeles, of course, certainly has its problems. But they aren't really correlative to immigration-- we have Asian and Black and Skinhead and White gangs, not just Latino gangs; we have crowded hospital emergency rooms due to blacks and poor whites with no health care, not just hispanics; some first generation immigrants don't learn English (though many do), but second generation immigrants do and indeed improve LA English with colorful expressions brought over from Spanglish.)

So when someone says that America should be "less Mexican", my general reaction is that I live in a city that is much "more Mexican" than most of the rest of the United States, in a state that is also much "more Mexican" than most of the rest of the United States, and I don't see the problem. I certainly see a certain cultural shift, but I don't see the NEGATIVE cultural shift that other people are seeing. And if I am not convinced that there is such a negative cultural shift, I suppose I am likely to assume that a person who says they want a "less Mexican" America is acting out of animus against Mexicans, the same way I would react (and I am sure Ross would react) to someone who said they wanted a "less Catholic" or "less Christian" America.

But the key insight is, the people on the other side of the debate are perceiving-- rightly or wrongly-- the allegedly dastardly cultural effects of Mexican immigration that I don't see. And that is the key to understanding their reaction-- they don't think they are being anti-Mexican, because they are responding to trends in society. But those of us who don't think those trends are real assume they must be anti-Mexican.

Posted by Dilan Esper | June 20, 2007 8:57 PM

Re: if a "guest worker" who comes to this country is injured on the job and they are rushed to the emergency room and they have no ability to compensate the doctors for their time and the hospital for their equipment, will we just let this individual die?

Um, isn't that what the Workers Comp system is there for? I assume it will apply to Guest Workers hurt on the job as well. That, or there will be a flock of lawyers circling around any guest worker injured on the job eager to sue the pants off the employer.

Posted by JonF | June 20, 2007 9:50 PM

...isn't that what the Workers Comp system is there for? I assume it will apply to Guest Workers hurt on the job as well.

One can think of lots of different ways to get creative with respect to guest worker programs, or other proposals to facilitate and regularize economic migration from Latin America. Employers could be required, for instance, to pay a superminimum wage to such workers. Or they might indeed be required by law to provide medical insurance, and/or post a bond to pay for the medical expenses of these migrants.

The point is, there are many ways we could conceivably ameliorate the negative externalities of the immigration of less skilled workers if a legal, regulated framework is provided for. This is reason #927 why the United States would be better off ending the defacto prohibition of non-familial Latino economic immigration in favor of an official, sanctioned program of one sort or another. When the state abdicates oversight, the black market steps in to fill the vacuum, but black markets are by definition unregulated, and uncontrolled.

Posted by Jasper | June 20, 2007 11:12 PM

Libertarianism is sophomoric.

Posted by Steve Sailer | June 21, 2007 3:17 AM

Dilan's comment is a quintessential example of the obtuse liberal/libertarian "argument" about immigration: "you don't like immigration? but what about all the great ethnic food????"

And here I am, living in Los Angeles, where all these Mexicans are supposedly changing the culture in all sorts of negative ways, and, I am sorry, but I just don't see it.

Read Heather MacDonald in City Journal.

The Asian gangs are a phenomenon of immigration - their numbers are just smaller. And the numbers make a big difference with respect to health care, too - the large numbers of poor hispanic immigrants in Southern California exacerbate the stresses on the healthcare system. The fact that they aren't the only source of stress on the system isn't an argument in favor of large amounts of immigration.

You don't see the problem because you aren't looking. Why don't you spend more time in East L.A., where there are high rates of crime, gang activity, illegitimacy, truancy, etc., in large part do to the massive influx of hispanics (predominantly Mexicans) over the last 20 years.

But Los Angeles aside, why don't you go live in Mexico? Are you seriously going to sit here and tell us that there are no significant difference in culture between America and Mexico? And that it isn't likely to cause problems if millions of Mexicans come to live in the U.S., geographically concentrated in an area proximal to Mexico?

Posted by Mike S. | June 22, 2007 11:30 AM

Namely, we generally consider it one of America's finest attributes that it is not, and has never been, a land of "cultural and national unity."

Of course it's a land of cultural unity - it couldn't survive as a nation without it. It's foolish to claim that America doesn't have a unique cultural identity, even if it is different from those in other countries.

We don't exist as a nation because our forefathers banded together against the Huns in a small geographic region, worshiped in the same churches, and intermarried with each other. We exist because large numbers of people from many different countries left the Old World and banded together to build a new nation that doesn't share a common religion or ancestry.

For the first 200 years, all of the "immigrants" (many of whom were settlers, not immigrants) came from Northern Europe, predominantly from the British Isles. There sure were a lot of Muslims & Hindus in those groups of people, weren't there?

A prerequisite for enjoying freedom and opportunity is respecting the rule of law, a respect that is immediately rejected by coming to stay in this country illegally. It's also true, vis-a-vis the cultural question, that countries south of the U.S. have a much weaker attachment to the rule of law. Which is why we should be selective about who we allow to immigrate here.

Posted by Mike S. | June 22, 2007 11:38 AM

Dilan,

Here I am, too, in Los Angeles. Been here my entire life except for my college years. Mass immigration has of course changed the city, and the entire region. What positives or negatives are among those changes is I suppose is a matter of outlook. As for myself, I see plenty of negative changes. Take the LAUSD, for example. It's a mess, and no one can deny that immigration from Latin America has had a significant hand in its decline. Or take the proliferation of Hispanic gangs (regarding your comment about white "skinhead" gangs in L.A. - tell us where exactly these gangs are - I haven't seen such gang members since the mid-80's, and they were more of the spraypainting/unruly-concertgoer type than the stab-you-in-the-liver type.

Posted by Chris | June 24, 2007 3:23 AM

Here's some data on the topic:

http://www.lapdonline.org/all_most_wanted

Posted by Chris | June 24, 2007 3:28 AM

Mike S. and Chris:

You guys can come to LA, live here in your entire life, and I assure you, you will not be murdered by a Hispanic street gang.

You might, however, learn Spanish.

Posted by Dilan Esper | June 25, 2007 2:29 AM

Dilan,

Not so fast. A guy I went to high school with was in fact shot in the early 90's by a member of a Hispanic street gang, in Highland Park. Tom Brownlee was his name. Would have been about 39 now.

A coworker of mine at the USC Health Sciences campus in Lincoln Heights was carjacked around 2001 by someone who likely was an illegal and was definitely an Hispanic immigrant, although he was AFAIK, never caught.

I had a run-in of my own, but nothing came of it, thankfully.

Posted by Chris | June 25, 2007 4:34 AM

http://sexy-halloween-costumes.blogspot.com halloween costumes

Posted by halloween costumes | September 24, 2007 5:48 PM

http://halloween-masks.blogspot.com/ halloween masks

Posted by halloween masks | September 24, 2007 7:31 PM

http://brother-and-sister-sex.blogspot.com/ brother and sister sex

Posted by brother and sister sex | September 25, 2007 8:24 PM

http://hometown.aol.com/maskhalloween halloween masks

Posted by halloween masks | September 26, 2007 3:59 AM

http://hometown.aol.com/fpmovies free porn movies

Posted by free porn movies | September 26, 2007 12:36 PM