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Thread: Yes Rand Paul, there is an emergency at our border!

  1. #481
    Quote Originally Posted by Swordsmyth View Post


    I support the US right to control its borders and territory and I reject its attempts to violate the territory of Venezuela, the open borders supporters around here support Venezuela's right to control its borders and territory but reject America's right to do the same.

    How hard is that to understand?
    What is hard to understand is how you can go around claiming people who have adopted Ron Paul's position on the border, and even linked to his position and adopted it as their own, as "open border."
    9/11 Thermate experiments

    Winston Churchhill on why the U.S. should have stayed OUT of World War I

    "I am so %^&*^ sick of this cult of Ron Paul. The Paulites. What is with these %^&*^ people? Why are there so many of them?" YouTube rant by "TheAmazingAtheist"

    "We as a country have lost faith and confidence in freedom." -- Ron Paul

    "It can be a challenge to follow the pronouncements of President Trump, as he often seems to change his position on any number of items from week to week, or from day to day, or even from minute to minute." -- Ron Paul
    Quote Originally Posted by Brian4Liberty View Post
    The road to hell is paved with good intentions. No need to make it a superhighway.
    Quote Originally Posted by osan View Post
    The only way I see Trump as likely to affect any real change would be through martial law, and that has zero chances of success without strong buy-in by the JCS at the very minimum.



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  3. #482
    Quote Originally Posted by Swordsmyth View Post
    The open borders advocates here always say that they should be able to invite anyone they want to come here,
    That is freedom. You do not own property which you cannot invite people to or expel people from.

    I have even had them say they would be within their rights to invite a foreign military
    That is absurd. The only reason it is even a discussion is because of government interference in property rights.

    To look at the other side of the coin, is it my business who you have in your home?

    but when it comes to Venezuela they suddenly develop a respect for borders, independence and sovereignty.
    I would assume it is because they want issues to be solved locally as well as they do not want another 20 year war.
    “The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.” --George Orwell

    Quote Originally Posted by AuH20 View Post
    In terms of a full spectrum candidate, Rand is leaps and bounds above Trump. I'm not disputing that.
    Who else in public life has called for a pre-emptive strike on North Korea?--Donald Trump

  4. #483
    If taxpayers money deal did not happen after negotiations, this emergency could be resolved with private funding?



    Steve Bannon to raise money for a wall on private land along Mexico border

    March 7, 2019

    Steve Bannon (L), former adviser to President Trump, is joined by Brian Kolfage, founder of 'We Build The Wall,' and former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Koback, during a public discussion of border issues in Green Valley Friday night. (Photo: Alexis Egeland)

  5. #484
    Quote Originally Posted by jmdrake View Post
    What is hard to understand is how you can go around claiming people who have adopted Ron Paul's position on the border, and even linked to his position and adopted it as their own, as "open border."
    Because they advocate for absolutely no controls on immigration and zero border security which is contrary to Ron's positions and is the definition of "open borders".
    Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.

    Robert Heinlein

    Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler

    Groucho Marx

    I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.

    Linus, from the Peanuts comic

    You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith

    Alexis de Torqueville

    Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
    Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it

    A Zero Hedge comment

  6. #485
    Quote Originally Posted by Swordsmyth View Post
    Because they advocate for absolutely no controls on immigration and zero border security which is contrary to Ron's positions and is the definition of "open borders".
    Except you have made that claim against people who absolutely do not do what you just said. Me as an example.
    9/11 Thermate experiments

    Winston Churchhill on why the U.S. should have stayed OUT of World War I

    "I am so %^&*^ sick of this cult of Ron Paul. The Paulites. What is with these %^&*^ people? Why are there so many of them?" YouTube rant by "TheAmazingAtheist"

    "We as a country have lost faith and confidence in freedom." -- Ron Paul

    "It can be a challenge to follow the pronouncements of President Trump, as he often seems to change his position on any number of items from week to week, or from day to day, or even from minute to minute." -- Ron Paul
    Quote Originally Posted by Brian4Liberty View Post
    The road to hell is paved with good intentions. No need to make it a superhighway.
    Quote Originally Posted by osan View Post
    The only way I see Trump as likely to affect any real change would be through martial law, and that has zero chances of success without strong buy-in by the JCS at the very minimum.

  7. #486
    Quote Originally Posted by kcchiefs6465 View Post
    That is freedom. You do not own property which you cannot invite people to or expel people from.
    It is not freedom for people to invite an unlimited number of communists to come into my country and impose communism on me.


    Quote Originally Posted by kcchiefs6465 View Post
    That is absurd. The only reason it is even a discussion is because of government interference in property rights.
    It is absurd but the extreme anarchists have taken that position anyway.

    Quote Originally Posted by kcchiefs6465 View Post
    To look at the other side of the coin, is it my business who you have in your home?
    It is if they keep shooting up the windows in your house from my property, the same thing applies to those who impose communism on me after being invited in to the country by people like you.


    Quote Originally Posted by kcchiefs6465 View Post
    I would assume it is because they want issues to be solved locally as well as they do not want another 20 year war.
    And I want our issues solved locally as opposed to being invaded by hostile foreigners who seek to impose communism on me.
    Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.

    Robert Heinlein

    Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler

    Groucho Marx

    I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.

    Linus, from the Peanuts comic

    You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith

    Alexis de Torqueville

    Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
    Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it

    A Zero Hedge comment

  8. #487
    Quote Originally Posted by jmdrake View Post
    Except you have made that claim against people who absolutely do not do what you just said. Me as an example.
    Where?
    Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.

    Robert Heinlein

    Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler

    Groucho Marx

    I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.

    Linus, from the Peanuts comic

    You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith

    Alexis de Torqueville

    Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
    Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it

    A Zero Hedge comment

  9. #488
    Quote Originally Posted by Swordsmyth View Post
    Where?
    You're saying you haven't? Okay. It's late. I'll take your word on that. Next time I think you are accusing me or someone else who is saying "I support Ron Paul's position that Trump's clamor for emergency powers is unconstitutional, we don't need machine guns or barbed wire on the borders to deal with illegal immigration, and that in general more work visas are a good thing" of being open borders I'll try to remember that you (apparently) don't think that makes someone open borders and hold you too that.
    9/11 Thermate experiments

    Winston Churchhill on why the U.S. should have stayed OUT of World War I

    "I am so %^&*^ sick of this cult of Ron Paul. The Paulites. What is with these %^&*^ people? Why are there so many of them?" YouTube rant by "TheAmazingAtheist"

    "We as a country have lost faith and confidence in freedom." -- Ron Paul

    "It can be a challenge to follow the pronouncements of President Trump, as he often seems to change his position on any number of items from week to week, or from day to day, or even from minute to minute." -- Ron Paul
    Quote Originally Posted by Brian4Liberty View Post
    The road to hell is paved with good intentions. No need to make it a superhighway.
    Quote Originally Posted by osan View Post
    The only way I see Trump as likely to affect any real change would be through martial law, and that has zero chances of success without strong buy-in by the JCS at the very minimum.



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  11. #489
    Quote Originally Posted by Swordsmyth View Post
    It is not freedom for people to invite an unlimited number of communists to come into my country and impose communism on me.
    We must abandon free market principles to save the free market.

    It is absurd but the extreme anarchists have taken that position anyway.
    Probably trolling you to begin with but let us think about that.

    How many soldiers would it take to conquer (nevermind that you are talking about migrants and peasants who only have political power because of this system of governance)?

    Are all of the Honduran horde going to live in Clayden's backyard?

    It is if they keep shooting up the windows in your house from my property, the same thing applies to those who impose communism on me after being invited in to the country by people like you.
    I honestly feel like you understand the fallacy here.

    It isn't. I haven't invited anyone. And if you did not grant a monopoly on violence right to one organization, you might not need concern yourself as much with who controls said organization.

    And I want our issues solved locally as opposed to being invaded by hostile foreigners who seek to impose communism on me.
    Reminds me of Kansas.
    “The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.” --George Orwell

    Quote Originally Posted by AuH20 View Post
    In terms of a full spectrum candidate, Rand is leaps and bounds above Trump. I'm not disputing that.
    Who else in public life has called for a pre-emptive strike on North Korea?--Donald Trump

  12. #490
    Quote Originally Posted by kcchiefs6465 View Post
    We must abandon free market principles to save the free market.
    Theory must bend to reality, liberty must be secured or it doesn't exist.


    Quote Originally Posted by kcchiefs6465 View Post
    Probably trolling you to begin with but let us think about that.

    How many soldiers would it take to conquer (nevermind that you are talking about migrants and peasants who only have political power because of this system of governance)?

    Are all of the Honduran horde going to live in Clayden's backyard?
    Some people own enough land to invite enough foreigners to conquer an area and the open borders crowd want to invite an unlimited number into the US at large which can contain enough to impose communism on us all. (especially in collaboration with the native left)


    Quote Originally Posted by kcchiefs6465 View Post
    I honestly feel like you understand the fallacy here.

    It isn't. I haven't invited anyone. And if you did not grant a monopoly on violence right to one organization, you might not need concern yourself as much with who controls said organization.
    Open borders policy is an invitation to any and all people who want to come here and those people would create an organization with a monopoly on violence if we didn't already have one, we will not be able to create or maintain either an anarchy or a small government society as long as an unlimited number of communists are allowed to come here.


    Quote Originally Posted by kcchiefs6465 View Post
    Reminds me of Kansas.
    Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.

    Robert Heinlein

    Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler

    Groucho Marx

    I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.

    Linus, from the Peanuts comic

    You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith

    Alexis de Torqueville

    Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
    Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it

    A Zero Hedge comment

  13. #491
    Quote Originally Posted by Swordsmyth View Post
    Theory must bend to reality, liberty must be secured or it doesn't exist.
    Liberty is secured when people quit putting their faith into the hands of bureaucrats and tyrants.

    Some people own enough land to invite enough foreigners to conquer an area and the open borders crowd want to invite an unlimited number into the US at large which can contain enough to impose communism on us all. (especially in collaboration with the native left)
    Some centralized and unaccountable group of people does 'own' enough land to allow 'foreigners' (i.e. communists) to 'conquer' (i.e. enact various tyrannical legislation), especially in collaboration with the native left.

    The solution hardly is to expand their authority

    Open borders policy is an invitation to any and all people who want to come here and those people would create an organization with a monopoly on violence if we didn't already have one, we will not be able to create or maintain either an anarchy or a small government society as long as an unlimited number of communists are allowed to come here.
    We are a long ways away regardless.

    Uncertainty is uncomfortable. Bureaucrats need jobs. All are cogs in the wheel.

    Dust in the wind.
    “The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.” --George Orwell

    Quote Originally Posted by AuH20 View Post
    In terms of a full spectrum candidate, Rand is leaps and bounds above Trump. I'm not disputing that.
    Who else in public life has called for a pre-emptive strike on North Korea?--Donald Trump

  14. #492
    Quote Originally Posted by kcchiefs6465 View Post
    Liberty is secured when people quit putting their faith into the hands of bureaucrats and tyrants.
    Nonsense, the anarchy fairy will not protect you from outsiders who want to take your liberty and such people will always be with us.


    Quote Originally Posted by kcchiefs6465 View Post
    Some centralized and unaccountable group of people does 'own' enough land to allow 'foreigners' (i.e. communists) to 'conquer' (i.e. enact various tyrannical legislation), especially in collaboration with the native left.

    The solution hardly is to expand their authority
    It is NOT an expansion of their authority to make them do their job and protect us from outside threats, they have always had that authority.

    Quote Originally Posted by kcchiefs6465 View Post
    We are a long ways away regardless.
    No we are not, we are right on the edge of the cliff, we are only a few straws short of breaking the camel's back.

    Quote Originally Posted by kcchiefs6465 View Post
    Uncertainty is uncomfortable. Bureaucrats need jobs. All are cogs in the wheel.
    There is no uncertainty, there is certainty, if we don't stop the invasion we will be subjected to communism and genocide.


    Quote Originally Posted by kcchiefs6465 View Post
    Dust in the wind.
    That still doesn't make any sense as a reply to this:

    Open borders policy is an invitation to any and all people who want to come here and those people would create an organization with a monopoly on violence if we didn't already have one, we will not be able to create or maintain either an anarchy or a small government society as long as an unlimited number of communists are allowed to come here.
    Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.

    Robert Heinlein

    Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler

    Groucho Marx

    I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.

    Linus, from the Peanuts comic

    You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith

    Alexis de Torqueville

    Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
    Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it

    A Zero Hedge comment

  15. #493
    Quote Originally Posted by Swordsmyth View Post
    Nonsense, the anarchy fairy will not protect you from outsiders who want to take your liberty and such people will always be with us.
    Darn. I barely have enough time to debate the insiders.

    It is NOT an expansion of their authority to make them do their job and protect us from outside threats, they have always had that authority.
    Just to be clear, you are calling to steal property from me now in the name of preventing property being stolen from me in the future by foreigners.

    No we are not, we are right on the edge of the cliff, we are only a few straws short of breaking the camel's back.
    Fair enough.

    There is no uncertainty, there is certainty, if we don't stop the invasion we will be subjected to communism and genocide.
    I feel like I am getting no where.

    That still doesn't make any sense as a reply to this:
    It's a song. Kansas- Dust in the Wind
    “The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, but he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.” --George Orwell

    Quote Originally Posted by AuH20 View Post
    In terms of a full spectrum candidate, Rand is leaps and bounds above Trump. I'm not disputing that.
    Who else in public life has called for a pre-emptive strike on North Korea?--Donald Trump

  16. #494
    Quote Originally Posted by kcchiefs6465 View Post
    Just to be clear, you are calling to steal property from me now in the name of preventing property being stolen from me in the future by foreigners.
    Life isn't perfect, your choice is between a relatively limited government or a totalitarian one, the foreigners will take much more from you.




    Quote Originally Posted by kcchiefs6465 View Post
    I feel like I am getting no where.
    I know the feeling.
    Never attempt to teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and annoys the pig.

    Robert Heinlein

    Give a man an inch and right away he thinks he's a ruler

    Groucho Marx

    I love mankind…it’s people I can’t stand.

    Linus, from the Peanuts comic

    You cannot have liberty without morality and morality without faith

    Alexis de Torqueville

    Those who fail to learn from the past are condemned to repeat it.
    Those who learn from the past are condemned to watch everybody else repeat it

    A Zero Hedge comment

  17. #495
    Quote Originally Posted by CaptUSA View Post
    You realize that many of us do not believe in free open borders, right? That's just something the government shills say to put fear into you so that you'll want to give government more power. Go back and see the Bastiat quote I posted earlier. The socialists always misrepresent the liberty position. Always.

    And there is no contradiction in his position, only your interpretation of it.
    What exactly is your Open Society 'Liberty Program?

  18. #496
    Quote Originally Posted by CaptUSA View Post
    You realize that many of us do not believe in free open borders, right? That's just something the government shills say to put fear into you so that you'll want to give government more power. Go back and see the Bastiat quote I posted earlier. The socialists always misrepresent the liberty position. Always.

    And there is no contradiction in his position, only your interpretation of it.
    Do tell.



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  20. #497
    Quote Originally Posted by jmdrake View Post
    What is hard to understand is how you can go around claiming people who have adopted Ron Paul's position on the border, and even linked to his position and adopted it as their own, as "open border."
    ''I DON'T WANT FREE OPEN BORDERS...'' Ron Paul '19

    Last edited by Stratovarious; 03-08-2019 at 05:40 AM.

  21. #498
    Quote Originally Posted by Swordsmyth View Post
    Some may be shills but others are sincere in my opinion, they are just so dedicated to their alternate realities that they refuse to recognize actual reality and deal with it, they would rather worship the anarchy fairy under a communist regime than accept even the smallest and most basic government to preserve as much liberty as is actually possible.

    I have had one open borders advocate learn and switch sides since I have been here, most of them are just too deep into their fantasy to be able to handle the pain giving it up would cause.
    I will break my four-year silence to comment on this thread, on page 17, ninja-style.

    Swordsmyth, you are painfully correct, and I would like to expand on this at length. For good or ill, libertarianism has created many of the most rigidly principled deontologists the world has ever seen this side of Immanuel Kant. We understand instrumental rationality enough to reason well about economic outcomes, but we tend to be epistemically rational to a fault about moral issues. I suspect some of us would literally rather die than inwardly or outwardly acknowledge or express support or tolerance for any policy that violates the non-aggression principle in any circumstance whatsoever.

    We're only human, so we understand it's forgivable to accidentally slip up in our real life interactions from time to time, but to accept or approve an instrumentally rational compromise on a moral issue is to reject the moral fabric at the core of our personal identities. Permitting any nuance on this matter or giving an inch invites chaos into our hearts and makes us theoretically vulnerable to arbitrarily oppressive statist thinking based on subjective value judgments.

    The pathological libertarian cannot tolerate such a collapse of moral universality. "Not even in the face of armageddon. Never compromise," as Rorschach from Watchmen would say regarding a different moral absolute ("evil must be punished"). I have now been a libertarian now for 11.5 years, and my pragmatic self-preservation instincts spend their full-time job holding my moral idealism from the cliffs of insanity. In 2016 it was just a given that nobody could convince me to vote for Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump if they had a gun to my head, and I think I meant it literally. I may still feel the same, and this is just a weak no-brainer starting point as far as many libertarians are concerned. Most morally self-conscious people have lines they simply will not cross, but as libertarians ours tend to be far more restrictive, especially in the political sphere.

    The vast majority of the time, our consequentialist viewpoints merely reinforce our moral certitude. After all, a society that broadly adopted libertarian deontological ethics would maximize real-world utility in a way that a cacophany of 300 million screeching utilitarian voices simply never could. (They would disagree, but that's beside the point.) Directly pursuing utilitarianism generally just leads to a chaotic war of all against all, because everyone has different utility functions, most are poorly calibrated, and most are more instrumentally rational than epistemically rational to begin with (that is, most people are both short-sighted and self-centered). Libertarians are often criticized for sharing utopian thinking with communists, but this is a misconception: Unlike the ever-tweaking utopian statists, our general viewpoint is more that principled libertarian solutions are "as close" to a panacea for most socioeconomic problems as a succinct set of rules could ever get, where all but the most exceptional deviations would cause more problems than they solve. In other words, we don't want to undermine a system that works in 99% of cases to accommodate the exceptional 1% cases. We're willing to leave those to chance or charity or even accept a 1% failure rate, rather than risk tearing everything down in pursuit of that utopian 100%.

    In general, our economic and social views align so nicely with our deontological ethics that we rarely have to question whether the non-aggression principle should be our categorical imperative, or if we care more about real-world outcomes. It rarely matters whether we rejected the gun in the room before or after we built our mental model of consequences; they have become deeply intertwined. We have to examine which one is more important so infrequently that I think most of us eventually subconsciously convince ourselves that no exceptional situations even exist. It's a comforting thought. We all recognize that any state action disturbs whatever the nonviolent path of least resistance would have been, and the effect generally (always?) has negative consequences that exceed the benefit and necessitate further tweaking to mitigate. Sometimes this opens the door to possible nightmare futures, like the idea of Trump's wall being used to keep us in, as the Berlin Wall was used to keep East Germans under Communist control. Why bother quantifying this risk next to the cultural and political risks of uncontrolled or excessive immigration? If we turn our moral principles into absolutes we'll at least dodge the risk of corruption, and we can always find consequentialist rationalizations that assure us uncontrolled immigration is more of an economic benefit than a political danger.

    It is in this way, that we become deeply pathological and, I think, a danger to ourselves. In my heart of hearts I want to be an anarchist, but I've never been able to convince myself that such a system would be predictably stable and avoid catastrophic perverse incentives in practice. Neither have I been able to convince myself that I shouldn't care about the consequences anyway on moral grounds, because unconditionally upholding the NAP is the greatest possible moral good. It seems my commitment to deontological ethics is not absolute, or perhaps, that I have misidentified the precise deontological principles that should be my true categorical imperative. Maybe the NAP is a crude first-order approximation of a more accurate and nuanced universal moral principle, which takes a broader view of self-defense than I can narrowly articulate. I'd imagine that true moral principles are what they are, regardless of how easy or difficult it might be to twist their linguistic expression into a dangerously contradictory meaning. Universal laws are normally parsimonious, but on occasion they take labrynthine twists.

    In any case, I never never been able to convince myself that American culture can survive uncontrolled immigration, or that the future of liberty can survive the death of American culture, or that such an outcome is acceptable. I believe the immigration issue is an actual exception where strict adherence to the NAP is at stark odds with our goal to see real-world outcomes produce more liberty. ("GASP! TRAITOR!")

    The biggest reason has little to do with economics and everything to do with American culture and politics. Culture matters, and as Sarah Hoyt (a conservative blogger I mostly enjoy) argues here, it is more than tasty food, fancy attire, and festival days. Those are just the superficial elements. The core of culture, which multiculturalist indoctrination has always obscured (on purpose I believe), encapsulates our deeply ingrained attitudes about how human beings should interact with each other:
    • The structure of government, role of executive power, role of the legislature, principles of jurisprudence and common law, etc.
    • The role of government in society
    • The role of religion in government, and vice versa
    • The acceptable uses of violence or coercion to enforce social or economic norms
    • The definition and role of property in society
    • The rights of individuals and their responsibilities to each other, their communities, and their countries
    • Views on education, language, fatherhood, motherhood, and family, and on what the culture should encourage and discourage
    • Views on how to handle disagreement, offensive or hurtful speech, etc.
    • Morality: What is a virtue, and what is a vice? How should morality be enforced?


    The power elite understand this in a way most of their followers do not: Culture matters, and they have worked long and hard to make Americans forget ours, so they could supplant it. How many times have you heard a leftist repeat the clueless sentiment, "America has no real culture, unlike all the other countries?" It becomes more true every day as we become more polarized and divided, but it was never true in the way they speak it. America has its skeletons, and it has become frighteningly corrupt and imperialistic, but what legitimate success it did attain -- greater than probably any other country in history -- it attained as a function of culture, most of it good. Our culture is not McDonald's, barbecue, and American football. The British common law system, Enlightenment ideals of individual rights and property ownership, Protestant work ethic, entrepreneurial spirit, and rugged individualism formed the backbone of the culture that built this country. The flame of liberty still survives in the remnant, but its ideological enemies are trying to extinguish it using every means at their disposal, and the immigration system is on the list.

    Culture is not a hat that a person can swap on a whim. It forms the basis of a person's worldview, and how they interact with the world around them. If a handful of open-minded immigrants from a radically different and incompatible culture move to America to seek a better life, their cultural immersion will make them Americans before long. They won't just see that we live better than people in the countries they came from. They will see WHY. As they assimilate, they will come to understand our success as the direct consequence of our cultural differences (petrodollar hegemony notwithstanding), and they will gradually adopt our ways of thinking. However, if an enormous number of immigrants from a radically different and incompatible culture move to America to seek a better life, they will remain too segregated to assimilate. Instead of adopting traditional American values, they may see our success as mere turn of fate, and try to "culturally enrich" us with the sociopolitical attitudes that dominated their countries of origin. Worse, confronted with the leftist ideology that our success came from "stealing their resources," many will see no reason to adopt our culture or become American. Instead, they may instead agitate to "reclaim" what they're told was theirs, as "La Raza" -- "The Race" -- they will try to "reclaim" what they're told was theirs. Aztlan indeed.

    Sure, the Cloward-Piven strategy to overburden the welfare state with immigrants is also at play, and the open borders libertarians have a valid point that it wouldn't be a problem if we simply eliminated welfare. That's all well and good, but that's a GOAL, not a strategy. The question is, how do we actually get there? We can't just snap our fingers and do it! Ron Paul supporters have been trying for 12 (or 30 in some cases), and libertarians in general have been trying for decades longer than that. In all that time, we've consistently lost more ground than we've gained. The key point to understand here is simple:

    We are running out of time.

    We don't have another 47 years to waste sparring each other as the Libertarian Party has done. We may not even have another 12 years to waste, as we here on this site have done, before it's too late. It may already be too late; many of us here argued the same a decade ago. What I think many people fail to understand is that it's not just going to be too late for the US government to turn around. It's going to be too late for American culture to survive, and if American culture dies, so does every link the average person has had or will ever have, to libertarianism or even liberty in general. If you think the gulf between you and the average American is too wide to bridge today, you have no idea how bad it could get.

    Too many on the left are indoctrinated with Cultural Marxism, call-out culture, identity politics, and the virtue of dogpiling and personally destroying anyone who disagrees with them in the slightest. Too many on the right are indoctrinated with neoconservative imperialism. As grassroots conservatives and Trump supporters are mercilessly evicted from the public square by identitarian obsessives, they are becoming vulnerable to fascist and white nationalist extremes in their desperation to stop the next Bolshevik revolution.

    At this point, spreading the light of pure libertarianism to the average American is already like proselytizing for a strange alien religion with orange and blue morality in an unknown and unpleasant-sounding language, with vaguely threatening hand gestures. Our education strategy thus far has been, "Let's start with Libertarianism 710 with Ron Paul and proceed to Libertarianism 896 with Walter Block." Our audience is not remotely ready for that yet. We need to focus on the preschool basics here like "Stop stabbing each other with scissors," because that's where everywhere else is at. We cannot achieve a future of liberty without first restoring or reinvigorating latent respect for American culture, and our window of opportunity grows shorter every day, and with every migrant caravan.

    Traditional American principles lose more mindshare every year, and a significant contributor includes immigration from culturally opposed countries at a rate that exceeds our ability to culturally assimilate the immigrants. Many on this forum seem to argue, "Our fellow Americans are doing plenty well throwing away their own culture anyway." That may be true, but this is an obfuscating rationalization for inaction, not a mitigating factor. Bringing up a second problem does not make the first one go away. Both problems reinforce each other.

    If we want any hope at all, we need to buy time. We need to buy time!

    I constantly read posts from fellow libertarians CaptUSA, acptulsa, Ender, PAF, SuperfluousMan, etc. scolding the libertarian-leaning conservatives like Swordsmyth and kahless about how the CORRECT approach is to "Just eliminate the welfare system." OH, WOW, WHAT AN INSIGHT! We could just eliminate the welfare system, and it won't be overburdened anymore! Holy cow, why didn't I think of that sooner? It's not like we've been trying to do that already for decades with only negative results to show for it, right?

    As I said above, eliminating welfare is a goal, a destination, not a strategy. If we could do that, we'd have already won. That's probably the absolute last pillar of runaway statism that will ever fall, so how do we expect to get there? It's not even a "Plan A," and if our actual "Plan A" is "Just educate people," we've been doing that one long enough to estimate its time to success as well: At the current rate it will take roughly infinite eons, although I suppose we could more precisely describe it with a negative number of years that represents our opposite-pointing velocity vector.

    Lately it feels like we're all on a ship headed for Liberty Island. We've been pointing our sails toward Liberty Island for literally decades, but it's still nowhere in sight, and all of the navigational signs indicate the wind has been pushing us backwards for quite some time. We're probably leagues farther from our destination than we started. Meanwhile, the creaky wooden ship is riddled with holes, and it's taking on water fast. Some of the uncultured pirates aboard start saying,
    "Hey, there's a hole, and we're taking on water! Help me plug this up!"
    Our more astute philosophers say,
    "Wait! Don't touch it! You might make it worse! Just...just...just go to Liberty Island instead! That's what we need to focus on, going to Liberty Island. Just go there! That's the solution to our problem."
    The pirates shout, panicked, "But no, seriously! We are going backwards and taking on water! There's no telling how long it will take to get to Liberty Island, but I can guarantee we'd all be dead before we get there if we don't stop the flooding! Why don't you help me plug up this hole?"
    The great philosophers reply in their wisdom, "What's the point in plugging that hole? There are plenty of other holes anyway. Put that hammer down before you hurt yourself, and let's just go to Liberty Island instead!"

    If "just educate people" is our "Plan A," and it appears like it will take literally forever, it seems like we have no choice but to support some "Plan B" which will help buy us more time (hopefully a lot). That's especially true when the bigger problem involves the culture shifting away from us in the first place. Slowing or stopping the deliberate dilution of American culture via heterodox immigration would give us at least a little bit of the breathing room we need, and we need every bit of it that we can get.

    As it stands, any kind of border control requires one or both of these two things:
    1. Establish and maintain control of border ingress (if not egress)
    2. Deport illegal aliens already in the United States


    Of the two options, method '1' is far superior. Deportations are horribly inhumane practices that destroy people's lives, and they provide a continued pretext for an ever-increasing police state and surveillance dragnet, combined with an enormous budget for the predictably ineffective results. No, thank you.

    In contrast, tightening the border via almost any mechanism (wall, alert sensors, minutemen...) is far more humane, and putting a moratorium on unskilled immigration wouldn't hurt. Side note: Like virtually everyone else here, I vehemently oppose the 100 mile Constitution-free zone, etc. Acting as though reluctant border control supporters on Ron Paul Forums believe in a total police state is shamefully disingenuous. (If you dare accuse me of this, I will tell your mother, and you will be in so much trouble.)

    As it stands, the conservatives and Trumpettes have presented us with a possible "Plan B" that could buy us more time. They're advocating for a wall, which is arguably the worst version of approach '1'. They've even already backed themselves into a corner where the stupid thing will only cover a fraction of the border and still costs $5 billion. As inane as that may sound, guess what? It still has far more traction than virtually anything we've ever done. I'm not going to lie here. I'm ambivalent about the wall. I'm willing to grudgingly accept it for the hope of a good outcome, but I don't want to want it, and I think the concerns that it could eventually be used to keep us in are valid. However, what other viable short/medium-term option do we have that doesn't involve continuing to drive off the same cliff?

    The United States is likely the world's last stand for liberty. Either we revive American culture, or libertarianism dies with it. We don't have the option to enact our magic libertarian dream plan either. That's not in the cards for us any time soon, because we're only bit players. That means we can either form a coalition with the [ostensibly] ruling party on an issue of potential joint interest, or we can pound sand and continue helplessly dying in our armchair perfectionist irrelevance. Those are our options this year, as I see it.

    If we support the wall as a dirty strategic compromise (by itself, without additional police state boondoggles attached), it might help us buy some of the time we need to turn things around. Our support might also be used to get a last-minute version with all sorts of horrifying extras attached as well. It could also just be immediately used to keep us in, and never benefit us one bit. Those are the risks we'd take by supporting it. They're terrible, but the option also provides a glimmer of hope that our time horizon may grow substantially. The alternative to taking a risk is to continue on the same path with the certainty that we'll go where we've been going.

    My idealistic side desperately wants to believe that principled libertarian advocacy alone will save us, but I don't see a viable strategy at this late stage, and at the end of the day, I want to live. I did not sign up for a suicide pact. I want my unborn children to grow up in a world where some Enlightenment-inspired civilization still exists, however imperfect it may be. Unless someone can suggest an actual alternative (and mutually exclusive) strategy that is within our power to realistically get us to Liberty Island alive in our allotted time under our present constraints, or that will buy us more time than the dunderheaded conservatives' idea, I have to side with the conservatives on the wall, notwithstanding my caveats.* I'll take that over impotently walking off into the ocean in despair, paralyzed by the NAP.

    *Caveat: For the record, I do agree with Ron Paul, Rand Paul and Andrew Napolitano on the specific topic of this thread (though not always as strongly): Unilaterally declaring a national emergency over the border situation appears to be an unconstitutional executive overreach at this point, regardless of my views on the wall itself. johnwk has made a rather admirable effort trying to justify it in terms of the actual law, but the stretches of reasoning involved seem to go into "living document" territory where I dare not tread.

    Even the federal power for Congress to control immigration itself rests on Constitutionally shaky ground. It seems to be a reasonable joint interpretation of the Commerce Clause, "repel invasions" clause, and "necessary and proper" clause, at least in such a manner that a wall along any state's border (for instance) could be construed as a reasonable exercise, given the appropriate magic words describing a congruent purpose. However, the wording does not explicitly encapsulate immigration. It's possible the power rightfully belongs to the states (and half-jokingly, perhaps the power of deportation from Texas to California still does), as it did in practice prior to the Page Act of 1875. Still, the Commerce Clause could have always interfered with the states in theory, and the Page Act made it a federal playground in practice anyway, for good or ill. At this point only strict constructionists would ever attack the Constitutionality of federal immigration control in good faith (even if leftists might attack it in bad faith, while interpreting the Constitution loosely everywhere else), so it is more the executive overreach that should concern us as a serious problem.

    The left, neoconservatives, and power elite routinely act on larger leaps, but our joint cause uniquely rejects that "might makes right" opportunism as a selling point. Sinking to the same level of lawlessness would therefore uniquely delegitimize that cause. No good-faith independent observer outside our libertarian sphere would ever predicate their respect and attention on our rigidly pure adherence to a deontological libertarian ideology that's alien to them to begin with, but we must at least respect the rule of law to effectively demonstrate moral superiority over arbitrary statism.

    Everyone here understands that we cannot permit a judge in North Carolina to invalidate voter-ratified Constitutional Amendments (or 18 months of legislation) for the entirely subjective rationale that a gerrymandered and therefore "invalid" legislature provided voters the option. For a similar reason, we cannot permit a President to subjectively redefine the contractual use of "invasion" in the Constitution to mean anything other than the plain meaning of the words to the two signing parties as the time of ratification.

    That is not to say Trump is strictly wrong to call it an invasion though: The leaders of the left are indeed systematically encouraging an excessive amount of immigration, on purpose, to reshape politics by transforming the country's demographics. This also ties in with the Cloward-Piven strategy of overwhelming taxpayer funded safety nets to foment socialist agitation, but I believe that is secondary. Either way, I'd colloquially call it a treason-assisted invasion in principle, if not according to the precise meanings of the words as understood by those who ratified the Constitution. The precise legalities must matter here though, because if they don't matter to us, they may never again matter to anyone...maybe for hundreds of years, or maybe forever.




    EPILOGUE:
    So, hi everyone, I'm still alive, and that's the giant rant I've been building up inside of me over months and months of reading these forums as a lurker. Also, the culture here these days is almost as shameful as the disgusting hatefest that's passing for politics in general. Please, be more charitable when judging each other's intentions.

    For instance, I'd like to discuss Swordsmyth for a moment (please forgive me for gossiping about you in the third person like you're not around to read it). Swordsmyth is far from a shill, and he's actually among the most intellectually honest posters on the whole board when it comes to tirelessly, patiently addressing his opponents' arguments in good faith. That doesn't mean he's always right; sometimes he misses subtleties, but he does try to address people's arguments directly the vast majority of the time (despite how jmdrake must have felt being misunderstood this whole thread). Sure, his obnoxious partisan language like "Demoncrats" is grating, childish, beneath his intellect, and counterproductively limits his reach. I also have no idea how he pays the bills with all his time on the forums, unless he's unemployed, which he claims not to be. (For that matter, I couldn't post half as much as the rest of you when I WAS unemployed...) However, I have seen far fewer signs of disingenuous squirreliness from him than I've seen from some others, who I'd "known" and respected for years. You can disagree with the guy without making it so personal all the time and treating him like some enemy infiltrator. He's not Walter Block (and neither am I), but can you honestly think of many other forums that better suit his (actual, non-straw-manned) views?

    On a similar note, the oft-repeated claim that the "right-wing trolls" have driven everyone away from RonPaulForums is a cynical and self-serving delusion from people whose IQ's are two-to-three standard deviations beyond the threshold for knowing better. Rand Paul's 2016 Presidential campaign was a bland disappointment that killed a lot of energy, and our lack of activity has nothing to do with one crowd driving another away. Our lack of activity comes from the site lacking a strong common purpose anymore. We aren't rallying behind any initiatives, any campaigns, or any flagbearers. The Ron Paul Liberty Report is good as usual, and I find it reasonable even in the rare case where my priority evaluation differs (immigration), but it doesn't inspire any kind of activity here. People just kind of linger to share outrage stories, yell at each other, work out their emotional need to feel involved, and pray that maybe someday we'll get the opportunity to do something important again. I hope we do, because the alternative is bleak.
    Last edited by Mini-Me; 03-08-2019 at 06:05 AM. Reason: Place epilogue in the epilogue where it belongs
    Quote Originally Posted by President John F. Kennedy
    And we must face the fact that the United States is neither omnipotent nor omniscient. That we are only 6% of the world's population, and that we cannot impose our will upon the other 94% of mankind. That we cannot right every wrong or reverse each adversity, and that therefore there cannot be an American solution to every world problem.
    I need an education in US history, from the ground up. Can you help point me to a comprehensive, unbiased, scholarly resource?

  22. #499
    Quote Originally Posted by Mini-Me View Post
    I will break my four-year silence to comment on this thread, on page 17, ninja-style.

    Swordsmyth, you are painfully correct, and I would like to expand on this at length. For good or ill, libertarianism has created many of the most rigidly principled deontologists the world has ever seen this side of Immanuel Kant. We understand instrumental rationality enough to reason well about economic outcomes, but we tend to be epistemically rational to a fault about moral issues. I suspect some of us would literally rather die than inwardly or outwardly acknowledge or express support or tolerance for any policy that violates the non-aggression principle in any circumstance whatsoever.

    We're only human, so we understand it's forgivable to accidentally slip up in our real life interactions from time to time, but to accept or approve an instrumentally rational compromise on a moral issue is to reject the moral fabric at the core of our personal identities. Permitting any nuance on this matter or giving an inch invites chaos into our hearts and makes us theoretically vulnerable to arbitrarily oppressive statist thinking based on subjective value judgments.

    The pathological libertarian cannot tolerate such a collapse of moral universality. "Not even in the face of armageddon. Never compromise," as Rorschach from Watchmen would say regarding a different moral absolute ("evil must be punished"). I have now been a libertarian now for 11.5 years, and my pragmatic self-preservation instincts spend their full-time job holding my moral idealism from the cliffs of insanity. In 2016 it was just a given that nobody could convince me to vote for Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump if they had a gun to my head, and I think I meant it literally. I may still feel the same, and this is just a weak no-brainer starting point as far as many libertarians are concerned. Most morally self-conscious people have lines they simply will not cross, but as libertarians ours tend to be far more restrictive, especially in the political sphere.

    The vast majority of the time, our consequentialist viewpoints merely reinforce our moral certitude. After all, a society that broadly adopted libertarian deontological ethics would maximize real-world utility in a way that a cacophany of 300 million screeching utilitarian voices simply never could. (They would disagree, but that's beside the point.) Directly pursuing utilitarianism generally just leads to a chaotic war of all against all, because everyone has different utility functions, most are poorly calibrated, and most are more instrumentally rational than epistemically rational to begin with (that is, most people are both short-sighted and self-centered). Libertarians are often criticized for sharing utopian thinking with communists, but this is a misconception: Unlike the ever-tweaking utopian statists, our general viewpoint is more that principled libertarian solutions are "as close" to a panacea for most socioeconomic problems as a succinct set of rules could ever get, where all but the most exceptional deviations would cause more problems than they solve. In other words, we don't want to undermine a system that works in 99% of cases to accommodate the exceptional 1% cases. We're willing to leave those to chance or charity or even accept a 1% failure rate, rather than risk tearing everything down in pursuit of that utopian 100%.

    In general, our economic and social views align so nicely with our deontological ethics that we rarely have to question whether the non-aggression principle should be our categorical imperative, or if we care more about real-world outcomes. It rarely matters whether we rejected the gun in the room before or after we built our mental model of consequences; they have become deeply intertwined. We have to examine which one is more important so infrequently that I think most of us eventually subconsciously convince ourselves that no exceptional situations even exist. It's a comforting thought. We all recognize that any state action disturbs whatever the nonviolent path of least resistance would have been, and the effect generally (always?) has negative consequences that exceed the benefit and necessitate further tweaking to mitigate. Sometimes this opens the door to possible nightmare futures, like the idea of Trump's wall being used to keep us in, as the Berlin Wall was used to keep East Germans under Communist control. Why bother quantifying this risk next to the cultural and political risks of uncontrolled or excessive immigration? If we turn our moral principles into absolutes we'll at least dodge the risk of corruption, and we can always find consequentialist rationalizations that assure us uncontrolled immigration is more of an economic benefit than a political danger.

    It is in this way, that we become deeply pathological and, I think, a danger to ourselves. In my heart of hearts I want to be an anarchist, but I've never been able to convince myself that such a system would be predictably stable and avoid catastrophic perverse incentives in practice. Neither have I been able to convince myself that I shouldn't care about the consequences anyway on moral grounds, because unconditionally upholding the NAP is the greatest possible moral good. It seems my commitment to deontological ethics is not absolute, or perhaps, that I have misidentified the precise deontological principles that should be my true categorical imperative. Maybe the NAP is a crude first-order approximation of a more accurate and nuanced universal moral principle, which takes a broader view of self-defense than I can narrowly articulate. I'd imagine that true moral principles are what they are, regardless of how easy or difficult it might be to twist their linguistic expression into a dangerously contradictory meaning. Universal laws are normally parsimonious, but on occasion they take labrynthine twists.

    In any case, I never never been able to convince myself that American culture can survive uncontrolled immigration, or that the future of liberty can survive the death of American culture, or that such an outcome is acceptable. I believe the immigration issue is an actual exception where strict adherence to the NAP is at stark odds with our goal to see real-world outcomes produce more liberty. ("GASP! TRAITOR!")

    The biggest reason has little to do with economics and everything to do with American culture and politics. Culture matters, and as Sarah Hoyt (a conservative blogger I mostly enjoy) argues here, it is more than tasty food, fancy attire, and festival days. Those are just the superficial elements. The core of culture, which multiculturalist indoctrination has always obscured (on purpose I believe), encapsulates our deeply ingrained attitudes about how human beings should interact with each other:
    • The structure of government, role of executive power, role of the legislature, principles of jurisprudence and common law, etc.
    • The role of government in society
    • The role of religion in government, and vice versa
    • The acceptable uses of violence or coercion to enforce social or economic norms
    • The definition and role of property in society
    • The rights of individuals and their responsibilities to each other, their communities, and their countries
    • Views on education, language, fatherhood, motherhood, and family, and on what the culture should encourage and discourage
    • Views on how to handle disagreement, offensive or hurtful speech, etc.
    • Morality: What is a virtue, and what is a vice? How should morality be enforced?


    The power elite understand this in a way most of their followers do not: Culture matters, and they have worked long and hard to make Americans forget ours, so they could supplant it. How many times have you heard a leftist repeat the clueless sentiment, "America has no real culture, unlike all the other countries?" It becomes more true every day as we become more polarized and divided, but it was never true in the way they speak it. America has its skeletons, and it has become frighteningly corrupt and imperialistic, but what legitimate success it did attain -- greater than probably any other country in history -- it attained as a function of culture, most of it good. Our culture is not McDonald's, barbecue, and American football. The British common law system, Enlightenment ideals of individual rights and property ownership, Protestant work ethic, entrepreneurial spirit, and rugged individualism formed the backbone of the culture that built this country. The flame of liberty still survives in the remnant, but its ideological enemies are trying to extinguish it using every means at their disposal, and the immigration system is on the list.

    Culture is not a hat that a person can swap on a whim. It forms the basis of a person's worldview, and how they interact with the world around them. If a handful of open-minded immigrants from a radically different and incompatible culture move to America to seek a better life, their cultural immersion will make them Americans before long. They won't just see that we live better than people in the countries they came from. They will see WHY. As they assimilate, they will come to understand our success as the direct consequence of our cultural differences (petrodollar hegemony notwithstanding), and they will gradually adopt our ways of thinking. However, if an enormous number of immigrants from a radically different and incompatible culture move to America to seek a better life, they will remain too segregated to assimilate. Instead of adopting traditional American values, they may see our success as mere turn of fate, and try to "culturally enrich" us with the sociopolitical attitudes that dominated their countries of origin. Worse, confronted with the leftist ideology that our success came from "stealing their resources," many will see no reason to adopt our culture or become American. Instead, they may instead agitate to "reclaim" what they're told was theirs, as "La Raza" -- "The Race" -- they will try to "reclaim" what they're told was theirs. Aztlan indeed.

    Sure, the Cloward-Piven strategy to overburden the welfare state with immigrants is also at play, and the open borders libertarians have a valid point that it wouldn't be a problem if we simply eliminated welfare. That's all well and good, but that's a GOAL, not a strategy. The question is, how do we actually get there? We can't just snap our fingers and do it! Ron Paul supporters have been trying for 12 (or 30 in some cases), and libertarians in general have been trying for decades longer than that. In all that time, we've consistently lost more ground than we've gained. The key point to understand here is simple:

    We are running out of time.

    We don't have another 47 years to waste sparring each other as the Libertarian Party has done. We may not even have another 12 years to waste, as we here on this site have done, before it's too late. It may already be too late; many of us here argued the same a decade ago. What I think many people fail to understand is that it's not just going to be too late for the US government to turn around. It's going to be too late for American culture to survive, and if American culture dies, so does every link the average person has had or will ever have, to libertarianism or even liberty in general. If you think the gulf between you and the average American is too wide to bridge today, you have no idea how bad it could get.

    Too many on the left are indoctrinated with Cultural Marxism, call-out culture, identity politics, and the virtue of dogpiling and personally destroying anyone who disagrees with them in the slightest. Too many on the right are indoctrinated with neoconservative imperialism. As grassroots conservatives and Trump supporters are mercilessly evicted from the public square by identitarian obsessives, they are becoming vulnerable to fascist and white nationalist extremes in their desperation to stop the next Bolshevik revolution.

    At this point, spreading the light of pure libertarianism to the average American is already like proselytizing for a strange alien religion with orange and blue morality in an unknown and unpleasant-sounding language, with vaguely threatening hand gestures. Our education strategy thus far has been, "Let's start with Libertarianism 710 with Ron Paul and proceed to Libertarianism 896 with Walter Block." Our audience is not remotely ready for that yet. We need to focus on the preschool basics here like "Stop stabbing each other with scissors," because that's where everywhere else is at. We cannot achieve a future of liberty without first restoring or reinvigorating latent respect for American culture, and our window of opportunity grows shorter every day, and with every migrant caravan.

    Traditional American principles lose more mindshare every year, and a significant contributor includes immigration from culturally opposed countries at a rate that exceeds our ability to culturally assimilate the immigrants. Many on this forum seem to argue, "Our fellow Americans are doing plenty well throwing away their own culture anyway." That may be true, but this is an obfuscating rationalization for inaction, not a mitigating factor. Bringing up a second problem does not make the first one go away. Both problems reinforce each other.

    If we want any hope at all, we need to buy time. We need to buy time!

    I constantly read posts from fellow libertarians CaptUSA, acptulsa, Ender, PAF, SuperfluousMan, etc. scolding the libertarian-leaning conservatives like Swordsmyth and kahless about how the CORRECT approach is to "Just eliminate the welfare system." OH, WOW, WHAT AN INSIGHT! We could just eliminate the welfare system, and it won't be overburdened anymore! Holy cow, why didn't I think of that sooner? It's not like we've been trying to do that already for decades with only negative results to show for it, right?

    As I said above, eliminating welfare is a goal, a destination, not a strategy. If we could do that, we'd have already won. That's probably the absolute last pillar of runaway statism that will ever fall, so how do we expect to get there? It's not even a "Plan A," and if our actual "Plan A" is "Just educate people," we've been doing that one long enough to estimate its time to success as well: At the current rate it will take roughly infinite eons, although I suppose we could more precisely describe it with a negative number of years that represents our opposite-pointing velocity vector.

    Lately it feels like we're all on a ship headed for Liberty Island. We've been pointing our sails toward Liberty Island for literally decades, but it's still nowhere in sight, and all of the navigational signs indicate the wind has been pushing us backwards for quite some time. We're probably leagues farther from our destination than we started. Meanwhile, the creaky wooden ship is riddled with holes, and it's taking on water fast. Some of the uncultured pirates aboard start saying,
    "Hey, there's a hole, and we're taking on water! Help me plug this up!"
    Our more astute philosophers say,
    "Wait! Don't touch it! You might make it worse! Just...just...just go to Liberty Island instead! That's what we need to focus on, going to Liberty Island. Just go there! That's the solution to our problem."
    The pirates shout, panicked, "But no, seriously! We are going backwards and taking on water! There's no telling how long it will take to get to Liberty Island, but I can guarantee we'd all be dead before we get there if we don't stop the flooding! Why don't you help me plug up this hole?"
    The great philosophers reply in their wisdom, "What's the point in plugging that hole? There are plenty of other holes anyway. Put that hammer down before you hurt yourself, and let's just go to Liberty Island instead!"

    If "just educate people" is our "Plan A," and it appears like it will take literally forever, it seems like we have no choice but to support some "Plan B" which will help buy us more time (hopefully a lot). That's especially true when the bigger problem involves the culture shifting away from us in the first place. Slowing or stopping the deliberate dilution of American culture via heterodox immigration would give us at least a little bit of the breathing room we need, and we need every bit of it that we can get.

    As it stands, any kind of border control requires one or both of these two things:
    1. Establish and maintain control of border ingress (if not egress)
    2. Deport illegal aliens already in the United States


    Of the two options, method '1' is far superior. Deportations are horribly inhumane practices that destroy people's lives, and they provide a continued pretext for an ever-increasing police state and surveillance dragnet, combined with an enormous budget for the predictably ineffective results. No, thank you.

    In contrast, tightening the border via almost any mechanism (wall, alert sensors, minutemen...) is far more humane, and putting a moratorium on unskilled immigration wouldn't hurt. Side note: Like virtually everyone else here, I vehemently oppose the 100 mile Constitution-free zone, etc. Acting as though reluctant border control supporters on Ron Paul Forums believe in a total police state is shamefully disingenuous. (If you dare accuse me of this, I will tell your mother, and you will be in so much trouble.)

    As it stands, the conservatives and Trumpettes have presented us with a possible "Plan B" that could buy us more time. They're advocating for a wall, which is arguably the worst version of approach '1'. They've even already backed themselves into a corner where the stupid thing will only cover a fraction of the border and still costs $5 billion. As inane as that may sound, guess what? It still has far more traction than virtually anything we've ever done. I'm not going to lie here. I'm ambivalent about the wall. I'm willing to grudgingly accept it for the hope of a good outcome, but I don't want to want it, and I think the concerns that it could eventually be used to keep us in are valid. However, what other viable short/medium-term option do we have that doesn't involve continuing to drive off the same cliff?

    The United States is likely the world's last stand for liberty. Either we revive American culture, or libertarianism dies with it. We don't have the option to enact our magic libertarian dream plan either. That's not in the cards for us any time soon, because we're only bit players. That means we can either form a coalition with the [ostensibly] ruling party on an issue of potential joint interest, or we can pound sand and continue helplessly dying in our armchair perfectionist irrelevance. Those are our options this year, as I see it.

    If we support the wall as a dirty strategic compromise (by itself, without additional police state boondoggles attached), it might help us buy some of the time we need to turn things around. Our support might also be used to get a last-minute version with all sorts of horrifying extras attached as well. It could also just be immediately used to keep us in, and never benefit us one bit. Those are the risks we'd take by supporting it. They're terrible, but the option also provides a glimmer of hope that our time horizon may grow substantially. The alternative to taking a risk is to continue on the same path with the certainty that we'll go where we've been going.

    My idealistic side desperately wants to believe that principled libertarian advocacy alone will save us, but I don't see a viable strategy at this late stage, and at the end of the day, I want to live. I did not sign up for a suicide pact. I want my unborn children to grow up in a world where some Enlightenment-inspired civilization still exists, however imperfect it may be. Unless someone can suggest an actual alternative (and mutually exclusive) strategy that is within our power to realistically get us to Liberty Island alive in our allotted time under our present constraints, or that will buy us more time than the dunderheaded conservatives' idea, I have to side with the conservatives on the wall, notwithstanding my caveats.* I'll take that over impotently walking off into the ocean in despair, paralyzed by the NAP.

    *Caveat: For the record, I do agree with Ron Paul, Rand Paul and Andrew Napolitano on the specific topic of this thread (though not always as strongly): Unilaterally declaring a national emergency over the border situation appears to be an unconstitutional executive overreach at this point, regardless of my views on the wall itself. johnwk has made a rather admirable effort trying to justify it in terms of the actual law, but the stretches of reasoning involved seem to go into "living document" territory where I dare not tread.

    Even the federal power for Congress to control immigration itself rests on Constitutionally shaky ground. It seems to be a reasonable joint interpretation of the Commerce Clause, "repel invasions" clause, and "necessary and proper" clause, at least in such a manner that a wall along any state's border (for instance) could be construed as a reasonable exercise, given the appropriate magic words describing a congruent purpose. However, the wording does not explicitly encapsulate immigration. It's possible the power rightfully belongs to the states (and half-jokingly, perhaps the power of deportation from Texas to California still does), as it did in practice prior to the Page Act of 1875. Still, the Commerce Clause could have always interfered with the states in theory, and the Page Act made it a federal playground in practice anyway, for good or ill. At this point only strict constructionists would ever attack the Constitutionality of federal immigration control in good faith (even if leftists might attack it in bad faith, while interpreting the Constitution loosely everywhere else), so it is more the executive overreach that should concern us as a serious problem.

    The left, neoconservatives, and power elite routinely act on larger leaps, but our joint cause uniquely rejects that "might makes right" opportunism as a selling point. Sinking to the same level of lawlessness would therefore uniquely delegitimize that cause. No good-faith independent observer outside our libertarian sphere would ever predicate their respect and attention on our rigidly pure adherence to a deontological libertarian ideology that's alien to them to begin with, but we must at least respect the rule of law to effectively demonstrate moral superiority over arbitrary statism.

    Everyone here understands that we cannot permit a judge in North Carolina to invalidate voter-ratified Constitutional Amendments (or 18 months of legislation) for the entirely subjective rationale that a gerrymandered and therefore "invalid" legislature provided voters the option. For a similar reason, we cannot permit a President to subjectively redefine the contractual use of "invasion" in the Constitution to mean anything other than the plain meaning of the words to the two signing parties as the time of ratification.

    That is not to say Trump is strictly wrong to call it an invasion though: The leaders of the left are indeed systematically encouraging an excessive amount of immigration, on purpose, to reshape politics by transforming the country's demographics. This also ties in with the Cloward-Piven strategy of overwhelming taxpayer funded safety nets to foment socialist agitation, but I believe that is secondary. Either way, I'd colloquially call it a treason-assisted invasion in principle, if not according to the precise meanings of the words as understood by those who ratified the Constitution. The precise legalities must matter here though, because if they don't matter to us, they may never again matter to anyone...maybe for hundreds of years, or maybe forever.




    EPILOGUE:
    So, hi everyone, I'm still alive, and that's the giant rant I've been building up inside of me over months and months of reading these forums as a lurker. Also, the culture here these days is almost as shameful as the disgusting hatefest that's passing for politics in general. Please, be more charitable when judging each other's intentions.

    For instance, I'd like to discuss Swordsmyth for a moment (please forgive me for gossiping about you in the third person like you're not around to read it). Swordsmyth is far from a shill, and he's actually among the most intellectually honest posters on the whole board when it comes to tirelessly, patiently addressing his opponents' arguments in good faith. That doesn't mean he's always right; sometimes he misses subtleties, but he does try to address people's arguments directly the vast majority of the time (despite how jmdrake must have felt being misunderstood this whole thread). Sure, his obnoxious partisan language like "Demoncrats" is grating, childish, beneath his intellect, and counterproductively limits his reach. I also have no idea how he pays the bills with all his time on the forums, unless he's unemployed, which he claims not to be. (For that matter, I couldn't post half as much as the rest of you when I WAS unemployed...) However, I have seen far fewer signs of disingenuous squirreliness from him than I've seen from some others, who I'd "known" and respected for years. You can disagree with the guy without making it so personal all the time and treating him like some enemy infiltrator. He's not Walter Block (and neither am I), but can you honestly think of many other forums that better suit his (actual, non-straw-manned) views?

    On a similar note, the oft-repeated claim that the "right-wing trolls" have driven everyone away from RonPaulForums is a cynical and self-serving delusion from people whose IQ's are two-to-three standard deviations beyond the threshold for knowing better. Rand Paul's 2016 Presidential campaign was a bland disappointment that killed a lot of energy, and our lack of activity has nothing to do with one crowd driving another away. Our lack of activity comes from the site lacking a strong common purpose anymore. We aren't rallying behind any initiatives, any campaigns, or any flagbearers. The Ron Paul Liberty Report is good as usual, and I find it reasonable even in the rare case where my priority evaluation differs (immigration), but it doesn't inspire any kind of activity here. People just kind of linger to share outrage stories, yell at each other, work out their emotional need to feel involved, and pray that maybe someday we'll get the opportunity to do something important again. I hope we do, because the alternative is bleak.
    This is probably one of the most difficult subjects to side on in the realm of the liberty pool. I'd be lying to myself if I thought I knew what the best solution would be.
    Regardless, +rep.

    Don't need a weather man to know which way the wind blows

  23. #500
    Quote Originally Posted by jmdrake View Post
    What is hard to understand is how you can go around claiming people who have adopted Ron Paul's position on the border, and even linked to his position and adopted it as their own, as "open border."
    I don't have a real problem with calling Ron Paul's position "open border." But you have to explain what you mean. It's a very flexible term. Ron Paul says he's not for open borders, so when he says that he obviously means something different by "open borders" than those who describe his position as an open borders position.

    Where I've seen problems surrounding that happen the most is when people insist on clinging to sound bites where he says something about not being for open borders, and then extrapolating from that that he must hold the positions that they think a person has to hold if they're not open borders, in contradiction to his actual positions. Or else, when shown his positions, they insist that he's a liar either when he says he's not for open borders or when he says he's for those positions which in their minds (but obviously not his) equal open borders.

    The same thing happens with "border security" and similar variations. Border security sounds like something perfectly unobjectionable, until you get into the details of what it actually involves for the people who harp on it. One by one, each of their specific proposals is always easy to show to be terrible. But they never want to discuss the details. They always want to keep the discussion in the vague realm of generalities like border security.
    Last edited by Superfluous Man; 03-08-2019 at 07:51 AM.

  24. #501
    Quote Originally Posted by Mini-Me View Post
    I will break my four-year silence to comment on this thread, on page 17, ninja-style.

    Swordsmyth, you are painfully correct, and I would like to expand on this at length. For good or ill, libertarianism has created many of the most rigidly principled deontologists the world has ever seen this side of Immanuel Kant. We understand instrumental rationality enough to reason well about economic outcomes, but we tend to be epistemically rational to a fault about moral issues. I suspect some of us would literally rather die than inwardly or outwardly acknowledge or express support or tolerance for any policy that violates the non-aggression principle in any circumstance whatsoever.

    We're only human, so we understand it's forgivable to accidentally slip up in our real life interactions from time to time, but to accept or approve an instrumentally rational compromise on a moral issue is to reject the moral fabric at the core of our personal identities. Permitting any nuance on this matter or giving an inch invites chaos into our hearts and makes us theoretically vulnerable to arbitrarily oppressive statist thinking based on subjective value judgments.

    The pathological libertarian cannot tolerate such a collapse of moral universality. "Not even in the face of armageddon. Never compromise," as Rorschach from Watchmen would say regarding a different moral absolute ("evil must be punished"). I have now been a libertarian now for 11.5 years, and my pragmatic self-preservation instincts spend their full-time job holding my moral idealism from the cliffs of insanity. In 2016 it was just a given that nobody could convince me to vote for Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump if they had a gun to my head, and I think I meant it literally. I may still feel the same, and this is just a weak no-brainer starting point as far as many libertarians are concerned. Most morally self-conscious people have lines they simply will not cross, but as libertarians ours tend to be far more restrictive, especially in the political sphere.

    The vast majority of the time, our consequentialist viewpoints merely reinforce our moral certitude. After all, a society that broadly adopted libertarian deontological ethics would maximize real-world utility in a way that a cacophany of 300 million screeching utilitarian voices simply never could. (They would disagree, but that's beside the point.) Directly pursuing utilitarianism generally just leads to a chaotic war of all against all, because everyone has different utility functions, most are poorly calibrated, and most are more instrumentally rational than epistemically rational to begin with (that is, most people are both short-sighted and self-centered). Libertarians are often criticized for sharing utopian thinking with communists, but this is a misconception: Unlike the ever-tweaking utopian statists, our general viewpoint is more that principled libertarian solutions are "as close" to a panacea for most socioeconomic problems as a succinct set of rules could ever get, where all but the most exceptional deviations would cause more problems than they solve. In other words, we don't want to undermine a system that works in 99% of cases to accommodate the exceptional 1% cases. We're willing to leave those to chance or charity or even accept a 1% failure rate, rather than risk tearing everything down in pursuit of that utopian 100%.

    In general, our economic and social views align so nicely with our deontological ethics that we rarely have to question whether the non-aggression principle should be our categorical imperative, or if we care more about real-world outcomes. It rarely matters whether we rejected the gun in the room before or after we built our mental model of consequences; they have become deeply intertwined. We have to examine which one is more important so infrequently that I think most of us eventually subconsciously convince ourselves that no exceptional situations even exist. It's a comforting thought. We all recognize that any state action disturbs whatever the nonviolent path of least resistance would have been, and the effect generally (always?) has negative consequences that exceed the benefit and necessitate further tweaking to mitigate. Sometimes this opens the door to possible nightmare futures, like the idea of Trump's wall being used to keep us in, as the Berlin Wall was used to keep East Germans under Communist control. Why bother quantifying this risk next to the cultural and political risks of uncontrolled or excessive immigration? If we turn our moral principles into absolutes we'll at least dodge the risk of corruption, and we can always find consequentialist rationalizations that assure us uncontrolled immigration is more of an economic benefit than a political danger.

    It is in this way, that we become deeply pathological and, I think, a danger to ourselves. In my heart of hearts I want to be an anarchist, but I've never been able to convince myself that such a system would be predictably stable and avoid catastrophic perverse incentives in practice. Neither have I been able to convince myself that I shouldn't care about the consequences anyway on moral grounds, because unconditionally upholding the NAP is the greatest possible moral good. It seems my commitment to deontological ethics is not absolute, or perhaps, that I have misidentified the precise deontological principles that should be my true categorical imperative. Maybe the NAP is a crude first-order approximation of a more accurate and nuanced universal moral principle, which takes a broader view of self-defense than I can narrowly articulate. I'd imagine that true moral principles are what they are, regardless of how easy or difficult it might be to twist their linguistic expression into a dangerously contradictory meaning. Universal laws are normally parsimonious, but on occasion they take labrynthine twists.

    In any case, I never never been able to convince myself that American culture can survive uncontrolled immigration, or that the future of liberty can survive the death of American culture, or that such an outcome is acceptable. I believe the immigration issue is an actual exception where strict adherence to the NAP is at stark odds with our goal to see real-world outcomes produce more liberty. ("GASP! TRAITOR!")

    The biggest reason has little to do with economics and everything to do with American culture and politics. Culture matters, and as Sarah Hoyt (a conservative blogger I mostly enjoy) argues here, it is more than tasty food, fancy attire, and festival days. Those are just the superficial elements. The core of culture, which multiculturalist indoctrination has always obscured (on purpose I believe), encapsulates our deeply ingrained attitudes about how human beings should interact with each other:
    • The structure of government, role of executive power, role of the legislature, principles of jurisprudence and common law, etc.
    • The role of government in society
    • The role of religion in government, and vice versa
    • The acceptable uses of violence or coercion to enforce social or economic norms
    • The definition and role of property in society
    • The rights of individuals and their responsibilities to each other, their communities, and their countries
    • Views on education, language, fatherhood, motherhood, and family, and on what the culture should encourage and discourage
    • Views on how to handle disagreement, offensive or hurtful speech, etc.
    • Morality: What is a virtue, and what is a vice? How should morality be enforced?


    The power elite understand this in a way most of their followers do not: Culture matters, and they have worked long and hard to make Americans forget ours, so they could supplant it. How many times have you heard a leftist repeat the clueless sentiment, "America has no real culture, unlike all the other countries?" It becomes more true every day as we become more polarized and divided, but it was never true in the way they speak it. America has its skeletons, and it has become frighteningly corrupt and imperialistic, but what legitimate success it did attain -- greater than probably any other country in history -- it attained as a function of culture, most of it good. Our culture is not McDonald's, barbecue, and American football. The British common law system, Enlightenment ideals of individual rights and property ownership, Protestant work ethic, entrepreneurial spirit, and rugged individualism formed the backbone of the culture that built this country. The flame of liberty still survives in the remnant, but its ideological enemies are trying to extinguish it using every means at their disposal, and the immigration system is on the list.

    Culture is not a hat that a person can swap on a whim. It forms the basis of a person's worldview, and how they interact with the world around them. If a handful of open-minded immigrants from a radically different and incompatible culture move to America to seek a better life, their cultural immersion will make them Americans before long. They won't just see that we live better than people in the countries they came from. They will see WHY. As they assimilate, they will come to understand our success as the direct consequence of our cultural differences (petrodollar hegemony notwithstanding), and they will gradually adopt our ways of thinking. However, if an enormous number of immigrants from a radically different and incompatible culture move to America to seek a better life, they will remain too segregated to assimilate. Instead of adopting traditional American values, they may see our success as mere turn of fate, and try to "culturally enrich" us with the sociopolitical attitudes that dominated their countries of origin. Worse, confronted with the leftist ideology that our success came from "stealing their resources," many will see no reason to adopt our culture or become American. Instead, they may instead agitate to "reclaim" what they're told was theirs, as "La Raza" -- "The Race" -- they will try to "reclaim" what they're told was theirs. Aztlan indeed.

    Sure, the Cloward-Piven strategy to overburden the welfare state with immigrants is also at play, and the open borders libertarians have a valid point that it wouldn't be a problem if we simply eliminated welfare. That's all well and good, but that's a GOAL, not a strategy. The question is, how do we actually get there? We can't just snap our fingers and do it! Ron Paul supporters have been trying for 12 (or 30 in some cases), and libertarians in general have been trying for decades longer than that. In all that time, we've consistently lost more ground than we've gained. The key point to understand here is simple:

    We are running out of time.

    We don't have another 47 years to waste sparring each other as the Libertarian Party has done. We may not even have another 12 years to waste, as we here on this site have done, before it's too late. It may already be too late; many of us here argued the same a decade ago. What I think many people fail to understand is that it's not just going to be too late for the US government to turn around. It's going to be too late for American culture to survive, and if American culture dies, so does every link the average person has had or will ever have, to libertarianism or even liberty in general. If you think the gulf between you and the average American is too wide to bridge today, you have no idea how bad it could get.

    Too many on the left are indoctrinated with Cultural Marxism, call-out culture, identity politics, and the virtue of dogpiling and personally destroying anyone who disagrees with them in the slightest. Too many on the right are indoctrinated with neoconservative imperialism. As grassroots conservatives and Trump supporters are mercilessly evicted from the public square by identitarian obsessives, they are becoming vulnerable to fascist and white nationalist extremes in their desperation to stop the next Bolshevik revolution.

    At this point, spreading the light of pure libertarianism to the average American is already like proselytizing for a strange alien religion with orange and blue morality in an unknown and unpleasant-sounding language, with vaguely threatening hand gestures. Our education strategy thus far has been, "Let's start with Libertarianism 710 with Ron Paul and proceed to Libertarianism 896 with Walter Block." Our audience is not remotely ready for that yet. We need to focus on the preschool basics here like "Stop stabbing each other with scissors," because that's where everywhere else is at. We cannot achieve a future of liberty without first restoring or reinvigorating latent respect for American culture, and our window of opportunity grows shorter every day, and with every migrant caravan.

    Traditional American principles lose more mindshare every year, and a significant contributor includes immigration from culturally opposed countries at a rate that exceeds our ability to culturally assimilate the immigrants. Many on this forum seem to argue, "Our fellow Americans are doing plenty well throwing away their own culture anyway." That may be true, but this is an obfuscating rationalization for inaction, not a mitigating factor. Bringing up a second problem does not make the first one go away. Both problems reinforce each other.

    If we want any hope at all, we need to buy time. We need to buy time!

    I constantly read posts from fellow libertarians CaptUSA, acptulsa, Ender, PAF, SuperfluousMan, etc. scolding the libertarian-leaning conservatives like Swordsmyth and kahless about how the CORRECT approach is to "Just eliminate the welfare system." OH, WOW, WHAT AN INSIGHT! We could just eliminate the welfare system, and it won't be overburdened anymore! Holy cow, why didn't I think of that sooner? It's not like we've been trying to do that already for decades with only negative results to show for it, right?

    As I said above, eliminating welfare is a goal, a destination, not a strategy. If we could do that, we'd have already won. That's probably the absolute last pillar of runaway statism that will ever fall, so how do we expect to get there? It's not even a "Plan A," and if our actual "Plan A" is "Just educate people," we've been doing that one long enough to estimate its time to success as well: At the current rate it will take roughly infinite eons, although I suppose we could more precisely describe it with a negative number of years that represents our opposite-pointing velocity vector.

    Lately it feels like we're all on a ship headed for Liberty Island. We've been pointing our sails toward Liberty Island for literally decades, but it's still nowhere in sight, and all of the navigational signs indicate the wind has been pushing us backwards for quite some time. We're probably leagues farther from our destination than we started. Meanwhile, the creaky wooden ship is riddled with holes, and it's taking on water fast. Some of the uncultured pirates aboard start saying,
    "Hey, there's a hole, and we're taking on water! Help me plug this up!"
    Our more astute philosophers say,
    "Wait! Don't touch it! You might make it worse! Just...just...just go to Liberty Island instead! That's what we need to focus on, going to Liberty Island. Just go there! That's the solution to our problem."
    The pirates shout, panicked, "But no, seriously! We are going backwards and taking on water! There's no telling how long it will take to get to Liberty Island, but I can guarantee we'd all be dead before we get there if we don't stop the flooding! Why don't you help me plug up this hole?"
    The great philosophers reply in their wisdom, "What's the point in plugging that hole? There are plenty of other holes anyway. Put that hammer down before you hurt yourself, and let's just go to Liberty Island instead!"

    If "just educate people" is our "Plan A," and it appears like it will take literally forever, it seems like we have no choice but to support some "Plan B" which will help buy us more time (hopefully a lot). That's especially true when the bigger problem involves the culture shifting away from us in the first place. Slowing or stopping the deliberate dilution of American culture via heterodox immigration would give us at least a little bit of the breathing room we need, and we need every bit of it that we can get.

    As it stands, any kind of border control requires one or both of these two things:
    1. Establish and maintain control of border ingress (if not egress)
    2. Deport illegal aliens already in the United States


    Of the two options, method '1' is far superior. Deportations are horribly inhumane practices that destroy people's lives, and they provide a continued pretext for an ever-increasing police state and surveillance dragnet, combined with an enormous budget for the predictably ineffective results. No, thank you.

    In contrast, tightening the border via almost any mechanism (wall, alert sensors, minutemen...) is far more humane, and putting a moratorium on unskilled immigration wouldn't hurt. Side note: Like virtually everyone else here, I vehemently oppose the 100 mile Constitution-free zone, etc. Acting as though reluctant border control supporters on Ron Paul Forums believe in a total police state is shamefully disingenuous. (If you dare accuse me of this, I will tell your mother, and you will be in so much trouble.)

    As it stands, the conservatives and Trumpettes have presented us with a possible "Plan B" that could buy us more time. They're advocating for a wall, which is arguably the worst version of approach '1'. They've even already backed themselves into a corner where the stupid thing will only cover a fraction of the border and still costs $5 billion. As inane as that may sound, guess what? It still has far more traction than virtually anything we've ever done. I'm not going to lie here. I'm ambivalent about the wall. I'm willing to grudgingly accept it for the hope of a good outcome, but I don't want to want it, and I think the concerns that it could eventually be used to keep us in are valid. However, what other viable short/medium-term option do we have that doesn't involve continuing to drive off the same cliff?

    The United States is likely the world's last stand for liberty. Either we revive American culture, or libertarianism dies with it. We don't have the option to enact our magic libertarian dream plan either. That's not in the cards for us any time soon, because we're only bit players. That means we can either form a coalition with the [ostensibly] ruling party on an issue of potential joint interest, or we can pound sand and continue helplessly dying in our armchair perfectionist irrelevance. Those are our options this year, as I see it.

    If we support the wall as a dirty strategic compromise (by itself, without additional police state boondoggles attached), it might help us buy some of the time we need to turn things around. Our support might also be used to get a last-minute version with all sorts of horrifying extras attached as well. It could also just be immediately used to keep us in, and never benefit us one bit. Those are the risks we'd take by supporting it. They're terrible, but the option also provides a glimmer of hope that our time horizon may grow substantially. The alternative to taking a risk is to continue on the same path with the certainty that we'll go where we've been going.

    My idealistic side desperately wants to believe that principled libertarian advocacy alone will save us, but I don't see a viable strategy at this late stage, and at the end of the day, I want to live. I did not sign up for a suicide pact. I want my unborn children to grow up in a world where some Enlightenment-inspired civilization still exists, however imperfect it may be. Unless someone can suggest an actual alternative (and mutually exclusive) strategy that is within our power to realistically get us to Liberty Island alive in our allotted time under our present constraints, or that will buy us more time than the dunderheaded conservatives' idea, I have to side with the conservatives on the wall, notwithstanding my caveats.* I'll take that over impotently walking off into the ocean in despair, paralyzed by the NAP.

    *Caveat: For the record, I do agree with Ron Paul, Rand Paul and Andrew Napolitano on the specific topic of this thread (though not always as strongly): Unilaterally declaring a national emergency over the border situation appears to be an unconstitutional executive overreach at this point, regardless of my views on the wall itself. johnwk has made a rather admirable effort trying to justify it in terms of the actual law, but the stretches of reasoning involved seem to go into "living document" territory where I dare not tread.

    Even the federal power for Congress to control immigration itself rests on Constitutionally shaky ground. It seems to be a reasonable joint interpretation of the Commerce Clause, "repel invasions" clause, and "necessary and proper" clause, at least in such a manner that a wall along any state's border (for instance) could be construed as a reasonable exercise, given the appropriate magic words describing a congruent purpose. However, the wording does not explicitly encapsulate immigration. It's possible the power rightfully belongs to the states (and half-jokingly, perhaps the power of deportation from Texas to California still does), as it did in practice prior to the Page Act of 1875. Still, the Commerce Clause could have always interfered with the states in theory, and the Page Act made it a federal playground in practice anyway, for good or ill. At this point only strict constructionists would ever attack the Constitutionality of federal immigration control in good faith (even if leftists might attack it in bad faith, while interpreting the Constitution loosely everywhere else), so it is more the executive overreach that should concern us as a serious problem.

    The left, neoconservatives, and power elite routinely act on larger leaps, but our joint cause uniquely rejects that "might makes right" opportunism as a selling point. Sinking to the same level of lawlessness would therefore uniquely delegitimize that cause. No good-faith independent observer outside our libertarian sphere would ever predicate their respect and attention on our rigidly pure adherence to a deontological libertarian ideology that's alien to them to begin with, but we must at least respect the rule of law to effectively demonstrate moral superiority over arbitrary statism.

    Everyone here understands that we cannot permit a judge in North Carolina to invalidate voter-ratified Constitutional Amendments (or 18 months of legislation) for the entirely subjective rationale that a gerrymandered and therefore "invalid" legislature provided voters the option. For a similar reason, we cannot permit a President to subjectively redefine the contractual use of "invasion" in the Constitution to mean anything other than the plain meaning of the words to the two signing parties as the time of ratification.

    That is not to say Trump is strictly wrong to call it an invasion though: The leaders of the left are indeed systematically encouraging an excessive amount of immigration, on purpose, to reshape politics by transforming the country's demographics. This also ties in with the Cloward-Piven strategy of overwhelming taxpayer funded safety nets to foment socialist agitation, but I believe that is secondary. Either way, I'd colloquially call it a treason-assisted invasion in principle, if not according to the precise meanings of the words as understood by those who ratified the Constitution. The precise legalities must matter here though, because if they don't matter to us, they may never again matter to anyone...maybe for hundreds of years, or maybe forever.




    EPILOGUE:
    So, hi everyone, I'm still alive, and that's the giant rant I've been building up inside of me over months and months of reading these forums as a lurker. Also, the culture here these days is almost as shameful as the disgusting hatefest that's passing for politics in general. Please, be more charitable when judging each other's intentions.

    For instance, I'd like to discuss Swordsmyth for a moment (please forgive me for gossiping about you in the third person like you're not around to read it). Swordsmyth is far from a shill, and he's actually among the most intellectually honest posters on the whole board when it comes to tirelessly, patiently addressing his opponents' arguments in good faith. That doesn't mean he's always right; sometimes he misses subtleties, but he does try to address people's arguments directly the vast majority of the time (despite how jmdrake must have felt being misunderstood this whole thread). Sure, his obnoxious partisan language like "Demoncrats" is grating, childish, beneath his intellect, and counterproductively limits his reach. I also have no idea how he pays the bills with all his time on the forums, unless he's unemployed, which he claims not to be. (For that matter, I couldn't post half as much as the rest of you when I WAS unemployed...) However, I have seen far fewer signs of disingenuous squirreliness from him than I've seen from some others, who I'd "known" and respected for years. You can disagree with the guy without making it so personal all the time and treating him like some enemy infiltrator. He's not Walter Block (and neither am I), but can you honestly think of many other forums that better suit his (actual, non-straw-manned) views?

    On a similar note, the oft-repeated claim that the "right-wing trolls" have driven everyone away from RonPaulForums is a cynical and self-serving delusion from people whose IQ's are two-to-three standard deviations beyond the threshold for knowing better. Rand Paul's 2016 Presidential campaign was a bland disappointment that killed a lot of energy, and our lack of activity has nothing to do with one crowd driving another away. Our lack of activity comes from the site lacking a strong common purpose anymore. We aren't rallying behind any initiatives, any campaigns, or any flagbearers. The Ron Paul Liberty Report is good as usual, and I find it reasonable even in the rare case where my priority evaluation differs (immigration), but it doesn't inspire any kind of activity here. People just kind of linger to share outrage stories, yell at each other, work out their emotional need to feel involved, and pray that maybe someday we'll get the opportunity to do something important again. I hope we do, because the alternative is bleak.
    Great post! +rep
    +
    'These things I command you, that you love one another.' - Jesus Christ

  25. #502
    Quote Originally Posted by jmdrake View Post
    Your lie is that anyone equated the forefathers with collectivism. And yes you did lie.
    There was no lie. What I wrote was: I take it you equate our forefathers and the United States Constitution with “collectivism” and something to recoil from.


    I offered an opinion based upon the use of the word "collectivism" by CaptUSA as an intolerable sin. I wasn't even responding to you!


    Here is the original post, and it had nothing to do with you! But you had to but in.

    The fact is, our founders came together, in a collective manner, and produced a document which actually promotes good government, and which I view as a miracle.


    Your insulting charge of my lying is without foundation.

    JWK
    Last edited by johnwk; 03-08-2019 at 07:52 AM.

  26. #503
    Quote Originally Posted by Superfluous Man View Post
    ...
    I don't support empowering the government to use force against people for victimless crimes, which truly are not crimes at all.
    Quote Originally Posted by Superfluous Man View Post
    Violating immigration laws would fall under the phrase I just used of "victimless crimes."

    It's only a crime in the sense of a violation of a law that human beings made up. It's not a genuine crime in the sense of something that harms someone else, violating natural law.

    Yes , America and Americans are victims of illegal aliens.

  27. #504
    Quote Originally Posted by Stratovarious View Post
    Yes , America and Americans are victims of illegal aliens.
    What's the injury?



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  29. #505
    Quote Originally Posted by Superfluous Man View Post
    What's the injury?
    They caused totalitarianism.

    They didn't vote it in. They scared us, and we insisted on it.

    But it's still their fault.
    Quote Originally Posted by Swordsmyth View Post
    We believe our lying eyes...

  30. #506
    Quote Originally Posted by acptulsa View Post
    They caused totalitarianism.

    They didn't vote it in. They scared us, and we insisted on it.

    But it's still their fault.
    "You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to acptulsa again."

  31. #507
    Quote Originally Posted by jmdrake View Post
    No false accusations at all. Saying that its a problem if a white community quits being majority white is racist. You falsely accused me of being anti white when I clearly said I don't care if my majority black neighborhood becomes mostly white. You are the racist and you falsely accuse others.
    You are taking words out of context. I said it is unfair for any native population whether white or black if they are being displaced as the majority in overwhelming numbers by people of a different language and culture in their own communities. Nothing racist about stating facts but you are too emotional to understand these concepts.

    Quote Originally Posted by kahless View Post
    We are not talking about domestic migration so of course we are talking about race when it comes to immigration since look where it is coming from in large numbers. It is not a singular factor, I never said it was. There is also language, culture and people coming from political systems that have no concept of a libertarian form of government.

    I already described how historically you run into problems in swapping out a majority population. When people talk about losing their country and wanting their country back, many are talking about not becoming a foreigner of a different race, culture and language in their own country or they notice it already. They are just too afraid to admit it.
    Being racist and racism is supporting policy against people that live their entire lives in their community only to find themselves foreigners in their own land, discriminated against and unable to speak the language.

    I accuse you of being an anti-white since you have been hurling insults and calling me racist for simply stating the facts about how this world actually works and not what we want it to be. Like I said I would like to see people treat people that are different from them like they do on Star Trek but that is not the reality of the world we live in.

    You would not support what I am describing below. However you do support it in the United States. This clearly makes you an anti-white racist.
    Quote Originally Posted by kahless View Post
    One way to look at it is to use another country to apply US immigration policy to.

    For example to say there are too many <insert race>s in <country X>. That the US should send an overwhelming number of whites to displace the <insert race> majority in <insert country X>.

    That would clearly be a racist policy so how is saying we should do the same in the US not racism against the white majority here?

    You do not have to insert race above either. Just insert a different religion or culture, same thing. But for some retarded reason we cannot discuss that in the US without being called a racist or anti something or other for pointing it out.
    You bring up Ann Coulter yet she said the same things I am saying. I am not saying anything different. My reply to you.
    Quote Originally Posted by kahless View Post
    She wrote about exactly that as well as other Paleo-Conservatives like Pat Buchanan. I said the same thing in this thread and none of that is racist.

    ... You ignore history.....
    This is not singularly a issue effecting whites. I describe here how it is effecting the black communities. Does this make me racist to?
    Quote Originally Posted by kahless View Post
    ...The competition continues to oppress black communities the most. A moratorium would significantly help poor communities across America of all races.

    This however never gets addressed since the majority of blacks vote Democrat believing they have their best interests at heart. So we have the one D party that wants open borders that oppresses the black communities and you have Republicans that will undermine them with cheap immigrant labor.

    Then you have anyone else that points it out called racist by people like jmdrake who appears to sees whites through a racist lens.
    Quote Originally Posted by kahless View Post
    We are not talking about American blacks immigrating to America. That makes no sense. So saying race in regards to immigration is simply short hand. Since race with immigration comes vastly different cultures, religions, values, languages etc.
    Quote Originally Posted by kahless View Post
    American Blacks need less competition from immigration, over time it would improve their standard of living and lessen the animosity against whites. Therefore a greater percentage of blacks could more easily integrate into white communities and vice-a-versa.

    Of course the PTB do not want this since it is far more lucrative and able to control people to push anti-white propaganda to black communities and pitt whites and blacks against each other in the process. This is not anything new, Aristotle wrote extensively about how the elite controlled the masses in this manner.
    Quote Originally Posted by kahless View Post
    No, I was specifically speaking of suddenly flooding the country with people of a different, race, language and culture combined in mass. The white or black American family ends up being a foreigner in their own neighborhood. It is just not right.
    ...
    It is simply means keeping the demographic the same as the majority of the history of the US. This way we all have a common language and culture. Other races as a minority have assimilated as a minority and that is fine.

    What you are however advocating has throughout the history of the world ended up with racial, ethnic or religious strife. That is where we are headed without maintaining the demographic composition this country historically had. That is not racist, it is just being real.
    .....
    Do I wish people could be like in Star Trek, sure. But no, the reality is there are racists in all races. Whites do not have some monopoly on racism.
    Simply stating the truth how people really are and not the political fantasy world you hear on TV.
    Quote Originally Posted by kahless View Post
    I wish the right would stop this "I don't care about race". They do but are too afraid to speak the truth or believe they will automatically lose the political debate and be called a racist. That fear is why they are losing the country and will become a oppressed discriminated against minority. We see this happening now and we have seen it throughout the entire history of the world when a majority population is replaced with another. Just ask the American Indians.

    That fear of being called a racist and not being real on race will end up with racial and ethnic minorities fighting one another in this country. They already do and you can take white people totally out of the equation for this problem to exist. You should hear how racist that some Cubans, Dominicans, Haitians and Puerto Ricans, are with one another.
    Pointing out what people believe like I did here is not racist.
    Quote Originally Posted by kahless View Post
    - they do not want to be displaced becoming a stranger in their own community and unable to speak the language of the community.

    - they do not want to be discriminated against in their own community since they are now outnumbered.

    - they do not want to see the US end up with ethnic factions fighting one another in their communities or worse ethic or racial civil wars like the Balkans since immigration was not regulated.

    - they do not want rapists, murders and various other criminals escaping from their homelands into our communities since immigration was not regulated.

    - they do not want terrorists or some foreign power flooding the country with people that want to kill us since immigration was not regulated.

    - they do not want to increase government spending to care for immigrants.

    - they do not want people that have no concept of liberty fundamentally changing this country politically by eventually voting for an anti-liberty political system.

  32. #508
    "And now that the legislators and do-gooders have so futilely inflicted so many systems upon society, may they finally end where they should have begun: May they reject all systems, and try liberty; for liberty is an acknowledgment of faith in God and His works." - Bastiat

    "It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere." - Voltaire

  33. #509

  34. #510
    Quote Originally Posted by Superfluous Man View Post
    They why did Democrats do better than Republicans in the election that just happened?
    Voter and election fraud?
    "I shall bring justice to Westeros. Every man shall reap what he has sown, from the highest lord to the lowest gutter rat. They have made my kingdom bleed, and I do not forget that."
    -Stannis Baratheon

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