RE: The World According to Trumpites (1)
Larken, I agree with you on point b, but I disagree with you on point a.
This Honduran caravan is NOT an example of "peaceful people crossing borders," this is an orchestrated stunt that has been organized by radical Marxists, and which is being funded by globalists like George Soros.
Don't believe it?
INVESTIGATION: Meet the Radical Anti-U.S. Marxists behind the Migrant Caravan
http://benjaminarie.com/investigation-radical-marxists-migrant-caravan/
From the article: "A mob of foreigners numbering over 7,000 is streaming toward the U.S. border, moving steadily like an army on the march. The left insists that it is organic, an innocent group of refugees just trying to escape hardship.
But there is far more going on behind the scenes than meets the eye.
After digging into the background of a man who authorities believe organized the caravan and pouring over Spanish-language sources, some eye-opening facts have been uncovered.
There is strong evidence that Bartolo Fuentes, a far-left organizer who is a key part of the Central American caravan, is more radical than previously reported. In fact, he is an avowed socialist who is motivated to retaliate against the United States.
Also connected to the supposedly “organic” caravan are numerous Central American communist groups, which openly despise the U.S. and have pledged to 'conquer' it."
Confirmed: Open Borders Group Behind Illegal Alien Caravan Is Linked to Soros’s Open Society
"The open borders group behind the illegal alien caravan marching to the US border is funded by several liberal organizations including Soros’s Open Society.
The Pueblo Sin Fronteras (“People Without Borders”) is a project of La Familia Latina Unida, a Chicago, Illinois-based 501(c)(4) illegal immigration advocacy organization formed in 2001 by Elvira Arellano, an activist for immigrants living illegally in the United States.
The group is part of the CARA Coalition and is funded by a number of major left-of-center grantmaking foundations, including the Open Society Foundations, MacArthur Foundation, Ford Foundation, and Carnegie Corporation of New York."
Is anyone reading this really naive enough to believe that these Marxist organizers, and the globalist puppet masters who are funding this, like George Soros and his Open Society Foundation, really give a rat's ass about libertarian principles?
We don't live in a private property anarcho-capitalist society, but if we did, this issue should be clear to anyone who calls themselves a libertarian. Property owners have the right to exclude people from their property. If this were a privatized city, or a private condominium complex, a caravan barging in would be a blatant violation of property rights. If some property owner wanted to take them in, they could do it, so long as they did not violate the property rights of others in the process.
We don't live in a private property anarcho-capitalist society. We live in a defacto democratic welfare state with forced association laws and lots of public (ie-taxpayer funded) property and infrastructure. The government monopolizes the function of regulating borders and immigration. The same situation exists everywhere else in the world.
Given this reality, advocating that just anyone should be able to waltz in with no questions asked, regardless of whether the people entering are Marxists or theocrats or criminal thugs or welfare seekers or communicable disease carriers, violates the rights of the existing resident taxpayers (who are the true owners of the "public" property and infrastructure in the country). This is forced association. Forced association is not libertarian. Marxists, theocrats, criminal thugs, and welfare seekers are NOT peaceful people, and communicable disease carriers (which are more likely to come from third world countries) pose a threat to the existing population.
Multiple surveys indicate that the vast majority of Americans want to see immigration reduced. The most recent survey I saw said that 81% of Americans want less immigrants. Most people do not mind some immigrants, provided that they are actually peaceful and productive people, but the majority of people do not want immigrants who pose a burden to the taxpayers by sucking up a disproportionate amount of welfare money and other taxpayer funded services, nor do they want criminal thugs, nor do they want communicable disease carriers. The majority of people also do not want to be ethnically or culturally displaced by large numbers of immigrants, particularly high time preference (as in people who lack the discipline to delay gratification) immigrants who have higher birth rates than the existing population, and who have no qualms about becoming welfare moochers. Most people also don't like it when immigrants become "citizens" and form voting blocks, which means that they can gain political power, and use that political power against much of the existing population. Statistics indicate that a super-majority of modern day immigrants not only use welfare and other taxpayer funded services at a rate that is higher than that of most of the rest of the existing population, they also vote in super-majority numbers to expand the welfare state and pass more gun control laws.
I know that you don't care about elections Larken, but whether you care about them or not, we have to live with the results. I know that Democrats and Republicans are both corrupt, and that Libertarians rarely win anything (and even with the Libertarian Party, its last three presidential tickets have been unprincipled jokes) beyond a low level local office where they can't accomplish much of anything, but even so, sometimes a good bill gets passed, or a bad bill gets blocked. Democratic and Republican party politicians are typically vile scumbags, with the rare exception of a Ron Paul type, but even among them, there is a range of how bad they are. So if the voting demographics in a particular city/town or county or district or state has been altered such that it swings the elections toward the biggest socialist gun grabber winning the election, this is something that damages our lives in the here and now. Politicians, even the slimiest among them, will often "put their finger in the wind" to figure out what they can get away with in the eyes of the voters. So even if a a politician is a completely unprincipled scumbag, if they live in a district where a super-majority of the public strongly supports gun rights, they will be less likely to put forth a gun control bill, or to vote in favor of a gun control bill. However, if they live in a district where lots of immigrants who do not come from a pro-gun rights culture live, and these people have been granted citizenship, which means they can vote, that area will be more likely to elect politicians who put forth, and vote in favor of, gun control bills. Another thing to consider here are ballot initiatives and referendums. These can be put on the ballot in some states by people signing petitions, but even if the states where they can't be put on the ballot via petitions, they can be put on the ballot by any legislative body in any state. Back in the 1970's, before California was hit by wild shifts in demographics due to mass immigration, the voters in that state actually shot down (pun intended) a gun control initiative. Now fast-forward to today, after California has experienced wild shifts in demographics due to mass immigration, which has been fueled by the welfare state, and there were gun control initiatives on the ballot in some recent elections that passed, with a super-majority of the vote. Now go to some states that have not been hit with large numbers of immigrants, like say Wyoming or Montana or New Hampshire, and see what happens if you put a gun control initiative on the ballot. You'd probably have a really difficult time even getting a gun control measure on the ballot in a state like Wyoming or Montana or New Hampshire, but if you did, it would likely get shot down (pun intended again) by the voters. This may end up changing in these states at some point if these states end up experiencing wild shifts in demographics by an influx of foreigners who do not come from a pro-gun rights culture, and/or if the people in government who want to get rid of the 2nd amendment continue brainwashing of the public against gun rights in the government schools and in the media, especially if they keep staging false flag shooting events (which I suspect explain all, or most, of the big, hyped up shooting events over the last several years).
Now somebody here may say, "Well I hope that the immigrants do help the government collapse, because then we can have anarchy, dude." My response to this is that if you want freedom, you need to be surrounded by a majority of people who also want it. Having large numbers of people from foreign lands who hold Marxist or theocratic ideologies, or who are criminal thugs (like MS-13 gang bangers, or radical Jihadis) entering the same land territory where you are located, particularly if they are being lured into the country by government welfare programs (and note that the Refugee Resettlement Act literally uses taxpayer funds to bring these people into the country, and that once here, they sign them up for every welfare program possible, and note that these people tend to have high birth rates, which means they produce lots of offspring who get on welfare), is not going to result in a population that wants a libertarian society. If anything, if the current government collapsed, the result of such scenario could be a new government that is even worse than the old one.
The fact that the state monopolizes a function does not necessarily invalidate the function. I agree that the state is an illegitimate institution, and should not exist, but this does not change the reality that it does exist. Ideally, we'd live in voluntary society, and any function that the state is monopolizing which does not initiate force or fraud would be provided for on a voluntary basis. This is NOT our current reality. The state currently monopolizes roads and firefighting. So should one say, "I'm an anarchist dude, so I'm not going to drive on the roads, and if they fall into a state of dis-repair, you are a statist if you ask the state to maintain them." Is any sane person whose house catches on fire going to say, "I'm an anarchist, man, so I don't want the taxpayer funded fire department putting out the fire. I'm just going to let my house burn down because I'm taking a principle stand. Taxation is theft, so if I call the taxpayer funded fire department to put out the fire at my house, this would violate the Non-Aggression Principle, so I'm taking a principled stand by letting my house burn down." I have strong disagreements with the way that the state handles criminal justice, but even so, sometimes they do arrest and prosecute people who are guilty of things that would be regarded as being legitimate crimes in a libertarian society, like murder, rape, assault, theft, arson, etc...
My point here is that I don't think that this caravan of Marxists and welfare seekers, which are being funded by globalists who are using them in their quest to tear down countries so they can bring about a a New World Order totalitarian agenda, have any "right" to the property or infrastructure in the current land mass known as the United States of America, so given that the the government monopolizes the function of regulating borders and immigration, and that no free market solution is on the table, I do not think that advocating that the state shut these people out is a violation of libertarian principles. Advocating that the state let these people in would cause far more damage and rights violations than the state shutting them out would do. If the state does try to shut them out, and any of them sneak in anyway, the state should not reward any pf them, or any offspring they may have, with welfare handouts or other taxpayer funded services, or with American citizenship (granting which would mean they could vote and gain political power).
Larken, I have been aware of you and your work for a long time, and I usually agree with you, but I think that you are wrong here.
I am NOT a Donald Trump supporter, by the way.