In a style reminiscent of Leftists, a lot of libertarians are quite abusive, arrogant and contemptuous in support of their open-borders beliefs. It's rather amazing really. Governments South of the Rio Grande are almost always very authoritarian and oppressive. Do libertarians want the sort of people who support such governments flooding into America and gaining the vote? Does the USA need Peronistas, Bolivarists and their ilk? Bolivar was Fascist long before Hugo Chavez reinvented him.
That influx has of course already happened to some extent and could well be a major factor in explaining the Leftward lurch of the Democratic party in recent years. So we have libertarians supporting authoritarianism in effect: Another instance of the madness that can result from following a rigid ideological line.
The post below offers another line of argument
Libertarians have been accusing me of being a “secular conservative” for having politically incorrect views on immigration. Mainly, I see illegal aliens as law-breakers, and like law-breakers they deserve a punishment instead of the defeated Dream Act.
While all libertarians respect the concept of private property when it comes to their homes, they don’t necessarily see America as a private property. They see it as a Wal-Mart where everyone can come in and spend their money. Yet America is not a Super Center, at Wal-Mart you have to pay for the doctor you see and leave when the store closes, not to mention that a baby born at Wal-Mart doesn’t become a stockholder with voting rights.
Now I will admit that to a business owner more people means more customers, banks today accept the Mexican ID to make sure that the illegals don’t put their money under the mattress. But if business is everything, why not tolerate fraud, tax cheating, money-laundering, drug dealing, white slavery, and plenty of other “business” practices that are quite illegal? Just like society didn’t tolerate Leona Helmsley when she cheated on her taxes, society cannot tolerate breaking and entering whether it’s a property or a country.
Yet in America we are being told that it’s racist to wear old glory on Cinco de Mayo, government forms must be translated into Spanish, and Hispanic kids in Arizona must get pro-Mexican education classes. If Mexico won’t teach the greatness of George Washington, why should they learn about Pancho Villa?
So as someone who loves America, I simply have to say, “mi casa no es su casa,” mi home is not your home. If you come here, do it legally, adapt to our culture, embrace our traditions, learn our language and don’t demand any special treatment because this is not the Minority States of America but the US of A.
And if you think I’m a racist for saying that, try getting a job in Mexico without knowing Spanish, try telling a Mexican school to give your child bilingual education, sue a company because they didn’t translate their legal disclaimer into English, or call people racist for wearing Mexican colors on the Fourth of July. Frankly, if the Mexicans can celebrate their culture, why can’t we? If they’re not afraid of offending us, why are we? The answer is we have been duped into believing that we are the bad guys and everyone else is the good guy. If that’s the case, why is everyone coming here?
So to my libertarian friends, wake up! Open borders is like free trade, it doesn’t work unless everyone else is doing it. Americans in foreign countries get VISAS or face deportation, while that may be unrealistic with 10 million illegal aliens, I propose they either pay a $20,000 fine or face prison, or they can simply go back to where they came from. That amount is based on how much a legal alien I know had to spend between student visas, H1-b’s and his greencard.
In the end, if it’s expensive to follow the law, it shouldn’t be cheap to break it.
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Bill Introduced in Arizona challenges Birthright Citizenship
"Arizona is expected to set off another seismic immigration wave on Thursday, when both chambers of its legislature expect to hear the introduction of bills denying citizenship to U.S.-born babies of undocumented immigrants. Republican State Sen. Ron Gould said he and Republican State Rep. John Kavanagh agreed on a day for each to introduce the legislation, but Gould said that timetables for consideration of the bills by the separate chambers will diverge at that point."
Unfortunately, a site [RRND] which reposted this story did so with the commentary-type headline “Idiot pols think state legislature can amend US Constitution,” demonstrating that even people who claim to be libertarian can be guilty of prejudice and incredibly fuzzy thinking.
As the article makes clear, and discussion over the past few months amplifies, there is a growing number of people who believe that the current interpretation of the 14th Amendment (an interpretation which dates only from about 1912 and was not accepted until much later (1982 - see the note, even though the amendment was ratified almost fifty years earlier) is wrong and was not intended by either Congress or the states.
Therefore, this is not an attempt to bogusly “amend” the Constitution as the libertarian site claims, but similar to the action taken by Montana and other states in the last couple of years to re-establish states’ authority under the 9th and 10th Amendments and force the reevaluation of the federal government’s claims of power under (and interpretation of) the Interstate Commerce Clause (a claim also dating from the 1930s).
Therefore, this sort of off-the-cuff, contemptuous commentary (and ad hominem attack) on some Arizona legislators does no service to the cause of liberty.
It is also important to at least try and be consistent in our opposition to the state: this 14th Amendment debate should no more be suppressed than the debate over the “militia clause” of the 2nd Amendment. The argument hinges on how “jurisdiction” is defined and the intent of the amendment itself, which clearly was to recognize that “other persons” as originally addressed in the Constitution (slaves) were citizens.
For those interested, this is an extract from an opinion piece [by Ann Coulter, a lawyer] published back in August of 2010. The facts appear to be accurate. My additional comments are in brackets.
In fact, this alleged right [birthright citizenship] derives only from a footnote slyly slipped into a Supreme Court opinion by Justice Brennan in 1982. You might say it snuck in when no one was looking, and now we have to let it stay [or do we?].
The 14th Amendment was added after the Civil War in order to overrule the Supreme Court's Dred Scott decision, which had held that black slaves were not citizens of the United States. The precise purpose of the amendment was to stop sleazy Southern [AND even sleazier Northern] states from denying citizenship rights to newly freed slaves -- many of whom had roots in this country longer than a lot of white people.
The amendment guaranteed that freed slaves would have all the privileges of citizenship by providing: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside." The drafters of the 14th amendment had no intention of conferring citizenship on the children of aliens who happened to be born in the U.S. ...
Inasmuch as America was not [then] the massive welfare state operating as a magnet for malingerers, frauds and cheats that it is today, it's amazing the drafters even considered the amendment's effect on the children of aliens.
But they did.
The very author of the citizenship clause, Sen. Jacob Howard of Michigan, expressly said: "This will not, of course, include persons born in the United States who are foreigners, aliens, who belong to the families of ambassadors or foreign ministers."
In the 1884 case Elk v. Wilkins, the Supreme Court ruled that the 14th Amendment did not even confer citizenship on Indians -- because they were subject to tribal jurisdiction, not U.S. jurisdiction.
For a hundred years, that was how it stood, with only one case adding the caveat that children born to legal permanent residents of the U.S., gainfully employed, and who were not employed by a foreign government would also be deemed citizens under the 14th Amendment. (United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 1898.)
And then, out of the blue in 1982, Justice Brennan slipped a footnote into his 5-4 opinion in Plyler v. Doe, asserting that "no plausible distinction with respect to Fourteenth Amendment 'jurisdiction' can be drawn between resident aliens whose entry into the United States was lawful, and resident aliens whose entry was unlawful." (Other than the part about one being lawful and the other not.)
Brennan's authority for this lunatic statement was that it appeared in a 1912 book written by Clement L. Bouve. (Yes, the Clement L. Bouve -- the one you've heard so much about over the years. [sarcasm, folks!]) Bouve was not a senator, not an elected official, certainly not a judge -- just some guy who wrote a book.
Why is this important? Yes, as Mama Liberty pointed out, it is closing the barn door while the barn is burning: the damage is already done, and it is too late for the dead Republic and Union.
But one of the peripheral benefits of such a debate as this legislation is promoting is that we lovers of liberty have a chance to help people see that there is no alternative to government as usual - except one: liberty. Just as we lovers of liberty have gained allies, friends, and co-workers from similar fights over the 1st and 2nd Amendment (or indeed, have been converted to liberty because of the fights over these, and other lovers of liberty who helped us see they were just part of a much bigger war), so WE can win new friends and allies and co-workers in this fight over the real meaning of the 14th.
Even better, we can use this to point out that “jurisdiction” at least implies voluntary and individual consent to a pact or compact - or even a Constitution. What a concept! But if we do not ourselves know the history, or if we dismiss things like this effort in Arizona with nothing but harsh words and contempt, we will have thrown away that opportunity.
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