DISQUS

No, the prospective immigrant must be known not to increase the sum of aggression on the existing citizenry; it can't just be assumed, as if there were no enemies. Our rights are a claim on other citizens within the same bounded polity, to take the side of fellow citizens, in at least that one situation, where the foreigner enters with additions to the level of aggression. There is no right to invade.

I get the impression that 'nationalism' is being used as a smear-term. Patriotism and loyalty are available terms without any package-dealing, smearing potential. If rational arguments are available for having per capita improvements within our national boundaries, no longer be the standard for evaluating the decisions of officialdom and electorate, why wouldn't they be forthcoming?

The manufacturing cities used to have around twice the per capita incomes of the poorer states; now Detroit city and Missisippi are on a level. This explains why the 1920's industrial powerhouses are the democratic core areas today. Those cities became less and less tolerant of human success, taxing the industrialists and then the middle class into headlong flight, and tried to make up their clientele losses with welfare-magnetized populations and immigrants in need of ethnolinguistic ghettoes. They became zones of freedom-FOR-aggression, tolerant of barbarically high crime rates. In such circumstances the vote can easily go 90% moderate left. The left is a passion for freedom-for-aggression,disaffinity for the military and the police as well as any other force working for freedom-FROM-aggression. Foreigners are to the left of us, immigrant cohorts come in on net public subsidy which requires incease of aggression on the citizenry, so they reinforce that democratic pattern.

It ought to be asked, how can a prospective immigrant have rights here, just by starting to move this way? Is there some good to the species to be gained by inventing an obligation of the net taxpayers of our citizenry, to extend protection through our government, out to all who say they want it? How do we know that foreigners here have rights and not privileges only? More cooperation of whatever kind is always better? What about cooperation by foreigners in increasing aggression on the net taxpayers of our citizenry, is that part of the dynamic cooperation that generates increased utility as it increases? The intellectually honest and sincere would want to answer these questions, or not?

"Micha Ghertner
February 17th, 2008 07:03 34I have not, and will not, commit to any kind of allegiance to “fellow nationals” relative to others. "
This is such a naked statement of disloyalism; the effrontery of it is breathtaking. If Ghertner lives in Israel, he needs to be visited by state security forthwith. If he is a resident alien in America, he is in an obviously undesirable category of highly deportable aliens. There is no place in the world for such a mentality, except perhaps parts of the Eastern Congo or the remainder of Somalia. That is, places so worthless, impoverished and ridden with freedom-for-aggression, that no one can be bothered to set up a functional government there and maintain it. The undesirable alien Ghertner should be told that there is still in force what is called the Smith Act in America.
Note also how the mass-murder excusing left slides into such neat alignment with these libertarians of the disloyalist (see the Ghertner quote above) kind. they are disloyalists first and foremost, then differentiate.
Ghertner has the further rank effrontery to describe patriots as not generating positive value for their society, while illegal aliens and disloyalistic resident aliens somehow do, and have a right to be here, ahead of the actual loyal citizens!
Only nihilism could hatch so many inversions of the moral realm.

Have we disrespected the Angels of God, who appeared as earthlings Ghertner and Wilkinson? Or is there supposed to be an Idolatry of the nation, which occurs when one speaks of its moral community of allegiance for counter-aggression, as the ONLY one which may in this world, command? Basing universalism on non-universal religion would be an act of faith at least, and perhaps an attempted theocratic bullying. Why did not God love and preserve for us the polyglot empires? Why does God send barbarians to the open societies before he destroys them, and why does he smite the stateless person without mercy? Citizens of the world are not known to be other than, or morally superior to nihilists, or not?

Then there would seem to be no extra-national conventions enforceable, if universality holds no attributes of sovereignty.
Answering Micha, the debt comes from our being already committed to an allegiance with fellow nationals, relative to the foreigner coming in with aggression, intentional or otherwise. This allegiance has attributes of sovereignty, but the Kantian categorical imperative does not, not in this world. It is universalizable, though, since we don't know that there is anything wrong with each sovereign polity commanding its minimal allegiance as above: that of nationals to each other, and relative to the foreigner, who crosses in a certain way which triggers the minimum.

Maybe he's a liberto-deontologist, or a pro-aggressionist, one has to infer by what is opposed.
In any case, it is not known to be true that we have any duty or responsibility to maximize the global utility, as if it were known. What is known is that there are huge numbers of hostiles out there, so we can't ignore aggression, sovereignty, organized aggression by foreigners towards those of our nation to whom loyalty is owed. An unreasonable, undemonstrable universal brotherhood and equality of concern for everyone's utility disregards the loyalty owed to those of our sovereignty, when foreigners arrive in a way which increases aggression here. Some nations are more valuable than others, to humanity , to civilization and its progress. The nihilist may rage that he cannot bring in enough foreign hostiles to bring down the even 100-fold differences in production which today exist between nations, but our real responsibility is even enhance these differences, since the progress of civilization is not known to be capable of proceeding any other way. The nihilists know this, which is why they have to use smears to promote universal poverty.

What about immoral free-riding by the disloyal citizen; can he pretend global citizenship while accruing the undeserved benefits of participation and residence in a polity which depends the citzens being loyal to one another over against the foreigner? Why would smear terms such as chauvinism have to be used to refer to patriots, unless there is no rational argument for the stateless person as being somehow better? Prove that you're not a chauvinist, no, let the anarcholibertarian prove that a stateless world is valuable in some way. Disloyalism is not known to be rational, feed it to the sharks.

Cosmopolitan identity is not all the better if it's fictional and valorizes the stateless person above the loyal citizen. Malicious hatred against American success would be often the motivation for wishing a NAU on us. Before the 'age of nationalism' a failed model of loyalty to royal families with enclaves and exclaves, began to die of its weak loyalties, but none of these was as weak in terms of commanding loyalty as the EU the UN or the other candidates. Co-prosperity spheres, UAR's, federations of the x-esias and y-islands? Humanity has no attributes of sovereignty, but a real nation does, and it commands loyalty when foreigners cross our borders in such a way as to bring increase of aggression, at the very least. Deregulate Islamic immigration, if you want to be their Dhimmi, and hopelessly second-class.

The American children are juveniles, if they increase the level of aggression here the responsibility for many years is on their parents. This is not the case for foreigners coming in here on even the tiniest net public subsidy. If they are juveniles their parents are responsible, not the US net taxpayer, who is one to whom loyalty is owed in this case. If the foreigner takes net public subsidy here that is a hostile act by a foreigner within the borders, and the officials who supply it are traitors as defined in the US constitution, and those immigrants are accessory to treason, a capital offense. This status is hugely different from a newborn of our citizenry, so the analogy between an immigrant a newborn is not convincing in the least. Intent matters as well; we can constrain the locomotion of those who mean us harm, moving threateningly towards us. As to duties of a citizen, the nation means at least that we owe allegiance to other citizens when foreigners arrive in a manner which increase the level of aggression here, on the citizenry.

How do we take away the rights of a foreigner to move around here when he is not known to have any such right? Is there a right to hostile immigration, or a right to invade? Our laws don't cover foreigners living abroad, but they do impose a responsibility on us to be loyal to fellow citizens, upon whom the level of aggression is increased by foreigners. I'm still waiting for an answer as to how foreigners living overseas are not chargeable with treason against America, if they have rights here and are morally not essentially in a different category than citizens. I doubt that anyone will ever feel strong enough to answer this though, and especially not here.

I'm gratified to see that my objections have been allowed to stand without contradiction.

It strikes me as a remarkably traitorous anti-principle. How can it be right to increase the level of aggression on fellow citizens, including the net taxpayers thereof, by claiming some fuzzball 'principle' of global free association which includes a privilege of bringing in an aggressor? If it were a sincere claim, those who wanted to associate more intimately with foreigners could move there, or if they want only products they can import them. Importing people is not a right, they could be aggressors. If free immigration made a country better, the Congo and Somalia and several other countries with no effective immigration control and lots of refugees would not be among the poorest and most anarchic. The anarcholibertarian, though, qua nihilist, cherishes freedom-for-aggression, and laments that we don't have enough hostile foreigners here, to make another eastern congo for his delectation.

Inequality of income is not in itself bad, but stagnation of median income means that the impulse to increase productivity is weakened, and the more so, the longer this situation lasts. Since the redistribution of pretax income towards the superrich, is the cause of perhaps more than all of this shift, we have reason to fear that it may go further.

Similarly, what do you think of this reasoning? The differentials in per capita production between the richest and poorest nations are of absolutely INDISPENSABLE importance for ages to come, to maintain the MOMENTUM of forward motion, of progress of civilization and especially technology. The more immigration the richest nations have which comes in at the same or lower wages, the more this will tend to take away from the momentum of progress in productive technology.

Citizen vs. non-citizen is morally not important? If so then reparations owed by an aggressor country and its citizens, should be levied throughout the world, and paid to all countries? Patents issued in one country are thereby enforceable everywhere? The distinction between enemy combatants and fellow citizens is arbitrary? We don't owe loyalty to fellow nationals when foreigners attack within our borders? American sovereignty is arbitrary folderol? Is the distinction between criminals and non-criminals arbitrary and socially constructed?

The reason that the poorest billion or two or more should affirm the regime of immigration restrictions is that it allows for progression of productivity, which is disfavored if labor is always available at the same or lower cost, any time there is occasion to increase production. If Yale had open admissions it would be unfavorable for new processes of production being invented there. If America had open admission, and by magic there were no hostiles even of the welfare-grabbing kind, the entire world would lose that portion of productivity increase which arises from the higher prevailing wages for menials and more-skilled here. If a rollback occurs from stagnation of technical progress, the infectious agents will change faster than medicine can counter them, and sweep through, taking out 90% even of vulnerable populations in the tropics. In any case loyalty is owed to the net taxpayer of our citizenry, when a foreigner comes in on net public subsidy, increasing the level of aggression here There is not moral interchangeability between citizen and foreigner. One proof of this is that treason, which is defined in the constitution, cannot be committed by a foreigner here, only by a citizen.

To clarify and soften the above, our better nations are going to attend to the needs of the disloyal libertarian types, much as the Christian pacifists who are systematic and otherwise supportive of our defense, obtain privilege to be loyal in their own way. As to particularism itself, one kind involving loyalty to fellow nationals over against the foreigner, and having atributes of sov ereignty, is unique. One particularism does not imply every other, and this is all the more obvious in that they contradict each other. Smearing by use of equivocation, slippery slope and false dilemmas, might be used to wriggle out of loyalty to one's nation, but if there were rational arguments as to why the statless person is actually better, they'd be used, and not the smears.

What's missing here is that the national group has attributes of sovereignty, unlike the others, it can command loyalty, and it needs to , to maintain its basic defense functions. The libertarian pretends that he has conscience which can stand up to a charge of treason, by implicitly holding that there are no enemies. The nation can command loyalty in the case where a foreigner such as an immigrant coming in on net public subsidy, increases the level of aggression within the borders; it can command at least that much loyalty. But the tolerance of a libertarian's claims to global conscience and publicized disloyalism, is an additional feature, which the nation does not in its minimal form, need to give.