Elsewhere (129)

Why do so many committed anti-liberals bewail the increasing power of the Laurie Pennys and Hilary Clintons of this world without bewailing the phenomenon that hands them more power with every day that passes: mass immigration?
Conservatives in the U.S. bewail the tsunami of illegal immigrants over our southern border all day long and into the night, but neither political party has the slightest interest of addressing the problem with anything other than AMNESTY FOR ALL!
The Democrats are eager to import the new voters and the GOP is beholden to the Chamber of Commerce, which loves the cheap labor. Despite laws being passed that mandate a physical barrier at the border, only a gesture of a fence has been built in a few places.
This despite ample evidence that it’s not just busboys crossing over but Hamas and other Muslim terrorists, narcotraficantes who are more than happy to behead or bribe silly anyone in their way, “rape trees” wherein the panties of “conquered” migrant women are displayed as trophies, gangsters from MS-13, and as the second-largest non-Latino contingent: Romanians.
George Bush was famously awful on border security, prosecuting border guards for the slightest offenses against drug lords and working closely with Vicente Fox to do God knows what. Obama has upped the ante by encouraging our current “Children’s Crusade” wherein minors from Central America come up unaccompanied by the tens of thousands. They’re finding “cheat sheets” that coach the kids on what to say when questioned.
And yes, anyone who complains is accused of being a nativist and a racist.
So consider that question addressed rather than ignored.

Just some food for thought: Life Expectancy by State in the U.S.
Notice that Utah is 10th (80.1 for whites) and its immediate neighbor Nevada is 36th (76.7). Notice all of Nevada’s neighbors in that map at the top of the article.
Identical health-care systems, drastically different outcomes.
Go figure, right?

Throughout the western world curriculum and the means of it’s delivery was altered to suit girls preferred learning styles
That’s true. Partially, it might’ve been intended to provide an advantage to female students, but I should point out that girls’ learning style of quiet reading and concentration is much easier on the teacher (at any level). Not that I would necessarily expect a state-run near-monopoly subject to intense union pressure to advance the interests of its employees over its ostensible customers; its just that sometimes that’s the way it works out.

“Post Italia ’90, the game was strangely invaded by middle-class guardianista types… and they’ve dominated ever since.”
Something the Fast Show noticed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c29OpzjjXc0

I think to some extent, the sports wars are a proxy for a larger culture war, and one that doesn’t shake itself out on traditional political lines. In part, it’s a proxy (and probably as such a good stress-relief valve) for the more destructive forms of nationalism. Big international events (like the World Cup and the Olympics are the only place where it’s socially acceptable for everyone to get in their national colors and wave the flag around. (Also note how much effort the so-called internationalist socialists back in the cold war days used to put into their Olympic training programs).
As an American (and one that doesn’t follow any sports), it’s still part of the background culture that American Football / Baseball / Basketball / Hockey are national team sports, even if it’s not the preferred sport in your area, and that those sports will be treated differently than, say, Cricket. Soccer is in an odd spot because it’s common to play soccer as a kid, and the sport is still reasonably competitive attention-wise up through high school. At the adult level, soccer tends to be associated with immigrants that still root for their home team and with people that want to follow soccer because it’s not one of the big four (Ie, as a sign that you’re sophisticated, urbane, and multicultural.)
Because I like research, I found this particularly amusing:
http://www.sportsgrid.com/media/heres-a-fun-map-of-the-world-based-on-sport-popularity-by-region/

di,
Just some food for thought:
Something curious stands out in that chart: Native American life expectancy in California is higher than any other state, by a wide margin. There’s two factors at play here, 1. Native Californians are much more integrated (assimilated?) into the “dominate” white culture and, 2. Casino income grants those still living on the reservations a healthier, more comfortable lifestyle, and greater access to private health care, rather than depending on the notoriously miserable federal government health care system most other Native tribes endure.
I’d like to see a comparison with that chart and another listing, by state, the percentage of each ethnic group using government health care (VA, Medicare and Medicaid).

Ted,
It’s a temporary change while a minor glitch is being fixed.

Trial after Darius,
It’s difficult to know quite how best to respond to this, as this is an issue that evidently causes you profound emotional upset. It’s also clear that you are further distressed by the fact that you have a fervent belief in something like a conspiracy of silence against what you claim is “the truth about the huge genetic influences on criminality (among many other things).”
When possible, I try to avoid ad hominem attacks as I would rather try and address someone’s ideas than someone’s character. However in this case, it’s quite hard to be able to tease apart your paranoias from your arguments.
From my perspective, what I see reflected in your comments is the image of a man wrestling with a phantom of his own creation. You come across as someone who is likely quite intelligent but intelligence cannot alone guarantee the truth of anything – in fact, often quite the opposite because an intelligent person is better able to rationalize illusion as reality.
It’s not completely clear who this phantom figure is that you are arguing with, but what I am certain about is that it is neither me nor Dalrymple/Daniels, who (somewhat tellingly) you describe as “ignorant about statistics and science, as you might expect from a psychiatrist” (my emphasis). There’s no real need for me to respond to arguments that aren’t of my own making and, besides, you at least seem to have demolished your phantom’s arguments to your own satisfaction.
At this point, the only thing I can suggest is that you provide the references or links to the scientific evidence you claim to have the proves beyond question the ‘truth’.
In the meantime, I’ll leave you and your phantom to ponder the following:

… the development of the brain can be affected by what happens in the womb between conception and birth. These things can happen differently according to the behavior of the mother, including diet, smoking and intake of alcohol and narcotics, not to mention damage that can occur to the brain during its passage through the birth canal. Genetic mental potential would therefore mean potential at the moment of conception, rather than at birth, since “native intelligence” has already been affected by environment.

” I’m rather amused by the irony of a website of the central banks criticising state subsidy of banking.”
They are not criticising it Thornvaris, so much as owning up to it. They are very conservative in their estimates of course, but then they are serving the iondustry.

” A woman bringing up a child also provides a service to the public. I would prefer to subsidise her.”
Well, if YOU prefer to subsidize her, do so by all means. Don’t be taking money from the rest of us to do so. Do not the bankers also raise children? How is the woman providing more benefit than she has subtracted? As I stated above,
They (bankers) go to work and make decisions on what businesses and/or people are likely to pay back the loan(s). Not necessarily always good decisions, but in the aggregate they are far more so than the government employees socialism would like to replace them with.
Please explain how, whatever entity you would replace banks with, would not require far greater subsidy. The government bureaucrats you seem to favor exist COMPLETELY on subsidy.
Also, I think it is unlikely that banks, for example, have provided more benefit than they have subtracted. Please show your math, not your feelings. And again, you are playing with the word “subsidy”. Loans given to the major banks, especially the ones FORCED on the solvent banks, have been repaid. Where are the lines of unwed mothers waiting to repay their dole money?

You’re merely repeating what you’ve been trained to repeat. Have you ever considered what you might have believed just as firmly in an alternative history? And have you ever considered how much like a religious believer you are?
Whereas Minnow is repeating pitch-perfect Marxiod cant that he generated ex nihilo from his unconnected neurons. None of his assertions resemble faith in by-God rightness, especially the insistence that one’s opponents are possessed by devils false consciousness.
Pity you can’t sell off any of that excess self-unconsciousness: you’d be set for life.

“rape trees” wherein the panties of “conquered” migrant women are displayed as trophies
And the way to protect those migrant women from this horrible crime is to build a big fence to keep them out rather than giving them full rights and the protection of the police and courts? Such is the sympathy of the anti-immigrant.
Full rights and protection of WHICH police and courts? The Mexican police and courts? They are paid off by the traffickers. The U.S. Courts? They have no jurisdiction in Mexico (where most of these crimes take place).
If the wall were there, the women wouldn’t be paying the raping coyotes to get them across, because that method of crossing wouldn’t be available. They’d have to stay home until their papers were processed. ¡Qué horror!
Or does the world entire have the right to enter the U.S. however and whenever they want, no questions asked?
Such is the sympathy of the anti-immigrant.
How dare you.
Yo he vivido en Latinoamérica y España, tengo un ABD en Literatura Hispana de Cornell University, vivo en un barrio donde hay muchos imigrantes (legal e ilegal) y enseño escuela dominical a los latinos en su propio idioma. Conozco más latinos que jamás en tu vida has visto. Es imposible conocerlos sin encariñarse con ellos.
Pero oponerse a la imigración ilegal no iguala una antipatía hacia los imigrantes en general. Me acusaste de tal no porque es verdad sino porque te hace sentir superior moralmente a mí, una persona que no conoces ni de vista y mucho menos de corazón.
Hay muchos costos en mantener la frontera “abierta” como la tenemos ahora y los costos los están llevando tanto los latinos como los pobres de este país. Yo no soy tan tonta para creer que la vanidad moral es buena criteria para decidir un asunto tan complejo.
¡Qué cara tiene en acusarme de xenofobia! ¡Qué falta de integridad! Estarás en el pago de los narcotraficantes ¿verdad que sí? ¿O sólo los de tu equipo pueden acusar a los demás de mala intención?

Minnow:
Are you scared of an accusation of racism? Or is mass immigration a Good Thing badly handled at the moment but sure to come right in the end?
Hang on, am I right that this fierce libertarian wants the state to decide who can travel where? Surely that is a greater infringement on liberty than taxing you for hospitals.
I’m not a libertarian. Even if I were, it wouldn’t follow that I supported mass immigration. Libertarians who do support mass immigration from the Third World aren’t exactly assisting their own cause. The same goes for opponents of Laurie Penny. Unless I’m mistaken in thinking Third World immigrants vote overwhelmingly for anti-libertarian and pro-Penny parties.
Nikw211:
Thanks again for reply, but as I said, I’m familiar with Guardianista ideology. You’re merely repeating what you’ve been trained to repeat. Have you ever considered what you might have believed just as firmly in an alternative history? And have you ever considered how much like a religious believer you are?
What odds would you give on the thug being black? … Not just a higher proportion: a much higher proportion.
The salient feature of this man is not his ethnicity but his willingness to use extremes of violence. I wouldn’t be willing to bet on the level of melanocytes in his skin because it simply isn’t relevant
So you’ve been trained to think: “The first and simplest stage in the discipline, which can be taught even to young children, is called, in Newspeak, CRIMESTOP. CRIMESTOP means the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought.” And of course: noticing racial patterns is VERY dangerous. Better to pretend they’re not there.
– what matters is what he does, not what he is.
Then why mention that “he” is a “man”? That’s not a “salient feature” and “simply isn’t relevant” either. In fact, the thug’s sex is highly relevant, just as his race is. Whether the greater male propensity to violence is purely cultural (it isn’t) or partly genetic, it’s something that needs noticing and discussing. The same applies to the greater black propensity to violence. But Dalrymple only mentions one half of the story.
The “recklessly violent antisocial ‘ACAB’ wife-beating gold-toothed maniac” is a distinctively black demographic …
Well that really rather depends on the criteria you are going to use to determine the demographic.
The criteria are 1) recklessly violent; 2) antisocial; 3) ‘ACAB’; 4) wife-beating; 5) gold-toothed; 6) maniac. And a much higher proportion of blacks meet those criteria than of whites. Tho’ ‘ACAB’ should be replaced with ‘FDF’, i.e. ‘Fuck Da Fedz’ — notice how half-wits in the UK have adopted the term. And when I say half-wits, I mean just that: the lower average intelligence of blacks is one reason they’re over-represented in violent crime. And the lower average intelligence of blacks is related to their lower brain size and different brain chemistry, both of which are under decisive genetic influence.
Personally, I avoid categorizing by race – partly of course because, by definition, it is actually racist
Of course you avoid it: you’re trained in CRIMESTOP. I don’t care whether a claim about reality is racist or sexist or homophobic or Islamophobic or anti-semitic or blasphemous in some other way. People who use those terms are trying to police thought, not to understand the world.
– but mainly because it focuses on what people are and not on what people do.
But categorizing people as “people” focuses on what people are and not on what people do. Do you mean it’s okay to say that humans behave like humans because humans are humans, but any finer distinction must be subject to an ideological test? (See CRIMESTOP, above.)
You also appear to be practising a form of racial identity politics, though one which characterizes black people as being violent oppressors rather than being oppressed by violence.
I’m not practising any kind of politics: I’m making observations about reality. Blacks commit violent crimes at much higher rates than any other race, just as heterosexual men commit violent crimes at much higher rates than women or homosexual men. Those are facts. I’d like good explanations for them. And I don’t think crypto-religious metaphysics supply any.
For ideological reasons, [Dalrymple/Daniels] won’t describe reality and he won’t admit the truth about the huge genetic influences on criminality
It is not race or ethnicity, but the post code (zip code) that you are born into that is the most reliable indicator by far as to the statistical probability of a child growing up to become involved in violent crime – race and ethnicity are irrelevant.
Are sex and age irrelevant too? Obviously not, but then CRIMESTOP doesn’t apply to them. In fact, post code is correlated with race and isn’t a “reliable indicator” in any case. Women and gays born in “violent” areas do not grow up as violent (on average) as straight men. Straight men become less violent as they age. That’s an obvious indication that something biological is at work. Whites born in “violent” areas do not grow up as violent (on average) as blacks. And they certainly do not grow up as inclined to commit rape. Again, biological explanations are obvious. Except to Guardianistas and other adherents of supernaturalism.
As Steve 2: Steveaggeddon, Lancastrian Oik and others have also both pointed out, the trump card is by and large attitude rather than genetic inheritance or geographic location.
“Attitude” is an aspect of psychology. Psychology is decisively influenced by genetics. It’s also influenced by drugs. But you can’t (at present) drug blacks into being cleverer than Chinese, or drug Chinese into running faster than blacks. (On average.)
How else can we explain why, amongst low income British families who are eligible for free school meals, 75% of teenagers from an ethnic Chinese background passed five or more A*–C grade GCSE high school exams compared to only about 30% of white and black children? Not race, attitude.
But Chinese males do better than Chinese females, particularly in demanding subjects like maths and physics. Why does “attitude” differ between the sexes like that? After all, as all goodthinkers know, attitude is produced by a disembodied spirit having no connection with anything so vulgar as the material brain. This is why we don’t need to worry that Chinese brains are larger (on average) than white brains, which are in their turn (on average) larger than black brains. Well, I worry about it, but I’m a racist, aren’t I? I think it’s part of why average Chinese IQ is higher than average white IQ, which is higher than average black IQ. I also think brain size — and performance — are under genetic control. Or their upper limits are, at least. Male brains are also bigger than female brains, which helps explain why there are far more male geniuses than female ones.
Some questions I doubt you’ll answer: What would Michael Adebolajo or a fellow jihadist do if given the opportunity to set off a nuclear device in London or Washington or Paris? What would Dale Cregan and his kind do?
Adebolajo was a jihadist, Cregan a drug dealer. In that sense,
In that sense, one would be willing — and eager — to flatten a city and murder millions of people. And the other wouldn’t. In other words, your attempt to paint them as equivalent lunatics fails. Guardianistas also often pretend that whites are over-represented as serial killers, but that’s not true either. Blacks are over-represented there too. Blacks are over-represented in all kinds of violent crime. Dalrymple joins liberals in keeping quiet about that fact.
The difference between Irish terrorism, which never sought to destroy cities, and jihadi terrorism, which would happily do so, is partly due to race: the jihadis are drawn from more violent and more psychologically unstable races. In-breeding among Muslims is not good for the brain. Islam appeals to blacks partly because it’s a way of upsetting “da Fedz” (see Dalrymple on this) and partly because it provides better excuses for violence than Christianity. Adebolajo was from a Christian family.
[Dalrymple/Daniels]’s criticizing Muslims.
Not in that extract he’s not.
Of course he’s criticizing Muslims. He doesn’t simply say that “Indian heroin addicts” differ from white ones, he notes that most I.H.A.’s are Muslim. That’s not a positive fact about Muslims. But he never notes that blacks are hugely over-represented as violent misogynists. It’s entirely possible that blacks were a majority of the worst murderers and rapists Dalrymple came across. They were certainly over-represented in a way that cried out for explanation. Dalrymple has never even noted their over-representation, let alone sought to explain it. But he does note male over-representation in violence and Muslim over-representation in crime and seek to explain those. He’s an ideologue, not a realist. He’s also ignorant about statistics and science, as you might expect from a psychiatrist.

“¡Qué cara tiene en acusarme de xenofobia! ¡Qué falta de integridad! Estarás en el pago de los narcotraficantes ¿verdad que sí? ¿O sólo los de tu equipo pueden acusar a los demás de mala intención?”
I didn’t accuse you of any such thing, I just pointed to those of your remarks which demonstrate hostility to the poor immigrants that, from the other side of your mouth, you claim to feel such affection for. You seem to think that we should divide ‘legal’ immigrants from ‘illegal’ ones in terms of moral consideration, but I see no reason to. If you really care for the poor immigrant, campaign to stop their persecution from the police and other authorities. If you really feel that the poor of Latin America deserve the same opportunities as the rich in the north, remove the barriers and allow them to benefit from their own work and enterprise. But I think you do not accept that there is no moral difference between these groups of people and that is why you want to erect fences to keep them out.
Y si quieres continuar la conversation en castellano (sin diacriticas por razones tecnicas mias) me da igual, pero supongo que presentaria problemas por muchos de los demas .

Thought you’d try to answer under the radar. Yes they have, with the exclusion of Fannie and Freddy, which are essentially government institutions who are primarily responsible for the crisis in the first place.
https://projects.propublica.org/bailout/
Even with F&F, the interest payments of the other banks and such have returned a $40bil “profit”. Of course by not shutting down the bad banks, a GOVERNMENT decision, has increased the moral hazard.
Again I ask where are the paybacks from the welfare mothers. Who would do the job of the banks if not for the banks and who would pay those people. Where is the return on the dollars loaned to the welfare mothers?
It’s poor form to lie, obfuscate, and dodge the questions asked.

I’ll also add this:
Minnow figures that because his position on immigration is predicated on compassion, the opposite position must be informed by lack of compassion.
IOW, he’s perfectly conforming to the stereotype of a Leftist: Conservatives think Leftists have bad ideas; Leftists think Conservatives are bad people.
What a rigid, unthinking, self-congratulatory, malicious worldview!

Because that’s in my power to do, right? I can march into any parliament in South America and demand that they implement Hernando de Soto Polar’s prescriptions to bring the poor out of the informal economy and into the formal one, where they can obtain credit and actually get ahead with their enterprises.
You can’t do that, but you can vote for parties in your own country who will open the borders so that these people aren’t forced to live under the regimes that impoverish them. Instead you propose policies that make their position worse, erecting barriers to stop them moving to places where they can benefit from their own hard work.
You’re also not affected by the consequences of such indiscriminate “compassion.” Your wages are not being lowered — and your jobs taken away — by 20 million illegal immigrants being paid under the table
I may well be affected by it, but again I detect crocodile tears. Why is you sympathy reserved for the person whose wages are lowered (and actually there is very weak evidence for this) rather than the person whose income is massively raised (the immigrant). If the immigrants are illegal, they won’t have to be paid ‘under the table’ will they? The aggegate is a massive gain in human happiness.
As it turns out, it is possible to swamp a life raft.
A life raft, yes. But not a great nation like the USA.
It’s easy for you on your island nation to preach to us filthy rednecks about morality in immigration. So easy that you don’t even have to think about it.
Islands can just as easily be reached by immigrants as anywhere else, especially today. That is how I come to be on this Island. Along with just about everyone else I know. I expect the Dicentras did not spring from the native rocks of the United States either.
Minnow figures that because his position on immigration is predicated on compassion, the opposite position must be informed by lack of compassion.
My position is based on reason, not compassion. But I don’t despise compassion as you seem to. If you are not motivated by hate I think you need to explain why you do not want to prevent the wealthy of the South migrating to the US, but only the poor.
Also, I’d like to remind Minnow what happened when the European underclass flooded the North American continent in search of the economic opportunity denied them in their home countries.
The crime was not the movement of peoples, it was the organised genocide of the native Americans by the US Army. I don’t think even you imagine that Mexican immigrants are secretly planning to ‘displace’ the current population of the US, let alone organise a massacre.

Just to warn you in advance – don’t bother replying to this because I won’t read it
There are a lot of things you haven’t read. And there are some big surprises ahead for you.
i.e. all blacks are like this, all women are like that, all Chinese are like the other and so on.
Is that why I constantly said “on average”? You are aware of what “on average” means, aren’t you?
– I don’t really intend to listen in on any more conversations between you and your phantasm. It’s a waste of all our times.
In your case it is, because you don’t appear to have much grasp of simple English vocabulary. And see CRIMESTOP.
I’ll reply anyway.
I see that you have cut and pasted the your previous post from June 30 09:56. And in your mind … or that of your phantom interlocutor … this is meant to prove what exactly?
Sorry, I had trouble posting previously, so thought it hadn’t got through. Hence double post.
Re. statistical literacy. Here’s a quote from Dalrymple:
“If, shall we say, one stepfather in five is neglectful of or violent towards his stepchildren, then those stepchildren who have three stepfathers in their lives (and they are by no means a few in contemporary Britain) have a sixty per cent chance of experiencing neglect or violence in their childhood.” (from Spoilt Rotten: The Toxic Cult of Sentimentality)
Are you a psychiatrist yourself? Either way, can you spot any error in “sixty per cent chance”? I suspect not, but if you can, what do you think of Dalrymple as a statistician?
It’s difficult to know quite how best to respond to this, as this is an issue that evidently causes you profound emotional upset.
I’d assume that genuine geneticists in the Soviet Union felt rather upset when Lysenko ruled the roost. Indeed, lots of people probably felt upset about communism in general.
It’s also clear that you are further distressed by the fact that you have a fervent belief in something like a conspiracy of silence against what you claim is “the truth about the huge genetic influences on criminality (among many other things).”
The Nobel laureate James Watson — co-discoverer of the structure of DNA — suggested that black failure to match white achievement had something to do with lower average black IQ and black genetics. Cue left-wing hysteria, Watson losing a big job, the cancellation of his lecture tour in the UK. An American social scientist called Joseph Richwine suggested in his PhD thesis that mass immigration by low-IQ Hispanics was not a recipe for future prosperity. When this emerged later, there was left-wing hysteria and Richwine lost his job. The American writer John Derbyshire pointed out, after the death of Trayvon Martin, that blacks were much more of a threat to whites than vice versa. Cue left-wing hysteria, loss of job. That’s within the past decade. Before that, men like Hans Eysenck and E.O. Wilson were picketed and physically attacked for suggesting that genetics influenced culture and intellectual achievement.
Were you aware of all that? If you were, can you tell me whether it supports the idea of a “conspiracy of silence”? Or does it, on the contrary, suggest that the left believes in free speech and free enquiry about racial differences?
At this point, the only thing I can suggest is that you provide the references or links to the scientific evidence you claim to have the proves beyond question the ‘truth’.
So you’re unfamiliar with the wealth of evidence out there. Try these, at the blog of a part-black, part-Chinese, part-white Jamaican-American scientist called JayMan:
http://jaymans.wordpress.com/jaymans-race-inheritance-and-iq-f-a-q-f-r-b/
http://jaymans.wordpress.com/hbd-fundamentals/
In the meantime, I’ll leave you and your phantom to ponder the following:
… the development of the brain can be affected by what happens in the womb between conception and birth. These things can happen differently according to the behavior of the mother, including diet, smoking and intake of alcohol and narcotics, not to mention damage that can occur to the brain during its passage through the birth canal. Genetic mental potential would therefore mean potential at the moment of conception, rather than at birth, since “native intelligence” has already been affected by environment.
If I hadn’t already pondered that, why would I say this?: “I also think brain size — and performance — are under genetic control. Or their upper limits are, at least.” In other words, environment can lower “native intelligence” below genetic potential (the upper limits). No-one achieves their full genetic potential, whether athletically or intellectually, because no environment is ever perfect. But decade after decade blacks dominate the 100 metres and whites dominate atomic physics.
That was the second time you’ve asked me a redundant question. I said this:
A Guardianista would applaud his failure to mention the “race” of the thug here (after all, goodthinkful folk know that it’s completely irrelevant)
You then asked:
Have you considered the possibility that the reason why he doesn’t include reference to ethnic origin here is that it might be irrelevant?
One of us has not considered possibilities, but it isn’t me. I suspect that’s related in your training in CRIMESTOP.

Is there a limit to that?
No. I don’t think it is the business of any government to say who can go where and who can work for whom. I am amazed at the number of people who think it is not only acceptable that governments have this power, but good.
Are you seriously suggesting that every oppressed and impoverished person in the world would be better off if they just upped sticks and moved to the USA
No, which is why most people wouldn’t do it. But having the option immediately enriches everyone, and many will be enriched more directly. A huge number of those who stay home will benefit from remittances from their emigree family members, of course.
This is the stupid ‘we are all immigrants’ argument
You mean stupid in the sense of annoyingly, unanswerably true? I my case my father was an immigrant, so it is very present. I can’t think what benefit there would have been to anybody of keeping him out. Mind you, he was a bit of a bastard.
After another 72 hours or so I’ll bring round a tray of sandwiches to keep you all going.
Hold the mayo.

No. I don’t think it is the business of any government to say who can go where and who can work for whom
Kind of naive. Supposing most people do think it’s the govt’s business to control immigration into their country? Who gets to decide, them or you (and your fellow correct-thinkers)?
I don’t know about the US, but in the UK the immigration debate is befogged by one side calling the other racists or xenophobes, as a substitute for actual argument. Sometimes the accusation is rather underhand.
It’s instructive to take out all these accusations, and see what the side making them has left – if anything.
On the other hand countries not only have the right to control their borders, but might want to sacrifice some of the supposed economic benefits of high immigration, in order to preserve their own culture which they might love – an entirely different thing from hating another culture.

Surely it’s the Law which primarily determines “who can go where and who can work for whom” rather than the government as such?
The law grants governments the right to make these decisions. I don’t think they should have it and we can change it so that they don’t. Why do we object so strongly to internal passports but tolerate the other kind? It amazes me that people can think they liberty minded but think it acceptable to have to apply for government documentation before they leave the country.

Again, as I stated earlier yet failed to follow my own advice, arguing with Minnow and other such leftists is a waste if time. They will obfuscate, engage in gross sophistry, broaden and narrow the meaning of words as they see fit, feign ignorance of plain and simple facts, and when all else fails, flat out lie. Not all leftists, mind you, but such a significant number, likely even a significant majority, that it becomes a fool’s errand to argue with them. Which is a shame because honest debate in a free and open society is extremely valuable.
As for the offer of sammiches, in present context reminded me of Sandwich Boy from a while back. That said for whatever reason, I have feeling I’ll still be here 72 hours from now. Extra mustard on mine, por favor.

The law grants governments the right to make these decisions.
We’re still talking about democratically elected governments here I assume – opposition parties still have a role to play in that process.
Or are you in the camp that believes that democracy isn’t ‘really’ democratic and therefore advocates what I’ve heard referred to as Radical Democracy?
As far as I am able to understand it, Radical Democracy always sounds like a euphemism of proletarian dictatorship (though I don’t know much about it so perhaps that’s to overstate the case).
I don’t think they should have it and we can change it so that they don’t.
When you say ‘we’ you mean everyone who can vote but is not a member of government and by ‘they’ you mean the democratically elected government that only serves a term of 5 years before re-election – by everyone who can vote?
Or do you have something else in mind?

Again, as I stated earlier yet failed to follow my own advice, arguing with Minnow and other such leftists is a waste if time. They will obfuscate, engage in gross sophistry, broaden and narrow the meaning of words as they see fit, feign ignorance of plain and simple facts, and when all else fails, flat out lie. Not all leftists, mind you, but such a significant number, likely even a significant majority, that it becomes a fool’s errand to argue with them. Which is a shame because honest debate in a free and open society is extremely valuable.
Shorter WTP: it’s not fair, they won’t agree that words mean what I say they mean!

It is fun though to see all the previous enemies of statism lining up to defend state power.
A good example of what WTP is complaining of in your comments, where is anyone defending state power ? Dicentra in particular was actually drawing attention to the way the power of the state is being misused, to the detriment of everyone concerned. If you are going to turn arguments on their head like this then it cuts both ways, as I suggested previously this keenness of yours to see the poor of the world move to the cruel, exploitative, rich man’s paradise of the west is in complete contradiction of your normal view of the west as cruel, exploitative etc. Nation states are what we have and they regulate who is allowed to emigrate to their jurisdiction, I am simply describing the reality of that and suggesting that as things stand those states are well advised to proceed cautiously with immigration.
We are not talking about ‘shifting people around’
Yet again you take a figure of speech and proceed to build a strawman with it. Comparing a government restricting people to their home towns with having controls on immigration is ludicrous. You also ignore my real point, which was that it is economic activity which adds value and increases growth that matters, not the number of people with jobs. Those jobs may be a benefit to the individuals concerned but not necessarily to the whole economy. Which is one of several factors which need to be taken into account when looking at immigration policy.
In other words, when the poor no longer need to travel abroad, we will let them?
More straw please Minnow is building an army of corn dollies.

A good example of what WTP is complaining of in your comments, where is anyone defending state power ? Dicentra in particular was actually drawing attention to the way the power of the state is being misused
She was urging that the authority of the state should be exerted more vigorously by building fences to keep out foreigners.
Yet again you take a figure of speech and proceed to build a strawman with it. Comparing a government restricting people to their home towns with having controls on immigration is ludicrous.
It is not ludicrous, it is the same thing being done to a different degree. You need to explain why there is a difference in principle if you want to justify one but exclude the other.
You also ignore my real point, which was that it is economic activity which adds value and increases growth that matters
that is an ideological point. I think it is the wellbeing of people within the economy that matters. Which I guess is why we disagree so much on how policy should be managed.
Yet you think that poor people benefit from trading their labour across borders, which they often do, I don’t see how that is compatible with a non belief in free trade.
Because the trade isn’t free. Governments dictate which people can work where. the market is rigged.
OK so Mexico is improving economically but the poor aren’t doing so well yet and instead of letting things take their course until they do they must be allowed to compete with other
So, let me get this straight, you do not believe that free trade is beneficial? Not for poor people anyway? I think the Mexican migrants are best placed to decide what is to their benefit, don’t you? And there is no evidence that migration impoverishes the host nations. In fact the opposite seems to be true, a thought that occurs to me every time I go out for an Indian.
mexico is not exporting crime over the border. The US has created an insane prohibitionary system which criminal take care of as ever. Decriminalise drugs and migration and it melts away. But then, what would all those border officials and DEA officers do to top up their pensions/

She was urging that the authority of the state should be exerted more vigorously by building fences to keep out foreigners.
To prevent people from entering without permission.
MY STANCE ON IMMIGRATION: “Yes immigration but not illegally, because not entering through the front door causes innumerable headaches including for the illegal aliens themselves.”
Merely granting amnesty to those already here doesn’t solve the problem of not knowing who is here in the first place.
Complexity happens, and simplistic answers from lofty intellectual perches usually make things worse.
Even illiterate campesinos know what they don’t know and have the modesty not to presume otherwise. Minnow, however, thrives on intellectual arrogance without ever having to deal with the consequences of his prescriptions.
Typical.

Shorter WTP: it’s not fair, they won’t agree that words mean what I say they mean!
Really? From the little piss ant who whined about crossing thread subjects being bad form? Why you little worthless tick of an ass on the ass of a worthless ass. You withering pile of stinking camel cheese. You smug smegma-sucking dole sloth. You pompous stuck up snot nose giant twerp scumbag…you dung beetle…you…you fish called Minnow.
Now we can play I-know-you-are-but-what-am-I until the internet runs out of storage space and you still will not have produced one useful, concrete bit of fact/knowledge to back up one tenth of the worthless drivel you’ve spilled here. You are nothing more than the personification of MP’s Dead Parrot sketch.
I asked you specific questions looking for specific answers and you do nothing but obfuscate and weasel. You have nothing to say yet burn paragraphs saying nothing. Since you won’t address the questions asked without being a dick, can I get a one-word answer to just one question? True or false. On average, people who hold jobs running businesses provide more value to society than the average welfare mother.
As for water, David, like WC Fields I never touch the stuff. Fish f*ck in it. But thanks for the sammy’s. Well, when they get here, that is. And sorry about the carpet. I’ll ring round later and make it up to you. Promise.

In the alternate universe, I’m accused of advocating for the genocide of the white race or something.
For one thing, what would “the citizenry / the country” even mean in a world in which borders are completely dissolved?
I’m interested in hearing more about the virtues of this single-jurisdiction world. I bet it’s just like Star Trek!

What kind of magical thinking is that? Do you think our resources are infinite?
very nearly, yes. I think you have fallen for the zero sum economic fallacy. Workers entering the USA add vale to the economy rather than subtracting to tit. If they are allowed.
MY STANCE ON IMMIGRATION: “Yes immigration but not illegally
But ‘illegally’ is a policy prescription,. We can change what ‘illegally means, and you are for making more illegality and using the powers of the state to police it more vigorously. I want to increase the basic human freedoms of movement and association that you wish to limit.
Merely granting amnesty to those already here doesn’t solve the problem of not knowing who is here in the first place.
I don’t think the state or anybody else has the right to know who is anywhere. Mind your own business. It will make you happier in the end.
Countries get to decide who crosses their borders and whether they stay or go.
yes, but they shouldn’t. Freedmso of movement and association is are basic human rights and states should not interfere in that. I am surprised that you do not find this blatant infringement of liberty troubling.

For one thing, what would “the citizenry / the country” even mean in a world in which borders are completely dissolved?
Maybe this is the root of the confusion. To clarify: I am not suggesting that borders could or should be dissolved, merely that they should be opened. This is perfectly feasible, has happened often in the past and does not make for any ontological difficulties concerning citizenry.

I really can’t agree with this – yes there are real benefits to immigration but there are also real consequences and some communities are impacted far more than others. When that happens, strain and tension can easily become too much and boil over into all sorts of unpleasantness.
Where people mix together there is always happiness and unpleasantness both, but we need more than a fear of unpleasantness before we remove basic human rights, such as freedom of movement and association. Of course there will be difficulties, but the benefits according to all data we have, will outweigh them. Your great grandparents were from precisely the poor, despised categories of immigrants that people like Dicentra fear and wish to keep at bay. They were hated and there were always warnings of the awful consequences of admitting them (look at the slums they live in! Look at the diseases they bring! Look at their lawless children, their failure to speak English, the way they club together to do down the natives!).
But we don’t need to remove border control over night, simply make it a five year target policy and gradually bring it down. We could start with countries within the EU, see if we get flooded by them (still no sign but maybe the tsunami will come in the autumn. Or winter, or next year …), and then work out.

Minnow,

Where people mix together there is always happiness and unpleasantness both, but we need more than a fear of unpleasantness before we remove basic human rights, such as freedom of movement and association

I’m afraid I need to return again to my earlier comments: I just cannot grasp why you seem to have such a cavalier attitude to what is a profoundly complex issue unless, as I also mentioned before, it’s because you are speaking in very vague general terms which, nice though they might be in some alternate universe, cannot be ‘merely’ or ‘simply’ applied without incurring significant consequences.
For example, you say that the freedom of movement is a basic right – and as a general statement of principle, I agree. However, I can only agree to a limited extent because it is only one right of many and it shouldn’t really come as a surprise to find that the right of a migrant to enter a country may be in conflict with the rights of the indigenous citizenry to property, to security, to participation in their own government and so on.
The right to freedom of movement cannot and should not be allowed to trump the rights of the people who live in the place you want the freedom to move to. Surely it’s not unreasonable for migrants to be able to both understand and respect that principle? (I regularly work with colleagues from Spain, France, Germany, Colombia, Russia, Lithuania and Poland who’ve been in the UK for some years now and I would say all of them understand and respect the latter point.)
Less abstractly, the resources any one country has are not finite so as I said before it is naïve in the extreme not to think that an open border policy will have very practical consequences on everything from rent and wages to the use of services, public health and education.
It is surely irresponsible to say, as you have done …

we don’t need to remove border control over night, simply make it a five year target policy and gradually bring it down.

… while taking absolutely no consideration whatsoever on the wider consequences this could have.
You seem to be so convinced that the only obstacle is fear and xenophobia that you have quite lost sight of the fact that such a policy could wreak financial and social havoc – if left unmanaged.
The population of the UK in 1945 was a bit around 35 million, today it’s about 63 million and current predictions reckon it to be about 70 million + by 2025. Given these figures, I hardly think it fair to characterize concerns over immigration policy as being ignorant, backward, xenophobic etc.

Of course there will be difficulties, but the benefits according to all data we have, will outweigh them.

Not necessarily – as I’ve said, as a principle I think immigration has a great deal of potential benefit, but those benefits won’t be realized unless the government is carefully monitoring and managing the process.
I am not a fan of UKIP and tend to think of Nigel Farage as a bit of an arse on the whole, but that said I cannot see any reason why a Canadian or Australian style points system couldn’t work for the UK as it has worked in the latter two countries.

Your great grandparents were from precisely the poor, despised categories of immigrants that people like Dicentra fear and wish to keep at bay.

I’ve no doubt that Dicentra is more than capable of speaking for herself on this, but I’m pretty sure that’s not what she was saying was it?
I understood her main point to be that migration should be legal, not illegal.
That seems eminently sensible to me (though I must admit I’ve missed most of the exchange you’ve been having with her on this thread so maybe you were referring to something else).
I just can’t work out what you are trying to say with …
Don’t worry about it then, it’s not important (obviously!).

Dicentra wants the law to be tougher and aggressively applied. I want the opposite
In the United States, the existing laws aren’t applied at all. I’m not kidding: Things got so bad in Arizona with “unpleasantness” like kidnappings and murders and rapes and general lawlessness that AZ tried to assist the feds to do what they were mandated by law to do but WERE NOT DOING.
Not because of budget constraints, because of executive commands: stand down. Obama smacked Arizona down so hard the echoes are still audible in the Grand Canyon.
The law mandating that the fence be built was passed years ago and money allocated. It has not been built. Border Patrol agents are issued bean-bags instead of bullets. They’re prosecuted for shooting narcotraficantes in the butt at the behest of the Mexican government, which is owned by the drug cartels.
The only actual change to the immigration law I’d request is that the legal path be streamlined so that it doesn’t take so long to come in licitly.
Also, none of the people who advocate open borders spend any time in the areas where the actual consequences are going down. Minnow seems to think that the discomfort of large influxes boils down to linguistic barriers, cultural confusions, and eww I don’t like them furrners.
Until Minnow gets half a clue about what the open border with Mexico actually DOES.
Workers entering the USA add vale to the economy rather than subtracting [from it].
Not if they go on the dole. Which is what our government has explicitly encouraged through publications sent southward and other recruiting efforts.
Low-skilled workers, even when paid legally, don’t contribute near as much tax revenue as they consume in schools, infrastructure, law enforcement, WELFARE, and the like. If your government has set up a lavish welfare state but doesn’t generate the revenue to support it, then you’ve run out of FINITE RESOURCES. Further, when they send hefty remittances back home, our economy doesn’t benefit.
WELFARE STATE + OPEN BORDERS = DISASTER
You can have one or the other but not both. When my ancestors came across the pond, there was no welfare state: it was either work or starve, so they worked.
Our society can sustain SOME illegal immigration and SOME of them on welfare, but not in infinite amounts.
But I forgot I was addressing an intellectual: maths are for the little people, aren’t they? If you’re clever, you can figure out how to make it all work.
“We” can figure it out, that is. The BORG collective in action.

There were some comments not so long ago here regarding genderless pronouns… well:
http://www.tor.com/blogs/2014/06/post-binary-gender-in-sf-excitotech-and-non-binary-pronouns

ftumch,
“Never argue with an idiot. They will only bring you down to their level and beat you with experience” – George Carlin (or Mark Twain. Or who knows?)
Or, “Arguing with an idiot is like playing chess with a pigeon. It doesn’t matter how good you are, because he’ll just knock over all the pieces, crap on the board, and strut about like he’s victorious.”
Nikw211,
You expected intellectual consistency from the resident pigeon?

they are highly likely literate and have completed at least 12 years of compulsory education; by and large, they have a general understanding that taxes need to be paid, laws have to be obeyed, contracts signed etc.
Whereas in Mexico, gaming the system IS the system. And yeah, there are pockets of Full-On Mexico in the U.S. (California’s central valley, for example), and that those areas every bit the dysfunctional hell-holes that Mexico is.
Some cultural differences are superficial (cuisine, language, holidays); others are profound (caste systems, misogyny, rule of law vs rule of the strong).
But dealing with that kind of head-scratching complexity utterly precludes smugness, and so that’s why Minnow won’t acknowledge it.
Not in front of us, anyway. That’s not what he’s here for.