The historical freedoms of ordinary Americans depend on restricting immigration, particularly immigration from cultures and nations that have produced anti-American terrorists. Period. Even assuming open borders is a component of liberty–a proposition I reject–rational, liberty-loving people can accept that we must sometimes sacrifice a part, lest we sacrifice the whole. Pace the critics, it is no more a threat to the principle of liberty to restrict immigration than a fence around one’s house is a threat to the principle of freedom to travel.
As I hear about tissues, eye drops, water bottles, and even books being banned from carry on-luggage in the latest spasm of our airline security personnel, I’m reminded of what I said it in this June 19, 2006 blog entry:
The existence of good and decent Muslim Americans and Muslim immigrants does not change the fact that the au courant restraints on our freedoms that we now endure are a direct consequence of the artificial introduction of Arab and Muslims into a republic made up largely of European Christians and accustomed to an inherited and historical balance of liberty and order. We are now searched at airports, eavesdropped on by the FBI, forced to pay for long foreign wars all in the name of the counterfeit “freedom” to have aliens from the third world living alongside of us.It’s no more contrary to freedom to keep foreigners out of our country, than it infringes on natural liberty if I have walls around my home and don’t invite a stranger in. Real lovers of liberty should see that our freedoms depend upon restricting immigration of cultural aliens, particularly Muslims. If not, in a rights equivalent of Gresham’s Law, the false freedom of open borders will replace all the actual freedoms we’ve come to cherish: free travel, physical safety, privacy, and the rule of law.
I think the problem of domestic restrictions shows the essential relationship between liberty and community. A community with a common sense of collective identity, mutual interest, and trust can afford a substantial realm of freedom within its confines. Enemies in the gates, however, generate a climate of uncertainty, insecurity, mutual suspicion, danger, and, ultimately, the extinguishment of liberty. This occurs as people rationally conclude that the government’s duty to provide order, its first duty, is threatened by the toxic combination of dangerous interlopers and mores that evolved under more peaceful and trusting conditions.
Bush and his transportation secretary Norman Minetta have repeatedly criticized any kind of racial or religious profiling of airline passengers. This prioritization of equal treatment now hinders the freedom of ordinary Americans, just as the faux freedom of open borders has ruined our public monuments with concrete barriers, free movement in public gatherings, and speedy air travel. I’ll take the “tyranny” of immigration restriction over this de facto tyranny any day. Unlike our present exercise in contradiction, this course will actually make us safer while letting us enjoy our traditional degree of freedom.
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Very well said.
It’s obvious that this is the choice we face: control our borders or lose our freedoms and our way of life. But it seems few people are willing to even speak the obvious. Only a few people in the media and a few in the ‘conservative’ blogosphere are daring to say it, Lawrence Auster being one of them.
Maybe once the taboo on saying these things is broken, we can actually have a sane public discussion on this crucial point.