It's a Small World After All

I figured yesterday's column would be controversial.

A well-intentioned Facebook friend commented thusly:

Are we all assuming that these new arrivals aren't going to want the same things we do? I think that might be a bad assumption. As David just said: when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Can we not co-opt them as easily as the progressives have?

That presupposes assumptions, rather than observations, were made. The burden is on anyone challenging the piece to address and refute each specific documented claim by presenting superior counter-documentation before making the ...uh... assumption that they are invalid and moving the discussion on to a new track. And in re suggesting it's just as easy to co-opt, again, the burden is on the proposer to flesh that out and explain what evidence he has to suppose that. Who is making assumptions here?

"Can't we all get along?" sounds like a great plan. I'm game. As long as getting along doesn't result in more dangers, burdens and infringements, and fewer Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity. I need more than a hopeful heart and platitudes here. Flesh out how "we" are going to  do it.  And how easy "easily" is.

I was pleased to receive the following via email from WarOnGuns Correspondent JM, who has agreed to let me share it here:

Outstanding article on immigration and gun control! I just emailed it to several of the Vdare.com writers, so hopefully one of them blogs about it. As a matter of coincidence, the NRA sent a letter to me today asking me to sign up. I think I will print off and include your column in my response!

One other point: if people calling themselves "libertarian" or who follow Koch Brothers funded establishment type "libertarians" who are generally pro-gun rights attempt to object to your article, you can always respond with this by the guy who literally created the modern day libertarian movement.

Rothbard starts on the immigration issue on page six. He remarks how he completely changed his views on free immigration when he witnessed Russia encourage mass immigration to Latvia and Estonia to destroy their culture and language during the fall of the Soviet Union. On page nine, Rothbard references how Latvia, Estonia, and Switzerland dealt with mass immigration by refusing to allow the immigrants to vote - thereby maintaining their values and culture.

If the founder of the modern day libertarian movement is not enough, here is another major figure in the modern day libertarian movement making the same case, albeit in much greater detail.

The main point Rothbard and Hoppe make is that this isn't "free labor" - but instead centrally planned economic policy in the form of mass immigration by the government since the market is not making these decisions.

Read that last sentence again. Who is co-opting whom here? And for what purpose?