Monthly Archives: April 2009

Update VI: The Swine (AKA The State) Are AWOL

Canada, Europe, Healthcare, Homeland Security, IMMIGRATION, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, libertarianism, Liberty, Natural Law, Objectivism, The State

The excerpt is from my new, WND column, “The Swine (AKA The State) Are AWOL.” If you miss the column on WND.com, you can catch it weekly on Taki’s Magazine, the following day. It’s now up. (May 2)

“Whether they are armed with bombs or bacteria, stopping weaponized individuals from harming others—intentionally or unintentionally—falls perfectly within the purview of the ‘night-watchman state of classical-liberal theory,’ in the words of the philosopher Robert Nozick. …

“A well-policed barrier is the definitive, non-aggressive method of defense against these ailments and afflictions. You don’t attack, arrest, or otherwise molest undesirables; you keep them at bay, away.”

“Libertarian and leftist protest over any impediment to the free flow of people across borders is predicated not on the negative, leave-me-alone rights of the individual, but on the positive, manufactured right of human kind to venture wherever, whenever.”

Read “The Swine Are Loose,” (Taki title) to learn what “the quintessential ‘Renaissance woman,’ the late, dazzling, Madeleine Pelner Cosman, Ph.D., Esq.—expert aviator, health-care policy analyst, marksman, and musician—had to say about “the effects on the health system of the bleeding Southwestern border.”

Update I (May 1): I don’t think I’ve made any dogmatic statements about Objectivist thinking per se. What I will say is this: From all warring Objectivist sources, I’ve read oodles about waging war on the world, but very little that is coherent about stopping the Third World from invading the US.

As I wrote in 2004, “Inviting an invasion by foreigners and instigating one against them are two sides of the same neoconservative coin.” I have seen no evidence that “real” Randians have departed from this neoconservative perversion.

Yes, some Objectivists say borders ought to be protected against dem terrorists, but has any dared to venture that defending the country’s borders may have more than just a security dimension?
By all means, enlighten me (with citations/links, please).

The title of my near-complete book manuscript, Into the Cannibal’s Pot, is meant as a metaphor, and is inspired by Ayn Rand’s wise counsel against prostrating civilization to savagery. I have no doubt she’d have been appalled by the free-for-all on the border with Mexico — and not just because of the possibility of infiltration by a couple of malevolent Muslims.

By all means, provide links to a coherent, Rand-stamped, non-neoconservative view of immigration that does not focus exclusively on security to the detriment of cultural components, which are as essential to the survival of American liberty.

Update II: I don’t buy the allegation that views on immigration among Objectivists are shaped by the validity/legality of Ayn Rand’s visa. Rand was not swayed by positive law. Likewise, Objectivists would—or should—argue from the natural law.

Update IV (May 2): The Hispanic influx into the US is unprecedented. Writes my WND colleague, Vox Day:

“To describe the discourse concerning the mass inflow of foreigners that has taken place over the last 29 years [as] ‘the immigration debate’ is to use a misnomer. What has taken place since the 1980 U.S. census is nothing less than a mass migration of the sort that irretrievably transformed historical civilizations everywhere from Hellenic Greece to Moorish Spain. In 1980, the number of Hispanics living in the United States was 14.6 million. In 2008, it was 45.5 million. Hispanics now account for 15 percent of the total population, and because they are the fastest-growing population segment, the census bureau expects their numbers to increase by a further 67 million by 2050.”

Update V (May 3): Sigh. “The Swine Are AWOL (Or Loose)” was not complicated, at least not to the sensible, straight-thinking.

* The dread diseases delineated in the column happen to hail not from the first world, but from Latin America, with which we have an open border.
* The state has a minimal duty. It is not to “control disease” or test every human being crossing the border, but to enforce a border.
* Currently about a million, poor, deprived, and often depraved, ill people cross over each and every year into the US. By enforcing the border, so that far fewer get through, the number of locals killed or sickened by criminals or carriers will be reduced. Not eliminated; reduced. Is that simple logic unclear? I don’t think so.
* This policy should not be egalitarian, naturally. Canada and Europe are first-world destinations. The diseases making a come-back in the US do not come from North America or the Continent. We have a contiguous border with the first-world Canada, and the third, or second-world Mexico. We do not share a border with Europe, naturally.

Update VII (May 4): Jack writes:

Hi

Seems that the comments are closed for this item, so will send just one of the citations/links you asked for.

Within the narrow confines of the original article, I thought it was in writing but the only reference I could find was Yaron Brook stating that people carrying infectious diseases is one of the groups that would be excluded from coming into the country. (Bottom of the page, last video, within the first minute.)

Cheers
Jack

Updated: Conservatives Add Another Blond To The Brain Trust

Celebrity, Christian Right, Conservatism, Gender, Homosexuality, Intelligence, Pop-Culture, Republicans

Michael Musto, the Village Voice’s machine gun, on Miss California: “This girl is a ding-dong. She’s not just a boob, but a fake boob. (An allusion to Carrie Prejean’s breast augmentation.) A beauty contestant with falsies and an opinion. Let the babe who needs a brain implant deflate. You’re telling me a lot of beauty contestants are fake? Next you’re going to be telling me their personalities are artificial too. There is no talent, no personality to these contestants, just parading down the runway like a ding-dong trying to cure cancer and find the right handbag to match her navel.”

Ding-dong has been stumble-bumbling on the morning shows. Expect Hannity’s Great American Panel to be next, the slutty Kim Kardashian having already blazed a trail with her famous tail on that Fox News show. I never thought I’d come to think of “Hannity and Colmes,” “Hannity” in his previous incarnation, as an intellectual high-water mark for this “news” program.

From the bimbo burlesque, let’s move on to the ding-dong’s area of expertise, same-sex nuptials. This is from my “MARRIAGE AND THE MANUFACTURING OF RIGHTS”:

“Not conferring the benefits of marriage on homosexual unions does not violate the rights of gays. Not if we adhere to the libertarian definition of rights as the inalienable rights to life, liberty and property. Since these are the only rights libertarians wish the state to enforce, equality under the law is thus the requirement that the state not deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process. …

“If we define rights properly, we must conclude that gay couples are not being denied their individual rights.” …

“Ideally, government should be entirely divorced from the nuptial business. But from the fact that the state upholds traditional marriage, why does it follow that it is violating the individual rights of same-sex couples who clearly don’t fit the definition or the profile?”

“Religious institutions ought to act as the ministers of marriage. If marriage were privatized, conservatives would have to accept that some liberal churches and synagogues (the mullahs in their mosques would resist) will wed homosexuals.”

Update (May 1): To read about other “conservative,” blond, ding-dongs, see:

A Cow Is Born

Elizabeth Hasselbeck

Update III: Swine Flu Part II: Pandemic Threat Raised

Classical Liberalism, Constitution, Democrats, Government, Healthcare, Homeland Security

JUST ANOTHER DAY AT THE US-MEXICAN BORDER. Breitbart: “Suddenly faced with a new and unforeseen threat, people entering the country who said they felt unwell were questioned about their symptoms. But there were no reports of anyone refused entry.”

THE SWINE STILL AWOL Although Secretary Napolitano has advised Americans not to travel to Mexico, the Homeland Security’s headless head lady has instructed border agents to lay off entrants from Mexico; do only passive surveillance now.

“Right now,” she said, “we don’t think the facts warrant a more active testing or screening of passengers coming in from Mexico. … All persons entering the United States from a location of human infection of swine flu will be processed through all appropriate CBP protocols. Right now those are passive. That means that they’re looking for people who — and asking about, are you sick, have you been sick, and the like; and if so, then they can be referred over for further examination.”

Meantime, world-wide, “thermal scanners and upgraded checks for flu-like symptoms” have been implemented at airport checkpoints.

MSNBC: “Ira Longini, professor of biostatistics and epidemiology at the University of Washington in Seattle, talks about using ‘social distancing’ to reduce transmission of swine flu.” But worries that the window of opportunity is closing.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but “social distancing” would include precisely the measures this administration (following in the the footsteps of the last band of bastards) refuses to take: Put some distance between residents of flu “Ground Zero” (Mexico) and the US.

(Swine Flu Part I.)

Update I: Writes the indefatigable Brenda Walker of VDARE.COM:

“I don’t think Washington would shut down the Mexican border for any reason. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of American citizens are killed yearly by illegal alien Mexicans and those victims are considered by elites to be the acceptable cost of the globalized economy. Nothing changed in immigration policy after 9/11 when 3,000 died in an hour. So don’t expect a few germs to alter the Potemkin village that stands for national security these days. DHS is not even testing travelers from Mexico for the virus even though the government has declared a public health emergency.”

Update II (April 29): Those anarchists who think laissez faire is best in the case of the Mexican Flu will be disappointed. The WHO has raised the pandemic threat to 5, “meaning the world is at imminent risk of a pandemic from H1N1 swine flu,” said Dr. Margaret Chan.

This also means that the US can no longer just wave through entrants from Ground Zero.

In my household there is a little less snickering at the resident Howard Hughes: me. For years I’ve practiced rituals my family has scoffed, even mocked. Having grown up in a water-poor country where fruit and veg. are irrigated with “recycled” water (Israel), I wash produce down to the individual berry, and dry it, with the hope that mechanical manipulation helps remove filth.

With me in my handbag are alcohol impregnated “wet ones”; I prefer these to bottled gel, because you can’t sterilize handles, bars and door knobs with the latter. My keyboard has recently been replaced since vigorous cleaning had caused the letters to fade. I’ve been barred from our very old TV remote, after Sean managed to salvage it.

You get the drift.

Still, Scherie G. makes exactly the point that needs making. Not everyone entering the US is equal, however much our egalitarians would like that to be the case. Americans are so naive, they fail to even begin to imagine the kind of hygiene, health, and eating habits mass migration brings to their country.

As an immigrant to this country, I was screened for TB, HIV, Hepatitis B., and other infectious diseases. Can I honestly say that the host population had no right to know whether I carried these dread diseases?

Anyone who has not crossed over into the intellectual abyss that is anarchy will recognize that, yes, the host population has a right to be protected from an assault on their persons.

What infuriates me is the fact that such screening is practiced on a biased sample: one which is law abiding, tax-paying, and relatively well-off and healthy.

The number of communicable diseases—some really grotesques, such as brain worms, dengue fever, and leprosy—that have entered the US because of unselective immigration is appalling.

“Each illegal with Multi-Drug Resistant Tuberculosis coughs and infects 10 to 30 people, who will not show symptoms immediately. Latent disease explodes later,” reports WND.

So the idea that once one carrier enters the country, then the other million need not be stopped is worse than stupid. The greater the number of infected entering the country, the greater and wider-spread the harm.

Update III: DHS does not have to solve the problem of the flu; all it has to do is its duty: defend this country’s borders. Not sure why this simple thing is so hard to grasp. It must be the affliction that accompanies those congenital, left-liberal, anarcho-instincts.

Updated: Meaningless Musical Chairs

Democrats, Elections 2008, Government, Media, Political Philosophy, Politics, Republicans, Science

The parties are exchanging spit:

MSNBC: “Republican Sen. Arlen Specter disclosed plans Tuesday to switch parties, bringing Democrats closer to the 60-vote supermajority they need to push Barack Obama’s agenda through the Senate.”

The imagery conjured by defections, or ideological spit swapping, between Republicans and Democrats, in my mind, is of two colossal, identical amoebas occasionally allowing their semi-permeable cell walls to open and merge with a biologically compatible, primitive organism. In fact, that’s the perfect, dynamic metaphor for our two-party system.

Although dyed-in-the-wool party parrots will disagree, based on fact, reality, and policy prescriptions, the differences between the parties exist along a continuum; are quantitative, not qualitative.

As I said in “The Commie Who Controls the Economy From the Grave”:

“How much to hand out; who to hand it to; which handout makes the best use of taxpayer money; do the Big Three submit a business plan with their bailout requisitions, or not—that’s the depth of the ‘philosophical’ to-be-or-not-to-be among Republikeynsians.”

Mercer in 2006: “What we have now is a cartel, the traditional ideological differences between the political parties having been permanently blurred.”

The solution?

Mercer in 2006: “Antitrust laws ought to be deployed, not against business, but to bust this two-party monopoly, which subverts competition in government and rewards the colluding quislings with sinecures in perpetuity.”

Update: Look at the bright side. The political developments have steered Commissar Keith of MSNBC away from lamenting, night after night, the damage water boarding has wrought on Abu Zubaydah’s bladder, to speculating how Specter’s defection will help his man Obama’s agenda.