printRobert Rector, Senior Research Fellow at the Heritage Foundation, has this to say about the illiberal, lemming’s lunacy of open-border libertarianism:
“I very much enjoyed your column on WorldNetDaily today. You hit the nail on the head. As I pointed out in a recent response the Wall Street Journal, the issue is not merely the “welfare state,” narrowly defined, but the much broader transfer/redistribution state, and, more fundamentally, the right to use the ballot box to pillage other people’s bank accounts. When you confer citizenship on a low-skill immigrant, you are granting them the right to use the electoral process to access your income.
I had a recent debate with Dan Griswold of Cato in which he actually said that we should have amnesty and open borders now and then work on limiting welfare later. (Not that Cato has ever had the least practical effect in limiting welfare spending). I think we could borrow a concept from the recent debate about “enforcement first.”
If libertarians are intellectually serious, they should eliminate the transfer state first along with the right to use the ballot box as an instrument of pillage, and then talk about open borders. At present, there is one potential vote for eliminating the welfare state in the U.S. Congress, so they will have their work cut out for them.
Again, great column.
Robert Rector
Senior Research Fellow
The Heritage Foundation