Category Archives: The State

Robert Rector Of the Heritage Foundation On the ‘Transfer State’

libertarianism, Political Economy, The State

Robert 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

Machan/Mercer Exchange

Founding Fathers, Government, IMMIGRATION, libertarianism, The State

Tibor Machan posted a brief reply to “The Work Open-Border Libertarians Won’t Do” in the Comments Section of Barely a Blog. The meat of Machan’s reply:

“Refusing to extend welfare to illegal immigrants will amount to an arbitrary, indeed mean-minded policy based on nothing more than nationalism or even worse, such as preference for members of one’s own race or age group or some such nonsense.”

Machan’s line of reasoning proceeds from the premise that limiting the size and scope of the Welfare State no matter how is not necessary the most urgent—and hence the most ethical and moral—imperative. Rather, according to Tibor’s reasoning, given the reality of the Transfer State, apportioning welfare based on egalitarian, “fair,” and consistent criteria is the most pressing matter.

The premise of Machan’s reply seems to be that egalitarian treatment (of the world) is the proper purpose of policy. As a strict propertarian, I could not disagree more; As I see it, the imperative of policy is to limit theft, not extend its spoils fairly.

I also wonder about the worldview held by libertarians. The founders clearly recognized that some people were the responsibility of a limited, American, republican government; others not. What, after all, did John Quincy Adams mean when he counseled that America not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy, but remain the well-wisher of the freedom and independence of all, but the champion and vindicator only of her own?

Machan’s reply, on the other hand, seems to suggest that “We Are the World”—that since we have the misfortune of laboring under the transfer state, we are obliged to extend its “benefits” to all who enter its orbit.

Quarantine, Yes Or No?

Classical Liberalism, Ethics, Individual Rights, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, The State

“I’m a very well-educated, successful, intelligent person. This is insane to me that I have an armed guard outside my door when I’ve cooperated with everything other than the whole solitary-confinement-in-Italy thing.”

So said the patient “with a form of tuberculosis so dangerous he is under the first U.S. government-ordered quarantine since 1963,” on returning from a transatlantic trip to celebrate his wedding. The trip took him from Atlanta to Europe—Greece, Italy, the Czech Republic, France—and back to Atlanta via Canada and New York. By the man’s telling, he came back not because he realized he had exposed others to a deadly, highly infectious airborne disease, but because “he was afraid that if he did not get back to the U.S., he would not get the treatment he needed to survive.”
“Health officials said the man had been advised not to fly and knew he could expose others when he boarded the jets from Atlanta to Paris, and later from Prague to Montreal… He knew he had a form of tuberculosis and that it was resistant to first-line drugs.” Apparently he was also told to wear a mask. That too he ignored. If Andrew Speaker—that is the patient’s name—is as smart as he professes, he ought to have known not to expose people without their consent to any TB, much less to a strain associated with a 50 percent mortality rate.

Speaker returned to North America via Canada, driving into the US, a fact that demonstrates consciousness of guilt: He avoided American airlines, as he had been placed on a “no-fly alert,” which, it transpires, was overlooked at the border crossing. I suspect this case is akin, legally, to an individual infected with HIV not informing his sexual partners of his condition.

I’m trying to think of a libertarian argument against coercively confining a man who knowingly and intentionally uses his body as a lethal weapon against unsuspecting innocents. I can’t come up with one. Can you? Another libertarian has expressed a preference for “home confinement with an electronic monitor. This would seem to strike the balance between protecting his liberty interests and the safety of the public.” I like home confinement, only I really do not believe the authorities acted illiberally up until now: they gave the patient the goods (the info), and left it up to him to comply voluntarily. Andrew Speaker, on the other hand, ignored the information and acted recklessly. Should be given a second strike? If he strikes out again, someone could die—especially individuals with a low T cell count (suppressed immunity). Armed and dangerous is how he ought to be regarded. Would an electronic monitor provide ample warning in the event he violated the quarantine? By the time the authorities locate the quarantine violator, he may well have infected a host of people.
In the meantime, Diane Sawyer, who grills her subjects only in the sense Larry King interviews his, has elicited Speaker’s story. It’s a maze of contradictions and dissembling, and is accompanied suspiciously with “sexy” poses of Innocent Andy and a woman with a blond head the shape of Paris Hilton’s, a forlorn look, and big implants. His new wife, presumably. The fact that this is an educated man—a lawyer, no less—doesn’t help his case.

Elections: Punish the Pols

Elections 2008, Neoconservatism, Politics, The State

It becomes crucial to remind Americans that, irrespective of political fidelity, politicians—local, state, and federal—must pay for the evil they do. They enjoy the kind of immunity no one in the private sector enjoys. Justice demands punishment, not rewards for what these people have inflicted on us.

If you like paying in blood and treasure for recreational wars, fine; throw the bums out for the nine-trillion in national debt they’ve run up. As our national debt stands, we would not be admitted into the company of socialists: The European Union. The EU “expects member nations to hold deficits below 60 percent of GDP.”

Heck, punish them for Sarbanes-Oxley. Foreign companies are choosing to delist in the US, because of the cost of compliance with our regulations, and opting to list in Europe and Britain. Our capital markets are more communistic than the countries Bill O’Reilly is always mocking.

Just punish the pols. Maybe they’ll develop a Pavlovian response to aversive treatment, if not a dog’s smarts.