Category Archives: The State

Refugees, Not Europeans, Benefit From The Engineering Of A Single European Identity

EU, Europe, IMMIGRATION, The State

“Europe rediscovers borders,” writes Kevin D. Williamson, and I would urge that so should we. “[T]he free movement of people called ‘al-Nasseri’ across the Mediterranean and over the Bavarian Alps” has been slowed some, with Germany and Austria… announcing “the implementation of border checkpoints.”

Checkpoints, of course, are not borders; they are what government erects when it wants to be seen to be doing something (I sound like Sir Humphrey Appleby of BBC’s “Yes, Minister” and “Yes, Prime Minister” satires). A Brownian Motion of sorts.

And to what avail are checkpoints if you are going to eventually allow a deluge of Middle-Eastern men safe passage into your communities? As Mark Krikorian points out,

… it’s important to note that refugees from the Islamic world cannot be properly vetted. I don’t mean only that the Obama administration has a frivolous approach to “violent extremists,” or that the Department of Homeland Security hasn’t shown itself especially competent in this regard. Rather, it is impossible to weed out jihadists from a refugee flow. Who are we going to check with, the Damascus police department? It’s not like any document claiming to be from Syria can be relied on; fake Syrian passports, for instance, are in great demand.

Back to Kevin:

… Berlin has pleaded for “solidarity” in the face of the crisis, studiously avoiding the question “Solidarity with whom?” Sweden, with its population of just 9.6 million, is expecting somewhere between 75,000 and 100,000 applications for refugee status. …
… Poland has shocked polite society by making it clear that it would prefer a small number of refugees, if any, and that they be Christian rather than Muslim. …
… Different peoples have different countries for a reason, and that’s why there are — or should be — fences or their equivalents. Whatever your assessment of the merits of Switzerland vs. Syria, Switzerland is Switzerland because it is full of Swiss people, and Syria is Syria because it is full of Syrians. As in the United States, the fingers-in-the-ears refusal of responsible European authorities to recognize this basic fact of life — that human beings are not interchangeable widgets …

Question: Weren’t most writes at National Review once for the collectivist super-state that is the European Union?

The quest to engineer a single European identity is at the heart of the crisis (as is the US’s foreign policy). “It remains unmistakably true,” wrote classical liberal philosopher David Conway, that “from its postwar beginnings to the present, the principal advocates and architects of European union have been uniformly animated by collectivist objectives that are deeply anti-liberal in spirit and form.”

“The EU already has rights to legislate over external trade and customs policy, the internal market, the monetary policy of countries in the eurozone, agriculture and fisheries, many areas of domestic law including the environment and health and safety at work,” and it has extended its rights into “justice policy, especially asylum and immigration.”

And it is this illiberal impetus that has allowed bureaucrats in Brussels to usurp the authority of previously sovereign states and make policy for the Continent (while being immune from its repercussions). Were it not for the rigid controls the EU exerts over its satellite states—each European country would be likely to respond to “refugees” in a manner consistent with the wishes of the voters, rather than that of the bureaucracy and its crooked beneficiaries.

Marco Rubio’s Missing Years

Free Markets, Human Accomplishment, Republicans, The State

If my memory serves me correctly, during the first prime-time Republican debate, in Cleveland, Ohio, it transpired that Marco Rubio, a nice enough, charismatic “regimist,” had spent a total of two years of his working life outside of government (or in “public service,” to use a euphemism). Why wasn’t he asked what it was that he did during that time?

WTF! Did A Woman Just Get Jailed For Being Tardy??????

Government, Homosexuality, Liberty, Religion, The State

District Judge David Bunning has jailed a Kentucky county clerk who refused to violate her Christian faith and issue licenses to same-sex couples. (Via WND.) Fine (yes, how about a fine as a first option). Fire Kim Davis if she refuses to do the government’s business. It’s the dirty business she signed up for. But jail!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

WTF!

Oregon Oink Sector And The Urban-Renewal Trough

Business, Federalism, Government, Taxation, The State

Broadcaster Lars Larson did a bang-up job, today, in shaming City of Oregon Mayor Dan Holladay for his ambient lawlessness: first, for securing appropriations in the cause of urban, central planning; next, in his haste to frustrate the democratic will of the outraged citizens.

The circumstances, courtesy of the Portland Tribune:

Mayor Dan Holladay’s opinion piece published in the Autumn 2015 Trail News, a publication providing citizens information on most city departments, told every household in the city that a petition to kill urban renewal would have a “very chilling effect on economic development” not just in the downtown urban renewal district, but throughout the city.

After the state received a complaint on Aug. 25 from petitioners, Holladay said he “made a mistake” by submitting the piece for the Trail News.

State law (ORS 260.432) says that elected officials shouldn’t publish letters advocating a political position in “a newsletter or other publication produced and distributed by public employees.” Oregon City’s mayor has for years submitted a piece to the “City Matters” column on page 2 of the city’s Trail News publication.

John Williams, one of the petitioners, offered this trenchant condemnation:

Holladay doubly misstepped by submitting the argument for a city publication before the measure had even gotten enough signatures to qualify for the ballot.

“He has the right to express his opinion, but he shouldn’t be using citizens’ taxpayer dollars to try to put a halt to a democratic process,” Williams said. “Signing the petition in question will not ‘put a halt to these programs and many others’ as he claims, but only put an issue on the ballot for citizens to debate.” …

And no representative ought to use “citizens’ taxpayer dollars” for job-creation programs. The narrowest interpretation of a local government’s authority ought to be pursued and adhered to by all local representatives, whatever their political stripe.

That government job-creation programs are a racket for the locality is abundantly clear in our neck of The Evergreen State. Paving over quaint, perfectly lovely trails is a political hobbyhorse around here.

Local politics is not my bailiwick; but when I do venture into the miasma, the blood boils at the excesses in the pink state.

Those who’re better suited to confront the juggernaut that is local government might find it useful to apprise themselves of the history and politics of Urban Renewal, a history that has a lot to do with making poor people go away by demolishing their homes—gentrification, if you will. City officials—they live off wealth others generate: taxes—“grow” concerned over “declining incomes in and tax revenues from certain neighborhoods.” They then use their power to designate them as “blighted.” Government’s hope, ultimately, is to generate more tax revenues from the neighborhoods.

The CATO Institute speaks to how cities use tax-increment financing (TIF) in the service of “crony capitalism and social engineering.” If you want to slum it, read about the history and politics of TIF.