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.

South African Jews: If Desperate, Go to Israel

Crime, IMMIGRATION, Israel, South-Africa

Israel’s overall death rate from crime is very low; lower than that of the US, which is, overall, about 6 in 100,000. Of course, in our ghettoes it rises to about 40 per 100,000, and thus closely approximates the rates I’ve documented for South Africa.

As readers of this blog (and of my columns) know, South Africa jostles with Iraq (but beats Columbia, I am told) for the title of the most violent place on earth: “The last statistics available, courtesy of the CBS, showed that between April 2004 and March 2005, 18,793 people were murdered in South Africa (population 47 million). In comparison, the ‘high crime’ United States (population 297 million) suffered 16,692 murders. Put differently, South Africa has 60 homicides per 100,000 people; the US approximately 6. And these are the official, filtered figures. According to Robert McCafferty of the United Christian Action, the South African Medical Research Council tallies 89 daily deaths, or 32,000 a year. Interpol’s statistics are also double those released by the South African Police Service.”

Remarkably, in 2004, Israel’s death by murder was 3.7 per 100,000 for civilians only; 4.3 when soldiers were included. (“Homicide rates in 2004 in a number of major U.S. cities, including the nation’s capital, exceeded rates of Palestinian fatalities at the hands of Israel’s army in the past year.”)

Ergo, if South African Jews are unable to immigrate to the US or Europe, they ought to consider Israel. They are far less likely to die there than in South Africa.

Paris’ Plight

Criminal Injustice, Hollywood, Individual Rights, Law

What’s being done to Paris Hilton is plain wrong.

Let me preface the above with this: She’s an ill-bred slut; a skunk with expensive clothes. She’s a stupid, rude, uneducated, and unkind woman (consider how she and her sidekick mocked those sweet quilting ladies on their reality show, and how they generally show contempt for the “yokels” with whom they slum it on the show).

Every time I’ve heard Paris speak, my impressions have been confirmed; she’s repulsive. As for her so-called allure, in “Sluts Galore,” I identified her as part of the “porn aesthetic,” sporting “sly, weasel-like looks.” I also thoroughly resent that her name mars one of my favorite fragrances, “Paris” by Yves Saint Laurent. (The allure of Paris the city, nothing can alter, except rioting Muslims.)

However, Hilton she was given unprecedented sentence for a low-level misdemeanor.

Here’s what Thomas Mesereau, a defense attorney for whom I have a great deal of respect, said. I praised his defense of Michael Jackson. (The article about that defense almost no one wanted to publish, including a large libertarian site.) Mesereau has said this about the legal plight of Paris—including the sentence, and the subsequent usurpation by the Judge of the sheriff’s authority:

“…you have a judge who is not following the law and who is willing to undermine our sheriff’s department. This judge absolutely has violated every procedure that applies to a situation like this. All her attorneys can do at this point is file an appeal, try and get her out on bail, as a misdemeanor permits one to do, and take it from there…

But I think the whole situation is a disgrace, because this judge undermined our sheriff and actually treated Paris Hilton far worse than anyone else would have been treated in this situation…

This judge knows darn well, because he’s in the criminal justice system, that people convicted of crimes like this, low-level misdemeanors, only spend a few days in jail, because they need to stop overcrowding, and they have to keep violent felons or people accused of violent felonies in jail.

I have had people go in the morning and leave that afternoon. Nobody gets 45 days like this. Nobody is told, you must spend all 45 days. He did it for the cameras. …And I think it’s highly improper…

I think equality should be the major message in our justice system, that, no matter who you are, you’re treated equally with everybody else.

This is a case of celebrity injustice. He did things with her because of who she is, and how much wealth she has, and because there were paparazzi and cameras around, that he wouldn’t have done with anybody else. And he’s created a difficult situation for our sheriff, who is a dedicated public servant, a very decent man. I know him very well.

And he’s trying to treat everybody equally. He didn’t treat Paris Hilton any differently from anyone else. And the judge tried to make it look like he had…”

Update: As usual, the media and the punditocracy are always wrong. Weeks after the fact, Greta Van Susteren of Faux News discovered (not due to any research she had conducted) that Hilton received more time than a wife batterer would. The Los Angeles Times did the journalist footwork (I can’t locate a link). After presiding over a gaggle of “experts” who hooted and hollered for Hilton’s head, Van Susteren has reversed her position.
About this you can be certain: mainstream media are always wrong. I put it down to cultural dumbing down: egalitarian hiring and the feminization of news.

In the chat I had with Jim Ostrowski of Paleo Radio last week, we agreed about the Hilton case, only I insisted on making the following distinctions (they are not mutually exclusive):
1) Hilton is a Ho—an unkind, classless slut. She’s huge because the market adjudicates popularity, not quality.
2) Hilton received unjust treatment by the legal system. (As a mother, I must say that the cry she let out to hers, “Mother, mother, this is unfair,” was horrible to hear.)

In this case, the injustice was by popular demand. The people—the pitchfork-hoisting, philosophical acolytes of the French Revolution—demanded Paris’s empty head, and got it.