Malkin Or Sailer?

Ethics, IMMIGRATION, Intelligence, Journalism, Media

My mouth dropped open in amazement: Malkin, on Fox News, mustered more than bare-bones, “enforce-immigration-law” mantra for her argument. When asked as to the purpose of immigration law, she unusually referred to the injunction in the Preamble to the Constitution to “promote the general Welfare.”

I was impressed, but also baffled. Malkin is a straightforward reporter, who very rarely is capable of jumping a level of abstraction, beyond the facts, to come up with an original angle. How did she suddenly galvanize a principle to bolster her case? What was going on? (Then I went back to eating, so I forgot the whole episode…drool.)

Today, as I was catching up on Steve Sailer’s latest, I found a possible explanation for Malkin’s buoyed brain. In attempting to answer the question of “What is it that immigration policy is supposed to achieve?”, Sailer quotes from the Preamble:

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity…”

He then adds this:

“In other words, American policy should be for the benefit of Americans and our descendents, not for the advantage of, say, the five billion potential immigrants who live in countries with average per capita GDPs lower than Mexico.”

Speaking of third-rate pundits who borrow from their betters without crediting, a line first used in this column, recently “found” its way into a new book by this pseudo-libertarian. The line is: “The National Education Association is the al-Qaida of education.” I wonder where he got it.

Update: In response to the legitimately wry comments hereunder by our reader, let me clarify: This space is generally not given over to speculation. When you have an uncreative, unoriginal, yet immensely popular “pundit,” come up with formulations and ideas a creative, original thinker came up with; when the time line indicates the good guy said it before the gimp did; when the parties are well-acquainted (in one case, the one party used to advertise reading this column, often commented on it, and in more honest moments even acknowledge using it); when there is a power differential between the parties, in other words, when the good guy is nowhere near as influential and as known as the gimp—well, then, it is not unreasonable to wonder out loud about the mysterious, osmotic diffusion at play, enunciated in this post.

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.