And the more the immigrant does to strengthen and empower the state, the more you will appreciate his presence. Got it.

Wow, this is getting long. May have to break further replies into mutliple posts.

Sounds good to me. Since we agree that usurpation is an illegitimate act, we should be in agreement that Person A telling Person B who Person B can allow onto Person B's property is illegitimate, right?

I mean, what could be more usurpatative (I'm loving this word) than me telling you what to do (and backing it up with the threat of violence)?

You're trying to wiggle out on a technicality. You've said that states "control" land. But such control can only be legitimate if the controller is the owner, OR has explicit permission from the owner. Since neither of these seem to be the case (and my argument is nothing more than pointing out that we have yet to see ANY way a state can own property legitimately), the control must be illegitimate.

Voting for what? Voting confers no legitimacy outside of the group of individuals who explicitly consent to such arrangements. If a gang gets together and decides to beat some guy up and take his stuff, the action does not magically become legitimate if they "vote for it".

Donation is something I'm willing to consider. There are problems with this, but I'll allow it for the purposes of this thread, since these problems are getting pretty esoteric and are *way* outside the scope of this thread. Let's even go as far as saying that the land the government actually claims "ownership" of was so donated. So the state has legitimate authority then to keep foreigners out of it's parks, and office buildings, and military bases, and courthouses.

Of course, my backyard has never been donated to the state, so the state's rules and regulations cannot legitimately be imposed there.

No! The issue of redress is totally seperate from the issue of legitimate ownership.



So what *do* you have to lend legitimacy to your position?

OK, just give me the axioms you're working from. Then we can see if the positions you're taking are consistent with those axioms.

It isn't sufficient because you want to impose those things upon other people. To do that, you need more than just *your own* approval.

Is stating a reason why I think Coke is better than Milk sufficient enough to impose rules upon you saying that milk is forbidden and coke is mandatory?

Still no answer! Why should your opinion be imposed? Your position places an onus upon me. It interferes with things that I am *entitled* to - freedom of assembly, for one. My position places no burden upon you. It does not deprive you of anything. My decision to interact with people who happen to have been born in Mexico in no way reduces your "right" to "space" - you still own the same property you owned before.

So, given that your position is invasive, and mine is not, WHY SHOULD YOUR OPINION BE IMPOSED UPON ME?

Example: Alice wants to shoot Bob, and Bob does not want to be shot. Obviously, both people cannot be satisfied. Is the fact that both of them cannot be simultaneously satisfied a *reason* that Alice *should* shoot bob? No, it's simply restating that the two positons are mutually exclusive.

Throw the baby out with the bathwater then?

"If I stick to principles, I can't get certain things that I want. Therefore, prinicples are too pesky. I'll say they're 'unpragmatic' to give my deviations an air of superiority."

Tell me, when are deviations from principles justified? Anytime you decide it's what you need to do in order to get what you want? If deviation from principles is part of your game plan, YOU HAVE NO PRINCIPLES.

My principles are very simple - and yes, I do think it is possible to stick to them. Other people may not, that doesn't mean I have to follow suit.

All you're doing here is highlighting the flaws in the system you support, the exact flaws I've been pointing out all along. You support a system where people get to tell other people what to do; you're fine with this, as long as you like the people who get to do the bossing around. You want rules to keep people you don't like from getting to positions where they can tell you what to do. You say if I get my way, people you don't like will start bossing you around. But if I get my way, the system by which they boss you around won't even exist!

That's not to say that you couldn't form or join some sort of collective organization that would do things like produce some document listing your rights, and provide structure for you to donate money towards protecting those rights.


Let's go through it one step at a time:

First you say that rights come from a piece of paper. Then you say that peice of paper limits government power (I agree that is was the *intent* of the authors), and that it does NOT grant rights.

Then you ask *me* if I realize this.

Usurped is different than "ungranted".

For someone who complains about bare assertions, this sure is a doozy.



So if "no constitution" equals "worst case scenario, ultimate government oppression" please explain how the constitution came to be in the first place. Since there was no magical piece of paper exuding a forcefield around our rights before it was created, our rights must have been so trampled that it would have been impossible to create such a document. Yet it happened. How? (for someone who complains when someone doesn't answer your questions, you sure leave a lot unanswered yourself.)

And again, you're imposing a false dichotomy. You're limiting the discussion to a choice between a limited government and an unlimited totalitarian regime.

If you don't like a Ford, you're going to get stuck with a Chevy.

Did you forget that you could ride a bike?

Which doesn't answer my question. Just more of the same "different people are yucky" stuff.

You say all these scary foriengers want to take away your constitution, when the most obvious threats to it are from native-born citizens, NOT foreigners. You're not sure what USAians have to do with that???

You might as well argue what would happen if 200 million martians became US citizens and voted in a regime of Green Overlords, given that all you've provided so far are the bare assertions you rail against when you think others are providing them. There's no evidence presented so far that any significant number of immigrants are coming here with the intention to destroy your precious magical paper, and as has been discussed above, this is a goalpost move since immigration and citizenship are different issues.

But regardless, this is nothing more than an appeal to boogeyman emotion. The fact that the boogeyman might do bad things to me is no justification to do slightly-less-bad things to me against my will simply because you claim to be protecting me from that boogeyman.

I read it again. And the dicotomy you alude to ("I'm not saying that ONLY persons who don't care about rights will object to lack of U.S. Constitutional protections") is not one I was accusing you of making.

Here's what I read:

You present two alternatives.

1) You beleive in the constitution and the rights it protects

2) You don't care about those rights.

That's how you framed it. You don't *explicitly* claim dichotomy, but it's very strongly impled.

More immigrant/citizen conflation. My interacting with some guy who happened to be born in mexico in no way requires you to admit him into your secret collective decision-making organization.

I just replied to nearly the entire post in detail only to have it lost due to acidentally hitting some Microsoft IE button I was unfamiliar with. Sorry but I'm not willing to do it again as it took about 45 minutes.

Let's throw out most of the embedded quotes if possible and try it from there. If not that, we'll just have to agree to disagree because this has gotten way too cumbersome and time-consuming. Good discussion though. If you'd care to summarize (maybe that would be best) I'll do my best to respond. But let's not get off into 5 deep embedded quotes and multiple times in one post - or anything approaching that. Good discussion and thanks.

Wow. Send this to a newspaper OP-ED or something. That was beautiful.

Would like to note that I enjoyed spectating and can't wait to spectate future JK/pvn debates.

Beautifully written....and totally wrong.

that is well written, and correct. JK, you gave them the Y from the DUCY about 50 posts ago, and they still refuse to take the blinders off. Give it up.

There's where you're oversimplifying and where you're wrong. If the USA takes in enormous blocs of people those people will tend to vote or press for government as they are accustomed to, and for what they view as what the role of government should be.

Nearly every country in the world has a philosophy geared more towards big government nanny-statism than does the USA. Immigrants from those places are likely to vote or agitate in that direction as well.

Additionally, relatively poor immigrants (which is most of them, considering illegals) are likely to vote or press for increased social services from government - which services as we both know, are only made possible by increasing the power of the government. They will also use a lot of social services from government sources which will increase funding (taxation) pressures in that direction. So your Mexican immigrants will on average contribute both political and demographic pressures towards bigger, not smaller, government in the USA. Q.E.D.

The dichotomy wasn't intended. Perhaps it's my fault for expecting that people will read precisely what I write and no more.

It seems to me after reading this debate and considering the issue that the real problem with immigration is clearly not immigration, but socialism. Immigration is a natural boon that socialism tries to turn into a pestilence. Shutting off the borders slows economic progress and seems like surrender to the corrupt machine that causes many of the curses associated with immigration and poverty as a whole.

This is what I assumed when I typed that posted. Ceteris paribus, we are wealthier with more economic competition rather than less; unfortunately other variables can come into play when introducing lots of poor people into a democracy.

Unless I'm totally wrong for some other reason, in which case I don't really know what to say.

It seems what you are saying is this: power centralization is bad. So does that make you an anarchist? Because if you are, we have no problem.

I've linked this like 10 times already, but it keeps being relevant:


Robert Murphy - Five Most Common Myths about International Trade
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6539529787216552726&hl=nl

I would say I am more of a Constitutional minimalist. (Very minimalist )

That's good to hear.


Can you explain to me at what point decentralization of power becomes bad? The anarchists want power in the hands of the people themselves, that they themselves can choose how to use their own property whereas any form of power/statism demands the existance of a ruling class that take away this power from people and into a special class of people.

Good question, and I'll have to think about it a bit to give you a more complete answer than this:

It's not that I think decentralization of power is bad (I think it is generally good), but rather that I think that in the complete absence of a minimal, constitutionally limited framework, even worse frameworks will arise which will concentrate power at even greater expense and destruction of individual rights.

So what are the principles?

You say a concentration of power is bad, but you say your personally preferred concentration of power is good.

This leads to my often cited question: why can't I be free?

Why *must* a human being exert physical violence against me?

If your reasoning is [ human being X *must* exert physical violence over you because he is preventing another human being from exerting even greater physical violence against you ], then I hope you see the problem of the act itself. Anyone exerting physical power over someone else can-not be interested in helping others. Physical violence by it's very nature is destructive and can never serve people who it is exerted over.


I can come to no other conclusion that your argument is one from status quo: the power that exists is legitimized because it holds the power. Because how would you respond to following your argument through in a consistent manner: the person who does not initially hold the power (the one ruled over), would stand up, fight and exert power *back* over the previous ruler, because his reasoning is: I am doing good by exerting physical violence over this other human being to prevent even *worse* atrocities.


Do you see how your argument justifies *any* violence, because it states that anyone enacting in aggressive violence can claim to be preventing even worse atrocities.




(I think my argument above is sound, maybe pvn can check it).

Ding.

Consider this.

You go stand out in the middle of the road at 5:00 AM when there's no traffic. You're fine. Nothing is bothering you. Occasionally a guy drives by you, but he easily sees you and drives around.

Now 8:30 rolls around. There's about 300 times as many cars. You're getting honked at, cussed out, and very nearly killed. This isn't at all like things "used to be".

Now, is the solution to make everyone stop driving, or to get the [censored] out of the road?

This happens way too often. It's happened to me more than once. For posts of any significant length, I always type them in an external text editor then copy/paste them into the 2+2 form. It's saved me on several occasions.

IF they become citizens. And IF then they vote. Neither of which is the lock you're making it out to be. Allowing people to come here and work, even granting permanent resident status IN NO WAY REQUIRES GRANTING CITIZENSHIP.

I really don't have any more to say on this point.

The problem with immigration isn't "socialism", to use that abbreviation for our social programs. The problem is giving illegal immigrants access to those programs. You can have one without the other, although Id prefer neither (as welfare is currently structured). To surmise that without social programs there would be less illegal immigration is fairly obvious, to assume it would signficantly less is pure guesswork.