PaperbackWriter

Never forget that Donald Trump is the Music Man. youtube.com/watch?v=LI_Oe-…

Okay, but imagine if all the effort which has been spent on whipping up anti-immigration sentiment was instead put towards an effort at changing the law surrounding welfare access. Mass deportations only seem "more likely" than reforming welfare, because so much effort has been put into getting people worked up about immigration with narratives which are often just pure nonsense ("they're eating cats and dogs! They took our jobs!"), or which exploit blatant racism/bigotry (as I saw first-hand when I lived in England, where I caught the tail-end of the hysteria about Polish immigrants taking over Britain). Re. Reddy, "they wouldn't have been abused if he hadn't brought them" -- this just sounds to me like the arguments around gun control, where Democrats point to some ne'er-do-well criminal in the inner city who got a gun illegally in violation of all the many laws already making it illegal for him to get a gun and then saying "and that's why we need even more laws against getting a gun!" Criminals will get guns anyway. Ditto: criminals will get around the immigration laws and come into the country anyway, and a more Byzantine immigration system just creates more opportunities for criminals/abusers to take advantage of innocent people.

Opposing welfare on principle is irrelevant. That requires unlikely legal changes. Welfare for immigrants is already illegal, & just needs enforcement. Same for the other measures I mentioned. For Caplan to say "if" like that just means he's oblivious to the obvious facts, again. Yes, Reddy gamed the system (including Berkeley rent control, not a Federal immigration policy), but the people he brought in wouldn't have been able to afford to come if he hadn't brought them.

I changed my mind on immigration in part because I would read the literature in favor of open borders, but when they would write that "it does not mean that anyone should be allowed in the country, no questions asked," my natural question then was... well then what are the reasonable restrictions that we can impose? The answer to that was always met with hostility and derision, or being labeled a Nazis for suggesting that it's reasonable to not allow people to come who wish us harm. That's when I realized that the open borders advocates are lying when they say that there can be some restrictions. Oh, then it must be that we need a new libertarian nationalism that advocates for the proper role of restricting immigration to our nation and is specific about who can and can't come. Source: An Argument for Opening America’s Borders By Shikha Dalmia

Sigh. It's frustrating how you are so close to understanding this, but then throw in that the "important things" cops should be doing instead of bullshit like this is catching illegal immigrants. Catching illegal immigrants *is* part of the bullshit cops should say "no" to. If someone has lived here and hasn't hurt anyone or stolen anything, why should my taxes be spent paying a police officer to go after that person for not having a government permission slip, rather than have the cop go after someone who is actually violent and hurting innocent people?

Too many cops won't tell their supervisors "no" and will do ridiculous things rather than important things like catching illegal immigrants and other criminals. Sad we can't count on them and work with them as we would like to, as a community, as Citizens all of us.

Every open-borders libertarian I've ever come across has been adamantly against the existence of any taxpayer funded welfare (if you can point me to an exception, it would be the first example I've seen), and if the welfare state must exist, they're clearly in favor of denying welfare to immigrants. In practice, the biggest defenders of the welfare state are the restrictionists. Part of the reason why they want to keep out immigrants is so that more welfare money goes to native citizens. In fact, Ben Powell the economist has said (in a debate with Kirkorian) the best argument against more legal immigration is that it helps sustain the welfare state fiscally and thus immigration is an impediment to abolishing welfare. As for the point about immigration fraud/H1B fraud, I can understand why open borders libertarians don't care about that. It's all government bullshit anyway that no one should have to bother with in the first place, so who cares if the government is lied to by people trying to exercise their basic freedoms? It's like saying "2nd Amendment advocates never take issue with people setting up phony machine gun dealerships so they can buy machine guns!" -- yeah, because 2A advocates think *anyone* should be able to buy a machine gun without *any* government paperwork, so they're fine if some people game the government's system to their advantage because the government's system shouldn't exist in the first place. The adherence to the hostile ideologies is definitely a genuine concern, but I've seen Bryan Caplan say that if he saw evidence that a majority of immigrants coming here believed in hostile ideologies and wanted to destroy freedom, he would change his stance on open borders (iirc he said this to Nick Gillespie in an interview with Reason). Based on what I could find on Lakireddy Reddy on Wikipedia, it sounds to me like a big part of that problem is the system of immigration restrictions! People in India want to come to the US (for understandable reasons), but can't legally without jumping through a whole bunch of government-created (artificial) barriers or, often, can't come legally at all without gaming the system or committing out and out fraud. Thus, when they get to the US fraudulently and in violation of the law with the help of someone like Lakireddy Reddy, he now has power over the immigrants and can abuse them because he can always threaten them with deportation. If the people he abused could just come here legally without needing prior government permission, they wouldn't have need of Lakireddy Reddy "services" in the first place, or, if they accepted his help getting to the US, would be in a better position to flee him or report his abuses if the government itself weren't turning these people into criminals.

I'd be more sympathetic to them if they advocated proof of citizenship for voting and deportations for immigration fraud, going on welfare, adherence to hostile ideologies, and H1B fraud. They don't, as far as I've ever seen. Since you're a local, look up the case of Lakireddy Reddy. He was my landlord in Berkeley, so I have some personal experience w/ how our immigration system gets abused.

One of the persistently pernicious tropes that has come out of the Iran War is the idea that Tehran really wasn't the threat that hawks claimed it was. But Iran's own actions since the start of the conflict have proven the hawks completely correct. My latest - with receipts:

@PoliceThePolic1 One of these dudes was the supervisor at the jail. Sentenced to 16 months in prison.

⚠️ 5 Cops Savagely Beat the Piss Out of Prisoner on Suicide Watch - Which cop is the good cop?

But there's a huge a difference between saying "libertarianism needs a LAND to operate in" vs "libertarianism needs A PEOPLE to work," which is what "nationalism" ultimately comes to mean in practice most often, since "nation" the word is descended from Latin "natio" meaning "race of people." Plus, the people today who seem most enthusiastic about "nationalism" seem much more invested in the idea of "an exclusive group of homogeneous people" rather than "a territory where anyone can live in liberty."

@PaperhackWriter @AP4Liberty TLDR, policies need a territory first to operate in, otherwise, as they say, you're just pissing in the wind.

This is a sign that libertarian nationalism is a very real threat. Now is the time to join. DM me and I'll reach out.

Could also be they know Trump won't be around forever (or much longer) and are willing to put up with him until he's gone in a short while, whereas they're very wary about the up and coming gen of Democrats like AOC, Mamdani, and so on, not to mention the current crop as embodied by Kamala, Liz Warren, or the Party Establishment (Pelosi/Schumer).

Historically speaking, Dems should really be doing better than this considering Trump's weak approval rating. It could be that the polls are just not capturing a wave of people who will reluctantly vote Dem in November. But also possible that as annoyed as some are with Trump, they remember quite well that they like Dems even less. With current approval numbers for Trump being what they are, Republicans would do well to stay above 200 seats in the House. Instead, multiple polls have them still neck and neck to narrowly cling to the majority. A pleasant surprise, for now. My default assumption though is that political gravity will eventually assert itself if nothing changes in GOP's favor.

@The_Davos_Man They made him American because Americans are just more cool than any Russian ever could be, that's why. It's the meme, about know the rules:

I hate the "Lord of War" movie. Because they turned Victor Bout into an American. Don't know if they thought it would make the character more relatable, or because they wanted to tell a "West Bad" narrative. But it sucks. Victor Bout is a Russian war criminal.

@krzysioactuary @AP4Liberty "Oh, so you believe in the right to private property? So does that mean I get to own slaves?" Your argument is just as stupid. Open borders = *peaceful* individuals voluntarily moving around, not "armed soldiers moving to a place so they can be violent to other people."

@AP4Liberty I ask: "So the border will be open for People's Liberation Army to march in and liberate us, good and hard, right?" And in return I get: - Accusations of islamophobia, when I was expressing marxismophobia, are these two the same? - "We have military for that" -- To close borders?

Open borders libertarians: liberty for all, no person has the right to restrict the movement of others across property that person doesn't own. Bordertarians: but the foreigners are really scary! I demand the government protect me by not allowing *literally anyone and everyone* to cross the government's arbitrarily defined monopolized parcel of land it calls a border! Open borders libertarians: okay, fine, we'll compromise by having *some* restrictions based on objective criteria, like a person who is violent, believes in a violent ideology, has a criminal record, is mentally ill, stuff like that. Bordertarians: Oh, so you don't REALLY believe in open borders!??!?!? Open borders libertarians: Well, yeah, I do, I'm fine with allowing in literally anyone and everyone because I understand the government can't keep you safe and immigration restrictions don't actually work as intended, but cause a lot of harm to innocent people, including the native born of a country. I'm just willing to compromise with you if it means we have borders which are way more open than they are now. Bordertarians: No, we need to make borders even more shut than they are now!

I think you're being a little harsh to open borders libertarians, but Bryan Caplan definitely humiliated himself by defending Dubai's immigration model, which is little better than (or maybe actually worse than) indentured servitude. Caplan came across as a stereotypical ivory tower academic, divorced from reality, and autistic libertarian, wedded to theory over actual practice.

Unrestricted-borders advocates are the most dishonest people I've ever seen in the Libertarian movement outside foreign policy. Their whole argument consists of equivocating between qualified and unqualified immigrants to generate statistical averages, then denying that there are any such things as unqualified immigrants. E.g., the recent Cato study finding that "immigrants" were net-positive for the US economy, lumping in illegal border-hoppers w/ H1B medical professionals, then ignoring the costs of their children born here, then saying that it's a good thing that they raise housing prices and property taxes for US citizens??? Completely dishonest. Then there was Bryan Caplan saying Dubai was an example of open borders just because it has a high foreign-born population. Most of those foreigners are de facto slaves, brought in to work construction in such heat that they get so dehydrated they literally stop peeing no matter how much water they drink, and they can't leave their employers because their bosses confiscate their passports, so they can't live or work for anyone else and they can't leave the country, either. Unrestricted-borders advocates also completely ignore that Democrats subsidize illegal immigration for immigrants who will vote Democrat, paying for their housing, medical care, etc., enabling them to work under the table for less than legal US residents.

Because you wanted a Francis Scott Key Bridge update. *collapsed 2 years ago *primary contractor fired *budget initially 1.8 billion now 5.2 billion *completion initially 2028 now late 2030. Posting this in pencil.

@lisavsworld Eh.....it was pretty lame to have *yet another* Darth Vader expy/stand-in. However, there was indeed great potential in showing how he's basically an edgy teenager who worships an evil man as a way of rebelling against his hippie parents, same way some teens worship Hitler now.

Kylo Ren was an excellent character and he was well acted and perfectly cast. He had so much potential that was wasted by poor writing and Kathleen Kennedy's obsession with girlbossery.

Why is a dead dictator's account from a country that bans X (and the internet) for its people still allowed to be verified and post here?

Mussolini had the same idea about how to sell socialism to the masses. By wrapping it in the flag of nationalism. HOWEVER (I'll stop being facetious for a minute), I *agree* with your point about "American" Libertarianism. That does go down well with ordinary people! But I'd call that "patriotic libertarianism" not "nationalist libertarianism" and yet when I suggested such a term to Austin, he explicitly shot it down. Why? Because he revels in how the word "nationalist" alienates certain kinds of libertarians.

@PaperhackWriter @AP4Liberty Padgett made the point that it's easier to rally people in an ideology if there is a "nation" component to it. Like "American" as in "American Libertarianism" as opposed to pure internationalist ideology like "international communism" I don't like the confusion this term causes

A list of self proclaimed libertarian nationalists so far... 1. Jeremy Kauffman 2. Austin Petersen 3. Austin Padgett 4. ________?

It's interesting how all those people you named (except maybe Tom Woods?) used to be Leftists and/or Democrats before becoming "libertarians" -- and why did they become libertarians? Because of the "war" issue. It's almost as if they never stopped being Leftists, and all the good parts of libertarianism -- free market absolutism, gun rights, drug legalization, open borders -- are stuff they're willing to throw away in order to appease America's enemies.

Chase Oliver's foreign policy is the same as Nick Fuentes' and Dave Smith's and Tom Woods' and Marxist professor Michael Rectalward's.

Thanks to the Jones Act waiver, Americans can now send American fuel to other Americans without resorting to ridiculous and inefficient workarounds:

@MorosKostas Credit where it is due.

This is, unless I am forgetting one, the 4th civil rights lawsuit by the DOJ to defend Second Amendment rights in the places they are under siege: 1. Sued Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department over its years-long wait times for carry permits. 2. Sued US Virgin Islands over unconstitutional gun permit denials. 3. Sued DC over its AWB. 4. Now this Denver lawsuit. That's on top of the many amicus briefs, the ATF rule changes just announced, the upcoming rights restoration process, and so on. We are a cynical bunch in the 2A space, and perhaps that comes with the territory I guess of being activists for a right which is centered on the ultimate skepticism of government power. But it's critical to acknowledge that, in terms of federal support of the Second Amendment, we've never had it so good in modern history. The only comparison I can think of, as I often note, is the Reconstruction-era Freedmen's Bureau, which also tried hard to defend gun rights for people whose government was trying to disarm them.