Larry Arnn, the conservative president of Hillsdale College, arguably the most conservative college in the country, had an op-ed in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal in which he partially praised the Declaration of Independence. Complimenting J.D. Vance’s speech accepting the Republican vice-presidential nomination, Arnn reflected on certain passages of the Declaration of Independence, such as how it is sometimes necessary for people “to dissolve the political bands” and its appeal to the “laws of Nature and Nature’s God.” Notably omitted from Arnn’s homage to the Declaration, however, was what I consider the most important phrase of all: that everyone has been “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Why would Arnn omit that phrase from his paean to the Declaration? One possibility is that he simply overlooked it. Another possibility is that he doesn’t think it’s very important. Yet another possibility is that he doesn’t agree with it.
In fact, even though they are loathe to admit it, most right-wingers ardently oppose that part of the Declaration of Independence. That’s because they know it negates their deep devotion to America’s system of immigration controls.
As a right-winger, Arnn is a deep devotee of America’s system of immigration controls. As such, he believes that the federal government should wield the power to control who enters the United States. Yet, at the same time, he has to realize that his favoring of America’s system of immigration controls — and, implicitly, the immigration police state that comes with it — cannot possibly be reconciled with Thomas Jefferson’s notion in the Declaration that everyone, not just Americans, has been endowed with the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Consider the pursuit of happiness. When migrants cross the southern border and enter the United States, they are exercising this particular right. They are pursuing happiness by coming to the United States. Either the pursuit of happiness is a natural, God-given right or it isn’t. If it isn’t, then it’s a privilege bestowed by government, one that the government can regulate, control, and manage. But if it is a right, then it precedes government. In fact, as the Declaration states, the reason that government is called into existence is to protect the exercise of natural, God-given rights that naturally precede government.
It’s the same with respect to the rights of life and liberty. When migrants come to the United States, they are trying to sustain their lives through labor. That necessarily means the exercise of economic liberty — that is, entering into mutually beneficial labor contracts with employers and economically beneficial trades with others. If life and liberty are natural, God-given rights that adhere to everyone, as the Declaration states, then government has no legitimate authority to control, regulate, manage, or interfere with them.
I am sure that Arnn understands the importance of freedom of travel with respect to interstate borders inside the United States. I’m willing to bet that he favors America’s system of open borders and freedom of travel within the United States. But the inference to be drawn is that he considers freedom of travel to be a government-granted privilege rather than a natural, God-given right that adheres to all people everywhere. That’s because crossing an international border and entering the United States is no different from crossing a state border and entering a state. Both are entirely peaceful acts that do not involve a violation of the rights of others.
In his article, Arnn refers to America as our national “home.” But that notion is actually a Cuban or North Korean one. In those countries, the state owns everything and so it’s understandable that people would see their nation as a national home in which government controls the “front door.”
But America is founded on the principle of privately owned property, which, as the English philosopher John Locke, who inspired Jefferson, pointed out, is another natural, God-given right. That means that you have the right to control who comes onto your property, but neither you nor the government have the right or authority to control who comes into my home or my business. That’s because my home and my business belong to me, not to you and not to the government.
It’s also worth mentioning that America’s system of immigration controls is based on the socialist principle of central planning. That’s why we have had a hundred years of what Ludwig von Mises termed “planned chaos.” It’s also why we have an immigration police state, one that includes a Berlin Wall and concertina wire, which brings death and suffering to multitudes of innocent people who are doing nothing more than exercising their natural God-given rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Yet, conservatives pride themselves on favoring “free enterprise, private property, and limited government,” which is their favorite mantra, only not when it comes to immigration. Needless to say, a socialist immigration-control system, a government-controlled “national home,” and an immigration police state are the opposite of “free enterprise, private property, and limited government.”
Not surprisingly, there was another provision of the Declaration that Arnn failed to mention in his article — that one of the reasons the British colonist were revolting was that their king was “refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither.”