Reminder: Our online Zoom conference on open borders continues this Monday evening, November 4, with Don Boudreaux, former president of The Foundation for Economic Education and current professor of economics at George Mason University. 7 p.m.-8 p.m. Eastern Time. Register here.
Reminder: I’ll be speaking at the JFK Lancer conference and also at the CAPA conference, which are being held on November 22-24 in Dallas. There is also an excellent third JFK conference on the same weekend sponsored by the JFK Historical Group. All three of them are fantastic JFK-assassination-related conferences. I highly recommend registering for all three and then picking and choosing which sessions you would like to attend at all three conferences. The registration prices are moderate and it’s a great way to support three great conferences. I will have some of my JFK books at my presentations to autograph and sell at a discounted price. I hope to see you all there!
*****
Libertarian supporters of America’s socialist system of immigration controls often quote Milton Friedman, who said that you can’t have both open borders and a welfare state. The notion is that foreigners will come to America to get on welfare, which will result in higher taxes for American citizens. Therefore, the argument goes, we libertarians have no effective choice but to abandon the libertarian position in favor of open borders and join the statists in support of immigration controls until the welfare state has been brought to an end. As soon as the welfare state is terminated, they say, we can then return to advocating our libertarian principle of open borders.
To that, I respond: Nonsense and balderdash! We libertarians must never permit the statists to manipulate us into joining up with them in the support of any aspect of statism, including immigration controls. The minute that statists succeed in maneuvering us into joining them, they have won. Our goose is cooked with respect to achieving a genuinely free society. After all, who can have any respect for a movement that permits itself to be manipulated into abandoning its principles and supporting statism?
If we are to ever achieve the genuinely free society, we libertarians have to continue standing foursquare and uncompromisingly in favor of libertarianism all across the board. That’s how we attract people to our cause. If adhering to libertarian principles were to result in having to pay higher taxes because immigrants are going on welfare, then so be it. The payment of higher taxes is a smaller price to pay in the fight for freedom compared to the abandonment of principle and the support of statism.
Rather than abandon our principles and support statism, we should instead continue focusing on ending the statist wrongdoing — i.e., the welfare and the taxes that support welfare. This enables us to continue adhering to our principles by showing why the welfare state — and the taxes that support the welfare state — should be dismantled while, at the same time, making the arguments in favor of open borders — that open borders is not only the only solution to America’s perpetual immigration morass but also the only solution that is consistent with sound economic, moral, religious, free-market, and freedom principles. If we abandon our principles “temporarily” (i.e., until the welfare state is dismantled at some indeterminate time in the future), then Americans never hear the arguments in favor of open borders.
Moreover, where does the abandonment of principle stop? Every libertarian knows that the drug war constitutes one of the most egregious infringements on liberty. It’s not a coincidence that every authoritarian, dictatorial, or totalitarian regime in the world has drug laws. The drug war provides regimes with a perfect way to control and dominate the citizenry and destroy their liberty and privacy in the process, under the notion that drug laws will keep them “safe” (which is the same notion with immigration controls).
Libertarians have long been in the forefront in the advocacy of drug legalization, not only as a moral and freedom position but also as a utilitarian one. Drug legalization would immediately put out of business all of the drug cartels and the violence that comes with them. It would also immediately bring an end to drug-war corruption in the government, including law enforcement.
Yet, if drugs were legalized, there is little doubt that many drug addicts would turn to Medicaid to help pay for treatment. That could result in the payment of higher taxes, just as open borders could theoretically means higher taxes through increases in welfare payments. (My own conviction is that tax revenues generated by the enormous prosperity that would come from vast majority of people who aren’t interested in going on welfare would far outweigh the increase in welfare expenditures for the tiny minority of foreigners who would go on welfare. Moreover, there is no inherent reason why Congress can’t simply enact a law that prohibits foreigners from going on welfare.)
Does this mean that libertarians should support the war on drugs until Medicaid is abolished? If we do that, we can kiss our hopes for a free society goodbye. How much respect could anyone have for a movement that is ostensibly fighting for a free society while, at the same time, supporting drug laws indefinitely into the future?
Again, we should never permit the statists into maneuvering us into abandoning our principles and joining them in support of statism. If we do that, they win automatically because they will have succeeded in degrading our movement and our philosophy. Statists love it whenever they can get libertarians to join up with them in support of statist wrongdoing. Instead, to achieve freedom, we libertarians need to continue adhering to our principles by making the case for the free society all across the board — i.e., open borders, drug legalization, repealing welfare-state programs, and abolishing the taxes that fund statist programs. That’s how we achieve freedom — through the adherence, not the abandonment, of principle.
