"The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. The former are idealists acting from highest motives for the greatest good of the greatest number. The latter are surly curmudgeons, suspicious and lacking in altruism. But they are more comfortable neighbors than the other sort.”
- Robert Heinlein
I would prefer you as my neighbour over any altruist.
I'd have to dig up the reference, but there was a large study done a few years ago that showed that as a group, white people who identify as left-wing have a stronger oikophobia than the xenophobia of any other group.
This country is filled with persons who have college degrees but no learning -certainly not in logic (it's illegal immigration -stupid!). They who enact laws to which they are unaffected, and then virtue signal about it.
Those people were defeated in the voting box.
As a Catholic I'm bracing myself for bishops who are about to howl at the moon over deportations. They said nothing about the influx and deaths due to fentanyl, nothing about human trafficking at the border, nothing about the gangs and murder, nothing about Joe Biden being the most pro abortion president ever. They should stay silent now, but they probably won't. That's because the lack of flow of immigration will cause them to have to face life without government monies and stolen sheep to replace those who left after not being cared for. Things are going to get tough and gone are the days when a gay man might aspire to be a bishop, I hope.
The next time a liberal looks to debate you when it comes to illegal immigration, simply tell them that you will give an illegal their address so that they can live with them. The look on their face is classic. My wife immigrated to the United States from Italy, and we went through the proper channels for her permanent green card (10 years), and now she is about to become a U.S. Citizen. Tears came streaming down from her face when she was notified about her eligibility to become a U.S. citizen.
The word you're looking for in ancient Greek would be 'oikophilic'. Meaning 'preference for one's home' or 'preference for what is local and home-spun'.
Well argued Doc! I would be very interested in hearing your thoughts about "Democracy and the need for a Bill of Rights". The two concepts seem to me to be intimately connected and it is a discussion that used to be understood but sadly is no longer.
As a neighbour to your north - you know - the 51st state - I once had a job looking at large infrastructure projects from a regulatory perspective and, during meetings and hearings, I refused to offer the obligatory mea culpa over "land". Fortunately I was far enough up the food chain that I could off-load this loathsome and ahistoric chore to someone else. If we would only read the 11 or 12 treaties signed between the Crown and the Indigenous nations (treaties insisted upon by the wise and forward looking leadership of those nations I hasten to add) perhaps we would understand the significance of words like "cede" and "surrender".
I love your writing for its clarity and directness. Thank you for being an island of sanity in an ocean of stupid. Perhaps the island will start to grow in a new political landscape. Not a moment too soon if it does.
One of the original arguments against a Bill of Rights was that removed the force from idea of limited powers defined in the Constitution. Once you start with the what the government allows, you give it, in the end, tyrannical power.
I've heard the argument made that "we" need these people to compete on the international stage, I.e. the sports team metaphor (or if we are being honest indentured slave labour but I digress).
Who are we to deprive these struggling countries of generation after generation of doctors, programmers, and rocket scientists? How very selfish of us!
Seriously though, these same people who make that argument turn around and then say these brilliant immigrants can't do what they do in thier home country but they can only succeed in the west/US.
Spot the logical incoherence/smell the sulphur yet?
We need these people to compete against other nations, but they cannot compete from their home countries??? Uhm, yeah.
I for one, am happy to let them fail in thier home country. Is that racist? Maybe, but guess what, I don't care.
I too have this argument. We need them because they are talented. That just means Zimbabwe/India/Hong Kong becomes even poorer because they now have fewer nurses, doctors and engineers etc.
We know these are emotional arguments. The end game for liberalism. We can't go there and civilize them anymore, so they bring them here to demonstrate their generosity. It is all backhanded racism; the liberals have absolutely no conviction they can succeed in their own nations. It is all so tiresome. Still, the ethnic wars should be fairly lively.
The Christian argument is particularly infuriating, as the Vatican just a week ago increased penalties for illegal entry to 4 years in prison and $25,000 in fines.
You can’t argue logic with people who think emotionally. They’re stunted or lazy intellectually. Public education worked just the way they wanted it to….
These jagoffs don't get the moral high ground in this argument. You don't get to permanently alter someone's home without their consent and then claim you're the fuggin good guy. Good lord I hate shitlibs
Not a fan of Trump’s personality but his executive orders on our open borders, the insanity of gender identity which deny the reality of human sexuality, and the craziness of DEI which discriminate against whites, Asians and men in attempting to cure past discrimination against others are absolutely the correct approach to those festering problems.
Specifically about illegal immigration:
It’s still not clear to me (a Democrat) exactly why the Biden administration decided that it was a good idea to open our borders to millions of unskilled, uneducated people. Allowing a relative small number of the well educated in each year is probability a good idea. This was one of the most disastrous policies the country has seen in my long lifetime and I hope that our representatives in Congress will grill those responsible to determine its origin. It undermined the wages of all workers and exacerbated our national housing crisis when we can’t house our own citizens. It was a major factor in the election of Donald Trump. It consumed billions of our tax dollars which could have been put to better use. I still don’t understand those who say that we should not deport the majority of these interlopers. They violated our laws and continue to violate them and they should be removed not rewarded by allowing them to stay. There’s no statute of limitations on this illegal behavior. No one believes that they have a right to move to Paris and live their life there without the permission of the French and no one would argue that the French have no right to kick their sorry asses out of that country. Why do the same rules not apply to the United States? They clearly do.
Allowing a relative small number of the well educated in each year is probability a good idea.
---
I disagree. You then get lost squabbling about numbers. Is is a thousand or a hundred million?
Zero immigration is what most of the world insists upon. You cannot emigrate to the countries from which you are currently accepting people legally. India would not accept whites in any numbers. Only white countries have this affliction and the world is absolutely baffled by it.
I think we now have to accept mass immigration is disastrous for the developed nations. We are losing them. And the future is going to be violent.
The libertarian ideal of shopping for government requires PRICES. Allowing people to freely change countries is akin to freely picking up items off the shelf at the local Walgren's. The Founding Uncles risked their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to build a country for their posterity. (No point in taking such risks just for yourself. Bad ROI!)
We should charge admission. Admit only those willing to pay to be an American. That's how you get super Americans vs. colonizers.
What about taking none at all? You are full. A country isn't a geographical territory, it is a people. That's why Australia looks like Britain and not Aboriginaland. If you bring in different people, paying or otherwise, it changes. Most of the world is populated by people supremely indifferent to individual liberty, free speech, the rule of law etc etc.
Persuasion is useful. The argument I made is in libertarian terms. If you aren't dealing with a libertarian there are other arguments to make. For example, for environmentalists, point out that open borders are not compatible with Ecotopia. The culture which restrains its birthrate gets overrun by the culture which doesn't know how to use a rubber.
For hippie peaceniks, point out that with open borders, the problems of other countries become our problems. Open borders require imperialism.
I’m glad you said it, Briggs. It needed to be said. Who on Earth proved that it was morally acceptable to give away the common inheritance of an entire people? The arguments are bad. The giving up is piecemeal; space and resources aren’t part of a national inheritance anyway so we can reduce your portion howevermuch we like; you don’t even have a people or inheritance really; somehow magically immigrants won’t actually take up any of the public’s space or resources, which you will have to practice remembering to tell yourself when you bump into one instead of phasing through him.
Worse, who decided that the right people to get to decide when and to whom it is given away were those in government? This is the implicit argument of immigration advocates, who are often people who spend much other time decrying all the horrible things exactly those people do. Teaching your kids what to think is unacceptable but taking away available space and resources, as much as they like, is fine? It makes no sense. What are they even here for if not to see that that doesn’t happen? To make sure there are iPhones for your kids to buy if they degrade themselves enough?
Shade of Achilles proposes "oikophilic", which has no poor connotations. Trim it up to "ecophile" and get people started thinking about the root "eco" from "oiko" meaning "household", and they might even start to comprehend "my house, my rules."
Popularising ecophile/ecophilia/ecophilic is a great idea; I hadn’t realised that this is indeed the etymology of eco, loaned from Greek to Latin to English.
Oikophile is Scruton’s coinage I think. It’s not mine. Certainly he wrote an article called Oikophobia or something similar.
"The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. The former are idealists acting from highest motives for the greatest good of the greatest number. The latter are surly curmudgeons, suspicious and lacking in altruism. But they are more comfortable neighbors than the other sort.”
- Robert Heinlein
I would prefer you as my neighbour over any altruist.
'It’s better to say I’m my-own-people-ophilic (is there a Greek word for this?).'
Oikophile?
Great article
I'd have to dig up the reference, but there was a large study done a few years ago that showed that as a group, white people who identify as left-wing have a stronger oikophobia than the xenophobia of any other group.
They intensely loathe their native culture.
...except the parts of it that have come most rapidly to hasten their decline and replacement
This country is filled with persons who have college degrees but no learning -certainly not in logic (it's illegal immigration -stupid!). They who enact laws to which they are unaffected, and then virtue signal about it.
Those people were defeated in the voting box.
As a Catholic I'm bracing myself for bishops who are about to howl at the moon over deportations. They said nothing about the influx and deaths due to fentanyl, nothing about human trafficking at the border, nothing about the gangs and murder, nothing about Joe Biden being the most pro abortion president ever. They should stay silent now, but they probably won't. That's because the lack of flow of immigration will cause them to have to face life without government monies and stolen sheep to replace those who left after not being cared for. Things are going to get tough and gone are the days when a gay man might aspire to be a bishop, I hope.
The next time a liberal looks to debate you when it comes to illegal immigration, simply tell them that you will give an illegal their address so that they can live with them. The look on their face is classic. My wife immigrated to the United States from Italy, and we went through the proper channels for her permanent green card (10 years), and now she is about to become a U.S. Citizen. Tears came streaming down from her face when she was notified about her eligibility to become a U.S. citizen.
The word you're looking for in ancient Greek would be 'oikophilic'. Meaning 'preference for one's home' or 'preference for what is local and home-spun'.
Well argued Doc! I would be very interested in hearing your thoughts about "Democracy and the need for a Bill of Rights". The two concepts seem to me to be intimately connected and it is a discussion that used to be understood but sadly is no longer.
As a neighbour to your north - you know - the 51st state - I once had a job looking at large infrastructure projects from a regulatory perspective and, during meetings and hearings, I refused to offer the obligatory mea culpa over "land". Fortunately I was far enough up the food chain that I could off-load this loathsome and ahistoric chore to someone else. If we would only read the 11 or 12 treaties signed between the Crown and the Indigenous nations (treaties insisted upon by the wise and forward looking leadership of those nations I hasten to add) perhaps we would understand the significance of words like "cede" and "surrender".
I love your writing for its clarity and directness. Thank you for being an island of sanity in an ocean of stupid. Perhaps the island will start to grow in a new political landscape. Not a moment too soon if it does.
One of the original arguments against a Bill of Rights was that removed the force from idea of limited powers defined in the Constitution. Once you start with the what the government allows, you give it, in the end, tyrannical power.
The delegation from Pennsylvania had too many Philadelphia lawyers.
I've heard the argument made that "we" need these people to compete on the international stage, I.e. the sports team metaphor (or if we are being honest indentured slave labour but I digress).
Who are we to deprive these struggling countries of generation after generation of doctors, programmers, and rocket scientists? How very selfish of us!
Seriously though, these same people who make that argument turn around and then say these brilliant immigrants can't do what they do in thier home country but they can only succeed in the west/US.
Spot the logical incoherence/smell the sulphur yet?
We need these people to compete against other nations, but they cannot compete from their home countries??? Uhm, yeah.
I for one, am happy to let them fail in thier home country. Is that racist? Maybe, but guess what, I don't care.
I too have this argument. We need them because they are talented. That just means Zimbabwe/India/Hong Kong becomes even poorer because they now have fewer nurses, doctors and engineers etc.
We know these are emotional arguments. The end game for liberalism. We can't go there and civilize them anymore, so they bring them here to demonstrate their generosity. It is all backhanded racism; the liberals have absolutely no conviction they can succeed in their own nations. It is all so tiresome. Still, the ethnic wars should be fairly lively.
The Christian argument is particularly infuriating, as the Vatican just a week ago increased penalties for illegal entry to 4 years in prison and $25,000 in fines.
"My argument is I don’t want them. This is my home, not theirs, and they are not welcome.
That is all the argument I need."
I agree with this.
Pretty poor reply, I should have thought.
What is "my home" and what "my home" has to do with anything?
He can stay in his home. Nobody is objecting to that.
You can’t argue logic with people who think emotionally. They’re stunted or lazy intellectually. Public education worked just the way they wanted it to….
These jagoffs don't get the moral high ground in this argument. You don't get to permanently alter someone's home without their consent and then claim you're the fuggin good guy. Good lord I hate shitlibs
Not a fan of Trump’s personality but his executive orders on our open borders, the insanity of gender identity which deny the reality of human sexuality, and the craziness of DEI which discriminate against whites, Asians and men in attempting to cure past discrimination against others are absolutely the correct approach to those festering problems.
Specifically about illegal immigration:
It’s still not clear to me (a Democrat) exactly why the Biden administration decided that it was a good idea to open our borders to millions of unskilled, uneducated people. Allowing a relative small number of the well educated in each year is probability a good idea. This was one of the most disastrous policies the country has seen in my long lifetime and I hope that our representatives in Congress will grill those responsible to determine its origin. It undermined the wages of all workers and exacerbated our national housing crisis when we can’t house our own citizens. It was a major factor in the election of Donald Trump. It consumed billions of our tax dollars which could have been put to better use. I still don’t understand those who say that we should not deport the majority of these interlopers. They violated our laws and continue to violate them and they should be removed not rewarded by allowing them to stay. There’s no statute of limitations on this illegal behavior. No one believes that they have a right to move to Paris and live their life there without the permission of the French and no one would argue that the French have no right to kick their sorry asses out of that country. Why do the same rules not apply to the United States? They clearly do.
Allowing a relative small number of the well educated in each year is probability a good idea.
---
I disagree. You then get lost squabbling about numbers. Is is a thousand or a hundred million?
Zero immigration is what most of the world insists upon. You cannot emigrate to the countries from which you are currently accepting people legally. India would not accept whites in any numbers. Only white countries have this affliction and the world is absolutely baffled by it.
I think we now have to accept mass immigration is disastrous for the developed nations. We are losing them. And the future is going to be violent.
The libertarian ideal of shopping for government requires PRICES. Allowing people to freely change countries is akin to freely picking up items off the shelf at the local Walgren's. The Founding Uncles risked their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to build a country for their posterity. (No point in taking such risks just for yourself. Bad ROI!)
We should charge admission. Admit only those willing to pay to be an American. That's how you get super Americans vs. colonizers.
What about taking none at all? You are full. A country isn't a geographical territory, it is a people. That's why Australia looks like Britain and not Aboriginaland. If you bring in different people, paying or otherwise, it changes. Most of the world is populated by people supremely indifferent to individual liberty, free speech, the rule of law etc etc.
Persuasion is useful. The argument I made is in libertarian terms. If you aren't dealing with a libertarian there are other arguments to make. For example, for environmentalists, point out that open borders are not compatible with Ecotopia. The culture which restrains its birthrate gets overrun by the culture which doesn't know how to use a rubber.
For hippie peaceniks, point out that with open borders, the problems of other countries become our problems. Open borders require imperialism.
And so on.
Good point. You do get further arguing on their ground than your own.
I view it all as brainwashing. Only Western nations even consider it.
The brainwashing happened. Difficult to reverse in a timely fashion. Ergo, the need for polemical judo.
Yes, I see your point. Well made.
If I could give this post a hundred ‘likes’, I would. Well done, Mr. Briggs!
I’m glad you said it, Briggs. It needed to be said. Who on Earth proved that it was morally acceptable to give away the common inheritance of an entire people? The arguments are bad. The giving up is piecemeal; space and resources aren’t part of a national inheritance anyway so we can reduce your portion howevermuch we like; you don’t even have a people or inheritance really; somehow magically immigrants won’t actually take up any of the public’s space or resources, which you will have to practice remembering to tell yourself when you bump into one instead of phasing through him.
Worse, who decided that the right people to get to decide when and to whom it is given away were those in government? This is the implicit argument of immigration advocates, who are often people who spend much other time decrying all the horrible things exactly those people do. Teaching your kids what to think is unacceptable but taking away available space and resources, as much as they like, is fine? It makes no sense. What are they even here for if not to see that that doesn’t happen? To make sure there are iPhones for your kids to buy if they degrade themselves enough?
Probably "homophilic" but the unfortunate connotations might render that a non-starter.
I'm a "birds of a feather" guy, a "to each his own" guy, a "don't tread on me" guy.
Shade of Achilles proposes "oikophilic", which has no poor connotations. Trim it up to "ecophile" and get people started thinking about the root "eco" from "oiko" meaning "household", and they might even start to comprehend "my house, my rules."
Popularising ecophile/ecophilia/ecophilic is a great idea; I hadn’t realised that this is indeed the etymology of eco, loaned from Greek to Latin to English.
Oikophile is Scruton’s coinage I think. It’s not mine. Certainly he wrote an article called Oikophobia or something similar.