aequalsa

As I understand the phrase "New World Order," (leaving conspiracy theories aside) it is a reference to any large scale shift in global power. Britain in the early 1900's was a global hegememon that was challenged by the massive increase in German industrial power on the lead up to world war I and II. After the cost of the two massive wars and the conclusion of the Breton-woods agreements, "a new world order" came about with the ascendancy of the US who was relatively unscathed by both. The USSR then grew in power and capacity which, again, led to a "new world order," in which the world was divided in a bipolar sense, dividing roughly on the communist or globalizing capitalist sides. The abrupt fall of the Soviets in 1987 changed the global order again leaving the US with its massive productive capacity and military(we spend some 45% of all military dollars world wide, which is more then the next 10 countries combined) as the single global governor and enforcer of norms. The EU and China could very likely supplant the US in the next few decades as could an empowered and more heavily funded UN as the central authority between countries. The UN along with the world bank, IMF, WTO, GATT, etc all seem very interested in lessoning US power. With the self destructive attitude of the current administration, and our politicians generally, I see the downfall as close to inevitable.

Fan of Desmond Morris too?

I think that was in the context of her being tortured as a way to get to him. If he was dead there would be no more need to torture her, ostensibly.

I understand that. I didn't intend it to be a criticism as your response is correct.

This is from her playboy interview, I think a strong argument could be made that our 2 party system where both parties press as close to the center as possible might qualify as one part in effect. Executions w/o trial have not often occurred, so far as I know have not yet occurred. Expropriation of private property was held as proper in Kilo. Censorship seems partially true. McCain-feingold, like you mentioned, also government control of the airwaves are among the worst restrictions but there seem like enough alternative methods of free speech available, through the internet especially, that it may be premature to label our situation as being severely censured. So 2.5/4 maybe? Also, even though censorship occurs, it is far more mild than the sort which make ideological retaliation impossible. China's(and Australia's, i think) internet censorship is much more the onerous revolution needing type.

That's a good criticism, but to explain more precisely, I believe Rand's standard for dictatorship is the point at which it is no longer tolerable. The openness that I would allow for though, is that that point may become apparent to different people at different points in time. In Germany in 1939, blond haired Germans might believe it to not be sufficiently bad to warrant attacks on the state whereas a German Jew might think otherwise. There is an objective point where it is true for everyone, but since it is such a broad abstraction, integrating the essential concretes is going to take differing amounts of time depending on the person and circumstance.

your stance on that was cleared up for me with your use of the term "violation."

Thanks, that cleared up your stance for me. If rights are things which cannot rightfully be taken away, but they can be given up or rightfully violated in carrying out justice, then it seems that they have little in the way of inviolability to me. So if we take it as a given that immigrants have a right to cross the border at will, is the government morally justified in violating their rights if they have reason to believe that there are pose a security risks inherent in their so doing? Acting to protect rights though, does end in accidental violations of rights, which are then morally justified.

So the you would agree that the person who violates the rights of others, in effect gives up his rights?

You had said before that they could be given up, so I think I may be misunderstanding you. When someone criminally violates the rights of another and you, or the government retaliates, are you then removing his rights or "violating" them or has he "given them up"?

, but, in very, very few cases is that actually the case. That perception, common to depression is almost always factually untrue or based on incorrect premises and values, which if resolved remove the impetus for self-destruction.

Do you not agree with the definition you originally gave, then? Do you believe that this process sometimes removes the rights of individuals, at least temporarily? The assumption is that the government is not violating their rights, but that they have given them up in committing pr seeming to have committed a crime. I understand that and think it is a fair characterization Here, I am not sure what you mean by 'no more right.' If the government is granted that right to retaliate and individuals do not have that right, wouldn't it be correct to say that the government has a right that individuals do not....by which I mean, a moral justification to act freely in a way restricted to individuals? I'm pretty certain that no one here thinks otherwise.

I agree with that, but I would go further and agree with Locke that they can be taken away or given up, but not for "arbitrary," reasons. You can give them up by not respecting the rights of others, for example, and police can arrest you(withhold your liberty), find out they were mistaken and then let you go without it being unjust. Unfortunate, but not unjust. I see this sort of potential inconvenience as an unavoidable aspect of the application of rights theory in practice.

So, inalienable in the above context means that no one cannot violate the rights of others and be just at the same time, except in self-defense? Self-defense usually only applies in the moment of the attack. Do you include retaliation on the part of the government under the umbrella of self-defense? edit: Examples would be imprisonment, capitol punishment, retrieving stolen goods and the like.

From above... This is the part I was wondering about. Clearly, they can be taken away. They are by governments, criminals, and jailors all the time. So do you hold that as meaning rights ought never be taken away? That there is not moral justification for the removal of rights? Or just that they ought not be taken away for an arbitrary reason?

ROFL

In addition, many consider 11 million to be a low ball number and 20million + is more likely. If someone lived in Maine or North Dakota, you would be right, Sophia, but Phoenix or LA would be another story.

First, I'll speak as I please until a moderator asks me to do otherwise. Your feelings being hurt because you can't handle a generalization based on many facts has no place in an argument. I don't know your friends and can't(and haven't) made any comments about them personally. Generalizations are judgments. It is exactly how our brains function. We look for similarities and differences in groups of concretes, people, numbers, and everything else. It is perfectly valid and reasonable to like Californians and hate new yorkers, or love high school drop outs and despise college grads, as a general response to people of a particular culture or circumstance. The only potential problem with a generalization is if you believe that it applies in all cases. I clearly do not. Rates like 75% id theft and facts like phoenix having the second highest rate of kidnappings in the world and all the other problems brought up on this thread are readily available on the internet. I am not going to reproduce them for you. If you choose to ignore the real world context and circumstance then there is nothing I can say by way of logical deductions to get you from Ayn Rand said A is A to illegals commit more crimes. In fact, that won't even get me to the existence of Arizona as a place.

I'm sorry for the confusion. Let me try to clarify my views and arguments in some... That whole post that you refer to was only peripherally relevant to the argument for the rule of law. It is in response to the notion that there is little or no cost or damages caused by illegal immigrants to existing citizens. I meant it to be demonstrative of the way in which our rights are brought into conflict by the creation of the welfare state and that their right to move here for economic advantage or to avoid inconvenience, or even poverty, in no way trumps my rights to property and security which their illegal activities are a detriment to. The act of inviting and tolerating people with little regard for the legal process carries with it a great deal of cost. This is especially true in a welfare state, but would also be true in a capitalist state. By that reasoning, if I were, through chance, born as the son of a poor construction worker who never made much money because 45% went to the government each year, than I would be justified in stealing money from the son of a upper middle class accountant, who through entirely legal means had acquired a small fortune by only losing 18% of his income to the government. That argument is based on some egalitarian premises about chance circumstances. Even if by some small miracle we achieved a mostly rights respecting government,and to secure its borders there was some 3 day wait for people in failed or corrupt states to be admitted, while background checks were completed. To some percentage, this would still be wholly unacceptable and unreasonable, and they might try to get in illegally. Enforcement, in this case, is necessary and proper and breaking the law would still be immoral, despite any inconvenience this short breach of their liberty might cause them. This is where the rule of law becomes relevant to me. I argue that this is true up to the point at which dictatorship occurs. At this point, I acknowledge some room for interpretation, since what is tolerable for some by the government may not be tolerable for others. I see that decision as a moral absolute once it is made though. In effect it means that the moral agent would prefer anarchy and the elimination of the state and the current rule of (wrongful) law to existing under so corrupt a regime. This assumes the moral agent acts on principle rather than pragmatics though. The fact that so many other proper laws are broken by illegals implies to me that for the most part, their decision to break the law stems more from economic pragmatism than principle. Which gets to the third part of my view on this, which is rational self interest. By way of analogy(this ones for you, Jake) breaking the law is hardly ever in a person's best interests. When I was young and quite poor, they started mandating car insurance which raised the price of my premiums by about 300% over night. I couldn't afford it so I drove without it(had to get to work on different construction sites, so a bike seemed impractical). It worked in the short term since I paid no insurance. In the long-term it cost me 2 $500 tickets and extortionately high insurance rates once I did get insurance, because I had been uninsured for more that 6 months(perfect driving record was irrelevant) In addition to the cost being much higher their was considerable psychological cost in the fear of being pulled over and getting the bigger tickets, constant concern about getting in an accident and being liable, and even far less desire to go out and do things that i didn't have to in order to avoid the constant sense of risk and danger. Ultimately I just sucked it up and got a third job and no sleep. Even in cases like this where the law is immoral, breaking it puts the lawbreaker into opposition with the rest of that society. They become your enemy and you theirs. This is what I see as the primary justification for obeying the rule of law while it is tolerable. The visibility argument might have some validity, but I have to think about it more or hear more arguments. Right now it seems like performing sodomy in your own home when it's illegal, may not be relevant since it is a truly unenforceable law. No personal longterm consequences could develop, there is absolutely no impact on any other individual(assuming consent here) and there is no criminal industry which it builds around itself. Again, I am not positive, but I am leaning to seeing an invisible crime with no ripple, so to speak, as an appropriate exception. An example of a case where it might would be different would be someone fleeing a totalitarian state for their lives. So differentiating political refugees from economic ones may have some validity in the sense that the right to life and self-ownership is the primary, and in certain emergency situations such as that, certain restrictions on corollary rights might be proper.

Lucky we are not in a court of law where I am trying to prove a particular crime occurred then. "Maybe" was meant in the rhetorical, "You can't seriously believe that there is no victimization with the theft of someones identity," kind of way. If you honestly don't understand how stealing someone's id is a proper crime then I'll try to explain it to you when I have time, but I honestly just think you're pulling my leg. I'm not sure where you studied your polemics, but argument by analogy is perfectly valid as it is a method by which items with similar characteristics can be held together conceptually and compared for predictive value. In other words, it is a process of induction, essentially. You can make the claim that the similarities are weak and my analogy is poor and then show the dissimilarities if you like to support your view, but an argument from analogy itself does not disqualify its validity. To claim otherwise, well, that's illogical.

The original cause of the conflict of interests is the government, but another individual choosing to take my identity costing me time and money is a direct attack by him on me. He isn't forced to do it in any sense. It is a moral choice on his part and he is wholly culpable for the damage caused. We may have to agree to disagree on this one as I can't fathom this not being a direct and voluntary infringement of my rights by another individual. Reagan tried the amnesty thing before in the 80s. Obviously it doesn't fix it except for that one minute that no one is here illegally. The change would have to be more fundamental to avoid this reoccurring, I think. It would serve to increase tax collection rates though. I understand the difficulty and immorality of the current immigration system but advocating the reduction of my rights for the benefit of others because their right to a job here is more important than mine is not only an incorrect assumption but probably the worst way to convince an objectivist of the worthiness of your cause. I'm just sayin. I absolutely agree with you about the only moral choice, but disagree strongly that their economic well being should be primary to my own in any sense and that their misfortune gives them any claim on my life or any moral justification to violate my rights.

No disagreements with this. This is good foundation, but it, for me doesn't get very far out of the gate. Especially, since as you pointed out above, the mixed economy, which is our current given, through its inconsistencies puts the rights of people into conflict. Because of the addition of this factor my evaluation is no longer properly based on the consistent protection of rights, but rather on "how much of my own rights will I loose by granting rights to others?" As a south western resident When I consider immigration, I have to look at the numbers, the increasing crime on our border and in my neighborhood, trampling and destroying privately owned property on the way through, the bankrupting of hospitals that I might one day need, the costs of losing my identity in part or whole, the increase in taxes that I don't and can't easily avoid which they do, the entitlements which I don't receive but pay for, I am left with the unfortunate realization that respecting the rights of illegal immigrants requires me to sacrifice my own. Its little less then a request that I give up my own "inalienable" rights so that others may have theirs. In theory, open immigration is no threat to me. Currently, in actuality, it very much is. When you say inalienable, what do you mean exactly? Not solely, but people who are willing to break laws, in general, are not breaking laws because they are standing for truth and justice, but rather because they have little regard for the law and find it financially lucrative to do so. This filtering occurs with drug dealers also. If all drug dealers were just dealing as a principled act of defiance, there wouldn't be the amount of real crime attached to it that there is. Because drug dealing is illegal, it is lucrative so what you get for the most part, is dirt bags. I realize that there are some very fine, morally conscious drug dealers out there, especially in the medical marijuana industry, but that doesn't change the general statistical facts that most drug dealers are, in fact, dirt bags. In a fully rights respecting society, walgreens would sell the recreational drugs for a song and dance with no negative costs and associative crimes. Likewise with immigration, it would neither rob my purse nor stub my toe to have the whole population of the world move in. Hell, it would do wonders for property values Until such time as that rights respecting republic occurs however, the nature of the system is such that the people who are willing to break the law to come here pose a real and serious threat to my own and really all American citizens rights. First, I would see it as disrespectful for someone close to me to put me in the situation of being an accomplice to some illegal activity that they were engaged in without having consulted me first. In some situations I suppose that I would, consequences not damned but proper, but I don't view enforcement of the law as being my responsibility as a general rule(sort of my point all along, ya know ) . I would undoubtedly advise them to not break the law and attempt some legal work around and perhaps even judge them harshly.

It seems that circumstances may have changed then. Also, we may just be in different circles. I've seen dozens of 9's on w-2's in a dumpster of a roofing company I worked for.

But in the case of stealing someones identity, an illegal immigrant is not stealing or inconveniencing the government or the "privileged" citizens indirectly. They are acting to the direct detriment of another individual. It is a direct violation of rights. Even ignoring the issue of tax fraud and it's inconvenience to the person whose identity is being used, the impact on the individual can be financially quite large. I had this happen to me and it took me well over a year to repair. In the meantime, no home mortgages, no car loans, no credit cards and your credit record lacks the additional time that looks so good when you have 7 years of revolving credit rather that 5. When this happened. I found that I had bad credit from 1983. I was 7 years old then, to clarify. Even that one was difficult to remove. So I don't know how one would calculate the monetary damage of having your economic life put on hold for a year and a half, but I see it as considerable and my problems were relatively minor. There are many hidden costs to that sort of crime, but they are very real and very much a crime against other individuals.

I realize that. I meant to mean was that, I would have agreed with your view, as I understand it, with regard to immigration, that they should break the law since it is immoral and inconveniences them, plus I would have favored breaking all other immoral laws which you don't favor breaking whenever feasible. Your justification for that inconsistency in application is not clear to me but I do understand that it exists. At any rate, sorry for the presumption. Not sure I'd call it a fetish. The sexual satidfaction I recieve from discussing this subject, I can assure you is quite minimal. I tend to prefer to not be involved in other peoples business as much as possible. If I were presented with firm knowledge of illegal behavior and I was obligated legally to report it, then I suppose that I would. That said, I'm not going to go out of my way to look for it, and would attempt to have no knowledge of it. Also, I would say that a great deal of the law is so blurry that I would often not even be sure whether a crime had occurred. I don't have enough interest in it to make it my mission to find and turn in law breakers, if that's what you are wondering. This I apply primarily to my own behavior. I leave other people to decide whether they are at the point that they wish to be juxtaposed to society. I can imagine some extreme cases where I could see the validity of doing illegal things on an individual basis, but they would need to be situations that were quite bad, where I would also be willing to publicly turn myself in and spend life in prison, rather than allow the injustice to occur.