2 hours ago, TruthSeeker946 said:
Preventing the initiation of physical force includes preemptive action.
Taking preemptive action against savages even if they have not yet initiated force seems perfectly reasonable to me.
Considering what Rand said about the colonisation of North America, I find it hard to believe she would disagree.
It seems extremely unlikely she would be in favour of open borders and the consequent millions of irrational savages pouring into the country.
I am using savage in the same way she did i.e an irrational brute who does not recognise individual rights and is willing to use force to achieve his ends.
Please address Rand’s point about people who do not recognise individual rights having no rights themselves. If this is true, no rights are being violated by blocking the foreigner’s entry (assuming the foreigner does not recognise individual rights).
TS,
Exactly where did Rand write or even voice the idea that people who do not recognize individual rights have no rights themselves? I don’t recall such a thing. Additionally: What Rand thought follows from the essentials of her philosophy does not relieve one from the responsibility of thinking out for oneself what follows from the essentials of her philosophy and how so. And it does not relieve one from the intellectual responsibility of independently assessing whether the consequent is true and right, which is a perfectly good thing to discourse on here.
If one is not acting in immediate self-defense or invoking subsequent action by the law for retribution against someone who has actually initiated force against one, then using force (through law or otherwise) by way of preemption is itself an initiation of force. That was Rand’s view and it is widely shared wisdom won by long bloody history.
You guys let T.S. Elliot immigrate to your country. Freud also. Eliot turned RC. Might he have been fixing to help the Irish Republican Army? Might a Jewish guy like Freud join a communist cell bent on violent overthrow the government and its protection of the institution of private property in your country? Casting immigrants into your country as threats to keeping you free of force can become very irrational. Such would be not only the two farcical fancies I just mentioned. Blanket casting of people from certain countries or of certain religions as such threats is also irrational and unjust.
“What is your attitude toward immigration? Doesn’t open immigration have a negative effect on a country’s standard of living?” This is Rand's answer to that one (1974):
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> You don’t know my conception of self-interest. No one has the right to pursue his self-interest by law or by force, which is what you’re suggesting. You want to forbid immigration on the grounds that it lowers _your _standard of living — which isn’t true, though if it were true, you’d still have no right to close the borders. You’re not entitled to any “self-interest” that injures others, especially when you can’t prove that open immigration affects your self-interest. You can’t claim that anything others may do — for example, simply through competition — is against your self-interest. But above all, aren’t you dropping a personal context? How could I advocate restricting immigration when I wouldn't be alive today if our borders had been closed?