The Always-Quotable Derb On Libertarians And Immigration
01/07/2014
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In his recent note on the consistently disappointing Rand Paul [Republican U.S. senator from Kentucky], Peter Brimelow wrote,

It is logically possible to combine libertarianism with immigration patriotism, and Paul (like his father) showed signs of doing so instinctively. But apparently this instinct has not survived the pressures of the MSM, left-libertarian bigotry, campaign donors—and, it must be suspected, stupidity.

It seems likely to me that many VDARE.com readers have at least some libertarian sympathies — I do, myself — but we know enough about immigration's myriad disastrous impacts upon the American nation to recognize the idiocy of typical open-borders libertarianism.  (e.g. See writings by the cheerfully pathetic libertarian economist Bryan Caplan.)

Years ago, John Derbyshire wrote, memorably, about the stupidity of open-borders libertarianism in his classic Libertarianism in One Country.  As the saying goes, you should read the whole thing.  To entice you, I'll quote a paragraph from near the end of Derb's article:

As to why I think libertarians are nuts to favor mass uncontrolled immigration from the Third World: I think they are nuts because their enthusiasm on this matter is suicidal to their cause. Their ideological passion is blinding them to a rather obvious fact: that libertarianism is a peculiarly American doctrine, with very little appeal to the huddled masses of the Third World. If libertarianism implies mass Third World immigration, then it is self-destroying. Libertarianism is simply not attractive either to illiterate peasants from mercantilist Latin American states, or to East Asians with traditions of imperial-bureaucratic paternalism, or to the products of Middle Eastern Muslim theocracies.

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