Replies: 5 Comments

Posted by: Nathan Smith On Tuesday, April 5th

About Iraq:

The problem with the pre-emption doctrine is that, if everyone is allowed to attack before they are attacked, that formula would seem to push the world towards war very quickly. Suppose, for example, that Saddam had, in January 2003, launched an attack on the US, claiming that the US was a threat to his regime. Well, obviously we WERE a threat to his regime, so his move would have been perfectly legitimate. I believe that in that case the world would have rushed to our defense. Why didn't they rush to Saddam's defense when he was attacked (on fairly thin evidence that turned out to be mostly wrong)? Other than raw power considerations, the reason is that democratic legitimacy is superior to whatever form of legitimacy, if any, Saddam's government possessed. It doesn't seem to me that allowing for pre-emptive attacks on democracies is consistent with a tenable framework for international law.

Re: "You state: 'It is therefore not legitimate to enforce border restrictions on the foreign-born.' Ever?"

Well, in neo-Jeffersonian terms, no. A certain group of people has consented to laws which are (by their own terms) applicable within certain borders. From the point of view of these people, the resulting national government is "sovereign" over this territory. But the foreign-born in no way consented to this sovereignty, and are not bound to respect it. Arguably, once they have entered the country and begun to benefit from the laws and the economy of the society there, they may be taken to have consented to obey the law. They may, as you suggest, consent to obey the laws by sneaking in (and more so than the American-born, since their living in America is a result of a positive, deliberate action) but if so, the border restriction must be an exception, since it's nonsensical to say that, by entering the country, they signaled their consent to being ruled by a law forbidding them to enter the country. Obviously, they did just the opposite.

You say that a government's first duty is to protect its citizens. But that begs the question. Given that protecting its citizens is an important end of the government, only certain means may be justly used to achieve it. If an angry-left blogger encourages Islamic radicals, and the government judges that it would benefit the public safety to assassinate him in his sleep, it cannot justly do so. Given that public safety is the end, there are limits to the means, and that is what I am exploring.

In practice, I think the neo-Jeffersonian paradigm of justice and governmental legitimacy is quixotic, but we don't have any good alternative to it. In other words, we cannot avoid some injustice, probably quite a good deal of it, in the process of sustaining a free society. But at least we can recognize injustice as injustice, and make its eventual mitigation a goal.

My proposal for immigration policy is: don't restrict it, tax it. A first attempt to explain how this works is here.

Posted by: Bill On Monday, April 4th

Nathan I was an accounting major, so bear with me because I have more questions than affirmative responses. A few:

Isn't it more unjust, under your definition, for the US government to refuse to enforce US law in the interest of not imposing law on the foreign born? Haven't they consented to be governed by US law by virtue of sneaking into the country? Are their hands clean & does this matter?

You state: "It is therefore not legitimate to enforce border restrictions on the foreign-born." Ever?

Another point - about the parameters for mesuring whether a law and its application are "just" - is it neo-Jeffersonian to believe that domestic laws must balance the impact on non-citizens?

As for Iraq, do you really mean that WMD wasn't sufficient justification? A threat to the United States (as Bush et al. told us) isn't enough?

You'll have to forgive my ignorance here. In the end, I think you've lost sight of one truth that even I know: a government's foremost obligation is to protect its citizens. I can't square that with much of what you write.

Posted by: Nathan Smith On Monday, April 4th

Re: "'Unjust'? To whom?"

Unjust can be a weasel word, of course. For some people (not me), any inequality of outcomes is proof of injustice. I would defend the use of the word "unjust" here in two ways.

First, let me offer a neo-Jeffersonian account of the legitimacy of laws. Certain actions, such as murder and robbery, are crimes in themselves, regardless of the attitude or even the existence of any particular state. Other actions are declared illegal by a state, and the law is legitimate inasmuch as the people under that state's jurisdiction have consented to be ruled by that state. What immigrants do by entering and working in the US is not an inherent crime, like murder and sovereignty. It is the violation of a law, but they have not consented to be governed by that law. It is therefore not legitimate to enforce border restrictions on the foreign-born.

Second, while I reject the claim that justice requires equality of outcome, and while I believe that a certain (rather large) amount of inequality of opportunity is in practice inevitable, I do not think the state can justly engage in actions that deliberately increase this natural inequality of opportunity. There are vast disparities in wealth across the countries in our world, and America in particular is far richer in opportunities than other countries. By preventing people from immigrating to the US (for peaceful purposes and economic self-sufficiency, of course), we are thus acting unjustly.

Now, I'm not a utopian. I don't think we can eliminate all injustice in the world. Sometimes there's a case for maintaining a law which, though unjust, is useful in maintaining order. The czarist system in Russia was full of injustice, but it would have been better to leave it in place, because the configuration of forces in Russia at that time was such that revolution was likely to make things worse. It's arguable that we should maintain immigration restrictions in the US today, for the same reason.

But I'm an optimist, I think our system can handle the influx.

As for Iraq, I think the WMD threat and the desire to liberate an oppressed people were both necessary, and neither sufficient, to justify the war, from Bush's point of view. If Iraq had been a liberal democracy with a WMD threat (ignoring the democratic peace momentarily), regime change would have been wrong. If Iraq had been a totalitarian regime that did not pose a threat to the US, regime change would have been, at the least, harder to justify. Asking liberation or WMDs is like asking which blade in a pair of scissors does the cutting.

Posted by: Bill On Monday, April 4th

"Unjust"? To whom?

Also - "compassion" is a worthwhile goal and a guide but it's not a statement of policy, nor is it a sound basis for one any more than believing in the American Dream.

I'm surprised, too, that you'd say the "poor and unfree" were the reasons we invaded Iraq. I supported the war and Bush in general, but this wasn't the reason for the war until Bush needed it to be. I'm sure the country wasn't about to go to war on the unproven thesis that free nations are less likely to attack us.

Immigration policy, particularly where Mexico is concerned, has to protect the United States' interests first, and humanity's second. Much as I'd like to believe they're interchangeable, I'm not about to concede Bush's immigration policies are defensible. The sad truth is that Karl Rove believes Hispanics are the future of the Republican Party, and Bush seems willing enough to be pushed around. It's almost worse to believe Bush thinks the appeasement is a good idea, although he may.

Posted by: Nathan_Smith@ksg03.harvard.edu">Good Samaritan On Monday, April 4th

As I see it, there's no big mystery about Bush's Mexico border policy. Bush is a compassionate conservative. He believes in the American Dream. He belives in a way up for the less fortunate. And he's sometimes willing to put these principles ahead of respect for (unjust) law. It's the same reason he liberated Iraq: he wants to give the poor and the unfree a chance to build a better life through hard work. Given the choice between siding with the middle-class nativist and siding with the dirt-poor immigrant seeking a better life, he's with the immigrant.

Thanks for all the links!