Manufacturing Hate: Manipulating The Masses to Incite Revolution

Manufacturing Hate: Manipulating The Masses to Incite Revolution

Last Saturday I went on a quest to find the source of rising leftist hatred. I needed to get beyond the facades fronting websites and Facebook posts, as well as the provocative clickbait that covers the edges of browser pages. I needed to get inside the movement – the Petrograd Soviet, so to speak – to hear the Bolsheviki recite Marx, shout slogans, and call for worldwide revolution.

While I consider politics the genesis of coercion and compulsion, I am drawn, ala Murray Rothbard, to the machinations that make up the political process. Since I like to hear from all sources, I subscribe to emails from leftist organizations (and right ones as well), including ProgressOhio, whose website states it is the state’s leading progressive organization. A while back, they sent an email inviting subscribers to a We are Progress training summit hosted by Generation Progress, the youth outreach arm of the Center for American Progress (things get murky when you try to put all the organizations together). The summit included speakers from various other Ohio organizations (most small, flying well under the radar, so to speak). I decided to attend to find the source of hatred, expecting there would be calls for blood in the streets.

After I entered the meeting, sat down, and observed, I found the assumed agitators reserved and reasonable, with no revolution proposed. The hate was, for the most part, nonexistent. In fact, I empathized with many of the speakers. Sure their means were wrong, but their ends made some sense. Let me explain.


The summit was small, close to 50 attendees, with at least half being speakers or other members of the various organizations represented. Most were young and clean cut. A very ordinary crowd for an event held on a community college campus. During one session, local Ohio organizations were allowed 15 minutes to present their current agendas. The first organization to speak was Planned Parenthood, who subdued their vile inclinations and simply called for a national sexual education curriculum, never mentioning what the curriculum would entail.

Next up was a speaker from the Ohio Environmental Council, seeking support for legislation to mandate that entities wanting to frack have sufficient funds for post-fracking cleanup. He also wanted legislation to force farms to reduce runoff to protect lakes and waterways. I did not find his ends to be offensive. Sure, while his means were off, his ends were reasonable (i.e. less pollution). Any disparity between means and ends could be easily rectified, assuming the leaders of the council were willing to read Rothbard’s, “Law, Property Rights, and Air Pollution.”1

Then things got a little weird. The speaker for the People’s Justice Project noted that, five times a day, she “centered” herself on her commitment to “independent black power,” leading the audience in a chant of, “We have nothing to lose but our chains.” However, her passion was reducing mass incarceration. To that end, she wanted simple drug possession reduced to a misdemeanor from a felony. I agreed, not with the chant that channeled Assata Shakur and Karl Marx, but with any retreat on the so-called war on drugs.

Finally, the last speaker pleaded for donations to his organization that assists refugees relocating to Cleveland. He took a jab at the Trump administration, but it was only half-hearted. I found him to be a committed advocate for others. No revolutionary here, either.

This is the left of my youth, sincerely committed, yet misguided. It is the left that directed my steps when registering as a conscientious objector back in the 1980s. It is the left that desires change, but mistakenly sees more government as the solution. A left that rejects private property, but only because it doesn’t understand the moral and ethical principles underpinning private ownership, though it generally respects self-ownership (not including Planned Parenthood, of course). A left that challenges authority more than it desires collectivism. It is, to continue the analogy from above, the Russian workers in the soviets, soldiers on the lines or in the garrisons, and the peasants in the fields, seeking an end to the war, yet being driven toward revolution.

So where is the hate from the left?

As I allude to above, the speakers came from various small entities, all tied together by ProgressOhio and its nefarious, associated organizations. If you follow those organizations backwards, you find they are funded by, or associated with, other entities and individuals. As you go back farther and deeper, you begin to encounter the same names over and over again. It is as if a vanguard exists – an elite cadre akin to Lenin’s view of the role of the Bolshevik Party, agitating all toward revolution – that guides disparate groups, such as those at the summit, into collective action.

Unlike the Russian soldiers, workers, and peasants, who were united to end the war, there is no obvious unifying theme among the grassroots leftist organizations at the summit. Why does an environmentalist care about the struggles of recent refugees? So a theme must be created, which appears to be, from my observations, a combination of anti-Trumpism and pro LGBTQ slogans. Whatever it is, it seems to be working as planned.

The speakers I heard are not fomenting revolution – individually. Yet, they are unknowingly being directed from above to foment revolution collectively. A powerful force is manufacturing hate and manipulating opinions. This force, which cares nothing about the environment, mass incarceration, refugees, or even the LGBTQ community, is twisting views of the sincere, but misguided, from holding rational discussions at summits to manning barricades in the street. An insidious force that generates hate through propaganda, converting the interesting and pleasant souls at the summit into vile spectres, seeking the blood of anyone who dares resist the planks of the manifesto.

I did not find the true source of leftist hate – the scheming vanguard, though I found a hint of its trail. But I did learn something important: we either endeavor to spread the truth of liberty and property to all, or I end up plaintively pleading, at the sharp end of a bayonet, to the folks manning the pickets, “Don’t you remember me? I sat next to you at the summit.”

Note:

1. This is similar to the plethora of organizations on the right, such as those united in a genuine belief that marijuana is vile and remain illegal.

The Civil War Is at Hand Ready?

The Civil War Is at HandReady? 

Even though Fox News gave him the boot, George Will’s signature trait — pretentiousness — is alive and well.  In a recent column in the Washington Post titled “Vote against the GOP this November,” Will outdid himself with a whole new level of pretentiousness.  One gets the distinct impression that his greatest thrill in life is coming up with words that most people have never heard of.

True, his pretentiousness is phony and obnoxious.  True, he has become a caricature of the infantile whiners who failed to get their way in the last election.  True, his irrelevance has reduced him to a pathetic figure.  But before dismissing Will’s childish behavior out of hand, I think it’s worth examining what his downfall and subsequent bitterness means in the grand scheme of things.

Will is an icon of the establishment that ruled Washington for decades, prior to the Trump Revolution — perhaps, one might argue, since the very inception of the nation.  Those in the establishment have had their way for so long they cannot bring themselves to believe they are no longer in control of things.

To them, the Trump-inspired political earthquake is nothing more than a sociological hiccup — an accident of history that occurs every 50 years or so.  Just bide one’s time, keep calm, hold the fort, and it will all melt away when people finally come to their senses.

The late, great Charles Krauthammer, one of George Will’s closest friends, was somewhat caught up in the same normalcy-bias trap, though he had a much better grasp of reality than Will.  When I interviewed Krauthammer back in 2009, I found him to be reasonable and thoughtful with his words, and, in an uneffusive and odd sort of way, rather pleasant.


However, when Krauthammer and I appeared on a panel discussion together for the second time the following year, he was rather unhappy with my grouping Barack Obama in with some of the more infamous dictators of our time.  Obama is, after all, a nice guy.  Just ask Gentleman Mitt.

I mention my brief interactions with Charles Krauthammer only to make the point that even though he was unquestionably a brilliant, insightful, fair-minded man — not to mention an incredibly brave one — he could not seem to comprehend the fact that the political landscape was being paved over by a sea of fed-up, truth-telling populists.

I thought about all this in 2016 when Krauthammer said, “This is the strongest field of Republican candidates in 35 years.  You could pick a dozen of them at random and you have the strongest cabinet America’s had in our lifetime.”  I wholeheartedly disagreed with his assessment but respected his opinion.

He then went on to say, “Instead, all of our time is spent discussing this rodeo clown (Donald Trump).”  Still, no big deal, just his opinion.  But when he went one step further and complained that “No previous president has ever talked like that,” it was a telltale moment for me because it showed that Charles Krauthammer, a man who made it a habit to carefully measure his words, simply was not able to grasp what was happening in America.

Clearly, it had not sunk in with him that it was because Donald Trump “talks like that” that he was elected president — even though Horrible Hillary and the Dirty Dems, the FBI, the DOJ, and Never-Trump Republicans illegally conspired against him.

More broadly, I don’t believe Charles Krauthammer, notwithstanding his brilliance, could fathom that because no one has had the courage to reign in the hateful rhetoric and threats coming from the Radical Left, the door has been opened for them to take the next step and resort to the kind of violence that could lead to a second civil war.

The violence of the Radical Left was on vivid display last week when Sarah Sanders, Kirstjen Nielson, and Stephen Miller were confronted and harassed in restaurants and Pam Bondi got the same treatment when trying to enter a movie theater.  The message was clear:  Whatever it takes, “Nazis” must be forcibly prevented from infecting the public landscape.

All this reminds me of why I strayed from hard-line libertarian doctrine some years ago.  It was a result of my finally accepting the reality that there are both evil and ignorant people in the world who delight in causing pain and suffering to those with whom they disagree.  When I use the word evil, it’s not necessarily in a biblical context but, rather, a figurative way of referring to people who enjoy seeing others suffer.

As to ignorance, it can often lead to the same results as evil.  The empirical evidence makes it clear that a person who is ignorant but well-intentioned can do as much harm to others as the person who is knowledgeable but ill-intentioned.

Low-information (i.e., ignorant) people provide the manpower for evil leaders whose objective is to silence their perceived enemies.  They are the useful idiots that Vladimir Lenin spoke about so contemptuously in the early part of the 20thcentury, those lost souls who provide crusaders with the true believers they need to carry out their crusades.

They are generally the kind of self-loathing zombies who became Hitler’s brown shirts and Mao’s Red Guard.  Today they fill the ranks of hate groups like Occupy Wall Street, Antifa, and, yes, the Southern Poverty Law Center.

In other words, history has taught us not to dismiss rank-and-file true believers as harmless fools.  No matter how ignorant they may seem, they are extremely dangerous if for no other reason than they are guided by emotion rather than intellect.

Which brings me to the Boy Scout Republicans — unprincipled toadys like Paul Ryan, Jeff Flake, and Marco Rubio.  These are the mental dwarfs who bray on endlessly about “reaching across the aisle,” as though they believe their good-faith efforts will make the Dirty Dems respond in kind.  What they do not understand is that reaching across the aisle does not work when those on the other side of the aisle want to destroy you and everything you believe in.

As the Radical Left ramps up its moral-superiority crusade to take out Trump and his supporters, it will become ever more clear that their antics can end only in one of two ways:  capitulation by those on the right who disagree with them (as has usually been the case in the past) or all-out civil war.  Which one is worse is subject to debate.

The only thing we know for certain is that the Radical Left will never, ever back down.  Their hatred is too deep, their anger too raw, their ignorance too great.  And, make no mistake about it, the Radical Left now includes most of the Democratic Party.

Also, never forget that lurking in the background is the only president in history who vowed to fundamentally change America, the only president in history to hang around Washington after his presidency ended and actively try to undermine and destroy his successor; the only president in history to offer such violence-dripped gems as:

“We’re gonna punish our enemies and we’re gonna reward our friends,”

“I want you to argue with them and get in their face.”

“If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.”  (Maybe this is the best reason of all to cherish the Second Amendment.)

I guess this is what the oh-so-sweet and charming Mrs. Obama means when she says, with a straight face, “When they go low, we go high.”  Wink, wink.

It’s time to face up to it:  The Radical Left is at war with the rule of law, at war with the Constitution, at war with civility, at war with normal, everyday Americans.  The only question that remains is:  What will take the Radical Left’s hatred and insanity to a new level and cause them to fire that first shot at Fort Sumter?

Could it be Donald Trump’s upcoming, ultra-conservative Supreme Court pick?  We shall soon find out.

It’s About Resisting Tyranny

It’s About Resisting Tyranny

Why ‘No One Needs’ Is A Bad Anti-Gun Argument

Right now, the anti-gun zealots are preoccupied with so-called “assault rifles.” They’re doing everything they can to gin up support for a ban, hoping that a weak-spined majority in Congress will “bow to the will of the people” if they can just get enough support and hold onto it for a long enough period of time.

One of their favorite arguments, however, is that “no one needs an AR-15.” They usually then call it a “weapon of war.”

As gun folks, we tend to take issue with the whole “weapon of war” thing. After all, the AR-15 isn’t a weapon of war. No military on Earth has ever fielded the weapon and none has expressed any interest in doing so. While it’s similar to the M16/M4 platform, it lacks that select-fire capability that pretty much every military on the planet needs.

However, I don’t think that’s the part of the argument we should focus so much on. After all, we tend to want these guns in part to resist tyranny, right? If we ever have to do that, God forbid, they will then be weapons of war. It’s a quibble, but one anti-gunners will likely latch onto if any have the brainpower to see it.

Instead, I think the “no one needs X” argument is the weaker argument and one we should be attacking.

First, let’s face facts. Our system of government isn’t predicated on people only meeting their needs. After all, our affluent society is known by our consumerism to some degree. We buy all kinds of things, which is what has spurred our economy on and helped make us such a powerful nation.

No one needs most of the stuff we have.

My family possesses multiple laptop computers and a desktop. We don’t need all that. While I need a computer to work, my wife and son don’t. One computer fits my needs perfectly. Others? They probably don’t need a computer at all. It’s nice, but no one needs complete, unfettered access to the accumulated knowledge of mankind.

Oh, and that smartphone? No one needs one of those. In my youth, we got by guy fine with pay phones on the street corners and corded telephones at home.

What about cable TV? Do you really need 1,000 channels of nothing to watch? Do you really need 30 premium channels that are all playing the same movies? Even if they were chock full of interesting programming, you don’t need any of that. People lived just fine well before cable was much of a thing.

For that matter, who needs televisions? People got along just fine without them for centuries. Just why do you think you need one of those, anyway?

Honestly, the “no one needs” argument is stupid precisely because we can use that same argument to devolve society down to the point where all anyone would have is a cave, a fire, a spear for hunting, and the knowledge of which plants were edible and which would kill you. That’s where arguing need can easily take us.

No, no one needs an AR-15. But no one needs a lot of things.

If you want to tell me I can’t have something, you need a more compelling argument than “no one needs.” You need an argument that tells me why my possessing something is a clear and present danger to something or someone. If you can’t do that–pro tip: You can’t–then drop it. I’m not going to go along with your incessant whining simply because you think you have a right to impose your will on me.

No one needs to hear your opinions on things you know little about, after all, yet here you are. Why don’t you do something about that instead?

Cameras, surveillance and domestic abuse: A sinister match

Cameras, surveillance and domestic abuse: A sinister match

A note in a dead woman's pocket read: "There are cameras inside and outside the house."

On July 30, 2011, Simon Gittany threw his fiance, Lisa Harnum, off a 15th-floor balcony. She didn't survive.

Court documents paint a tempestuous relationship in the months leading up to Harnum's death. She wanted to leave Gittany. She told her mother she felt trapped.

Shortly before 10 a.m. on July 30, her Sydney neighbors heard a woman banging on their door and screaming for help. A camera in the hallway recorded Gittany putting his hand over Harnum's mouth and dragging her back into their apartment.

Sixty-nine seconds later, she fell to the pavement below and died almost immediately.

Later, during the postmortem, investigators found a handwritten note torn up in the pocket of Harnum's jeans.

When it was pieced back together, the note read, "There are cameras inside and outside the house."

Always connected

Billions of connected devices are playing a frightening new role in domestic abuse, helping perpetrators harass their victims at any hour of the day, in any corner of the world. While smartphones, cameras and social media have broken down barriers to communication, they're also erasing the physical distance between abusers and their targets, allowing them track and torment their victims in terrifying new ways. The issue is starting to gain attention, as The New York Times wrote earlier this week.

Before, to abuse someone emotionally or physically would require access to them.

Hadeel Al-Alosi, University of New South Wales

"Before, to abuse someone emotionally or physically would require access to them," says Hadeel Al-Alosi, an expert in law and criminal justice from the University of New South Wales. "Now that everyone has an iPhone and social media, it has become possible for abusers to pretty much torment victims or survivors any time of the day."

The result may be psychological scars from relentless cyberstalking or bruises and broken bones from beatings, but the abuse shares a common denominator.

"Domestic violence is about control," Al-Alosi says. 

Behind closed doors

For many victim-survivors, the most extreme forms of control can come through the most mundane technologies -- phone calls, texts, social media posts -- all enabled by always-on mobile devices, fast internet connections and pervasive connectivity.

According to a 2015 Australian survey of domestic violence practitioners [PDF], more than 80 percent of case workers reported clients were abused through both social media and smartphones. Perpetrators most often used text messages as their weapon of choice. One case worker described a victim receiving more than 30 calls and messages during a single counseling session.

A 2015 survey from the National Network to End Domestic Violence in the US reported similar numbers, and said "anonymity" was enabling abusers like never before.

One police officer I spoke with said a significant number of abusers flock to social media. While not authorized to speak on behalf of the state police force he works for in Australia, the Detective Senior Constable says digital platforms are emboldening abusers.

"People get very brave when they're miles away from someone and behind a keyboard," he tells me. "That's when the threats and manipulation really come into play."

Getty

If it's not one technology, it'll be another. 

"If he can't get to her through her Facebook, he'll go through Twitter," says Emily Maguire, CEO of the Domestic Violence Resource Centre Victoria in Australia. "If he can't get to her through Twitter, he will go through a phone. If he can't go through a phone, he'll go through her friends."

Al-Alosi tells a story about one woman who had a restraining order against her ex-partner. With no other means of contact, the man would transfer 10 cents into the woman's bank account, just so he could leave an abusive message in the transaction description.

When digital becomes physical 

Domestic violence affects women, men and same-sex partners, different races and socioeconomic groups, and children. But ultimately, as one Australian report on family violence puts it, "the biggest risk factor for becoming a victim of sexual assault and/or domestic and family violence is being a woman." It is overwhelmingly a problem that women suffer at the hands of men.  

The UN estimates a third of women globally have experienced violence at the hands of an intimate partner, or sexual violence from a nonpartner. According tothe Centers for Disease Control, nearly half of all women murdered every year in the United States are killed by a current or former male partner. In Australia, on average, one woman is killed every week. Lisa Harnum was that woman in the last week of July 2011. For her, digital surveillance meant an atmosphere that had her rightly fearing for her life.

According to court documents, Simon Gittany tracked Harnum's every move in the months before her death. He installed two cameras in their apartment and a pinhole camera outside the front door that police said was "virtually invisible." He put a secret program on her phone to monitor her text messages.

The use of spyware like this is becoming frighteningly common, according to domestic violence support workers, but it's a problem law enforcement is only just starting to come to grips with.

Miguel Navarro/Getty

In 2014, the US Justice Department indicted the creator of an app called StealthGenie in what the government said was the first-ever criminal case involving the advertising and sale of a mobile spyware app.

Installed on victims' phones without their knowledge, StealthGenie allowed abusers to monitor all calls, texts and emails, view photos and videos stored on the phone, intercept calls and even record what the user is saying when not on a call through the phone's microphone.

But while StealthGenie is gone, countless copycat apps and programs like it are just a quick Google search away, many promising constant surveillance and even physical tracking.

"It's pretty common and it's really easy to find," says Maguire of the Domestic Violence Resource Centre.

One Australian service that sells phone-monitoring apps also advertises a 2-in-1 "real-time GPS tracker and listening bug which allows you to locate its EXACT position at any time, accurate to within a couple of metres!" The service promotes its products as a way to catch cheating spouses, telling potential buyers, "It's OK to want the truth!"

The police officer I spoke with says these kinds of technologies are increasingly common in domestic violence cases. Working on the front line, he's seen "GPS units that are installed on vehicles in order to stalk people and see who they're spending time with, hidden CCTV cameras ... keyloggers installed on people's computers in order to access their online accounts" -- the kind of surveillance tech that you'd hardly expect to find in the suburbs.

People get very brave when they're miles away from someone and behind a keyboard.

Australian police officer

The technologies aren't always found. Surveillance software by its very nature is designed to be covert, making it easy for perpetrators to evade detection.

"We don't have any current data on just how frequent GPS tracking is, and it's really hard to collect because often you don't know," says Maguire. 

GPS tracking is especially problematic for women with abusive ex-partners, according to Al-Alosi.

"Some victims never know they're being GPS-tracked," she says. "The only reason they find that out is because their ex-partner happens to be everywhere they go."

Domestic violence case workers I spoke to described how abusers will download spyware onto phones bought for a partner or their kids, and track them even after the family has relocated for their safety. Others describe GPS trackers in cars or even children's prams.

Technology saving women, women saving themselves

It's easy to tell women to get off social media, change phone numbers or switch off completely.

But those who work on the front line say this is just another form of victim blaming. Not only does it require the victim to uproot her entire digital life, it can also do more harm than good.

"For a lot of women, their violent partner will have sought to isolate them from their friends and family," Maguire says. "Often, social media is the only way they can access information, support and resources from specialist family violence services, and it's often the only way that they can stay connected to everyone.

"Social connection and support is one of the biggest factors in women actually leaving violent relationships."

RELATED STORIES

• The rise of the Internet police
• Facebook targets potential revenge porn photos
• Online harassment of women an 'epidemic'

Al-Alosi agrees.

"What we're essentially doing is driving women out of technology and making it a male-dominated space," she says. "The main issue with that is, who should be accountable?"

But while technology can be used for abuse, it also offers a solution.

The SmartSafe app, developed by the Domestic Violence Resource Centre of Victoria (where Maguire is CEO), is just one tool that's making it easier for women to document their experiences, escape violent partners and see their abusers prosecuted.

It offers links to resources and tips about how to stay safe online and on their phone. And it lets users record photos and videos, write notes and even capture voice and audio recordings -- all of which are time-stamped and securely stored in the cloud. Users can either retrieve this full record from within the app, or log on to a secure site from any computer using their email and password, then download it as evidence for police.

Enlarge Image

The SmartSafe app lets users keep records of domestic abuse on their phone.

Domestic Violence Resource Centre Victoria

"When you get into court, and you're sitting and talking to the court worker, you don't have to take a range of random bits of paper," Maguire says. "You can just show them your phone." 

The app disguises itself (both on the app store and the phone itself) in ways that the Domestic Violence Resource Centre has asked us not to disclose. The goal is clear: circumvent the surveillance many women experience when partners control every aspect of their phone use and communication.

The app also gives users a "sense check," she says. Victims whose partners gaslight and deny violent behavior have proof they didn't imagine the abuse.

SmartSafe isn't the only tool for victim-survivors. Others include the RUSafe app from the Women's Center and Shelter of Greater Pittsburgh, which lets women securely document their experiences.

There are also apps that connect victim-survivors with local resources and support services, and personal safety apps that will notify law enforcement if the user stops holding her phone on a late-night walk home.

For a lot of women, their violent partner will have sought to isolate them from their friends and family. Often, social media is the only way they can access information.

Emily Maguire, Domestic Violence Resource Centre Victoria

Domestic violence won't be erased by a single app. Systemic abuse is the result of a culture that excuses controlling behaviour, dismisses domestic violence and disempowers victims.

But despite the frightening toll of domestic violence -- the countless lives it changes, the lives it ends -- technology can help.

Even after years of policing and facing horrific cases firsthand, the police officer I spoke with still has hope.

"Technology means that victims are no longer just victims. They're also active participants in their retribution," he says. "That's powerful stuff."

If you or someone you know is impacted by sexual assault or family violence, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 or visit www.thehotline.org. In an emergency, call 911.

A World of Free Movement Would Be $78 Trillion Richer

A World of Free Movement Would Be $78 Trillion Richer

Yes, it would be disruptive. But the potential gains are so vast that objectors could be bribed to let it happen

A HUNDRED-DOLLAR BILL is lying on the ground. An economist walks past it. A friend asks the economist: “Didn’t you see the money there?” The economist replies: “I thought I saw something, but I must have imagined it. If there had been $100 on the ground, someone would have picked it up.”
If something seems too good to be true, it probably is not actually true. But occasionally it is. Michael Clemens, an economist at the Centre for Global Development, an anti-poverty think-tank in Washington, DC, argues that there are “trillion-dollar bills on the sidewalk”. One seemingly simple policy could make the world twice as rich as it is: open borders.

Workers become far more productive when they move from a poor country to a rich one. Suddenly, they can join a labour market with ample capital, efficient firms and a predictable legal system. Those who used to scrape a living from the soil with a wooden hoe start driving tractors. Those who once made mud bricks by hand start working with cranes and mechanical diggers. Those who cut hair find richer clients who tip better.

“Labour is the world’s most valuable commodity—yet thanks to strict immigration regulation, most of it goes to waste,” argue Bryan Caplan and Vipul Naik in “A radical case for open borders”. Mexican labourers who migrate to the United States can expect to earn 150% more. Unskilled Nigerians make 1,000% more.

“Making Nigerians stay in Nigeria is as economically senseless as making farmers plant in Antarctica,” argue Mr Caplan and Mr Naik. And the non-economic benefits are hardly trivial, either. A Nigerian in the United States cannot be enslaved by the Islamists of Boko Haram.
The potential gains from open borders dwarf those of, say, completely free trade, let alone foreign aid. Yet the idea is everywhere treated as a fantasy. In most countries fewer than 10% of people favour it. In the era of Brexit and Donald Trump, it is a political non-starter. Nonetheless, it is worth asking what might happen if borders were, indeed, open.

To clarify, “open borders” means that people are free to move to find work. It does not mean “no borders” or “the abolition of the nation-state”. On the contrary, the reason why migration is so attractive is that some countries are well-run and others, abysmally so.

Workers in rich countries earn more than those in poor countries partly because they are better educated but mostly because they live in societies that have, over many years, developed institutions that foster prosperity and peace. It is very hard to transfer Canadian institutions to Cambodia, but quite straightforward for a Cambodian family to fly to Canada. The quickest way to eliminate absolute poverty would be to allow people to leave the places where it persists. Their poverty would thus become more visible to citizens of the rich world—who would see many more Liberians and Bangladeshis waiting tables and stacking shelves—but much less severe.

If borders were open, how many people would up sticks? Gallup, a pollster, estimated in 2013 that 630m people—about 13% of the world’s population—would migrate permanently if they could, and even more would move temporarily. Some 138m would settle in the United States, 42m in Britain and 29m in Saudi Arabia.

Gallup’s numbers could be an overestimate. People do not always do what they say they will. Leaving one’s homeland requires courage and resilience. Migrants must wave goodbye to familiar people, familiar customs and grandma’s cooking. Many people would rather not make that sacrifice, even for the prospect of large material rewards.

Wages are twice as high in Germany as in Greece, and under European Union rules Greeks are free to move to Germany, but only 150,000 have done so since the beginning of the economic crisis in 2010, out of a population of 11m. The weather is awful in Frankfurt, and hardly anyone speaks Greek. Even very large disparities combined with open borders do not necessarily lead to a mass exodus. Since 1986 the citizens of Micronesia have been allowed to live and work without a visa in the United States, where income per person is roughly 20 times higher. Yet two-thirds remain in Micronesia.
Despite these caveats, it is a fair bet that open borders would lead to very large flows of people. The gap between rich and poor countries globally is much wider than the gap between the richest and less-rich countries within Europe, and most poor countries are not Pacific-island paradises. Many are violent as well as poor, or have oppressive governments.

Also, migration is, in the jargon, “path-dependent”. It starts with a trickle: the first person to move from country A to country B typically arrives in a place where no one speaks his language or knows the right way to cook noodles. But the second migrant—who may be his brother or cousin—has someone to show him around. As word spreads on the diaspora grapevine that country B is a good place to live, more people set off from country A. When the 1,000th migrant arrives, he finds a whole neighbourhood of his compatriots.

So the Gallup numbers could just as well be too low. Today there are 1.4bn people in rich countries and 6bn in not-so-rich ones. It is hardly far-fetched to imagine that, over a few decades, a billion or more of those people might emigrate if there were no legal obstacle to doing so. Clearly, this would transform rich countries in unpredictable ways.

Voters in destination states typically do not mind a bit of immigration, but fret that truly open borders would lead to them being “swamped” by foreigners. This, they fear, would make life worse, and perhaps threaten the political system that made their country worth moving to in the first place. Mass migration, they worry, would bring more crime and terrorism, lower wages for locals, an impossible strain on welfare states, horrific overcrowding and traumatic cultural disruption.

Open questions

If lots of people migrated from war-torn Syria, gangster-plagued Guatemala or chaotic Congo, would they bring mayhem with them? It is an understandable fear (and one that anti-immigrant politicians play on), but there is little besides conjecture and anecdotal evidence to support it. Granted, some immigrants commit crimes, or even headline-grabbing acts of terrorism. But in America the foreign-born are only a fifth as likely to be incarcerated as the native-born. In some European countries, such as Sweden, migrants are more likely to get into trouble than locals, but this is mostly because they are more likely to be young and male. A study of migration flows among 145 countries between 1970 and 2000 by researchers at the University of Warwick found that migration was more likely to reduce terrorism than increase it, largely because migration fosters economic growth.

Would large-scale immigration make locals worse off economically? So far, it has not. Immigrants are more likely than the native-born to bring new ideas and start their own businesses, many of which hire locals. Overall, migrants are less likely than the native-born to be a drain on public finances, unless local laws make it impossible for them to work, as is the case for asylum-seekers in Britain. A large influx of foreign workers may slightly depress the wages of locals with similar skills. But most immigrants have different skills. Foreign doctors and engineers ease skills shortages. Unskilled migrants care for babies or the elderly, thus freeing the native-born to do more lucrative work.
Would open borders cause overcrowding? Perhaps, in popular cities like London. But most Western cities could build much higher than they do, creating more space. And mass migration would make the world as a whole less crowded, since fertility among migrants quickly plunges until it is much closer to the norm of their host country than their country of origin.\

Would mass immigration change the culture and politics of rich countries? Undoubtedly. Look at the way America has changed, mostly for the better, as its population soared from 5m mainly white folks in 1800 to 320m many-hued ones today. Still, that does not prove that future waves of immigration will be benign. Newcomers from illiberal lands might bring unwelcome customs, such as political corruption or intolerance for gay people. If enough of them came, they might vote for an Islamist government, or one that raises taxes on the native-born to pamper the newcomers.

Eyes on the prize

There are certainly risks if borders are opened suddenly and without the right policies to help absorb the inflow. But nearly all these risks could be mitigated, and many of the most common objections overcome, with a bit of creative thinking.

If the worry is that immigrants will outvote the locals and impose an uncongenial government on them, one solution would be not to let immigrants vote—for five years, ten years or even a lifetime. This may seem harsh, but it is far kinder than not letting them in. If the worry is that future migrants might not pay their way, why not charge them more for visas, or make them pay extra taxes, or restrict their access to welfare benefits? Such levies could also be used to regulate the flow of migrants, thus avoiding big, sudden surges.

This sounds horribly discriminatory, and it is. But it is better for the migrants than the status quo, in which they are excluded from rich-world labour markets unless they pay tens of thousands of dollars to people-smugglers—and even then they must work in the shadows and are subject to sudden deportation. Today, millions of migrants work in the Gulf, where they have no political rights at all. Despite this, they keep coming. No one is forcing them to.

“Open borders would make foreigners trillions of dollars richer,” observes Mr Caplan. A thoughtful voter, even if he does not care about the welfare of foreigners, “should not say...‘So what?’ Instead, he should say, ‘Trillions of dollars of wealth are on the table. How can my countrymen get a hefty piece of the action?’ Modern governments routinely use taxes and transfers to redistribute from young to old and rich to poor. Why not use the same policy tools to redistribute from foreign to native?” If a world of free movement would be $78trn richer, should not liberals be prepared to make big political compromises to bring it about?

This article was originally published by "The Economist" -

Ralph Nader Asks Former First Ladies: Why No "Heartfelt Concern for Tens of Thousands of Children Killed or Seriously Maimed" by Their Husbands' Wars?

Ralph Nader Asks Former First Ladies: Why No "Heartfelt Concern for Tens of Thousands of Children Killed or Seriously Maimed" by Their Husbands' Wars? Consumer advocate puts check on Laura Bush and Michelle Obama for selective criticism when it comes to kids harmed by brutal U.S. policiesBy Andrea GermanosJune 23, 2018 "Information Clearing House" - Noted consumer advocate and author Ralph Nader on Friday offered a sharp retort to Laura Bush and Michelle Obama in response to the former first ladies levied criticism at the Trump administration'scruel immigration policy that separated immigrant children from their families. "Would be nice if Laura Bush and Michelle Obama had expressed similar heartfelt concern for the tens of thousands of children killed or seriously maimed by the wars of their husbands in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere," he tweeted. Ralph Nader ✔@RalphNader Would be nice if Laura Bush and Michelle Obama had expressed similar heartfelt concern for the tens of thousands of children killed or seriously maimed by the wars of their husbands in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere. -R 10:23 AM - Jun 22, 2018 7,320 3,489 people are talking about this

As it's signed "-R," it was written by Nader himself, rather than his staff who often tweet on his behalf.
The tweet follows an op-ed published Sunday at the Washington Post in which Bush took aim at Trump's "zero tolerance" policy, writing that she "was among the millions of Americans who watched images of children who have been torn from their parents."
"I live in a border state. I appreciate the need to enforce and protect our international boundaries, but this zero-tolerance policy is cruel. It is immoral. And it breaks my heart," she wrote, tweeting out the same section of text.
Michelle Obama retweeted that, adding, "Sometimes truth transcends party."
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), it should also be noted, was created under the George w. Bush administration and the Obama administration also came under fire for his deportation policy, treatment of child migrants, and the detention of immigrant families.
The other living first ladies have also weighed in on the Trump administration's widely condemned policy of ripping families apart at the Southern border, with all expressing at least some measure of criticism.
The current First Lady's reaction to the separations and detention of chidlren was quite mild, with a spokesperson for Melania Trump saying she "hates to see children separated from their families." It also rang particularly hollow, as, on her way to visit a detention center at the border, she wore a jacket emblazoned with the words "I really don't care, do U?"

This article was originally published by "Common Dreams " -

The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House.

======

'F*ck Decorum': On House Floor, Rep. Ted Lieu Plays Audio of Detained Children Crying

Kyle Griffin

✔@kylegriffin1

Ted Lieu plays the ProPublica audio of crying children in detention centers on the House floor.

Karen Handel, who was presiding over the floor, repeatedly tries to stop Lieu.

Lieu responds: "Why are we hiding this from the American people?" (via CSPAN)

10:40 AM - Jun 22, 2018

• 39.1K
• 17.4K people are talking about this

Twitter Ads info and privacy

Corey Lewandowski Mocks 10-Year-Old Girl Torn From Mom: ‘Womp Womp’