One World Without Borders Would Lead To Tyranny

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Hillary, in her own words, said “My dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders”.

She said it, but it’s not clear if she believes it. It’s unclear because she offered these views, many times, to rich powerful banks anxious to pay Hillary preposterous amounts of money for Hillary to tell them that open borders are good. Could it be—stretch your mind here—that these banks were not paying for her wisdom (have you thought Hillary wise?) but her future cooperation should she become president?

That’s a political question we can leave aside. More interesting is the call itself for the elimination of all borders. The call, once feint, grows lower.

Before that, consider the false but alluring ideology of Equality. Equality is the pernicious doctrine that (1) everybody is equal in theory but unequal in circumstance, and that (2) everybody could be made equal if circumstances were adjusted. The stronger the grip this ideology has, the more any inequality, no matter how trivial, outrages.

A person under the delusion of Equality will say it is unfair that one man was born here, and another there. The disparity will rankle and he will march. But it is, of course, impossible for both men to be born in the same place and time and under identical circumstances. This is why the equalitarian calls for the leveling of circumstance. This is why the equalitarian would punish, fine, or restrict one man if the equalitarian considers the man benefits from superior circumstance (it may not be superior in reality), and it is why the equalitarian would reward, embellish, and loose a second man if the equalitarian considers the second man suffers from inferior circumstance (again, it may not be inferior in practice). The equalitarian would insist on these actions against the will of both men.

Equality necessarily leads to tyranny. Why? Because the moment equalitarian controls are removed, inequalities arise, and since inequalities are unacceptable, the chains must needs reappear. Tyranny. Equality also always, and just as necessarily, leads to a massive inequality: there must under Equality be masters, the equalitarians, and slaves, the “equal.” This is obvious to equalitarians (as it is not for those not under the sway of the ideology), and it is the seductions of the great and vast powers they will wield that drives the equalitarians’ desire for Equality.

And so now we turn to The Atlantic, which published an essay by Alex Tabarrok, which gives the game away in its title (editors usually write titles), “The Case for Getting Rid of Borders—Completely: No defensible moral framework regards foreigners as less deserving of rights than people born in the right place at the right time.

There is the heartfelt cry against the inequality of circumstance. The cry is taken up immediately:

To paraphrase Rousseau, man is born free, yet everywhere he is caged. Barbed-wire, concrete walls, and gun-toting guards confine people to the nation-state of their birth. But why? The argument for open borders is both economic and moral. All people should be free to move about the earth, uncaged by the arbitrary lines known as borders.

Man is not born free, and man is never free in the sense meant by Rousseau and his followers (they mean Do What Thou Wilt, whereas true freedom is being unrestricted to do what is good). At the very least, infants are chained to their mothers else they die. And the same by analogy this is true of the rest of us. Equalitarians confuse the ties that bind us and make us stronger with chains that restrict desire. By a cruder analogy, you cannot take the innards of a functioning machine and toss them into the wind with the cry “Be free!” and hope the machine will still work.

Tabarrok’s only argument is that inequalities exist. “Nature’s bounty is divided unevenly,” he says. “Closed borders compound these injustices, cementing inequality into place and sentencing their victims to a life of penury,” he weeps. Tabarrok, a staunch materialist, can only put inequalities in terms of money. Spiritual and cultural worth is not quantifiable, money is measurable. And because it is measurable, it takes on meaning which far exceeds its importance.

No standard moral framework, be it utilitarian, libertarian, egalitarian, Rawlsian, Christian, or any other well-developed perspective, regards people from foreign lands as less entitled to exercise their rights—or as inherently possessing less moral worth—than people lucky to have been born in the right place at the right time.

This is confused because Tabarrok bases his morality on rights and not duties. Start from a false premise and you could end up anywhere. Worse, starting with rights assumes what it sets out to prove, that all should have the same rights (and equivalent circumstance): the argument is circular. What’s odd is that Tabarrok misidentifies moral worth as being in a state of equal circumstance, while simultaneously denying it. If moral worth is to be the key metric, as it should be, in judging a human life, then circumstance is always circumstantial.

It’s always most difficult to see what is missing, and what isn’t there in Tabarrok’s argument is the identification of who is to be in charge once all borders are erased. Ask him if he sees himself in the role of equality enforcer. He also forgets that when there is only One World, there is nowhere left to run to.

14 Comments

  1. Michael Dowd

    Excellent analysis William. Agree completely. If open borders were to happen, along with all the happy equality nonsense, what would ensue would the need to eliminate, say, half the population for starters. Reason: what would motivate productive people to grow enough food, etc. Prisons and gulags would be necessary to keep the restless natives under control. Haven’t we already tried this with Communism? Quick raise your hands. How many of you would like to live in China or North Korea?

  2. “…who is to be in charge once all borders are erased.”

    Bingo!

    Of course, it will be the enlightened elite, those of higher mind and finer sentiment, you mouth-breathing deplorable!

  3. Trigger Warnings

    “[E]verybody could be made equal if circumstances were adjusted…”

    And they could, too. Read Harrison Bergeron to understand how this could be achieved.

  4. Gary

    Equality exists in mathematics, not nature.

  5. Frederic

    Vonnegut really saw it coming….the amazing thing is it’s even more
    absurd than he suggested.

  6. Scotian

    Libertarians often confuse free trade with free movement of people. They have very different consequences. One thought is that without government ownership of property, public lands, and possibly a welfare system, you would need a private sponsor.

  7. Ray

    In the late great USSR everybody was theoretically equal. How did that work out?

  8. JohnK

    I keep wondering when any Catholic bishop (Bueller? Bueller?….) is going to pay any attention at all to CCC 57:

    This state of division into many nations is at once cosmic, social and religious. It is intended to limit the pride of fallen humanity united only in its perverse ambition to forge its own unity as at Babel. But, because of sin, both polytheism and the idolatry of the nation and of its rulers constantly threaten this provisional economy with the perversion of paganism.

    Dear bishop guys: how hard is it to understand that ‘this state of division’ is going to exist until Gabriel blows his trumpet, by what you yourselves professed? And that any effort to build the new Babel is always going to end in tears? Catholic-type persons used to be flat-out grateful when there wasn’t straight anarchy, or blatant thugocracy, in at least a few places in this vale of tears. Catholic-type persons used to understand, with St. Augustine (and with St. Thomas, 800 years later), that economic theory must begin with the obvious fact that goods are scarce, not hyper-abundant. Must we ALL be Utopians — Babelites — (babies, might be more apt) now?

  9. Matt Czu

    Ray: Not very well. The Soviet system suffered from the same grave failure as this “brave new global world” will: the omnipotent positive feedback wish. A true “Death Wish” (just to paraphrase the Charles Bronson movie).

    Positive feedback is an aspect that these “believers” fully forget about. It is not possible to maintain a stable world without real negative feedback: a total lack of true power balance will quickly lead to disaster.
    Just to add a further aspect apart from the inequality one.

  10. DEBORAH ERICSON

    Hi William:
    The Atlantic along with The Economist are New World Order (One World Government, open borders) establishment platforms. Such a great way to respectably mold the populace ensconced in legacies of Liberalism masked as intellectual. Once you see it you can’t unsee.

  11. The US was a tyranny before 1882?

    BTW, why would lack of people control at borders mean egalitarianism? We don’t have people control at state borders in the US but state governments are much less egalitarian than the federal government.

  12. Sure there is equality in nature. Existence exists. We are all equal in that. Beyond that, their can only be equality under God and before the law. That means that the rules cannot be anything but blind to persons except as persons, not their circumstances. We are free to sin. When we do, we must pay the price. Morality must discriminate, that is to discern differences in the consequences of acts. Lucifer didn’t have to sin. Once he did, he had to pay the price. Adam didn’t have to sin. Once he did, not only did he have to pay the price, we have to pay the price.

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