aaron.harnly.net » politics

Great article on why we should restrict immigration

aaronharnly — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 10:20:13 +0000

The Atlantic Monthly is running a really hard-hitting, pull-no-punches piece on immigration restriction, and why this is the right time to put the brakes on.

It begins by acknowledging the historical role that immigration has played in our nation:

From the beginning, it has been the policy of the United States, both officially and according to the prevailing sentiment of our people, to tolerate, to welcome, and to encourage immigration, without qualification and without discrimination. For generations, it was the settled opinion of our people, which found no challenge anywhere, that immigration was a source of both strength and wealth.

It goes on to note that support for immigration generally rests on two key ideas:

Immigration boosts our population, which we need because our birthrate is lower.
Immigration brings laborers that do work that Americans are unwilling to do.

These two opinions were, first, that immigration constituted a net reinforcement of our population; secondly, that, in addition to this, or irrespective of this, immigration was necessary, in order to supply the laborers who should do certain kinds of work,…

The article then dismantles each of these two ideas. First, on the idea that we need immigration because our birthrate has declined — in fact, the article shows, our birthrate has declined because of immigration:

The arrival in the United States, … increasingly, of large numbers of degraded peasantry created for the first time in this country distinct social classes, and produced an alteration of economic relations which could not fail powerfully to affect population. The appearance of vast numbers of men, foreign in birth and often in language, with a poorer standard of living, with habits repellent to our native people, of an industrial grade suited only to the lowest kind of manual labor, was exactly such a cause as by any student of population would be expected to affect profoundly the growth of the native population. Americans shrank alike from the social contact and the economic competition thus created. They became increasingly unwilling to bring forth sons and daughters who should be obliged to compete in the market for labor and in the walks of life with those whom they did not recognize as of their own grade and condition.

And second: the idea that we need immigrants to do work that Americans are unwilling to do — this too is turned on its head. In fact, Americans only become unwilling to do certain “degrading” labor only when new groups of immigrants arrive:

Does the Italian come because the Irishman refuses to work in ditches and trenches, in gangs; or has the Irishman taken this position because the Italian has come? The latter is undoubtedly the truth; and if the administrators of Baron Hirsch’s estate send to us two millions of Russian Jews, we shall soon find the Italians standing on their dignity, and deeming themselves too good to work on streets and sewers and railroads. But meanwhile, what of the republic? what of the American standard of living? what of the American rate of wages?

Finally, the article points out that we just don’t have the room to absorb this influx of immigrants any more:

First, we have the important fact of the complete exhaustion of the free public lands of the United States. Fifty years ago, thirty years ago, vast tracts of arable laud were open to every person arriving on our shores, under the Preemption Act, or later, the Homestead Act. A good farm of one hundred and sixty acres could be had at the minimum price of $1.25 an acre, or for merely the fees of registration. Under these circumstances it was a very simple matter to dispose of a large immigration. To-day there is not a good farm within the limits of the United States which is to be had under either of these acts. The wild and tumultuous scenes which attended the opening to settlement of the Territory of Oklahoma, a few years ago, and, a little later, of the so-called Cherokee Strip, testify eloquently to the vast change in our national conditions in this respect.

Finally, the author calls for a national “rest” from immigration, to give our country a chance to recuperate from its devastating effects, before more undesirables arrive:

For one, I believe it is time that we should take a rest, and give our social, political, and industrial system some chance to recuperate. The problems which so sternly confront us to-day are serious enough without being complicated and aggravated by the addition of some millions of Hungarians, Bohemians, Poles, south Italians, and Russian Jews.

And yes, it was written in 1896.

Church and State and all that

aaronharnly — Wed, 06 Apr 2005 13:07:29 +0000

Everyone is talking about Church and State these days. Is America a secular nation, imperiled by a new breed of religious radical? Or is our proud religious and Christian tradition under assault from an unprecedented liberal, anti-religious agenda?

As the above straw men make clear, neither is true. This is a nation founded by and composed of mostly religious Christians, yet with a deeply secular governing tradition. Forces promoting and opposed to religion, and promoting and opposed to the mingling of church and state, have been battling for the past two centuries. These latest kerfuffles are pretty mild in the context of the controversies that have riven the nation before.

An early debate in the drafting of the Constitution in 1787 was whether and how a religious oath should be required of national leaders. The Massachusetts Constitution extended the equal protection of the law, and right to hold office, to any Christian (though Catholics had to swear to renounce papal authority “in any matter, civil, ecclesiastical or spiritual.”) The 1777 New York Constitution implicitly permitted Judaism, but required immigrating Catholics to renounce papal authority, and prohibited Catholics from holding office. The 1776 Maryland Constitution extended “protection in their religious liberty” to “all persons professing the Christian religion” but not Jews or deists.

Only Virginia’s constitution established complete freedom of religious opinions and belief, and explicitly separated civil duties from religion. So it was a matter of some controversy that the Constitutional Congress modeled the federal constitution after Virginia’s, explicitly stating in Article VI that federal officials “shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”

In 1794, Thomas Paine, popularizer of the American Revolution, wrote The Age of Reason, a treatise on religion. While he disavowed atheism, he embraced a deist worldview and viciously attacked Christianity and clericalism of all stripes. This did not make him a popular man in America. The book was written in a French jail (where Paine sat because he rejected the overzealous heights of the French Revolution), and Paine stayed in France until 1802.

He returned at the personal invitation of Thomas Jefferson, who had been elected president in 1800. Jefferson himself was not a Christian — he wrote, but declined to publish, The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, a version of the New Testament with all miracles and theology removed. Paine’s reputation as a radical and anti-Christian preceded him; Jefferson came under furious attack from Federalists for his invitation:

If, during the present season of national abasement, infatuation, folly, and vice, any portent could surprise, sober men would be utterly confounded by an article current in all our newspapers, that the loathesome Thomas Paine, a drunken atheist and the scavenger of faction, is invited to return in a national ship to America by the first magistrate of a free people. A measure so enormously preposterous we cannot yet believe has been adopted, and it would demand firmer nerves than those possessed by Mr. Jefferson to hazard such an insult to the moral sense of the nation. If that rebel rascal should come to preach from his Bible to our populace, it would be time for every honest and insulted man of dignity to flee to some Zoar as from another Sodom, to shake off the very dust of his feet and to abandon America.

Makes Tom Delay look positively civil. (source: Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism by Susan Jacoby)

symbolic incoherence

aaronharnly — Fri, 25 Mar 2005 12:56:00 +0000

So by now we’ve probably all seen the photos of the Terri Schiavo protesters with tape over their mouths:

I’m not going to get into the utter tragedy that is this case. I just want to register my confusion and disappointment at this protest imagery.

What is this image supposed to mean?

I am censored by LIFE?
LIFE is the duct-tape of oppression?
Free Terri from LIFE?

Now, if these protesters wore a T-shirt that said LIFE, and then covered their mouths with duct tape on which was scrawled, JUDICIAL TYRANNY, or CULTURE OF DEATH, well, I might disagree but at least it would make sense.

See, this peace protester is using the image correctly:

I thought these pro-life types were pretty experienced and savvy protesters, but apparently they need an aesthetic advisor.

Okay, enough snark for the day.

Book Report: Legacy of Dissent

aaronharnly — Thu, 27 Jan 2005 14:46:58 +0000

Legacy of Dissent ed. by Nicolaus Mills

Dissent Magazine is my favorite contemporary political journal (admittedly, of like three that I ever read). It’s avowedly left-wing, so it doesn’t try to be all things to all people (like some). Yet unlike many left-wing magazines, it doesn’t waste your time with choir-preaching conservative-bashing that serves merely to make you feel righteous, rather than advance a discussion (like a few magazines I can think of). Rather, it devotes its energy to liberal self-critique, challenging of orthodoxies, and honest insight into what in the liberal agenda is both moral and practicable.

I was vaguely aware of Dissent’s history as a noteworthy anti-Communist (but pro-democratic-socialism) voice in the post-WWII landscape, so I was excited to stumble onto this collection of essays spanning the history of the magazine.

Well, my overwhelming impression is: Socialist thinking was by and large a bunch of dreck, man. For an anti-Communist magazine, they spent a lot of time quoting Marx, debating what Marx really would have wanted, and cooking up their vision of what a just society would look like. Peering from the far side of the millenium, this stuff reads like so much hooey.

The cultural writing, on the other hand, retains immense social and historical interest, and there are some real gems here. Paul Goodman’s “Growing Up Absurd”, from 1960, charts the emergence of the Beats and a whole generation of “Independents”, who are not outside of the economic system, yet do not properly belong to it:

…This is the vast herd of the old-fashioned, the eccentric, and criminal, the gifted, and serious, the men and women, the rentiers, the free-lances, the infants, and so forth. This motley collection has, of course, no style or culture, unlike the organization that has our familiar “functional” style and popular culture. Its fragmented members hover about the organizations in multifarious ways — running specialty-shops, trying to teach or give other professional services, robbing banks, landscape gardening, and so forth — but they find it hard to get along, for they do not know the approved techniques of promoting, getting foundation grants, protecting themselves by official unions, lefally embezzling, and not blurting out the truth or weeping or laugh out of turn.

Cute!

Another wonderful piece is Richard Wright’s 1957 “White Man — Listen!”, derived from his book of the same name. He wrestles with the twin facts of his existence: Black, and thus “never allowed to blend with the culture and civilization of the West”; and yet, irreconcilably, Western in his beliefs and outlook:

I have not consciously elected to be a Westerner; I have been made into a Westerner… The content of my Westernness resides fundamentally, I feel, in my secular outlook upon life. I believe in a separation of Church and State. I believe that the state possesses a value in and for itself. I feel that man - just sheer brute man just as he is - has a meaning and value over and above all sanctions or mandates from mysetical pwoers, either on high or from below… When I look out upon those vast stretches of this earth inhabited by brown, black, and yellow men — sections of the earth in which religion dominates, to the exclusion of almost everything else, the emotional and mental landscape — my reactions and attitudes are those of the West.

Though Western, Wright is not of the West:

Yet, when I turn to face the environment that cradled and nurtured me, I experience a sense of dismaying shock, for that Western environment is soaked in and stained with the most blatant racism that the contemporary world knows… Rooted in my own disinheritdness, I know instinctively that this clinging to, and defense of, racism by Western whites are born of their psychological nakedness, of their having, through historical accident, partially thrown off the mystic cauls of Asia and Africa that once too blinded and dazed them…

And I’ll just end with a long excerpt from Erazim V. Kohák’s “Requiem for Utopia”, written after the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. Kohák went into exile from Czechoslovakia in 1948, and continues to write and teach at Boston University and Charles University in Prague.

[Dubcek and his colleagues] were determined to be humane authoritarians, respecting the rights of their subjects. In their seven months in power they discovered that the idea of a humane authoritarianism, the standard illusion of welll-intentioned rhetorical revolutionists, is an illusion, a contradictio in adiecto. A humane authoritarianism would respect the freedom of its subjects, and so inevitably create the possibility of dissent and opposition. Faced with opposition, the human authoritarian faces the choice of ceasing to be authoritarian — or ceasing to be humane. Repression, whatever its overt aim, can be humane only in rhetoric — in practice it necessarily means breaking men. Czechs and Slovaks, including Dubcek, were too familiar with the logic of terror to opt for the latter alternative. After seven months, the program which started out as a program of humane communism became a program of social democracy.

…

The ideals of human freedom and social justice remain valid. Democracy — democracy for blacks as well as whites, in economics as well as politics, at home as well as in remote reaches of Latin America or Eastern Europe — remains valid. Socialism, the ideal of social justice and social responsibility in industrial society, remains valid. Human and vicil rights, the right of every man to personal identity and oscial participation, all remain valid. But the utopian myths of self-proclaimed rhetorical radicals do not advance these ideals. The detour on which too many socialists embarked in 1917 is over, finished, discredited, revealed as an exhiliarating, aristocratic, and ultimately reactionary social sport, not the radical social progress it claimed to be. The task that remains is the work of social progress — not the aristocratic sport of revolution, but the solid work of redical, deep-rooted transformation of society. Men may still demand their daily dose of illusion, the exhilaration of revolution or “confrontation” rather than the down-to-earth facts and figures of a Freedom Budget; but those who cater to this demand can no longer do so in the name of social progress — or in the name of socialism.

Utopia is dead. Czechoslovakia has been a graveyard of illusions.

Book Report Sunday (Tuesday Edition): The Nazi Seizure of Power

aaronharnly — Wed, 29 Dec 2004 07:16:15 +0000

The Nazi Seizure of Power by William Sheridan Allen

A very merry Christmastime to all. Nothing better than a cozy week of snowshoeing and fireplaces to get some reading done…

In the small [Bavarian] town of Northeim, the National Socialist Party rose from winning 5% of the vote in 1930 to over 60% in 1933. Once they achieved democratic victory, the Nazis promptly dismantled the free press, absorbed civil societies, crushed opposition parties, and cancelled elections. Allen seeks to explain how and why the Nazis swept to power so suddenly and thoroughly.

Northeim was a typical country town of about 10,000, with about one-third of the (male) population civil servants, one-third industrial workers or unskilled laborers, and the remainder a mixture of professionals, farmers, and merchants. Unemployment peaked at a moderate 10%, even at the height of the Depression. Around 130 residents (1%) were Jewish, mostly thoroughly assimilated shop owners. A relatively small number (~ 8%) were Catholic, with the rest Lutheran. The character of the place was solid “Red State”, if you will — industrious, tightly-knit, patriotic, militaristic.

Prior to the Nazi rise, the electoral picture was roughly this:

a solid 25% of the electorate supported the Democratic Socialists, to whom [AUTH] is clearly sympathetic. They were the only party that was committed to democracy and the Weimar Republic to the bitter end, and their support scarcely wavered over the years.
A small but noisy fraction (~ 5%) supported the Communists, whose effects were primarily to frighten the middle class and prevent the Socialists from moving further to the center. A sizable chunk of the Communists would eventually support the Nazis, either out of spite of the Socialists, an attraction to radical revolution of any stripe, or the belief that it would hasten the true communist revolution.
The majority of the electorate was split between several conservative parties: the Nationalists, the Catholic Center, and the People’s Party. It was from these rather staid parties that the Nazis would win the bulk of their support.

Much of the middle of the book is simply a chronicle of rallies, speeches, and marches held by the various parties. This part is rather boring and seems to miss the point — I rather doubt the Nazis won simply because they held four rallies with three brass bands each in April of 1932. Rather, the victory was primarily ideological and strategic:

First of all, the patriotic, militaristic character of the town was shrewdly exploited by the Nazis, who took every opportunity to wave the flag, point to the Imperial Army as the true soul of the nation, and identify the Nazi cause with a rejuvenated military.
Both from tradition and for fear of Communist encroachment, the Democratic Socialists espoused Marxist rhetoric (though they were centrist in practice). This alienated the sizable middle class of the town and made a centrist governing coalition impossible. The Nazis crafted their message to be primarily anti-Marxist, stirring up fears of violent revolution by anticlerical fanatics.
As unemployment rose, the right-wing parties stymied every effort of the Socialists to reduce unemployment with public works projects. Though unemployment was never very high, the unemployed were very visible, waiting for the dole and at the soup kitchen. Thus fear of a worsening economy tilted sentiment away from the ineffective Socialists and conservatives, toward the parties that were agitating for decisive action, i.e. the Nazis (and to a lesser extent Communists).
Violent clashes between militia groups on the left and right (the Socialist Reichsbanner and the SA Brownshirts) further polarized the situation. Once blood had been spilled, prospects for a centrist governing coalition evaporated, and conservative fears of Bolshevik violence escalated. Soon the thuggery of the Nazis seemed to be only “safe” course to prevent Communism.
Finally, the tradition and commitment to democratic principles was simply not well established. Hence neither the electorate nor the right-wing parties flinched when Nazi rhetoric made clear their desire to stamp out dissent and bring strong, “uniting” leadership to the country.

It is at the end of the book that the simple failure of democratic society is made clear. As the Nazis consolidated power, they began shutting down both the left-wing and right-wing independent newspapers. One would like to think that in countries with well-rooted democratic traditions, this would bring such a hue and cry that the experiment would end there. Instead, the conservatives acquiesced utterly. Then the Socialist party was banned, and again the conservatives did not object; when the conservative parties themselves were banned, people were upset but the train was already off the tracks. Martin Niemoller indeed.

Book Report Sunday: Fighting Years

aaronharnly — Mon, 20 Dec 2004 04:26:20 +0000

The idea is that I record a few favorite passages and any take-home thoughts I have from books as I read them. These aren’t summaries or book reviews, so their utility may be limited for the dear readers.

This one is catch-up from a couple of weeks ago:

Fighting Years: Black Resistance and the Struggle for a New South Africa by Steven Mufson

Written in 1989, after the mid-80’s revival of the liberation movement in South Africa, but before the freeing of Mandela and the end of apartheid. Two rather simple lessons stand out for me:

1. Counterinsurgencies actually can work, and liberations can fail.

Watching The Battle of Algiers, it’s easy to draw the conclusion that when you’re fighting for liberation and self-determination, victory is a historical inevitability, and counterinsurgency only cuts heads from an indomitable hydra. In the modern context this may be true, viewed from a sufficient distance. But there were determined, popular, and well-organized black liberation movements that had the entire nation of South Africa ablaze in 1960, in 1979, and 1985. And each time, with ruthless persecution of the leaders, squelching of the free press, and concessions to the material and social well-being of the underclass, the government pretty well stamped each movement out. So damn, these things are hard, it turns out. I suppose a Palestinian or Tibetan could remind me of that.

2. The question of the use of violence in a liberation movement is not a simple one. I have always maintained, along with the rest of my 8th grade social studies class, that Gandhi and Martin Luther King were good men. No controversy there. The question is, is their path truly the only just one?

There’s a moment in the book in which a crowd seizes a suspected police informer. They begin to force a tire around his shoulders, in preparation for necklacing. Bishop Desmond Tutu jumped into the crowd, cradled the informer in his arms, and told the mob they would have to kill him first.

A few days later, speaking to an extremely skeptical crowd, he tried to explain his actions. He raised his arms in a Christ-like pose, and said:

I understand when people are angry or hurt and want to take it out on those we think are collaborators. But I abhor all forms of violence. I want to condemn in the strongest terms what happened in Duduza [an internationally televised necklacing]. Many of our supporters around the world said then “Oh, oh. If they do those things maybe they are not ready for freedom.” Let us demonstrate the discipline of people who know that they are ready for freedom. At the end of the day, we must be able to walk with our heads high!

It’s a great speech, and the practical and moral lesson is clear, but the crowd was unimpressed. Years of nonviolent efforts had resulted in nothing but exile or death for the leaders. George Orwell once wrote a short essay (forget the name? Ah. Reflection on Gandhi) in which he alleged that a non-violent campaign like Gandhi’s, intended to appeal to the conscience of the oppressor, would simply fail in a country where dissenters disappeared in the middle of the night. South Africa was such a country, and the conscience of the whites was simply not stirred.

Not until whites faced civil unrest, difficulty traveling through the countryside, and rebellious youth throwing stones in downtowns of “white” cities did they take notice. So perhaps, just perhaps, there is room in my moral universe for violent acts, at least directed against property, and against uniformed enforcers of the oppression.

Alright, hafta cut this short. cheers.

The Paige Award

aaronharnly — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 18:30:42 +0000

In the spirit of Andrew Sullivan’s funny little awards for outrageous discourse, I would like to propose the Paige Award. This goes to that person in public life with the most outlandish and offensive comparison of domestic political opponents to terrorists.

I name the award in honor of former Education Secretary Rod Paige’s February 2004 labeling of the National Education Assocation a “terrorist organization.”

An early contestant was President Bush’s advisor Karen Hughes, when she commented that pro-choice = terrorist:

“I think after September 11th the American people are valuing life more and realizing that we need policies to value the dignity and worth of every life. And President Bush has worked to say, let’s be reasonable, let’s work to value life, let’s try to reduce the number of abortions, let’s increase adoptions.

The fundamental difference between us and the terror network we fight is that we value every life… Unfortunately our enemies in the terror network, as we’re seeing repeatedly in the headlines these days, don’t value any life, not even the innocent and not even their own.”

And I have a new nominee, from this recent NYTimes article about Christian conservatives — Missouri State Representative Cynthia Davis:

“It’s like when the hijackers took over those four planes on Sept. 11 and took people to a place where they didn’t want to go,” she added. “I think a lot of people feel that liberals have taken our country somewhere we don’t want to go. I think a lot more people realize this is our country and we’re going to take it back.”

I’m sure there are a few to be found on the left somewhere, but these ones made an impression on me at the time.

Doctored ad story grows legs!

aaronharnly — Fri, 29 Oct 2004 19:15:14 +0000

As noted in this Daily Kos update, the doctored Bush/Cheney ad story has picked up some steam…

The story is running on CNN, the NYTimes, etc. etc. Wahoo!

The Fake Troops In Bush’s New Ad

aaronharnly — Fri, 29 Oct 2004 02:55:15 +0000

Appropriately titled “Whatever It Takes”, the new BC04 ad uses Bush’s convention acceptance speech, stirring music, and images of dedicated troops and families in the heartland. As astutely noted by mikellanes in this thread:

It also uses Photoshopped images to ~~turn a small crowd into a large one~~ cover over Bush at a podium:

See the original thread under my nom de plume “mithras the prophet” at DailyKos.com:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/10/27/22442/878

The Fake Troops In Bush’s New Ad

aaronharnly — Fri, 29 Oct 2004 02:55:15 +0000

It also uses Photoshopped images to ~~turn a small crowd into a large one~~ cover over Bush at a podium:

See the original thread under my nom de plume “mithras the prophet” at DailyKos.com:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/10/27/22442/878