Paul Profile picture
Apr 21, 2020 8 tweets 2 min read Read on X
My own support for #openborders is pretty primal. It just *is* intuitive to me that a person should not be forced to live within arbitrary boundaries. I'm more likely to start from freedom of movement and shop around for ideologies than have an ideology modulate that view.
That core intuition is enhanced by considering the sharp differences in opportunities for flourishing that borders enforce and further by the fact that these differences owe to complex and interacting historical injustices.
But the libertarian case for open borders is unsatisfying because the libertarian conception of freedom is unsatisfying. The welfare and regulatory state abridges libertarian freedom in various ways but expands positive freedom (capabilities) in many other ways.
A libertarian case for open borders will be haunted by a hostility to redistribution. That is, libertarians, following Friedman, may believe open borders and welfare states are incompatible. They won't be especially concerned about how to make welfare and migration jive well.
Open borders libertarians may also ignore concerns about inequality. Many libertarian advocates are all too ready to limit democratic and economic rights of immigrants in exchange for their gaining entry (surtaxes and voting restrictions and the like). This promotes hierarchy.
A neoliberal case for open borders would keep the core cosmopolitan intuition, but also consider how immigrants can be integrated (*not* assimilated) so as to avoid both exploitation of migrants and nativist backlash.
I think leftist arguments for open borders are important too. There is a degree of rectificatory justice involved in open borders that should explicitly acknowledge colonialism and imperialism, which both libertarians and neoliberals don't readily appreciate.
As well as the possibility of immigrants as a potential political, coalitional resource against what they would call the White capitalist class and who are, in any case, a privileged class intent on preserving their advantages.

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More from @paulcrider

Mar 12, 2023
Okay, stream-of-conscious thread on liberalism, neoliberalism, politics, policy, and philosophy commencing here and going through the night. (There'll be long gaps and pauses) 🧵#NeoliberalShillBracket
Liberalism is values, practices, & institutions. Usual stuff: representative government, now w/ high suffrage democracy, tho that wasn't always the case. I think at this point liberalism requires democracy and without it—whatever may've been once true—it's not really liberalism.
Okay so rep. gov't and high suffrage democracy. Also markets; professional state bureaucracy, rule of law and a constitutional legal tradition; stable property rights and a welfare state. #NeoliberalShillBracket
Read 40 tweets
Mar 10, 2023
Manne is one of my favorite philosophers but I really disagree with the thrust of this post, which is about the social context of aspiration. 🧵
If health and fitness, and professional development are middle-class striving, I guess I tend to see middle-class striving as a good thing, and something that doesn't *by necessity* have to be premised on exclusion and elitism. Image
The urge to better one's condition seems pretty valuable, alongside likely being a basic fact of human nature. Of course it occurs in a social context, which is riddled with various status hierarchies, many malign or toxic. We should fix the social context, not ditch aspiration.
Read 5 tweets
Oct 7, 2022
Dreher is right about this. Gender & sexuality are both more fluid for more people than either conservative doctrine or the "born that way" school have supposed. Gender & sexuality are socially construed. *Of course* normalizing LGBTQ identities leads to more LGBTQ people. What we have now challenges...
It's remarkable that @roddreher thinks of himself as tolerant though. Characterizing a society with more LGBTQ people as "moral insanity", "Babylonian decadence", or the cause of "our dying civilization" is not tolerant. Maybe tolerance for him just means avoiding overt violence. But there's little reason f...
But it's neither tolerance nor pluralism to merely marginalize--look the other way *so long as* the queers keep hidden--but to drive a demonizing political backlash when LGBTQ folks have gained some cultural influence.
Read 4 tweets
Sep 8, 2022
I think it's fair to be confused by all the definitions and vague boundaries of trans vs nonbinary vs genderfluid etc. The definitional overlap between trans and nonbinary arises precisely because we all want to avoid gender essentialism. 🧵
But to go from the regrettable-but-inevitable ambiguity of "transgender is an umbrella term" to "the medical establishment operates on kids to enforce gender conformity is a non-sequitur. It's also a conspiracy theory and basically a blood libel.
The image evoked here is a tomboy who gets gaslit by school counselors and activist doctors into believing she's really a boy and is then rushed into hormone therapy and surgery. This is just false.
Read 16 tweets
Apr 25, 2022
Steady stream of these essays by "politically homeless" libertarians. This one by @ismurray. There is exactly one small-l liberal small-d democratic party and one antidemocratic white nationalist party in the US. I wish this choice weren't so difficult for libertarians. 🧵
The piece frets about regulating Big Tech, antitrust policy, and protectionism. Identity politics too, but I'll get to that. Look, I was a big @ewarren booster, but even I complain about her protectionism. But this is *inconsequential* compared to *preserving democracy*.
.@ismurray describes the basic political realignment and its global nature. This is basically correct, in my view. Image
Read 8 tweets
Apr 6, 2022
Disappointing from @AmericanPurpose. There are no trans extremists. There are trans folks who want to live their lives. There is no "radical gender ideology" any more than there was ever a "homosexual agenda". It's a fabrication of the reactionary right to weaponize polarization.
The piece is full of lies and misrepresentation. For example, "trans women are women" does not mean trans women and cis women must be treated the same in all contexts and that's never been the claim. Not even all cis women are expected to be treated the same in all contexts!
We say trans women are women because absent some context where transness is specifically apposite, trans women are, well, women, and to insist on demarcating trans women as an intrinsically separate class is marginalizing. (Mutatis mutandis trans men.)
Read 10 tweets

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