The North Should Build a Fence
This problem has been ignored for far too long. Unauthorized immigration by Southerners into wealthy Northern states is draining the Northern economy and changing our way of life. Finally, a solution.
Uneducated, impoverished, and with a poor command of English, Southerners are invading by the millions. Between 1900 and 1970, over twenty million undocumented Southerners crossed the border into the North. Millions more have come since then, seeking to take advantage of our robust economies and generous social benefits.
The numbers cited above tell only half the story, however. The Total Fertility Rate--that is, the number of children an average woman will have over her lifetime--is dramatically higher for Southerners. Mississippi's TFR, for example, is 2.26, while Vermont's is a far more civilized 1.69 (far below replacement rate.) If just half the population of Mississippi immigrated to Vermont, there would be more Southerners than Northerners in that state within a single generation! Such an influx would place an enormous burden on our public school systems, hospitals, unemployment offices, and police force.
It's not just that they're uneducated, gun-wielding maniacs, though. Southern culture is very different from Northern culture. We in the North prefer active lifestyles and healthy eating. Southerners seem to care only for driving their pick-up trucks from the local BBQ joint to the nearest Wing Stop. One look around Times Square will confirm it: the only fat people around are wearing shorts and have cameras slung over their necks. Thus the Southern immigrants pose a public health concern too. The average BMI in the North has increased dramatically in the past 30 years, though it thankfully still lags behind that of our neighbors to the South.
Perhaps if they learned the language we'd be more welcoming. But they sternly refuse to speak proper English, preferring instead their own incomprehensible dialect. "Y'all" and "might could" are making their way into the casual conversations of Northern gentlemen with alarming speed. How long before we're all speaking with a twang?
My proposal, then, is to build a fence across the waistline of this great nation of ours. The Mason-Dixon line would be a fine starting point for compromise, but we may wish to keep Maryland on our side so as not to lose Washington, DC. We'll still have immigration, of course, but on a vastly reduced scale. Highly educated Southerners (Ph. Ds, M.D.s) or those with special skills which cannot readily be found in the North will still be able to obtain work visas easily. The rest, who would simply be a drain on our economy, will simply have to wait their turn. Ten years seems fair.
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Comments:
Nov '10
Re: The North Should Build a Fence
Quick thought experiment that gets at the nature of the political qua political: if all 113 million Mexicans got up and moved to the United States, would the United States be the same country? No, it would utterly, radically alter the very nature of the country, and for the worse.
"For it is surely not by the fact of its walls..." Aristotle 1276bl16-40.
Mar '11
Re: The North Should Build a Fence
You'd find that southerners think a Mason-Dixon Line fence is a dandy idea.
You've got one thing wrong though... the problem isn't southern migration to the north. Precisely the opposite. Northerners (and some westerners... namely California) keep coming here. As a result, these are quite popular down here:
Georgians will readily tell you that Atlanta is more like LA than Dixie now. And North Carolina is rapidly becoming a blue state because of the largely northern liberal academics, bureaucrats, and professionals that have flocked to the research triangle, and have spent decades transforming it into a culturally northern state. Austin is a similar situation. It was a refuge for liberal southerners in the 60's, but has become a mecca for western liberals looking to escape California's rot... and yet they vote for the very same policies in Texas that set California to rot in the first place.
Edited on April 20, 2012 at 7:16amNov '10
Re: The North Should Build a Fence
Robert Lux: Quick thought experiment that gets at the nature of the politicalqua political: if all 113 million Mexicans got up and moved to the United States, would the United States be the same country? No, it would utterly, radically alter the very nature of the country, and for the worse.
"For it is surely not by the fact of its walls..." Aristotle 1276bl16-40. · 6 minutes ago
I always thought Aristotle was making just the opposite point--that a nation is defined by its laws and institutions, not its ethnic makeup. He goes on, "If this is indeed the case, it is evident that it is looking to the regime above all that the city must be said to be the same; the term one calls it can be different or the same no matter whether the same human beings inhabit it or altogether different ones."
That's fine too. Change the title of my post to "The South Should Build a Fence" and replace my arguments with yours. My not-so-subtle point is the same.
Edited on April 20, 2012 at 7:22amJun '10
Re: The North Should Build a Fence
Let me move south before you put up that fence.
Oct '10
Re: The North Should Build a Fence
Lol. From what I know, more people from the north are migrating to southern states, because of cost of living, taxes, weather, job opportunities.
northern states tend to be whiter and less populated (like sweden), southern states the opposite, more "multicultural".
you should be more compassionate to the rednecks in the south. where are they gonna go once their culture and population have been displaced within 50 years? the can't migrate south, and they can't move up because of the wall you are proposing. I'll give you an example: How did the Moros in the sourthern philippines react when their culture and way of life were threatened?
Edited on April 20, 2012 at 8:57amJul '11
Re: The North Should Build a Fence
"Son, you better tuck in that lip before you get it shot off", Gary Sinese, AKA Lt. Dan.
May '10
Re: The North Should Build a Fence
Would this fence mean no more Ohio license plates in South Carolina? If so, I'm sold (y'all). Also, be sure to check out Hank Jr.'s unappreciated classic, "If the South Woulda Won..."
Dec '10
Re: The North Should Build a Fence
So you do acknowledge that the North won? This could make you an exception.
Edited on April 20, 2012 at 2:43pmOct '10
Re: The North Should Build a Fence
The blog post is now in the main feed. Amazing.
I think southerners are okay with the northerners building a fence separating northern and southern states... as long as there's also a fence separating the border states from mexico.
Jan '11
Re: The North Should Build a Fence
Anything that keeps the snow birds and damned Quebecois from driving down here would be an unmitigated, unqualified good thing.
Dec '10
Re: The North Should Build a Fence
I wish you guys had built a fence.
Your food sucks, your road systems are crap, your weather is bad, 2/3rd of your stores still don't take credit/debit, and you are rude and strangely more racist.
Oct '10
Re: The North Should Build a Fence
Keep Texas beautiful: put a Yankee on a bus.
Nov '10
Re: The North Should Build a Fence
Not JMR
I always thought Aristotle was making just the opposite point--that a nation is defined by its laws and institutions, not its ethnic makeup.
Regime (politeia) is not equivalent to arrangement of laws and constitution. As Codevilla nicely puts it in his indispensable The Character of Nations, a rather Aristotelian book:
Regimes are "an arrangement of offices and honors that fosters a peculiar complex of ideas, loves, hates, and fashions and that sets the standards for adults and aspirations for children . . . Regimes cannot be reduced to official acts of commission or omission. They are the sum of what his prominent in society--the reigning ideas, loves and hates, fashions and phobias, hymns and epithets. They are embodied in prominent persons--the Establishment. . . . The reason that regimes are confused with mere arrangements of constitutions and laws is that our medieval Christian heritage leads us to think of politics as inherently separate from civil society--family, business, and professional life, the realm of knowledge, faith, and morals. But in fact, though no modern regime . . .
1/2
Edited on April 20, 2012 at 2:37pmNov '10
Re: The North Should Build a Fence
2/2
. . . has the unchallenged moral authority of pre-Christian, pre-philosophic polities, all modern regimes increasingly resemble ancient rather than medieval ones. Modern governmental and nongovernmental elites are integrated everywhere as they have not been since the third century A.D. Even the most liberal modern governments have material powers beyond the imagination of ancient tyrants. So, like it or not, the stakes of modern politics include the character of civil society."
Apr '12
Re: The North Should Build a Fence
Give me football, better weather, better cost of living, and less judgmental people
Nov '11
Re: The North Should Build a Fence
Wow, I feel like such a horrible racist and/or snob now because I believe that nations actually have borders, and those borders should actually mean something.
I feel as if I'm being trolled. The feeling is similar to that engendered by the James Delingpole Abortion Experience.
I might just take my ball and move to Rapture.
Apr '11
Re: The North Should Build a Fence
Foxman
So you do acknowledge that the North won? This could make you an exception. · 3 hours ago
Edited 48 minutes ago
Who said it was over?
Nov '10
Re: The North Should Build a Fence
The fence might be a better idea than blowing the bridges on the interstates as some of us have contemplated. Rock on!
This is the second post that has been less than kind about the South in the last 24 hours, is this part of the the new Ricochet move to bolster membership?
Feb '11
Re: The North Should Build a Fence
Not JMR
I always thought Aristotle was making just the opposite point--that a nation is defined by its laws and institutions, not its ethnic makeup.
It ain't about the ethnic makeup- and I'm surprised to see a member of this site making such a racist argument.
It's about the culture. People from Mexico- and other nations- aren't Americans. They might become such- as de Tocqueville wrote one could become an American in a day- but that isn't an inevitable consequence of setting foot inside the territory of the United States.
Bluntly, the idea that a nation will stand when its laws and institutions are faced with even a voting plurality of citizens - e.g. as in California- who do not accept the bedrock assumptions of the culture- personal responsibility, limited government- is fatally flawed.
Unfortunately too many people can't grasp that, no matter what happens in the real world.
Re: The North Should Build a Fence
I wouldn't want to lose the Southern solider - always seemed a special, patriotic breed to me.
As a Yankee, I love the south, and have long dreamed of moving there. I feel so comfortable when I'm down there.
Whenever I watch a movie where the characters have a Sourther drawl, I suddenly have one too for the next few days.
Just envy, I guess.