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Tag: Open Borders
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This week on JobMakers, host Denzil Mohammed talks with Johan Norberg, senior fellow at the Cato Institute and author of Open: The Story of Human Progress. They discuss the many ways in which America is better off because it has been open to the exchange of ideas and skills that created cures, machinery, and technology. However, Norberg cautions that progress is limited as a result of the current obsession with “borders”: sovereign nations, state borders, and rules and regulations that differ even by neighborhood and restrict what we can do. If history is a guide, openness and diversity mean faster progress, innovation, and entrepreneurship. But, he warns, America is already losing ground – entrepreneurs and inventors are going elsewhere, as you’ll learn in this week’s JobMakers.
Guest:
Join Jim and Greg as they give a small cheer to the White House Press Corps for being loudly ushered out of the Oval Office without being allowed to ask any questions. They also unload on the Biden administration for allowing hundreds of thousands of migrants into the country over the past several months through the catch and release approach, which means we’ll probably never find them again. And they call out the anti-Semites in the House Democratic Caucus who forced the defunding of Israel’s Iron Dome missile defense in order to pass a bill to keep the government open and to raise the debt ceiling.
Migrant Crisis and Wuhan Flu?
Last week, my husband and I attended a family party in New York. Joking about “social distance,” family members did refrain from hugging as enthusiastically as we might ordinarily have done, and the cousin who had just returned from Milan was mock-shunned and chided for not informing us of his travels before he had intruded into the new, six-foot diameter personal space bubble we’d been told we should maintain around ourselves.
My husband and I got home from New York just as the cancellation cascade commenced and things began to look less ha-ha and more serious. Family e-mails have been arriving daily, offering health updates; one family member has a slight fever, everyone else seems okay, wash your hands, wash your hands, wash your hands. Had we known then (that is, two weeks ago) what we know now, the party might have been canceled altogether. Certainly, my Milan-visiting cousin would’ve been politely un-invited, or offered the option of virtual attendance via Skype. After all, the focus of the party was my aunt’s 85th birthday. She’s hale and hearty, but … she’s 85.
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Jim Geraghty of National Review and Greg Corombos of Radio America worry that Republicans and Democrats are underestimating Sen. Bernie Sanders’ chances in 2020 after the 77-year-old socialist from Vermont blew his competition out of the water by raising $18 million in his first six weeks. They also remember that Julian Castro is running after the former DNC darling from Texas called for decriminalizing illegal border crossings. And they unload on CNN’s Christiane Amanpour after she asks former FBI Director James Comey whether the federal government should have clamped down on chants of “lock her up” against Hillary Clinton during the 2016 campaign.
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David French of National Review and Chad Benson of Radio America fill in for Jim Geraghty and Greg Corombos. They hope that Congress may exert its constitutional authority by passing legislation to end the family separation policy, secure the border, and stop illegal immigration. They also fear the growing divide between conservatives and liberals as they each adopt more extreme policy positions. And they react to the insane comparisons between the U.S. border and Nazi concentration camps.
Tevye the Milkman, Libertarianism, and the Open Borders Fantasy
“…Political freedom and escape from tyranny demand that individuals not be unreasonably constrained by government in the crossing of political boundaries. Economic freedom demands the unrestricted movement of human as well as financial capital across national borders…” — Paragraph 3.4 of the 2016 Libertarian Party platform
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Obama’s Epidemic?
As you may have noticed, there is “a mystery virus” sweeping America. Or so we are told, for there is no mystery as to the identity of this virus. As internist Chris Foley, out in Minnesota, told Scott Johnson of Powerline:
This is basically the same virus commonly seen in the equatorial Americas and South America. The very odd emergence of this virus at this time – especially just prior to the new school year and now fueled by the congregation of children in schools – demands an explanation. The only plausible one is that this has been brought here from south of the – now non-existent – border.
Progressives Fear Open Borders Too
Not to step on Frank’s beat, but in a case of I-read-it-so-you-don’t-have-to, Salon has a piece by the intellectually one-dimensional Michael Lind. If you ever want a handle on unthinking progressive reactionism, Lind is your guy.
Strangely, Lind sounds much like a conservative in that he laments the support for open borders by progressive elites.
The mere 15 percent of Democrats who favor increased immigration make up the overwhelming majority of Democratic pundits, think tank operatives and other opinion leaders. Indeed, it appears that many prominent progressives are opposed to any enforcement of U.S. immigration laws at all.