PaperDetective

Diana Hsieh's declaration of 'conform to my views or get moving' was sent to me as a daily digest item from the O-list. I'm astounded to read that I was expected to cancel my membership with your board if I signed up with her O-list. I guess that if I had read better what her rules where, I would have been 'awake' earlier. I just did not think of checking her rules as I assumed that they would be rational. We'll be disagreeing about any of her redeeming qualities. Poison is poison, even if there is some of the best whiskey mixed in. I'm just so used to the total benevolence I encountered amongst fellow Objectivists that this really got me totally unawares. By the way, Betsy, thanks for editing my typos. This 'hasty' bad boy will work harder at that. ;-)

Thanks for a very impressive and thoughtful reply post, ewv! Now that you pointed me to the word 'conservatives' that Hsieh used, I just realize that she used a hardly cloaked technique to label unjustly Objectivists in that thread as 'conservatives'.

Thanks, Betsy. What a great person Janet Bush sounds to have been.

I can empathize with your experience with the US court system. Any chance you could do so venting with the local press?

I cannot resist adding to this 2 year old thread Ms Hsieh's latest 'hastiness', as related to the 'NYC mosque debate'. Hopefully it was not addressed in a previous thread (I did not see it, after intensive searching). When she saw inn Ed Cline's Facebook thread on this that there were Objectivists who argued for 'violating' the enemy's, so the mosque owner's 'property rights', she posted this text below on her own O-list, which is a direct request to all those who disagree with her on the mosque issue to remove themselves from her lists. If that is not bullying, because she cannot win an argument with facts and argumentation, what is it? Having had an understandable cautiousness from her past stay at the moral relativists of David Kelley, does not mean that one now has to move to the other extreme of denying others justice and that one has then the right to now condemn every person disagreeing with you about the measurements of evil, not about if something is evil or not. Ms Hsieh did not have the open mind for that. For her anyone who did not see like her the risk of non-objective law becoming embedded in our society as a greater evil than the 'imminent now' threat of the mosque construction, was considered as poison to her Olist. I quote Ms Hsieh literally below on June 6, 2010 from the O-list summary I got from her. And despite that I had not contributed to Ed Cline's thread then, I was happy to oblige by quitting that Olist and telling here why, being that I do not accept threats. I also pointed out that I was quite concerned about there being a newly baked professor around like her who teaches Objectivism and acts this way, threatening, bullying. The two do not go together. There is something with someone when he uses aggression to force his ideas on others (I admit I sometimes also did that inadvertedly out of passion, but always redeemed myself for the injustice done). I never saw this kind of bullying attitude from other longtime Objectivists I met and certainly not from Ayn Rand nor Leonard Peikoff, who are models of an open mind to me, so I cannot stand silent without exposing the opposite, this kind of bullying acts for what they are: evil. Still I have trouble exactly defining more precisely for myself what is the injustice that Ms Hsieh committed and continues to commit wit her 'hastiness'. Any ideas? ---------------------------------------------- Date: Jun 16 09:10AM -0600 Url: http://groups.google.com/group/oactivists/...4f84abfb48d4cf4 OActivists & OBloggers, I've just written up a fairly lengthy post on what's morally wrong and politically dangerous about the conservative attempt to prevent the building of the mosque near the WTC: http://blog.dianahsieh.com/2010/06/nyc-mos...rty-rights.html (Please post any comments on this issue in those blog comments, rather than on the list.) I'm disheartened to see some Objectivists supporting this violation of property rights. To do so means that people's rights may be stripped solely based on ideology, even if they're not involved with any criminal wrongdoing. That's a very, very dangerous slippery slope. The only practical and moral solution to the threat of totalitarian Islam is to destroy the states that sponsor it, as well as vigorously seek out and prosecute budding terrorists in America. If you regard the violation of property rights as justified in this case -- such that you're committed to that view and to advocating it -- then please e-mail me privately. I hate to say it, but we need to discuss whether you can remain on OActivists and OBloggers. I won't have these lists help promote violations of rights, particularly not when likely to create such dangerous precedents. -- DMH

I am struggling more every day with the following contradiction and I would like to know if anyone feels the same or can point out if I am going wrong somewhere. Both the Ayn Rand Institute and friends of mine are actively supporting the activities of the Tea Parties around the country. I understand that their premise is that there are people amongst the tea partiers who are potential minds who may be open to hearing and adopting the sole truly rational philosophy that benefits us all, Objectivism. That seems like a noble desirable goal to me to want to achieve. On the other hand, I encounter a growing discomfort with the Tea Party groups developing into a strong basis for anti-immigrants, so anti-illegal aliens and anti-open immigration. Many of these tea party people are rabidly against (illegal) immigrants, accusing them of 'stealing jobs', 'breaking into 'our' home, being thieves, rapists, murderers and potential terrorists, etc. Tea Parties are even joining forces or co-sponsoring events together with anti-immigrant organizations. n other words, the Tea Party 'movement' is, to my taste, a barely veiled, anti-immigrant movement, where 'the government' is not the only 'enemy' as it shares the podium with 'the illegal immigrant'. My discomfort with any rational person who believes he needs to seek 'Objectivism-candidates' in such an environment is that I feel such a choice is in fact the choice to sacrifice of these illegal human beings for this noble goal. It would not be necessarily intentional, but the result is the same. I tested my view above by pointing out the problem I see with the Tea Parties to an objectivist involved with them and got an answer I felt lost with, basically a reiteration of the intent to find 'open rational minds' to learn about Ayn Rand and merely a statement reading that the person 'did not know enough about the immigration issue'. It left me dissatisfied, but that could also be because I may not have communicated too well my point of view. Is my view on this 'conflict between Tea Parties and Open Immigration ' exaggerated? Am I wronging those Objectivists involved with the Tea Parties? Not sure what to do about this, but I know that I cannot hold contradictions, so I need to resolve this either way.

I just read Goldhagen's book 'Hitler's Willing Executioners', which shows how the German mind was gradually 'conditioned' to accept 'the Jew' as being 'evil incarnate' and 'to be exterminated'. This gradual conditioning struck me has having eerie similarities with the current conditioning of the American mind as seeing 'the illegal' as being responsible for all evil in American society. Leading radio and TV hosts and their public feed us on a daily basis with the picture of the illegal as 'rapist', 'terrorist', 'drug trafficker', 'traffic violator', 'invader', 'disease carrier', 'communist', 'social benefits moocher', 'destroying educational system', etc. Same with many Tea Party organizations and their leaders, the NRA, many politicians, governors, law enforcers, etc. It is mainstream now. Those anti-illegal immigrant agitators are also demanding that the illegal immigrants to be 'microchipped', 'rounded up', 'put in jails', 'deported', 'shot or 'electrocuted at the border', etc, and there are already bodies of innocents to account for their ideas becoming reality, like that human smuggler young boy the other day (if he was that at all). It does not matter here anymore that the great majority of illegal immigrants are honest innocent people. Their individual identity has become irrelevant. They are dehumanized. The illegal has become 'the new Jew' and America is building its society around this 'evil', just like the Germans did around their picture of 'the Jew'.

The only thing that I see in that video is two people going at each other, one gauding, the other taking the bait. It looks more like Germany in the 1920s, when mob rule was common, where two gang leaders lead their mobs to eachother. Beyond Malkin's book attempting to justify the internment of our fellow citizens (with Japanes background during WWII, I suggest you read her book 'Invasion: How America Still Welcomes Terrorists Criminals & Other Foreign Menaces to Our Shores', It is her declaration of war against illegal immigrants. She comflates criminals with innocents, a package deal so her true intent, demomizing illegals, works. Ms. malkin mereley leads a different gang with a different agenda than that 9/11 truther Alex Jones that attacked here, but she is no better as her actions are equallly based on a fantasy and equally vitimize the innocent.

I disagree with you that Michelle Malkin is admirable. Putting up a big mouth about 'Big Government' is not courageous. Few will contradict her there nowadays because she has the truth with her and she really runs zero risk. No one is going to jail or fine her. If the context were that she was living in a country filled only with communists, now that would be courageous. There is nothing admirable in Malkin hunting down and agitating against the defenseless. the illegal immigrants. I would call that 'easy pickings' and cowardice. She is pointing a cannon at people who do not even have a toy sword to fight her with. As to Malkin being a daughter of immigrants, I do not see how that qualifies her automatically to value immigrants. In fact, even immigrants themselves, especially recent ones are among those encouraging the hunting down the illegals. Their 'thought' is that they should 'stand in line', without questioning the collectivism behind that system. More likely Malkin feels that illegals should stand in line like her parents did and she resents that they do not (I'm psychologizing a bit now, so consider this a mere fantasy). Malkin may have various noble goals mixed with one evil one, but that does not protect her from being judged evil in the matter of the illegal immigrants. Being partially poisonous is still 'being poisonous'. Also, consider the double standard Malkin applies, that of demanding individual rights for American citizens, but denying them to anyone who is no American citizen, so any foreigner. Human rights mean nothing to the Christian Right. They ant to regulate our lives, but they do not want others to regulate THEIR lives. That is the typical double standard of the Christian right. The 'illegals matter' is just one aspect of their xenophobic 'nationalist' ideas. If you listen well you'll find out there is more. 'America First' has been taken by them to mean 'America Is Always Intrinsically Good' and 'What Is Foreign Is Intrinsically Evil or Possibly Evil'. Anyone remember the 2009 Swine Flu? Monist others, Michelle Malkin, Michael Savage, Laura Ingraham, Jay Severin etc. directly and indirectly accused illegal and legal immigrants of being the source of this 'pandemic'. Severin even got temporarily relieved for the daily accusations he broadcast in that area. So should all these media pundits have been but they were not. Here is an article referring to Malkin and her fellow agitators' actions in that swine flu matter: http://www.alternet.org/immigration/138859...eir_xenophobia/ And here is a list with references to specific publications by some of those agitators, including Malkin, regarding the swine flu: http://mediamatters.org/research/200904270037?f=h_latest Note that I do not endorse the organization Media Matters (a bunch of liberals), which provides these facts, but it is hard enough to find unblemished sources these days and I do agree with them about the truth of these specific facts.

I assume this is a question to me to produce further evidence of radio hosts are feeding the picture of 'the illegal' as 'evil incarnate'. More than fair question. At the moment I'm working on a site called 'www.illegalheroes.org'. In a few days, when it goes up, it should contain, as my first content contribution, a blacklist of such illegal-bashing agitating radio hosts in a few days. It will be based on the radio talk show hosts industry trade magazine's list of the top 250 radio hosts. Rush Limbaugh (one of the leading immigrant bashing agitators) and Mark Levin will be definitely on that list, with specific first hand sources, quotes and dates. Once I'm done with that, I'll proceed to publish a similar list on the Tea Party agitators, focused primarily on Tea Parties where the figureheads are acting that way. The latter is a bit more substantial and complex, so bear with me a little longer on that one. My goal with the site is to make the case for open immigration while atv the same time also stopping or slowing down the dehumanizing of 'the illegal' and working on humanizing illegal immigrants again by showing specific individual cases of their heroism. Hopefully those examples will help invalidate the mainstream premise of the illegal as 'evil incarnate'. Most illegal immigrants I consider heroes, and because of their courage and inventiveness and independent thinking they are far more true to what the original picture of the true American is. We could use lots more of their type here instead of many of our own citizens who live on our hardearned tax dollars. Maybe I should argue for a swap of 'immigrants for moochers'? ;-)

As to the 'collectivist' aspect of government defending 'Americans only', the task of the US government, in its most essentialized form, is 'to defend individual rights on its territory' not to give privileges, so protections, to specific groups over others. If it were not that way, no foreigner would be safe here. It is 'collectivist' (subjugation of individual to group) to delimit individual rights to be 'only a quality of those who are American citizens' and thus making all other human beings on American territory subject to the whim of the group of American citizens, since they do not have the protection they are owed. In a concrete situation that means that any American can shoot a foreigner on US soil and get away with it, or he can rob that foreigner from his property without impunity. It would be a situation like with the slaves here in the past. By the way, I believe Dr. Harry Binswanger is indeed a proponent of unrestricted immigration. He merely pointed out that if US government discovers that an immigrant has a contagious disease they can require that you get healthy first before entering. I believe that is no different from government isolating you here in the country when you get such a disease, both so you do not violate the freedom of others here. Same thing was pointed about by Dr Binswanger with not letting in or removing known terrorists or killers. Those also get removed from society regardless if American or not. So those kinds of restrictions are not only 'immigrant-related', but applicable to all on this territory. Today's problem is that the conflation of the protections against crime, health hazards and invasion (of an army) is the source of the demonization of illegal immigrants. Clearly separating those different 'protections', may help de-demonizing illegal immigrants, of course if that is what the honest intent of the conflaters would be (which it mostly is not). The real de-demonizing can only stop though when Americans accept that: a) US government protects all on its territory, not just American citizens, but also foreigners here B ) there is no moral nor other legal basis in America for the US government to stop foreigners crossing the border than the three mentioned above

There is nothing brave about Michelle Malkin when she demonizes those who cannot defend themselves, the illegal immigrants. Courage only comes with those who fight true bad guys, not imagined ones.

I agree with you that the 'demon' of terrorism is a partial feeding ground for the demonization of 'the illegal'. Your point made me think of another 'demon' that has fed the demonization of 'the illegal', Big Government. The demon of the Tea Parties. What do both have in common? The terrorist is real and Big Government is real AND both are powerful, although not unbeatable, if one has the right philosophical premises. Unfortunately most Americans have the wrong philosophy nowadays, so they are disarmed and have therefore been conditioned to mistakenly feel powerless towards these two real great evils. Instead the American mind has figured out that the 'fake evil', 'the illegal', is weak, easy to 'beat', easy to eradicate. The illegal is easy prey and has therefore become the main focus of the American mind. Yes, the illegal is now enemy no. 1, while the true enemies no. 1 are prioritized downwards and are thus given the weapons to defeat us. Again I reiterate that not all Americans are this way, but quite a number and increasing daily, likely a majority, are. That is what I mean when I say 'the illegal as evil incarnate' is 'mainstream' in America.

If you mean that I was implying that Americans are not responsible for their own thinking, their change of mind towards making the 'illegal' immigrant central to their view of 'what evil is', I was not. Conditioning does not presuppose that there is no independent thinking process with the 'conditioned'. And thinking does not presuppose that one will only store concepts that are valid. Nazi Germany is the best example that humans can store concepts that are entirely false and that humans will use those false ideas to act on it. And I will not let those American minds, which internalize this false picture of illegal immigrants, off the hook by saying that they were deceived into this. Humans also act based on self-deception, ignoring the proof of reality. That s their own doing then. I would even generalize, considering that there is only a trend towards escalation, that 'the American mind' is now closed. Most Americans will not even listen to proof that they are wrong about 'the illegal immigrant'. It is a 'blind mob' that we're facing with blind hatred towards 'the illegal'. By the way, I forgot to add to the list of 'evil incarnate' depictions, two important pictures of 'the illegal': the illegal as a 'job stealer' and the illegal as a 'home invader' (in the context of 'invading the country'.) Just two more illustrations of the total contradiction to reality in 'the American mind', since a 'job stealer' does not exist as jobs are not owned by employees and Americans do not 'own the country, only individual citizens own individual lots of land and certainly not that of others. Despite reality saying 'no', the American mind has internalized these pictures as valid and builds a whole 'new world' around them.

Thanks, Betsy. Your forum has added joy for me during many of those years of my life and I hope it to be so for many more. :-)

It is a myth that illegals have 'advantages'. Far from that. The balance is against them, not 'for them'. They have been driven into 'illegality', have to play hide and seek all the time, risk jailtime and expulsion. Illegals can be 9iand are) blackmailed by anyone and cannot take on many jobs, since they require 'legal status' and they cannot insure themselves or open bank accounts legally. Even hospitals are now reporting them to authorities. How about taking away THEIR disadvantages first? And amnesty won't do that, since the immigrants keep coming. It will simply fix the problem for the ones present here. However, legalizing open immigration, the true solution, will likely immediately make many former illegals more expensive and more productive than the slave labor jobs they hold now, since they will be able to move up in society free, without fear, like any legal resident or citizen. And their places can be taken by others who will initially work for less.

Not sure where you get that I am stating that legal and illegal immigration are entirely equal, but in the USA illegal and legal immigrants are indeed being treated the same way, as 'criminals. '. An legal immigrant gets abused under our current immigration laws as if he is a bad guy and our anti-immigration laws look at the illegals as if they are criminals, while they are not, since the grand majority of them do not violate any life nor property of a US citizen. If anything, illegals are less prone to crime because they have more to lose than citizens. And please spare me the false use of them 'trespassing'. Trying to criminalize what is not truly a crime, since there is no true trespassing (the country is not owned by you), does not work with me.

Not sure what the argument is behind 3 links to the leading national propagandist against illegal immigrants, Michelle Malkin.

I'm sure there are or were exceptions to the long, although not exhaustive, list above of anti-illegal immigrant tea party activities across the nation that were not anti-illegal immigration related, but one cannot ignore the evidence of 'anti-illegals activity substance' I gave, based on incidental differences. Also, the fact remains that the tea party movement, so a big chunk of tea parties, is getting increasingly involved in the anti-illegal immigration drive. A 'zero-immigration' proponent like national politician Tom Tancredo has not hooked up with the Tea Party, because a few cooks who would be against illegals. Being anti-illegals is main stream now, as it is main stream in America in general. The recent Gallup/USA poll of May 1/2, 2010 illustrates this, with about 2/3 of Americans opposing illegal immigrants and attributing all kind of totally unwarranted qualifications to them. My point is that, with all the good initial intentions, of demonstrating for limiting government, the Tea Party organizations are now heading for 'more government'. The only things is that the Tea Partiers delude themselves that it is that being 'anti-llegals' is not 'more government' in their lives, but only in the immigrants' lives. This is a typical attitude in a society that succumbed to statism (attitude of 'get the other guy not me). Additionally most Americans seem to miss that they are frequently affected by government intervention in immigration, because it raises the cost of labor and of products and decreases the tax base, home buyers market, health care providers etc.

I'm not sure what voting statistics you are referring to, but to use voting statistics from a situation that is not 'open immigration' and apply them to an 'open immigration' situation is comparing apples to oranges. The type of legal immigrant who votes and is part of the statistics currently is the type who like every American citizen submits to our statist laws, not the 'model freedom seeking immigrant', not the hero who comes here despite our statist laws and risks deportation, imprisonment, loss of job and property, maybe even his life. I wager that if we would make the 12-20 million illegals legal, things would look quite differently, especially once the illegals use their freedom to move up in society and have most at stake to lose if their property gets redistributed. Our socialists (liberals) are only gaining votes for their schemes if we restrict our fellow citizen's liberties with statist laws, but the opposite happens if we make everyone free to move upwards. Of course it is always possible that the USA is already too far along the statist path and we simply cannot get our statist laws reversed anymore. In that case we're all toast anyway, so this open immigration is worth a try, even for lack of better alternative. Think of it this way. Let's assume that the immigrant problems does not exist and no one needs to enter our country and we only have to deal with the current majority of irrational socialist minds amongst American citizens. How would you try to handle their growing wave of desire to redistribute your wealth, by cultivating a desire for more or for less freedom, for more or for less rationality? The problem remains the same. It is not 'by the numbers of citizens' that we are going to win this war of ideas. It will only be solved by making the ideas available and hoping that this 'free will' people will make the right choice. there is no guarantee for 'rationality' regardless if we have 300 million or 320 million citizens here. All I can see is that the immigrants are probably better candidates for a 'rational life' than many of our 'native' citizens, just because of their already heroic attitude towards beating all odds to get here. We need more heroes. :-)

I'm not sure why you assign rights to a French citizen to change the laws and vote in Switzerland. Is that what happens there nowadays? Also, as far as I know, the French citizens nor the immigrants from France, are that substantial in numbers in Switzerland, so it seems unlikely they have any impact, regardless of the bad culture they may bring. More likely the Swiss themselves have changed their culture for the worst because it was already bad, for lack of a rational philosophy and for being already fundamentally socialist. I never found the Swiss to be overly respectful of individual rights in their culture, more that they were socialist in nature with a pragmatist flavor. They would respect individual rights when convenient to the mob (they call it democracy), but not always and definitely not in principle. As opposed to the US Constitution acknowledging the sovereignty of the individual, the Swiss one does not, so its culture is statist like all other European. So the example is really not comparable to the USA, where we offer truly a choice for the immigrant to escape. Switzerland is not a place to escape statism, mainly a place to maybe make the pain of socialism a little less, because Switzerland is still less 'poisoned' than France. Therefore the type of immigrant you get there is different, just another 'moocher' not a freedom loving immigrant.

Sadly many Americans currently think this way, but it is erroneous. The welfare problem is tied to the wrong cause and therefore the result is not a solution but actually a worsening of the problem. Illegal immigrants are not the cause of the welfare state and therefore curbing them is no solution Actually, not curbing immigration, but choosing for open immigration, will solve the welfare problem much faster The reason for this is that there will be no more illegals, so the number of taxpaying Americans will increase and with that the chance that those taxpayers will learn that their money is being redistributed and they will be voting against that in the next elections. What opponents of open immigration do not seem to understand is that the people fleeing statism and socialism are AGAINST statism and socialism and flee it precisely BECAUSE of the lack of freedom and the redistribution of wealth. The immigrants do not want to get into the same mess again. Instead, here in America the immigrants get to be free and keep the fruits of their labor. They'll therefore often be better defenders of our freedom than many here, because they have first hand experience of what happens if they do not defend it. Maybe open immigration will stem the tide that most 'native' Americans are too far removed from such n full statist experience to be sufficiently vigilant about their liberty, their rights.

I'm not sure I understand your point. Do you mean to say that, because someone comes from a socialist country, he is a socialist by default? In that case I would be a socialist and I would be a danger for the USA and should be deported, since I immigrated from a country with a bad culture, the socialist country of Holland, where statism and collectivism are heavily ingrained in daily life and individualism is badly looked upon. And even if someone comes from a socialist country being a real socialist, is it not possible that he may change? Are we now that insecure about our own capitalist culture, that we will not accept the challenge of freely competing with the failed culture of socialism?

If the current immigration laws and the shooting, deporting and jailing of illegals is not 'anti,' than it would be pro. That would mean it would benefit the illegals. How does it? They do not benefit from this but get hurt. Which seems rather 'anti' to me. Or did you mean to say that hurting the illegals benefits the American citizens? Even that is untrue. American citizens also get hurt when illegals get hurt. That is because employers get denied the right to hire those illegals, home owners get denied the right to sell to them or rent to them, etc. So you desire 'order'? Whose 'order'? By whose decree? Why is your 'order' morally right and the illegal's 'order' is not?

Brad, Thank you. 1) Great post on what is my pet subject of 'open immigration'! Was it published somewhere other than here? 2) If you publish it, I suggest making a solid explicit case for the moral part of 'open immigration', so it cements your political suggestions. The moral issue at hand here is always that any human being who does not infringe on another human being life or property (so this excludes true criminals and people with contagious diseases), has the right of no one infringing on his own life or property. Therefore no American citizen has a moral right, through 'immigration restriction' to deny American citizens to trade (hire, house etc) with whomever they see fit regardless of immigration status and to deny non-citizen human beings to live and work, so trade, here in America. 3) As to the section on the 'seeker of the unearned' coming here, I'm aware of the popular belief, that gets propagandized that most illegal immigrants come here for our welfare system. Isn't this section feeding into that myth? The truth is that most illegals pay taxes (the IRS has a growing fund that has amassed over $50 billion - these are 2006 numbers - of paid taxes by illegals which have been paid to the IRS under fake IRS numbers. That does not match the 'unearned'. Most illegals have thus actually 'earned' the welfare state benefits like any American citizen. The bad news for them is that they cannot even claim those benefits because of their 'illegal' status! Also, many socalled benefits illegals use, are merely forced upon them because they have been left without any choice, not because they are moochers. For example: They cannot get health care insurance like you and I (requires SSN and official employer registration, impossible for them), so they are left with being forced to appeal on the federal EMTALA law forcing hospital emergency rooms to treat anyone, regardless of his financial position. 4) In the section on 'unemployment' and 'taking our jobs', I would add and highlight much more the fact that no American is entitled to any job, despite the 'scare' myth created by the anti-immigrants that illegals are 'stealing jobs'. Don't inadvertedly accept the premise of the immigration opponents, by talking from a viewpoint of 'there is a jobs problem'. There is not. Again, thanks for keeping this issue alive. I have a personal stake in this because a large part of my family got destroyed and/or hurt during WWII and when, as Jews, most countries slammed the door in their face when they made attempts to flee the Nazis. Never again should this horror happen to anyone, but it is being inflicted on tens, possibly hundreds of millions fleeing squalor, sickness and/or death as we speak.