Gaetz: Border Walls Work And Democrats Know It (Special Bonus I-Was-Right-All-Along Screed)
Pretty strong arguments.
I just want us to address the illegal immigration problem effectively/efficiently. Trump got things rolling toward a crazy extreme with the very idea of a sea-to-sea concrete wall-not-fence. And he stuck tenaciously to that crazy idea for quite awhile. Now...Trump could make the pope cuss...and he needs to be taught proper respect for Congress...and I understand how a crazy person can force one into an overreaction... But... The opposite kind of crazy has been running wild on the left in the form of sympathy with fully open borders and the view that border barriers are inherently evil. Even Pelosi foolishly declared fences immoral. So now the Dems have managed to defend--and perhaps even adopt--a view that's approximately an order of magnitude crazier than Trump's. Trump's wall idea was nuts, but it didn't involve anything like abandoning national sovereignty. He merely defended a maniacally extreme version of something we already have--physical barriers along the border. The Dems seem to have leaped off the philosophical cliff in response. And this is, I think, characteristic of the progressive left: they've demonstrated a willingness to defend positions that involve radical theoretical / philosophical shifts. This is far more radical than the way the right operates. They may want to weaken government, but they don't implicitly argue that the very idea of nationhood is wrong. They're willing to argue for crazy social creationist positions in order to defend the utterly indefensible view that people can change their sex-or-gender merely by saying so or wishing or occupying a different social role. They commonly deride the very possibility of truth, reason and objectivity, and commonly argue that science is inherently political...even while declaring the other guys anti-science... Seriously. What's going on on the left right now should horrify any reasonable person.
Anyway, two things I've been right about:
First, many on the left are in favor of open borders. I started pointing out several years ago that that position was entailed by much of what progressives were saying--that the things they were saying didn't make sense unless they believed in open borders. I caught a lot of grief for that, but I was right.
Second, that Trump would make the left even crazier. There's no doubt about that.
I also predicted that after Trump, there'd be a deluge of progressive-left insanity. I guess that prediction will have to wait two years to be assessed. But I'm afraid I'll turn out to have been right about that, too.
I just want us to address the illegal immigration problem effectively/efficiently. Trump got things rolling toward a crazy extreme with the very idea of a sea-to-sea concrete wall-not-fence. And he stuck tenaciously to that crazy idea for quite awhile. Now...Trump could make the pope cuss...and he needs to be taught proper respect for Congress...and I understand how a crazy person can force one into an overreaction... But... The opposite kind of crazy has been running wild on the left in the form of sympathy with fully open borders and the view that border barriers are inherently evil. Even Pelosi foolishly declared fences immoral. So now the Dems have managed to defend--and perhaps even adopt--a view that's approximately an order of magnitude crazier than Trump's. Trump's wall idea was nuts, but it didn't involve anything like abandoning national sovereignty. He merely defended a maniacally extreme version of something we already have--physical barriers along the border. The Dems seem to have leaped off the philosophical cliff in response. And this is, I think, characteristic of the progressive left: they've demonstrated a willingness to defend positions that involve radical theoretical / philosophical shifts. This is far more radical than the way the right operates. They may want to weaken government, but they don't implicitly argue that the very idea of nationhood is wrong. They're willing to argue for crazy social creationist positions in order to defend the utterly indefensible view that people can change their sex-or-gender merely by saying so or wishing or occupying a different social role. They commonly deride the very possibility of truth, reason and objectivity, and commonly argue that science is inherently political...even while declaring the other guys anti-science... Seriously. What's going on on the left right now should horrify any reasonable person.
Anyway, two things I've been right about:
First, many on the left are in favor of open borders. I started pointing out several years ago that that position was entailed by much of what progressives were saying--that the things they were saying didn't make sense unless they believed in open borders. I caught a lot of grief for that, but I was right.
Second, that Trump would make the left even crazier. There's no doubt about that.
I also predicted that after Trump, there'd be a deluge of progressive-left insanity. I guess that prediction will have to wait two years to be assessed. But I'm afraid I'll turn out to have been right about that, too.
posted by Winston Smith at
8:49 AM
3 Comments:
I still think your conclusion that the psychotic left was dedicated to open borders was unjustified.
They are, as you yourself fully endorse, completely arational. They are operating off of emotion and endorphins. They didn't have some super-secret open-borders position; they merely fell into open-borders as a position because it happens to align with their psychosis.
They aren't for open borders; they are arationally flailing about for a position which, by its happenstance alignment with the rational conclusion of their former position, serves their ever-emotionally-driven, endorphin-satiating movements.
So, though many of them have wound up embracing this rational position, they arrived here by arational means.
Predictable? Likely. But not because their former position rationally entailed their current position.
And therefore, I proclaim my prior critiques valid.
Yup.
I do that.
I disagree.
The left was clearly advocating ideas that converged on open borders. Yeah, they're irrational nuts, but it was clear what trajectory they were on. Many of them have always been for open borders, others were basically there but hadn't quite admitted it, others believed a bunch of things that committed them to open borders, and with even a little thought that's where they'd end up.
I think this is a pretty common kind of phenomenon: a movement being committed to something that it hasn't quite admitted to itself yet...or knows it can't admit openly for political reasons.
But doesn't their "trajectory" imply some form of rational consistency whose absence you, yourself, have bemoaned?
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