Hello. New to the forum and wanted to get peoples opinion on nationalism and race from other libertarians.
I been seeing different videos and comments on youtube with people that describe themselves as libertarian but want a closed border in order to preserve their culture(white culture).
Heres one comment : "sure hope Ron doesn't make it easier for people to get into the country. Even if there was no welfare state, allowing immigrants such as Hispanics, Blacks, and Arabs into the country would be a terrible idea. They would turn the country into a shit-hole with their low IQ, ethnocentrism, criminal activity, and anti-freedom ideology. "
Now as an anti-statist brown person living in Southern california, I sort of take offense to this. It's like writting every one of us off as anti-freedom low IQ sub humans. I am not the most politically correct person, but this type of additude won't do much to spread the ideas of liberty.
I don't know, maybe theirs some truth to what these people are saying. But you'd be surprised how many non-whites would be open to libertarian ideas if they actually ever had the chance to hear about them. And who knows, maybe it wouldn't be enough. But using the state to preserve society how you see fit just doesn't sit well with me. Or maybe its just that being brown makes me a bit uncomfortable when people start screaming that we shouldn't be here. Just curious what people think.
If racists are willing to marginalize themselves then I think that's a boon for society at large. If their right to disassociation is based purely on property grounds and not State grounds (i.e. "borders") then they're in the clear as far as I can tell, but the argument that they should have the right to tell other property owners who can and cannot be admitted is just absurd.
"sure hope Ron doesn't make it easier for people to get into the country. Even if there was no welfare state, allowing immigrants such as Hispanics, Blacks, and Arabs into the country would be a terrible idea. They would turn the country into a shit-hole with their low IQ, ethnocentrism, criminal activity, and anti-freedom ideology. "
That's a funny thing to read- it smacks of someone who has a low iq, is involved in ethnocentrism, and with an anti-freedom ideology by wanting to bar people from entering into a country.
There'll always be people who are scared of someone who's different from them, maybe from bad past experiences, or maybe from reading negative stories on the news all the time- who knows why, I say its best to ignore them until they try to use violence on you. Why pay any attention to people who've already decided who you are without knowing a thing about you? I never understood the extreme passion that people like Rick Santorum oppose learning other languages and things of that nature.
I mean I see things like this-> http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/no-more-speaking-spanish-in-america/ and the main argument against people who speak spanish seems to be "I hate learning". lol sometimes I wonder if these people are real.
If people are uncomfortable around people who are different than they are, I won't begrudge them that, so long as they don't make it into a racial superiority/inferiority complex. Most people prefer to be around people who are like themselves and, whether consciously or subconsciously, they like to be around people of a similar race in general. But instead of it being solely about race, I think that's more about culture and it seems to be the case that most people gravitate towards similar cultures.
I don't know if IQ is determined by race or not, but I do know that the people in academia and the sciences would do everything in their power not to admit to this if it were true. I think it is possible, at some subconscious level, that cultural homogeneity as compared to racial homogeneity may have something to do with societal health. At least in a libertarian scope, I haven't really read enough of Hoppe on the subject, but defending "borders" sounds an awful lot like a State to me and I don't kow how Hoppe plans to have little patches of private property and still have all of the property holders to make a conscious effort to keep "undesireables" out of the area.
That said, my hunch is that the Race/IQ thing is pseudoscientific and that the defense of borders just amounts to a State. As a libertarian, I think you should uphold freedom of movement, freedom of association, and freedom of private property to do what one wishes on said property. "Illegal" immigration enforcement seems contrary to all of those tenets. "Deportation" is fine with me on a private plot of land, but a group of people on a nebulous plot of land making a decision that they have no personal investment in based on xenophobia has nothing to do with any of the above and when the government is forcibly removing you from your current location, they are doing so with the claim in mind that they actually have the right to decide who is existing on the given plot of land. It's silly to me.
Let me start off by getting something of a "little secret" off my chest. This is that I do believe that a noticeable fraction of human intelligence does come from race. I am not scientifically oriented and I have little to back this up, and I don't care enough to do any more research because then we get into the fact that...
I don't care. I feel that aligning oneself on account of race, or indeed anything that is not inherent to one's personality is absolutely disgusting and vulgar. I also hope that eventually through interracial marriage race starts to disappear entirely so it just won't be a f***ing issue anymore. Indeed I feel that dating or marriage outside of race is the most anti-racist thing that one could do, and the best to help race relations in the long run.
I feel that everything should be voluntary and thought out as much as possible, everything from culture to even the family unit. So if people don't like a certain culture then sure let them avoid it or try to employ another culture instead. However, I know of hardly any libertarians who would do this upon racial lines.
There are, I believe a disproportionatly large number of racists in the libertarian camp. It's not a large number, but for what libertarianism preaches it's a surprisingly large minority (my guess is aboot 15 percent). I feel this is for two reasons, the first is because of the roots of libertarianism, with the old classical liberals and Jacksonian Democrats, were often pro slave (why this was is absolutely beyond me) and the second reason is that libertarianism, being at the political fringe of the spectrum, is more likely to be discovered by those who are "radical" and so those who happen to be racists are attracted there because the position itself is attractive.
But anyway I think that there are relatively few racist libertarians and practicably everyone here at least is very anti racial nationalism.
They would turn the country into a shit-hole with their... ethnocentrism... and anti-freedom ideology
Hehehe.
In the recent Mises Circle in Chicago, either Roderick Long or Jacob Huebert made the point that people from outside Western European culture are not responsible for the growth of statism in the West, but Europeans and Anglo-Americans themselves. Europeans took it upon themselves to adopt socialism and Nazism in the last century and continue to support social democracy today, and Americans are the ones voting for politicians who reliably wage war and redistribute wealth. Along those same lines, the huge numbers of German and Irish immigrants were not responsible for, say, the establishment of public education or strict laws on alcohol; it was home grown Americans responding to the 'dangerous' heritage of the German and Irish immigrants. Today, it is not Latinos or Muslims pushing for things like the National ID card, but Americans in response to them. There is enough "anti-freedom ideology" at home.
Plus, immigrants tend to be industrious. That's why they emigrate: to find work. They don't come here to steal or rape - for many of them, it's a lot easier to do those things in their home countries! And what would their IQ matter, if their work is valued by others?
Western culture has become the bastion of anti-freedom ideology. Those who still imagine that America or the West is some kind of bastion of freedom are simply from the lower classes and can't afford to travel either around their own country or around the world. The fact of the matter is that American culture is already viciously fascistic. I would say that the ease and safety with which you can buy a marijuana joint, rent a hooker or buy an AK47 is a good, quick measure of the actual liberty which exists in any given part of the world. The West ranks extremely low on this measure and most places outside the west fare much better. Another measure is the security of the family unit and its freedom from State interference. In other words: is polygamy permitted, are parents permitted to discipline their children according to prevailing cultural norms, and so on? If you're not squirming in your seat after reading what I just wrote, you're exceptional for a Westerner.
Now that we've buried the myth that Western culture has anything to do with freedom, let's move on to the issue of border control. Basically, border control is an extension of property rights in land. If a group of landowners sharing a contiguous property boundary choose to exclude people of a certain race, sex, hair color, sexual orientation, etc. etc. that's their business. In a private law society, there would be no public borders as we have between Mexico and the United States since there could be no tax-funded entity to enforce them. Hence, the only borders that would exist would be private (or, at worst, quasi-private borders, i.e. city limits). Since ownership, by definition, entails the right to exclude others from using the owned property on any basis for any reason or no reason at all, then it logically follows that border controls could follow whatever criteria landowners agreed for them to follow.
It is well established that the free market punishes xenophobia, racism and other arbitrary segregational mentalities. So, we should expect that border controls in a private law society would tend to be rational. However, I am with Hoppe on the point that private law societies would tend to expel proponents of ideologies which, if followed, would lead to a disruption of social order, that is, ideologies which mitigate against private property, family cohesion, just law, and so on. For example, expulsion or exclusion from a territory for promoting communism or statism would not be irrational but, rather, an act of defense against an ideological attack on the social order within the territory.
Clayton -
They would turn the country into a shit-hole with their low IQ, ethnocentrism, criminal activity, and anti-freedom ideology.
Ethnocentrism, and anti-freedom ideology... That statement itself is filled with contradictions and jackassery. I picture a flag toting Amurrican to make that remark.
Either way, a nationalist, or racialist, view can fit into the libertarian framework if on a voluntaryist basis. Ostracization is perfectly fine.
Thanks for all the great responses. This all reinforces what I had originally thought. I guess I was surprised that their was a group of self described libertarians out there that had this point of view.
About the low IQ's. I wouldn't be surprised if their was some kind of difference in IQ's overall in the different races. Maybe their is, but maybe their isn't. I don't know. But I don't care for two reasons. 1. Even if it were proven, for example, that white people overall had higher IQs then blacks, EVERY white person can't have a higher IQ than every single black person. So it still boils down to each individual person. 2. Having a lower IQ doesn't mean everything. We are not all equal anyway. One person may be good at working with their hands doing a contruction type job while another is better at office work. One person is good at sports while another is good at running a business. etc.
People being racist is not such a threat to me unless they have the government behind them. You can say ''no mexicans allowed" at your business. Fine, it's your property. You can choose to not hire any mexicans at your business. Fine. The problem I have with these 'libertarian nationalists" is that their are plenty of people willing to hire mexicans(and others) to work in the US and they want to use the state to end this. I also think language should stay freed up. Sort of like the free market view of money. Let the best language win out. Let people speak what they want or whatever.
When one starts hearing anti-immigration rants one can be sure that the days of the society at hand are numbered. Still, it would not be proper to keep a society forcefully from meeting its due (by keeping an open border, which is otherwise the only consistent libertarian option), so I must agree with Hoppe’s idea of allowing cities or even blocks to decide on their own immigration policy.
I’m certain there are plenty of nice, productive, freedom-minded batches of people everywhere on earth, and it would not be proper to let them succumb to the near-future immigration paranoia that’s building up (talking about Western Europe here, I can’t say about the US). So, go the Swiss way, let any canton/city/county decide for itself, and competition will weed out the cantons/cities.
I'm sure some of the logicophiles around here will give that type of fallacious reasoning a fancy name.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_fallacy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_perspectives_on_immigration
Some libertarians may be racist and think that people are divided into races, but that's totally different from wanting different rights to different races. Most libertarians aren't and if some libertarians want to restrict immigration that isn't racism neither. What I personally think is that most of this debate over racial things is totally irrelevant if compared to economic questions and racist libertarians should realize this.
Race and IQ: On the one hand, it is obvious that there is huge variation in knowledge and aptitude between races as measured by the respective representation of different races in complex economic activities. However, this inarguable fact is not likely explained by an innate "neuron deficiency" in some races and "neuron surplus" in other races. There is no reason to believe that fewer neurons are required to ride down an African elephant, bind it and remove its tusks than are required to fill out Excel spreadsheets in an air-conditioned office. If anything, it seems to me a lot more complex skills are required to ride down the elephant. In the West, we tend to associate intelligence with cleverness and smarts with puzzle-solving ability. "IQ" is really a measure of the ability to solve puzzles. I'm sure people with high IQ are better at crosswords than people with lower IQ. I'm not sure that that matters, though. The elephant example goes to the point that Thomas Sowell makes in this short and salient article - it's experience that matters. Smarts are cheap. It's the ineffable understanding of how things work that comes from repeatedly experiencing them that is costly to obtain and valuable in the satisfaction of human wants.
As you noted, it may be the case that different races have different aptitudes. As a rule, white people and Asians don't win Olympic foot races; black people do. But everyone with two legs can run and the fastest white or Asian runners are much faster than the average runner from any human race. So, we have a lot more in common (we can all run) than we have in distinction (some people can run faster than others) and the best in any race are better than the average in all other races.
Finally, having said all that, it doesn't really matter. The average IQ of whites, blacks, Asians, etc. is no more meaningful than the average IQ of redheads or the average IQ of left-handed people or the average IQ of people whose name starts with the letter 'M'. It's a purely arbitrary grouping of people almost all of whom have nothing to do with one another. All the matters is individual choice which is necessarily based on individual aptitude. Each person should be free to pursue his own ends without interference from others. That is human action and is the long overdue lesson that the modern world must begin to learn on pain of total breakdown of the social order.
tckb909:About the low IQ's. I wouldn't be surprised if their was some kind of difference in IQ's overall in the different races. Maybe their is, but maybe their isn't. I don't know. But I don't care for two reasons. 1. Even if it were proven, for example, that white people overall had higher IQs then blacks, EVERY white person can't have a higher IQ than every single black person. So it still boils down to each individual person. 2. Having a lower IQ doesn't mean everything. We are not all equal anyway. One person may be good at working with their hands doing a contruction type job while another is better at office work. One person is good at sports while another is good at running a business. etc. People being racist is not such a threat to me unless they have the government behind them. You can say ''no mexicans allowed" at your business. Fine, it's your property. You can choose to not hire any mexicans at your business. Fine. The problem I have with these 'libertarian nationalists" is that their are plenty of people willing to hire mexicans(and others) to work in the US and they want to use the state to end this. I also think language should stay freed up. Sort of like the free market view of money. Let the best language win out. Let people speak what they want or whatever.
Quoted for win and winful because of the truth.
The idea that race affects IQ is not pseudoscience. Prof. james Watson the Nobel winning geneticist dertainly beleivs it to be true. What is pseudoscientific is the massive attempt to stop all research into it by marxist academia. I have no doubt whatsoever that African Americans are not as intelligent as White Americans or Asian Americans on average. This raises several points. the first is that as Libertarians we don't assign people to groups, we treat them as individuals, this means that no matter what race someone belongs to we treat every individual the same. This differs from the left ,who although they claim to say that race science is not true actaully really beleive it which is why they back the promotions of Black people on lower scores than they do white people. They don't say it but their policies tell us "black people are stupider than white people so we have to promote stupdier black people to make things more equal". the result is that when I see a black police chief I just see someone promoted because of race and influence and not ability. Ditto college academics etc etc. Marxists beleive that treating people the same whatever their race is "Racist".
My second point is that the law should not treat people differently because they are of lower intelligence.SO even iff ALL black people were stupider than all white people(which I don't beleive) it doesn't follow that they should have less civil or legal rights than white people. however in a society where intelligence is a key component in earning money it is clear that black people are going to be poorer than white people (on average).
@AaronBurr
Something to note: Thomas Sowell noted that when he was in the army as a photographer, all the white soldiers went to him when they wanted something done with photography. They thought that he must have been beyond excellent to have been a black photographer in such a white dominated world.
Apparently the same thing happened to him when he started teaching. He had all his students' attention during his very first lecture. He had heard how students are, and he couldn't believe that they were that respectful. Again, they thought for a black man to be a professor of economics in such a world, he had to be amazing.
Funny how things changd so much with affirmative action.
I don't get your point here. Thomas Sowell is certainly a very erudite intelligent person. He is also black. I have no claimed in anyway shape or form that Black people cannot be intelligent.
sorry -reread your posting about sewell and misread your intention - I agree completely
Well Aaron, nobody that leans towards the socioeconomic determinants denies that there is a gap. They are saying that there is no evidence to support the genetic-leaning people's case on the matter. However, I agree that even if there was evidence for a link, the academia would do anything to suppress it. I had a psychology textbook from a few years ago and this sentiment is exactly why I think the genetic-leaning people's case will never be taken seriously no matter if it is correct or not:
"Perhaps one of the most controversial and troubling findings in the study of intelligence is that average IQ scores differ among races.....Over the years, some sectors of society have attempted to use these findings in a misguided, and at times even malicious, attempt to argue that some races are innately superior to others. For instance, in 1994, Richard Hernstein and Charles Murray touched off a bitter dispute when they published a book called The Bell Curve."
This is dumb for two reasons. Using the word "troubling" is a loaded emotional term and suggests that this author already has a bias against the possibility that there may be a racial-genetic factor involved. Secondly, "for instance" in front of the sentence that demonized people as being idiotic racists implies that Hernstein and Murray were involved in the racial disputes that went forth. They also spent 4 sub-headings telling us why it isn't racially determined with no retort from the opposing point of view (which there are plenty of dissenting voices in the psychological community).
Again, I lean towards the people who think that it's socioeconomic in nature, but the bias against the geneticist camp is overwhelming. So even if the latter were correct, it would never gain traction.
It's kind of a non issue. We are concerned on the sociological level with wealth maximization as the issue, and think that - in some form or another the market mechanism is what leads to wealth maximization, and that when people speak of wants needs and ends this is more or less at the bottom of things, and the only real way to solve things of this nature (in some form or another - as kind of the "meta" outlook on things, as it were).
That said, it is amusing to watch some libertarians talk in a rather apologetic obfuscating language to help with thier aesthetics and get really passionate about their pet theology...be it quasi/closet racists or loopy leftists. It's a funny little dance they do.
That said - anyone who actually uses language like "white people are smarter than black people" and thinks they are saying something useful - is an arch fool. The language and actual power mechanisms that matter in sociology simply won't allow for such statements to exist for any applicable use- and on a personal note, I think that is a good thing, and in no way do I consider myself a leftist.
The stereotypical pseudo-elitist attitude you get in a few right wingers is pretty much a self deluded confession of defeat and irrelevance.
>The idea that race affects IQ is not pseudoscience... I have no doubt whatsoever that African Americans are not as intelligent as White Americans or Asian Americans on average.
First, IQ is not intelligence. As the inventor of "IQ" stated, intelligence cannot be reduced to a single number; minds are complex and not superposable like simple line segments are. Calling IQ a measure of someone's intelligence is not science.
Second, what is the average of a 10cm-wide square and a 20-cm wide square? It's a 15.8cm-wide square if you consider area to be important; it's a 15cm-wide suqare if you consider width to be important, or it can be other values. With two simple physical quantities, arriving at an "average" already presents a connundrum. Now how in the hell do you average two contrived, soft-science quantities with undefined dimensions (units)? Averaging two quantities of knowledge is difficult enough, but it's even harder with ill-defined ratios. What's the average of an 80-year old genius and 10-year old retard? Would it be a 45-year old ordinary person? Or something else?
Anyone with Physics 101 background knows that ignoring units yields meaningless computations of no scientific worth. Playing games with numbers is a job for pseudoeconomists / econometricists, NOT actual scientists.
Third, why does any of this even matter? There are probably tons of dumb people whose labors have objective exchange values far exceeding yours.
THIS. The contempt of the lettered class for the wealthy illiterate is a major source of anti-market sentiment.
I agree with you guys. IQ may demonstrate a certain type of intelligence, but it begs the question, what does "intelligence" actually mean? Ability to learn? Actual knowledge? It being based on standardized testing, when averaged on a mass scale, it'll probably overlook individual variables.
What's the average of an 80-year old genius and 10-year old retard? Would it be a 45-year old ordinary person?
Though your entire post was well worth the read, I want to highlight this, as this deserves some type of accolade.
All ideologies prefer some races to others.
Conservatives like Nascar
Liberals like skiing
Libertarians like ... running away from the police? I dunno...
"Intelligence is what an intelligence test measures." - E.G. Boring.
With all due respect to you as a person, statistically the person is correct. With regard to the IQ scores on ethnicities, certain asymmetries exist that can be used as policy making premises, given an end goal of intelligent civil population
aervew:Discussions over the definition of IQ or the technicals of measuring IQ are a red herring, a non sequitur, they do not address the argument that the would-be ethnicist is trying to make.
How are they red herrings, exactly? If the justification is a statistical claim about "average IQ" of different groups, and "IQ" is implied to be an accurate measure of intelligence, then it's perfectly legitimate to attack the efficacy of the "IQ" concept - it's the very foundation for the statistical claim.
The keyboard is mightier than the gun.
Non parit potestas ipsius auctoritatem.
Voluntaryism Forum
The argument isnt about singe people, or anecdotal groups.
Until I can make a profit or exploit some type of information for grouping people into such and such a category it is meaningless gibberish and / or metaphysical masturbations of the intellectual class to stir up a rabble for their benefit, honors, and amusements.
Groups are how the individual categorizes and utilizes them, not the other way around.
... What?
So what IQ tests measure is irellevant?? So if IQ tests measured one's attraction to puppies then this would not change the validity of what the racists say?
Definition is the most important part of any science, claim, or discussion.
>for the policy end of aggregate IQ increase, ethnic discrimination is correct
Not really. To boost society's IQ scores, you'd have to test for the low-IQ individuals and then sterilize or murder them.
Whereas your suggestion is clearly suboptimal. Because even if you succeeded at genociding everyone with the wrong skin color, you'd wind up having to switch to my approach anyway.
I'm not sure a high-IQ society would be that great. At best, you'd have a bunch of nuclear engineers cleaning their own toilets and mowing their own lawns. At worst, you'd have a bunch of mental patients who can recite 1 million digits of pi.
Another fly in the ointment is that increasing society's IQ is impossible since 100 is DEFINED as the average