Categories:
Economic and Political Philosophy
Like Martin Luther King, I have a dream: that my four children will one day live in a world where human beings will not be judged by the nation of their birth, but by the content of their character.
My dream, in short, is that my sons and daughter will live to see a world of open borders. If the arc of the moral universe bends toward justice, our descendants will view the immigration restrictions we continue to casually accept with the same horror that we now reserve for Jim Crow.
I wrote Open Borders hoping to make that arc bend a little sooner – to show everyone ages seven and up that radical liberalization of immigration is not just our moral duty, but an amazing policy opportunity for all humanity.
Happy MLK Day!
READER COMMENTS
mbka
Jan 21 2020 at 4:25am
Now that is eerie. A few hours ago I had the exact same vision of that exact same speech rewritten in this exact same spirit. I had no idea it was MLK day, I’m not even American. Only change, in my version it was “… they will not be judged by the color of their passports…”.
Fred_in_PA
Jan 21 2020 at 10:51am
I am working under the handicap that I have not read your book. So I do not know in any depth your arguments for open borders nor your rebuttals to my arguments against. Still . . .
I think this is a “belling the cat” problem; attractive in theory but practically impossible. Even within our own culture, principal-agent situations are cursed with the difficulty of judging the content of another’s character; trying to do so across cultures (and en masse) is likely far more difficult.
I think we North Americans thrive largely because of our Northwest European (Scottish-Dutch?) bourgeois culture. Most of the world’s populations live under other systems. Max Weber even made the argument (in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism) that Southern and Eastern Europe suffered for their divergence. The tribalism of the Middle East, the Olmec cultures of Central America, the fatalism of India, even our own inner-city Culture of Poverty may not be something we want to encourage.
Can people change? Of course. And would that we could screen-in those who were willing.
And yet cultures tend to be extremely long-lived. One’s culture is largely acquired at mother’s knee, shapes the adult’s behavior and is, in turn, taught to one’s offspring. In no small part, this is because cultures carry moral and ethical values — how one should deal with others. Those from “errant” cultures will (and should) resist casually throwing over what they were always taught was right or wrong.
The German goddess Frigga/Freya (for whom our Friday/ Freya’s day is named) was Odin’s equal and dates back at least 1100 years. Women, especially, might want to think twice about importing cultures that don’t share that cluster of values.
nobody.really
Jan 21 2020 at 11:59am
Nice image. And open borders has it merits.
But does open borders mean judging people by the content of their character? Or does it mean, for purposes of immigration, exercising no judgment whatsoever?
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