God, I hate this argument:
Something @realDonaldTrump said in his #OvalOfficeAddress tonight sounded familiar 😉 https://t.co/LfQzmlvs5i
— Tomi Lahren (@TomiLahren) January 9, 2019
“You lock your door because you want to know who’s coming into your home. It’s not because you hate the people outside. It’s because you love the people inside. Well, that’s what needs to be done with the USA, that’s why we have a border.”
It’s not your damned house. It’s our house. There are over 300 million people living here, and some of the people you want to keep out are people we want to let in, and we don’t appreciate you being a dick to our friends.
What really drives me crazy, however, is that people who say things like this are trying to draw an analogy to the right of home owners to control entry to their home in order to justify a restrictionist immigration policy that prevents me from inviting certain people into my home. If my prospective guests happen to have been born south of the border, immigration authorities will try to stop them from reaching my home, and if they get here anyway, authorities will enter my home against my will to remove them.
People who say things like this are using an analogy to private property rights to justify a policy that undermines private property rights.
Trump is one of the people inviting them into our house.
But your response is as bad as their idiot analogy.
We have laws restricting who may come into the “house,” just like patents may have rules over who the kids are allowed to bring into the house. That Susie wants to sneak her boyfriend through a window to evade those rules isn’t a reason to abandon them.
“Trump is one of the people inviting them into our house.”
He has massively reduced the invitations.
“That Susie wants to sneak her boyfriend through a window to evade those rules isn’t a reason to abandon them.”
Sure. But if Susie’s boyfriend is a perfectly nice guy with only the purest intentions toward Susie, maybe Susie’s parents need to reconsider whether or not they should allow him into the house.
“just like patents may have rules over who the kids are allowed to bring into the house”
I’m not a kid. The feds are not my parents.
And if Susie is an adult with her own room, it’s probably nobody’s business who she has in there. But even if it is — perhaps this is some sort of dormitory situation where they have to pass through common areas, etc. — it’s deceptive to pretend the rule is there because we love Susie so much.
Are we going to let the government decide who can cross the border and who can’t? I’m pretty sure that has been one of the functions of government since the beginning of governments.
Building the wall is a bad idea. It would only work if you had an army of people to patrol it, and that would end up costing many times more than the wall would cost in the first place. Eventually, funding for that army would fade away and the wall would become just another barrier to be crossed, like a river, mountain or desert.
“Are we going to let the government decide who can cross the border and who can’t?
I’m pretty sure that has been one of the functions of government since the beginning of governments.”
Sure. But right now we are keeping out way too many people, many of whom are getting in anyway, and then we’re spending tons of resources to kick them out when they aren’t actually harming anyone or anything by being here.
Let’s stop doing that.