Culture Matters

I live in a condominium. We own the land between the 27 buildings and the pavement in common and own only our individual units separately. This is a very analogous situation to US citizens owning private property as well as public property via government. The condominium association has rules about people coming onto the common property. There’s fencing around 95+% of the property. At times we have had homeless people sleeping in our hallways, clusters of teenagers gathered on our property, solicitors, drug sellers, prostitutes, vandals, flashers, and others who are not owners or guests but trespassers. This alien culture is not what we desire for our community. They are a physical threat as well a detriment to our property values. The By-Laws and Rules of the condo association explicitly prohibits such and seems quite appropriate to me.

Culture matters. “Culture is the social behavior and norms found in human societies.” We could bury our heads in the sand and deny this, tout that all cultures are equal, none better than any other. But to look at the world is to find that this is not true, even spectacularly not true. A quick check of the Economic Freedom of the World or the Index of Economic Freedom shows that a country’s culture directly impacts the conditions of life for that nation’s population. “Nations in the top quartile of economic freedom had an average per capita GDP of US$42,463 in 2015, compared to $6,036 for bottom quartile nations,” says the Economic Freedom of the World: 2017 Annual Report.

A country’s culture can change for the better or the worse. The following is a list of negative cultural traits, specifically violent traits, that I think the US should bar from immigrating here just as my condo association bars people of certain behavior from coming onto the property. These people would negatively impact life in the US and encroach on the freedom of Americans, particularly the most vulnerable Americans. And yet there are advocates of open immigration.

-Cannibals. If a tribe of cannibals were to move to the US they would be a bad influence on the culture, normalizing this hideous practice and threatening the lives of citizens. To advocate open immigration is to embrace cannibalism. (Well, OK, I guess some open borders advocates could respond that they will try to persuade—from a safe distance(!)—these folks to stop eating people once they’re here.)

–Female circumcision practitioners. This practice is properly seen as child abuse currently in the US. Normalizing this practice in our country via open immigration is to endorse this kind of mutilation of children.

-Convicted violent criminals. Under an open immigration doctrine any of the other 150+ countries could empty their prisons of the most violent convicted criminals by dumping them inside the borders of the US. Innocent Americans would then be the targets of these predators. Holier than thou open immigration advocates are welcoming perpetrators of violent criminal activity.

-Rapists. Some cultures regard any female without a male escort to be deserving of being raped and regard anti-rape laws as an infringement on the rapists’ rights to indulge their response to seeing an unescorted female. Open immigration advocates are endorsing rape.

–Sex slavery is an on-going problem already. Open immigration would allow sex slavers to settle among American citizens to engage their practice.  Open immigration advocates must approve of adding to the problem here in the US.

-With open immigration ISIS members and other terrorist groups could move to the US to set up terrorist operations. That’s fine with open immigration advocates.

Until we can shift to a Private Property Society we are stuck with a government handling immigration. With all property owned privately the immigration problem would be a thing of the past as the property owners would set the terms for access to every piece of property. For the most part, American culture has advanced beyond the practices listed above. These issues would be a lesser concern to every US citizen in the desired private property society. Until PPS is achieved shouldn’t we prefer that government policies closely match what would likely be the rules when it is achieved? Open borders advocates should direct their wrath at government intruding itself into what could otherwise be a private property society rather than at those of us who wish to solve the problem by creating that society. Why some want to welcome violent (do I need to say, virulently anti-libertarian) people into American society is beyond me.

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