Samizdata

“What’s peculiar is that it is often those who have most faith the in ability of government to fix complex and deep-seated problems, like poverty, poor education or climate change, who seem most fatalistic when it comes to the most basic of state functions: policing our territory.”

– Juliet Samuel, Daily Telegraph. (£)

Of course, the peculiarity of this is less peculiar when one reflects that a lot of those who wanted to allow the entire world to settle in the UK, no questions asked, do so because they subscribe to the “altruist” idea (in the Ayn Rand use of that word) that the most moral thing in the world is to give up a greater value in return for a lesser, or preferably, in return for nothing, not even a word of thanks. It is better to destroy our borders and undermine the notion that citizenship carries with it certain responsibilities, than to refuse it; it is better to trash industrial progress and comfort, in the name of combatting a supposed climate change menace, even if it means condemning billions to misery, because the Earth has some sort of intrinsic value, and so on. At the heart of the attitudes from those who want to stop policing the borders of nation states is a sort of anti-values forcefield that sucks all reason and logic into a hole.

Nations that cannot police their borders aren’t nations, and indeed, the very idea of a shared community, even the most libertarian one, where the State is vanishingly small, are gone if there is no border. Even if that border is just a line in the map, rather than a wall, or fence, or set of Customs posts, borders are like fences. They make for good neighbours. Neighbours try – or should – to get along with one another. Neighbours can look out for each other, share the news and gossip, rally around if there is a problem. Paradoxically, borders give rise to the notions of allegiance and loyalty, from which a sense of trust comes. Take that away, and it fosters all kinds of resentments and problems down the line that are in fact corrosive of a liberal order.

None of this means the usual fears about immigration, that those who arrive in a country are taking “our jobs” or so forth (the lump of labour fallacy). It is not even about the worry that those who come to a country might be a threat to “our” values. But surely, if a person is an illegal immigrant, even proudly so, that doesn’t exactly get that person off to a good start in terms of buying into their supposedly adopted country.