Donald Hank
Even after Paris, Libertarians endorse open borders
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By Donald Hank
November 20, 2015

The libertarian think tank Mises Institute just published an article titled ISIS May Be Our Ally Some Day. (My thanks to our friend Peter in the UK for this tip).

Expressed in the following sentence from the piece is perhaps the most dangerous error of ideological libertarianism:
    "In the West, since the nineteenth century, nationalism has largely filled the role of manufacturing consent to government domination, by drawing arbitrarily the contours of a fantasized historical and cultural community."
Libertarians make the same grievous mistake as radical leftists in that they ignore cultural identity and pretend it does not exist. I discussed this and its disastrous effects here.

Their attitude is: 50 million people share the same likes and dislikes, the same customs, the same religion and the same cultural identity? So what? It's up to us to erase this identity to save the world from war.

Liberals, including Libertarians, think that it was nationalism that gave the world the Third Reich and WW II. Quite the opposite is true. It was indeed the supranational idea of a united Europe that inspired Hitler, and the idea was carried on by his former officials after the war, as disclosed here and here and in this video by Edward Spalton and Rodney Atkinson, respectively.

By attempting to erase all cultural differences, Libertarianism and Leftism both seek to dominate while hypocritically endorsing "liberty." Instead of divide and conquer, they seek to artificially unite and conquer.

The author mentions the 19th Century as a turning point, alluding to the Treaty of Westphalia which enshrined in international law the concept of respecting the sovereignties of nations. Today's utter disregard for national sovereignties gave us the hideous grotesquery of a shattered Libya where the US hegemon decided arbitrarily to take out Ghadaffi, a progressive and beloved secular leader who brought unprecedented prosperity and refused to allow Islamic radicalism to get the upper hand. The author is, perhaps unwittingly, supporting this lawlessness.

The contours of a historical and cultural community they speak of are anything but arbitrary. Calling them arbitrary is indeed arbitrary in itself. The author is referring to national groupings whose constituent populations identify with each other sentimentally and intellectually. Nor is this community in any way a fantasy.

Go tell an Italian that the Italian identity is a fantasy. Be prepared to run.

But especially, do not tell a Russian that there is no such thing as a Russian identity, that it's all in his head (BTW, the Russians' strong sense of identity is one of the main reason for the utterly irrational hatred of all things Russian that permeates the West, particularly the upper strata, who cleave to the dangerous notion of supranationality endorsed by the Mises Institute author). False modesty aside, I am particularly alert to cultural differences because of my intimate exposure to many cultures and languages over about 55 years. My analysis is not only from intuition or from a study of other people's ideas, eg, from having read books or heard lectures, but primarily from years of experience in total-immersion experiences in the field. Why listen to an armchair philosopher when you can get it from the horse's mouth? Listen to the horse's words: Culture is real, more real than anything libertarians or their soul mates the liberal leftists have ever written. They, along with the liberal leftists, are in fact the reality-denying fantasists who promote the dangerous fantasy of a one-world world government that has wrecked swaths of our world both under the communists of the 20th Century and under the EU.

The lie that statehood and national identity do not exist is what is bringing down Europe before our eyes, flooding it with unvetted "refugees" from terror-nurturing countries and foisting a failed monetary system and military policies on its constituent states, all subservient to the US government. It has enabled a small deceitful cabal to bring an entire continent to virtual economic and social ruin.

America is on the way to such a union. GW Bush tried to foist the North American Union on us years ago. Fortunately, Americans – most of whom think of ourselves as a nation despite the ill-intentioned propaganda of the kind so cheekily represented by the Libertarians above – protested vigorously and the project was apparently scrapped. But in reality, even after the elites stopped naming its name, they stealthily pursued its goals as vigorously as before, with Bush opening our borders ever wider, allowing more and more illegal aliens into our country and even refusing to repatriate violent criminals who had entered the US illegally, as I showed here long before Donald Trump raised the issue. Obama is carrying Bush's torch. You don't have to name it to create a supranational union. The unnamed ones are the most dangerous.

Like all ideologies, Libertarianism must deny reality to survive and receive donations. One clue as to why we ignore Putin to our peril is that he has stated publicly that he has no ideology at all. Recently he was named the most powerful man in the world. Realism is power. Ideology is failure.

More on ideology:

http://laiglesforum.com/ideology-hidden-obstacle-to-reason/3342.htm

http://laiglesforum.com/ideology-bound-libertarians-look-a-lot-like-leftists/2620.htm

© Donald Hank

 

The views expressed by RenewAmerica columnists are their own and do not necessarily reflect the position of RenewAmerica or its affiliates.
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Donald Hank

Until July of 2009, Don Hank was operating a technical translation agency out of his home in Wrightsville, PA. He is now retired and residing in Panama with his wife and daughter.

A former language teacher, he holds an undergraduate degree in French and German from Millersville State University (PA), a Master's degree in Russian language and literature from Kutztown State College (also in PA), has studied Chinese for 3 years in Taiwan at the Mandarin Training Center, and is self-taught in other languages, having logged a total of 8 years abroad in total immersion situations.

He is also the founder of Lancaster-York Non-Custodial Parents, a volunteer organization that provides Christian counseling for non-custodial parents.

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