March 21, 2008

Reason Magazine alternative universe (everyone's a libertarian!)

The brain trust of Reason Magazine, Nick Gillespie and Matt Welch, offer "Where the votes are". The laugh-a-minute article tries to pretend that the libertarian vote means something:

As David Boaz of the Cato Institute and David Kirby of America's Future Foundation note in a study of public opinion polls, roughly 15% of the electorate can be considered libertarian.

Just as long as you define things just right, and put as much spin as possible on "consider", that might be true. However, very few people are willing to sign on to the full libertarian platform (and even less to the Libertarian version), and even those with modified positions such as Ron Paul have a definite ceiling of support. Most Americans want the welfare state to be tweaked, they don't want it abolished. And, very few Americans would be comfortable with the level of immigration that most libertarians support, with some of those even supporting open borders. Which brings us to this:

Grant amnesty -- er, citizenship -- to illegal immigrants. Neither Democrats' fears that unskilled arrivals drive down union wages nor GOP concerns about assimilation are borne out by facts. Most new arrivals go to places with hot economies, and Spanish-speaking households go English-only at the same pace as previous waves of Jewish, Italian and Polish immigrants. Besides, a 2007 USA Today/Gallup Poll found that 59% of Americans believe that illegals should be allowed to become citizens if they meet minimal requirements.

1. Of course a massive influx of low-wage labor will drive down wages or at least lead to wage stagnation. And, there's large unemployment in certain sectors because of massive immigration.

2. They're confusing economic assimilation with the other varieties. It's great that illegal aliens buy consumer products, but that doesn't mean they've assimilated to our laws and culture. And, in fact, thinking that our laws don't apply to them or that part of our country is owed to them is fairly widespread by a certain segment of the Hispanic community.

3. They're implicitly engaging in a logical fallacy: just because yesterday's immigration worked out OK doesn't mean the current variety will.

4. Obviously, most polls on this topic are highly flawed, often featuring misleading or incomplete questions. And, that includes the Gallup poll they mentioned above.

Posted to Politics at March 21, 2008 11:15 AM