January 23, 2004
BORDER PATROL:
Bush and the Great Wall: The barriers being erected to stem the flow of immigrants in Europe and the United States represent a destructive new world (b)order. (Mike Davis, tomdispatch.com)
When delirious crowds tore down the Berlin Wall in 1989, many hallucinated that a millennium of borderless freedom was at hand. Globalization was supposed to inaugurate an era of unprecedented physical and virtual electronic mobility.Instead, neoliberal capitalism has promptly built the greatest barrier to free movement in history. This Great Wall of Capital, which separates a few dozen rich countries from the earth's poor majority, completely dwarfs the old Iron Curtain. It girds half the earth, cordons off at least 12,000 kilometers of terrestrial borderline, and is incomparably more deadly to desperate trespassers.
The difference, of course, being that the Berlin Wall was necessary in order for the East German regime to keep their own people subjugated, while the borders Mr. Davis complains of are attempts by free peoples to defend their own societies. Posted by Orrin Judd at January 23, 2004 08:14 AM
It is clarifiying to see in whose company the Open Borders crowd have put themselves.
Mr. Davis remarks, "In the United States, trade unions and Latino groups similarly regard with fear and loathing Republican proposals to train up to one million local police and sheriffs as immigration enforcers." But, as Heather MacDonald has demonstrated, there is hardly any threat of such seriousness about illegal immigration.
Posted by: Paul Cella at January 23, 2004 08:48 AMMr. Cella-- merely because an insane person writes an article which boldly asserts certain things contrary to fact (such as your excerpt about the unions having "fear and loathing" about the non-existent prospect of non-existent proposals of a massive shutdown of illegal immigration, when in fact unions hate illegal immigration) does not invalidate the argument of the Open Borders crowd.
That's as pointless as trying to claim that since racists tend to oppose open borders, therefore those who oppose open borders have "put themselves in the company of racists." Completely unfair, either way.
Posted by: John Thacker at January 23, 2004 10:20 AMJohn:
There's always a racist component to anti-immigration, even when it was WASPs trying to keep Germans out.
Posted by: oj at January 23, 2004 10:26 AMJohn:
Good point. I should be more careful about the condemnation-by-association argument; some of the Open Borders tactics must be rubbing off on me.
My point was that the Open Borders arguments are not so easily distinquishable from Davis's Marxism.
Posted by: Paul Cella at January 23, 2004 10:43 AM