See Immigration
Those who support increased power for federal immigration authorities usually do so because they are concerned about the cultural effects of increasing numbers of people who do not understand the principles of liberty upon which America was founded, and who are easily manipulated by left-leaning demagogues.
Because I am a libertarian and oppose immigration laws I have been called an "anarchist." Actually I believe in MORE government than those who support "the government." I believe in self-government.
Here's how self-government works to protect American values better than the federal government:
Rather than being met at the border by jack-booted gun-wielding federal immigration authorities, immigrants should be met at the borders by voluntary associations of friendly Americans who will offer American hospitality, job training, values education and other works of mercy which will help the immigrants carry on great American libertarian traditions.
Once settled in America, there are continuing opportunities for self-governing Americans to help new arrivals become great citizens:
Families: Children who are not victims of government schooling and who have been trained to appreciate America's libertarian values can pass these values on to their neighborhood playmates who come from foreign lands. American parents have always been careful to know who their children play with, and always make an effort to meet the parents of their children's playmates and invite them to learn more about our culture.
Employers should actively seek out new arrivals to America and hire them, showing them how American employers appreciate the loyalty, hard-work, creativity and dedication which characterize most immigrants, and how generous American employers are in the wages they pay and benefits they offer. Lunchtime Bible studies and employee training sessions can pass on America's cultural values.
Landlords should rent to immigrants and help them become self-governing tenants, thus passing on American respect for property. Weekend classes in property management, concern for the environment, and household budgeting can be required of tenants in rental agreements.
Merchants should seek out immigrants and deal fairly with them, explaining to them how American capitalism rewards both buyer and seller in a voluntary exchange, and how capitalism has made America a more prosperous nation than the nation from which the customer has emigrated.
Teachers should pass on American values to their students, even in classes that do not directly teach social and cultural subjects. Like the Apostles (Acts 5:29), teachers should defy court orders prohibiting a discussion of American values before and after school, and at lunch.
Media sources which propagate anti-American values should be boycotted. Americans should invite immigrants to join them in viewing movies, television, plays, concerts, and other events which transmit American values. Americans should invite immigrants to neighborhood reading circles in which great American books are read and discussed. Americans should host ESL classes (English as a Second Language) in their homes. Parents are qualified to teach their children English; immigrants often bring a child-like love of learning.
Immigrants who commit crimes should be responded to in the same way we respond to natural-born Americans who commit crimes.
It is only because Americans are no longer self-governing that they appeal to "the government" to use armed force against immigrants. This desire for increased government power is lazy, unAmerican, and anti-Christian.
This Discussion of Immigration Continues Here:
- 1. Immigration Home
- 2. Immigration in a Division of Labor Economy
- 3. Why Immigration Enhances Our Culture
- 4. Why Immigration Increases Our Technology
- 5. Positive Effects of Population Growth through Immigration
- 6. The Case for Free Immigration
- 7. Refutation of the Arguments Against Free Immigration
- 8. Why Immigration Increases Capital
- 9. Why Immigration Raises Real Wage Rates
- 10. Legalized Immigration Does Not Destroy Our Culture
- 11. A Biblical Discussion about Immigration with Chuck Baldwin
- 12. The Downward Shift in the Libertarian Party Platform, 2002-2006
- 13. Why Anti-Immigration Laws are Unconstitutional
Voluntary Associations
Libertarianism is not a society without order. It is a society ordered from the bottom up rather than the top down. Among the most important sources of social order are "voluntary associations."
Democrats and Republicans are both advocating more power for Washington, D.C. This is not a new approach. In the early 1820's, America was experiencing a tremendous influx of immigrants. Alexis de Tocqueville was a French observer who doubted whether America could retain her admirable character with all these immigrants. DeTocqueville said only armed force could deal with the immigrants. But Christians in the America of that day believed that "the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ" (2 Corinthians 10:3-5).
Early American Christians sent an army of missionaries to deal with pressing social issues.
R.J. Rushdoony provides the following insights into DeTocqueville's day:
At [this] time, the United States was facing potentially revolutionary changes. The great influx of immigrants was beginning; people were pouring into the country who had little or no knowledge of its faith or heritage. They were simply seeking escape from tyranny and poverty and a better life for themselves.
In an important footnote, [Alexis de Tocqueville] saw the grim problem of the urban slums and their alien and criminal elements, declaring:
The United States have no metropolis; but they already contain several very large cities. Philadelphia reckoned 161,000 inhabitants and New York 202,000 in the year 1830. The lower orders which inhabit these cities constitute a rubble even more formidable than the populace of European towns. They consist of freed blacks in the first place, who are condemned by the laws and by public opinion, to an hereditary state of misery and degradation. They also contain a multitude of Europeans who have been driven to the shores of the New World by their misfortunes or their misconduct; and these men inoculate the United States with all our vices, without bringing with them any of those interests which counteract their baneful influence. As inhabitants of a country where they have no civil rights, they are ready
to turn all the passions which agitate the community to their own advantage; thus, within the last few months serious riots have broken out in Philadelphia and in New York. Disturbances of this kind are unknown in the rest of the country, which is nowise alarmed by them, because the population of the cities has hitherto exercised neither power nor influence over the rural districts.
Nevertheless, I look upon the size of certain American cities, and especially on the nature of their population, as a real danger which threatens the future security of the democratic republics of the New World; and I venture to predict that they will perish from this circumstance, unless the government succeed in creating an armed force, which, while it remains under the control of the majority of the nation, will be independent of the town population, and able to repress its excesses.
(Democracy in America, I:316f., Langley ed.)
Unwed pregnant girls were often disposed of in Europe by buying them a one-way ticket to America, for them there to seek their ostensible level, usually prostitution. "Black sheep" sons were also sent off to the United States, or ran off to it. . . .
The reaction of some conservatives was political and repressive. . . .
Tocqueville felt that that United States would surely "perish" under this invasion 'unless the government succeed in creating an armed force . . . independent of the town population' and able to control it. . . .
Hostility toward foreigners led to the creation of various "native American" movements and political bodies. These organizations fed on hatred for outsiders and stimulated it by highly emotional charges and claims. More than a little violence was unleashed against various immigrant groups.
These organizations not only did not accomplish their purpose, but also did much damage to American life.
The orthodox Christian reaction was very different. A wide variety of societies were created to minister to the new problems: Sabbath Schools for immigrant children and Christian day schools as well were created; English was taught to adults; missions were started; orphanages, relief societies, Bible societies, societies to deal with various vices, these and hundreds of other organizations were established to deal with every kind of problem which arose. The future of America was shaped by this massive effort at Christian reconstruction. The "native American" movement failed; the Christian reconstruction was so extensive that it became the real government of American society. . . . Alexis de Tocqueville, in commenting on the impact of non-ecclesiastical, societal Christianity on America, noted that authority in America was religious and
that "there is no country in the whole world in which the Christian religion retains a greater influence over the souls of men than in America." (op cit., I:332)
The 'Native American' movements did much harm to American life. They were noisy in their claims that they represented "real Americanism," but they were at best a neutralizing force to progress and Christianity. At their worst, they were anti-Christian and un-American in the name of Christ and America. By claiming to be the conservative force -- which they were not, for they had no appreciation for their puritan heritage -- they brought discredit on that heritage.
On the other hand, orthodox Christians, by their zeal to bring every man under the renewing power of God, did more than anyone else to cope with the central problems of American life. . . .
R.J. Rushdoony, Revolt Against Maturity, pp. 216ff. |
Alexis de Tocqueville,
Chapter 5: Of the Use Which the Americans Make of Public Associations in Civil Life
Second Book: Influence of Democracy on the Feelings of the Americans
Democracy in America, Volume 2
Achille Murat, another French observer of America, published his findings in 1833 in A Moral and Political Sketch of the United States. Murat personally disliked religion and found America’s religious nature highly offensive. He exclaimed:
It must be admitted that looking at the physiognomy [discernible character] of the United States, its religion is the only feature which disgusts a foreigner.
Achille Murat, A Moral and Political Sketch of the United States (London: Effingham Wilson, 1833), p. 142.
He continued:
[T]here is no country in which the people are so religious as in the United States; to the eyes of a foreigner they even appear to be too much so. . . . The great number of religious societies existing in the United States is truly surprising: there are some of them for every thing; for instance, societies to distribute the Bible; to distribute tracts; to encourage religious journals; to convert, civilize, educate the savages; to marry the preachers; to take care of their widows and orphans; to preach, extend, purify, preserve, reform the faith; to build chapels, endow congregations, support seminaries; catechize and convert sailors, Negroes, and loose women; to secure the observance of Sunday and prevent blasphemy by prosecuting the
violators; to establish Sunday schools where young ladies teach reading and the catechism to little rogues, male and female; to prevent drunkenness, &c.
Murat, pp. 113, 132.
Christianity in the 21st century is a narcotic. It is a me-centered "feel-good" religion. Too many Christians advocate more power for the federal government, the creation of "armed forces," and neglect the creation of voluntary associations and missions organizations which made America a great and Christian nation. These Christians want to "restore America" by creating a federal government vastly more powerful than the one created by Christians in the late 1700's. The coming America will not resemble the America of our Founding Fathers.
The civil government under the Founding Fathers publicly and officially ENCOURAGED these Christian "societies" -- they did not take the position of contemporary church-state jurisprudence, which says that government must never "endorse" or encourage Christian solutions to social problems like illiteracy and immorality.
As the New Hampshire Constitution, Art 1, sec. 6, "Bill of Rights" said,
As morality and piety rightly grounded on evangelical principles will give the best and greatest security to government and will lay in the hearts of men the strongest obligations to due subjection; and as the knowledge of these is most likely to be propagated through a society by the institution of the public worship of the Deity and of public instruction in morality and religion; therefore, to promote these important purposes, the people of this State have a right to empower, and do hereby fully empower, the legislature to authorize, from time to time, the several towns, parishes, bodies corporate, or religious societies within this State to make adequate provision at their own expense for the support and maintenance of public
Protestant teachers of piety, religion, and morality.
America was made great by Christian charity, and the Constitution did not abolish or prohibit this.
We cannot approve, however, of "faith-based" governmental appropriations. Appropriations should come voluntarily from the wallets of Americans, not from the barrel of a gun and seized by the IRS.
Secular Humanism has been imposed on America in an unconstitutional manner, and charity has also been crippled.
An important book is Marvin Olasky, The Tragedy of American Compassion . He details how early America was dominated by voluntary associations and "societies," such as "The Salem Society for the Moral and Religious Instruction of the Poor."
At the Trough," by Roger Schultz, review of Olasky
http ://www.visi.com/~contra_m/cm/reviews/cm04_rev_trough.html
"Compassionate Conservatism" - Olasky
http://www.heri tage.org/library/lecture/hl676.html
I have already posted excerpts from Cremin's authoritative history of education, which discusses the tremendous influence upon education these societies had. There were many, many such societies, and they met an urgent need.
Voluntary Associations and the Priesthood of All Believers
- How Voluntary Associations Can Solve the Healthcare "Crisis"
- Medical Insurance that Worked — Until Government "Fixed" It
A footnote: Notice that de Tocqueville said, "The United States have no metropolis; but they already contain several very large cities." It was common in de Tocqueville's day to use plural verbs to speak of the United States -- "The United States are a great source of inspiration to those who love Liberty Under God" -- because it was a union of sovereign States, and the Constitution acknowledged the sovereignty of those States. In our day the federal government has ignored the Constitution and the original intent of its Framers, and has almost completely eliminated "states' rights." It seems that its main purpose is to protect its own power, and further centralize power over the states. "The
United States is no longer an inspiration to those who love Liberty Under God."
next: International Financial Crises and the IMF
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