Professor Boudreaux's articles at Cafe Hayek are always thoughtful and thought provoking. His letters to editors are delights to read as he delicately eviscerates some faulty theory proposed by some wrong-headed editorial writer.
Here's a recent provocative article from Mr. Boudreaux -- Immigration: The Practice of the Principle -- in which he confirms his support for open immigration and tries to address a common concern ...
... that immigrants will use their growing political power to vote for government policies that are more interventionist and less respectful of individual freedoms. ...
If too many people from countries less free and economies less dynamic than America come to the U.S. and then vote for the same policies that condemn their native countries to second- or third-world status – policies based chiefly on envy, zero-sum thinking, hostility to bourgeois pursuits, belief in secular salvation by Great Leaders, and mountains of plain old economic ignorance* – then the very commitment to freedom that leads me to support open immigration might be inconsistent with the long-run maintenance of freedom.
Mr. Boudreaux agrees that it would be bad if immigrants overwhelmingly voted to move American economic policy in a more dirigiste direction. But he's sticking with open immigration because of the principle of the thing.
I still support open immigration. I cannot bring myself to abandon support of my foundational principles just because following those principles might prove fatal. ...
Freedom isn’t valuable because it is guaranteed never to fail; it’s not so guaranteed and it never has been. Freedom may well destroy itself. That’s a risk I’m willing to take, especially if the proposed means of saving freedom is to restrict it.
It looks good on the computer screen. But following a principle even if "following those principles might prove fatal" seems to be putting too much emphasis on that particular principle. Some principles are worth dying for. But I guess you have to be a libertarian in all capital letters to place open immigration into the same category as free speech. To me the beauty of libertarianism is that you get to define it the way you want.
Sometimes we do have to choose from among principles. No one summed it up better than James C. Bennett with this pithy little proclamation: Democracy, immigration, multiculturalism. Pick any two.
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