Downtown Berkeley. The Oakland – San Francisco Bay Bridge and the San Francisco downtown can be seen in the background. PowerBar headquarters are visible in Downtown Berkeley. Looking from the Berkeley Hills westward. California, US

Update: Dan Sanchez wonders: Is it good for liberty? 

Apparently, the revolution will be televised. And tweeted. One of the more interesting comments in response to this article compares the idleness of Berkeley cops to a South American soccer riot that overwhelmed local police officers. Coming nearly 2 months after more destructive riots in the same city-initiated by antifa in order to prevent Milo Yiannopoulos from speaking-it’s not a hyperbolic analogy. Concerns about overly aggressive policing aside, it makes you wonder what the purpose of a police force is if it cannot prevent citizens from being assaulted in the middle of the day.

Update: A felony conviction rate of over 70 percent. 

The hysterical reaction among open borders fanatics to this weekend’s ICE raids merely serves to illustrate how the President’s opposition continues to not take him seriously. Despite the repeated comparisons to every tinhorn dictator, strongman and despot the world over, from Vladimir Putin to, naturally, Adolf Hitler, the people who despise Donald Trump have no faith in his ability to actually follow through on his promises. Foremost among them, the enforcement and application of federal immigration law.

These raids, which are being denounced by the usual suspects, targeted a range of individuals who should never have been allowed into this country.

About 150 of the suspects have criminal histories, including felony convictions for serious or violent offenses, according to an ICE statement. There were 10 people with no criminal history but five had orders of removal or had been previously deported.

In other words, almost every single one of the people detained was a criminal alien or alien absconder. The fact that vast swathes of the American political class is vehemently opposed to enforcing the law should give you an idea of why these types of operations-although a limited step-are absolutely necessary. One can only hope that Senator De Leon’s relatives are paying close attention to the news.

Or, at the very least, begins to shift. The first loose brick turns out to be Suffolk County, where Sheriff Vincent DeMarco has decided to abandon his county’s sanctuary city policy. Hopefully, this is the first of many such reversals throughout the country. My only response to this pseudo-scholarly op-ed by open borders fanatics is, “Wanna bet?”

If you wanted to view a cross-section of the individuals whom Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are trying to enlist in their cause, you could do worse than visit a Donald Trump rally, where the hatred and viciousness of revanchist Mexicans and Hispanic gang members-or Dreamers, as Hillary calls them-is on full display. The Gateway Pundit has a post about a non-Hispanic Muslim thug who decided to join in on the action.

All of this begs the question, where is the safe space for Americans?

Yesterday saw yet another series of attacks upon peaceful Donald Trump supporters by violent, open borders Marxists. Predominately, although not exclusively Mexican. Naturally, this prompted the news media-with a few notable exceptions-to castigate the people who were peaceably assembling and/or dissemble about who was responsible for this violence. Hats off to the cretinous lackwits at Vox though, for actually endorsing Robespierrean political terror. Remind me again why building a wall is a bad thing?

Hopefully, Newt will address this subject, among others, in his periodic Facebook live chat. You can watch Newt Live here.

Addendum: In order to grasp just how destructive mass immigration, in concert with state-enforced multiculturalism, is to social capital take a look at this British poll. As you’ll notice, people living in Northern Ireland-the part of the UK which has been riven by sectarian conflict for over a century-trust their neighbors more than those living in a post-English London. Food for thought. 

One of the chief misconceptions about my immigration views is that they’re born of willful intransigence. The conceit that my political philosophy was shaped years ago-true, to a large degree-and has been unyielding in the face of overwhelming evidence which logically refutes it-completely baseless-is surprisingly widespread among my critics. The truth is that I’m actually desperate to be persuaded, to be convinced that open borders is somehow a desirable-or even workable-state of affairs.

Admitting that you’re wrong, especially about sincerely, long-held convictions, can be psychically devastating for some individuals. One need only read David Horowitz’s disturbing memoir Radical Son to get a sense of how traumatic reevaluating your core ideological beliefs can be to a human being. That said, I am not by nature an ideologue. My identity and my sense of self worth are not wrapped up in the outcome of a particular domestic or international debate. Although not a consequentialist, I do accept reality as it is, which is why I find the intellectual defense of mass, 3rd world immigration to the West so utterly unconvincing.

I want to be persuaded that I’m wrong,  but over the past 2 decades I’ve yet to encounter an even minimally persuasive argument explaining why I am. The most compelling defense of open borders I’ve heard was offered by Julian Castro, the son of a ’60s Chicana militant whose children have been able to profit from the political cachet of faux multiculturalism and our country’s drastically altered demographics. Empty suit though he is, at least he had a rudimentary understanding of the issue being discussed, unlike almost every open borders libertarian I’ve tried to engage on this subject. To cite just one example of the fundamental ignorance they’re operating from, the writer David Marcus routinely extols the beauty of Ellis Island immigration in cliched essays, despite being blissfully unaware of the fact that almost all non-white immigration was prohibited during this halcyon period of American history.

Yevgeniy Feyman is a much more informed interlocutor, yet I came away from his discussion at The Irish Exit this past week with my beliefs, vis-a-vis immigration, fundamentally unchanged. Although an expert in health care policy, Mr. Feyman has a keen interest in the subject of immigration, which he believes should be unfettered. Echoing many of the same arguments used by open borders advocate Bryan Caplan-whose work he referenced-he asserted that there is an ethical and utilitarian case for unrestricted immigration to the West, neither of which I found terribly convincing.

One of my main problems with the latter argument was his insistence upon using gross domestic product as a proxy for economic growth and wealth creation, something that is genuinely perplexing coming from an ostensible proponent of free markets. According to Feyman, economists have postulated a 60% growth in GDP if Western nations completely opened their borders, while a 140% increase would result from global immigration restrictions being completely removed. Even if we were to accept these fantastic claims, it’s far from certain that this would be a good thing for our economy. Even the thousands of largely illiterate, unskilled Somalis imported to the interior of this country collectively boost our GDP. However, I’m sure that serves as scant comfort to the taxpayers forced to support their intergenerational welfare.

Contrary to Feyman’s assertions, immigrants use welfare programs at a greater rate than natives, as well as previous generations of immigrants. This was true in 1996 and it’s true today, despite the meteoric rise in American natives’ exploitation of the social safety net. The only reason the disparity between the 2 groups isn’t greater is because there are a host of programs to which illegal aliens are debarred, a distinction which would be erased were amnesty to be enacted as it’s currently envisioned. The idea that you can’t simultaneously take advantage of welfare programs while working is another myth promulgated by open borders advocates.

What’s more, even though most immigrants come to the United States at the peak of their earning power, one-eighth of the immigrants to this country are over the age of 55! In other words, less than a decade from retirement. Although most of these immigrants will never collect Social Security checks, as the speaker pointed out during his talk, they will still be eligible to take advantage of SSI, a program that is hemorrhaging money, shows no signs of being reformed, and whose costs will continue to soar well into the future.

Feyman seemingly praised the mid-90s efforts to “fence in” welfare use by legal immigrants, efforts now categorically rejected by the presumptive Democratic nominee it should be noted, even as he acknowledged that these attempts at reducing the social and economic costs of immigration had largely failed. Even so, he insisted that these barriers would need to be reintroduced under his proposed scheme of open borders. Why welfare restrictions would be more viable in an electorate with tens of millions more unskilled, welfare-dependent, enfranchised immigrants than it was during the Clinton administration was a question that remained unanswered.

The subject of crime proved similarly elusive, as the crime rate of 1st generation immigrants was touted as definitive proof that open borders would be a panacea, even as Feyman conceded that 2nd generation immigrants had a crime rate identical to, and in some instances exceeding, that of Americans. In a remarkable feat of rhetorical jujitsu, this unpleasant fact was used as a data point IN FAVOR of unfettered immigration, proving as it does that immigrants are assimilating to American culture. Why we should be comforted that foreign gangs which were heretofore unknown in the United States are proliferating, and targeting Americans for extermination, is another question that begs to be answered.

Furthermore, the astronomical crime rate among illegal aliens was only briefly alluded to-and dismissed-during this lecture. Even if you ignore the incalculable human cost of our government’s sanction of criminal aliens, the fiscal cost is staggering. While 2 billion dollars might seem like chump change to a federal government that burns taxpayer wealth at a clip which would make a Saudi prince blush, it’s an oppressive burden to the states and municipalities which have to bear nearly the entire bill. This doesn’t even touch upon the fact that nearly 37% of federal prison sentences in Fiscal Year 2014 involved criminal aliens, let alone the impact of criminal immigrants overseas.

Interestingly, the health care cost of having such a large immigrant population was never broached, despite it being-along with the education-the largest economic burden this group imposes upon state and local governments. A burden which will only increase as the population of immigrants-both illegal and legal-expands, as the rapidly collapsing state of California illustrates.

But even if all of these economic and social metrics supported Yevgeniy’s assertions-and, as I’ve tried to illustrate, they do not-he would still be wrong from a philosophical standpoint. For his proposals are not consonant with liberty as its commonly understood, and they’re certainly not pragmatic, by his own definition. They would eliminate the ability to freely associate and to discriminate, despite these being inherent features of both libertarianism and our republic as it was traditionally conceived.

It’s not surprising then that the only political philosopher he invoked during his lecture was not a libertarian in any sense of the word, but John Rawls, a man whose ideas are the antithesis of those espoused by the Founders. His emphasis on the difference principle and the egalitarian case for opening our borders to the developing world demonstrates the utopian nature of this cause. The idea that inhabitants of third world nations are entitled to the West’s wealth-and that Western societies have no right to deny them-is a popular notion among open borders libertarians, and finds its most ardent advocate in the form of Bryan Caplan, a person who, a la Kevin Williamson, would rather see Americans die than deny the wishes of hundreds of millions of foreign nationals. Call it the Make-A-Wish Foundation for the global village.

The hermetic nature of the discussion among open borders advocates can be seen in the comparisons made between immigration restrictions and government-imposed segregation during the Jim Crow Era. This was another trope invoked by Mr. Famin in order to defend the idea of open borders, one which has its roots in the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965, which was enacted on a wave of specious comparisons between the struggle of black Americans for civil rights and the desires of foreigners in the third world to relocate to the United States. While correctly citing Robert Putnam’s study demonstrating the negative impact multiculturalism and open borders have on social cohesion, civic trust, and private, communal associations, from that he extrapolated that opponents of open borders must also support segregation along color lines.

There are so many flaws in this analogy that it would be difficult to enumerate them all, so I’ll highlight one of the most glaring. Namely, while Americans have Constitutional, civil rights to equal protection under the law, there is no comparable right for non-Americans to immigrate, settle and exploit the benefits extended to American citizens. It bears repeating that the men who created the framework for our system of government were deeply skeptical of the sorts of free immigration schemes proposed by the likes of Caplan et. al.

Another fundamental problem with this chain of reasoning is the arrogant assumption that the cultures of North America, Europe, and Australia somehow need moral improvement-provided, of course, by an unceasing stream of migrants from the third world. Beyond the obvious paradox at work in this formulation, there is the ahistorical nature of this assertion. It presumes that we don’t already have ample evidence from numerous countries that third world immigration to the West is destructive, not simply eroding the public’s trust in its leaders-which is a good thing-but erasing the very capacity for self-governance.

But even if there were no empirical evidence to support our position, the burden of proof would still be on individuals like Yeveniy Famin to prove that their stance is correct. When someone makes extraordinary claims on behalf of an untested idea that will dramatically alter the status quo, it’s not incumbent upon his opponents to prove a negative. It’s up to him to demonstrate that his idea will result in a positive improvement for individuals and our society. When I brought up the case of A.Q. Khan, a Pakistani Muslim immigrant who gave us the world’s first Islamic bomb, it wasn’t merely a gotcha question intended to embarrass the speaker or a misguided invocation of the precautionary principle.

There is actually ample evidence that the experiment with Muslim integration in The Netherlands has been a complete failure, and that the cumulative impact of this monumental social change has been decidedly negative for that country and its inhabitants. My point was simply that the adherents to open borders dogmatism couldn’t present a narrative that emphasized a corresponding good that’s resulted from widespread Middle Eastern and North African immigration to Holland. The retort that there are native-born citizens who’ve helped appalling regimes acquire nuclear weapons isn’t quite the devastating rebuttal that its opponents believe it to be. Just like the “there are American scumbags” aphorism, it presumes that just because evil exists we must do nothing within our power to limit our exposure to its most baleful consequences.

This line of reasoning would dictate that a landlord who currently has tenants that are scofflaws and destroy his property allow prospective renters who pose the same threat to live in his building, based upon a rigid devotion to equality. The logical extension of this can be found in Germany, where paying tenants are being evicted in order to make way for refugees, i.e. invaders from the Global South that Angela Merkel, the socialists, and Greens are cultivating as Germany’s new polity.

Open borders is a terrible idea, from both a consequentalist and natural rights perspective. When and if all societies are based upon mutual consent and non-coercion, then by all means, invite whomever you want to live, work, and possibly exploit, your self-contained civilization. I have no problem with Bryan Caplan et. al. inviting downtrodden Haitians or Yemenis to live at his expense, but I vociferously object to them externalizing the costs of their philanthropy to those, like me, who do not share their utopian ideals.

This site has not endorsed a candidate in this presidential election, even as the primary season draws to a close. What’s more, the idea of investing your hope in a politician-however charismatic or sincere he may seem-is something that I instinctually and categorically reject. Even those who maintain that Trump is the best available option concede that he might very well be a huge disappointment if elected. However, his commitment to highlight the horrific toll illegal immigration has taken upon our society-and his boldness in spotlighting the human tragedy caused by our government’s cupidity -is praiseworthy, regardless of whatever reservations you might have about Donald Trump as a person or politician.

If the only thing his campaign accomplishes is making the rest of America aware of the names that our pathetic media have tried to efface from history, allowing them to learn who Jamiel Shaw Jr., Kathryn Steinle, Tony, Michael, and Matthew Bologna were and why they were senselessly murdered, then it can be counted a success-and more worthwhile than almost every Republican presidential campaign of the past 3 decades. Can you imagine a John Kasich, a Mitt Romney, or a Marco Rubio standing beside and embracing Jamiel Shaw Sr. in front of a room filled with national and international reporters? To ask the question is to answer it.

So, regardless of who you intend on voting for tomorrow-if you happen to live in Indiana-or in the future, should this race continue, listen to the words of Jamiel Shaw Sr. His is a voice that has never been heard on a national political stage until this election. It’s one that should be broadcast to every potential voter across this nation, not the mindless cacophony  and hatred of those who’ve colonized California.

Turkey’s historic brutality towards ethnic and religious minorities, particularly what was once a thriving, prosperous Armenian Christian community, is well known throughout the West. The notion that rational individuals with a basic historic awareness would be persuaded to accept Turkish revisionism and holocaust denial is absurd.  However, that hasn’t stopped the Turkish government from spending millions of dollars in an effort to cajole, coerce or bribe governments throughout the world, including our own, to ignore its complicity in one of the greatest crimes of the 20th century. Acclaimed scholars of the Middle East have repeated the lies spouted by fascistic Turkish demagogues as it relates to this subject, and we now have the Wall Street Journal running a full-page advertisement espousing the views of the men who orchestrated the virtual annihilation of the Armenian people.

That is why the Rally For Justice, to be held outside the Turkish Consulate in Los Angeles this Sunday, is necessary. It’s an opportunity to remind the the world that the descendants of those who survived the Armenian Golgotha have not forgotten the persecution of their ancestors, and will not remain silent while Turkey attempts to airbrush its crimes out of history, even as its current government commits monstrous new ones upon another demonized minority. I would urge all of this website’s followers who live in Southern California to attend, and those who cannot to spread the word. In the face of unspeakable lies, remaining silent is not an option.