In his latest “New Rules” report, Bill Maher takes on immigration, favoring it but promoting assimilation, all while defending liberal American values—values like supporting gay and women’s rights, even when they clash with religious (in this case Muslim) values.
One issue: Maher seems to defend the practices of different cultures, like child marriages, so long as they’re not practiced in America. In other words, his message seems to be one promoting cultural relativism, so that things we consider odious might be okay on their home ground. Now I know Maher doesn’t believe in child marriage, honor killing, genital mutilaiton, and the like, but it would have been nice had he said that these things are wrong everywhere, even if they’re not considered wrong everywhere. Others might object to his criticism of accepting immigrants who come to the U.S. for economic reasons.
All in all, it’s a pretty good piece though the apparent cultural relativism spoils it a bit.
The panel guests shown are former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson.
Thanks for posting this, it hits on an area where I haven’t clarified my personal views.
On the one hand, as a libertarian I favor making the borders more open. A lot of people trying to come over our southern border want to work hard and provide for their families. Those are people I’d be proud to call my countrymen.
On the other hand, Islamism, the idea that Sharia should be the law of the land, is fundamentally in opposition to the Enlightenment values on which the United States was founded. We as a country don’t live up to those values all the time, but they are what underlies the Constitution. Allowing people who reject those values to become citizens because of a general commitment to fairness and openness strikes me as slow suicide for the republic.
The difficult question is how to implement an immigration strategy given those two, potentially conflicting, goals. Do we ban all Muslims? Do we ban only those from countries where support for Sharia is over 50%? Do we allow in only “westernized” Muslims from Europe? How do we align that with our core principle of freedom of religion?
I think the answer (for all Western countries, not just the US) is to be much more probing during the immigration process. For instance, asking people to talk, in their own words, about the values in question, to ensure they understand what they mean, rather than simply taking an exam whose answers they can memorize. I would also make the initial acceptance (for those who pass the first stage) conditional on demonstrating, over a period of, say, three years, that they are living those values, or at least not doing anything that clearly opposes them (such as making family members wear the veil), and being willing to rescind the acceptance if they participate in activities that are in contravention of those values. Only then, for people who have clearly assimilated and lived those values, would I proceed to actual eligibility for citizenship. That would make the process much more labour intensive (and thus, expensive) and probably reduce the number of people who could be processed by the system at any one time. To my mind, the latter would be a positive outcome. Breathing space is necessary.
You ask “How do we align that with our core principle of freedom of religion?” Here I think the answer is that freedom of religion means effectively freedom of belief, i.e. purely a matter of conscience. It does not necessarily extend to freedom of all customary practices of a religion, since those must be subject to the test of whether they infringe on the rights of others.
Sure, but I would think the initial interview stages would need to screen high 1000’s of would-be immigrants, and it will cost to curate and later check in on them. Certainly they should prove that they can support themselves, though.
You know we can demand device inspection at our frontiers and embassies. A quick AI scan of their social media, say, for “DEATH TO AMERICA” or some such should be excludable evidence.
In fact, we need no evidence to exclude somebody but we could search (via AI) social media accounts before arrival and have “filtering” possibilities never before possible.
D.A.
NYC
My understanding of the libertarian position on immigration is open borders for people who are looking for work, as you said.
The other part, that people push back on, is that noncitizens here to work are not eligible for any benefits unless/until they become citizens (not even emergent health care). This restriction of services/benefits avoids the reality that robust social services/benefits along with open boarders is not economically viable.
Wanted to check with a libertarian so I don’t butcher the idea.
Ask three libertarians about immigration and you’ll get five different answers. The party platform says:
“We support the removal of governmental impediments to free trade. Political freedom and escape from tyranny demand that individuals not be unreasonably constrained by government in the crossing of political boundaries. Economic freedom demands the unrestricted movement of human as well as financial capital across national borders.”
That “unreasonably constrained” is doing a lot of work there, given that libertarians range from classical liberals to anarchocapitalists. Without going down that particular rathole, you are correct that libertarians do not support government benefits provided through coercive means. Some do, in fact, take the position that we need to shrink the government before opening the borders.
While I understand the philosophical purity of the open borders libertarians, I’m personally more pragmatic about the fact that we are not in a libertarian ideal, other countries are not all friendly towards us, and some philosophies and religions are inimical to our values.
I’d like to see the U.S. move more towards libertarian positions in all areas. I’m unconvinced that open borders is the right first step in that direction.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bracero_Program
This seemed like a useful program; my family in Texas had positive experience with “braceros.”
I signed up for this site today, hoping it will give my thinking on immigration some sort of order: https://www.commonsenseamerican.org
And some allowance must be made for Muslims who were promised asylum for serving as our allies in Afghanistan and other places. Seem the worst treachery to promise it, get them here, and then expel them.
Assimilation doesn’t really work. Or, to qualify that, Americans tend to laud assimilation because it worked for lots of different types of European, but that’s because Europeans are all pretty similar to start with.
There are lots of nations where different ethnicities stay segregated for multiple generations, causing endless societal tensions. That’s more the norm.
Further, whether immigration benefits a country or not depends very much on who the immigrants are. And to judge that, the simplest test is to evaluate the prosperity, peacefulness and functionality of the countries that they come from.
Are migrants from, say, Norway or Japan likely to fit in well and be a boon to the country? Well, yes they are.
Are migrants from, say, Haiti, Somalia or Afghanistan likely to fit in well and be a boon to the country? Look at those countries and see.
Yes Coel. It is essential. In the multicultural Australia I grew up in all my many friends’ foreign parents did all they could do assimilate.
As I did when I lived in Japan. Then here.
The system doesn’t work with enclaves and ghettos.
D.A.
NYC
“Now I know Maher doesn’t believe in child marriage, honor killing, genital mutilaiton, and the like, but it would have been nice had he said that these things are wrong everywhere, even if they’re not considered wrong everywhere.”
“All in all, it’s a pretty good piece though the apparent cultural relativism spoils it a bit.”
Since the statement, “Child marriage, honor killing, and genital mutilation are wrong,” is not a scientific statement, then, according to your previously stated views, the statement cannot be true.
So, on your own views, the statement is just an expression of personal odium.
But you will grant that, as an empirical fact, the Muslims of these other countries do not share your odium; indeed, they view these practices with approval.
And on your view, neither you nor these Muslims are asserting a truth, since morality is not science, and only science has truth.
So, how is your view any different from moral relativism?
🎯
I am fully in favour of freedom of conscience / belief, but it is not unlimited. To paraphrase a quote commonly attributed to Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr (but undocumented), your right to follow your beliefs ends where my rights begin.
I agree with Mr Maher on this issue. In an environment where where women or gays or kafirs or animals do not have relevant rights, your right to follow your beliefs has no such limit.
That is thankfully not our Enlightenment-values environment, due to a combination of good luck and good management (so far); but if we collectively fail to effectively defend these values against enemies foreign and domestic then IMO we are unworthy of them. I sincerely hope this is not the case, but….
I’ll have to listen again but I didn’t get much cultural relativism. More just don’t bring it here, less “do it in your country.”
I’ll re-watch.
Good piece btw
D.A.
NYC
I agree; I spotted no cultural relativism in his piece. I’m usually with Maher, almost always, though sometimes a bit of the vaccine sceptic seeps through. Something he mentioned at the beginning: the flip side of attracting the best immigrants is that they are no longer in their home countries, who might have educated them (and, in many cases, in the USA they couldn’t have afforded such an education). If people want to legally immigrate for personal reasons, fine, but actively encouraging qualified immigrants to come seems to me like a form of colonialism, whatever the reasons for it.
In my opinion every Muslim candidate in the US needs to be asked if Sharia Law and the Quran preempt the Constitution. And they should be asked by the press specifically if they support child marriage, honor killings and genital mutilation.
Unfortunately their religion allows them to lie to infidels to advance the cause.
That would be another good question to ask them. dj
😀 (I assume that was meant as a deadpan joke. No offence intended.)
The problem of Muslims immigrating and refusing to accept Western values, trying to impose their religious dictates on their adopted country, is bad enough. What is really infuriating are the left-wing progressives who are stupidly indulgent of Islam. Maher was right to call out their hypocrisy in, among other things, fawning over Islam despite that religion’s persecution of LGBT etc people, for whose rights liberals have fought for many years.
Maher cited the example of Melissa Chaudhry, an avowedly progressive congressional candidate in Seattle that won’t list support for gays in her platform for fearing of offending Muslims. She grew up locally but apparently converted to Islam after marrying a Muslim man, which is likely the reason for her squeamishness about overtly supporting gays. While she says she supports gay rights and has “gay friends”, this was rightfully called out by the gay community here as being on a level with a white racist pretending not to be such by claiming he has “black friends”. Fortunately she lost the election, and by a very large margin. But she’s run before and I won’t be surprised if she tries again.
I think this blond, blue-eyed, hajib-wearing hypocrite personifies the idiocy that has overtaken much of the Democratic party these days. The party in the past has at its core accepted that the adoption and defense of classic Enlightenment values is the heart of traditional liberalism. This is the starting point. These values are not disposable when inconsistent with the pursuit of a newly fashionable agenda. These people need to stop pretending they are Democrats.
Some years ago a German feminist got into big trouble for suggesting that the reason so many young Western women fawn over Muslim men and convert to Islam is that they want to be dominated. According to her, they got fed up with wimpy feminized Western men and want what they think is a “real man” who tells them what to do and how to behave. Maybe that is the case for some, but I think for others it is just a case of sheer woke ignorance.