The fallacy of equivocation

This is Joseph.

Ladies and Gentlemen, the real progressive:

“For over two decades, I have implored our political elite to take seriously the truly progressive position on immigration: one of extreme skepticism. To no avail,” Karp [Business partner of our old friend Peter Thiel -- MP] said. “Unfettered immigration in Europe, where I lived for well over a decade, has been a disaster — depressing wages for the working class and resulting in mass social dislocation. I remain an economic progressive, isolated among self-proclaimed progressives that are anything but.”

This is obviously redefining the word far away from any conventional meaning. It is quite plausible to want to have controlled immigration as a progressive and it is fine to have rules. But obviously extreme skepticism is a nativist viewpoint that is, at the very least, tricky to reconcile with an American tradition of recruiting citizens from across the world. 

Now this isn't to go into a false dichotomy and say that there are only two ways forward. Immigration policy is a complex set of rules. It's quite plausible that it is an area that is ripe for reform. But extreme skepticism seems to be one end of a spectrum that contains a lot of different outcomes.

It is also worth noting that I have a very hard time with the idea of national land claims. I totally get nation states and understand why they have arisen. I know that it would be worse without them. But a great challenge of Libertarianism was to even imagine how a state could arise without injustice, and that is because everything about state formation is inherently unjust. But that doesn't mean the solution is no states -- the injustice arises from the othering of people who are not a part of the rising state and a stateless society just begs for new states to arise. It is unfortunate that birth is painful but that doesn't mean we do not nurture babies once they arise. 

Given that, the real goal of a state is not to keep it for one culture but to perpetuate a strong state that improves the lives of the members. It's not inherently obvious that extreme skepticism to immigration is the path forward.