Syriaphobia: the latest fad in collectivism

It has been claimed that at least one of the terrorists of Paris November 13 hid among Syrian refugees to gain entrance into Europe. On the basis of that, some (Republican) governors of American states have declared that they will not accept Syrian refugees sent to them by the federal government. But immigrants to America have been associated with crimes since 1492. Immigrants also bring enterprise, initiative, invention, and, most of all, descendants.

 

Michael Ansara,
perhaps best known for his role 
as Cochise in Broken Arrow, 
was also Star Trek's Kang, 
above as "Soldier" 
from The Outer Limits.

In the wake of the French Revolution, Federalists and Republicans both supported and opposed the immigration of French refugees, depending on who was referring to whom.  To the Federalists, the French Revolution was the expression of everything evil in democracy.  However, many of the refugees were aristocrats, fleeing the Terror.

(And that is another point for another essay: Terrorism, as we understand it today, was invented by a native government. The Reign of Terror was not imported from Arabia.) 

Those aristocrats were worrisome for the Republicans whose sympathies were with the Revolutionaries. However, the Revolutionary government of France sent spies. Its envoys interfered in American politics,  attempting to influence our foreign policy. For all of that, and more, see the website of the Office of the Historian of the U.S. Department of State here. 

 

Anousha Ansari, entrepreneur,
ISS astronaut
and co-founder of the
Ansari X-Prize.

Long established as proper Bostonians, the English in America were appalled by the Irish immigrants of 1848. They lived like animals, bred like animals -- and bred crime. Or so the English of Boston claimed. Among the consequences of Irish in America was the cliché of the Irish cop, established following the War Between the States, and enduring even today. Another cliché was the Irish army sergeant. 

Many had enlisted in the North and South in order to obtain military experience that they could take home to fight Great Britain. Many more stayed here. And their descendants supported terrorism for over 150 years. With the founding of Sinn Fein in 1905, evermore American money flowed into the conflict. 

We worry today about Arab Americans and Islamic Americans supporting terrorism now, but no one was concerned when “professional Irish” in America paid for revolution in Ireland and terrorism in the United Kingdom. 

Like Boston and New York,
Cleveland was a center of Finnianism.

They were not alone. In the 1930s and 1940s, both Nazi Germany and Communist Russia maintained huge networks of supporters. It is also quite likely that the USSR insinuated its agents into the stream of European refugees from World War II. Similarly, communist agents probably were among the Vietnamese. We know that China sends its operatives in as students. Disturbing as that is to consider, actual harm is harder to prove.

Homegrown socialists, whether Fascist, Bolshevik, or others were common enough. Our coinage of the era should appear shocking to any thinking person today. It was not an accident: many progressives and intellectuals of the late 19th through mid-20th centuries were collectivists. In Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, the clones were named after great collectivists of the times, Polly Trotsky, Lenina Crowne, and Benito Hoover, and others. In our time, the political leaders charged with defeating ISIL actually share many of its philosophical foundations: mysticism, revelation, altruism and collectivism, and ascetisim.

Fasces on American dime 1917-1945. German half mark and US quarter dollar.

Among the spies for the USSR was Samuel Dickstein, a US Congressman and New York Supreme Court justice. Meanwhile Prescott Bush, scion to the presidents of our time was able to get out of being implicated in a Wall Street Coup against President Roosevelt.  The German-American Bund pushed the Nazi Party line here at home. It only resulted in more anti-German sentiment.  Unlike the Japanese, the Germans were not put in concentrations camps - it was a possibility. In the movie Wings, about World War I, when the comic German, Arnold Schwimpf enlists with his buddies, the recruiting sergeant (an Irishman) says, "If you ask me, all you Dutchmen ought to be locked up until this thing is over." Those were heady times.  And America survived.

Civilization will survive ISIL.

Ayn Rand used the term “muscle mystic” (likely invented by Nathaniel Branden) to explain people who worship brute force. They thought that seizing factories would make them productive. They saw goosestepping rows and columns followed by arrays of tanks and mobile artillery, and accepted that whoever brandished them must be strong. In fact, reality and reason required that the Nazis and Communists would fail. So, too, is ISIL's program ultimately unworkable.

According to the news reports now about the Paris bombings, this murder of 180 people was carefully planned and executed over months.  Over 700 million people live in Europe, about 68 million of them in France. A million years will not be enough time for the terrorists to kill everyone they dislike.

Meanwhile, immigrants to Europe and the USA and everywhere else bring valuable human capital away from ISIL.

Yes, some may be criminals, as were the boys at Five Points, the Purple Gang, and the Mafia. It is a fact of human population distribution, however, that there must be at least as many Kennedys, Reagans, Einsteins, Fermis, Scalias, and Ayn Rands. And the creative work of good people outlasts  the destruction by evil people. 

It is an axiom of criminology that "crime knows no neighborhood." In other words, no place, no population is especially criminogenic. Crimes are committed by individuals who make bad choices. That is why Dr. Martin Luther King's dream was a world where a person is judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin. The basic error, the fundamental fallacy, is considering masses of people as collectives. Including or excluding groups, tribes, ethnicities, etc., is the wrong way to consider the question. In point of fact, US immigration policy requires each legal immigrant to prove their case on their own merits. That is appropriate. 

ALSO ON NECESSARY FACTS

Libertarians and Racism

A Man's Home is His Market

Laissez-faire Criminology

The Ferengi Rules of Commerce

LIBERTARIANS AND RACISM

Ayn Rand's essay on “Racism” in The Virtue of Selfishness was unequivocal: racism is the crudest form of collectivism. 

Anyone who discriminates among individuals on the basis of anything other than moral character should be shunned.  Ancestry is irrelevant.  Yet libertarians broadly excuse racial discrimination as your right.  It may well be for a libertarian.  To the libertarians, you have a perfect right to use heroin, work as a prostitute, and join a Wiccan collective.  So, for them, racism is just one more silly thing that people do.  They defend it on those grounds.  Objectivists think differently.  For them, rational individualism begins with the law of identity: A is A.  From that absolute, they derive ethics and politics.  

Thus, for an Objectivist, racism is irrational and therefore immoral. 

Being immoral racism is anti-life, by definition.  Seldom will you find any self-identified Objectivist defending the irrational as your political right except, perhaps, as a marginalized counter-example.  By the same standard, you have a political right to attend religious services; but Objectivists are atheists, so for them, the question is moot.

However, racialist ideology permeates the entire conservative-libertarian-objectivist spectrum.  Among Objectivists many do argue well against it.  Nonetheless, the existence of racialists among them cannot be denied.  On the Objectivist discussion board Rebirth of Reason, racist “Brad Trun” posted his “libertarian realist” ideas.  He was relegated to the Dissent forum because his posts directly contradicted Ayn Rand on Racism.  The ensuing discussions revealed racialist ideas among several of the strong and regular posters. 

It gets so complicated so quickly ...

On the Rebirth of Reason site, Objectivist Steve Wolfer offered peer-reviewed publications from mainstream anthropology in support of his claims that races exist.  Wolfer was firm – even adamant – that race is not a moral status.  Good people and bad come from all such groups, however defined.  Still, he accepted the existence of races.  He is not alone.  The US Government insists that I must choose a race, though they recently allowed me to select “Two or more” which I do, as I deny the existence of race, except as a social construct among the uneducated.

Remaining uneducated may be your right to a libertarian.  Majoring in criminology, I took many sociology classes, including “Race and Ethnic Relations” (SOC 205) at Washtenaw Community College.  It was interesting.  In the first or second class, one young woman said to a fellow student, “I do not see you as a Black man, but as a person.”  Replied the man with the dreadlocks: “If you do not see me as a Black man, I am insulted.”  We all have a right to self-identification … and a right to worship the moon and do our financial bookkeeping in Roman numerals…  An Objectivist sees the situation differently.

Addendum January 29, 2012
This page has received an inordinate visibility and therefore I want to clarify, if possible, that my classmate with the great hair was only uneducated about race.  We were, after all, in the same class and therefore equally educated.  He chose to identify with his African, not European, forebears.  As a numismatist, I confess that I found the Greeks and Cartheginians of Sicily interesting; and I collected a set of coins from the Hungarian Malcontents Revolt.  Call it ancestor worship; it is not rational.  So, I get the hair. And he had at least one good story:  Visiting Nigeria, people stopped him on the street and gave him money because they thought that he was a holy man; whereas in Detroit, the police on patrol, pulled over and demanded to see his identification papers. It was a cogent point from an insightful campus peer -- and all the more reason for us all to abandon the social construct of race.

Ayn Rand’s essay “Racism” by LibertyPen “C. M. Herdert” narrator here

and a different presenter here

And another speaker here

Printed format excerpts from  “Racism” by Ayn Rand here

“Money dissolves skin colour on contact. The fact that Silicon Valley, the freest market in the world, has produced the United Colours of Geek proves it.”—Dan Gardner.