“Arrests at the southern border will set new records this year,” Joe Walsh reports at Forbes. “Border Patrol apprehended 1.998 million people at the U.S.-Mexico border from October to August, already blowing past the 1.659 million arrested in all of fiscal year 2021, which was the agency’s busiest year on record.”

Republicans have noticed, but their response is, well, a bit odd.

US Senator John Thune (R-SD) blames Joe Biden’s “de facto open border policies.”

US Senator Rick Scott (R-FL) blames Biden’s “amnesty agenda and open border policies” not only for “record-breaking illegal [sic] immigration” but for a supposed “fentanyl crisis.”

In what universe does “more arrests than ever before” translate to “open border policies?” And how does the seizure of “9,962 thousand pounds” (I don’t know if that’s a typo or if Scott really means 9.9 million pounds) of fentanyl translate to an “unchecked deluge of drugs pouring into the United States?”

Our mutual friend Bob doesn’t drink, and I can prove it — see that trash can full of empty bourbon bottles on his back porch? Airtight case! High-quality deductive sleuthing on my part. You’re welcome.

Look, I get it: Republicans are miffed that after trying to out-Democrat the Democrats on immigration authoritarianism for 20 years,  finally nominating life-long Democrat Donald Trump as a “Republican” for president in 2016 to get the job done, they STILL lag Barack Obama and Joe Biden on pretty much every “immigration enforcement” metric.

But the immigration and fentanyl “crises” aren’t due to insufficiently vigorous enforcement.  People are going to travel, and use drugs, no matter how much effort the state puts into trying to  stop them and no matter how many are arrested.

The notional “fentanyl crisis” comes down to fentanyl being more powerful than other opioids and therefore easier to smuggle — because smaller quantities are needed — past US drug enforcers.

Scott’s solution isn’t to endorse ending the disastrous war on drugs. Instead, he’s introduced no fewer than three bills to step up the very “drug enforcement” that makes fentanyl an attractive alternative to traditional, less dangerous, opioids.

Our choice isn’t between “secure borders” and a “drug-free America” on one hand, or “open borders” and a “fentanyl crisis” on the other.

Our choice is between open borders and legal drug use on one hand, or open borders and illegal drug use, plus an expensive and overbearing police state on the other.

Politicians — Republican and Democrat alike — clearly prefer the latter.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

“With the possible exception of things like box scores, race results, and stock market tabulations,” Hunter S. Thompson wrote in 1973, “there is no such thing as Objective Journalism. The phrase itself is a pompous contradiction in terms.”

Someone forgot to tell George Washington law professor Jonathan Turley, who bemoans the rise of “advocacy journalism” (which he himself  prominently practices) in general and what he characterizes as Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin’s “call to abandon the foundational principle of impartiality in journalism” specifically.

Like many, Turley seems to long for a return to some Golden Age of journalism when journalists merely provided facts in a “neutral” manner, giving readers the necessary evidence to reach their own conclusions instead of inserting their own biases and opinions into the matter.

There are two major problems with Turley’s desire.

One is that the existence of such a Golden age is pure myth. The idea of “objectivity in journalism” is largely a product of Walter Lippmann’s 20th century call for a “detachment” he himself didn’t practice as a journalist, in reaction to a previous era (indeed, the entire previous history) of journalism in which reporters wore their biases on their sleeves and readers chose the newspapers most compatible with their own biases.

The “objectivity” of the post-Lippmann press didn’t consist of eliminating bias. It consisted of smothering bias under a bland gravy of pretended neutrality.

Which brings us to the second problem: Neutrality and objectivity are different — and, moreover,  completely incompatible — things.

Objectivity is about discerning reality as it actually is, or at least attempting to do so.

Neutrality is about not taking sides on issues.

As an example of the two approaches, let’s take the subject of Anthropogenic Global Warming. Earth is, or is not, warming. It is warming, or not, for particular reasons (including, possibly, human activity). And there are, or are not, specific consequences.

A truly “objective” journalist would work hard to find out (and tell us) whether or not Earth is warming, for what particular reasons it is or isn’t warming, and what the consequences of its warming or non-warming are or aren’t.

A truly “neutral” journalist would neither hold nor express any opinion on what ought or ought not to be done about the answers to those questions.

Objectivity doesn’t forbid us to form opinions. In fact, it usually requires us to do so. Trying to keep one’s opinions out of one’s communications is both unrealistic and counter-productive.

Rubin says we should “burn down the Republican Party.” Turley says we shouldn’t. Either or neither of them may have reached their positions “objectively.”  But neither of them owes us a pretense of neutrality, and both enrich us by showing their work.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

As I write this, we’re 47 days away from the November 8 general election — voters will elect candidates to all 435 US House seats, 35 US Senate seats, and other offices that vary from state to state.

As close as that sounds, in some places it’s even closer. “Early voting” begins 46 days before Election Day in Minnesota and South Dakota, 45 days early in Vermont, Virginia, and Wyoming, 40 days early in Illinois and Michigan, and with shorter windows in most states.

It’s time to start making some decisions. Not just on which candidates to vote for, but on whether to vote at all.

The usual answer to the question “should we vote?” is “of course!” Some consider it a “civic duty” and even suggest making it mandatory. It’s how the system works. If you don’t vote you have no right to complain about the outcome.

Some anarchists, libertarians, and other contrarians take things in the opposite direction. Voting, they say, signals consent to the results, and approval of a bad system. It’s a moral crime. If you vote you have no right to complain about the outcome.

Personally, I consider voting neither a civic duty nor a moral crime.

If I don’t like my choices (or the overall system), I’m under no obligation to pretend I do by voting.

On the other hand, the system does exist, and will continue to exist for the foreseeable future whether I vote or not, so there’s no reason I shouldn’t register my preferences as to how it operates and who runs it, if I feel like doing that.

I’m not going to try to convince you to vote. But I am going to try to convince SOME of you to NOT vote.

If you haven’t taken the time to familiarize yourself with the candidates and issues on your ballot, you shouldn’t vote.

If you’re familiar with some of the candidates and issues but not others, you shouldn’t vote on those latter candidates and issues.

Voting on things you neither understand nor particularly care about is just a waste of time, effort, and maybe gasoline. And while the chances of your vote being the deciding vote in any given election are about as good as your chances of winning a billion-plus-dollar lottery drawing, why take the risk of causing the “wrong” result by voting from a position of ignorance?

If you’re not sure you should vote, you probably shouldn’t.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY