Monthly Archives: January 2018

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In Defense of Immigration from “Shi*thole Countries”

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The Stature of Liberty. Photo from MaxPixel's free collection.

“Why are we having all these people from shi*hole countries come here?” US president Donald Trump allegedly asked during an Oval Office meeting, further musing that the US should try to strike a new balance with fewer immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean and more from, say, Norway.

Well, of course, he shouldn’t have put it THAT way, if he did (he denies it). Between the language and the demographics in his supposed example, he’s handed his opponents the opportunity for a doubly delicious round of public moral preening — look how vulgar, and how racist, Donald Trump is!

Maybe they’re right. But they’re missing much bigger points. Whatever his phraseology, and regardless of any racial differences between the populations of the countries he chooses as examples, he got the whole matter backward in two important ways.

First and foremost, neither Donald Trump nor Congress should be choosing who comes to America. That’s the market’s job, not the government’s job, and certainly not the federal government’s job. Prospective employers and prospective employees don’t need politicians to tell them whether or not they can get together. They can figure that out for themselves. If it’s government largess that’s the problem, well, end the welfare state already instead of complaining endlessly about who uses it (besides which, immigrants pay more per capita in taxes and consume less per capita in welfare benefits than native-born Americans ).

Secondly, as sociologist and essayist Jacques Delacroix points out,  the incentives for immigration run in the opposite direction from that Trump’s comment assumes:

Immigrants from wealthy states like Norway (which has a higher per capita GDP and a more robust welfare state than the US) are more likely to be from the bottom of the barrel — the people who can’t or won’t  make out well for themselves in an economy even better than ours, but have enough money to get on a plane and take their laziness and complaining elsewhere.

Immigrants from poor states like Haiti, Somalia, and — Delacroix’s example — India are more likely to be the cream of the crop, those ambitious enough to leave everything they know behind and start over in search of success, in some cases, even risking starvation in the desert or shark-infested waters on inner tubes for a minimum wage opportunity.

Again: The market’s got this, if the politicians will just  butt out and knock off their disgusting, anti-American, authoritarian control freakery.

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.

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Two Modest Proposals for Choosing Better Presidents

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In a recent column, I noted that if Oprah Winfrey runs for president in 2020, she will be at least as qualified for the office as the incumbent, Donald Trump, was when he announced his 2016 campaign.

They’re both billionaires of similar net worth — her self-made, him not so much.

They’re both former television personalities — her the long-time host of a top talk show and builder of an attached media empire, him a “reality TV” shock jock. And so on and so forth.

The feedback I’ve received runs from the “no way” of Trump supporters to the “yes way” of Trump haters, with a healthy portion of people who consider neither of the two even remotely qualified for the job and wonder if the world is going crazy.

So, let’s talk about qualifications for the presidency. The US Constitution lists three: A prospective president must be at least 35 years old, be a “natural born citizen” of the United States, and have resided within the US for 14 years.

But, of course, many people want more than just those three things in a president, and I guess I can’t blame them. Unfortunately, what people — at least the people who pick major party presidential nominees — usually seem to want is a sitting or former governor or US Senator (or, occasionally, a victorious general). They want “political experience.”

I disagree. America’s fifty governors and 535 members of Congress seem to constitute the worst possible pool from which to select a president. Their collective record of corruption, incompetence, scandal, etc. is probably an order of magnitude worse than the record of any 585 randomly selected regular Americans. Seldom a day goes by without some politician getting caught with his hand in the till, or texting photos of his junk to random women, while passing monumentally stupid laws and running up $20 trillion in debt.

Secondly, if you think American government is moving in the wrong direction, well, guess who’s been moving it that way? These are the people trying to run our lives, and doing a terrible job of it. Political power attracts narcissists, sociopaths and megalomaniacs.

So, why not change the way we pick the president? I have two ideas, either one or both of which would improve the situation.

First, I suggest a constitutional amendment disqualifying any man or woman who has previously held elected office from running for president. A candidate could run for Congress or governor now or for president later, but not both. That should get rid of a lot of the scheming and opportunism associated with a political “career ladder” leading to the Oval Office.

Secondly — and, yes more severely — why not select the president by lottery? Just draw a random Social Security number, make sure the  person meets the other qualifications, and inaugurate him or her. Short of eliminating the office, random selection of the president seems like the best way to safeguard our liberties from people who want the job  … and who therefore should never be allowed within a mile of it.

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.

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Oprah for President? Why Not?

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Michelle Obama, Oprah Winfrey and Barack Obama...
Michelle Obama, Oprah Winfrey and Barack Obama at a rally (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The Cecil B. DeMille Award is an honorary Golden Globe recognizing “outstanding contributions to the world of entertainment,” first bestowed (upon its namesake filmmaker) in 1952. On January 7, Oprah Winfrey, the first African-American woman to receive the prize, accepted with a rousing speech that has fans calling for a 2020 presidential run. CNN Money reports that friends say she’s “actively thinking” about it.

Just a few short years ago, the idea of a president without prior experience in political office was nearly unthinkable. Prior to 2016, the last major party nominee, let alone president, with no political resume was Dwight D. Eisenhower, who, you may remember, whipped Hitler in World War Two.

And then came Donald Trump.

Like Oprah, The Donald is a billionaire and a former television personality. It seems that being a sitting or former state governor or US Senator (or general) is no longer a requirement for the top slot in American politics (the only president ever elected from the House of Representatives was James Garfield in 1880).

Apart from what one might think of his actual tenure in office, it’s far from obvious that Trump is more qualified than Winfrey for the post.

He’s a billionaire. She’s a billionaire.

He inherited wealth generated by sweetheart government housing contracts and managed to parlay it into larger wealth by leveraging political favors and massive debt, fleeing his failures  the bankruptcy wolves neared their doors.

She’s the child of a poor single mother in Mississippi who turned her high school radio gig into Chicago’s, then America’s, top-rated talk show and successful careers in writing, publishing acting, and film production. She became the richest African-American of the 20th century and the world’s first black female billionaire in the world.

Prior to Trump’s presidential campaign, there’s little doubt which of the two was more politically influential. Trump occasionally addressed politics with off-hand one-liners and feints toward running for office, fairly obviously as a way of building his personal business brand recognition rather than as a serious approach to issues or policy.

Winfrey, on the other hand, consciously spent decades establishing herself as an opinion leader on issues ranging from acceptance of LGBTQ Americans to the US invasion of Iraq to animal cruelty. She turned out tens of thousands of rally attendees — and likely hundreds of thousands of voters — for Barack Obama in 2008, probably making possible his victory over Hillary Clinton in the Democratic Party’s presidential primaries.

She also enjoys an advantage in the Democratic Party to the extent that she doesn’t seem to have dragged herself and others through the mud in the 2016 party in-fighting. She’s likely more popular at the party’s center than Hillary Clinton, and nearly as popular as Bernie Sanders on all but its furthest left fringes.

In my opinion, Oprah would beat The Donald like a drum in a presidential contest. I disagree with both of them on too many issues to vote for either one, but I relish a contest to which representatives of the failed political establishment aren’t invited.

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.

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