Aug 25, 2014 | Politics
"Open immigration" in the context of capitalism means open to non-criminals and open to non-jidhadists. It does not exclude screening for criminals (those who violate rights), those with contagious diseases, and terrorists.This is how Yaron Brook and Craig Biddle use the term. (I believe Binswanger is for "open borders" eventually -- but only after the removal of jihadists).Those who paint advocates of open immigration, such as Brook, Biddle and Weiner as leaving borders open with no screening (for jihadists and diseases, etc.) are dishonest.Dr. Brook explicitly states screening is required in his definition of open immigration in his video.Biddle states in his essay on open immigration and individual rights:"Open immigration does not mean that anyone may enter the country at any location or in any manner he chooses; it is not unchecked or unmonitored immigration. Nor does it mean that anyone who immigrates to America should be eligible for U.S. citizenship–the proper requirements of which are a separate matter. Open immigration means that anyone is free to enter and reside in America–providing that he enters at a designated checkpoint and passes an objective screening process, the purpose of which is to keep out criminals, enemies of America, and people with certain kinds of contagious diseases.2 Such a policy is not only politically right; it is morally right."
There are many differing arguments for open immigration -- each with their different nuances -- many of those arguments for open (and closed) immigration are wrong. So be careful when you lump them all together.Don't get caught up in the open to everyone vs. closed to everyone dichotomy on this issue. So people be careful when you paint with your overly large brush when demonizing an imagined enemy.Aug 25, 2014 | Politics
“Open immigration” in the context of capitalism means open to non-criminals and open to non-jidhadists. It does not exclude screening for criminals (those who violate rights), those with contagious diseases, and terrorists.This is how Yaron Brook and Craig Biddle use the term. (I believe Binswanger is for “open borders” eventually — so I am not sure how he
will handle jihadists).Those who paint advocates of open immigration, such as Brook, Biddle and Weiner as leaving borders open with no screening (for jihadists and diseases, etc.) are dishonest.Dr. Brook explicitly states screening is required in his definition of open immigration in his video. Link is here:
http://openimmigration.net/category/video/Biddle states in his essay on open immigration and individual rights:“Open immigration does not mean that anyone may enter the country at any location or in any manner he chooses; it is not unchecked or unmonitored immigration. Nor does it mean that anyone who immigrates to America should be eligible for U.S. citizenship–the proper requirements of which are a separate matter. Open immigration means that anyone is free to enter and reside in America–providing that he enters at a designated checkpoint and passes an objective screening process, the purpose of which is to keep out criminals, enemies of America, and people with certain kinds of contagious diseases.2 Such a policy is not only politically right; it is morally right.”
There are many differing arguments for open immigration — each with their different nuances — many of those arguments for open (and closed) immigration are wrong. So be careful when you lump them all together.Don’t get caught up in the open to everyone vs. closed to everyone dichotomy on this issue. So people be careful when you paint with your overly large brush when demonizing an imagined enemy.Jul 26, 2014 | Politics
All anyone needs to know about the Middle East conflict is that the Jews want peace and the Arabs don't, because the Arabs hate Jews for religious reasons and they want them dead.Politics, territory - these are just excuses.Palestinian leaders have had several chances for a two state solution and they have always rejected it because they don't want a two state solution, and they don't care about the suffering of their people.They want all Jews out of there, or dead.The leader of Hezbollah is on record as saying that he won't be happy until every Jew on earth is dead.Once you realise that this is the position then, whatever you think of Israeli security measures, your moral standpoint has to change.
Jul 26, 2014 | Politics, Sci-Tech
From To make elite schools ‘fair,’ city will punish poor Asians | New York Post:
New York’s specialized high schools, including Stuyvesant and the equally storied Bronx High School of Science, along with Brooklyn Technical High School and five smaller schools, have produced 14 Nobel laureates — more than most countries.For more than 70 years, admission to these schools has been based upon a competitive examination of math, verbal and logical reasoning skills. In 1971, the state legislature, heading off city efforts to scrap the merit selection test as culturally biased against minorities, reaffirmed that admission to the schools be based on the competitive exam.But now, troubled by declining black and Hispanic enrollment at the schools, opponents of the exam have resurfaced. The NAACP Legal Defense Fund has filed a civil-rights complaint challenging the admissions process. A bill in Albany to eliminate the test requirement has garnered the support of Sheldon Silver, the powerful Assembly speaker.And new Mayor Bill de Blasio, whose son, Dante, attends Brooklyn Tech, has called for changing the admissions criteria. The mayor argues that relying solely on the test creates a “rich-get-richer” dynamic that benefits the wealthy, who can afford expensive test preparation.As Ting’s story illustrates, however, the reality is just the opposite. It’s not affluent whites, but rather the city’s burgeoning population of Asian-American immigrants — a group that, despite its successes, remains disproportionately poor and working-class — whose children have aced the exam in overwhelming numbers.And, ironically, the more “holistic” and subjective admissions criteria that de Blasio and the NAACP favor would be much more likely to benefit children of the city’s professional elite than African-American and Latino applicants — while penalizing lower-middle-class Asian-American kids like Ting. The result would not be a specialized high school student body that “looks like New York,” but rather one that looks more like Bill de Blasio’s upscale Park Slope neighborhood in Brooklyn.
Ironic?
To modern “progressive” elites, though, the story is intolerable, starting with the hard work. These liberal elites seem particularly troubled by the Asian-American work ethic and the difficult questions that it raises about the role of culture in group success.While the advancement of Asian students has come overwhelmingly at the expense of more affluent whites, it has also had an undeniable impact on black and Latino students, whose foothold at these schools, small to begin with, has all but vanished.[...]Subjective selection criteria also inevitably favor the affluent and connected — as a comptroller’s audit of the screened-school admissions process revealed. The study found that most of the schools examined did not follow their stated selection criteria and could not explain the criteria that they actually did use.[...]Critics of the SHSAT will reply that something must be done about declining black and Hispanic enrollment at the specialized high schools. The answer, however, can never be to lower objective standards.Adopting this cynical approach would do no favors for black and Latino children, while opening the door to discrimination against Asian kids like Ting. It is not the specialized schools’ emphasis on merit, but rather the advocates’ defeatist worldview that is truly — and tragically — wrongheaded.
