Libertarian in Name, Authoritarian at the Border - Free markets for us, border walls for them.

Ryan Haylett

I was driving behind a Ford F-150 the other day, and it had exactly two bumper stickers on the tailgate. On the left side, the bright yellow Gadsden flag. You know the one -- the coiled snake, "Don't Tread on Me." And on the right side, a massive, bold-lettered sticker that said, "BUILD THE WALL."

Ryan Haylett

And I just stared at it at the red light, trying to process the absolute, BRAIN-BREAKING cognitive dissonance happening on the back of this truck. Because you cannot hold both of those ideas in your head at the same time without short-circuiting.

Ryan Haylett

We need to talk about the anti-border libertarian. Or rather, the conservative who likes the aesthetic of libertarianism but completely abandons the principle the second they see someone speaking Spanish. Because free movement -- the ability of a human being to walk from point A to point B on this planet without the government putting a gun in their face -- is the ultimate litmus test for whether you actually care about INDIVIDUAL LIBERTY, or if you just hate paying taxes.

Ryan Haylett

Let's break this down down using the foundational rule of libertarianism: the Non-Aggression Principle, or the NAP. Murray Rothbard, one of the primary architects of modern American libertarianism, defined it pretty simply. It means you cannot initiate force against a peaceful person or their property. That's it. That's the whole ballgame. You can defend yourself, sure, but you cannot be the first one to swing.

Ryan Haylett

So, apply the NAP to the border. You have a guy in Honduras. He packs up his bag, he walks north, he crosses an invisible, arbitrary line in the Sonoran Desert, and he goes to work on a farm in Texas for a guy who voluntarily agreed to hire him. Who did he aggress against? Nobody. He didn't steal anything. He didn't hit anyone. He made a voluntary contract with an employer.

Ryan Haylett

But to stop him from doing that? To physically prevent him from crossing that invisible line? That requires a guy with a badge, a gun, a taxpayer-funded salary, and the legal authority to kidnap him, throw him in a cage, and physically abuse and deport him. That is STATE VIOLENCE. It is literally the definition of state coercion. You cannot claim to hate the state and then cheer for the largest, most heavily armed domestic law enforcement agency in the country (Customs and Border Protection) to restrict the peaceful movement of labor.

Ryan Haylett

Now, your typical American "libertarian" listening to this is already screaming at their dashboard. I know exactly what you're saying. You're quoting Milton Friedman. "You can't have open borders and a welfare state." It's the classic Welfare Magnet debunk. The argument goes: we can't let them in, because they'll drain the public schools, the hospitals, and the roads, and since I'm forced to pay for that via taxation, their immigration is an aggression against my wallet.

Ryan Haylett

Do you realize how INSANELY COLLECTIVIST that argument is? You are justifying the violent restriction of an individual's fundamental rights right now, based on the hypothetical possibility that they might consume resources from a collective pot that you don't even believe should exist in the first place!

Ryan Haylett

If you are one of these fake libertarians, your problem is the welfare state. Your problem is the taxation. But instead of fighting the state that is taking your money, you're asking that same state to build a two-thousand-mile concrete wall and militarize the border to protect the treasury! It's completely backward. You're sacrificing the individual on the altar of the collective tax burden. That is a conservative argument. It is NOT, and has never been, a libertarian one.

Ryan Haylett

Here is the tactical sleight of hand these guys pull: they conflate the two issues. They act like free movement and universal basic income are a package deal. But you can absolutely have free movement without extending the social safety net to non-citizens. In fact, we already do this for huge chunks of the welfare state. Undocumented immigrants don't qualify for federal food stamps, they don't get Medicaid, they don't get Social Security, even though many of them pay into it via fabricated social security numbers!

Ryan Haylett

Yeah, that's right, "illegal" immigrants already pay taxes and use the same crumbling roads and potholes you do. The only thing they’re not allowed to get is much of the minimal safety net you’re terrified of. If you want to ‘cut the welfare magnet,’ fine, cut the magnet, but don’t pretend that justifies kidnapping people.

Ryan Haylett

So if you're really just worried about the welfare magnet, the solution is simple. Pass a law: you can come here, you can work, but your public benefits are limited. Boom. Problem solved. But they don't want that. Because it was never actually about the welfare state. It's about DEMOGRAPHIC PANIC dressed up in a Thomas Paine costume.

Ryan Haylett

And look, we need to clear the air here on Anarcho-Capitalism, because that's the extreme end of this spectrum where the logic actually forces you to be consistent. AnCaps -- the David Friedman, pure Rothbardian crowd -- they don't believe the state should exist at all. No public property, NO public roads, NO borders. Everything is privatized. If you want to cross a border, you are literally just crossing someone's private land, and the owner decides if you can.

Ryan Haylett

But most of these guys waving the Gadsden flag aren't AnCaps. They're minarchists, or they're just embarrassed Republicans. They claim to want a minimal state. But how minimal is a state that requires a TWENTY-SIX BILLION DOLLAR annual budget for border enforcement? How minimal is a state that runs a network of detention centers holding tens of thousands of people who haven't committed a violent crime?

Ryan Haylett

You cannot claim to be a champion of free markets while demanding a government cartel on labor. Immigration is partly the importation of labor. Humans moving to where they are needed. If you believe in supply and demand, you have to let the supply reach the demand.

Ryan Haylett

This is why I call them LINO's, Libertarians In Name Only. They love the aesthetic. They love the guns, they like crypto, they want to smoke weed without the cops bothering them, and they want their income tax at zero. Cool. I agree with that. But the second they see a demographic shift they don't like? The second someone from Guatemala wants to compete in the labor market? Suddenly they want a massive, authoritarian police state. Suddenly they want armed agents checking papers on the highway.

Ryan Haylett

So here is my challenge to you. If your version of freedom requires a trillion-dollar federal apparatus to violently separate families and restrict the peaceful movement of human beings across the earth... you don't actually love freedom. You just want a GATED COMMUNITY, and you want the government you pretend to hate to act as your taxpayer-funded security guard. And it's about time we stop pretending that has anything to do with liberty.