Congratulations on getting published in <em>The American Conservative</em>. Well done!

I second Jon, but I wonder: Can we apply Mr. Jimmy Havok’s “magic phrase” to Mr. Dougherty’s writing?


http://surfeited.net/blog/fortune-cookie-neoconservatism.html#comments

Mr. Dougherty writes : “Putting aside the number of man hours it would take to check the legal status of village residents and the number of upset landlords and contractors,”

Interesting idea. And as long as we’re throwing privacy out the window, why not do it right and install telescreens in every apartment to make sure everyone is always at all times on the up and up?

After all, why should invasions of privacy be limited to immigration when a such a lovely slippery slope beckons?

FRSalzar, I think we get it. You don't believe in having immigration laws. You don't believe in quality of life laws. If you think that checking the immigration status of workers in a town that is well known to be teeming with illegal immigrants is tantamount to me installing computer chips in people's brains to control their every move than we have nothing to talk about.

Exactly what laws do you think are legitimate? Aren't you a pretty serious Catholic? Would you have indecency laws? Do you believe any community has the right, even on the local level to preserve its character? To regulate its economy? Anything?

What infuriates people about libertarians is that they treat say, demanding a business install handicap access (which is annoying in itself) as if it were the same thing as dropping a clusterbomb on some faraway village. The moral effect seems to matter very little - the agent, the state, seems to matter most.

Indecency laws? According to whose standard? According to that which is true? Or according to the perverse?

And so no, I don’t want indecency laws since while such laws may be within the purview of the state, I can also expect such laws in modern America to enforce perversion and vilify virtue.

The same holds with “quality of life” where Catholics are the ones being winnowed out. I have no intention of encouraging the state to winnow. A bit of unwanted grit in the meal is a desirable tradeoff when one is also likewise considered chaff for the fire.

Btw, I’ve heard ADA laws described in many colourful terms, but ‘annoying’ was never one of them. A bit far too understated I surmise.

---Indecency laws? According to whose standard? According to that which is true? Or according to the perverse? --

How about according to public authorities constituted in a manner that optimizes the probability that their judgments will be true? (The presumption of our fundamental laws over nearly 400 years has been that such optimization occurs through competitive elections.)

I cannot see how the logic of your statements stops short of liquidating public authorities entirely.

What I fail to understand, Michael, is the trust which paleos put in government to solve this problem. When, where & how has big government earned this trust?

We never said big government solves all problems. We also never said to trust it. We don't love Leviathan. Those are strawmen.

Also if you think the village of Brewster is big government then there is nothing left to discuss. We are that far apart for once.

I'm still baffled as to why Catholics are turning into pure anarchists - especially as regards economic liberalism which the Church has cast doubts on.

Local enforcement of laws, especially when the proper federal authorities are falling down on the job, seems entirely appropriate and entirely in keeping with the principle of subsidiarity. Local communities' having control over the character of the community seems to be to be a fundamentally conservative goal. It is in ceding these powers to distant, indifferent authorities that has helped get us into the current predicament, sure enough. But it has always been the federal government's responsibility to regulate the borders of the United States, since it presumably exceeds the competence of any individual state to do this. We are not calling on "big government" to do anything that it is not specifically permitted and expected to do. I do not trust the government to use this power as wisely as it should; I rather expect that it will abuse this power, which is why oversight and public scrutiny and involved citizens exist. But this is the government that we have, and laws regulating immigration are among the few things everyone can agree the federal government is permitted to make under the Constitution. I can pretend that enforcing immigration laws is like the next coming of Big Brother; I can pretend that cops enforcing speed limits are the Gestapo; I can also pretend that I am Napoleon. Or I can face reality and acknowledge things as they are. When the neo-Chavistas confiscate your property, you can tell them very earnestly, "But I don't believe in the nation-state!" That should get a good laugh.

Governments are obliged to enforce the laws that they have put on the books, or the law loses respect and authority as entire classes of laws that no one follows come into existence or there are laws which are only randomly and sporadically--and therefore unjustly--enforced. Where is the justice in catching and deporting Mexicans at the border, but leaving illegal Guatemalan labourers in peace in Brewster? Whether or not one is scandalised by mass immigration itself, the mockery of the law that is current immigration "policy" should trouble anyone who believes in the integrity of the rule of law. If enough people believe a law to be unjust or unconstitutional, they work and petition to repeal it or, as we do it today, have it struck down in the courts; they should not shrug and declare enforcement of said law to be the same as 1984.

Michael,
I know Brewster because I lived in Yorktown Heights for 10 yrs. But the point is that the same dynamic is at work in Brewster as elsewhere and Brewster is not going to be able to expel illegal immigrants without the help of the Feds. You can raise property taxes in order to investigate, round up and bus them to Danbury, if you so choose, but they'll keep coming back as long as there are people in Brewster willing to employ them. If you regulate and police local businesses/homeowners even more it is safe to say that the town will suffer as these businesses/homeowners will move elsewhere.

I am not an anarchist but I don't see any reason to increase the power of incompetants because, as Mr Salzer pointed out, any new powers can easily be used against us in the future. I do not deny the right of a town to regulate certain aspects of community life, but I question whether - in this particular case - it is prudent to do so.

The Church has condemned socialism, not free market economics. The Church does not "cast doubts".

Daniel,
I have agreed that it is within the bounds of justice to regulate immigration; I simply question the prudence. In other words I am more afraid of an armed and subsidized police than I am of illegal immigrants. This is not my little fantasy but my response to a real usurpation of power by those I consider the enemy of all I hold dear (family, tradition, property).

"If enough people believe a law to be unjust or unconstitutional, they work and petition to repeal it or, as we do it today, have it struck down in the courts" This is unworthy of you; you are not so naive as to really believe this.

Mr. Dougherty writes: “We never said big government solves all problems. We also never said to trust it. We don't love Leviathan. Those are strawmen.”

Is Mr. Dougherty arguing for the sovereign ‘country’ of Brewster to enforce its own immigration laws?

Previously Mr. Dougherty wrote: “Winner gets to stay in the country,” With country understood to mean not Brewster but the U.S. It’s U.S. federal immigration law Mr. Dougherty is asking to be enforced, not local Brewster immigration law. Thus Miss Vicki is correct to point out that Mr. Dougherty is looking to the Federal government to solve his problem.


Further, it’s not a question of Anarchism but of competency. Only a fool asks a plumber qua plumber to set a broken leg because it’s outside of a plumber’s competency. Likewise, it’s outside the competency of the vicious qua vicious to enact and enforce virtuous law.

I guess I am fuddled as to why civil servants as a class of people are considered 'vicious'. That is certainly not congruent with my observations of my co-workers during my years as a public employee. There are economists and political scientists who make a project of studying public bureaucracies. That the incentive structure facing the civil servant discourages efficiency and (less frequently) encourages solicitude to pressure groups has been part of their critique. I am not aware that they have discerned that public agencies attract, generate, or retain vicious people.

As a long time resident of Westchester County (Croton-on-Hudson, holla!), I can attest that illegal immigrants have been swarming Weschester for more than a decade. The big change is that these guys were very low key during the nineties, they stayed out of trouble, but now they are really dominating certain areas. They get caught for drunk driving all the time. Its starting to get out of hand. Still, they seem a heck of a lot better than the more murderous, hell-razin Mexican illegals.

That being said, Vicki is waaay off when she thinks cracking down on illegals will drive away businesses and residents. This is Westchester County!!! If anything, the increase of illegals will drive away residents, especially poorer residents who can't insulate themslves with high property values. Enforcing local laws to retain the character of a town will no doubt be wildly popular with residents, although I'm sure that any business in need of dishwashers won't like it. Hmm, let's balance the interests there: desire of residents to keep lawfulness and order in their town versus desire of employers to pay lowest possible wages....gee, I dunno, that's a hard one.

Brewster, through its people, is sovereign within its proper sphere. The fact that our corrupt federal goverment has abandoned us to the interests of corporate welfare, does not mean that we should just shrug as our towns are transformed into balkanized barrios. It is within the rights of towns like Brewster to enforce local zoning laws and other quality of life ordinances.

It is fascinating to see people lose all sense of reason and proportion when the topic of illegal immigration is brought up. Illegal immigration is a crime. Americans don't want it, only corporate and political elites (and their intellectual lackeys) want it. The law is all we Americans have.

My point was that if the town wishes to enforce these laws on a permanant basis it will necessitate a large increase in property taxes. Since you live in Croton you know what these are already like. Suffice to say that one cannot live in "white" Westchester County without an income of $200,000, and that's the lower end of the spectrum. Higher taxes will automatically drive borderline folks somewhere else and you will end up with a version of Darien where you'll need an income of $1,000,000 to survive. That's your concept of popularism?

Now an example of how this can work is Pelham Manor. It surrounded by the Bronx & New Rochelle (both low income areas). There is virtually no crime and there are absolutely no illegals, nor blacks or hispanics for that matter. How do they do it? Simple: the mafia protects it. This is an aspect of subsidiarity not yet addressed by y'all. Why not privately enforce the town's written or unwritten laws? Especially since, as you point out, the Feds have abandoned them.

My Aunt has lived (in a house she owns) near Croton-on-Hudson since 1959. I assure you her income is nowhere near that.

"My Aunt has lived (in a house she owns) near Croton-on-Hudson since 1959. I assure you her income is nowhere near that"

She undoubtedly paid off her house long ago so only needs to pay the property taxes in order to live there. But when she dies and the house is sold it will sell for many times what she paid for it, the property will be reassessed and the new owner will have to pay exhorbitant taxes. No one making under $200,000 in his right mind would bid on it (assuming that it is a modest home).

BTW, if there's any way of keeping the property in the family do so! I wish we had!

Ummm, OK. Well guess what Vicki, you are wrong. Croton housing prices have exploded recently due to the general housing bubble, but they are not uniformly of McMansion magnitude. There are still many sections where folks live decent working class lives. Many of the smaller older homes are still reasonable for Westchester (consider that it is only 30 minutes from NYC).

But anyway, having the cops get off their soft butts will not likely cost that much more than now. They usually spend their time cruising about looking for high school keg parties to bust.

A belated félicitations to Michael for the publication of this article. Anyone who's not read Raspail's Camp of the Saints should do so now (preferably in French if possible, but there is a very good English translation available). Of course these real life stories are all the more difficult to get through, not the least because at the end of Camp of the Saints we can at least conceive of a different fictional ending. In real life, of course, there is no such possibility.

OK, I guess we're coming at the housing thing from different angles. I'm thinking in terms of raising a family (and mine is a large one so I think in large terms). But, you're right, it's still possible to buy a 1,000 sq ft home in Croton for $450,000.

As for the cops: there are 3 types. Big city cops who deal with real crime, small town cops who bust keg parties and - by far the worst - mid-size town cops who have all the funding and cop toys but very little real crime. They're the ones to be afraid of.

The opening scene in Camp of the Saints is by far the best part of the book; it's a classic!

Michael,
I know Brewster. I have lived here for 22 years. Your article did illustrate exactly the situation here. I also had a chance to speak to Mayor John Degnan about your article. He mentioned that he would like to respond to your article. I don't know whether he has or not. I know he has some ideas on how to alleviate the situation.
I recommend you check out the Brewster10509 discussion group at yahoo. The issue is discussed almost daily and your article appeared there as well. As a follow up to your article (if you plan to write one), you might want to have a discussion with the mayor.