Core Topic: Extended discussion on birthright citizenship and the Supreme Court case challenging its scope under the 14th Amendment.
Naturalization vs. Immigration: Libertarian debate distinguishing free movement and contracting from the separate political act of citizenship, voting, and welfare eligibility.
Naive vs. Realist Libertarianism: Critique of “vote harder” approaches and reliance on constitutions versus elite theory and historical state growth dynamics.
Cultural and Geopolitical Impacts: Arguments that mass naturalization reshapes political representation and institutions, with examples spanning U.S. districts, the Baltics, and Israel.
Policy Framing: Proposal to allow freer movement while significantly restricting or delaying citizenship as a non-interventionist mitigation strategy.
Market/Economy Notes: Brief pessimistic outlook mentions potential economic downturn and geopolitical flashpoints (e.g., Strait of Hormuz), without investment-specific guidance.
Events Mentioned: Mises Institute events and a Bitcoin conference appearance noted, but not presented as investment pitches.
No Investable Ideas: No public company tickers, GICS sectors/sub-industries, or concrete investment themes were substantively pitched.
Transcript
Welcome back to the Power Market podcast. I'm Ryan McMakin, editor and chief at the Mises Institute. And joining me today are two of our contributing editors. We have th Bishop and we have Connor O'Keefe. And we got a few different issues we can talk about today. I think we'll just briefly talk about Pam Bondi, who I guess just got fired a few minutes ago. uh but also look a little bit at uh this issue of birthright citizenship which is in the news again because a case related to the topic is in front of the Supreme Court right now and we'll look at at the issue of naturalization and citizenship and if there is a any sort of libertarian justification for widespread naturalization. Uh but first uh though we got some events coming up. We got San Diego. We got uh Rothbard U. We got another event in New Hampshire. So yeah, what's the story there? >> Yeah, you're still in my thunder there, Ryan. But we do have some great events. Uh do have some great events coming up. Um and as Ryan has already mentioned, San Diego on April 25th. Uh the topic California's decline, a warning to America. Uh got a great lineup including both Ryan and Connor. Uh we also have Chris Carlson with the Independent Institute, friend of the show. We've got Bill Anderson, senior editor uh at at the misa.org. Um we've got Peter Klene, big deal right then and there. And Ed Fuller, who is always a fascinating speaker. Um so that's going on on April 25th. Rothbard University, which is a great opportunity if if you were never able to experience the best week of the year, which is Mises University. Rothbard University gives you uh I I kind of think of it like a almost like a fan camp experience, right? Like like this is your ability to to to have that. Um it's a two-day event in May beginning on the 14th in beautiful Auburn, Alabama as we celebrate the year of Rothbard. Um we're going to have a great great lineup of some of our our best uh Misesu faculty members. Um you know, can't recommend that highly enough. Very excited for that. And then um on June 27th, I think this is the first time we've mentioned it on this show. Why is the health care system broken? We're going to be diving down into that. We've got a great lineup of uh experts that have looked at the healthcare policy. Tim Terrell um who always does a great um uh healthcare related talks at Misesu. I always get a lot from that. And Bob Murphy of the human action podcast uh and and other things. You might be familiar with that name. Um he'll be speaking there. So very excited for that. Always good to be in the free state of New Hampshire. Again, that will be in June. We've got even more events than that on the rest of the calendar, but if you want to see more about those, you have to visit mises.org/events. And if you're a you're a Bitcoiner, you're going to be at the the Bitcoin conference this year. We're also going to be there uh in April. Very excited to have Gidto Holesman, the great Guido Hollesman uh talking about the ethics of money production. So, if you're a Bitcoiner going to be in Las Vegas for that event, please stop by our table. I will be there. Connor will be there. Brian not going to be there, but uh we'll still have a good time. So, uh yeah, that's what we got cooking right now. >> All right. Well, also I'll note uh just hey, in August Albuquerque event again. So, uh which is more related to my stomping grass. So, just to save the date. Yeah, go to mises.org/events. Also, if you haven't subscribed to our email, go to click on subscribe near the top of the page as well. Uh let's talk about Pam Bondi. uh who the last really I heard from her, I don't pay attention to these people. They're insufferable. Uh but I I do know that we should not care about Epstein or rape because the stock market was at 50,000 once upon a time. I don't think it's quite that high anymore thanks to the policies of her boss. Uh but I guess she's gone now though. Is this true or was this just a rumor I saw on Twitter? >> This is true. Ding-dong Pam Bondi is gone. Uh I I think probably you perhaps uh I mean you know he seth is giving him her a run for the money but but perhaps the most uh we don't have to go in the the uh the Nomi uh >> Christian our former uh Department of Homeland Security um director but I think one of the leading faces of incompetency and betrayal um you know of uh the the administration so far is Pam Bondi. Um, you know, obviously, uh, as was the the fill-in for after Matt Gates's nomination went away as a as a Fidian. Uh, I I have not been a fan of Pam Bondi for quite some time. She was not a, uh, not my favorite AG. Um, that's for sure. Really bad on gun policy and and all sorts of of stuff like that. Um, very much caught uh, you know, I think I think it was someone someone casted for the TV appearance, but as you mentioned, like you know, her her congressional testimonies were were always a disaster. the again the amount of of credibility lost very early on with a complete disaster of the entire um Epstein situation. You could not have played that situation uh any worse. Um seems from reports now that yeah frustration been growing over a period of time yada yada yada. Um Lee Zeldon who uh was a member of Congress um you know ran a a more competitive than usual race for New York governor a couple years ago. He's been the EPA uh director um for uh uh you know during this Trump term. He it seems like he is the the heavy front runner to to replace her. Um but that means the grand scheme of things there's a different question there. Um but but yeah, Pam Bondi a a face of of embarrassment and uh uh mediocrity uh gone. So yeah, there you go. setting. >> Well, I I see here Dominic Trippy. Uh, this has a lot of engagement. I don't know if this guy is famous or whatever, but it's a high engagement post here on Twitter. He says, uh, Pam Bondi reportedly begged, quote unquote, to keep her job in a intense showdown, quote unquote, after, I don't know, doing something that annoyed Trump. I mean, who cares? Uh, but I hope that's true. That would have been a hilarious sight to see her beg to keep this job get nuked anyway. I mean, you play with Donald Trump, you deserve to get humiliated. I mean, that's where you all end up. That's how it works. Uh JD Vance is learning that lesson the hard way. That kissing Trump butt uh is not going to be a great career move uh for you. But yeah, Bondie the latest one to be lost on this. Not going to miss her too bad. I'm sure they'll get someone far worse. That's certainly the trajectory of this administration. Uh and then I look forward to the congressional hearings after the democrats sweep the house and the senate senate come uh November by a humongous margin after the economy tanks and the straight of hormuz is still shut and NATO dissolves and all those other great accomplishments of the uh the Trump administration come to roost. Uh you guys have anything more to add about Bondi? I mean, it's anything that makes her look terrible, I'd love. >> No, I I think you guys are right. I have a My pessimistic view of the Trump administration is that it is primarily a theater production there. The whole point of all these figures is they're supposed to come in and convince the population that they're actually like meaningfully changing things in DC while they don't actually meaningfully change things. And Bandy Bondi was just bad at it. She was terrible. Um, I I think the reason they probably moved away from Matt Gates, I mean, I know there was issues with the realism of him actually uh getting appointed, but Matt Gates seems like somebody that may have actually tried to change things, and that's not what you're supposed to do in that position. Bondi, that was never, she was never going to come in and change things. It was all about the spectacle, but she like it was just so cartoonish with the the Epstein binder. That was kind of the first thing as far as I remember. Um, and it just went terribly. the testimony like her job is to be in those testimonies and uh she's literally an actor. Like yeah, we're doing huge things and we're taking on the swamp when they when they're really not. And she just failed at that completely. But yeah, I expect her uh replacement to be worse in the sense that they're better at acting, but they don't actually do anything good. I mean, I just think she's a great embodiment of like just the the Epstein issue, which again, I know, as we talked in the past, I think it's one of the most important issues of of modern politics. I think, you know, it is a tool of of of delegitimizing, you know, so many institutions. um you know her handling of this you know could not have been could not have escalated that issue bigger as in a in a short period of time quite as how how terribly from from the administration standpoint it was like this this the the the head fake and all sort of stuff. Um and so I mean I I think it really is uh you know it's a fitting fitting end to her there. Um, but I think that's going to be the last thing I can see that. >> But but that's that's an important point there, too, is that her failure was not not investigating the Epstein stuff. It was it was avoiding it in a way that blew up and became this big issue. That's why she's being pushed out. It's not It's not like they're finally going to start looking into that, >> right? >> No. >> Yeah. >> No. The uh this we're we're fighting a war to to protect Pedos. I mean, that's basically uh US policy at the moment. So yeah, don't ex don't well the the war has already been used as an excuse to cease the investigation and to put it on the back burner. So I mean that's a just an illustration right there as to where this regime is headed in terms of of those things. Well, let's talk about uh the issue of birthright citizenship. This here's the part of the episode where people maybe if they just listen to this part, then we get a bunch of emails telling us how we're a bunch of Trump partisans because we're against birthright citizenship. At least I am. Uh, and so never I guess ignore the first 10 minutes of of the show. We had Trump derang derangement system during the first 10 minutes of the show and now we're MAGA heads. So just try to keep up everybody. Uh, birthright citizenship. There is a case before the Supreme Court right now. It's called Trump versus Barbara. Uh, Barbara being some anonymous person that is the plaintiff in this case. in the Trump administration saying birthright citizenship uh is not the intended actual outcome of the 14th amendment that it's not a real thing and that uh the president can get rid of it. Uh there are a couple of different issues here, right? The court could rule that birthright citizenship is in fact plainly protected by the 14th amendment and it's unchangeable and anyone born within the borders of the United States except possibly diplomatic personnel that aren't subject to the laws of the United States fully uh are all automatically citizens. So birth tourism, right? Chinese women come in and they rent an apartment in Southern California. They give birth here. They head back to China. The child is now a US citizen and that can be exploited later. You could just be a visitor. The child gets born here in the United States. That person now is a citizen. And so there are many arguments against this. Of course, the legal argument, which is what's being made right now in front of the Supreme Court, is that the 14th Amendment doesn't actually guarantee this to everybody. that uh its real meaning simply was to apply it to former slaves and the children of former slaves. And that's clear that at least it was partially meant to apply that. That was the problem that was being addressed at the time was that slaves are being freed. And the question was, well, what if state governments don't grant citizenship then to these people? Okay, well, we'll pass an amendment that says, well, if you're born there, you get automatic citizenship. That was the problem that they were trying to deal with. An important aspect of this though is that those people would have been stateless, right? And this has always been a unique problem that governments have generally always written into their statutes, which is that a stateless person has different status and different consideration from a person who's already a citizen somewhere, just not here. And that of course that is the case of the overwhelming majority. Almost everybody who comes to the United States is not stateless. they in fact are citizens somewhere uh their country of origin in most cases and these people are in effect foreign nationals. So the question is when foreign nationals come to the United States and have children here regardless of how little time they've been here how invested they are in the system uh do they do those children of foreign nationals then automatically become US citizens and was that the intent? uh there have been arguments that there aren't and I outlined in this ar in an article I uh that was titled uh birthright citizenship isn't real in the sense of uh there was no clear legal consensus on birthright citizenship in the first heck 50 years or so after the ratification of the 14th amendment there were persistent questions about did it apply to Native Americans who were clearly subject to US jurisdiction and it seems that they were not because it required federal legis legislation in 1924, I believe, uh to grant citizenship to those people even though they were subject to US uh the US state and born within what was effectively the US uh jurisdiction. So all of those questions then are now before the Supreme Court. How will they rule? Uh, I think one thing that's a given is even if they said that there are some holes in birthright citizenship, I can't see in what universe they're going to rule for Trump being able to undo uh, birthright citizenship via executive order. That was what Trump was trying to do. That was a lot of what precipitated this was I'll just with a stroke of the pen uh get rid of birthright citizenship. Uh in no scheme of the 14th amendment or congressional authority that has come out of that uh has anyone proposed other than Trump that you could just do that with an executive order. The question is can Congress change uh birthright citizenship? My position is that they could. Uh but in the end this these are all legal arguments right and these can be these have their value these have their use in terms of okay if you win the legal argument here then that's advantageous but it doesn't really tell you anything about the legitimacy morally of birthright citizenship or mass naturalization and that's what I want to get into a little bit uh today is the lack of discussion about naturalization uh and the process of citizenship among people who call themselves libertarians. Um this this stems back to an article I had written last year where I kept seeing that almost all of the discussion about people coming to the United States was centered on immigration. That is just the physical movement of people. And they argued that well, if you're using government agents to then round people up, uh not even give them due process and other critiques of of immigration and especially things where you're telling private employers who they can hire, you're telling private landlords who they could rent apartments to. That's the worst of the worst is when you've got laws saying that an employer should be uh subject to prosecution for simply giving a job to somebody and that the onus is on that person to look up if someone's a citizen or has a right to work and all that sort of thing. Yeah, that's that's nothing more than government meddling in private sector affairs. But the question of citizenship seems to be ignored almost universally from what I can find among libertarians. They never discuss who should be a citizen, how long it should take to become a citizen. The assumption, as far as I can tell, is that the libertarians who call themselves pro-immigrant, libertarians, and such, there's always just an assumption that a there's no real distinction between immigration and citizenship, their position is that, oh, if someone comes here, then they should soon become a citizen. What is the what is the grounding of that? What is the libertarian argument? for that. Just because someone's in a particular location doesn't mean they get to be a citizen on any libertarian argument. I've seen also if you had a very uh very anti-naturalization regime, so say you had US law and that it said you needed to wait 30 years to become a US citizen. What's the libertarian argument against that? I I haven't heard one from what I can see. nothing rooted in uh property rights, nothing rooted in natural rights, life, liberty, and property. None of that. And you can't say that that counts as government regulation either because simply electing to not naturalize people has nothing to do with government regulations. Has nothing to do with taxes. It has nothing to do with extending government power. So, I don't know if you guys have seen anyone say anything on this or if there's any arguments among the pro-immigration crowd that try to uh move beyond just yeah, people should be able to freely move. Okay. But then does everyone get to become a citizen everywhere they go? Have you seen anything on this? Because it seems to me that people are militantly ignoring this issue among people among libertarians who weigh into the immigration debate overall. I mean, I I I see it almost as like a it and ends up kind of becoming a proxy fight that just goes right back to immigration where I think for the more like pro-immigration type libertarians. The view is essentially that citizen the value of citizenship is that it means you can't be deported. And if their view is that uh the act of deporting somebody is a violation of their rights, then granting somebody like essentially a waiver that gets rid of that is um good and valuable there. So I I think that it ends up just kind of coming back to immigration at the end of the day. Um, but I mean it's they're very important questions and like of course I guess I'm trying to steal man like the I don't think they would defend the whole version of citizenship that we're all sold that it's about being able to vote and you know hold public office and x y or z. I I think um the just because the libertarian debate seems to be so exclusively focused on the act of deportation that you know if you don't possess citizenship then you are therefore vulnerable to this act. It kind of it nudges the discussion back to that. Is it just to kick somebody out of the country? Yes or no? that that's kind of my um as somebody that hasn't I I haven't taken a super deep dive into that, but I it seems like whenever I see this topic come up in the context of this debate, that's kind of the way it it ends up circling back around to just pure immigration. >> But you can write laws that respect permanent residency and make those people ineligible for deportation. You don't require citizenship. Yeah, I I'm not saying I agree with that, but it's still like it's it's the same kind of messy scenario where we're talking about this very unlbertian situation we live in right now and then trying to kind of act, you know, or randomly and selectively pretend like we are living in this private property uh society. No, I completely agree with you and I'm on your side of this in terms of the uh libertarian or the especially with birthright citizenship. I'm just um I'm trying to square why to your point why it never really seems to be a conversation that even if it's taking place at all that it even lasts that long and that's my theory. Well, I think there very much is a kind of a view amongst many libertarian self-described libertarians and embodied by certain libertarian organizations, right? You know, I mean, you know, and I know it can become cliche to talk about, you know, beltway libertarians and not and obviously we got a there's a long story tradition of making those distinctions, but I think it does embody underlying root differences in what the entire libertarian project is about. Um, you I know we were talking before the before we started recording about Ryan's talk at uh libertarian scholars conference before ERC a couple weeks ago where you distinguishing between, you know, naive libertarians and and realist libertarians. Um I I think you know emerging from that is is a very modern view of classical liberalism which is not classical at all but views the entire project of you know the 20th century as the eraser of you know ethnic, religious cultural differences and that it is precisely by bringing in you cliche you diversities or strength sort of component that the political body is itself made better by having um you know immigrants take office, right? like you have that that has that very explicit dynamic to you know all these different perspectives and and cream rises the crop top and and and you know there's there's a universal uh uh uh you know it's this it's it's this notion of of this universalistic view of human nature um that drives a lot of the passion and divides I mean you it's very difficult um you know even with how how prominent the immigration issue is and obviously you know the citizenship question is separate as you've noted from the immigration issue. I remember when you first brought this up a couple years ago, Ryan, you know, it is interesting just how little there is on this narrow question of citizenship within the im within libertarian literature at large. um you know but but even within how focused the immigration question has been is one of the top topics of the last 10 years um the inability to have I think serious nuance discussion even within libertarian circles I know you know Dave Smith's been out there debating you know KO guys and whatever and it's just it it's you the the pro-immigration folks from my opinion very rarely take seriously any of the arguments being use because they're appealing to this far more universalist basic human right sort of component to the relationship of the the the world at large have taken to extreme and you know the American political body. I I think Kaplan is perhaps the most honest Ibrian Kaplan is perhaps the most honest in and taking those arguments to their natural conclusion. There's there's you can critique there's plenty to critique from from where he comes from in there but I think he is the most honest on highlighting you know I think even using example that you know even if the the you know well-being of Americans been down the universal you know benefit for humanity at large and that's worthwhile and whatever there but but there there is a I think it's such a a profound disconnect because there is no common um you know whereas you know there might be uh when we're talking about economic issues there there may be at the end of the day you know broad general consensus on human thriving and and the way that economic freedom, you know, even from different perspectives and different schools of thought and different methodologies and whatever. There there's there's a there's a common core at the end of the day on what what the people see as the good and proper when it comes to the immigration issue. There's a there's a the found a profound disconnect. Um this is why people are so desperate to to I think you know you someone who understood these difficulties very well. of course Lud Vameis himself who who dealt with a you know a multi- ethnic empire the Hungarian with the Austrohungarian Empire and whatever like you know the people that dealt with this seriously recognizes rooms for very clear nuance and that is an angle that I think is is lacking particularly you know I think you know I think our camp does a pretty good job of this you know Rothbar's work and and the the the changes of of his views on the issue over time reflect that as well but but you when it comes to quote unquote libertarians for your circles particularly the the major DC institutions, they they very much view immigration as always a net positive and that is then conflated with okay opening up the definition of citizen as broadly as possible is a net positive and therefore anything that restricts that is not argued based off the merits itself but is then smeared as nivist, racist, etc., etc., etc. And therefore there is no serious question to consider what does citizenship look like? And then if we were to to to take this out and really think about it from the ground up of what would a property rights a full a fully privatized society look like. I mean you're probably looking at it and opt into society. You you you are you are going to have very strict rules on who can be there, right? Um you know the citizenship question is dealt with contractually and explicitly in that regard. And what we have is is a 20th century in particular and obviously the the 14th amendment and and what they're using to justify this very broad definition of birthright citizenship in today predates the 20th century but it's more the 20th century mindset um that you know American citizenship is is a is a deacto world good um and you know that's that's something that you know and it's something that that is obviously prominated throughout the west right where we're seeing this you know major you know massive problem within Europe obviously um as well and you know there's connections of war and refugee crisis and everything like that but but it it is an amazing lack of rigor um on this particular narrow issue of citizenship that gives birth to so many of these problems um and unfortunately I know we we care less about the playbyplay it it appears from you know all of the the Scottus watchers that you this might end up being a 62 or 63 72 vote it you know all the betting markets are on uh uh on on the on the court ruling against Trump and and then there's debates about narrow and and and and broader rulings within it. Um so it does seem that this play is going to fail here. But I think this is a a very important discussion to be had um and something that deserves a lot more serious analysis than than you know what we get typically out there. >> Yeah. I think though uh you're right about how the real motivation is just to maximize the number of foreign immigrants based on the beltway libertarian view. Right. Because I can guarantee you if I were like on a panel with these people like someone like Allan Nozz I I'm not sure how to say his name. Uh Alex Naze I something like that. Anyway, big super open borders guy for Kato. Right. If I were on a panel with him um and I said I am in favor of widespread immigration that is the free movement free contract for employers in the United States to hire whoever they want from whoever in the world but I believe that citizenship should require 30 years of residency in the United States. so extremely libertarian on the free movement of peoples, free contract, all that stuff. But I also don't think that this administrative thing called citizenship, which in no way would impact anyone's private property, would in no way impact the free movement of people, would no way impact people's free contract. If that was my position, I pretty much can guarantee you that that guy Alex would call me a racist and some sort of nivist because really his goal is just maximize foreign voting in the United States based on everything I've seen that he's written. That's really the motivation and that's the Kato position. We want just we view American citizenship as, as you say, a world good. And that seems to me the overwhelming position. A lot of it's left unsaid, but it's not enough to be libertarian on private property with these people. You have to be actively in favor of widespread naturalization for these people. They avoid the issue if you bring it up. And uh they would oppose, I can almost guarantee you, a significant change in the requirements for naturalization. uh but they never just come really right out and say that because if you are looking for limitations truly libertarian ways to limit in migration which and that's another problem is these people focus entirely on the economic impacts of migration and ignore the geopolitical realities and and I've looked at that in a number of articles it's absurd to claim there's no destabilizing geopolitical realities behind widespread migration >> well it's even worse than that And two people, you know, one person in particular I respect a great deal. Um, but I know like Ben Pal and I think it was is Nazareth or whatever his name is did a paper downplaying the the the impact on culture, political institutions, etc. Um, and it was a very interesting paper and there's this use of of kind of these synthetic modelings for trying to solve political science problems and and whatever. And again, a big big fan of of Ben Pal's work and and you know, it was very interesting research, but uh but he was basically arguing that there is no that that that it it wasn't dismissing that additional layer of analysis, but dismissing the notion that there are significant impacts as a byproduct of immigration on these institutions. And the thing is like I I know one of my favorite mechanisms, right, is is looking inwards in the United States and and our own issues with borders at the state level. And it's like if if you look at the American United States, you particularly if you look at the the American South, the the changes from inward migration of people moving from the Midwest, people moving from New York, particularly as a Floridaian, I can speak well on this, is that there are significant political change. I mean the the state of Georgia in particular uh has had significant changes in immigration from around the country as well as international you as well as proper foreign immigration but I a massive change in the amount of the percentage of the population that are nativeorn Georgians. Virginia. Virginia is Virginia because the amount of non Virginiaians, non-native Virginiaians, the lack of the the the the the change the in the ratio of generational Virginiaians has dwindled significantly over time and that completely changes the political makeup of these bodies. And so, yes, that's not even, you know, dealing with changes in radically different changes in culture. I mean, I'm certainly not going to deny those cultural differences from being in, you know, California and being from South Carolina, but but those are those are smaller compared to the cultural differences between Minnesota and and, you know, Somalia or or Syria, right? Um but even with those you you you see very clear changes and and imagine like you could have solved all this if if you did not have if if if simply crossing a state line did not give you the im immediate access to vote in state elections then that would you know that that that would have have significantly stopped a lot of the changes that we've seen in real time. Um >> yeah that's something I've raised as well is like why do we assume that the two have to go together? This is true domestically, right? If you have total freedom of movement between states of the United States and unfortunately in modern times, this was not the original intent. The original intent of the United States was that your citizenship came through the state level. Uh, and then the federal government recognized it. Uh, but it's kind of crazy to think that I'm living in California one minute and then I move to a community in some other state across the country and I immediately get to vote in those elections even though I not integrated into the local economy into the local culture. I know nothing about this new location I'm in and I'm supposed to be able to vote immediately. Again, you would allow total movement, freedom of movement, freedom of commerce and all that, but why do you have to allow instant political participation in the new locations? I know that historically there are theories of citizenship and why you should have citizenship in these places. I don't find those theories convincing. And libertarians, the ones I deal with, apparently either don't know they exist. I've written on them and looking at the granting of citizenship across state lines historically in the 19th century and you had uh some big variations in constitutional views on that from the Midwest to the far west those sorts of things. Uh and they had very clear theories about what it was that brought state citizenship. Uh but I can't find libertarians who even talk about that stuff. uh the just the assumption is wherever you are you should get to participate in the political system but when people ask me what is your what is your view of immigration uh one view is simply I'm for high level of flexibility in migration in the movement of peoples and for very very restrained granting of citizenship of naturalization and that is a clear way to limit um the incentives for migration people move to the United States all the time because they know it's a free and easy way to get access to US citizenship. And what does citizenship mean when we are talking about citizenship in the United States and in a democratic state in general? What we're really talking about is just two things. Yeah, you can talk about all this BS about like, you know, feeling like you're a member of the community or whatever. What really matters are two things. Access to the welfare state and the ability to vote. That is what naturalization means in basically every sense. And all that other stuff is just nonsense that people throw in to confuse people about what citizenship is really about. And so the question is do you want to give people the incentive of come here and within five years five years in the United States you can get access to the welfare state as a citizen. So full access and also then you can participate in the political system. Uh again how allowing free movement to people does not require that it also you citizenship is not required for the respecting of private property. This is something that needs to be noted as well is that people say well your rights will be violated. Well the bill of rights doesn't require citizenship. I blame the Trump administration in part for this. The Trump administration and its toadies have ridiculously claimed that the Bill of Rights doesn't apply to any non-American citizens. Total garbage view. But they've pushed that big time. It's clear from not only the text but the whole legal tradition that the Bill of Rights applies to persons, not to citizens. And that's an important point because it shows that the people who wrote the Bill of Rights in the Constitution did not regard citizenship as necessary for the protection of private property. So we can easily have a schema in which private property rights are respected and which citizenship is not granted. That was considered just easy. That was considered, of course, it's going to be that way in the early 19th century. Unfortunately, you get some of these people who have invented these new legal theories that the Bill of Rights is only for citizens. And now we have a lot more confusion. Well, to your point, uh you're even describing the best case scenario there because what you're describing or even in the first case when coming to the the benefits and and kind of the access to the to the treasury that come with uh immigration and citizen in citizenship or the the perks there and that that's assuming good faith actors following the law like in in a situation as it plays out in the real world is you've got fraud, you've got entire industries and and and cartels built to you to to to shorten the time frame. of being able to get those those welfare dollars. And and I I think the the the reason why this topic is is so important um is, you know, beyond just simply this legal case and and you know, inter libertarian disputes over over these matters. Um because after all, I mean, you know, we all know libertarians control the political apparatus and therefore our opinion on these things are what dictates American policy. But but there is something real there where like the the the it is I think it's obvious that the libertarian label with young Americans today is very low. And that is because the libertarian label is associated with this view of American citizenship and immigration at large as a world good. And therefore the extension by which the libertarian label is viewed you holds is is is associated with that being one of the the sacred sanct aspects of it does so at the risk of undermining everything else that is associated under private property under free markets you know under etc etc etc and so I think there's no bigger draw no bigger cause for the the diminishment of the libertarian label than this particular issue and that, you know, the generational impacts and that go and I'm I'm I'm a lot more optimistic than what I'm coming across here. I I kind of my running theory with with Gen Z is that they're anti-bertarian but somewhat Rothbartian coded in the way that they actually view institutions and and they view war and they view a lot of things. Like we still got work some economic arguments in the middle there, but I think they're they're anti- libertarian but Rothbart coded. Um but like if if but like that's exactly what these people don't like. like that's exactly what what Kato would not want is to have a Rothbartian coded libertarian label. And and so like that that undermines, you know, that there there's no better u um push towards explicitly anti-liberal, anti-lbertarian, pro- status, etc. uh uh draw for younger generations than this unrealistic libertarian perspective. You know, this this this underlying revolution of replacing natural rights and these concerns about pre-political concerns with the elevation of civic right, civil rights and this universalist approach to, you know, invite the world. That is, I think, a very real threat to peace, prosperity, and everything else that we hold dear. And I think that's why this this issue has been, you know, so hotly contested. Um, and I think to to the the broader L-word detriment. >> Well, I think this takes us to that issue of naive libertarianism versus realist libertarianism that I tried to uh really explain in greater detail in my recent talk at the libertarian studies conference because what basically if what you're saying is we want more and more naturalization, we want more and more citizenship, uh what you're saying is we want to expand the franchise more, right? And and this this has been part of right this is the vote harder position. And when I had a so when we posted this article online and I said hey look uh why why do what is the libertarian case for widespread citizenship for the easy granting of citizenship? And one person responded the libertarian case is simple. Without birthright citizenship the state will treat you like even harder than it does already. citizenship ought to be strengthened and expanded if you're to progress toward a free society, not undermined. All he's saying is more people should vote. We need more voting. Vote harder and then the government will treat you better. A remarkable thing to say when you consider the history of universal um suffrage and the efforts throughout the 19th century to expand suffrage to each and every person and to every group regardless of if they're productive, whether they're on welfare, all of that. All he's saying is vote harder because then the government will treat you bad because don't you guys know your 1/1 100 millionth of a vote will prevent your rights from being violated. And this is the epitome of the naive libertarian view. And the naive libertarian view is that if we can just get some written constitutions, if we can get just we can we can elect the right people, if we can get more people voting, uh then uh these these constitutions will somehow restrain state power and make everything work fine. The realist libertarian view has correctly noted the historical record to say well that's obvious nonsense that the growth of widespread uh citizenship in this case which leads to of course uh full active participation through voting has led to huge growth in state power state activity in the rise of total warfare in a complex of special interest groups a what calls a complex system of patrons and clients. And what this guy doesn't understand is he he, you know, he naively thinks if more pe if you have citizenship and you can vote, then you can protect your rights. What he he forgets is that on the other side are also a 100 million people with a vote who may be voting to destroy your property rights. This does not compute apparently with some people. They don't understand how the voting process works, how uh special interest groups work, how the putoaucracy works. And so just voting will protect your rights. Obviously a nonsensical position for anyone taking a hard look at how political systems work. >> Well, and it also assumes that political power is the byproduct of like of of of popular opinion. >> Yeah. Right. >> Well, that's a key part of the naive, >> right? Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Like that's the thing. It's like that's what I mean I I highly recommend. I mean, if you're listening to this podcast, you really need to check out Ryan's talk. It was a great talk. If you like elite theory, if you like uh if you like Gustav de Malinary, if you if you like uh if you like shots at the country at the state of Israel, you get everything you want within that that that one 45minute bit there. Um but I bet this is precisely why though that the the elite theory, the the Italian realists um are so important and and and you work that Rothbart naturally built upon with Anatomy and the State and and guide so much of of the work that we do. um is that you you very much do have this very again I think this is this this very modern view on you know the the the status wish fulfillment that that you know if only and and this goes into Rothbart's critiques of of pure educationalism as as libertarian strategy and and whatever is is that you some sort of view that oh if if we only got like enough you know if if if we only convince everyone to to like libertarian ideas and we can convince everyone of libertarian ideas as long as we're nice and we don't come across as racist and bigoted and and you know whatever, right? All that is is is also kind of assumed within the the thing there. Then golly, gosh darn, we're going to join together as a political body and and and harmony is going to ring around the land and we're going to have a a liberal state that is going to to to be aligned with with our our our interest and you know and and and this is why like you tend to have this incorporated with a foreign policy world set that embraces some form of American empire, broader American hedgeimony, right? is that you this is true domestically and also can be extended internationally that that just through political will guided by the right ideas then the state is is great champion of freedom and you know as you as your talk highlighted as as elite theorists note as as Rothbart certainly notes is that that is not how the state operates in practice and if we're if we're genuinely concerned about question of the state then we both need to appreciate the the the the state for what it is without the the romantic propagandic lens that we're told and also have just as much respect for the plea the for for the importance of the pre-political civic institutions of nation state religion language right all all of those concepts that that Mises writes about that that good good libertarian theorists write about and and and issues that are typically viewed with with skepticism or hostility from these universal libertarian perspectives and so yeah that's you know all all that to say it definitely listen to Ryan's talk and I think this is a great example that touched one one very good example of that broader issue. >> Yeah, naive is a good word for it. It's something we've been attacking on the show since we started it about a year ago. The idea that all this stuff is like the whole system's designed really well. It's just a little bit broken. We just don't quite have the right people in there. And the the fact that essentially all of this wealth is being pumped into DC to all these well-connected people is just an accident. They don't mean to do that. They're really trying to actually solve poverty and get everybody fed and get everybody in homes and they just keep messing up in ways that enrich themselves and their friends. Um, and yeah, that's a very naive look at it. The system is working very well. It's just not designed to work for us for the average everyday American. It's designed to work for a small group of people at the expense of everybody else. And like on top of that, like another huge concept um in this is that the whole like just that it's something I've been um dealing with a little bit with like some emails after I wrote an article uh kind of attacking the presidency, but this sort of reverence we have for the constitution even amongst like you know libertarians and small government folks and just viewing it as this tool to constrain the government. And once again, like yes, in theory, okay, it sounds great that there's these, you know, it's illegal for the government to do X, Y, and Z because it violates our rights. I'm, you know, I'm generally a fan at least in principle of like the Bill of Rights, but if you really take a realistic look at it as I think and my favorite um annunciation of this is in Rothbart's foreign new liberty where he's just pointing out that it is a lot more the constitution is better explained if you look back throughout history as a justific as a tool for justifying the expanse of power, not something that actually limited it. And yeah, I I I do believe that that's why I like that naive realist divide there because the naive in my view uh perspective is that we can have this you know inter this monopolized state and they will have internal constraints on what they can do and they judge themselves and they're the ones that are in charge of making sure they're not breaking the rules and if they are breaking the rules, you know, to stop themselves and to punish themselves and we can just trust them. we can, you know, sit back and assume that they're going to, you know, uh, like work in our favor now. And that's just, if you just read history, it's obvious that the only real constraint on political entities is external. It's either other states or it's a population that doesn't, you know, believe they're legitimate. Uh, and it's because you're just, it's the whole who's watching the watchmen. You can't trust institutions to judge themselves. you need outside arbitrators. You need other people to come in and stop them if they're doing things poorly. And that's why I think it blends well to the point you ended on there, though. And I I I do want to do some more thinking on this on the libertarian theory of citizenship, but it really strikes me as a very similar thing to the libertarian theory of nations and nationhood. And like Rothbart's nation by consent, it's it's important for libertarians to realize that nations are real things. they exist but they are not political entities. That's sort of where it gets complicated is that and um there are two I think somewhat famous books the famous but I can't remember the title of each of them that attempt to lay out the specific nations in like the literal sense meaning like a group of shared culture in a territorial area lay out the the nations that actually exist within North America within the continental US. And I think one of them says there's eight. The other one says there's 11 there. But these are definable pockets where you know people it of course it's like and because humans define ourselves based on how we're different like it's you can find exceptions anywhere but generally there's there's a difference between people that live in you know northern New Jersey where I was and now in Auburn Alabama like there are differences like these are real cultural units here but like what the state has done is they've taken that they've uh essentially created this political entity which is the continental not the continental United States, but the the United States um and then they try to like by fiat bring all of these real institutions um and turn them into basically political entities. So to me, citizenship is essentially just being an active in the real sense, the non-political sense, it's just being an active involved member of your community that cares, you know, beyond your household. And like, you know, I think that's generally a good thing. it's good to be a good member of your community. But then that's taken and through this whole process the state essentially changes it into the ability to vote and you know vote against other people's rights and all these things that no actually we oppose. But yeah, I just think it's it's so important to not go too far and be like all of this stuff is completely fake. like these are real non-political institutions that it it basically what I'm trying to say is that if you forget that or if you try to act like that's not the case, you get what I think is largely the situation we're in as a country where you're trying to ram together all of these different nations. You give everybody the right to vote and you're going to just get what is essentially a cold war. It's a very unstable political situation. I think that's behind a lot of the issues we have, not really with DC specifically, but in terms of like especially like the rural urban divide and all that stuff. A lot of that it's I mean, not that I think the state is necessarily like really, like we were talking about earlier, really trying to do this the right way. They're setting things up in ways that benefit themselves. But a lot of the people that are that seem to be kind of on our side that accept a lot of these broader visions, I think they it's really important to to remember the th those those institutions are real and you have to actually think about that when you're thinking about these kinds of especially a policy like immigration, but really anything. Well, and I think there's definitely there's there's a bent of libertarian as well that views those the underlying pre-political national considerations and and and cultural considerations and and view those as problems to be fixed, right? like you you you see you the strong but like you pretty much everyone that we're describing that are you the these these great absolute celebrators of of open borders and and universal citizenship and whatever you you you can you can guarantee their opinions uh you you already know their opinions on the Civil War. You know their their opinions on states rights. You know their opinions on civil rights, right? And and it's it's you know again not trying to defend all the different imple implementations there but like if you're going to have uh is is that you the more that you that you you you look upon centralized power to fix these underlying cultural issues and you centralized power needs cultural homogeneity to create a lasting order. And so this what you have is is you know the 20th century was and and part of that is technological. I'm not saying all this was was ordained down from above, but but it's it's the the you know the way that uh the same way that that having a three big television networks homogenize national opinion on war, right? It it it's it's the desire to homogenize and erode those those distinctions to it always facilitates centralized power. If you view that, okay, we've got to correct for the racism of George Wallace and we have to correct for the racism of the South and we have to, you know, fix the the the homophobia of Iowa and and therefore we need these top down things to to to cleanse these sins, these impurities from from the cultural dynamic that's always going to serve Washington, that's always going to serve centralized power. And and there's definitely a libertarian ethos that wants to eliminate all those considerations and view everything from you know create a nation of of you know interchangeable consumers and like and that is the ideal society is that you know you know imagine there's no no religion. Imagine there's no you know imagine if you try and everything can be dictated entirely by economic relationships. And and what they don't realize is that is that that they are the useful tools for the most powerful state that they could possibly create because that is the only force necessary to erode those sort of things that they feel as icky and and and reeks of of you know the ancient regime, right? And so then that's perhaps even worse than naive, right? That that is that is perhaps almost satanic in nature. Um, but I think it's a close relationship to this very romantic view of uh, you know, that that that is a defining feature of the that that naive libertarian. >> Well, it's basically the French revolutionaries view, right? Let's destroy all things that that are unique at the local level, all differences among us and subvert everything to the will of the entire voting population of France, which of course there is no real will of the people. But what they really mean is the oligarchy that runs the new French Republic and and destroy any local resistance, destroy any difference, destroy anything that differentiates us from each other. They take that same ideology and apply to the marketplace. Everybody should just be exactly the same. And if you don't think uh nations matter and and cultural national differences matter, then let's ask the Baltic states if they should have an open border with Russia. Let's ask if they think if uh 50 million Russians just moving across the open border, right? They just decide, hey, there's more job opportunities. I like the sea coast. I'd rather live in the Baltics. So, let's say 20 million Russians move to the Baltics. This would basically eliminate the Baltic languages uh as any sort of institutional language because of course, Russia would overnight then become the official language in these places. the entire school system would change within a couple of years. It would all become geared around Russian culture and the the open borders people have never addressed that. And you could even make the case that okay well let's have an open border so there's free commerce and free movement. Okay so then the question is should anyone who moves into say Estonia automatically get Estonian citizenship? Should the children of all Russians who are there get automatic Estonian citizenship? They don't have any answer for that too from what I've seen. Of course, if you did, that would completely destroy what differentiates Estonians from Russians. And I suppose many libertarians then would like that because then it would then reduce people to just this sort of mass of undifferiated groups. In reality, it wouldn't though. It would just turn everybody Russian is would be the the the end result there. Uh but there's no there's no real recognition of the fact that naturalization and the the liberal granting of citizenship actually has geopolitical effects actually has real effects upon the population which then turns into effects upon those people's ability to actually be represented in the legislature because you can imagine what would happen to the pre to the pro- Estonian view in the local legislature if 10 million Russians moved into Estonia. It would be gone. it would be voted into oblivion immediately. So if you like that sort of thing, it's essentially ethnic cleansing, then that's great, I suppose. Um, that's why, of course, Israelis are always for open borders in one direction. Everywhere Israelis want to go, it's an open border. Anytime anyone wants to enter Israel, it's a closed border. Uh this is of course the attitude of all colonialist uh regimes is hey the the border from England to um I don't know Nigeria in 1901 it's an open border the border from Nigeria back to London that's a closed border you can't move in that direction so we've all seen this sort of thing before to just ignore all the realities of this seems to be just uh common place among open borders libertarianis pretend like these sorts of factors don't exist. And what what often these people do is they confuse just simple historical realities with a principle. So consider the United States say, "Well, that hasn't happened in the United States. There hasn't been just this wave of of a neighboring country moving in and taking over." Well, that's because the United States is huge and there's no similarly sized countries nearby and they're also a mixture of many different countries wishing to move in. So, they tend to cancel each other out. though that's not true everywhere. You cannot derive any principle from the fact that that hasn't happened that way in the US. And and Mises notes this. He notes that the US could probably survive an open borders regime because the US is so big and over time it would have the ability to over time integrate a lot of these people. He says if Australia did that, it would be completely overwhelmed by like Filipinos, Japanese, Chinese overnight and Australia would cease to exist in anything we would recognize as Australia. This is just common sense. But the open borders people just pretend it doesn't exist. But it's it's also just not true because like I mean if you look at at the congressional level it is undoubtedly it is without question there are congressional districts that are that that have their their views on international aid shaped entirely based off of immigration patterns within those states. >> Yeah. >> I mean you you you can every every person running for Elon Omar's district has to have a a very strong opinion on Somalia 10 Somali land. Um in South Florida, you've got to have a very strong opinion on on Cuba, right? in Israel. Um you it's like and and you have these also these kind of weird enclaves that pop up in in random places as well where like you'll have like a like a there's a strong like south southeastern contingent in this one little spot here and like that's going to have a major impact on uh you know on on on that particular issue for that particular congressman. And so even if it's not national in scale, you know, they you very much have congressional representation, even if they are nativeorn, right? We can have this broader conversation about whether Elon Omar should be a citizen, but like but but they are effectively taxpayer funded lobbyists for foreign causes by the makeup of immigration within these districts. That's if you can't acknowledge that reality, then you are by definition not a realist. And there's an easy free market solution, a lazair free market solution that requires no more. Is it a total solution? It's certainly a mitigation. It's a way to mitigate everything you just described though. It requires no government regulation, requires no bureaucrats, requires no taxation, requires no active government intervention at all. It's simply called don't give citizenship to all of these people that are moving in from other places. Simply take no action. That is a free market lazare mitigation factor right there. But the fact that there's so much opposition to that from people claiming to be libertarians shows you that they're not actually interested in the the libertarian solution there. They want an active government spreading more suffrage, spreading more ability uh to reflect I guess what is some sort of rousoe view about the will of the people or something like that. The libertarian view is simply take no action, stop granting citizenship and you wouldn't have these takeovers nearly as quickly or in as broad a factor. And then another issue too is and obviously this is so beyond the realm of what US constitutional law envisions is who is moving in matters a lot, right? Are we talking about a bunch of anti-Christian people from let's let's just say Hindus from India is are to do they integrate as well as someone from say a Latin American country that already speaks a European language that is already a a Christian that already has a concept of western republican government and I know right-wingers always talk about these people like they're third world members of like jungle tribes or something. The reality is is that the vast majority of Latin Americans know a lot about the concept of republican government. They speak European languages and they're Christians. Are those people the same as immigrants from a place where they don't know anything about Christianity or they actively hate Christianity which is the majority religion in America? And if they have no concept of how Republican government works, are those the same sorts of immigrants as other immigrants? It's in a any sort of realist view would have to admit there's a real distinction there even though US law has no room for making that distinction. And I'll just say right here though that I like my immigrants the way I like my coffee from Latin America. So let's just be very clear about that. I do think there's a real difference. I do think if you were to have a very poorest border, Latin Americans would be the way to go because of a common European history, because of uh a common government institutions, which of course uh a lot of Latin American governments are based on the US government, but they're corrupted and they don't function nearly as well. Those are all issues that need to be taken into consideration and I think really indicate that well, let's just face it, all immigrants aren't the same. And you can look at that in crime rates, too. It seems everywhere Filipinos go, the crime rate is lower for the Filipinos than for the native population. So apparently Filipinos are ideal immigrants, at least in terms of crime. I mean, these are these are just like empirical facts that we're just supposed to ignore as well. And uh again, there's no schema there, but citizenship consideration of how well are you integrated in the community, that would seem to factor in as well. >> Well, do you get any Filipino coffee, Ryan? I've never had Phil. Is there any such thing? I don't know. They If it's good, then I can expand my uh little quit there. They of course there is a Latin American, of course, connection to the Philippines. The Philippines was largely colonized from Mexico, not directly by Spain. Little factoid for you there. Um anyway, uh so so I don't know where we go from here in terms of the naturalization debate. I I just I've written on this a few times and and I never get a response uh from any of the open borders people. >> Yeah, I I like the idea. I mean, especially just attacking voting. We don't believe that one has the right to vote on another person's rights. And yeah, I think this would be a great way to stabilize the situation greatly if the new populations moving in didn't have the power to, you know, immediately basically become uh like you said, a voting block with real sway at least in their congressional districts. Unfortunately, just looking at this Supreme Court ruling, doesn't look like it's going to happen anytime soon. Certainly not through executive order. So, the the problem will persist. >> I'm sure Mike Johnson's going to take care of it. Don't worry, Connor. >> John John Thun and uh and Mike Johnson. We're going to take care of it. >> That's right. The system works. All right. Well, we're we've gone over an hour, so we better wrap up here on uh this episode of the Power and Market podcast. Thank you guys for joining me today. Thank you everyone out there for listening. We'll be back next time with more. So, we'll see you there.
Trump Is Right on Birthright Citizenship
Summary
Transcript
Welcome back to the Power Market podcast. I'm Ryan McMakin, editor and chief at the Mises Institute. And joining me today are two of our contributing editors. We have th Bishop and we have Connor O'Keefe. And we got a few different issues we can talk about today. I think we'll just briefly talk about Pam Bondi, who I guess just got fired a few minutes ago. uh but also look a little bit at uh this issue of birthright citizenship which is in the news again because a case related to the topic is in front of the Supreme Court right now and we'll look at at the issue of naturalization and citizenship and if there is a any sort of libertarian justification for widespread naturalization. Uh but first uh though we got some events coming up. We got San Diego. We got uh Rothbard U. We got another event in New Hampshire. So yeah, what's the story there? >> Yeah, you're still in my thunder there, Ryan. But we do have some great events. Uh do have some great events coming up. Um and as Ryan has already mentioned, San Diego on April 25th. Uh the topic California's decline, a warning to America. Uh got a great lineup including both Ryan and Connor. Uh we also have Chris Carlson with the Independent Institute, friend of the show. We've got Bill Anderson, senior editor uh at at the misa.org. Um we've got Peter Klene, big deal right then and there. And Ed Fuller, who is always a fascinating speaker. Um so that's going on on April 25th. Rothbard University, which is a great opportunity if if you were never able to experience the best week of the year, which is Mises University. Rothbard University gives you uh I I kind of think of it like a almost like a fan camp experience, right? Like like this is your ability to to to have that. Um it's a two-day event in May beginning on the 14th in beautiful Auburn, Alabama as we celebrate the year of Rothbard. Um we're going to have a great great lineup of some of our our best uh Misesu faculty members. Um you know, can't recommend that highly enough. Very excited for that. And then um on June 27th, I think this is the first time we've mentioned it on this show. Why is the health care system broken? We're going to be diving down into that. We've got a great lineup of uh experts that have looked at the healthcare policy. Tim Terrell um who always does a great um uh healthcare related talks at Misesu. I always get a lot from that. And Bob Murphy of the human action podcast uh and and other things. You might be familiar with that name. Um he'll be speaking there. So very excited for that. Always good to be in the free state of New Hampshire. Again, that will be in June. We've got even more events than that on the rest of the calendar, but if you want to see more about those, you have to visit mises.org/events. And if you're a you're a Bitcoiner, you're going to be at the the Bitcoin conference this year. We're also going to be there uh in April. Very excited to have Gidto Holesman, the great Guido Hollesman uh talking about the ethics of money production. So, if you're a Bitcoiner going to be in Las Vegas for that event, please stop by our table. I will be there. Connor will be there. Brian not going to be there, but uh we'll still have a good time. So, uh yeah, that's what we got cooking right now. >> All right. Well, also I'll note uh just hey, in August Albuquerque event again. So, uh which is more related to my stomping grass. So, just to save the date. Yeah, go to mises.org/events. Also, if you haven't subscribed to our email, go to click on subscribe near the top of the page as well. Uh let's talk about Pam Bondi. uh who the last really I heard from her, I don't pay attention to these people. They're insufferable. Uh but I I do know that we should not care about Epstein or rape because the stock market was at 50,000 once upon a time. I don't think it's quite that high anymore thanks to the policies of her boss. Uh but I guess she's gone now though. Is this true or was this just a rumor I saw on Twitter? >> This is true. Ding-dong Pam Bondi is gone. Uh I I think probably you perhaps uh I mean you know he seth is giving him her a run for the money but but perhaps the most uh we don't have to go in the the uh the Nomi uh >> Christian our former uh Department of Homeland Security um director but I think one of the leading faces of incompetency and betrayal um you know of uh the the administration so far is Pam Bondi. Um, you know, obviously, uh, as was the the fill-in for after Matt Gates's nomination went away as a as a Fidian. Uh, I I have not been a fan of Pam Bondi for quite some time. She was not a, uh, not my favorite AG. Um, that's for sure. Really bad on gun policy and and all sorts of of stuff like that. Um, very much caught uh, you know, I think I think it was someone someone casted for the TV appearance, but as you mentioned, like you know, her her congressional testimonies were were always a disaster. the again the amount of of credibility lost very early on with a complete disaster of the entire um Epstein situation. You could not have played that situation uh any worse. Um seems from reports now that yeah frustration been growing over a period of time yada yada yada. Um Lee Zeldon who uh was a member of Congress um you know ran a a more competitive than usual race for New York governor a couple years ago. He's been the EPA uh director um for uh uh you know during this Trump term. He it seems like he is the the heavy front runner to to replace her. Um but that means the grand scheme of things there's a different question there. Um but but yeah, Pam Bondi a a face of of embarrassment and uh uh mediocrity uh gone. So yeah, there you go. setting. >> Well, I I see here Dominic Trippy. Uh, this has a lot of engagement. I don't know if this guy is famous or whatever, but it's a high engagement post here on Twitter. He says, uh, Pam Bondi reportedly begged, quote unquote, to keep her job in a intense showdown, quote unquote, after, I don't know, doing something that annoyed Trump. I mean, who cares? Uh, but I hope that's true. That would have been a hilarious sight to see her beg to keep this job get nuked anyway. I mean, you play with Donald Trump, you deserve to get humiliated. I mean, that's where you all end up. That's how it works. Uh JD Vance is learning that lesson the hard way. That kissing Trump butt uh is not going to be a great career move uh for you. But yeah, Bondie the latest one to be lost on this. Not going to miss her too bad. I'm sure they'll get someone far worse. That's certainly the trajectory of this administration. Uh and then I look forward to the congressional hearings after the democrats sweep the house and the senate senate come uh November by a humongous margin after the economy tanks and the straight of hormuz is still shut and NATO dissolves and all those other great accomplishments of the uh the Trump administration come to roost. Uh you guys have anything more to add about Bondi? I mean, it's anything that makes her look terrible, I'd love. >> No, I I think you guys are right. I have a My pessimistic view of the Trump administration is that it is primarily a theater production there. The whole point of all these figures is they're supposed to come in and convince the population that they're actually like meaningfully changing things in DC while they don't actually meaningfully change things. And Bandy Bondi was just bad at it. She was terrible. Um, I I think the reason they probably moved away from Matt Gates, I mean, I know there was issues with the realism of him actually uh getting appointed, but Matt Gates seems like somebody that may have actually tried to change things, and that's not what you're supposed to do in that position. Bondi, that was never, she was never going to come in and change things. It was all about the spectacle, but she like it was just so cartoonish with the the Epstein binder. That was kind of the first thing as far as I remember. Um, and it just went terribly. the testimony like her job is to be in those testimonies and uh she's literally an actor. Like yeah, we're doing huge things and we're taking on the swamp when they when they're really not. And she just failed at that completely. But yeah, I expect her uh replacement to be worse in the sense that they're better at acting, but they don't actually do anything good. I mean, I just think she's a great embodiment of like just the the Epstein issue, which again, I know, as we talked in the past, I think it's one of the most important issues of of modern politics. I think, you know, it is a tool of of of delegitimizing, you know, so many institutions. um you know her handling of this you know could not have been could not have escalated that issue bigger as in a in a short period of time quite as how how terribly from from the administration standpoint it was like this this the the the head fake and all sort of stuff. Um and so I mean I I think it really is uh you know it's a fitting fitting end to her there. Um, but I think that's going to be the last thing I can see that. >> But but that's that's an important point there, too, is that her failure was not not investigating the Epstein stuff. It was it was avoiding it in a way that blew up and became this big issue. That's why she's being pushed out. It's not It's not like they're finally going to start looking into that, >> right? >> No. >> Yeah. >> No. The uh this we're we're fighting a war to to protect Pedos. I mean, that's basically uh US policy at the moment. So yeah, don't ex don't well the the war has already been used as an excuse to cease the investigation and to put it on the back burner. So I mean that's a just an illustration right there as to where this regime is headed in terms of of those things. Well, let's talk about uh the issue of birthright citizenship. This here's the part of the episode where people maybe if they just listen to this part, then we get a bunch of emails telling us how we're a bunch of Trump partisans because we're against birthright citizenship. At least I am. Uh, and so never I guess ignore the first 10 minutes of of the show. We had Trump derang derangement system during the first 10 minutes of the show and now we're MAGA heads. So just try to keep up everybody. Uh, birthright citizenship. There is a case before the Supreme Court right now. It's called Trump versus Barbara. Uh, Barbara being some anonymous person that is the plaintiff in this case. in the Trump administration saying birthright citizenship uh is not the intended actual outcome of the 14th amendment that it's not a real thing and that uh the president can get rid of it. Uh there are a couple of different issues here, right? The court could rule that birthright citizenship is in fact plainly protected by the 14th amendment and it's unchangeable and anyone born within the borders of the United States except possibly diplomatic personnel that aren't subject to the laws of the United States fully uh are all automatically citizens. So birth tourism, right? Chinese women come in and they rent an apartment in Southern California. They give birth here. They head back to China. The child is now a US citizen and that can be exploited later. You could just be a visitor. The child gets born here in the United States. That person now is a citizen. And so there are many arguments against this. Of course, the legal argument, which is what's being made right now in front of the Supreme Court, is that the 14th Amendment doesn't actually guarantee this to everybody. that uh its real meaning simply was to apply it to former slaves and the children of former slaves. And that's clear that at least it was partially meant to apply that. That was the problem that was being addressed at the time was that slaves are being freed. And the question was, well, what if state governments don't grant citizenship then to these people? Okay, well, we'll pass an amendment that says, well, if you're born there, you get automatic citizenship. That was the problem that they were trying to deal with. An important aspect of this though is that those people would have been stateless, right? And this has always been a unique problem that governments have generally always written into their statutes, which is that a stateless person has different status and different consideration from a person who's already a citizen somewhere, just not here. And that of course that is the case of the overwhelming majority. Almost everybody who comes to the United States is not stateless. they in fact are citizens somewhere uh their country of origin in most cases and these people are in effect foreign nationals. So the question is when foreign nationals come to the United States and have children here regardless of how little time they've been here how invested they are in the system uh do they do those children of foreign nationals then automatically become US citizens and was that the intent? uh there have been arguments that there aren't and I outlined in this ar in an article I uh that was titled uh birthright citizenship isn't real in the sense of uh there was no clear legal consensus on birthright citizenship in the first heck 50 years or so after the ratification of the 14th amendment there were persistent questions about did it apply to Native Americans who were clearly subject to US jurisdiction and it seems that they were not because it required federal legis legislation in 1924, I believe, uh to grant citizenship to those people even though they were subject to US uh the US state and born within what was effectively the US uh jurisdiction. So all of those questions then are now before the Supreme Court. How will they rule? Uh, I think one thing that's a given is even if they said that there are some holes in birthright citizenship, I can't see in what universe they're going to rule for Trump being able to undo uh, birthright citizenship via executive order. That was what Trump was trying to do. That was a lot of what precipitated this was I'll just with a stroke of the pen uh get rid of birthright citizenship. Uh in no scheme of the 14th amendment or congressional authority that has come out of that uh has anyone proposed other than Trump that you could just do that with an executive order. The question is can Congress change uh birthright citizenship? My position is that they could. Uh but in the end this these are all legal arguments right and these can be these have their value these have their use in terms of okay if you win the legal argument here then that's advantageous but it doesn't really tell you anything about the legitimacy morally of birthright citizenship or mass naturalization and that's what I want to get into a little bit uh today is the lack of discussion about naturalization uh and the process of citizenship among people who call themselves libertarians. Um this this stems back to an article I had written last year where I kept seeing that almost all of the discussion about people coming to the United States was centered on immigration. That is just the physical movement of people. And they argued that well, if you're using government agents to then round people up, uh not even give them due process and other critiques of of immigration and especially things where you're telling private employers who they can hire, you're telling private landlords who they could rent apartments to. That's the worst of the worst is when you've got laws saying that an employer should be uh subject to prosecution for simply giving a job to somebody and that the onus is on that person to look up if someone's a citizen or has a right to work and all that sort of thing. Yeah, that's that's nothing more than government meddling in private sector affairs. But the question of citizenship seems to be ignored almost universally from what I can find among libertarians. They never discuss who should be a citizen, how long it should take to become a citizen. The assumption, as far as I can tell, is that the libertarians who call themselves pro-immigrant, libertarians, and such, there's always just an assumption that a there's no real distinction between immigration and citizenship, their position is that, oh, if someone comes here, then they should soon become a citizen. What is the what is the grounding of that? What is the libertarian argument? for that. Just because someone's in a particular location doesn't mean they get to be a citizen on any libertarian argument. I've seen also if you had a very uh very anti-naturalization regime, so say you had US law and that it said you needed to wait 30 years to become a US citizen. What's the libertarian argument against that? I I haven't heard one from what I can see. nothing rooted in uh property rights, nothing rooted in natural rights, life, liberty, and property. None of that. And you can't say that that counts as government regulation either because simply electing to not naturalize people has nothing to do with government regulations. Has nothing to do with taxes. It has nothing to do with extending government power. So, I don't know if you guys have seen anyone say anything on this or if there's any arguments among the pro-immigration crowd that try to uh move beyond just yeah, people should be able to freely move. Okay. But then does everyone get to become a citizen everywhere they go? Have you seen anything on this? Because it seems to me that people are militantly ignoring this issue among people among libertarians who weigh into the immigration debate overall. I mean, I I I see it almost as like a it and ends up kind of becoming a proxy fight that just goes right back to immigration where I think for the more like pro-immigration type libertarians. The view is essentially that citizen the value of citizenship is that it means you can't be deported. And if their view is that uh the act of deporting somebody is a violation of their rights, then granting somebody like essentially a waiver that gets rid of that is um good and valuable there. So I I think that it ends up just kind of coming back to immigration at the end of the day. Um, but I mean it's they're very important questions and like of course I guess I'm trying to steal man like the I don't think they would defend the whole version of citizenship that we're all sold that it's about being able to vote and you know hold public office and x y or z. I I think um the just because the libertarian debate seems to be so exclusively focused on the act of deportation that you know if you don't possess citizenship then you are therefore vulnerable to this act. It kind of it nudges the discussion back to that. Is it just to kick somebody out of the country? Yes or no? that that's kind of my um as somebody that hasn't I I haven't taken a super deep dive into that, but I it seems like whenever I see this topic come up in the context of this debate, that's kind of the way it it ends up circling back around to just pure immigration. >> But you can write laws that respect permanent residency and make those people ineligible for deportation. You don't require citizenship. Yeah, I I'm not saying I agree with that, but it's still like it's it's the same kind of messy scenario where we're talking about this very unlbertian situation we live in right now and then trying to kind of act, you know, or randomly and selectively pretend like we are living in this private property uh society. No, I completely agree with you and I'm on your side of this in terms of the uh libertarian or the especially with birthright citizenship. I'm just um I'm trying to square why to your point why it never really seems to be a conversation that even if it's taking place at all that it even lasts that long and that's my theory. Well, I think there very much is a kind of a view amongst many libertarian self-described libertarians and embodied by certain libertarian organizations, right? You know, I mean, you know, and I know it can become cliche to talk about, you know, beltway libertarians and not and obviously we got a there's a long story tradition of making those distinctions, but I think it does embody underlying root differences in what the entire libertarian project is about. Um, you I know we were talking before the before we started recording about Ryan's talk at uh libertarian scholars conference before ERC a couple weeks ago where you distinguishing between, you know, naive libertarians and and realist libertarians. Um I I think you know emerging from that is is a very modern view of classical liberalism which is not classical at all but views the entire project of you know the 20th century as the eraser of you know ethnic, religious cultural differences and that it is precisely by bringing in you cliche you diversities or strength sort of component that the political body is itself made better by having um you know immigrants take office, right? like you have that that has that very explicit dynamic to you know all these different perspectives and and cream rises the crop top and and and you know there's there's a universal uh uh uh you know it's this it's it's this notion of of this universalistic view of human nature um that drives a lot of the passion and divides I mean you it's very difficult um you know even with how how prominent the immigration issue is and obviously you know the citizenship question is separate as you've noted from the immigration issue. I remember when you first brought this up a couple years ago, Ryan, you know, it is interesting just how little there is on this narrow question of citizenship within the im within libertarian literature at large. um you know but but even within how focused the immigration question has been is one of the top topics of the last 10 years um the inability to have I think serious nuance discussion even within libertarian circles I know you know Dave Smith's been out there debating you know KO guys and whatever and it's just it it's you the the pro-immigration folks from my opinion very rarely take seriously any of the arguments being use because they're appealing to this far more universalist basic human right sort of component to the relationship of the the the world at large have taken to extreme and you know the American political body. I I think Kaplan is perhaps the most honest Ibrian Kaplan is perhaps the most honest in and taking those arguments to their natural conclusion. There's there's you can critique there's plenty to critique from from where he comes from in there but I think he is the most honest on highlighting you know I think even using example that you know even if the the you know well-being of Americans been down the universal you know benefit for humanity at large and that's worthwhile and whatever there but but there there is a I think it's such a a profound disconnect because there is no common um you know whereas you know there might be uh when we're talking about economic issues there there may be at the end of the day you know broad general consensus on human thriving and and the way that economic freedom, you know, even from different perspectives and different schools of thought and different methodologies and whatever. There there's there's a there's a common core at the end of the day on what what the people see as the good and proper when it comes to the immigration issue. There's a there's a the found a profound disconnect. Um this is why people are so desperate to to I think you know you someone who understood these difficulties very well. of course Lud Vameis himself who who dealt with a you know a multi- ethnic empire the Hungarian with the Austrohungarian Empire and whatever like you know the people that dealt with this seriously recognizes rooms for very clear nuance and that is an angle that I think is is lacking particularly you know I think you know I think our camp does a pretty good job of this you know Rothbar's work and and the the the changes of of his views on the issue over time reflect that as well but but you when it comes to quote unquote libertarians for your circles particularly the the major DC institutions, they they very much view immigration as always a net positive and that is then conflated with okay opening up the definition of citizen as broadly as possible is a net positive and therefore anything that restricts that is not argued based off the merits itself but is then smeared as nivist, racist, etc., etc., etc. And therefore there is no serious question to consider what does citizenship look like? And then if we were to to to take this out and really think about it from the ground up of what would a property rights a full a fully privatized society look like. I mean you're probably looking at it and opt into society. You you you are you are going to have very strict rules on who can be there, right? Um you know the citizenship question is dealt with contractually and explicitly in that regard. And what we have is is a 20th century in particular and obviously the the 14th amendment and and what they're using to justify this very broad definition of birthright citizenship in today predates the 20th century but it's more the 20th century mindset um that you know American citizenship is is a is a deacto world good um and you know that's that's something that you know and it's something that that is obviously prominated throughout the west right where we're seeing this you know major you know massive problem within Europe obviously um as well and you know there's connections of war and refugee crisis and everything like that but but it it is an amazing lack of rigor um on this particular narrow issue of citizenship that gives birth to so many of these problems um and unfortunately I know we we care less about the playbyplay it it appears from you know all of the the Scottus watchers that you this might end up being a 62 or 63 72 vote it you know all the betting markets are on uh uh on on the on the court ruling against Trump and and then there's debates about narrow and and and and broader rulings within it. Um so it does seem that this play is going to fail here. But I think this is a a very important discussion to be had um and something that deserves a lot more serious analysis than than you know what we get typically out there. >> Yeah. I think though uh you're right about how the real motivation is just to maximize the number of foreign immigrants based on the beltway libertarian view. Right. Because I can guarantee you if I were like on a panel with these people like someone like Allan Nozz I I'm not sure how to say his name. Uh Alex Naze I something like that. Anyway, big super open borders guy for Kato. Right. If I were on a panel with him um and I said I am in favor of widespread immigration that is the free movement free contract for employers in the United States to hire whoever they want from whoever in the world but I believe that citizenship should require 30 years of residency in the United States. so extremely libertarian on the free movement of peoples, free contract, all that stuff. But I also don't think that this administrative thing called citizenship, which in no way would impact anyone's private property, would in no way impact the free movement of people, would no way impact people's free contract. If that was my position, I pretty much can guarantee you that that guy Alex would call me a racist and some sort of nivist because really his goal is just maximize foreign voting in the United States based on everything I've seen that he's written. That's really the motivation and that's the Kato position. We want just we view American citizenship as, as you say, a world good. And that seems to me the overwhelming position. A lot of it's left unsaid, but it's not enough to be libertarian on private property with these people. You have to be actively in favor of widespread naturalization for these people. They avoid the issue if you bring it up. And uh they would oppose, I can almost guarantee you, a significant change in the requirements for naturalization. uh but they never just come really right out and say that because if you are looking for limitations truly libertarian ways to limit in migration which and that's another problem is these people focus entirely on the economic impacts of migration and ignore the geopolitical realities and and I've looked at that in a number of articles it's absurd to claim there's no destabilizing geopolitical realities behind widespread migration >> well it's even worse than that And two people, you know, one person in particular I respect a great deal. Um, but I know like Ben Pal and I think it was is Nazareth or whatever his name is did a paper downplaying the the the impact on culture, political institutions, etc. Um, and it was a very interesting paper and there's this use of of kind of these synthetic modelings for trying to solve political science problems and and whatever. And again, a big big fan of of Ben Pal's work and and you know, it was very interesting research, but uh but he was basically arguing that there is no that that that it it wasn't dismissing that additional layer of analysis, but dismissing the notion that there are significant impacts as a byproduct of immigration on these institutions. And the thing is like I I know one of my favorite mechanisms, right, is is looking inwards in the United States and and our own issues with borders at the state level. And it's like if if you look at the American United States, you particularly if you look at the the American South, the the changes from inward migration of people moving from the Midwest, people moving from New York, particularly as a Floridaian, I can speak well on this, is that there are significant political change. I mean the the state of Georgia in particular uh has had significant changes in immigration from around the country as well as international you as well as proper foreign immigration but I a massive change in the amount of the percentage of the population that are nativeorn Georgians. Virginia. Virginia is Virginia because the amount of non Virginiaians, non-native Virginiaians, the lack of the the the the the change the in the ratio of generational Virginiaians has dwindled significantly over time and that completely changes the political makeup of these bodies. And so, yes, that's not even, you know, dealing with changes in radically different changes in culture. I mean, I'm certainly not going to deny those cultural differences from being in, you know, California and being from South Carolina, but but those are those are smaller compared to the cultural differences between Minnesota and and, you know, Somalia or or Syria, right? Um but even with those you you you see very clear changes and and imagine like you could have solved all this if if you did not have if if if simply crossing a state line did not give you the im immediate access to vote in state elections then that would you know that that that would have have significantly stopped a lot of the changes that we've seen in real time. Um >> yeah that's something I've raised as well is like why do we assume that the two have to go together? This is true domestically, right? If you have total freedom of movement between states of the United States and unfortunately in modern times, this was not the original intent. The original intent of the United States was that your citizenship came through the state level. Uh, and then the federal government recognized it. Uh, but it's kind of crazy to think that I'm living in California one minute and then I move to a community in some other state across the country and I immediately get to vote in those elections even though I not integrated into the local economy into the local culture. I know nothing about this new location I'm in and I'm supposed to be able to vote immediately. Again, you would allow total movement, freedom of movement, freedom of commerce and all that, but why do you have to allow instant political participation in the new locations? I know that historically there are theories of citizenship and why you should have citizenship in these places. I don't find those theories convincing. And libertarians, the ones I deal with, apparently either don't know they exist. I've written on them and looking at the granting of citizenship across state lines historically in the 19th century and you had uh some big variations in constitutional views on that from the Midwest to the far west those sorts of things. Uh and they had very clear theories about what it was that brought state citizenship. Uh but I can't find libertarians who even talk about that stuff. uh the just the assumption is wherever you are you should get to participate in the political system but when people ask me what is your what is your view of immigration uh one view is simply I'm for high level of flexibility in migration in the movement of peoples and for very very restrained granting of citizenship of naturalization and that is a clear way to limit um the incentives for migration people move to the United States all the time because they know it's a free and easy way to get access to US citizenship. And what does citizenship mean when we are talking about citizenship in the United States and in a democratic state in general? What we're really talking about is just two things. Yeah, you can talk about all this BS about like, you know, feeling like you're a member of the community or whatever. What really matters are two things. Access to the welfare state and the ability to vote. That is what naturalization means in basically every sense. And all that other stuff is just nonsense that people throw in to confuse people about what citizenship is really about. And so the question is do you want to give people the incentive of come here and within five years five years in the United States you can get access to the welfare state as a citizen. So full access and also then you can participate in the political system. Uh again how allowing free movement to people does not require that it also you citizenship is not required for the respecting of private property. This is something that needs to be noted as well is that people say well your rights will be violated. Well the bill of rights doesn't require citizenship. I blame the Trump administration in part for this. The Trump administration and its toadies have ridiculously claimed that the Bill of Rights doesn't apply to any non-American citizens. Total garbage view. But they've pushed that big time. It's clear from not only the text but the whole legal tradition that the Bill of Rights applies to persons, not to citizens. And that's an important point because it shows that the people who wrote the Bill of Rights in the Constitution did not regard citizenship as necessary for the protection of private property. So we can easily have a schema in which private property rights are respected and which citizenship is not granted. That was considered just easy. That was considered, of course, it's going to be that way in the early 19th century. Unfortunately, you get some of these people who have invented these new legal theories that the Bill of Rights is only for citizens. And now we have a lot more confusion. Well, to your point, uh you're even describing the best case scenario there because what you're describing or even in the first case when coming to the the benefits and and kind of the access to the to the treasury that come with uh immigration and citizen in citizenship or the the perks there and that that's assuming good faith actors following the law like in in a situation as it plays out in the real world is you've got fraud, you've got entire industries and and and cartels built to you to to to shorten the time frame. of being able to get those those welfare dollars. And and I I think the the the reason why this topic is is so important um is, you know, beyond just simply this legal case and and you know, inter libertarian disputes over over these matters. Um because after all, I mean, you know, we all know libertarians control the political apparatus and therefore our opinion on these things are what dictates American policy. But but there is something real there where like the the the it is I think it's obvious that the libertarian label with young Americans today is very low. And that is because the libertarian label is associated with this view of American citizenship and immigration at large as a world good. And therefore the extension by which the libertarian label is viewed you holds is is is associated with that being one of the the sacred sanct aspects of it does so at the risk of undermining everything else that is associated under private property under free markets you know under etc etc etc and so I think there's no bigger draw no bigger cause for the the diminishment of the libertarian label than this particular issue and that, you know, the generational impacts and that go and I'm I'm I'm a lot more optimistic than what I'm coming across here. I I kind of my running theory with with Gen Z is that they're anti-bertarian but somewhat Rothbartian coded in the way that they actually view institutions and and they view war and they view a lot of things. Like we still got work some economic arguments in the middle there, but I think they're they're anti- libertarian but Rothbart coded. Um but like if if but like that's exactly what these people don't like. like that's exactly what what Kato would not want is to have a Rothbartian coded libertarian label. And and so like that that undermines, you know, that there there's no better u um push towards explicitly anti-liberal, anti-lbertarian, pro- status, etc. uh uh draw for younger generations than this unrealistic libertarian perspective. You know, this this this underlying revolution of replacing natural rights and these concerns about pre-political concerns with the elevation of civic right, civil rights and this universalist approach to, you know, invite the world. That is, I think, a very real threat to peace, prosperity, and everything else that we hold dear. And I think that's why this this issue has been, you know, so hotly contested. Um, and I think to to the the broader L-word detriment. >> Well, I think this takes us to that issue of naive libertarianism versus realist libertarianism that I tried to uh really explain in greater detail in my recent talk at the libertarian studies conference because what basically if what you're saying is we want more and more naturalization, we want more and more citizenship, uh what you're saying is we want to expand the franchise more, right? And and this this has been part of right this is the vote harder position. And when I had a so when we posted this article online and I said hey look uh why why do what is the libertarian case for widespread citizenship for the easy granting of citizenship? And one person responded the libertarian case is simple. Without birthright citizenship the state will treat you like even harder than it does already. citizenship ought to be strengthened and expanded if you're to progress toward a free society, not undermined. All he's saying is more people should vote. We need more voting. Vote harder and then the government will treat you better. A remarkable thing to say when you consider the history of universal um suffrage and the efforts throughout the 19th century to expand suffrage to each and every person and to every group regardless of if they're productive, whether they're on welfare, all of that. All he's saying is vote harder because then the government will treat you bad because don't you guys know your 1/1 100 millionth of a vote will prevent your rights from being violated. And this is the epitome of the naive libertarian view. And the naive libertarian view is that if we can just get some written constitutions, if we can get just we can we can elect the right people, if we can get more people voting, uh then uh these these constitutions will somehow restrain state power and make everything work fine. The realist libertarian view has correctly noted the historical record to say well that's obvious nonsense that the growth of widespread uh citizenship in this case which leads to of course uh full active participation through voting has led to huge growth in state power state activity in the rise of total warfare in a complex of special interest groups a what calls a complex system of patrons and clients. And what this guy doesn't understand is he he, you know, he naively thinks if more pe if you have citizenship and you can vote, then you can protect your rights. What he he forgets is that on the other side are also a 100 million people with a vote who may be voting to destroy your property rights. This does not compute apparently with some people. They don't understand how the voting process works, how uh special interest groups work, how the putoaucracy works. And so just voting will protect your rights. Obviously a nonsensical position for anyone taking a hard look at how political systems work. >> Well, and it also assumes that political power is the byproduct of like of of of popular opinion. >> Yeah. Right. >> Well, that's a key part of the naive, >> right? Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Like that's the thing. It's like that's what I mean I I highly recommend. I mean, if you're listening to this podcast, you really need to check out Ryan's talk. It was a great talk. If you like elite theory, if you like uh if you like Gustav de Malinary, if you if you like uh if you like shots at the country at the state of Israel, you get everything you want within that that that one 45minute bit there. Um but I bet this is precisely why though that the the elite theory, the the Italian realists um are so important and and and you work that Rothbart naturally built upon with Anatomy and the State and and guide so much of of the work that we do. um is that you you very much do have this very again I think this is this this very modern view on you know the the the status wish fulfillment that that you know if only and and this goes into Rothbart's critiques of of pure educationalism as as libertarian strategy and and whatever is is that you some sort of view that oh if if we only got like enough you know if if if we only convince everyone to to like libertarian ideas and we can convince everyone of libertarian ideas as long as we're nice and we don't come across as racist and bigoted and and you know whatever, right? All that is is is also kind of assumed within the the thing there. Then golly, gosh darn, we're going to join together as a political body and and and harmony is going to ring around the land and we're going to have a a liberal state that is going to to to be aligned with with our our our interest and you know and and and this is why like you tend to have this incorporated with a foreign policy world set that embraces some form of American empire, broader American hedgeimony, right? is that you this is true domestically and also can be extended internationally that that just through political will guided by the right ideas then the state is is great champion of freedom and you know as you as your talk highlighted as as elite theorists note as as Rothbart certainly notes is that that is not how the state operates in practice and if we're if we're genuinely concerned about question of the state then we both need to appreciate the the the the state for what it is without the the romantic propagandic lens that we're told and also have just as much respect for the plea the for for the importance of the pre-political civic institutions of nation state religion language right all all of those concepts that that Mises writes about that that good good libertarian theorists write about and and and issues that are typically viewed with with skepticism or hostility from these universal libertarian perspectives and so yeah that's you know all all that to say it definitely listen to Ryan's talk and I think this is a great example that touched one one very good example of that broader issue. >> Yeah, naive is a good word for it. It's something we've been attacking on the show since we started it about a year ago. The idea that all this stuff is like the whole system's designed really well. It's just a little bit broken. We just don't quite have the right people in there. And the the fact that essentially all of this wealth is being pumped into DC to all these well-connected people is just an accident. They don't mean to do that. They're really trying to actually solve poverty and get everybody fed and get everybody in homes and they just keep messing up in ways that enrich themselves and their friends. Um, and yeah, that's a very naive look at it. The system is working very well. It's just not designed to work for us for the average everyday American. It's designed to work for a small group of people at the expense of everybody else. And like on top of that, like another huge concept um in this is that the whole like just that it's something I've been um dealing with a little bit with like some emails after I wrote an article uh kind of attacking the presidency, but this sort of reverence we have for the constitution even amongst like you know libertarians and small government folks and just viewing it as this tool to constrain the government. And once again, like yes, in theory, okay, it sounds great that there's these, you know, it's illegal for the government to do X, Y, and Z because it violates our rights. I'm, you know, I'm generally a fan at least in principle of like the Bill of Rights, but if you really take a realistic look at it as I think and my favorite um annunciation of this is in Rothbart's foreign new liberty where he's just pointing out that it is a lot more the constitution is better explained if you look back throughout history as a justific as a tool for justifying the expanse of power, not something that actually limited it. And yeah, I I I do believe that that's why I like that naive realist divide there because the naive in my view uh perspective is that we can have this you know inter this monopolized state and they will have internal constraints on what they can do and they judge themselves and they're the ones that are in charge of making sure they're not breaking the rules and if they are breaking the rules, you know, to stop themselves and to punish themselves and we can just trust them. we can, you know, sit back and assume that they're going to, you know, uh, like work in our favor now. And that's just, if you just read history, it's obvious that the only real constraint on political entities is external. It's either other states or it's a population that doesn't, you know, believe they're legitimate. Uh, and it's because you're just, it's the whole who's watching the watchmen. You can't trust institutions to judge themselves. you need outside arbitrators. You need other people to come in and stop them if they're doing things poorly. And that's why I think it blends well to the point you ended on there, though. And I I I do want to do some more thinking on this on the libertarian theory of citizenship, but it really strikes me as a very similar thing to the libertarian theory of nations and nationhood. And like Rothbart's nation by consent, it's it's important for libertarians to realize that nations are real things. they exist but they are not political entities. That's sort of where it gets complicated is that and um there are two I think somewhat famous books the famous but I can't remember the title of each of them that attempt to lay out the specific nations in like the literal sense meaning like a group of shared culture in a territorial area lay out the the nations that actually exist within North America within the continental US. And I think one of them says there's eight. The other one says there's 11 there. But these are definable pockets where you know people it of course it's like and because humans define ourselves based on how we're different like it's you can find exceptions anywhere but generally there's there's a difference between people that live in you know northern New Jersey where I was and now in Auburn Alabama like there are differences like these are real cultural units here but like what the state has done is they've taken that they've uh essentially created this political entity which is the continental not the continental United States, but the the United States um and then they try to like by fiat bring all of these real institutions um and turn them into basically political entities. So to me, citizenship is essentially just being an active in the real sense, the non-political sense, it's just being an active involved member of your community that cares, you know, beyond your household. And like, you know, I think that's generally a good thing. it's good to be a good member of your community. But then that's taken and through this whole process the state essentially changes it into the ability to vote and you know vote against other people's rights and all these things that no actually we oppose. But yeah, I just think it's it's so important to not go too far and be like all of this stuff is completely fake. like these are real non-political institutions that it it basically what I'm trying to say is that if you forget that or if you try to act like that's not the case, you get what I think is largely the situation we're in as a country where you're trying to ram together all of these different nations. You give everybody the right to vote and you're going to just get what is essentially a cold war. It's a very unstable political situation. I think that's behind a lot of the issues we have, not really with DC specifically, but in terms of like especially like the rural urban divide and all that stuff. A lot of that it's I mean, not that I think the state is necessarily like really, like we were talking about earlier, really trying to do this the right way. They're setting things up in ways that benefit themselves. But a lot of the people that are that seem to be kind of on our side that accept a lot of these broader visions, I think they it's really important to to remember the th those those institutions are real and you have to actually think about that when you're thinking about these kinds of especially a policy like immigration, but really anything. Well, and I think there's definitely there's there's a bent of libertarian as well that views those the underlying pre-political national considerations and and and cultural considerations and and view those as problems to be fixed, right? like you you you see you the strong but like you pretty much everyone that we're describing that are you the these these great absolute celebrators of of open borders and and universal citizenship and whatever you you you can you can guarantee their opinions uh you you already know their opinions on the Civil War. You know their their opinions on states rights. You know their opinions on civil rights, right? And and it's it's you know again not trying to defend all the different imple implementations there but like if you're going to have uh is is that you the more that you that you you you look upon centralized power to fix these underlying cultural issues and you centralized power needs cultural homogeneity to create a lasting order. And so this what you have is is you know the 20th century was and and part of that is technological. I'm not saying all this was was ordained down from above, but but it's it's the the you know the way that uh the same way that that having a three big television networks homogenize national opinion on war, right? It it it's it's the desire to homogenize and erode those those distinctions to it always facilitates centralized power. If you view that, okay, we've got to correct for the racism of George Wallace and we have to correct for the racism of the South and we have to, you know, fix the the the homophobia of Iowa and and therefore we need these top down things to to to cleanse these sins, these impurities from from the cultural dynamic that's always going to serve Washington, that's always going to serve centralized power. And and there's definitely a libertarian ethos that wants to eliminate all those considerations and view everything from you know create a nation of of you know interchangeable consumers and like and that is the ideal society is that you know you know imagine there's no no religion. Imagine there's no you know imagine if you try and everything can be dictated entirely by economic relationships. And and what they don't realize is that is that that they are the useful tools for the most powerful state that they could possibly create because that is the only force necessary to erode those sort of things that they feel as icky and and and reeks of of you know the ancient regime, right? And so then that's perhaps even worse than naive, right? That that is that is perhaps almost satanic in nature. Um, but I think it's a close relationship to this very romantic view of uh, you know, that that that is a defining feature of the that that naive libertarian. >> Well, it's basically the French revolutionaries view, right? Let's destroy all things that that are unique at the local level, all differences among us and subvert everything to the will of the entire voting population of France, which of course there is no real will of the people. But what they really mean is the oligarchy that runs the new French Republic and and destroy any local resistance, destroy any difference, destroy anything that differentiates us from each other. They take that same ideology and apply to the marketplace. Everybody should just be exactly the same. And if you don't think uh nations matter and and cultural national differences matter, then let's ask the Baltic states if they should have an open border with Russia. Let's ask if they think if uh 50 million Russians just moving across the open border, right? They just decide, hey, there's more job opportunities. I like the sea coast. I'd rather live in the Baltics. So, let's say 20 million Russians move to the Baltics. This would basically eliminate the Baltic languages uh as any sort of institutional language because of course, Russia would overnight then become the official language in these places. the entire school system would change within a couple of years. It would all become geared around Russian culture and the the open borders people have never addressed that. And you could even make the case that okay well let's have an open border so there's free commerce and free movement. Okay so then the question is should anyone who moves into say Estonia automatically get Estonian citizenship? Should the children of all Russians who are there get automatic Estonian citizenship? They don't have any answer for that too from what I've seen. Of course, if you did, that would completely destroy what differentiates Estonians from Russians. And I suppose many libertarians then would like that because then it would then reduce people to just this sort of mass of undifferiated groups. In reality, it wouldn't though. It would just turn everybody Russian is would be the the the end result there. Uh but there's no there's no real recognition of the fact that naturalization and the the liberal granting of citizenship actually has geopolitical effects actually has real effects upon the population which then turns into effects upon those people's ability to actually be represented in the legislature because you can imagine what would happen to the pre to the pro- Estonian view in the local legislature if 10 million Russians moved into Estonia. It would be gone. it would be voted into oblivion immediately. So if you like that sort of thing, it's essentially ethnic cleansing, then that's great, I suppose. Um, that's why, of course, Israelis are always for open borders in one direction. Everywhere Israelis want to go, it's an open border. Anytime anyone wants to enter Israel, it's a closed border. Uh this is of course the attitude of all colonialist uh regimes is hey the the border from England to um I don't know Nigeria in 1901 it's an open border the border from Nigeria back to London that's a closed border you can't move in that direction so we've all seen this sort of thing before to just ignore all the realities of this seems to be just uh common place among open borders libertarianis pretend like these sorts of factors don't exist. And what what often these people do is they confuse just simple historical realities with a principle. So consider the United States say, "Well, that hasn't happened in the United States. There hasn't been just this wave of of a neighboring country moving in and taking over." Well, that's because the United States is huge and there's no similarly sized countries nearby and they're also a mixture of many different countries wishing to move in. So, they tend to cancel each other out. though that's not true everywhere. You cannot derive any principle from the fact that that hasn't happened that way in the US. And and Mises notes this. He notes that the US could probably survive an open borders regime because the US is so big and over time it would have the ability to over time integrate a lot of these people. He says if Australia did that, it would be completely overwhelmed by like Filipinos, Japanese, Chinese overnight and Australia would cease to exist in anything we would recognize as Australia. This is just common sense. But the open borders people just pretend it doesn't exist. But it's it's also just not true because like I mean if you look at at the congressional level it is undoubtedly it is without question there are congressional districts that are that that have their their views on international aid shaped entirely based off of immigration patterns within those states. >> Yeah. >> I mean you you you can every every person running for Elon Omar's district has to have a a very strong opinion on Somalia 10 Somali land. Um in South Florida, you've got to have a very strong opinion on on Cuba, right? in Israel. Um you it's like and and you have these also these kind of weird enclaves that pop up in in random places as well where like you'll have like a like a there's a strong like south southeastern contingent in this one little spot here and like that's going to have a major impact on uh you know on on on that particular issue for that particular congressman. And so even if it's not national in scale, you know, they you very much have congressional representation, even if they are nativeorn, right? We can have this broader conversation about whether Elon Omar should be a citizen, but like but but they are effectively taxpayer funded lobbyists for foreign causes by the makeup of immigration within these districts. That's if you can't acknowledge that reality, then you are by definition not a realist. And there's an easy free market solution, a lazair free market solution that requires no more. Is it a total solution? It's certainly a mitigation. It's a way to mitigate everything you just described though. It requires no government regulation, requires no bureaucrats, requires no taxation, requires no active government intervention at all. It's simply called don't give citizenship to all of these people that are moving in from other places. Simply take no action. That is a free market lazare mitigation factor right there. But the fact that there's so much opposition to that from people claiming to be libertarians shows you that they're not actually interested in the the libertarian solution there. They want an active government spreading more suffrage, spreading more ability uh to reflect I guess what is some sort of rousoe view about the will of the people or something like that. The libertarian view is simply take no action, stop granting citizenship and you wouldn't have these takeovers nearly as quickly or in as broad a factor. And then another issue too is and obviously this is so beyond the realm of what US constitutional law envisions is who is moving in matters a lot, right? Are we talking about a bunch of anti-Christian people from let's let's just say Hindus from India is are to do they integrate as well as someone from say a Latin American country that already speaks a European language that is already a a Christian that already has a concept of western republican government and I know right-wingers always talk about these people like they're third world members of like jungle tribes or something. The reality is is that the vast majority of Latin Americans know a lot about the concept of republican government. They speak European languages and they're Christians. Are those people the same as immigrants from a place where they don't know anything about Christianity or they actively hate Christianity which is the majority religion in America? And if they have no concept of how Republican government works, are those the same sorts of immigrants as other immigrants? It's in a any sort of realist view would have to admit there's a real distinction there even though US law has no room for making that distinction. And I'll just say right here though that I like my immigrants the way I like my coffee from Latin America. So let's just be very clear about that. I do think there's a real difference. I do think if you were to have a very poorest border, Latin Americans would be the way to go because of a common European history, because of uh a common government institutions, which of course uh a lot of Latin American governments are based on the US government, but they're corrupted and they don't function nearly as well. Those are all issues that need to be taken into consideration and I think really indicate that well, let's just face it, all immigrants aren't the same. And you can look at that in crime rates, too. It seems everywhere Filipinos go, the crime rate is lower for the Filipinos than for the native population. So apparently Filipinos are ideal immigrants, at least in terms of crime. I mean, these are these are just like empirical facts that we're just supposed to ignore as well. And uh again, there's no schema there, but citizenship consideration of how well are you integrated in the community, that would seem to factor in as well. >> Well, do you get any Filipino coffee, Ryan? I've never had Phil. Is there any such thing? I don't know. They If it's good, then I can expand my uh little quit there. They of course there is a Latin American, of course, connection to the Philippines. The Philippines was largely colonized from Mexico, not directly by Spain. Little factoid for you there. Um anyway, uh so so I don't know where we go from here in terms of the naturalization debate. I I just I've written on this a few times and and I never get a response uh from any of the open borders people. >> Yeah, I I like the idea. I mean, especially just attacking voting. We don't believe that one has the right to vote on another person's rights. And yeah, I think this would be a great way to stabilize the situation greatly if the new populations moving in didn't have the power to, you know, immediately basically become uh like you said, a voting block with real sway at least in their congressional districts. Unfortunately, just looking at this Supreme Court ruling, doesn't look like it's going to happen anytime soon. Certainly not through executive order. So, the the problem will persist. >> I'm sure Mike Johnson's going to take care of it. Don't worry, Connor. >> John John Thun and uh and Mike Johnson. We're going to take care of it. >> That's right. The system works. All right. Well, we're we've gone over an hour, so we better wrap up here on uh this episode of the Power and Market podcast. Thank you guys for joining me today. Thank you everyone out there for listening. We'll be back next time with more. So, we'll see you there.