Further Thoughts on Late-Stage Objectivism

In the language I quoted in the previous post from Rand, she referred to Arabs (Muslims I assume is what she had in mind) as "savages."  She also said harsh things about American Indians as well.  With respect to Indians she said, "why should you respect the 'rights" they don't have or respect?"   [Ayn Rand Answers, p. 103, emphasis added.]  I'm not saying I completely agree with Rand in her description of Arabs and Indians, but her point is that Indians didn't have "rights" because rights are culturally contingent, so to speak.  So the next time someone tells you that Rand supported "open immigration,"* remember that Rand wasn't speaking in the context of mass third world and Islamic immigration.

Here's Biddle:

The only culture to which anyone can have a right is a culture of respect for and protection of individual rights. Fortunately for those who love and want to preserve American culture, the principle of individual rights is the basic principle of that culture; respect for that principle is an essential characteristic of a true American; and foreigners who immigrate to America, for the most part, embody that characteristic.

Note the separation of culture and "respect for and protection of individual rights."  Freedom has been rare in history.  It arose in only a few places after a long cultural gestation.  There is no reason to think that a free country can survive a massive influx of people from non-rights respecting culture.  Biddle does claim that immigrants "for the most part" accept individual rights.  But if what if they don't?  In any event, there has been large third world immigration into the US and Islamic immigration into Europe.  There is enough data to make a judgment, but nowhere do Brook, Biddle and Binswanger discuss this.  The evidence is incresingly coming in that immigrants don't.  To take one example, the Washington Post recently gloated that thanks to massive immigration, the Second Amendment will go to the way of the Do Do. **

And Late-Stage Objectivism combines the neo-con belief that it's always 1933 and that Jews are always in great threat of their freedom.  So Brook and Binswanger believe Israel should keep out Etheopians and Eritreans while the United States should allow almost unlimited entry.
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* As Mark Hunter (ARI Watch) points out, Rand didn't write anything on immigration.

** The standard open immigration argument is that citizenship should be limited.  But under the Constitution, as interpeted by the Supreeme Court, if you are born in the US then you are a citizen. So the immigrants' children, who are likely to share their parents values, will be citizens and the end result will be the same.