Tag: immigration

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general freedom ideological culture responsibility

Gases and Masses

Global Blame

For once, The Washington Post headline actually reflected the commentary: “America is the worst polluter in the history of the world. We should let climate change refugees resettle here.”

Michael B. Gerrard, associate faculty chair at Columbia University’s Earth Institute and director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School, presents a gloomy, doomy picture of earth 85 years from now.

“Toward the end of this century, if current trends are not reversed,” he writes, “large parts of Bangladesh, the Philippines, Indonesia, Pakistan, Egypt and Vietnam, among other countries, will be under water.”

And we need somebody to blame. Today.

Step forth, America!

“[I]ndustrialized countries ought,” Gerrard argues, “to take on a share of the displaced population equal to how much each nation has historically contributed to emissions of the greenhouse gases that are causing this crisis.”

The World Resources Institute places responsibility for 27 percent of world carbon dioxide emissions between 1850 and 2011 on us. Therefore, the U.S. must care for 27 percent of the world’s climate change refugees . . . eight decades from now.

It’s only “fair,” according to the dean, that “The countries that spewed (or allowed or encouraged their corporations to spew) these chemicals into the air, and especially the countries that grew rich while doing so, should take responsibility for the consequences…”

Especially?

Is Gerrard battling so-called “carbon pollution” or . . . wealth?

I have a simpler plan, one not based on collective “justice” — fantasies of what whole nations somehow “deserve.” People should be free to move where they think they will be better off.

Will that still be America?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Global Blame

 

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ideological culture individual achievement media and media people national politics & policies responsibility

Mercy as a Calling

The cause of immigration reform hit a huge speed bump in recent weeks, with the arrival at the border of thousands upon thousands of children from war-torn Central America.

War-torn? Yes. Gangs — micro-governments in the olden style — fed by drug money have turned the Latin American states to our south into war zones, alas not too dissimilar to the gang warfare that beset some of our great American cities.

Only worse.

No wonder the people in those countries are scared, and desperate. “Coyotes” are taking advantage of U.S. politicians’ inability to secure the border, or even cook up a coherent immigration policy, and charge large amounts of money to transport children to “safety” in the U.S.

Where they are gathered and detained.

In the midst of all the partisan bickering — a legitimate clash of ideologies, really — stands one hero: Glenn Beck. While President Obama avoids the border crisis as if avoidance solves problems, radio/TV/Internet sensation Beck is taking his trucks and buses and volunteers directly to the area Obama avoids, the detention centers and surrounding cities and churches.

He’s taking food, clothing, and comforts for the children.

Last night on The O’Reilly Factor he explained  that governments are instituted to provide justice. He laments the lack of justice on  immigration coming from Washington. But the business of the people — of caring Americans — is not primarily justice.

It’s mercy, Beck says. He’s raised millions, and he’s personally taking aid to where it’s needed.

Heroic. And very neighborly.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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general freedom

Libre from Cuba?

Some Cubans will soon be free to escape the Cuban dictatorship.

The Cuban government recently announced it would end exit visa requirements by mid-January. After which, Cubans wanting to go abroad will simply need a passport and a visa from the country they’re headed to.

Some of them, at least.

Cuba won’t simply let its people go. Emigration will remain a privilege — one more often accorded now, but still a privilege — not a right. A privilege the government may revoke at will by invoking, for example, “national security” to stop dissidents who might cause trouble abroad. Skilled professionals may be kept to “preserve the human capital created by the Revolution” — you know, on the “You Didn’t Build That” principle.

For a government (whether a dictatorship or a prelude to one) to treat rights as mere provisional gifts is nothing new. The Weimar constitution of 1919 held the rights of the individual to be “inviolable” — unless a law were passed to violate them. (Article 114.) The German’s home was “an asylum and inviolable” — unless a law were passed to violate it. (115.) Freedom of speech, freedom of movement, etc., were all guaranteed — except when the state deemed otherwise.

Yes, Cuba’s loosening of emigration rules will be a boon for those Cubans free to leave under the new rules. But the situation resembles that of a prison in which everybody is wrongly incarcerated, from which half the inmates are one day graciously released. Well, great, except . . . shouldn’t they all be released?

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.