I don’t have much of anything useful to say about the Duke Lacrosse team rape case today. For news and commentary I’d suggest Justice 4 Two Sisters and Feminist Blogs. But I do have another reminder for those who have forgotten the logic of our language.

This reminder is in the form of a challenge, for neoconservative creepy spendthrift fascist David Brooks, in light of his recent foray into virtue ethics on behalf of something he calls the code of chivalry, and his complaints against sociological commentary. In order for Mr. Brooks to have his commentary on the commentary make sense, he’s going to need to explain a couple things:

1. First, how the following are not terms that pertain to a discussion of character, or how they fail to highlight issues of morality:

   • Athletic thugs
   • Male predators
   • Lust
   • This whole sordid party scene
   • Entitlement and privilege
   • Inequality
   • Exploitation
   • Felt free to exploit
   • License to rape, maraud, deploy hate speech and feel proud of themselves in the bargain

2. Second, how the following are something other than sociological hypotheses and sociological questions:

   • You would surmise that his character had been corroded by shock jocks and raunch culture
   • A community so degraded, you might surmise, is not a long way from actual sexual assault.
   • How have these young men slipped into depravity?
   • Why have they not developed sufficient character to restrain their baser impulses?
   • Today that old code of obsolete chivalry is gone, as is a whole vocabulary on how young people should think about character.

Any ideas? I’m open to suggestions. Without them, though, one just might fear that Brooks is drawing a false distinction. Or maybe even that in doing so, he’s misrepresenting the debate as one about over-arching methods. And that by doing so, he’s simply evading serious debate over, or even engagement with, substantively different views about morality and culture, or about the class structure of society, or about just what the ethic of chivalry really came to, and what it excused.

Just a thought.

For those willing to face the substantive part of this moral and sociological train-wreck head-on, see Jill @ Feministe (2006-04-09), Amanda @ Pandagon (2006-04-09), Echidne of the Snakes (2006-04-10), and Majikthise (2006-04-10), who’ve already said it better than I could.

Just a quick reminder, for those who have forgotten the logic of our language.

Killing a bunch of hostile soldiers in the field, in response to an attack they launched on your encampent, is not appropriately described as a massacre. On the other hand, charging into village in the middle of the night and indiscriminately cutting down men and women, from infants to elders, is.

This is, admittedly, a minor point, more or less completely unrelated to the actual topic or thrust of the article in question. Reason being that I’m in no condition tonight to face that kind of a logical or moral trainwreck head-on.

Cf. also Hopelessly Midwestern (2006-04-05), for your train-wreck-facing needs.

You know the rules. Here’s the quote. This is a passage, parts of which are famous, from the short essay that Vladimir Nabokov wrote on his novel Lolita the year after it was published. I read this at home, after having spent the past couple weeks reading Lolita on the bus, on my way to and from work.

At first, on the advice of a wary old friend, I was meek enough to stipulate that the book be brought out anonymously. I doubt that I shall ever regret that soon afterwards, realizing how likely a mask was to betray my own cause, I decided to sign Lolita. The four American publishers, W, X, Y, Z, who in turn were offered the typescript and had their readers glance at it, were shocked by Lolita to a degree that even my wary old friend F.P. had not expected.

While it is true that in ancient Europe, and well into the eighteenth century (obvious examples come from France), deliberate lewdness was not inconsistent with flashes of comedy, or vigorous satire, or even the verbe of a fine poet in a wanton mood, it is also true that in modern times the term pornography connotes mediocrity, commercialism, and certain strict rules of narration. Obscenity must be mated with banality because every kind of aesthetic enjoyment has to be entirely replaced by simple sexual stimulation which demands the traditional word for direct action upon the patient. Old rigid rules must be followed by the pornographer in order to have his patient feel the same security of satisfaction as, for example, fans of detective stories feel–stories where, if you do not watch out, the real murderer may turn out to be, to the fan’s disgust, artistic originality (who for instance would want a detective story without a single dialogue in it?). Thus, in pornographic novels, action has to be limited to the copulation of clichés. Style, structure, imagery should never distract the reader from his tepid lust. The novel must consist of an alternation of sexual scenes. The passages in between must be reduced to sutures of sense, logical bridges of the simplest design, brief expositions and explanations, which the reader will probably skip but must know they exist in order not to feel cheated (a mentality stemming from the routine of true fairy tales in childhood). Moreover, the sexual scenes in the book must follow a crescendo line, with new variations, new combinations, new sexes, and a steady increase in the number of participants (in a Sade play they call the gardener in), and therefore the end of the book must be more replete with lewd lore than the first chapters.

Certain techniques in the beginning of Lolita (Humbert’s Journal, for example) misled some of my first readers into assuming that this was going to be a lewd book. They expected the rising succession of erotic scenes; when these stopped, the readers stopped, too, and felt bored and let down. This, I suspect, is one of the reasons why not all the four firms read the typescript to the end. Whether they found it pornographic or not did not interest me. Their refusal to buy the book was based not on my treatment of the theme but on the theme itself, for there are at least three themes which are utterly taboo as far as most American publishers are concerned. The two others are: a Negro-White marriage which is a complete and glorious success resulting in lots of children and grandchildren; and the total atheist who lives a happy and useful life, and dies in his sleep at the age of 106.

Some of the reactions were very amusing: one reader suggested that the firm might consider publication if I turned my Lolita into a twelve-year-old lad and had him seduced by Humbert, a farmer, in a barn, amidst gaunt and arid surroundings, all this set forth in short, strong, realistic sentences. (He acts crazy. We all act crazy, I guess. I guess God acts crazy. Etc.) Although everybody should know that I detest symbols and allegories (which is due partly to my old feud with Freudian voodooism and partly to my loathing of generalizations devised by literary mythists and sociologists), an otherwise intelligent reader who flipped through the first part described Lolita as Old Europe debauching young America, while another flipper saw it as Young America debauching old Europe. Publisher X, whose advisers got so bored with Humbert that they never got beyond page 188 [where Lo suggests the second road trip –R.G.], had the naïveté to write me that Part Two was too long. Publisher Y, on the other hand, regretted that there were no good people in the book. Publisher Z said if he printed Lolita, he and I would go to jail.

No writer in a free country should be expected to bother about the exact demarcation between the sensuous and the sensual; this is preposterous; I can only admire but cannot emulate the accuracy of judgment of those who pose the fair young mammals photographed in magazines where the general neckline is just low enough to provoke a past master’s chuckle and just high enough not to make a postmaster frown. I presume there exist readers who find titillating the display of mural words in those hopelessly banal and enormous novels which are typed out by the thumbs of tense mediocrities and called powerful and stark by the reviewing hack. There are gentle souls who would pronounce Lolita meaningless because it does not teach them anything. I am neither a reader nor a writer of didactic fiction, and, despite John Ray’s assertion, Lolita has no moral in tow. For me a work of fiction exists only insofar as it affords me what I shall bluntly call aesthetic bliss, that is a sense of being somehow, somewhere, connected with other states of being where art (curiosity, tenderness, kindness, ecstasy) is the norm. There are not many such books. All the rest is either topical trash or what some call the Literature of Ideas, which very often is topical trash coming in huge blocks of plaster that are carefully transmitted from age to age until somebody comes along with a hammer and takes a good crack at Balzac, at Gorki, at Mann.

–Vladimir Nabokov (November 12, 1956), On a book entitled Lolita, from Lolita (ISBN 0-425-04680-X), pp. 284–286.

Over at Positive Liberty, Timothy Sandefur and Jason Kuznicki seem intent on retreading an argument over immigration that I last saw in the clash of the fascists between Sam Huntington and David Brooks almost exactly two years ago. Here’s Sandefur, who apparently believes that he’s explaining a problem:

The illegal immigration problem is so severe in Southern California that it is difficult for people elsewhere in the country, including even Northern Californians, to really understand what's going on. Whole areas of Southern California are now virtually Mexico. The population of illegal immigrants is enormous, and climbing steadily, at the rates of at least hundreds per day.

— Timothy Sandefur, Positive Liberty (2006-03-30): Illegal Alienation

I’m still waiting to find out what the problem is, but Sandefur apparently believes he’s intimated at least part of it just by telling us that parts of Southern California are now, in some unspecified sense, like Mexico. (Well, so?)

Here’s what Sandefur takes to be the most serious objection to Mexicans moving in without permission slips from the federal government:

The most serious, to me, is philosophical. You cannot have a free society among people who do not understand the cultural and philosophical framework of freedom. Allowing people into a nation who do not identify themselves as part of that nation–who do not speak the language, who do not observe the holidays, who do not know or care about the history and ideals and cultural icons–is simply suicidal.

— Timothy Sandefur, Positive Liberty (2006-03-30): Illegal Alienation

Of course, it is almost certainly true that freedom requires a certain cultural and philosophical framework, and it would be good if everybody adhered to it. But I’m baffled by the suggestion that speaking the prevalent language, observing the prevalent holidays, or knowing or caring about the history and ideals and cultural icons of whatever country you intend to move to are essential parts of that cultural and philosophical framework. There’s no special affinity between liberty and monolinguism, between freedom and observing any particular theo-nationalist liturgical calendar, or between autonomy and being interested or well-versed in any particular part of the history of the foreign land that you are moving to. (I’d suggest, if anything, that having to negotiate many different languages, many different cultures, many different understandings of history and pop culture, can be just as conducive to freedom, if not more conducive to freedom, as any sort of constructed nationalism.)

But this is ultimately beside the point anyway. Even if failing to learn English was a dreadful threat to the prospects of liberty; even if not celebrating Veterans’ Day or Flag Day or Arbor Day were an ominous step towards totalitarianism, it would provide absolutely no justification whatever for using force to stop people from traveling to property where they are welcomed by the owner (either out of hospitality, or because they pay rent, or because they are prepared to buy it for themselves). Certain kinds of bad thoughts may very well be corrosive to liberty, but there’s no libertarian justification in restraining, beating, shooting, detaining, jailing, or exiling somebody just for having bad thoughts. Neither you nor the government has any right to force people off of property onto which they have been invited, even if you think that their presence is a looming danger to the future of liberty in America, unless they have actually done or threatened real violence to somebody else. Vices are not crimes, and only crimes can justly be resisted by force.

That argument seems simple, and obvious. So why don’t more advocates of immigration just stick to their guns and make it? Perhaps it’s understandable that non-libertarians don’t make it, but what about libertarians? Why does Kuznicki take this to be the most natural line of response to Sandefur?

Subsequent evidence runs against Jefferson's prediction. The United States has absorbed substantial waves of Irish, East European, and East Asian immigrants, none of whom came from countries or cultures that habituated them to freedom. Many spoke little or no English and were almost wholly ignorant of the American system. Yet after a generation or two — and often much sooner — they turned out pretty much like any other group of Americans.

What we are experiencing now is entirely within the bounds of the demographic precedents set by these other groups: As a proportion of the general population, the number of immigrants today is roughly on par with levels that we have experienced in the past, as this (intentionally?) misleading graph actually demonstrates quite well (hint: look at the percentages).

Given the demographic similarities and historical precedents, I have little reason to fear that Latinos will somehow be different — unless, that is, we give them incentives not to assimilate.

— Jason Kuznicki, Positive Liberty (2006-03-30): How I’d Reform Immigration

What legitimate reason has the United States government to care whether or not Latin@s assimilate or don’t assimilate? What legitimate reason have we got to make the decision whether or not to use force to stop immigrants (or to exile them from their current homes) on the basis of whether or not they are willing to assimilate to the surrounding culture? Maybe they will and maybe they won’t; but whatever the virtues or vices of declining to assimilate, it’s not a hanging crime, and neither you nor anybody else has the person to destroy a person’s livelihood, clap them into irons, and force them back out of the country over it. Neither you, nor anybody else, has the right to harass, shove, restrain, beat, or shoot people to stop them from entering the country over it. The only issue here is the freedom of movement of the immigrant, and the property rights of whoever owns the property where the immigrant is staying. (If the immigrant is trespassing, of course, there are already laws against that; it has nothing in particular to do with immigration.) Sandefur, for his part, thinks he has a reply to this. Here it is:

First, it must be kept very clear that no person has a natural right to enter another country against the will of those citizens. A person has a natural right to leave his [sic] own country, no doubt. But a political society is an agreement among people for purposes of the common defense, and the people therefore have the right to decide whether or not to allow others in. So long as they do not make that decision on an arbitrary basis, they have the right to refuse to extend citizenship or entry to others if they wish. So no person has the right to force his [sic] way into the another nation and demand to be accepted.

— Timothy Sandefur, Positive Liberty (2006-03-30): Illegal Alienation

If Sandefur were right about this, it would provide a basis for taking things like assimilation into account when you’re setting immigration policy. If it were a matter of resisting people trying to force her way in against the will of people who have a right to keep them out, then you might very well think that any number of factors might be good reasons for stopping them rather than letting them in.

But he’s not right; that’s not what this is about. The appeal is nothing more than overt, garden-variety political collectivism, which tricks itself out in a few of the rhetorical cadences of property rights while actually assaulting those property rights in the name of collective coercion of innocent individual people. Sandefur would have The People decide whether or not to allow others in, but in a way that systematically denies individual people the right to decide whether or not to allow others in to their own property. Of course, there is no natural right to enter another person’s land against the will of that person (that’s just trespassing). But I take it we’re not talking about trespassing law here. We’re talking about an immigrant who’s made arrangements for a place to stay with a willing landlord — through the hospitality of people she knows, or by paying rent for the space, or by buying it for herself from the previous owner. Who is, therefore, welcomed by the owners of the property. The only people deciding not to allow her in are, ex hypothesi, people other than the owners, third parties — nativist voters, opportunistic legislators, La Migra, or whoever else — who think that force of numbers or the writ of The Law gives them some kind of right to impose their decisions on other people’s property.

There are political theories that would approve of this kind of bullying and coercion — as long as it had the right majoritarian or authoritarian backing. But libertarianism is not one of them. If I invite a Mexican worker into my home, she or he has got a right to stay there as long as I (and my landlord) permit it. If a local factory gives her a job, she’s got a right to work there as long as she and the employer want her to continue. If she’s happy to keep speaking Spanish and I’m happy to let her stay without speaking English, then she still has a right to stay. If she’ll work on Dead Prez Day and the factory is happy for her to work on it, then she still has a right to stay. There is no way for La Migra to butt in, whether she is willing to assimilate or not, without mounting an assault on both her and on my rights to do as I please with my own home, or the factory’s rights to hire whom they please. Whether or not Mexican workers are interested in assimilating to any particular local culture is interesting only as an empirical question, a matter of idle sociological curiosity. It has absolutely no bearing on the question of right, because your ideas about culture don’t trump my right to my own land, and they don’t trump her life, liberty, or livelihood. Period.

When the topic is immigration policy, please just shut up about cultural assimilation. Whether it is happening or not, and whether it ought to happen or not, it is completely irrelevant to the course of (in)action that the government ought to pursue.

Further reading:

• GT 2004-03-22: Freedom is irrelevant. Assimilation is inevitable.
• Comment (2006-03-27) on Wizbang: Criminals threaten to strike: why is this considered bad?, on the fundamental issue in all this.

There’s no real way to reply seriously to the kind of deliberate political sadism suggested by nativist creeps like those commenting on Wizbang’s latest on the Evil Alien Invasion. So, instead, I’ll limit myself to a couple questions and a remark. Here’s Linoge, suggesting massive new layers of government regulation in order to make undocumented immigrants suffer as much as it’s feasible to make them:

The word illegal sums it up entirely… I would not go so far as to say they should be arrested on sight (though I am close), but their presence illegally in another nation should be heavily discouraged. That means, no health care, no driver’s licenses, no jobs, no nothing. At all. Ever. —Linoge

Well, at least you’re not going so far as to say they should be arrested on sight. That’s mighty white of you.

Now, here’s the question for the day. How would immigration cops looking to make an arrest determine somebody’s immigration status on sight in the first place?

Meanwhile, here’s a small-government conservative who’s a fan of the East Berlin immigration policy:

At any rate, I don’t see why the States don’t take matters into their own hands. Why do we have to wait for the feds to take action? Is there some reason that Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California can’t start building walls and fences along their borders with Mexico? What prevents the States from using their state police forces to find, arrest and detain for later deportation illegal aliens? I’m not suggesting roadblocks, house-to-house searches, or Ihre Papiere, bitte, but I don’t see why a state trooper who stops a Hispanic driver can’t do a quick computer check to see if the person is in the country legally.

— docjim505

Here’s the second question for the day: what is the difference, if any, between (1) a cop stopping you and — solely on the basis of your race, by the way — demanding your ID for a check of your immigration status, and (2) a uniformed goon demanding Ihre Papiere, bitte? Because he, what … demands your papers in English rather than in German?

SJBill, for his part, didn’t feel threatened by undocumented Mexican immigrants until they scared him by … exercised freedom of speech and assembly:

Before these protests, I was pretty ambivalent on the issue — meaning I wasn’t directly threatened by illegal Mexicans. I see them all the time at local Home Depots, etc., but they are looking for work and trying to grind out a living. So, with the protests, the lights in the kitchen came on and we see millions of Mexicans (presuming most have other than legal status) marching in our cities and streets — all of a sudden I’m not quite so comfy. It’s pretty scary.

… I see a credible threat to our nation’s security, and we should do what we can to send these folks back home if they cannot abide the law of our land. That’s not being a xenophobe.

— SJBill

Maybe not. But suggesting that people be threatened, beaten, restrained, arrested, detained, imprisoned, exiled, etc. simply on the basis of their nationality, for having done nothing more than tried to work for a living for a willing employer, is.