That is the title of my latest Free Press column, which is interesting throughout.  Here is one bit from it:

Behind any immigration debate is an uncomfortable truth: In rich, successful democracies, every workable immigration policy, over enough time, offends liberal instincts or public opinion—often both. We oscillate between compassion and coercive control, and the more we do of one, the more we seem to need some of the other.

The dilemma: Due to the ever-rising numbers of migration to the United States, the enforcement of immigration restrictions has to become more oppressive and more unpleasant as time passes. The alternative course, which is equally unpleasant, is that immigration increases to levels that voters find unacceptable, and we fall under the rule of anti-immigrant parties—which are illiberal on many other issues as well.

The news gets worse. The more pro-immigration you are and the more you allow some foreigners to enter this country, the more others on the outside will wish to come too. Unless you are going to open the border entirely (not a good idea), you will end up having to impose increasingly harsh measures on illegal arrivals, and tougher and tougher restrictions on potentially legal applicants. The liberals in essence become the illiberals.

So I mourn our ongoing and intensifying moral dilemma. At the margin, there are so many people who want to come here (a sign of American success, of course) that there is no kind and gentle way to limit their numbers to a level the public finds acceptable.

And this:

A third alternative is to slow the intake. Keep it fast enough for America to remain “a nation of migrants,” but slow enough to avoid major backlash or to asymptotically approach open borders.

That sounds pretty good, right? But here is the illiberal catch: Given the growing attractiveness of migration to America, penalties and enforcement have to get tougher each year. There are no ways to send large numbers of people back that are not cruel and coercive. There are also few ways to keep people out that do not involve the extensive presence of coercive police, border arrests, imprisonment, and other unpleasant measures.

We might decide to let in more migrants, but still we will end up being cruel to the would-be migrants at the margin. And as demand to migrate continues to rise, we have to be increasingly coercive over time.

That does not have to mean masked ICE men grabbing people randomly off the streets (which leads to violating the constitutional rights of mistakenly identified citizens), but one way or another it is going to involve threats of violence against actual human bodies. That can mean turning away boats full of desperate people, flying people back home, putting them in interim jails, and in general treating them in ways I find deeply unpleasant and disturbing. It is no accident that the Biden administration could not completely avoid the Trumpian policy of separating illegal migrants from the children that accompany them.

Definitely recommended, one of my more interesting pieces this year.

The post “Why ‘Humane’ Immigration Policy Ends in Cruelty” appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.

Since October 1, PBS isn’t taxpayer-funded, but the radical leftist spirit of PBS remains unchanged. When it comes to transgenderism, for example, the discussion cannot have two sides. In a 2023 study of seven months of the PBS News Hour, the libertine left drew 90 percent of the air time. It was even worse for in-studio guests. It was 19 to one -- and the one unsolicited utterance that opposed the left-wing position came from gay tennis star Billie Jean King, who dared to suggest that men shouldn't compete in women's sports once it came to advanced competitions like the Olympics. On November 24, the News Hour guest was Alejandra Caraballo, a trans woman who works at Harvard’s Cyberlaw Clinic. Caraballo exemplifies the acidulous leftist vitriol on Bluesky, the leftist alternative to Twitter. Caraballo posted this on June 18, after the Supreme Court upheld Tennessee’s ban on gender-denying mutilations for children: “I honestly don’t care anymore if this country destroys itself and burns down to the ground. The current form of the United States is incompatible with democracy or human rights. It no longer has any legitimacy to govern and I’ll dance on its grave. Let something better rise from the ashes.” This is the guest PBS picked -- the ones currently pretending to love America with Ken Burns bringing the DEI spirit to The American Revolution. Interviewer William Brangham waited until the last question to posit: “You have faced your own share of criticism for some of the things you have written on social media. Where do you see the boundaries in terms of how to have this debate, especially as it pertains to people who are near and dear to you?” There were no quotes on screen of her many wild swings on Bluesky, like this new one on the Elissa Slotkin “illegal orders” video: “Hot take but the president openly calling for the murder of his political opposition should be grounds for immediate impeachment and removal for office [sic].” Caraballo claimed this is systemic: “I think about this a lot in terms of the incentives of social media and how it can incentivize a certain style of engagement. But I think, in general, one of the things I have always tried to say and repeat, the quote is, 'be brutal to systems, kind to people.'" But when it comes to opponents in the trans debate, from Riley Gaines to Bari Weiss, there’s no kindness from Caraballo. Before that, Brangham’s most challenging question was this: “Back during the election, political analysts point to that notorious [notorious!?] set of ads that the president ran against Kamala Harris, she's for they/them, he's for you, as both being divisive and effective as an ad campaign. And, as you know, there are polls that show that somewhere around half of Americans approve of what the president is doing vis-a-vis trans people. How do you explain that? How does that sit with you?” Caraballo found that “incredibly troubling,” and underlined that Republicans running in off-year races pushed the trans/sports issues and lost, like in Virginia, where Winsome Earle-Sears spent a lot of money on “some extremely heinous anti-trans ads.” Heinous!? What Caraballo demonstrates is that radical trans activists don’t believe in democracy. They want an autocracy where no one can oppose their dictates. It’s not my way or the highway – it’s my way or “burn America down to the ground.” This is the kind of wacko that PBS is platforming. They also don’t believe in democracy, or they would allow someone on their show to oppose this hate-engulfed male.

People are turning to socialism. Two-thirds of Americans ages 18-29 hold a "favorable view" of it.

New York just elected a "proud socialist" mayor. My video explains why his ideas would make things worse.

Of course they would! Socialism has never worked. Anywhere!

Yet Seattle too just elected a socialist mayor.

"Let's give socialism a chance," said a student writing in The Student Life, a college newspaper.

Americans should know we already gave socialism a chance. The only reason we get to celebrate Thanksgiving with lots of food is because the Pilgrims learned (the hard way) that socialism doesn't work.

When they came to America, they first tried sharing land. Gov. William Bradford decreed that each family would get an equal share of food, no matter how much they worked.

The results were disastrous.

Few Pilgrims worked hard, claiming "weakness and inability," wrote Bradford. "Much was stolen."

The same plan in Jamestown led to starvation, the death of half the population, even cannibalism.

Learning from their mistakes, the Pilgrims tried a different approach: "Every family was assigned a parcel of land," wrote Bradford. Then, he noted, Pilgrims "went willingly into the field."

That's capitalism.

Soon, there was an abundance of food. So much that the Pilgrims and Natives could celebrate Thanksgiving together.

This abundance has only grown.

We'll feast on vast amounts of food this Thanksgiving that, despite media clickbait, is much more affordable than it used to be. Today Americans spend only 10 percent of our disposable income on food. When I started working, it was twice that.

This abundance didn't come with people in government manipulating supply chains, or comrades dictating prices and quality.

It comes from millions of people practicing capitalism, making billions of voluntary exchanges.

It comes from free people willing to innovate and take risks, in an attempt to make more money by serving customers better than the next guy.

This process almost always works better than government central planning.

Without central direction, farmers, truckers, and grocers move food across the country with remarkable coordination and efficiency.

Stores compete so fiercely that they sell turkeys at a loss, just to get you through their doors.

Global competition drives airlines to lower their fares so it's cheaper for you to fly home for Thanksgiving.

And despite the media's alarms about climate change creating food shortages, global agricultural output sets record highs year after year.

Government didn't orchestrate any of that. Government can barely manage a DMV line.

Markets create abundance because they quickly reward people who figure out how to make things cheaper, faster and better.

That's what I'm thankful for this Thanksgiving.

The alternative looks a lot like Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea.

While we enjoy the gifts that free enterprise brings, the Associated Press reports that in Venezuela, "every meal is a struggle."

NBC, before going on to write silly stories that practically promote socialism, admits that in Cuba, residents face "daily blackouts lasting up to 20 hours, mounting piles of uncollected garbage, and severe shortages of food and basic goods."

When politicians try to control the economy, the abundance you get is scarcity.

We live in a country where choices overwhelm us, and shortages are something we read about in the news.

It should make us grateful. Not just for the food, but for the free enterprise system that creates it.

This Thanksgiving, as you go around the table to say what you're thankful for, take a moment to thank the farmers, truckers, pilots, grocery workers, engineers, entrepreneurs, and most importantly, the economic freedom that makes it all possible.

Let's not let socialist idiots kill it!

Abundance doesn't happen by accident. It won't continue if we forget where it came from.

COPYRIGHT 2025 BY JFS PRODUCTIONS INC.

The post Thanksgiving Should Worry Today's Socialists appeared first on Reason.com.

South Africa is facing a crisis that goes beyond headlines about crime and corruption. In this video essay, Iona Italia reads “Fleeing South Africa” by the philosopher David Benatar—Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cape Town.

Benatar examines:

• Rising political extremism and racialised violence
• The debate over whether white farmers are being targeted
• Why some South Africans now fear state collapse
• The Trump administration’s controversial refugee policy
• The role of Julius Malema and the “Kill the Boer” controversy
• What the international media gets wrong about the situation

View full transcript Allegations of a “white genocide” in South Africa have risen to international prominence since US President Donald Trump became a conduit for them. Having terminated all other refugee programmes, the Trump administration very publicly welcomed an initial group of “Afrikaner refugees” to the United States on 12 May 2025. Soon thereafter, President Trump met with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and his delegation in the Oval Office. Mr Trump was quickly criticised for making unfounded claims about the maltreatment of “whites” in South Africa. However, while there is currently no genocide of “white” South Africans, and most “white” South Africans do not yet qualify as refugees, the situation of South African “whites” is worse than Mr Trump’s critics acknowledge. The word “genocide” is notoriously vague. For example, the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, defines genocide as “any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: 1. Killing members of the group; 2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; 3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; 4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; 5. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.” This definition suggests that intentionally killing a single member of a relevant group could count as genocide, given the inclusion of “in part.” Otherwise, clearly there is some unstated minimum number or proportion of a group who must be killed before there can be said to be a genocide. It is unlikely that any such threshold is being met in South Africa. This does not mean that “whites” are not being targeted in significant ways. The purported basis for the genocide accusation is the epidemic of “farm murders,” which have been said to affect “white” farmers disproportionately. This accusation has been quickly dismissed by various media commentators, who have swallowed President Ramaphosa’s claim that the farm murders are merely part of the broader problem of murder and other violent crime in South Africa. This is a complicated empirical matter. However, it is inappropriate to ignore a carefully qualified analysis that suggests that “white” farmers may indeed be being disproportionally targeted, especially in some parts of the country.   We do not yet know enough about the circumstances of the particular Afrikaners who have been flown to the United States as refugees to know whether they all personally had reasonable fears of being racially targeted in violent ways. However, one of them reports having been attacked on her farm four times. Moreover, there is evidence that at least some of the murders of “white” farmers have been motivated, at least in part, by racial animosity. Moreover, because the perpetrators often torture their victims, and steal relatively little, there is good reason to think that the crimes are motivated by hate. “White” farmers and their families have been beaten, immersed in bathtubs of boiling water, burned with hot clothes irons or molten plastic, stripped, raped, tied to vehicles with rope or barbed wire and dragged long distances, had their eyes gouged out, and been tortured with an electric drill, strangled, dismembered, and hacked to death. In one case, two farm women were stabbed in the vagina with broken glass, and one had her breast cut off while she was still alive. Even if some of these victims may not have been racially targeted, farmers have reasonable fears of being victims of violent crime—as indeed do many “black” South Africans. Not all migrants are refugees. Like “genocide,” “refugee” can be understood in broader or narrower ways. According to one definition, a refugee is “a person who has been forced to leave their country in order to escape war, persecution, or natural disaster.” If those particular Afrikaners who were flown to the United States are not escaping persecution—a term suggesting something more severe than discrimination—then they are migrants rather than refugees, under this definition. Other definitions are more expansive. One such definition understands a refugee as “a person who flees to a foreign country or power to escape danger or persecution” (my emphasis). More of the Afrikaners who were welcomed to the United States might meet this definition, but so would many other South Africans who move to the United States, given how dangerous it is in South Africa, especially in certain areas. According to yet another definition, a refugee is “a person who has escaped from their own country for political, religious, or economic reasons or because of war.” The inclusion here of “economic reasons” might encompass some who would not be refugees under the first two definitions. Again, however, it is certainly not only Afrikaners—or South African “whites” more generally—who would have “economic reasons” to relocate to a richer, more functional society. Indeed, the overwhelming majority of the poorest people in South Africa are “black” rather than “white.” This has led some to ask why, of all the people in the world to accept as refugees, the Trump administration has chosen “white” South Africans who hardly stand out as those most in need of refuge. One suggestion is that it is precisely because they are “white.” That may be true. However, those asking this question are generally reluctant to ask another, comparable question: Why, of all the countries South Africa could have targeted in the International Court of Justice, did it choose Israel? Why has it pursued a dubious case of genocide when a real genocide is taking place on the African continent—in Sudan? (Indeed, in defiance of a South African court ruling, the government even refused to arrest Sudan’s then-president Omar al-Bashir when he visited the country in 2015.) Why is South Africa silent on the massive human rights abuses perpetrated by its repressive allies, such as Iran, Russia, and China, while it relentlessly pursues Israel, a broadly liberal democratic state? This silence does not excuse the Trump administration’s refugee policy, but it does show that Mr Trump is not the only person to be selective about his responses to real or putative atrocities. Although there is currently no “white” genocide in South Africa, it is not impossible that there will be one in the future—even though the country likes to vaunt its peaceful transition to democracy. President Trump played a video during the South African delegation’s visit. It included clips of Julius Malema, leader of the so-called Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), now the fourth-largest political party in South Africa. Mr Malema is well known for regularly chanting, “Dubul' ibhunu” (“Shoot the Boer”—where “Boer” can variably be understood as “farmer” or “Afrikaner”). South African courts originally judged that this phrase constituted prohibited hate speech, but that decision has since been overturned by a higher court. To put this in perspective, while Mr Malema, a prominent politician, is given free rein to call for the killing of fellow citizens, a previously unknown estate agent was found guilty of using a racial slur about “blacks” by the Equality Court, and required to pay R150,000 to the Oliver and Adelaide Tambo Foundation. Criminal charges were subsequently also brought against her, and she was sentenced to pay a fine of R5000, and to two years’ imprisonment, suspended for five years. This kind of differential treatment reflects the power dynamics of post-Apartheid South Africa. Apologists for the “Kill the Boer” song, including former President Thabo Mbeki, argue that the words are not to be taken literally. But some clearly understand them literally. In one case, for example, the blood of the victims of a farm murder was used to write the words “Kill the Boer” on the walls of their homestead. Julius Malema has explicitly refused to rule out the possibility of calling for a genocide. He has said: “We are not calling for the slaughtering of white people—at least for now,” on more than one occasion. He has refused to pledge that he would not call for such slaughter in the future, and has reaffirmed his willingness to use violence, even though he lives in a constitutional democracy where “blacks” constitute eighty or ninety percent of the population, depending on how broadly the category “black” is construed. Meanwhile, the “white” proportion of the South African population has declined from around 22 percent in 1921, to thirteen percent in 1995, and 7.3 percent in 2022. Some might wish to dismiss Mr Malema as a fringe element. However, singing “Kill the Boer” is not restricted to his EFF party. It has been sung by former President Jacob Zuma, now head of uMkhonto weSizwe (MK), the third largest party, and by the ANC, the largest party. The ANC has also stoked racial tensions, and aligned with others who have done likewise. President Ramaphosa has dismissed a call to condemn the EFF’s singing of the song. Race-baiting is common among the dominant Left of South African politics, and in the universities. Consider, for example, the Pan Africanist Congress’s slogan, “One Settler, One Bullet” (where “whites” are regarded as settlers), and the University of Cape Town student who sported a T-shirt on which was written “Kill All Whites.” The majority of South Africans evidently do not support this divisiveness, but the power of elites to whip up violence should not be underestimated.  The EFF need not come to power in order to engage in genocidal acts. The state has proven completely unable to either curb the country’s usual violence or rein in civil unrest. If genocidal violence broke out, even without government instigation or approval, it is unclear that the state could quickly end it. Even if there is never a “white” (or other minority) genocide in South Africa, there are other possible bad outcomes. Current levels of racial violence may increase. There is already considerable discrimination against “white” South Africans (and sometimes other “racial” minorities). Indeed, there are currently 142 “racial Acts of Parliament … operative.” These include affirmative action policies that their defenders claim are justifiable measures, necessary to correct historical injustices. Indeed, that view is so dominant within South Africa that the few people who oppose it are condemned and even ostracised. Yet, there are good reasons to reject the extreme racial preference practised in South Africa. It has been very harmful to the country, deterring much-needed investment, and prioritising sinecures for some over service-delivery for the majority. While the most privileged and well-connected “blacks” have been economically uplifted, the majority of “black” South Africans remain impoverished, and South Africa continues to have the highest level of inequality in the world. This is partly—but not wholly, as the ANC would have us believe—attributable to the legacy of Apartheid. Much of it is the result of the corrupt policies and practices of the ANC, which ruled South Africa for the first thirty years of its democracy. This is evidenced by the fact that the Gini coefficient has not decreased, and possibly even increased since the advent of democracy. The country is falling apart. Electricity supply by the state provider is erratic. The roads in many municipalities are riddled with potholes. Schools serving the country’s poorest have disgracefully low educational and infrastructural standards. The public healthcare sector is in tatters. Law enforcement is dysfunctional. President Ramaphosa has characterised those Afrikaners who took up the Trump administration’s offer of refugee status as “cowardly.” But “whites” who criticise the racial politics characteristic of the ANC and the parties to its left are routinely branded as “racists,” no matter how impeccable their anti-Apartheid credentials may be. Constructive citizenship by “whites” is not welcomed, unless it toes the party line. Some “whites” may be willing to put up with this kind of treatment. Those who are “gatvol” (fed up) and want to leave are not cowards. None of this is to suggest that “whites” are treated anything like as badly in post-Apartheid South Africa as “blacks” were prior to the transition to democracy. This fact has led some to think that Afrikaners and other “whites” must count themselves lucky. Of course, the situation for “whites” could be even worse, but that is not the standard by which we should judge whether citizens of a country have good reason to stay or to go.

Chapters

00:00 Allegations of white genocide gain international attention with Trump’s involvement
00:14 Trump administration welcomes Afrikaner refugees amid criticism of genocide claims
00:41 Defining genocide and assessing its relevance to South Africa
02:02 Examination of farm murders and claims of racial targeting
03:52 Distinguishing migrants from refugees in the Afrikaner context
05:16 Questions surrounding race-based refugee criteria under Trump
06:11 South Africa’s selective human-rights focus and international legal actions
07:08 Julius Malema’s rhetoric, legal decisions, and racial tensions
08:44 Malema’s position on genocide and demographic changes
10:02 Race-baiting and political slogans intensifying political stress
10:55 Racial policies and investment disincentives
12:06 Infrastructure and service decline under troubled governance
12:46 ANC racial politics and pressures on white citizens
13:11 Post-apartheid racial dynamics and historical comparisons

A vacancy tax is a charge imposed on property owners who leave residential or commercial properties unoccupied for a specified duration. As usual, a statist violation of property rights.

The post <em>Palestine 36</em> is an insult to history appeared first on spiked.