In a column at the New York Times tech columnist Farhad Manjoo makes the argument for completely open borders in the United States:

There’s a witheringly obvious moral, economic, strategic and cultural case for open borders, and we have a political opportunity to push it. As Democrats jockey for the presidency, there’s room for a brave politician to oppose President Trump’s racist immigration rhetoric not just by fighting his wall and calling for the abolishment of I.C.E. but also by making a proactive and affirmative case for the vast expansion of immigration.

It would be a change from the stale politics of the modern era, in which both parties agreed on the supposed wisdom of “border security” and assumed that immigrants were to be feared.

As an immigrant, this idea confounds me. My family came to the United States from our native South Africa in the late 1980s. After jumping through lots of expensive and confusing legal hoops, we became citizens in 2000. Obviously, it was a blessing: In rescuing me from a society in which people of my color were systematically oppressed, America has given me a chance at liberty.

But why had I deserved that chance, while so many others back home — because their parents lacked certain skills, money or luck — were denied it?

The answer to his question is complicated and various but I’ll summarize it this way. Open borders do not provide a system of universal peace, prosperity, and brotherhood but rather war and misery without limits. No right of immigration is recognized under that most expansive document of human rights, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. There is a right of self-determination which means we have a right to limit immigration. There is no moral obligation to take immigrants in. Mass immigration tends to destabilize both the sending and receiving countries socially and politically.

Expect to hear Mr. Manjoo’s argument with greater ardor and vehemence in the coming years.

Today’s brouhaha du jour reminds me that not only does running for political office not require one to understand the U. S. Constitution it does not require that the seeker have read it and the situation is even worse for pundits. Here’s the issue as presented by Chris Cilizza of CNN:

Sometimes the best power moves in politics are conveyed in the most mundane language.

“Sadly, given the security concerns and unless government re-opens this week, I suggest we work together to determine another suitable date after government has re-opened for this address or for you to consider delivering your State of the Union address in writing to the Congress on January 29,” wrote Speaker Nancy Pelosi to President Donald Trump on Wednesday.

Make no mistake: Pelosi’s decision to disinvite Trump from delivering his “State of the Union” address to Congress is a total power play designed to remind Trump that a) Congress is a co-equal branch of government and b) his willingness to keep the government shuttered until he gets money for a border wall is going to have impacts on him, too.
Just in case you missed that message, Pelosi delivered it again in an interview with CNN’s Ashley Killough. “This is a housekeeping matter in the Congress of the United States, so we can honor the responsibility of the invitation we extended to the President,” said Pelosi. “He can make it from the Oval Office if he wants.”

and here’s Article II Section 3 of the U. S. Constitution:

He shall from time to time give to the Congress Information on the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient; he may, on extraordinary Occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in Case of Disagreement between them, with Respect to the Time of Adjournment, he may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper; he shall receive Ambassadors and other public Ministers; he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed, and shall Commission all the Officers of the United States.

The Congress does not have the authority to invite or disinvite the president to anything. If that is the custom, it is a courtesy not a requirement. It has generally been held that it does not even have the authority to issue a subpoena to the president.

Now I happen to think that the practice of delivering the State of Union message publicly in person should be abandoned. I think it’s a custom unbecoming of a democracy and only began with Woodrow Wilson as a tool for rallying support. But not only does the president not require an invitation from the Congress to deliver it he or she can actually summon both houses of the Congress to deliver it.

I was remiss in not mentioning that another Broadway great, Carol Channing, has died at the age of 97. From Variety:

Larger-than-life musical stage personality Carol Channing, who immortalized the characters of Lorelei Lee in “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” and Dolly Gallagher Levi in “Hello, Dolly!,” has died. She was 97.

Channing died Tuesday of natural causes at her home in Rancho Mirage, Calif.

Her publicist B. Harlan Boll confirmed the news. He wrote, “It is with extreme heartache, that I have to announce the passing of an original Industry Pioneer, Legend and Icon — Miss Carol Channing. Saying good-bye is one of the hardest things I have ever had to do, but I know that when I feel those uncontrollable urges to laugh at everything and/or nothing at all, it will be because she is with me, tickling my funny bone.”

Channing won a Tony as best actress in a musical in 1964 for Jerry Herman’s musical version of Thornton Wilder’s “The Matchmaker.” Until then she had been closely identified with the gold-digging Ms. Lee in the 1948 musical adaptation of Anita Loos’ flapper-era novel.

Her larger-than-life personality did not lend itself to film but on stage she was magic. I saw her in Hello, Dolly! and she was wonderful. (I have also seen Ginger Rogers, Ethel Merman, and Pearl Bailey playing Dolly Levi. The Pearl Bailey-Cab Calloway all-black production of Hello, Dolly! was incomparably great.)

I don’t think we’ll ever see her like again. It is a different, smaller world.

In the aftermath of my post on most important composers of popular song of a few days ago, I began researching the statistics on which songs have been the most “covered”, i.e. most professional recordings by different performers. My first reacton is that I don’t believe a lot of the reports. For example, I don’t believe there are as many covers of “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction” as are claimed.

However, the importance of John Lennon and Paul McCartney can hardly be exaggerated. While I don’t believe the claims of millions of covers, I do believe that “Eleanor Rigby” and “Yesterday” have each been covered more than 150 times.

I also think that any article that doesn’t include “Silent Night” among the songs that are most covered is probably a fraud. Just about every recording artist of any significance records a Christmas album (some do many of them) and nearly every Christmas compilation includes “Silent Night”.

Unlike the punditry I have not been fulminating on Britain’s decision to exit the EU, known as “Brexit”, for the following reasons:

1. How much of the United Kingdom’s sovereignty to surrender is completely an issue to be decided by Britons.
2. They had a referendum. They decided to leave the EU.
3. Any movement to keep holding referenda until the desired result (stay) is reached is scurrilous.
4. Liberal democratic government means doing what the people want at least some of the time. Even if you think it is stupid or harmful.
5. If they want guillotines to start being erected in town squares, elites should just keep doing what they’re doing.

I don’t think there’s anything else to say. It’s not any of my business.

I was prepared to detest Megan McArdle’s most recent Washington Post column, “Can immigration save the U.S. from its birthrate crisis?”:

The primary asset of any society is its people. That’s true in the lofty spiritual sense and in the crass financial one: Other people produce both the economic goods and the tax revenue that sustain the nation.

Like any other asset, this one needs to be replenished by continual reinvestment. A society that stops replacing itself is like a trust-fund kid dipping into the capital. The accounts empty at an accelerating pace, and a bill eventually comes due that cannot be paid.

Virtually the entire rich world is now in varying stages of that cycle.

but, as she acknowledges in the next sentence, the U. S. does not have a birthrate crisis. After considering U. S. policy she lands in the right place:

An immigration solution to the United States’ demographic challenge would probably mean a very different immigration policy, something like the points system used by countries such as Canada and Australia, which selects for migrants reasonably fluent in English and likely to be net tax contributors. Family reunification, which reinforces the United States’ historical bias in favor of low-skill migration, might well have to be curtailed.

While we do not have a birthrate crisis, we do have a pair of other crises, both of which are exacerbated by uncontrolled immigration. The first of these crises is a productivity crisis. Consider these two graphs. The first depicts labor productivity:

while the second depicts marginal labor productivity:

Take particular note of the circled sections on the righthand side of each chart. What they tell us is that there has been a change. The return on investment in labor is not growing as it once was. Indeed, if you could extend that chart all the way back to 1790 you would see how much has changed over the years. We don’t need more workers. We need fewer workers with low skills and more with higher skills. At its best higher education only addresses the second part of that equation and at that only if higher education actually brings more productivity which would require us to be more restrictive in the sort of higher education we’re subsidizing.

The other crisis is a crisis of social inequality which is being made worse by income inequality. But that’s a topic for another post.

One last thing that should not be neglected in this discussion. Japan has actual population decline, very low immigration, and no crisis. They have no crisis because labor productivity continues to rise and income equality is much greater there than here. In other words even with a birthrate below the replacement rate the welfare of the population can grow as long as productivity continues to rise and the benefits of that increase are spread across the population.

The basic question is what sort of society do you want? If you want a stratified society with a permanent underclass, just keep doing what we’re doing.

First, an army without bullets. Now, per the National Interest, an air force without planes:

One-third of Britain’s military aircraft isn’t available to fly, according to British media.

“Figures unearthed by freedom of information campaigners show 142 of 434 of the air force’s planes have been sidelined,” said the British tabloid Daily Mirror.

Some planes and helicopters have been mothballed, while others are down for major maintenance. The problem spans numerous models, including the Royal Air Force’s flagship fighter, the Eurofighter Typhoon.

“Military top brass revealed 55 of the 156 Typhoon jets are in the RAF’s ‘sustainment fleet’ – and not in its ‘forward fleet’ ready to be deployed on operations,” the Mirror said. Even aircraft in the forward fleet, which should be available for operations, are down as “short-term unserviceable aircraft.”

In addition to the Typhoons, “five out of 20 Atlas A400M transport planes are in the sustainment fleet – despite the first of its type only being delivered in 2014,” said the Mirror.

We’re getting our wish. When you infantilize your allies, you shouldn’t be surprised when they behave like infants.

I’m afraid that Gavin Mortimer is engaging in wishful thinking in his piece at the Spectator:

What France (and the rest of Europe) is witnessing is not a populist revolt but a politically incorrect one. People have had enough of being mocked and marginalised by what George Orwell described as ‘a dreary tribe of high-minded women and sandal-wearers and bearded fruit-juice drinkers who come flocking towards the smell of ‘progress’ like bluebottles to a dead cat.’

The difference between now and 1936, when Orwell wrote that pungent depiction, is that then the ‘dreary tribe’ had no influence. They were swept into cultural power in the 1960s but they are in the process of being swept back out in the second decade of the 21st Century. This will be hard to bear for progressives after a half-century of hegemony. The silent majority has found its voice and it demands it be listened to. A failure to do so will have dire consequences for Europe.

We’ll see. I think the “dreary tribe” has a much more secure grasp on power in Europe than it does here.

Should the U. S. Constitution be amended to remove the “no religious test” clause from Article VI? Here it is:

All Debts contracted and Engagements entered into, before the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be as valid against the United States under this Constitution, as under the Confederation.

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.

The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.