Hans-Hermann Hoppe is an economist at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas and a brilliant libertarian polemicist in German and English, whose last book, Democracy: The God that Failed, has created excitement here and in Europe, Hoppe's work defends immigration restriction and free trade, among other things. Last year, Hoppe offended the Thought Police on his campus by noting that homosexuals (like other groups, such as the very young and very old) plan less for the future than heterosexuals. This fleeting observation in a 75-minute lecture led gay activists to demand the university authorities punish Hoppe for violating protected group rights. Now the university is proposing to reprimand him and withhold his next pay increase. The ACLU (!) has ridden to his defense, on the grounds that whatever gay might claim for themselves, their "protection" does not take precedence over freedom of speech, and the Las Vegas Review-Journal has described him as "a world-renowned economist, author and speaker." Stay tuned.
Tony Blair is talking about reducing immigration, which has been a huge problem in the UK for years, and years, and years. However, he has the Prime Minister said that it was the Bank of England's view that inward migration had had a positive impact on the economy.
He added that new immigration controls announced yesterday by Home Secretary Charles Clarke had been designed to ensure that the prospects for economic growth would not be damaged.
The idea that immigration is necessary to economic growth is an often-refuted canard. And it's a lame excuse for not doing something about mass immigration.
Blair is a Labour Prime Minister, and as such, should be willing to preside over the total destruction of the British economy, as his predecessors did.
Martin Amis has a piece in the London Times about the horrors of violence in the Colombian streets, in which he pauses to hit at Ronald Reagan's attitude towards gun control, which doesn't have much relevance to Colombian gangsters' access to twenty-dollar hand grenades, and their habitual use thereof.
But it raises another point; there are supposed to be 150,000 Colombians in the US. While some of them are refugees from the violent youth of Colombia, some must be the violent youth themselves. Is anything being done to prevent them "Coming to America?"
Here's a non-encouraging note:
Those Colombians who are now safe in the US have embraced their new home in the most American of ways—by becoming political activists.
Most Vdare readers are aware that the Bush budget massively reduced the Congressional level of Border Patrol increases from 2,000 yearly to 210. In addition, the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program, which reimburses states for illegal alien incarceration costs—aka SCAAP—has been sent to the scrap heap.
But some items chosen for Bush largesse should also raise eyebrows for the concerned taxpayer. Here are a selected few:
And for a final blow, Bush is pulling the plug on one of the few government endeavors which can truly be called inspiring, the Hubble Space Telescope.
