Who and what rules America

We’ve been hearing lately about the “no-match” letters that the Bush administration, under a show of enforcing the immigration laws, is having the Social Security Administration send to companies telling them that they must either fire employees with fraudulent social security numbers or pay fines. So, guess what happened? The ACLU and several labor groups sued to stop the no-match letters from being sent, on the basis that they would cause employers improperly to fire Hispanic legal immigrants. And guess what happened next? A federal judge stopped the SSA from sending the letters.

And why, according to the plaintiffs, would the letters result in the firing of legal aliens and citizens? The New York Times explains:

The lawsuit cites a December report by the Social Security inspector general that said 17.8 million of the agency’s 435 million records contained errors that could result in a discrepancy about who is legal.

In other words, about four percent of the SSA’s records contain errors that “could” result in a mistake about who has a legitimate social security number, and thus “could” result in an employer firing someone who is not illegal. This reminds me of the arguments liberal politicians repeatedly used against the employer sanction law in the 1980s, that it would be totally unacceptable, an eternal stain on our country, blah blah, if the law resulted in any discrimination.

And there you have the Prime Directive of Liberalism: you shall not do anything, even if is essential to the protection of society, if it “could” result in even a single act of discrimination or unfairness to a member of a minority group. Since such perfection is not possible, especially when government is dealing with millions of minority lawbreakers, the real meaning of liberalism is that society shall not enforce laws against mass law breaking, such as illegal immigration, because some people will inevitably be treated unfairly. Indeed, the larger the scale of law-breaking, the more likely it is that any effort to enforce the law will affect some individuals unfairly, and therefore the more unjust the law enforcement becomes. It’s yet a further application of Auster’s First Law of Majority-Minority Relations in Liberal Society, which says that the more harm a minority or alien group is causing, the more racist society is for trying to stop the harmful behavior, and therefore the more the minority must be allowed to continue doing the harm.

There’s another interesting angle emerging from this story. For decades, mainstream conservatives have blamed the breakdown of our society on the transformation of individual-rights liberalism (right-liberalism), which the conservatives think is good, into group-equality liberalism (left-liberalism or multiculturalism), which the conservatives think is bad. The present case demonstrates that the distinction between “good” individual rights and “bad” group preferences may not always be valid. It shows that pure individual-rights liberalism by itself—that is, liberalism which makes the avoidance of any possible discrimination against any individual more important than the protection of the whole society from mass lawlessness or other grievous harm—is as destructive as the liberalism of minority group privileges.

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Leonard K. writes:

You wrote: “And there you have the Prime Directive of Liberalism: you shall not do anything, even if is essential to the protection of society, if it could result in even a single act of discrimination or unfairness to a member of a minority group.”

This reminded me of the notorious O.J. Simpson case. During the TV frenzy that accompanied it, one of the most frequently repeated phrases was “I’d rather let a hundred guilty go free than one innocent be convicted.” What struck me then was not the apparent absurdity of the motto itself, but the fact that nobody, nobody—including the anti-Simpson camp—ever disagreed with its essence!

A. Zarkov writes:

Last January while attending a convention in San Francisco I stuck up a conversation with an anonymous stranger who happened to work for the Social Security Administration. I think he was some kind of mid level bureaucrat. I asked him why SS doesn’t notify me whenever my number gets used for a new employment? In this way I would know immediately if someone were working under my number so I could take action. Otherwise the IRS will get a report of wages that I don’t know about and will be missing from my tax return. Some time after I file my return, I’ll get a notice from IRS for back taxes, interest and penalties. This kind of thing can be difficult to fix because you have to prove you never earned that money. It’s a real headache for many people. The phantom worker usually claims a large number of dependents to avoid any withholding. He told me that SS can’t notify me because they don’t know my address. Then I said “but SS sends regularly mails me a summary of my all my earnings.” He then said “we do a mail merge with IRS,” meaning they don’t have a database with my address, and for some reason won’t create one from IRS data.

This was a frustrating conversation. But it clearly shows the government knows what’s happening and really doesn’t want to fix it because they want illegal aliens here. This temporary injunction is but another example.

I’ll give you another example. The state of Virginia is very strict about traffic enforcement. You speed greater than 90 MPH and you will get jail time even for a first offense. It’s the only state that bans radar detectors in cars (DC does too). Yet VA make it trivial to avoid getting liability insurance. You just check a box saying you have insurance, no proof required. The state knows that large numbers of illegal aliens drive without insurance and they want to make it easy for them to cheat.

We have lost control over our government. It seems to care about the interests and welfare of Mexicans over Americans. The president of Mexico can openly threaten the sovereignty of the U.S. with no response from our president or State Department. It no longer represents Americans.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at September 07, 2007 07:46 AM | Send