Items of Value

Seventy-three year old Gloria Steinem, foundress of Ms. Magazine, says in her stump for Hillary that "gender is probably the most restricting force in American life." Tell that to some oppressed color-minority, or our differently-documented habitués, or our gays. Well, maybe gay is a gender ... and also a minority -- but it does sort of seem like Ms. Steinem didn't get the vast left wing conspiracy memo: "The Revolution is over; we won."

But that's just a fantasy. Revolutions can't ever end. The struggle is eternal. As long as there has ever been an injustice, there will always be injustice. You know, injustice, like marriage only between complementary genders, and a merit based playing field for job and education opportunities, and meaningful, enforced borders.

That's something else that I just don't get. I do understand the arguments for "regularizing" illegals. They're here, and it would be inconvenient and disruptive to their lives to require them to return to their country of origin. How onerous to go back to the mud huts and chicken-crowded alleyways, when they can get free emergency-room healthcare and that high-quality inner-city tax-free education here, with that world-prize jackpot of American citizenship for their anchor babies. If I could sneak into New Jerusalem and become a citizen of the City of God, well, I'd do it too.

So I get that. What I don't get is the open-borders crowd -- and what a chicken-crowd -- who want open borders. You know, new people rushing in on the very bare heels of the old horde. Like, adding to the problem. Surely they must understand that there's a problem? Closing emergency rooms? Over-crowded classrooms? Over-flowing prisons? Unlicensed drivers? TB outbreaks? Admittedly, some of our irrational rightwing complaints, such as with drivers licences, are an easy fix: just give them licenses. Problem solved. Licenses are after all just like borders -- a political construct, a mere intellectual fiction that might be hand-waved away with an elegant flourish. Mightn't it be possible, with sufficient faith, to do the same with, say, antibiotic-resistant strains of tuberculosis? Given the awesome power of words, it must be thus. I will it so.

So that's why we masturbating leftists and greedy fatcats are in love with a virtual fence. It represents no actual barrier, you see, so we can get all those brown voters and cheap laborers to give us power, political or financial, depending on how we're bent. And bent we are, hell bent, to either oppress or grievance-monger, according to our bias. Exploit. I mean the verb.

It has to do with understanding value, true value. What is valuable must be protected. Things of value can be stolen, and their worth is not increased by the act. As George Will says when speaking of the monster Castro, a market economy "is an information-generating mechanism," which means that "communism cannot know what things should cost. Hence communism's amazing contribution to humanity's economic history is 'value-subtraction' -- products worth less than the materials that go into them." I quote that, aside from the fact that I just love clear and elegant reasoning, because it points out the need to fight only for things that are worth fighting for. Worth.

Steinem? The most "restricting" force in American life is the obligation to be an ethical and law-abiding citizen. There is a way in which Revolution and citizenship are opposites. Citizenship requires some meaningful form of stability, a foundation upon which to build, complete with the expectation that what has been built will survive. Revolution means change, and as long as there is revolution there must be change -- even what has been built will be vulnerable: perhaps something better is possible, but something different is required. Every actual historical Revolution has been a bloodbath. This, contrasted to the fact that markets are inherently democratic. You see? Practice over theory. Independence over authoritarianism.

We object to gay marriage not because we object to homosexual acts, but because marriage is what it is -- a foundation of stability. We object to open borders because exploitations, either of votes or of labor, undermine the vested interests, the committed investments of actual citizens, who depend on stable wages and on loyalty to our culture's institutions, as opposed to the ad hoc interests of those who come merely to exploit their exploitability. Our labor as citizens in the business of our democracy has added worth that is worth protecting.



J