The situation is analogous to my “right” to travel within your home.

So the state collectively owns all the property it claims dominion over, and its subjects (both citizen and not) must justify to it their freedoms, but it need not justify to them its authority?

This sort of sounds like… the abolishment of private property; a purely socialist sentiment.

+2 chutzpah points, though

Fucking finally.

And by the way, I'm cartooning my own book idea, which is largely about the new sentimentalist literature in moral psychology and what it tells us about what is distinctive in liberal moral personality and moral culture. The stuff about globalism and mobility is meant to reinforce how the liberal taste for fairness, equality, and a distaste for coalitional exclusion has a lot of room to grow.

In terms of patriotism, I would go so far as to say the very values of libertarianism, or the free market, or however one might put it, while more scientifically elaborated by the Austrian thinkers, were a pillar of our country's founding document (or at least the principles behind it). The very idea of limited government and free trade was at the heart of our revolution, and as such can a certain patriotism not be a reverence for those principles in as much as this country has been the most successful avatar of them. Yes, of course we have slipped hither and thither towards socialism and imperialism, and who knows what other 'isms might follow, but it's impossible to deny that of all countries, people choose to try by hook or by crook, over fences and under ditches to come here the most. I know, I work for an immigration firm. So I think America's association (originally at least) with the values that we associate with can be enough to foster some kind of patriotism. I'm not referring to anything extreme, but if someone asks me why I live here, I can give them good reasons – and I don't feel the need to wear an ironic t-shirt on the 4th of July.

That's me putting it into quasi-Rawlsian language. But I think a lot of our disagreement will have to do with the difference between my (to you probably deflationary) conception of states as monopoly providers of certain necessary public goods, and what I take to be your more Rawlsian sense of states as sites of democratic activity and democratic activity as important to human dignity in a way that completely eludes me.

I'm working on a book proposal about the psychology and authority of liberal moral sensibilities, and after arguing that conservatives really are more or less backwards, I intend to argue that liberalism really does requires a kind of Mises-Hayek kind of global federalism, and that contemporary welfare state liberals and social democrats are illiberal (standing athwart history yelling stop) insofar as they stand in the way of this. So this is a debate I really appreciate having. (As opposed to the debate with a lot of conservatives, who generally don't see the need to justify the exclusion.) I look forward to these papers and your dissertation. Thanks again for all the helpful pointers.

To me the opposite point seems considerably stronger. Private property is invalid because you can't get turtles all the way down, so there is always an original historical title which is invalid theft! PPIIB negative rights are insufficient in practice without positive rights to coerce services be coerced from others! PPIIB because it increases inequality! PPIIB because inheritance is morally invalid! PPIIB because the law in its august majesty forbids the rich as well as the poor from sleeping under bridges! These arguments are commonplace and evidently deeply felt. But they all seem even stronger if you substitute “national property and inherited citizenship are invalid because” for PPIIB. In particular, it seems like an amazing joke when non-internationalist socialists attack the fundamental invalidity of the original title of private property, or attack inheritance, or attack negative rights.

It is as if there are cozy leftist gentlecitizens' agreements not to use anti-private-property and anti-inherited-aristocracy arguments against nationalism. Also not to apply the big hammer of structural sexism allegations to the arguments for women being known to be superior as custodial parents. Also not to apply a woman's right to control her body to taking unauthorized drugs or to taking money for sex. Also not to apply the “no visits or economic advice to murderous dictatorships” taboo to socialist dictatorships. Etc. If such agreements weren't universally honored among all right-thinking citizens, these mighty arguments beloved of the left would seem to be even more dangerous to the left's own positions than to the positions they choose to argue against.

Private property has one strong practical argument in its defense: people who tell you they are going to get rid of property are often fools or lying. The same square meter of land can't very well be used to raise rutabagas and to collect photoelectric power; an orchard doesn't work if anyone who feels the impulse is entitled to convert it to a barbecue bonfire. So the question “who gets to use this thing” is one that needs quite complicated practical answers. Since it needs messy practical answers, criticism of a particular answer as imperfect is insufficient, you need to show that the answer is more imperfect than some practical alternative.

Conversely, many historically-important status questions like “who is allowed to strike whom whenever he pleases” or “who is allowed to leave the plantation, or the Socialist Republic” or “which ethnic groups shall be the slaves and which shall be the masters” don't need nontrivial practical answers, they can be basically unasked. In the past few centuries, various highly successful societies have answered basically “that's a stupid question, everyone should have the same rights,” using our convenient bright line “is human.” (We should enjoy the bright line while we can: two decades at the outside, I think, given AI and genetic modification…) Unlike special rights to property, special rights to citizenship look to me like an inherited legal status distinction, typical of the kind of questions which successful societies have unasked with equality under the law.

Nationalism does have one strong practical argument in its favor: at least since Napoleon, people have been understandably impressed by the effectiveness of nationalist armies. But if you consider that a compelling argument, you should be very uneasy about some other practical arguments that leftists (and ofttimes rightists as well) seem unconcerned about. E.g., a national rock-solid long-term credit rating was quite reasonably considered a major national security issue up until the 1930s or so. Whatever you think of the enormous wise overall-good net impact of changes like the New Deal, it seems flaky to wave away the centuries-old question of how fiat money affects the ability to float a bunch of 100-year bonds in times of need. (I've sometimes wondered what percentage of its GDP Britain was able to raise and spend in WWII vs. WWI. Every history mentions lend-lease and other credit-exhaustion symptoms. I've never seen a calculation of whether the credit exhaustion came proportionally earlier in WWII, as the old fogeys would've expected given how permanent fiat money was introduced between WWI and WWII.)

You might check out Joseph Heath's excellent paper here:
http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/%7Ejheath/multicul...

Heath tells me he's moved away from the Dworkinian machinery (rightly, I think) in the paper to a more Rawlsian one but the same argument works, I think. It's best when read with this other very good paper of his:
http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/%7Ejheath/rawls.pdf

Anyway, I hope that's helpful.

The immigrant to Switzerland, by contrast can make a rights claim because nations with a right to exclude aren't institutions general benefit to all.

Three questions:
1. Is that right?
2. Do you think a nation without a right to exclude actually a nation? (i.e. is ability to exclude as central the institution the nation as it is to the institution of property?)
3. What sort of evidence can you imagine convincing you that nations are institutions that are beneficial to all?

As always, love the blog

On immigration debate, the relevant extreme problem is no immigration at all. It's not the only alternative, but when people are forced to explain why not to ban immigration, they should reval their basic arguments.

I'm not so sure you would because at some point your same arguments would be turned against you with regards to private property borders.

I was reminded once of this on a beautiful hike on the North coast of Hawaii. Looking over a magnificent valley I set out to explore it for the day only to have my hopes dashed after coming along a huge Private Property sign , NO TRESPASSING… property of such and such mega-corporation of Japan.

How long under libertarian rules until all property is held in the hands of a few while the many are paid a pittance to till the farm? There's more then one road that leads to serfdom.