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cue the trumpettes lining up to babble about how it's necessary. even if you think this policy is necessary, this is still a shitty policy because it doesn't g

cue the trumpettes lining up to babble about how it's necessary. even if you think this policy is necessary, this is still a shitty policy because it doesn't go far enough to satisfy its stated aims in addition to being morally repugnant. you shouldn't support this policy because of how flawed it is. there are plenty of countries that are incubators of islamic terrorism that aren't on the ban. if the goal is to prevent islamic terrorists from abroad committing terror acts here, that's still entirely possible. osama bin laden wouldn't be caught by this ban or the previous one because he was a saudi. think about that for a minute. and now the border patrol / tsa will be even more inspired to make life hell for the law abiding people who are coming here or returning here from abroad from countries not mentioned on the ban. this is killing the usa's tourism industry. this is preventing highly educated people from abroad from coming here to let us make use of their talents. this is an embarrassment. anyways, i challenge any supporters of this policy to defend it here in public. you won't last long.

VLM 10y ago
Why is driving a privilege, yet visiting the USA is seen by some as a human right for all of our species? What claim does a random foreigner have on the USA that ranks their desire to visit above the commander in chief's desire for them not to visit, in other words why is the desire of the elected president believed by some to rank lower than the desire of any random non-citizen human visitor? It seems an incredibly peculiar ranking. Why are some countries allowed to control who visits them, and some are not? Why is the USA one of the countries that is not allowed to have any border controls? Is that, pragmatically, successful? Why is the battle almost exclusively being portrayed as it being immoral and unethical for only the USA to have any border control at all of any form, rather than the somewhat more likely and seemingly easier to convince specifics of this individual border control ruling being wrong? If this regulation or law needs to be repealed because it can be "proven" wrong (where proving amounts to yelling really intimidatingly loud) then why is only this regulation or law being targeted as opposed to NORML or the IRS or a bazillion other laws and regulations which are both more likely to be nonsense and hurting more people?
- jcranmer 10y ago
  > Why is the battle almost exclusively being portrayed as it being immoral and unethical for only the USA to have any border control at all of any form, rather than the somewhat more likely and seemingly easier to convince specifics of this individual border control ruling being wrong? Context is everything. The US is already regarded as having a well-working, effective screening process for visa and refugee applications. This means that it's hard to find any justification for drastic, emergency-sounding restrictions. Particularly since Trump was well-known for espousing a religious test ("Muslim ban") on the campaign trail, Giuliani says this is what he suggested when asked how to implement the Muslim ban, and the government hasn't offered any evidence for why the additions are necessitated for national security, it is rather easy to assume that this is an attempt to ban Muslims. And imposing a religious test runs afoul of the Constitution, even if there were good reasons for it.
- yedava 10y ago
  Firstly, the US already has intensive screening for immigrants and does reject a lot of people from entering the country. So Trump and other like minded folks saying that the US has open or porous borders is false. The motivation for that claim could chalked down to old fashioned xenophobia rather than any concern for security. On the issue of privilege vs human rights, the US is populated by immigrants and many of them who argue against bans like this see themselves in new immigrants. The Trump/Bannon/Miller argument is that since immigrants are stealing jobs and are weakening the value system of the US, we need to cut back on immigration. That sends a very strong signal to present immigrants that their presence is harming the country. The outrage against Trump stems from this kind of signalling from his administration.
- _jal 10y ago
  I'll play along. > Why is driving a privilege, yet visiting the USA is seen by some as a human right for all of our species? The comparison makes no sense. A non-non-sequitur question would be the same comparison about guns, given that guns are essential for the livelihood of far fewer people than cars, it would be comparing deadly objects to deadly objects instead of humans, and legal standards would actually match up in a slightly more sensical way that might produce an actual answer[1]. But to ignore the multiple ways it makes no sense, an answer would look something like, because piloting deadly weapons with a modicum of skill is something many people find positive, whereas travel in the abstract is considered by many people a fundamental human right. > What claim does a random foreigner have on the USA that ranks their desire to visit above the commander in chief's desire for them not to visit The president's status as "commander in chief" means nothing in a civilian context, and I see nothing in the constitution about Presidential Whim being a meaningful legal basis - can you point to the SCOTUS case establishing "do what thou wilt shall be the the whole of the law"? > Why are some countries allowed to control who visits them, and some are not? I have no idea what you're talking about, or what it has to do with Muslim bans in the US. If you can point to someone of relevance making that claim in relation to the Muslim bans, please do share. > Why is the battle almost exclusively being portrayed as it being immoral and unethical for only the USA to have any border control at all of any form This is what a red herring looks like. > why is only this regulation or law being targeted as opposed to NORML I dunno, perhaps because NORML is not a sitting president currently banning Muslims? Perhaps because people see different relevance to their lives between different bad laws? Perhaps because this is happening now, we want less of it, and the best way to get less of something is to nip in in the bud? Perhaps because many people see banning people based on religion abhorrent to the character of their country in ways that bad taxation doesn't? How about I flip that around- when there are so many other absurd laws, is this the only one you want to defend? Why aren't you throwing your rhetorical skills at some other battle? [1] The answer, of course, is the constitution.
dang 10y ago
> cue the trumpettes lining up to babble Partisan rants are not welcome on HN. We ban users that do this and have warned you before, so please stop. Even if your underlying views are right, you're damaging the site. It looks like you have been using HN primarily for political argument. That's not what HN is for; we eventually ban accounts that do that too. HN exists to gratify intellectual curiosity, and accounts that post comments need to comment primarily in that spirit—otherwise we'd soon become a very different place. Fortunately you've posted that sort of comment as well, so it's a matter of adjusting dials.

VLM 10y ago

Why is driving a privilege, yet visiting the USA is seen by some as a human right for all of our species? What claim does a random foreigner have on the USA that ranks their desire to visit above the commander in chief's desire for them not to visit, in other words why is the desire of the elected president believed by some to rank lower than the desire of any random non-citizen human visitor? It seems an incredibly peculiar ranking. Why are some countries allowed to control who visits them, and some are not? Why is the USA one of the countries that is not allowed to have any border controls? Is that, pragmatically, successful? Why is the battle almost exclusively being portrayed as it being immoral and unethical for only the USA to have any border control at all of any form, rather than the somewhat more likely and seemingly easier to convince specifics of this individual border control ruling being wrong? If this regulation or law needs to be repealed because it can be "proven" wrong (where proving amounts to yelling really intimidatingly loud) then why is only this regulation or law being targeted as opposed to NORML or the IRS or a bazillion other laws and regulations which are both more likely to be nonsense and hurting more people?

jcranmer 10y ago
> Why is the battle almost exclusively being portrayed as it being immoral and unethical for only the USA to have any border control at all of any form, rather than the somewhat more likely and seemingly easier to convince specifics of this individual border control ruling being wrong? Context is everything. The US is already regarded as having a well-working, effective screening process for visa and refugee applications. This means that it's hard to find any justification for drastic, emergency-sounding restrictions. Particularly since Trump was well-known for espousing a religious test ("Muslim ban") on the campaign trail, Giuliani says this is what he suggested when asked how to implement the Muslim ban, and the government hasn't offered any evidence for why the additions are necessitated for national security, it is rather easy to assume that this is an attempt to ban Muslims. And imposing a religious test runs afoul of the Constitution, even if there were good reasons for it.
yedava 10y ago
Firstly, the US already has intensive screening for immigrants and does reject a lot of people from entering the country. So Trump and other like minded folks saying that the US has open or porous borders is false. The motivation for that claim could chalked down to old fashioned xenophobia rather than any concern for security. On the issue of privilege vs human rights, the US is populated by immigrants and many of them who argue against bans like this see themselves in new immigrants. The Trump/Bannon/Miller argument is that since immigrants are stealing jobs and are weakening the value system of the US, we need to cut back on immigration. That sends a very strong signal to present immigrants that their presence is harming the country. The outrage against Trump stems from this kind of signalling from his administration.
_jal 10y ago
I'll play along. > Why is driving a privilege, yet visiting the USA is seen by some as a human right for all of our species? The comparison makes no sense. A non-non-sequitur question would be the same comparison about guns, given that guns are essential for the livelihood of far fewer people than cars, it would be comparing deadly objects to deadly objects instead of humans, and legal standards would actually match up in a slightly more sensical way that might produce an actual answer[1]. But to ignore the multiple ways it makes no sense, an answer would look something like, because piloting deadly weapons with a modicum of skill is something many people find positive, whereas travel in the abstract is considered by many people a fundamental human right. > What claim does a random foreigner have on the USA that ranks their desire to visit above the commander in chief's desire for them not to visit The president's status as "commander in chief" means nothing in a civilian context, and I see nothing in the constitution about Presidential Whim being a meaningful legal basis - can you point to the SCOTUS case establishing "do what thou wilt shall be the the whole of the law"? > Why are some countries allowed to control who visits them, and some are not? I have no idea what you're talking about, or what it has to do with Muslim bans in the US. If you can point to someone of relevance making that claim in relation to the Muslim bans, please do share. > Why is the battle almost exclusively being portrayed as it being immoral and unethical for only the USA to have any border control at all of any form This is what a red herring looks like. > why is only this regulation or law being targeted as opposed to NORML I dunno, perhaps because NORML is not a sitting president currently banning Muslims? Perhaps because people see different relevance to their lives between different bad laws? Perhaps because this is happening now, we want less of it, and the best way to get less of something is to nip in in the bud? Perhaps because many people see banning people based on religion abhorrent to the character of their country in ways that bad taxation doesn't? How about I flip that around- when there are so many other absurd laws, is this the only one you want to defend? Why aren't you throwing your rhetorical skills at some other battle? [1] The answer, of course, is the constitution.

dang 10y ago

> cue the trumpettes lining up to babble Partisan rants are not welcome on HN. We ban users that do this and have warned you before, so please stop. Even if your underlying views are right, you're damaging the site. It looks like you have been using HN primarily for political argument. That's not what HN is for; we eventually ban accounts that do that too. HN exists to gratify intellectual curiosity, and accounts that post comments need to comment primarily in that spirit—otherwise we'd soon become a very different place. Fortunately you've posted that sort of comment as well, so it's a matter of adjusting dials.