Tyler Cowen: belief

Transcript context

…They could be. Now, there are cultures in which horrible things are happening, whether those are rightly attributed to anything other than an assortment of current forces, and whether they’re rightly attributed to something intrinsic to the culture. The liberal suspicion is the former, not the latter. To allow people in who are producing terrible things is not a good idea, and so, screens on immigration — those are a good idea. Whether the screen should be defined in terms of individual characteristics or of nation or religion, I would favor individual characteristics, but it can’t be the case that the widespread concerns currently in Europe and the United States about immigration are rightly dismissed as a product of hostility or bad nationalism. There’s clearly something that’s fair in those concerns. If I think about how immigration restrictions are enforced, I sometimes worry that liberal societies ultimately, at some margin, have to use illiberal means to keep out or deport immigrants. I’m for more immigration — high-skilled, low-skilled. I’m very pro-immigration, but I’m not for open borders altogether. It seems there’s always some margin where, really, a lot of people want to come to the US, the UK, a lot of other countries, and you’re keeping them out, ultimately using violence, or you’re pushing them back out again in ways where you’re dealing with actual human bodies. It’s not just regulatory. You’re physically doing something to real people. It can be children. It can be babies. Typically, a lot will be vulnerable people. What does that look like under liberalism? There’s Kantian liberalism, which says people should be treated as ends, not as means, and that everyone has dignity. That’s bedrock. What it specifically entails for immigration policy is to be determined, but that’s a central liberal foundation. Then there’s Mill’s more, let’s say, romanticized utilitarian form of liberalism. That doesn’t have the Kantian bedrock, but the well-being of the people who are, let’s say, being deported is something that is not a matter of indifference. These abstract foundations for liberalism don’t entail concrete policies, so maybe I’ll tell a story if I may.…

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