Libertarianism and Imagination

Click on Hatsune Miku and she'll dance.

People say a lot of stupid things about libertarians.  On the other hand, libertarians often say stupid things themselves.  As I've made clear, I consider myself a libertarian, but I clarify it by calling myself a libertarian nationalist. to keep people from confusing me with the sillier strains of libertarianism.  (See Venn Diagram.) One of the most popular things for open-borders libertarians to say is "Borders are imaginary."  Well, now, what does that mean, exactly?  It's meant, of course, to make those of us who think national borders are a good and useful thing to sound like some kind of mystics who live in a fantasy world, the opposite of the truth.  Thing is, "imaginary" here is a little misleading.  There are at least three categories of imaginary things.  First, we have things that people dream up, usually called "fiction," that exist only in the imagination and that are not intended to be considered as real things.  A good example is Hatsune Miku, there (I'm doing it again.).  She's a cartoon character that somebody made up.  Better yet, she's even usually computer-generated.  Totally imaginary.  A fictional creation.  Second, you have symbols.  All of language is symbols.  All of the words in this post are symbols.  The thoughts they stand for might be real, or, better, their referents might be real, but the words themselves are only symbols, and not real.  The third category is  that bugaboo "social constructs."  That is, having a brain, human beings see the world beyond concrete objects.  We create concepts, or social constructs, to order the world and think about reality.  A country, and therefore its borders, is a social construct.  Christianity is a social construct.   The Golden Rule is a social construct. Music is a social construct.  Propery rights are a social construct. Libertarianism is a social construct.  So, the sentence "Borders are imaginary" is itself imaginary on two levels.  First, it's just a set of symbols, and second, it's a concept, and concepts, not having a concrete form, are imaginary.  So saying "Borders are imaginary" is a self-anihilating act.   A statement that destroys itself.  A self-referential paradox. Anyhow, maybe we could do without fictional things.  Miku is fun, but not necessary.  But we do seem to need symbols, being a social animal — you know, language and all that.  And we need social constructs, because that's how our brains work.

Enough word play, though.  I remember reading years ago about Konrad Lorenz, who pretty much invented ethology as we know it.  He discovered, or pointed out, that when a bird is singing sweetly in a tree, it's not for the pure joy of it.  No. The bird is saying: "This is my goddam tree.  Any other bird who gets near this tree is going to get his ass kicked!"  In short, the bird is talking about borders.  Your dog can often be observed behaving the same way, either by barking or leg-lifting, declaring his property rights and his borders.  Can libertarians do less?

This post was inspired by a lovely terse post on "The Joy of Curmudgeonry," a nice site I recommend to you all.  Read it HERE.