is Donald Trump’s call for a ban on travel by Muslims to (in?) the U.S. My reaction to this relates to my review of Greg Ip’s book, Foolproof, which is about risk policy. My point there is that both policy makers and ordinary citizens make bad risk judgments when they respond to the salience of a risk rather than computing costs, benefits, and probabilities. The Muslim origins of the San Bernadino terrorists may be salient, but that does not mean that Trump’s response is wise.
When you choose a policy in a war, it makes sense to maximize the adverse effect on your enemy and to minimize the adverse effect on friends and neutrals. Trump is proposing something that would do the opposite. So even before you get into the moral hideousness of it, his idea fails on practical grounds.
It reminds me of interning Japanese-Americans during World War II, which was morally and tactically wrong.
Take a couple of propositions in order:
1. The fallout from Islamic terrorism in the US since 9/11 has been massive in terms of dollar costs and erosion of rights. Trillion dollar wars, domestic spying and meta-data collection, police-state presence in airports and other large venues. Not to mention the loss of life in the terrorist killings.
2. Every Islamic terror incident was perpetrated by people who were in the US legally under current laws.
3. Trumps proposal would have stopped the perpetrators from arriving here in #2, and thus avoided the fallout in #1.
If someone offered you the deal, with perfect-hindsight, to trade islamic immigration in exchange for avoiding the major terrorist attacks beginning with 9/11, would you take it?
We seem to import about 200,000 people every year from islamic countries. Could these slots be filled by other immigrant groups with a lower risk profile? To use a bit of baseball terminology, what is the ‘wins-over-replacement’ of some of these muslim immigrants. If it’s zero– and south americans and asians could bring just as much human capital to the USA– islamic immigration is all risk and no reward.
My problem with this analysis is that it assumes perfectly effective regulation with zero counter-adaptation. My guess is that you see closer to the opposite. The terrorists would evade the regulation, and the people you would keep out would be exactly the people who obey laws and work for a living.
I think that the error here is quite analogous to the error of those who believe that gun control could absolutely prevent mass murder. They assume perfectly effective regulation with zero counter-adaptation.
Even though I am not against all gun control, I would be quite humble in my prediction about the consequences of any actual laws that might be enacted.
I really can’t believe we’re having this discussion. In the nearly 15 years since 9/11, all the terrorist attacks in the US put together don’t account for even half as many deaths as a single commercial jet crash. How many decimal points are required to express the percentage of Muslims in America who are responsible for terrorist attacks?
The US has visa-free travel agreements with many countries who have significant Muslim populations. Are you going to start requiring visas for travel between the US and western Europe? With the UK? With Canada?
And what of the millions of Muslims already living in the US? Are you going to expel them? Put them in camps? Under continuous surveillance? How, exactly, do you expect them to react to becoming official second-class citizens? You think there might be any chance of that causing just a few additional radicalizations that wouldn’t have happened otherwise?
Even accepting nearly all your premises I would not take this trade. Why? Because islamic extremism is only the catalyst of the tyranny. The actual cause is our home grown tyrants.
After this campaign, it’s going to take the Republican party quite a while to wash off the stink. I don’t think they are going to increase their minority votes any time soon. Which probably means no more wins at the federal level. Thanks, Trump!
I am afraid that you will be wrong. The Republican party may attract more and more of the white vote. The danger is that we end up with a white party and a non-white party. Such a situation could lead to increase in political corruption.
From what I’ve read of the demographics, it’s already hard to assemble a “white party” that’s large enough to elect a president. That’s only going to get harder.
Actually, getting historical highs of minority support at the cost of whites is a losing proposition for Republicans for some time. Most of it is in states way into one camp or the other already (California and Texas). The place that votes are up for grabs in battleground states are in the Upper Midwest/Ohio/PA. Winning there is about winning over whites.
If you actually run the numbers the only hope for the Republicans in the next ten years is to get 65%+ of the white vote. Their only hope past ten years is to stop immigration and deport who they can.
Explicitly becoming the white party is the only way to win. A few minutes with the fwd.us election tool will prove this (ironic, huh).
Majority whites need to take down traitor whites and their imported mud slave caste that they are using to make up for the fact that white people don’t believe in them anymore.
http://www.fwd.us/gopfuture
Trump has a more diverse set of supporters than any other Republican candidate. Heck, he has a more diverse set of supporters than Bernie Sanders. Of course, we should take that in context of the fact that Democrats still generally have a larger support among minorities than Republicans do, but it is clear that the narrative of Trump as being the “white” candidate has some holes.
Count me as another troglodyte who doesn’t see such a policy as that big a deal. The aim is to eliminate Type II errors, even at the expense of a lot of Type I errors. I would agree with the previous commenter that the cost of even a few Type II errors is really high and the cost of a lot of Type I errors is in fact pretty low.
Furthermore, I do not think a parallel to the Japanese internment is apt. The Japanese were American citizens who should have been protected from such measures, at least absent some provocation, by the constitution, so their internment essentially represented a reneging on a promise or a willful violation of a prior agreement. That isn’t the situation here. Whatever promises the US government has made to foreign nationals, via treaties and the like, I think you’d have to agree those are not the same as promises made to citizens via constitutional law.
Minimizing your own exposure is also a goal and it could be that the global minima happens to occur where your friends benefit less than your enemies. Given that we cannot identify who is who, and even worse, today’s friends may be tomorrows enemies, minimizing your own exposure first may be the wisest strategy. Perhaps the ratio of enemies/friends in our country will be maximized under Trump’s plan, but as long as the absolute number of enemies is reduced to a minimum then our terrorism risk is as well.
If the absolute number of terrorists is minimized under Trump’s plan could it still be considered a practical failure?
This exactly what the Trump campaign does:
1) Trump says something very strong.
2) The rest of Republicans condemn Trump.
3) Trump walks back some of his policy statements
4) Trump continues to gain supporters.
It is fair to say Trump is popular for positions although it is probably not enough for the nomination. Still I find amazing that Trump can gain 30 – 40% of the Republicans though.
The Democrats are “helping” the cycle of insanity too. Now “Justice” is looking into whoever oppressed the kid who brought the bomb-looking-clock to see if there is any institutional racism- which there obviously must be because he was a de facto protected class who simply brought a clock. People can’t even tell this is stupid. I.e., no muslim kids other than ones bringing bomb-looking-clocks are persecuted for bringing bomb-looking-clocks to school. Plenty of white kids are suspended for biting their jelly sandwiches (zero tolerance for peanut butter in schools) into the shape of a pistol. So, did some marginal “racism” cause the teacher to flag the kid for bringing a terrorizing contraption to school? I don’t know. Maybe some teachers are just jerks. A lot of mine were.
Anyway, the point is that one side says any concern-based generalization over a group is unacceptable (except law-abiding, peaceful gun owners) and any profiling must be applied across the board. So, the other side takes the equally crazy opposite position.
If you can’t see the difference between not letting Saudi Arabians travel to the US and interning American citizens in camps, I’m pretty sure that Trump is not the one with bad judgment. It’s really quite dangerous to suggest an equivalence here.
Have you tried traveling to Saudi Arabia? It’s quite difficult. I went once and it was hard. My colleague wasn’t able to go (he is Jewish), but I suspect this setback was quite a bit easier than having his family’s property confiscated and being put in a camp because of his nationality. That’s just my suspicion though.
While it’s true that people make bad policy decisions, for example, you’re very unlikely to be a victim of Muslim terrorism, it seems like no one is good at making good decisions all around. For example, Muslim immigrants from certain countries are way, way more likely to commit acts of mass violence than people from other groups. Why ignore the latter analysis but not the former (or vice versa)? Why do we need radicalized immigrants from Saudi Arabia? What’s the benefit to outweigh the costs?
Right. The trouble is – as Haidt might say – that ‘costs vs. benefits’ talk goes out the window whenever you hit something political that has been elevated into the realm of the sacred and taboo.
With apologies to Voltaire, “To learn who rules over you, simply find out what you are not allowed to subject to a genuine cost-benefit analysis.”
Rule #1 – If the enemy’s main goal and only hope of victory is to recruit allies: stop helping them.
This is a way to express displeasure with those friends and neutrals. It may be counterproductive but does reinforce his image.
A travel ban on Muslims will do plenty of harm, and no good.
Muslim terrorists (and non-Muslim terrorists, for that matter), will be able to enter the US regardless of the travel ban because the DHS is incompetent.
The vast majority of Muslims (law-abiding non-terrorist) will be greatly inconvenienced.
We do have to acknowledge that the terrorists are exploting Western pluralism and maybe that can be used to our advantage. It is weird that the story is always oppression when the actual fact is the very reason these yahoos are here is we already don’t persecute anybody and never will to the extent they do.
Liberals wanting America to be an oppressor nation so bad they can taste it probably hasn’t helped.
Trump’s proposal is wrong on almost every dimension I can think of, but even one more attack in public of the scale and type of last week, and it won’t matter one whit- you can call the 2016 election for Trump. Trump placed his bet yesterday, and I think probable that he will win it. Every politician that immediately criticized it is now totally dependent on there not being another terrorist attack like it in the US, or even in Western Europe.
“Trump’s proposal is wrong on almost every dimension I can think of…”
Assume for a minute, that Trump’s proposal can be separated into citizens versus non-citizens (there was confusion on this point.) Non-citizens, i.e. immigrants who want to come to the U.S. have no constitutional rights outside of the U.S. — while applying for a visa in Arabia, or Malaysia, or Indonesia, or Iran, or U.A.E. you are a citizen of your respective country wanting to come to the U.S. to visit and/or immigrate — we in the U.S. owe you nothing and can restrict your access in any way we want. We can limit immigration to those who wear hats, to those who are over 5 feet, to those who are not Muslim — we have the power to choose who we want to let into this country.
Immigration to the U.S. is not a right.
Having said that, it is clear that people are not widgets, some immigrants are better for the U.S. than others (because some people are better than other people) and we would be wise to acknowledge these basic facts and tailor our immigration policies accordingly. Therefore, no more Muslims (because the Muslim religion is not compatible with Western Civilization — open your eyes people), no more low-skilled peasants from third world countries (because we have enough already and have a tough time assimilating the ones who are here), etc.
All of this is not difficult to figure out but is somehow confusing or difficult for our liberal elites to get a handle on.
Idiosyncratic exclusion is not a right either.
From 8 USC §1182:
“Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.”
(Quoted by Mark Krikorian in the National Review)
Ken
That isn’t a right. That obetbroad snippet in a very long statue would find its way to the Supreme Court and would likely lose Constitutional scrutiny as and religious test. But Trump has no real intention of doing that even if he got to be President, which he is even less likely to be now. He is bsing, and there is even time left for him to find even crazier things to say.
How about some gun laws with real teeth being enforced against the gun happy white Christians who actually commit the majority of murders in this country?
Of course not. Such laws would only alienate and radicalize more peace-loving white Christians, some of whom might, regrettably, lash out violently.
By whites I assume you meant blacks. I’ve pointed out before lumping blacks together of precrime is more statistically correct than gun owners. I don’t support either.
Also the BJS says blacks were 52.5% of homicide offenders from 1980-2005 so unless white people have gotten a lot more violent in the past 10 years you probably want to target your abusive gun control laws at black people to have the most effect.
What? Even disregarding the statistical ignorance of this statement (being that it would not be surprising if whites commit the majority of murders, given that they are the majority of the population) it is still flat out false. Whites do not commit the majority of murders (let alone White Christians who legally obtained guns).
Just compare Utah (a state) to Chicago (a city). Now, I don’t have the stats for this, but I am willing to bet that the majority of murders in Utah are committed by whites. Chicago does have some really strict gun control laws, whereas Utah does not. OK, where is safer to live?
Some trolls are better than others.
Even still, Trumps idea is surprisingly stupider.
> Even still, Trumps idea is surprisingly stupider.
As I understand it, Trump’s plan is to halt the immigration of non-citizen Muslims to the US. I am open to the possibility that it is a bad plan, but I am at a loss for how it could be a worse plan that attempting to systematically disarm the local population. Care to elaborate?
From his campaign website – “Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on. ” This has widely been mischaracterized as a simple act of prejudice and religious intolerance, rather than a prudent call for review of the immigration system and our potential exposure to Islamic terrorists. As we know, the Obama administration has no interest in any bars to immigration, legal or illegal; they are not even interested in barring illegal immigrant felons from deportation.
Notice that the Democrats and marginal GOP candidates are squealing about this. They do not want a close examination of immigration policy, so they smear Trump for a very reasonable balance of costs and benefits.
When exactly would we “figure this out?”
Muslims are violent clannish low IQ peasant trash that make everywhere they go a shithole. Forget the worst case scenario of terrorism. The BEST CASE is that they become disorderly welfare leeches that ruin neighborhoods, make life miserable for everyone around them in a thousand ways, and eventually vote in Sharia once they are a big enough part of the population.
Trump took a stand for beauty, truth, order, and justice today. If he succeeds at stopping third world trash from taking over demographically it will be the single most important accomplishment of any president.
There is no coming back from demographic apocalypse, no reversal of the greatest mistake a modern society can make. Germany could survive losing two world wars. It won’t survive being demographically replaced. Demographics may not be destiny all on their own, but they are a pre-requiste of destiny. If you don’t have the right genes, you lose, no matter what else you do.
It took thousands of years to build societies capable of bringing us out the the pre-industrial abyss to live in a world where the vast majority of lives aren’t “nasty, brutish, and short.” That there are those that would send us back there simply so they don’t get called “racist” is a great evil.
It makes better immigration policy than security policy. That is looking on the bright side!
Prediction time: Trump will keep saying crazy garbage as long as it is working but as soon as he reaches that point of diminishing nuttiness a contender will emerge. As soon as that happens Trump will drop out.
Another discussion in a similar vein.
http://blog.dilbert.com/post/134791529391/risk-management-trump-persuasion-series
I think the sane debate might center around people who are allowed to come to the USA and become citizens or get on the track toward citizenship.
Individual persons don’t seem to be interchangeable. A Bayesian approach can add value at the margins.
I was re-reading Thomas Sowell’s _Intellectuals and Society_ this past week, and he said something about intellectuals preference for settling controversial policy issues based on large theoretical considerations, rather than based on the “mundane specifics” of the matter.
The more we investigate the “mundane specifics” of the matter, the saner our immigration and refugee / asylum and citizenship policies will be. The mundane specifics matter because people differ, and it’s a big world. Kabul is not like Scarsdale, for example.
The “mundane specifics” center not just on comparing data on (for example) the last 100,000 Fredonian immigrants in America to the last 100,000 Polivitsian immigrants, but comparing the apparent life trajectories of their descendants in the USA.
A variety of provocative viewpoints exist if we are willing to read widely–and not all of them should be summarily rejected because they offend our sensibilities.
Hard-headed analysis seems to be almost taboo. Not only is dispassionate analysis taboo, but all too often thinking out loud about the topic seems to involve risk.
Future reading:
What you can’t say by Paul Graham. web essay at paulgraham.com
Europe’s angry Muslims by Robert Leiken , Oxford University Press, ca. 2012.
Blog essays at Unz.com, including but not limited to anything written by “JayMan” or Peter Frost. Alas, they are bloggers and thus not peer reviewed.
Steve Sailer has proposed that the USA institute an “National Immigration Safety Board” similar to the one that investigates plane crashes. Why shouldn’t we have one? Is that a bad idea? If not, why not?