One of the things that’s becoming clear is the determination of the Trump administration to divide humans living in the United States into two groups (to whom Wilhoit’s Law applies), citizens and immigrants. Actually it is a bit more complicated than that, because some of the legal citizens are, in reality, at best some sort of semi-citizen,1 but let’s keep things simple for now. What I want to focus on is how incompatible this is with the notion of a free society, indeed with a free society even as those on the political right have historically seen it.
The Trumpists think they have a discretionary right to deport immigrants for wrongthink and wrongspeech, for taking part in a pro-Palestine demonstration, but also for writing a newspaper article, making a social media post, sharing a social media post, even liking one. They think that such people have no right not to be snatched off the street by goon squads. And they think that when immigrants face deportation for wrongthink they should have no right to contest the decisions made about them. The US courts may yet disagree with the Trumpists about these matters, but we’ll see.
Immigrants are people. Sorry for insisting on a truism, but I say it not just to argue that they have rights as humans, but also to make a point about their behaviour. US citizens are people too. And as people do, individuals in these two groups will barter and truck, fuck, form romantic ties, break bread, get drunk together, study together, worship together, share and dispute ideals, like and dislike books, operas, tv shows. Et cetera. You can’t monitor and control the activities of the individuals in one of these groups without monitoring and controlling the activities of the people in the other group who are in millions of cases the counterparties to their transactions and attachments.2
One of the marks of a free society, at least as many liberals and conservatives have insisted, is that it is composed of smaller societies through which much of its life is conducted.3 Associations, clubs, universities, schools, families, and so forth. Those societies have a life of their own and the wider society of which they form a part loses its own freedom and vitality when the state subordinates their inner life to its own purposes. Not that all such regulation is bad: some is necessary for justice and equality and even child protection (cf Brighouse and Swift)4. But overdo it and you create not a free society but a totalitarian one. Though immigrants may not be full legal and political members of the big society, they are often full and equal participants in the smaller ones and, as such, they need to be able to argue, express, consent, dissent, voice and exit just as the other members do. The smaller societies can’t function properly if they are composed of some people with rights and some people without them. Every member needs to hear what other members say and when some people can’t express themselves for fear of the consequences that not only destroys the inner life of society but also leaves individuals open to blackmail and exploitation.
As the United States slides into totalitarianism, there’s not much that anyone can say in a blog post that will prevent the worst. But if it is, at least, to stand as a warning to other societies that want to retain such freedom as they have, then we had better notice that the casual assumption that a neat quasi-natural divide can be drawn between citizens and immigrants isn’t limited to the US, it is the routine unthinking blather of politicians in Europe and elswhere, and not just on the extreme right. And if and when the bad times come and the immigrants get targeted, that will harm not just the direct objects of xenophobic policies but also all of the individuals who live lives entwined with theirs, some of whom will doubtless find their own status reclassified.
- Elizabeth Cohen, Semi-Citizenship in Democratic Poltics (Cambridge 2014). ↩
- Here I am just channeling the arguments of Chandran Kukathas’s superb Immigration and Freedom (Princeton 2021), which everyone should read. ↩
- Can you get more conservative than Burke with his “little platoons”? See also Tocqueville, Durkheim, Hegel, etc. ↩
- Harry Brighouse and Adam Swift, Family Values (Princeton, 2016). ↩
{ 29 comments… read them below or add one }
CHETAN R MURTHY 03.29.25 at 6:22 pm
I had two thoughts to add:
(1) the US Constitution grants many rights not to -citizens-, but to -persons-. IIUC correctly, that’s the legal term of art. Which is why and how the govt can deport an immigrant green card holder at customs: ostensibly, they have not been admitted to the US, hence are not persons under the Constitution. What Trump is doing is blatantly illegal and violates precedent going back forever.
(2) In William Sheridan Allen’s The Nazi Seizure of Power: The Experience of a Single German Town, 1922-1945, he describes how the Nazis stifled civil society by installing their apparatchiks into every civil-society organization: every union, social club howsoever innocuous, etc. As you say, “you create not a free society but a totalitarian one”
Jeremija Krstic 03.29.25 at 7:59 pm
I believe this is primarily about Palestine, and only tangentially about immigrants. The US federal government desperately wants to protect and preserve their client entity in Palestine. For that purpose they want to punish everyone advocating/protesting against that entity. They will do this by any and all means at their disposal. They will cut the funding of the universities allowing protests, and they will harass individual protesters. And this is where the immigration/citizenship status comes into play: it’s easier to harass non-citizens than citizens. But I suspect they will use any other leverage too.
J, not that one 03.29.25 at 10:14 pm
My interpretation of Frank Wilhoit’s use of his “law” is that he specifically was speaking of Republicans or conservatives vis-a-vis other American citizens. But maybe “immigrants” is the perfect category for this use: people who are always going to be applicants and will never be full members. (Though psychotherapy always is available to undercut any such statement, declaring it to be a neurotic phantasy, and the exclusion to have been imagined by the patient.)
The OP is interesting, but at the moment (from the US, and having been reading a little more widely recently) I’m not seeing how useful this line of thought is. What if we could go back in time and ensure that the United States was established as a society (both formal and informally) according to some theory? Then we wouldn’t have the problems the theory was formed to fix or explain away! I’m also not seeing consideration of how one’s words are received and used by those who read them and take them seriously (not specifically by Chris Bertram but in general). Is this a description of reality or a description of an ideal? Is it a description of a society that works better than the US does or a description of the United States itself? Is it a description of the entire country, or is it a description of some people who are good people and excludes people who disagree with the theory underlying it? And what about all the other thinkers and schools of thought out there? Maybe I should do some kind of survey of which are actually influential and powerful in my own world rather than wishing I were English (or whatever). At any rate, we’re not now in a position to do anything much with those kinds of ideas I think.
Immigrants are people, the US Constitution absolutely forbids the way they’re acting, these are things that are true. The corporate structure referenced in the OP has no real place in mainstream American thought is also true (which is not to say that there’s only the state and individuals, to conclude this would involve a massive error in logic). One of these seems relevant right onwards and the other may be relevant, but how is not at all clear.
JPL 03.29.25 at 10:28 pm
In their thinking the Trump administration seems to be equivocating on the notion of ‘rights’. Something like the right to vote pertains to an act that has a specific function in the political system, and is not a general ethical principle that in any ethical system must apply universally, so it can be restricted to citizens. But, e.g., the right to due process on the other hand is a part of the “rule of law principle”, where any person affected by the laws of the land is equivalent to every other person so affected, and can’t be restricted only to citizens or to any other subgroup, and “persons” is the term with “universal” reference. If animals could talk, they would demand to be included. A constitutional law expert could state the distinction more effectively, perhaps, but I thought an attempt should be made to express it. Odd that we have a government entirely staffed by people who either don’t understand this distinction, or think that people won’t notice that they are ignoring it. All persons residing in the US have a right to due process; all persons living in any country have a right to due process. Sometimes recognition of rights has to be demanded.
Alex SL 03.29.25 at 11:44 pm
A key issue in this will be for both Americans and for the USA’s traditional allies around the world to figure out and accept what they are dealing with. There is a lot of denial around, both by those who are in favour of what is happening but don’t want to admit what they are and by those who are horrified but find it more comforting to convince themselves that it is all a mistake, and things will get back to normal in two or four years.
In particular, a lot of people have convinced themselves that, even if departments are shut down illegally and science is defunded illegally and immigrants are being deported illegally, all is fine as long as there is a heavily gerrymandered election every four years. I am increasingly certain that most people at a very basic level do not grasp concepts like conflicts of interest, due process, and the rule of law.
What is happening here is worse even than “There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect”, because the Trumpists do not even accept laws to the degree outlined in that quote. To them, the law isn’t a useful tool to bind the poor and dissidents, it doesn’t even register in their model of the world. If you are on their side, you can commit financial fraud and corruption and are safe from investigation and/or get a presidential pardon. If you are not on their side, goons can drag you away to a prison camp, or your organisation gets illegally defunded, or the company you work for gets illegally excluded. If a judge decides against them, they ignore the ruling. You and what army?
Perhaps not half, but a plurality of US-Americans now think entirely in terms of us-versus-them. As Trump’s policies begin to bite, social media are full of screenshots from MAGA forums and “X” where Trumpists complain, and it is extremely revealing how they nearly all fall into one of three categories:
‘I have voted for Trump three times and still fully support him in every way, but I lost my job at (government department). I know he only wants to fire The Bad Ones, so there must have been a mistake. Please repost so that Trump sees this and gives me back my job.’ I would call this the ‘abusive relationship’ category. The logic is that because I am on Trump’s side, I should have special protections. There are no rules or laws, only whether or not I am on the right team.
‘I fully support Trump but am having growing concerns. I cannot discuss this with my family because they are liberals, so obviously biased. Can you help me understand what is going on?’ The ‘clearly a cult’ category.
‘I voted for Trump so that he hurts the liberals/foreigners/immigrants, but his tariffs are hurting me too, and I didn’t vote for that.’ In other words, sociopathy and a complete void of empathy for others. There are no rules or laws, only a desire to see others suffer for being different.
Nowhere to be found: genuine understanding and admittance that the policies are bad even if they would affect only others but not me. This is all somewhat puzzling to me, because I tend to think that fairness, the idea that everybody should be held to the same rules, is a very deep instinct in all of us; but apparently, that instinct has no chance against being in a cult. Perhaps that instinct will still, in the end, be a lever that can be used as part of a backlash: “it is not fair” to proclaim that there is freedom of speech and then punish those, and only those, who speak against you. A lot of people outside of the cult will get that.
But right now we all have to understand and accept that a movement has taken over the USA that has much fewer moral principles than traditional conservatives, and that it has less respect for law and rules than even most other dictatorships, who, while wielding the law to maintain their grasp on power, at least understand that they have to be reliable partners if they want to maintain alliances and provide reliable governance if they want a functioning economy.
KT2 03.30.25 at 2:51 am
“As the United States slides into totalitarianism, there’s not much that anyone can say in a blog post that will prevent the worst. But if it is, at least, to stand as a warning to other societies that want to retain such freedom as they have,”…
Frank Withoit speaks.
Hope you comment Frank.
No spoilers.
“Lur the Trifling”
Frank Wilhoit
2025-02-10 08:28
https://www.broadheath.com/posts/lur-the-trifling/
@1 “What Trump is doing is blatantly illegal and violates precedent going back forever.”
Not forever. And illegal yes. Law firms have capitulated too. The Supremes? To late it seems whatever they say. And Musk’s, Larry Ellison’s, RJ Reynolds etc law firm writes Delaware rule book. They boast about it.
The Atlantic soon? Most of the centibillionaire owned news has self censored. Not so the…
“The Münchener Post (Engl. Munich Post)… was a socialist newspaper published in Munich, Germany, from 1888 to 1933. … “It was shut down by Hitler in March 1933 immediately after he became the Reich Chancellor.”
…
“Post-war importance to the Holocaust
“In the 50th anniversary addition of the Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, Ron Rosenbaum discusses how the Post tried to expose the Nazi Party’s plans of mass genocide and extermination of European Jews in the early 30s, to no avail.
“It was the Post that discovered and published on December 9, 1931, a secret Nazi Party post-takeover plan for the Jews in which can be found the first known use of the Nazi party euphemism for genocide – “Endlösung,” Final Solution.”
—?Ron Rosenbaum, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Münchener_Post
“Against Normalization: The Lesson of the “Munich Post”
“Ron Rosenbaum on what the media can learn from the prescient “Munich Post.”
By Ron Rosenbaum
February 5, 2017
…
“And in their biggest, most shamefully ignored scoop, on December 9, 1931, the paper found and published a Nazi party document planning a “final solution” for Munich’s Jews — the first Hitlerite use of the word “endlösung” in such a context. Was it a euphemism for extermination? Hitler dissembled, so many could ignore the grim possibility.
“The Munich Post lost and Germany came under Nazi rule — but, in a sense, the paper had also won; they were the only ones who had figured out just how sinister Hitler and the Nazis were.
…
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/normalization-lesson-munich-post/
Ken_L 03.30.25 at 7:38 am
MAGA Republicans seem to me to view the issues in terms of property rights. Real Americans™ “own” America. Consequently they not only have the rights to decide who else is allowed to visit, but to kick them out whenever they like, without having to give a reason. Talk of non-citizens having “rights” makes them incoherent with righteous indignation.
The new development that intrigues me is the insistence that judges have no right to interfere with the actions of the executive government. Trump was elected and they weren’t; Trump is doing what We The People elected him to do; judges trying to stop him are exceeding their authority. This novel interpretation of the role of the judiciary has been promoted by one MAGA voice after another from the White House and the Attorney General’s office down. Like so many other things this regime has done, it is quintessential totalitarian ideology.
Matt 03.30.25 at 7:57 am
I believe this is primarily about Palestine, and only tangentially about immigrants.
There are at least some cases that have nothing to do with Palestine. Kseniia Petrova is a clear example. It’s hard to know what, exactly, is going on in her case, but hers, and some others, show that this isn’t only about Palestine. What does seem to be the case is that certain non-governmental bodies (the “Canary Project” and perhaps some others) have been given a lot of influence on picking out targets, and these have been heavily focused on Palestine/Israel. But there’s no good reason to think that it will stop there, or that other interest groups won’t be given a go, too.
But also, we shouldn’t assume this sort of thing is, or will be, limited to the US. The vile Peter Dutton has been making noises about wanting the power to strip citizenship from undesirable dual citizens in Australia if he were elected, for example. And even the Labor Party here has been willing to say it will investigate and perhaps revoke the immigration status of some people in Australia who push the boundaries of acceptable speech.
J-D 03.30.25 at 8:08 am
In the UK, there’s a tradition observed in debate in the House of Commons of not mentioning the House of Lords by name. Instead, it’s referred to as ‘another place’ or ‘the other place’. Correspondingly, the tradition in debate in the House of Lords is to refer to the House of Commons as ‘another place’ or ‘the other place’.
There’s a similar tradition (I have no idea whether there’s a connection) at the two ancient English universities: at Oxford, ‘the other place’ means Cambridge and at Cambridge it means Oxford.
I suppose some people might think traditions of this kind are childish. These places have names, why not use them? Some people might not know what ‘the other place’ means and might get confused.
J-D 03.30.25 at 8:15 am
I suggest you reflect on this: if there actually were an instinct of the kind you imagine and it worked the way you imagine as powerfully as you imagine, then how could it be that people treat each other unfairly as much as they do? People disagree a lot about what’s fair and what’s unfair, even though they mostly seem to understand each other’s meanings when they disagree; that suggests to me that people’s instincts about fairness are both powerfully alike in some ways and powerfully different in some ways. I don’t find that especially puzzling.
J-D 03.30.25 at 8:24 am
It’s not so entirely unprecedentedly novel as might be supposed. It would have had some familiarity to the Stuart kings, and to the majority of judges who ruled in favour of the king in the Ship Money case, although a similar position being staked out in favour of an elected executive would not have been so familiar to them.
LFC 03.30.25 at 1:10 pm
I have not much idea what ‘J, not that one’ @3 is talking about. Or rather, I think ‘J, not that one’ has misread the OP.
She says that “the corporate structure referenced in the OP has no real place in mainstream American thought.” What the OP is talking about is the role of groups and associations that are part of any non- authoritarian or non-totalitarian society. I’m sure that with a little research one could find plenty of “mainstream” American social theorists who have written about this fairly standard point. Dennis Wrong’s The Problem of Order: What Unites and Divides Society comes to mind, and also Amitai Etzioni, Robert Putnam, and Robert Bellah, and probably Talcott Parsons as well, just to name a few.
J, not that one 03.30.25 at 2:15 pm
What’s interesting is that for years the ruling ideology of the people providing judges to the most extreme Republicans declared that it was in favor of allowing absolute power to the legislature and preventing Democratic presidents from pursuing the goals they were elected to attain, on the ground that only legal means would be to have the legislature pursue those goals. Now they’re permitting the president to overrule laws passed by Congress. They haven’t given a rationale but the obvious reason given their other actions is that they were lying all along and wanted only to destroy the government by corroding the processes that maintain it, and replace it with one they preferred.
J, not that one 03.30.25 at 3:52 pm
LFC, I’m interpreting the OP in terms of other books I’ve read in the same line. I think there are problems with it (and related but different ones with Bellah) and if you want to offer your own interpretation go ahead. Obviously if you read my comment you don’t expect me to discuss it here.
Anyone who hasn’t read Habits of the Heart and is under the impression Bellah was doing serious scholarship should pick it up however. Also, anyone who thinks it supports what LFC says it does.
Jeremija Krstic 03.30.25 at 5:53 pm
“Kseniia Petrova is a clear example.”
Is she? I haven’t heard of her before, and what I read just now (ABC) says this:
“A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that Petrova was lawfully detained after “lying to federal officers about carrying biological substances into the country.”
“Messages found on her phone revealed she planned to smuggle the materials through customs without declaring them,” the spokesperson said. “She knowingly broke the law and took deliberate steps to evade it.””
I don’t know if this situation is unusual; but I suspect it probably isn’t. This is what I do know: an acquaintance of mine in the US, he and his family had green cards. His teenage son gets in trouble with drugs, and is given a choice: criminal prosecution or his green card canceled, he leaves the country and never comes back. He chooses to leave, end of story. This happened something like 20 years ago.
So, punishment for a prosecutable criminal offense (the Petrova situation) by canceling visa or residency has been a thing for a long time. It’s canceling visa for clearly non-criminal speech what is new. Do you have an example where the speech in question is not Palestine-related?
Chris Bertram 03.30.25 at 7:00 pm
I’m happy to confirm LFC’s reading of the OP.
J, not that one 03.30.25 at 7:14 pm
Chris, thanks. I’ll tell the people who use the idea of “institutions” as a weapon against liberalism and probably are cheering Trump on either publicly or privately.
Alex SL 03.30.25 at 7:31 pm
J-D,
If you doubt the existence of an instinct for fairness, I invite you to try giving sweets to only four out of a group of five children, perhaps at Halloween or something. Or maybe celebrate an achievement of your team at work but try to exclude one team member from the celebration or reward. The problem is not that this instinct isn’t part of us, but that it has to compete with other instincts such as selfishness and protecting one’s ego.
Ray Vinmad 03.30.25 at 9:12 pm
“MAGA Republicans seem to me to view the issues in terms of property rights. Real Americans™ “own” America. Consequently they not only have the rights to decide who else is allowed to visit, but to kick them out whenever they like, without having to give a reason. Talk of non-citizens having “rights” makes them incoherent with righteous indignation.”
They have been –just as with racism–given a psychic wage that gives them a sense of superiority over others that repays them for whatever deprivations are brought to them by the rich. Trump to them is ‘doing a good job.’ It doesn’t matter what happens to the economy or anything else in their lives. He affirms them by affirming they have something that other people don’t have. What’s the point of having citizenship if anyone who is not a citizen gets (almost) the same things you do?
Trump has made ‘being a citizen’ seem like a very nice perk, a bonanza even. America can be a more exclusive club.
This is one of the things people like about fascism–the pro-fascist observer gets reaffirmed as lucky or special because bad things are happening to other people but not to them. The worse those things are, the luckier they will feel. Trump and Musk can rob them blind–and are doing this with social security and other public goods–and they will feel paid because their membership in the club is exclusive again. At least for awhile. The novelty is going to wear off eventually. I don’t know if they will have extensive waves of persecution to keep the good feeling going or if they’ll get sick of it no matter what they do.
Matt 03.30.25 at 9:50 pm
Is she? I haven’t heard of her before, and what I read just now (ABC) says this:
“A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that Petrova was lawfully detained after “lying to federal officers about carrying biological substances into the country.”
“Messages found on her phone revealed she planned to smuggle the materials through customs without declaring them,” the spokesperson said. “She knowingly broke the law and took deliberate steps to evade it.””
Is she and example? Yes. Shoul you trust the DHS spokesperson? No. I’ve been following the case carefully, both for some persona l reasons, and on an old-fashioned list-serve for immigration law professors. (I’m one of those, though now in Australia rather than the US.) If she’d intended to smuggle the specimins, she must have been very dumb indeed, because they were in sizable, clearly noticable cool containers in her luggage. And, there was no clear reason to not declare them. The evidence from sources other than not trustworthy government officials strongly suggests that it was simply a mistake on her declaration. It is true that CBP officers (like the border forces of most contries) have a very larger amoung of discretion to allow entry or not. This is undesirable but not unusual. But the normal action in a case like this would be a fine of about $500, and perhaps the impounding of the specimens. Cancellation of the visa and detention would be a very unusual action in a case like this. Transfering her to a detention center in Louisiana (as has been done in some other cases) would be unusual in a case like this to a very high degree. So, this is a pretty clear case of how things are going wrong for immigrants in the US now, and because of that for many others, too, as noted by the post. If you focus in too narrowly, you’ll not see or understand what’s happening. The post itself is quite useful in that way.
I’ll note that the situation of your acquaintance’s son is differenet. Drug offences are specifially listed in the Immigration and Nationality Act as a ground for removal. The laws here (and, again, in most countries) are unduely harsh, but they are also clearly established and explicit. They are not closely analogous to this case, and so provide no support for your interpritation.
J-D 03.31.25 at 2:52 am
I do not have the opportunity to conduct either of these experiments, but I suspect you have not considered what would happen in either of those cases where the excluded individual belonged to a group which everybody else was accustomed to regard as inferior. If you reward everybody except the one who belongs to the outcast/oppressed/marginalised group, what do you imagine would be the reaction of the others? What would make you suppose that they would all regard it as unfair?
What, in short, is puzzling about the idea that what is universal is some kind of instinct for fairness, but what is not universal is the instinctive sense that it is unfair to dish out different treatment to aliens?
John Q 03.31.25 at 6:14 am
As recent examples have shown, the absence of rights applies to visitors, such as tourists, as well as immigrants. The focus has been on danger at the border[1], but it could be even worse once you are in the country. Saying the wrong thing too loudly in the presence of a DHS informer could land you in indefinite detention. See Russia, North Korea etc.
[1] I have kept this fairly quiet until now, but I was detained at the US border and deported by ICE, under the Obama Administration, due to a misreading of my paperwork. I got my visa restored and have visited again, but it’s imbued me with a hatred of border police in general and ICE in particular. I’m happy to mention it now, as I never plan to visit the US again.
wetzel-rhymes-with 03.31.25 at 11:08 am
Good post. Everybody likely identifies with its sense dismal hopelessness, and I don’t think that’s really about the Trump/Musk regime which is a politically hapless implosion that makes as many crises and they intend, so they may even scapegoat themselves. It’s the broader descent into madness we aren’t going to climb out of easily! A noose needs a neck, after all. You show how Trump uses immigrants, ‘citizens’ and ‘non-citizens’ as surrogate scapegoats in a broader cancellation of free society, which will produce totalitarianism.
Maybe Virgil was a totalitarian propagandist in the style of the new Russia. On the shield of Aeneas in his great epic poem, Virgil depicted the descent of Augustus from the royal family of Troy, the marriage of history and power in the decadent re-application of heroic myth. Victor Hugo said Virgil was a “velvet gloved panderer of dictators”. However, even in the Roman Empire there was habeas corpus. Approximately one third of the population was enslaved during that time in Rome, and often a citizen may often be picked up by accident as an escaped slave. How would you feel if you were crucified by mistake? It might take two or three days to get you down, and you don’t come back from that!
Ancient Roman tyranny was an unjust slave state, but there was the right of habeas corpus. Discipline and punishment were upon the body, the whip. The fasces symbolized a magistrate’s power and jurisdiction. It consisted of a bundle of rods, often with an axe, carried by attendants. In totalitarian societies where thoughtcrime may occur, such as Stalin’s Russia or Mao’s China, the symbol of execution isn’t a noose or a cross but the train. Disappearance is the symbol for the individual, and there is no habeas corpus. Trump’s war on immigrants is the cancellation of free society, but the end of habeas is the eschatological constitution of totalitarianism because it’s the end of law in its fundamental ontology as the social production of truth.
MisterMr 03.31.25 at 11:13 am
It seems to me that the main beef here is the idea that the executive can overrule the judiciary (and perhaps the legislative).
This was something that AFAIK happened under fascism, nazism and also under the soviets, so it is the sign of dictatorship IMHO.
This is also accepted by trumpists because they see themselves as revolutionaries of sorts, and thus the balance of powers thingie is seen as just a brake for their revolution.
On the general idea of fairness (RE Alex SL and J-D), the question is if we have some sort of natural, i.e. baboon brain level, blurry fairness instinct.
I’m no biologist but this kind of instinct would logically only apply towards individuals of the same pack, so only to “ingroups”.
If people who are pro-Trump see immigrants as “outgroups” they would likely not feel this instinct of fairness.
Also “groups” in the sense of a pack of baboons (more or less), so very small relative to the size of modern day society. So we have probably ideologies that tend to expand the size of the group, at an extreme to whole humanity, but at times to smaller but still big groups (all correligionary, all americans, all whites etc.), while on the other hand when someone is painted as an outgroup this is what we generally call “de-humanizing” (from a perspective of human rights, that implies that all humans should be ingroups).
wetzel-rhymes-with 03.31.25 at 2:59 pm
I love how if you google Francis M. Wilhoit it leads you to prominent political scientist and author Francis M. Wilhoit. In his Wikipedia entry you read:
This quotation is often incorrectly attributed to Francis M. Wilhoit:
However, it was actually a 2018 blog response by 59-year-old Ohio composer Frank Wilhoit, years after Francis Wilhoit’s death. And it was here at Crooked Timber! That’s funny. I’ll share this here. My real name is Albert Einstein, and I’m the one that said ‘Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.” It sucks to get no credit.
LFC 03.31.25 at 6:09 pm
Re certain comments above:
— John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (first edition), sec. 79 (“The Idea of Social Union”), pp. 522, 525, 526, 527
Jeremija Krstic 03.31.25 at 6:43 pm
@Matt 20,
“Should you trust the DHS spokesperson? No. ”
I do trust the DHS spokesperson in that they are ready to charge her with “lying to federal officers”, which is a felony, as I learned from the 2017 Michael Flynn case. It’s a felony, same as that drug case 20 years ago. The only difference I see is that the drug case was probably a state case (Massachusetts), while “lying to federal officers” is federal, which is, I believe, much worse for the defendant.
Matt 03.31.25 at 8:26 pm
I do trust the DHS spokesperson in that they are ready to charge her with “lying to federal officers”, which is a felony, as I learned from the 2017 Michael Flynn case. It’s a felony, same as that drug case 20 years ago. The only difference I see is that the drug case was probably a state case (Massachusetts), while “lying to federal officers” is federal, which is, I believe, much worse for the defendant.
A few points here. First, if this is what she’ll be charged with, it’s even more an example of what Chris is talking about, not less. It would be extremely unusual to charge someone in her situation with this crime. Doing so would represent a massive increase in punitive power used against immigrants. As noted, the normal approach here would be a $500 fine. Think of all the people who have brought in a piece of fruit, or more than 1L of alcohol, w/o declaring it. This approach would make that a felony. It is obviously a wild increase.
Second, for immigration purposes, what matters isn’t state for federal crime. What matters is how the crime is dealt with in the Immigration and Nationality Act. (This has lead to some bizarre outcomes, where a state midemeanor is treated as an “aggrevated felony” for immigration purposes.) So again, the comparisons you’re making are not really relevant.
Immigration law is complicated and tricky, but trying to understand it from news releases usually isn’t a good approach, and you’re going astray here, I think.
Alex SL 03.31.25 at 8:30 pm
J-D,
Those are the conversations that puzzle me the most.
Me: Humans have an instinct for fairness, which one could perhaps play upon to make voters see how unfair Trumpism is, but it competes with other instincts.
You: No, you are wrong; “what is universal is some kind of instinct for fairness” but (example of it competing with another instinct).
Not sure how I can make myself clearer, but you vehemently disagree with me while seemingly having no disagreement with me.