The things my kids say

My son just asked me if we can AirBNB our house while we evacuate for the hurricane (we’re currently leaning towards sticking Matthew out).

Is it ok to have a purposeless military?

I believe this is a common sense proposition. You should never define a military force without it having a purpose.

You would think that there would be nobody on the other side of this question. Who would do such a crazy thing as to define a military force, but just have them milling around without a purpose or a mission? It’s ridiculous. Or is it?

10USC311

(a) The militia of the United States consists of all able-bodied males at least 17 years of age and, except as provided in section 313 of title 32, under 45 years of age who are, or who have made a declaration of intention to become, citizens of the United States and of female citizens of the United States who are members of the National Guard.
(b) The classes of the militia are—
(1) the organized militia, which consists of the National Guard and the Naval Militia; and
(2) the unorganized militia, which consists of the members of the militia who are not members of the National Guard or the Naval Militia.

What is the purpose of the military force called the unorganized militia? What is their mission? What is its proper scope of activity? I think that even people who generally support the 2nd amendment do not have a consensus and certainly have not thought much about it.

As an aside, it’s straight up sexism for female citizens to be included in only one of these two forces. A smart Republican would introduce legislation to fix that.

US Immigration defined

Immigration is defined in law in a pretty straightforward manner. If you cross US borders, you are defined as an immigrant unless you fit into one of twenty two different non-immigrant categories defined in 8USC §1101(a)(15). Each letter subsection of that section corresponds to the more familiar letter codes for non-immigrant visas. Most people are not familiar with all of them but the definitions aren’t particularly complex or confusing. If you’re seeking to cross the border as an immigrant, there are several sections under 8USC Subchapter II that apply. If you are a citizen, you’ve got to have a passport to leave or return.

Neither side in the immigration debate seems to want to lay out, specifically, what sections of the law they wish to change and how exactly they want to change it. Are there extremist imams getting R visas and endangering the safety of americans (mostly muslims)? That’s not the way we talk about immigration. Why,exactly, is the secretary of Labor involved in the issuance of visas?

We’d be a lot better off if discussion of the law had a lot more law in it.

There is no such thing as immigration

Immigration is like darkness. It is the absence of something, not something in and of itself. It is a partial restoration of the state of nature.

The natural state of man is that we move as we please. We stop people from moving as they or we please for various reasons. These stopping points are generally, but not exclusively called borders. Borders are not permanent. They can be moved, erased, reconstituted again. As any observer of Europe will note it can happen quickly and pretty often. Borders do not have to be impermeable. They can have exceptions to the rules. When people are peacefully allowed to cross borders permanently according to the will of the people controlling the border as an exception to the general rule of no crossings, it’s called immigration. Since most borders are controlled by more than one group, the exiting group often calls it a different term than the entry group.

You cannot create a proper system of exceptions to a rule without understanding why the rule exists. But ask people who have strong opinions on immigration why borders exist and more times than not, they haven’t considered the question at all. You could intuit why we have borders by the exceptions but almost nobody does, not even immigration restrictionists. We’re all playing the old game of blind men feeling the elephant and having opinions as to what it is.

The dividing line between free expression of religion and free speech

Clemson University has stepped into controversy by enforcing its free speech zone on a clear case of religious expression. An off campus preacher came on campus to invite students to pray with him. This was shut down as a violation of the university policy requiring an approval process and limiting activity to free speech zones. Unfortunately for Clemson, what was going on was not solely free speech. It was free exercise of religion as well.

Clemson University’s overall rating of respect of individual rights in education is low. It is rated red by FIRE (its lowest rating) but not for its facility policy which is marked green (FIRE’s highest rating). According to a Clemson official in their media relations department, there is no restrictive policy on religious expression just like there is no restrictive policy on freedom of the press. So why is Clemson able to restrict religious expression but not journalism under their free speech zone policy?

At posting time, there is no answer.