Name Our Graphic Novel!

I vote against #1, the “All roads” title. I find it a little confusing. My brain wonders, “which roads??”

I slightly prefer #3 to #2, as it’s more engaging and less encyclopedic.

Other possibilities:

• Why open borders will make your life better: more customers, more workers, and more citizens
• The science and ethics of immigration
• Why open borders will make your country and your life better: the science and ethics of immigration
• Open borders will make your country and your life better: why this is true and how it would work
• Immigration is better than you think: The case for open borders

How about simply, “Open Borders: The Right Thing To Do.”

If you are going to add something like, “The Science and Ethics of Immigration,” at the end, then I think “The Science and Ethics of the/our Freedom to Move,” is better.

“The Final Frontier: The Science & Ethics of Immigration”

I think “Tear Down These Walls!: The Science and Ethics of Immigration”.

As MikeP pointed out, “open borders” means drastically different things to you than it does to the people I hope you are writing to persuade. If you are just trying to signal to people who already agree with you, use the term “open borders”. Otherwise, avoid it.

“Tear Down These Walls” signals that you are for allowing trade in services and labor, but not for subsidizing immigration for political gains (which is how many on the right interpret “open borders”).

As a plus, it hearkens back to Reagan and anti-communism while not being an immediate turn-off to progressives.

I have a wonderful, radical idea that vastly improve the economy.

First, professors should be bared from having any input on who is hired at any university. All professional qualifications should be removed from getting a position as a professor. Anyone who wants to teach must be hired with benefits. Absolutely no questions about the applicants beliefs would be permissible; however, this is not really an issues since anyone who chooses would be a professor and would be teaching the students.

Second, all admission requirements should be removed as well as graduation requirements, and grading should also be eliminated for everyone in the world. All additional cost must be born by the university; however, the costs will be reduced from increasing the pool of available professors, so win / win. It goes without saying that the subsidies should be provided based on family income, including housing, healthcare, food, etc. Any additional students must be accommodated by the existing professors who must donate their time, since this is the only moral solution.

Third, the students should decide the bylaws and regulations of the university. The students should have full control over what is taught, how it is taught, what professors spend their time on etc., since this is the only moral, democratic option.

Imagine the benefit if everyone in the United States or the world could have the same economic outcomes as graduates for Harvard, Yale or George Mason. This can be done without any externalities. All we have to do force the immoral, greedy, nativist professors to comply, such as by someone like the current head of the department of education.

It is radical and it hasn’t been tried. We could eliminate world hunger, make me feel superior to others, and it would once again have absolutely no impact on the universities. I know what you are going to say: this is does not take into account why the students of Harvard are successful and your proposal is an over-simplistic solution that does not take into account any of the adverse side effects. I would reply that you lack the morals to truly respond because I have an economics degree and my certifications in IT, finance, and insurance make it easier for me to understand these complex subjects on how agglomeration impacts the economic development of regional economies. Lastly, do you not care about poor children? 😉

“Borders are super dumb”

Second vote for just “Tear Down These Walls,” no subtitle.

Do you know approximately when the publication date is? Immigration is next year’s high school debate topic, and I’d really like to have this as a primer for my students (especially as most of the stuff they’re going to get from camps will probably be either anti-capitalist identity politics or conservative anti-immigration arguments – I doubt they’ll have much exposure to pro-capitalist, pro-immigration positions).

roger:

I have an idea too. I will move in next to you and put a barbed wire fence surrounding the whole city block at your expense. Anyone wanting to enter will need my prior approval. If you invite someone without my approval, I will fine you and imprison your guest. I will tell you that this is all for your own good.

Here’s the point: Open borders doesn’t mean opposition to all exclusion. It means you and only you should be able to exclude people from your property. If you want to invite someone to come onto your property, neither I nor the government has any right to stop you from keeping the company you choose on your own property.

The subtitle makes it sound more like a journal article.

Walls: What Are They Good For?

Harry Potter and the Open Borders

Barriers to Prosperity: Subtitle of your choosing

Imaginary Lines: The Science and Ethics of Open Borders.

Following Cassiono….

“Borderless”

With a picture of a lone human striding across an open frontier.

Yearning to Breathe Free: The Unavoidable Virtue of Open Borders

The Tyranny of Borders

Mobility: The Right We’ve Forgotten

The Same Boat.

We know that Coolidge was worried by the idea that, as he said, “The slow and difficult advances which tolerance and liberalism have made through long periods of development are dissipated almost in a night when the necessary war-time habits of thought hold the minds of the people.”

And Coolidge could remember the Wilson administration. Wilson believed in harassment and censorship. Wilson was going to unite people by dividing them. Wilson thought that his ideals justified his intolerance and his high-handed indifference to the opinions of people who disagreed with him. Whereas Coolidge saw himself as a practical politician whose job it was to reassure voters and not just railroad them.

“Whether one traces his Americanism back three centuries to the Mayflower, or three years of the steerage, is not half so important as whether his Americanism of today is real and genuine. No matter by what various crafts we came here, we are all now in the same boat.”

But Coolidge specifically says that vicious criminals who behave like animals aren’t going to get the benefit of some kind of Sermon on the Mount from him. The president’s job isn’t to turn the other cheek and say that we are all God’s children regardless of our actions.

“I make no plea for leniency toward those who are criminal or vicious, are open enemies of society and are not prepared to accept the true standards of our citizenship. By tolerance I do not mean indifference to evil. I mean respect for different kinds of good.”

He’s talking up a positive idea of a community, which is very different from making a hand-wringing plea for forgiveness. If America or Europe or the West is, depending on who is denouncing it, uniquely evil and deserving of punishment, then that’s a different message. When a Swedish PM says that Swedes are “boring” or when British politicians can’t bring themselves to say anything positive about Britain beyond its being open to people born outside British borders, then that’s counterproductive.

Coolidge thought that Americans should be proud of America. He thought this was a privilege to celebrate.

“It is one of the glories of our country that we all have the privilege of being Americans. Some of us were born here of an ancestry that has lived here for generations. Others of us were born abroad and brought here at a tender age, or have come to these shores as a result of mature choice. But when once our feet have touched this soil, when once we have made this land our home, wherever our place of birth, whatever our race, we are all blended in one common country. All artificial distinctions of lineage and rank are cast aside. We all rejoice in the title of Americans.”

Campus nationalists don’t approve of that word “blended” or the words “one common country.” Cable pundits would fall over themselves denouncing Coolidge as a Nazi now, not for having signed the Immigration Act of 1924, but just for the words “one common country” alone. Identity politics is the continuation of war by other means, so it makes people intolerant and illiberal. And if that’s the goal then journalists and teachers and comedians are doing an excellent job of dividing people into angry tribes.

But Coolidge had the practical good sense to understand that rage and hatred are unproductive and that Manichean divisiveness isn’t the way of peace and prosperity.

“You bore aloft a standard of patriotic conduct and civic integrity to which all could repair. Such a standard, with a like common appeal, must be upheld just as firmly and unitedly now in time of peace. Among citizens honestly devoted to the maintenance of that standard there need be small concern about differences of individual opinion in other regards. Granting first the essentials of loyalty to our country and to our fundamental institutions, we may not only overlook but we may encourage differences of opinion as to other things. For differences of this kind will certainly be elements of strength rather than of weakness. They will give variety to our tastes and interests. They will broaden our vision, strengthen our understanding, encourage the true humanities, and enrich our whole mode and conception of life.”

I agree that using the term “open borders” in the title is misleading because most people assume it means no borders and immediately dismiss it and the horse it came in on. “Tear Down These Walls” and “Yearning to Breathe Free” both sound great.

So far, my favorite by far is “Imaginary Lines: The Science and Ethics of Open Borders.”

I also love Nicholas’ idea of a title connected to the idea of graphic novels, and I think that “Imaginary Lines” actually works with that – some kind of drawing of a line slowly fading out as people look on it, or something more imaginative 🙂

Open Borders: The Case for Free Migration

As a long-time open borders advocate, I have to say I don’t think the connotations of imaginary or disappearing lines work well.

Those borders are not imaginary. They represent the maximum extent of some other country’s laws and enforcement, and therefore are very real and very important. Even if the US were an anarchy, it would have borders and would protect those borders to prevent terrorists, contagion, and armies from crossing them.

One of the persistent objections to open borders is that it surrenders national sovereignty. The counterargument is that the whole point of sovereignty is to prevent governments from crossing those very real borders, not to prevent people or goods from crossing them.

The Costliest Walls on Earth: How Immigration Restrictions Decrease Wealth and Human Happiness

Tear Down These Walls: The Science and Ethics of Open Borders
is hands down the better title.

early Patr(e)on of Zach

Free to move