In my blog post yesterday, I pointed out some of the questions that have long befuddled me in my life as a libertarian: Why is it that so many Americans continue to support America's immigration-control system in the face of at least 80 years of manifest failure? Is there anything that could ever convince Americans that their immigration-control system will never work? If they were to be convinced that this system would never — and could never — work, would they abandon it in favor of open borders, the only immigration system that does work? Or would they continue to support it notwithstanding its continued and perpetual failure to achieve its goal?

In a larger sense, I think the answers to those questions might lie in the longtime commitment of 20th-century and 21st-century Americans to socialism. You see this unwavering commitment to socialism in such socialist programs as Social Security and Medicare. Despite the fact that these two programs, along with "defense" expenditures, are the principal factors heading the federal government into bankruptcy, most Americans, including some libertarians, simply will not let them go. That's because they're convinced that the nation would collapse without them. That's what socialism has done to people's minds. It is an insidious philosophy. 

I could also point to public (i.e., government) schooling, which is the crown jewel of socialism at the state level. Despite its manifest failure to educate, as most everyone acknowledges, and the adverse effect it has had on students with its Army-lite system of regimentation, conformity, obedience, mandatory attendance, and taxation, most Americans, including many libertarians (who have committed their lives to supposedly improving the state's schooling system with vouchers), simply will not let go of educational socialism. 

It's no different with America's system of immigration controls, which, like Social Security, Medicare, and public schooling, is a classic socialist program. That's because it is based on the socialist principle of central planning. Rejecting reliance on the freedom and the free market to regulate the flow of people across the international border, government officials instead plan, in a top-down manner, the movements of countless people in one of the most complex labor markets in history.