When the New World was being colonised by people from western Europe, it was attractive to different people for different reasons. Some saw resources, land, commerce, in addition others saw freedom to live according to their own consciences, away from the politically inspired persecution that had gone on for centuries in Europe and the Middle East. Migrants didn’t travel to adopt the prevailing culture of the natives of the Americas, they went in order to live their own lives freely. Sadly, though some went in peace, many went with violence, and visited that on the natives or traded slaves.

Fast forward 400 years or so, and we seem just as afraid of others as the native Americans must have been. Surely we can accept now, that we have so much more in common than we have different with virtually everyone. We want to live free of violence, we want to raise our families in peace and safety, we want to thrive and flourish as individuals and families. Sadly there are some who have not overcome the urge to be violent, to coerce, and this applies to both native and migrant.

When coupled with the power of the state this urge to violate the rights of others becomes an unstoppable oppressive force. But it is a mistake to think this is only a threat from migrants. You cannot have missed how coercive our system is anyway, without any outside influence. So long as our system of government is based on violating rights, rather than defending them as Bastiat observed, the fight over the levers of power becomes the big focus.

In that short sighted vision lovers of freedom might forget the levers of power are the problem, not the solution. Rather than raising their voice against the levers, they grab for them, to use them to prevent other people using them. But preemptive attack makes you the aggressor. This is counter-libertarian, upholds the present system, and distracts from the better way. Rather than writing more laws, and approving more violence and coercion to defend ourselves in the present system as Bastiat pointed out would be the inevitable objective, we need to focus on teaching true principles of liberty.