For the vast portion of my life I have followed the advice my father gave me "Put yourself in their shoes." I actually was able to understand what that meant. It meant to imagine I was them and in their situation. In reality it was a perceptual visualization technique and I do believe it is very useful.

I believe it is important to try to put yourself proverbially in as many different shoes for perspectives as you can.

I am going to use a variation on that technique within this post. It is important to note that using this technique is designed to help you perhaps understand different point of views. That does not mean you have to agree with all of them. It doesn't mean some of them might not be bad point of views. It does not mean certain ones are good ones. That is still up to you as an individual to determine on your own. The main goal of visualizing other points of view is to give yourself more information and ideas to help you make the decision that best fits you as an individual.

Begin Visualization

For the purpose of this particular post I want you to visualize your home, apartment, dorm, or wherever you live as a nation. This visualization will be useful for revealing some perspectives. You and those who live there have an income that they each use to buy food, pay for medical, etc. The maintenance of the house is paid for by taking a fixed percentage of income from each person that lives there every month and applying it to a pool. This should be considered like taxes for the purpose of this visualization.

Early after this house had been constructed your family moved into the house. There were some people saying, "That is a nice house, can we move in too?" Your family interviewed them and a few of them had very good skills and attitudes that would benefit the household. Your family told them IF they were willing to take on the values of the family, and essentially be adopted by the family they were welcome. More people asked. The family thought it through and realized they didn't have the resources and income to just take all these people.

Fast forward a few generations.

One of your ancestors is walking around the house and happens to see three people in a corner with blankets. There are crumbs from the things they ate from the cabinet. Who are these people? They are family that walked into your house and decided to live here. Some of the family members living there say "That's not right, they just came in, and started eating our food and decided they are going to live here." One of your descendants says "Hey, now, that is not very compassionate!" which SHAMED people and made them reconsider. "Okay, they can stay". The next day the amount of people in that corner had increased. They had told their other members of their family that they were allowed to stay so more people they knew walked in and took up camp in the home, and began eating the food.

The ancestors at first out of charity began purchasing more food. It was the charitable thing to do, but it was also survival. If they didn't buy more food they themselves would starve because these new people had been eating food.

Then there were messes all over the house and some walls being torn down. This was not your ancestors way, or even your family. They try to challenge the growing number of people, and are challenged by "Are you a bigot, is your bigotry coming out, is that why you don't want us bringing our culture and our ways?" Gulp, more of that SHAMING thing. "I thought when you moved in you liked our house and wanted to be part of our culture." The person nods and grins "We never said that. In fact you never asked us. You just let us live here. Now this place is ours." Your ancestors were beginning to see something was dreadfully wrong. They felt shame over perhaps such thoughts they were having as not being compassionate, or trying to force others to your view.

Some of your ancestors began to speak past the shame "We created this house and we did allow others to move in. They learned to be part of our family, they interviewed, they brought skills, and they actually lifted us all. We turned away people that didn't fit, and we also set a limit to how fast we could accept people without putting us all into danger. Now we simply let anyone come in, and they are not learning our ways they are forcing theirs upon us in our own house."

"Hold up! That sounds like bigotry" as the shame tactic once again comes into play.

"But, it is not. I am worried about survival. I am worried that we respected rules we all agreed to and followed them, yet now we are being shamed into supporting those who clearly respect no boundaries except those they brought with them in their own culture."

"Yep, that is definitely your bigotry poking out it's head. I am surprised, I didn't really expect you to be a bigot"

This went on and the tensions rose. Things were tighter financially. Then some of these newcomers and there were more of them now than before, suddenly needed clothing and medical, and things like that. They didn't have the money but if it wasn't done then their sickness and condition would impact everyone that lived in the house. It is also important to remember the compassion.

The house passed a new rule and increased the monthly amount each person must pay, except for these new people as they had no way to pay that. This extra money now could be used to clothe these people, provide them medical, etc. Your ancestors though, they had much less and they were finding they worked more and had less to show for it. They still ate, yet perhaps they didn't eat as well. Some of your ancestors even began to wonder if they could just stop doing the same work they are and also get some of the benefits of these new fees. This was quickly squashed as the rule was changed so those extra funds could only go to those newcomers, and the established ancestors could not use them.

Things were getting bad. Your ancestors culture was gradually being removed not by consensus, but simply by attrition and the fact that they had to follow rules, and they were shamed into helping those that did not follow them.

This continued until a descent into the lowest levels possible. Some of your ancestors starved. Some of the newcomers began to work a bit harder, and eventually it all leveled out and the newcomers now were the homesteaders and they closed the door. They even convinced some of your ancestors that if they didn't like it they should move as they pushed them through the door and closed it behind them.

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Visualization Ended

This was an imaginary visualization of my own putting the concept of ILLEGAL immigration, immigration, and things like DACA into perspective.

These days people will SHAME others by saying they are against "immigration" and how that is what our country was founded upon.

Our country technically was founded upon the ashes and blood of indigenous cultures, but let's step past that. The country the United States of America is indeed a melting pot built by immigration. The key is that the immigration was controlled and LEGAL. People had to petition. They had to attend classes, learn the history, learn the language, etc and they could become citizens. Before that they had to have papers that said they could be here. There was a fixed amount of people allowed to immigrate each year that was calculated to not stress the economy and allow the people to integrate and become part of it and perhaps even lift it. This was LEGAL immigration.

I don't know of anyone that is protesting LEGAL immigration. I do not know anyone that is recommending laws that ban LEGAL immigration. These are indeed some of the things this nation was built upon.

The problem we have and have had for awhile is that illegal people with no requirements to integrate, no requirements to have skills that benefit the rest of us, no requirements to follow employment laws so they can get jobs from citizens who are willing to break the law and employ them to their own benefit(aka under the table), etc.

DACA is hot in the news. It was created by Obama as an Executive Order. This means congress did not create it. It is designed to grant money to the children of ILLEGAL immigrants. They can illegally come here and the government will pay for their children to be educated. I'd want to immigrate here illegally as well if there were services like that. The children are not required to integrate, or anything like that.

Yet it is also important to remember one more thing about the government. It is good at producing only a few things. Waste, War, and Rules (laws). It actually doesn't produce anything on its own that is worth money.

So where does the money to pay for the illegal immigrants and the programs supporting them come from? One of two places.

Taxes. Meaning they take the money from citizens income, from property tax, from sales tax, etc. These are all things you cannot avoid paying unless you want to move out of the country (and you'll do the same elsewhere) or end up in prison or dead. So they are acquired by coercion, acquiescence, and force.

The second is debt. The government borrows money to pay for the things. What does this do? Well the only way they could ever pay off this debt is with the taxes since they don't produce things. This devalues the currency. It leads to what is called inflation, and in bad cases hyper inflation. It is very hurtful to the people that live there.

The problem is that we've become a people that are easy to shame. If you can push the buttons and say someone is a racist, is a bigot, is not compassionate, is a monster, etc. Then people usually give in.

Yet there needs to be rational thought. A person not doing something or allowing a thing can be for a much better reason than that. Perhaps they THINK before they do things. Perhaps they look at life like a boat, and if it springs leaks they try to fix it and stop them. If they purely gave into compassion odds are that the boat will sink.

So some things are done because it is STUPID not to do them.

The problem is compassion, shaming, and virtue signalling seem to rule the lands these days. People are more than content to do STUPID things as long as it makes them seem compassionate and gives them something to virtue signal about.

Illegal immigration is a problem. Now as a would be anarcho-capitalist I'd like to see a time where such concepts would not matter so much, but they still would because an ancap believes in property rights. Situations such as occurred in my visualization at the beginning of this post shouldn't happen even in ancap, because someone moving onto your property without your say so can be forcefully ejected. Ancaps practice the non-aggression principle. Yet they still believe in defense of themselves and their property.

We are in a quick downward slide along the compassionate slide of stupidity. We need to STOP, and THINK.

Sometimes we need to be brave enough to say "Being stupid has nothing to do with compassion!"