The President*- literally- makes history

"What about that Frederick Douglass? I made him famous again, am I right? Somebody told me he died, like 120 years ago. I bitched out Bannon for the mistake, and he said, 'Working on it, we're gonna restore them all to their former owners. Biggest job creation program ever. Construction will boom, all under budget like your towers. You can get rid of ALL the labor regs.' Fraud voting? Solved.'

"Then I called in my speechwriter and he said, "Got a Tweetstorm, boss?" So he didn't know either, and the President of Mexico didn't either. They don't elect their best.

"So I asked Melania, and she told me, 'I put all speeches in blue box and give back them to sad-making black lady.'

"So it just shows what we're gonna do for the blacks in America. Their writers have been horrible. I'm gonna make some more of the old dead ones famous. They should pay me royalties.

"I would have been the best slaveowner in America, believe me. Very fair. Not many beatings, but extreme vetting before they got off the ships."

h/t Marginal Revolution:

Frederick Douglass on Immigration

by Alex Tabarrok on February 1, 2017 at 4:39 pm in Economics, History, Law | Permalink

Let’s recognize Frederick Douglass more and more for his terrific views on immigration:

I submit that this question of Chinese immigration should be settled upon higher principles than those of a cold and selfish expediency.

There are such things in the world as human rights. They rest upon no conventional foundation, but are external, universal, and indestructible. Among these, is the right of locomotion; the right of migration; the right which belongs to no particular race, but belongs alike to all and to all alike. It is the right you assert by staying here, and your fathers asserted by coming here. It is this great right that I assert for the Chinese and Japanese, and for all other varieties of men equally with yourselves, now and forever. I know of no rights of race superior to the rights of humanity, and when there is a supposed conflict between human and national rights, it is safe to go to the side of humanity. I have great respect for the blue eyed and light haired races of America. They are a mighty people. In any struggle for the good things of this world they need have no fear. They have no need to doubt that they will get their full share.

But I reject the arrogant and scornful theory by which they would limit migratory rights, or any other essential human rights to themselves, and which would make them the owners of this great continent to the exclusion of all other races of men.

See also this earlier post by Ilya Somin.