Its frustrating, if you were alive during part of the 20th century,to see humanity circle back around to the century-old argument between socialism and fascism, both stupid philosophies seemingly discredited by the most memorable,horrible experiences of that centurybut in its first few decades passionately defended by street-fighting gangs of young ideologues on German streets.

How did thisrecurrencehappen? Its like were walkinga philosophical Mobius stripor worse, since we barely seem to be moving, sitting in a Mobius chair somewhere beyond time and space, surveying 100years of pointless crisis and conflict yielding no real learning.

One thing Ive learned, though, is that if yougive government an inch, itlltake a mile, sometimes a mile of paved road. As Ive lamented before, ironically, both the left and elements of the far right (includingsome purporting to be my fellow anarcho-capitalist libertarians) point to the expense of road maintenance as justificationfor government taking on other duties.

Who will buildthe roads? ask the leftistsas if the private sector doesnt get that task donewith great frequencywhile some who (inaccurately, I think) call themselves anarcho-capitalists ask, Shouldnt we be able to stop people at the border if the alternative is them using roads at the expense of innocent taxpayers?as if theres no way to get people to pay for roads (hint: tolls) besides deploying fascistic border patrols with the legal authority toharass everyone within 100 milesof the border in numerous ways that (obviously) go far beyond defraying road-maintenance expenses.

Given the obvious and very long history of governments mission creep whenever it can find an excuse to act, whether byadding a welfare agency or a police function, the last thing we should do is come up with more rationales for its existence, especially those of us claiming to be libertarians of some sort.

I was thus alarmed to see an editor at the Mises Institute, Ryan McMaken, taking the borders-are-libertarian argument one perverse step farther, arguing that whats good for the U.S. taxpayer (mainly because it excludesuntaxedMexicans from roads, in theory)is in fact good for the taxpayers ofevery individual U.S. state, sowhy not have 50enforceable borders?

If Brexit makes England freer than EU membershipdoes, and over time theresreason to believe individual European countries are likely less prone to impose crazy regulations than would be a Brussels super-state, goes the argument, you can hardly tell New Jersey it has no right to enforce its border against possibly untaxed interlopers from Pennsylvania or New York. A single small state such as Jersey might even be less intrusive and wide-ranging in its entry requirements than the enforcers at a big national border tend to be. And if not, you can always go around it more easily than you can the country as a whole. So, a newly-hardened New Jersey border could be the key to fostering freedom!

But everything we know about the history of government means we must at least consider the obvious ways this plan might go wrong, and an honest reminder how uglyand burdensomeenforcement is at the national border is a good place to start. They dont just check for violent criminals and invading armies there, after allwhich in principle, I think virtually everyone would consider reasonable, absent the complete dissolution of nationsbutinsteaduse the national border as both an excuse and an opportunity to mold trade, population demographics, drug use patterns, internal employment trends, and more.

Nowadays, given the rights near-total obsession with immigration, one must assure them that one is not dismissing any of the thingsin that list as unimportantbut one is, iflibertarian, insisting that the important things are the last things one should want controlled by government. You insist on a border? Keep it simple, mostly-porous, and limited in its functions, more or less like government itself, if wemust have one at all (for now).

By contrast, I suppose the border-lovers should look with a certain amount of admiration at the (understandably) more-policed-than-average city boundaries of New York. Its almost like paying to enter Disney World driving into this place, and rest assured youre constantly being surveilled in the processmusic to the border-enforcers ears, I suppose. But consider the possibility that its no coincidence this city spawned authoritarians such as (Brooklyn-born) Bernie Sanders and a man who recently endorsed him, his fellow communist Bill de Blasio.

Occasionally, circumstances will make a border or even a siege mentality a necessity, but its hardly something torevel in. Given the tendency of the authoritarian elements of any political plan to come to fruition while the libertarian elements get perpetually delayed, I think its a safe bet 50hardened state bordersif put in placebeforethe welcome day the federal government ceases to exist, and especially if put in place by the federal government itself rather than, say, fiercely freedom-loving state-by-state secessionistswould just yield astill-vastnation at first annoyed and in time inured to constant checkpoints alongonesslowedtrek across what wouldstill be the United States of America, with most of its federal regulations still intact.

(By contrast, long story short, a Brexited UK can fairly easily resume thinking of itself as and behavinglike an independent countrysome of these distinctions must be more a matter of contingent history than pure philosophical idealism.)

Constant government checkpointscant be what a reasonable-approximation-of-liberty (or private property) looks like, any more than a ring ofgovernmentcops around every town or block is (and New York has come close to trying that, too, given all the barricades put up in the Bronx at certain hours).In theory,yes,that system mighteventuallyfortuitously decay into mere parcels of private propertytheultimate win for libertarianismbut you know damn well it might more easily decay into a system in which you must constantly present your papers to go across town, one morelayer of very palpable tyranny.

Most of that will sound rather far-off and speculative, but one crude,practical litmus test right now for separating the libertarians-in-spiritfrom the mereborder-lovers/Trumpers-in-spiritis seeing how people react to the news of Greyhoundannouncing it will not comply with searches of its vehicles by immigration agents who do not have warrants. The same people aghast at the independent-mindedness of sanctuary citieswill want Greyhound punished, I suppose, but since I still remember the days when non-leftists preferred capitalist enterprises and individual rights to latitude for government goons, I say: Go, Greyhound!

Todd Seavey is the author ofLibertarianism for Beginnersand is on Twitter at@ToddSeavey.

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Who Will Build the Road to Serfdom? - Splice Today