The Boy Who Cried “Wolf!” and Nativists

The nativist claim that Ebola proves we MUST close our borders would be more believable if they hadn't been making the same claim for years. The nativists who cry “foreigners!” sound a lot like the boy who cried “wolf!”

On the other hand, they might have a point for once. Control of contagious disease was a traditional activity of classical liberal governments. I have seen complaints that such governments were more concerned about contagious disease than malnutrition.

On the gripping hand, there is the common problem of activity creep. Once it is considered proper for governments to intervene in epidemics, they have an incentive to consider more events to be epidemics.