First off, only an academic would propose something so blatently against the interests of our country. And how far would you push down wages here in America before you admitted that this would be bad for us? Would you ever admit that making us poor is bad?

We are the rich country, and our wages are high relative to the rest of the world. That is something that we wish to protect, not give away. People like you think that if we just let everybody on earth be an American , then the whole world could live like us. Wrong! If we let the poor unskilled of the world in here, then our standard of living here in the US would drop to match the 3rd world sh*tholes where they came from.

How about letting the 3rd world poor come in and compete for your job professor? Oh yeah, tenure protects you... It does not protect us! Take your American lifestyle ruining plan and shove it up your...

I come across as angry because some jerk is proposing an incredibly detrimental poilcy that would greatly hurt the least skilled and poorest Americans.

Opportunity: 1. A favorable juncture of circumstances 2. A good chance for advancement and progress.

Totally open borders, as you propose, would increase worker competition and decrease wages. While that may be an opportunity for out of work foreigners, it would mean a great decrease in opportunity for American workers.

Hope: 1. To desire with expectation of attainment. 2 To expect with confidence.

Totally open borders, as you propose, would greatly reduce every American worker's chances of getting a high paying job. While they may still cling to hope, it would be for a lower level of expectation and with less confidence. Hope would wane.

Freedom: 1. The absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action

Totally open borders, as you propose, would take money from the pockets of every worker. Their increased poverty would constrain their options. They would be less free to act.

So you say that you Love America for it's freedom, opportunity and hope. Why not work to preserve and enhance those things instead of working to tear them down?

I am for keeping the prosperity that we have, and perhaps seeking to expand it where we can. This contrasts with your plan for giving it all away.

Your slimy attempt to insinuate racism with the phrase "nasty foreigners" betrays your lack of depth. Intellectual laziness, and an inability to construct a logical rtebuttal on your part does not equal racism on my part.

Your ideas are not liberal. They are, in fact, significantly to the left of Marxism. Left of communism, whose made tight borders a hallmark of their regimes.

I know that you think that you have tested your ideas in the marketplace of ideas. You spouted this drivel in one of your classes, and your students didn't fight back. Well guess what? Your students aree with you because you control their grade! Like many in academia, you grade your students on their ideology. That's not the marketplace of ideas, that is you playing power politics.

Adam Smith's theory of free trade, embodied in his book The Wealth of Nations, does not say what you think it does. Free trade in his world is limited to goods. The analysis is at the Macro scale, between whole countries. There is no immigration policy embodied in that. Adam Smith style free trade does not call for borderlesness in any way. His theories have been extended by others to our current theory of free trade in services. Balgalore, India is the main beneficiary of this extension, and entry level tech jobs here have been the loser.

Many Democrats take issue with the free outsourcing that has already destroyed American manufacturing. Now this outsourcing is being extened to the service sector. The middle class is paying the price. They feel under seige. They are in debt and their wages are down. The Liberal alliance with Labor will ensure continued Liberal resistance to even the more basic free trade issues. Free open borders is suicide, and most Liberals know that. The Professor says that this majority of Liberal Democrats "can in no way be called 'liberal.'"

The Professsor is a living metaphor for the Ivory Tower. Collecting his salary from our tax dollars, and from the huge and growing educational debt industry. Completely out of touch with how his theories will hurt the common man who pays his taxes and takes on debt to get his children educated. I'm not confused about what the Professor is proposing, I am confused as to why anybody would pay to have their kid indoctrinated by a guy like that.

This is a men's issue. Stay out of it broads!

Or, sinced you seem so intent of making this a central part of Salon, how about a little balance and add a DudeSheet.