This is a slightly redacted email from a social scientist who prefers to remain nameless. Reprinted with his permission.
Hey Bryan,
I just finished Open Borders last night and I want to say great job! […] I’m a conservative/libertarian who was convinced by the arguments that Ann Coulter and others made that demographics change America will be forever liberal.
One thing that changed my view was “The Great Awokening,” seeing how white liberals changed their views on gender, race, etc. in a radical direction practically over night. This was a nice demonstration that political views are a lot more malleable than we suspect, and the static model in which you can calculate how many people vote Republican by looking at census information does not take into account that fact.
I’m writing because I want to share a few thoughts on the question of whether Republicans can actually win immigrant votes. It’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while, and, despite the Great Awokening, I don’t see a realistic scenario in which immigrants become Republicans, or even a case in which Republican can become pro-immigration without them being basically wiped out politically.
In your book, you frame the question as “Why do immigrants favor Democrats?” I think that’s the wrong way to look at it. As you show in Myth of the Rational Voter, the vast majority of the public is anti-market. The Republican Party, or at least the ideology it presents, is extremely pro-market by world standards (i.e., even conservatives in Europe support socialized medicine). Given this is the case, the real question is why do white Americans vote Republican? Clearly, as most political scientists agree, there is a backlash to Democrats on cultural and racial grounds. In particular, liberals are seen as anti-white male, really anti-white, by large portions of the public.
Since white support for Republicans is so unusual from a comparative perspective and is based on unique sociocultural dynamics, there is thus little reason to suspect that immigrants will similarly start to support the radically pro-market party. Perhaps it could happen if immigrants assimilated so completely that in their patterns and behavior they became little different from white Americans. It’s hard to see that given where cultural power lies, in a media and education system that promotes identity politics. Even a 180 degree turn away from the Trump strategy for Republicans would be very unlikely to overcome the effects of the education system and media. Political parties just aren’t that powerful in changing cultural dynamics, especially when they’re the party disfavored by opinion makers!
There is also the question of whether Republicans actually can shift to a pro-immigrant position and not be obliterated in the short run. Once again, the important thing to consider is how incredibly unpopular the Republican economic agenda is. If Republicans become Democrats-lite on immigration, or even more pro-immigration, what will they run on? Republicans have won elections by shifting attention away from economic issues, to foreign policy (see Cold War and post 9/11) or social issues like gay marriage, back when Republicans had majority support here. Yet the public has shifted left on gays, and foreign policy is not very salient anymore the further the Cold War and 9/11 rescind into the past.
Republicans’ current strategy in the Trump era is to run on immigration, with mixed results. Even though the public has shifted here too towards the left wing position, Republicans are much better off talking about immigration (which will gain them votes in some places, lose them votes in others), then talking about cutting funding for education or gutting Obamacare (which will lose them votes everywhere, see Matt Bevin). If Republicans surrender the immigration issue, they forfeit their only real strength, which is support from those who object to Democrats on cultural issues and are worried about a changing country. Politics then just becomes about economics, in which case Republicans will have to make their peace with socialized medicine, etc. or be wiped out.
Again, I agree with the book, as the economic and humanitarian arguments are too strong to refute even if you think immigration will create a permanent Democratic majority.
I have some thoughts on how you can win over far right to be less strenuously anti-immigration, given my own journey, but I’ll save that for another time.
READER COMMENTS
Peter Hurley
Nov 12 2019 at 10:24am
This is thoughtful, but I think somewhat mistaken in that it assumes political parties are less malleable than voters, when in fact they are even more malleable. There would not be anything like a “permanent Democratic majority.”
Canada is an excellent example here, being culturally similar to the US, but having experienced much higher immigration levels for the past couple decades (2.5x the levels of legal immigration; over 20% foreign born).
The Conservative Party of Canada is still quite competitive. While they did not win in 2019, they had a reasonable result all things considered. And the key battlegrounds of Canadian politics are largely within immigrant communities. The so-called 905 ridings (districts in the Toronto suburbs) are heavily immigrant populated. For example, the Conservative party swung this riding that is only 65% English spoken at home: https://338canada.com/districts/35003e.htm And the next 4 languages aren’t French, so we can pretty reliably infer they’re overwhelmingly immigrant households.
If the US Republican party was in a situation of Canada-level immigration, they would maybe lose an election or two and then start adapting to win. Parties adapt quickly when they get punched down to the mat. That’s how you saw Democrats moderate hugely in the 1990s under Clinton going for “triangulation” after Reagan cleaned their clocks.
nobody.really
Nov 12 2019 at 12:36pm
I agree: Political parties adapt their positions in order to win. Few Republicans campaign on reducing Social Security anymore. And while Republican campaign on the need to reduce the size of government in the abstract, they pretty much never do so in practice. In short, we should anticipate that competitive dynamics will continue to mold our world.
That said, some changes are easier to make than others. The Democratic Party was historically the party of the Deep South and segregation. It took a long time for that party to shed this association of animus. George W. Bush was quite mindful of this dynamic, campaigning to woo Hispanic voters and emphasizing that the US’s reaction to 9/11 was NOT an attack on Islam.
Trump, in contrast, has thrown caution to the wind. Whatever the merits of his policies, he has acted in a manner that future generations will be able to point to as evidence of Republican animus. And Democrats will strive to make this a salient issue wherever they think it will provide an electoral advantage. (Much like Republicans try to emphasize the Democrat’s supposed hostility to religion.) As immigrants become a larger percentage of the population–and especially as they become a larger percentage in swing states–the issue of animus will become increasingly potent in elections.
Ironically, new immigrants (provided they haven’t had their kids taken from them) don’t tend to have strongly partisan views; they tend to have more immediate concerns. But their children and children’s children will revel in telling the story of the abuse that their forefathers endured at the hands of Republicans.
Don’t get me wrong: Plenty of immigrants and their progeny will come to value traditional Republican policies–anti-abortion, pro-gun, low tax, etc. But the Republican BRAND may now be so tarnished that it becomes prudent to pursue these policies under a new name.
Thaomas
Nov 12 2019 at 4:15pm
Anti gun safety is pretty much a uniquely rural white icon and unlikely to be adopted by a generation of immigrants no matter how well assimilated the become. And “low tax” will hardly be appealing if it means deficit creation so that a huge portion of the revenue loss goes as income transfer to very high-income people. It didn’t work in 2017 why next time?
Daniel Klein
Nov 12 2019 at 11:34am
A digressive question:
The Great Awokening calls out for explanation. It precedes Trump. Maybe 2012/13 the start?
Has anyone attempted to put together a theory? I regard the Great Awokening as something really remarkable, extreme, and extremely sudden.
How does one explain the direction (lefty), suddenness, and extremity of the Great Awokening?
Social media will play a central part in even the most multi-causal explanation. But why does social media spell surging woke-ism? The atavism thesis?
What role do the trends in cultural institutions play? K-12, academia, so-called MSM, etc.
The family? Maybe the parents less of a corrective to the woke-ism kids get in the classroom? So a multi-generational story there?
Is it possible that Obama-era governance, media relations is a causal factor?
Explaining cultural change is always confusing, because explanations often amount to other, preceding cultural changes. That may prompt one to go back further, and reformulate the explanandum. But where to stop?
What are the five best pieces explaining the Great Awokening?
nobody.really
Nov 12 2019 at 4:14pm
Many theories. I kind of like this review by Eric Kaufmann, tracing intellectual history from the 1880s to the present. See also Michael Rectenwald’s Springtime for Snowflakes (2018), (“[S]ocial justice as such debuted in higher education in the fall of 2016 – when it emerged in full regalia and occupied campuses to avenge its monster-mother’s [postmodernism’s] death and wreak havoc upon its enemies’.”) and especially Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff’s Coddling of the American Mind (2018).
The Coddling authors cite various factors for the rise of on-campus “woke” behavior starting around 2013. First, they argue that the Baby Boomers gradually displaced the old guard in Academia, and their affinity for student protest have now come to full flower in their children.
They also note the rise of “safetyism,” a growing intolerance of previously conventional risks. We lecture kids about “stranger danger” and put missing children’s faces on milk cartons, even as incidences of children being kidnapped by strangers is vanishingly rare. We broadcast “America’s Most Wanted,” even as incidence of violent crime continues its dissent. We tear down jungle gym bars, and hold parents liable if they go shopping while leaving their 11-year-olds in a parked car. Grown-up behavior is delayed as ever fewer kids have jobs, driver’s licenses, or sex. Thus, neither the kids nor their parents are prepared for the rough-and-tumble of college life.
The authors also note that college-bound kids have less time for unstructured play. Unstructured play provides the training ground for people to learn to work out disagreements among their peers without appealing to authorities or force.
But most specifically, the authors argue that today’s kids grew up with cell phones and social media. These developments have resulted in kids spending less time in face-to-face interactions, and more time with kids focusing on presenting a curated version of their lives, and comparing themselves to curated versions of their peers. This has produced especially harsh consequences for girls. The authors cite studies arguing that boys and girls exhibit similar degrees of aggression, but that boys tend to engage in face-to-face aggression, while girls engage in gossip. This means that boys may live in fear during the day—but can rest comfortably when at home. But for girls? The authors quote someone’s hypothetical: Imagine a demon magically put a loaded gun into every teenager’s pocket. What would happen? Well, we might expect boys to shoot a lot of people, ‘cuz they’re more likely to engage in direct confrontation. In contrast, what if the demon magically put into each teenager’s pocket a device for stabbing people in the back socially? Well, we basically have—minus the demon. Unlike the risk of shooting, people can NEVER be free of the risk that they’re being undermined or excluded. Perhaps coincidentally, rates of anxiety and depression among young women have skyrocketed.
Yet Coddling emphasizes the need for perspective. The authors note that extreme “woke” behavior 1) is not evident on all campuses, and 2) pales in comparison to violent repressive impulses evidenced by protestors in Charlottesville and gunmen in schools, black churches, synagogues, nightclubs, and Walmart stores. “Woke” behavior is far from the greatest threat to free speech and free association; it’s mostly a problem of the affluent.
Jonathan Hadt
Nov 21 2019 at 8:05am
Wow, “nobody”, great summary of The Coddling, great answer.
I would just add this piece to the argument, which i only figured out from working with Tobias Rose Stockwell. We explain here why everything goes haywire around 2014: social media changed radically from 2009 to 2012. The Russians also start deploying social media against us in 2014, once the outrage platform was ready.:
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/12/social-media-democracy/600763/
Henry Thompson
Nov 12 2019 at 10:06pm
Dear Professor Klein,
Professor Peter Leeson and myself have, over the past few months, actually been working on an economic explanation of just this topic. Here is our working abstract:
“We explain increased protections for American college students from messages they value negatively, such as with trigger warnings, safe spaces, speech codes, and more restrictive norms of permissible expression. In 2013-2014 the members of iGen (b. post-1995)—America’s first generation of “social media natives”—began entering college, where the size of their social media networks increased sharply. As a result, the number and share of college students exposed to a given social media message increased sharply too. Students responded to increased exposure by increasing protections from negatively valued messages in their on- and offline environments. The types of protections adopted reflect college students’ high value of using yet high cost of curating social media. Taste-based explanations for increased protections, which rely on a sudden increase in student sensitivity or willingness to offend, are implausible and unnecessary. New, cheaper options for curating social media portend “the Great Awokening”’s wane.”
We recently finished a first draft, but would be happy to share more details of the paper if you are interested!
Hazel Meade
Nov 13 2019 at 2:44pm
I think the previous commenters are confusing two very different cultural phenomena. The campus emotional “safety” movement and the “woke” movement , while overlapping to some extent, are two distinct phenomena. “Woke” exists far beyond campuses and is not primarily concerned with speech codes- it’s a critique of US society that alleges structural racial inequalities. The “safety” movement is a more peculiar reaction to disturbing (offensive, disagreeable) material regardless of the subject matter – it’s not particularly focused on race but on emotional well-being, regardless of the cause of the emotional upset.
In other words, “woke” is addressing a difficult topic, and “safety” is saying something more like “how should we talk about difficult topics so people don’t feel threatened or upset about them, or maybe we shouldn’t talk about them at all”.
Robert A Gressis
Nov 14 2019 at 10:15am
The Rise of Victimhood Culture, by sociologists Bradley Campbell and Jason Manning, attempts to explain the great awokening.
First of all, they see the social justice movement as the inauguration of a new moral culture, which they call victimhood culture. It contrasts with honor culture and dignity culture. The features of victimhood culture they emphasize are how people react to slights.
In honor cultures, people are very sensitive to slights, but when slighted, try to take care of the slights without recourse to third-parties (sociologists call this approach to dealing with conflict “self-help”). The reason people in honor cultures are sensitive to slights is that their moral status depends on how honored they are; consequently, if someone slights them, this will affect their honor, so slights are very important. However, because being honored depends on being strong and capable, they have to take care of the slights themselves, which is why they practice self-help.
In dignity cultures, people are not sensitive to slights, but when violently aggressed upon, they turn to third parties for help. The reason people in dignity cultures do this is that moral status in a dignity culture depends on your intrinsic moral worth. But your intrinsic moral worth doesn’t depend on what people think of you, so to show that you believe this, you’re supposed to act in a dignified manner — i.e., self-controlled, above it all, etc. However, and also because you have intrinsic moral worth, if someone uses violence against you, it’s a third-party’s job to protect you.
In a victimhood culture, people are very sensitive to slights (like in honor cultures) but they turn to third parties to handle them (like in dignity cultures). The reason for this is that in victimhood cultures, your moral status depends on how victimized you are: the more victimized you are, the higher your moral status. So, noticing slights is to your advantage — the more you find, the higher your moral status. But also, publicizing your slights is also to your advantage, because your moral status depends on people knowing about how victimized you are. That’s why there’s so much turn to third parties.
So, why did victimhood culture arise? Campbell and Manning point to four factors that have emerged since the 1960s: (1) growth of the administrative state; (2) increasing demographic diversity; (3) decreasing social inequality; and (4) the rise of social media.
(1) Growth of administrative entities whose job it is to handle disputes tends to crowd out private ways of handling disputes. So, this explains why people in victimhood cultures turn to third parties.
(2) Increasing demographic diversity forces people to get used to it. The more diversity of kind X there is, the more that people treat departures from diversity (such as anti-diversity remarks or practices, which Campbell and Manning, following Donald Black (I think) call “underdiversity”) with condemnation. By contrast, the less diversity of kind X there is, the more that people treat movements to that kind of diversity with hostility. I’m skeptical of this, but that’s their view.
(3) Increasing social equality (thanks to the civil rights movements) forces people to get used to it. And, again, departures from equality (“overstratification”) meet with condemnation. I’m skeptical of this too.
(4) Increasing social media means it’s a lot easier for people to publicize their slights, thereby enlisting the aid of neutral third parties. Recall that thanks to (1), people stop adverting to private means of dispute resolution. So, (1) in combination with (4) helps to explain why people turn to Twitter (or whatever) to broadcast whatever indignity they believe they have suffered.
(1)-(4) exist to a very high degree in college campuses. That’s why the victimhood culture flourishes there most of all. And note that campuses are ideologically very homogeneous, which is why they take one kind of diversity, namely ideological, as a threat (this is the inverse of (2); once you have a very homogeneous society, departures in the direction of diversity — overdiversity — are treated very aggressively).
OriginalSeeing
Nov 19 2019 at 11:54am
In reference to #3:
There’s an effect (whose name I can’t remember) which states that as the perception of equality increases, the outrage of perceived inequality also increases.
Ghatanathoah
Nov 18 2019 at 3:15pm
My personal theory about the “Great Awokening” links it to the recession and the college bubble. We saw a period in the early 2000s and late 2010s where job prospects for college-educated young people declined considerably.
Money and work success are one of the key ways people attain status and self worth in society. With that avenue closed off, many people began to seek alternate sources of status. Another common source of status is visible devotion to the moral principles your culture believes in (this is why poor people are often more religious than wealthy ones). In the case of college-educated Americans, anti-racism, feminism, and other leftist principles.
This resulted in an “arms race” where people competed for status by devoting themselves more and more fervently to these principles. They began to expand on these principles to create more opportunities to display devotion. Eventually this resulted in a mutant form of progressivism that is to traditional American progressivism what Christian fundamentalism is to normal Christianity.
David Ehrlich
Nov 12 2019 at 11:51am
Several things, I have recently finished the ‘Myth of the Rational Voter’ on audio book, ‘What Is Conservatism?’ the new edition, and have been reading over the ‘Wealth of Nations’.
I think both the review and the in initial comment miss the point that the voter is actually irrational. The question should never be “Can Republicans Afford to be Pro-Immigrant?” the question should on’y be “Should we as a nation be Pro-Immigrant?” if the answer is yes, and the data says yes, from a free market stand point, then Conservatives should stand on principle and say “We are pro immigrant even if it erodes our base.”
There will probably have to be a time of un-reasoned Progressivism before the general population gets to a point where they understand that unlimited debt is unsustainable, extremely high taxes are oppressive, there is a rule of law and reality is not essentially relative, pure democracy is actually tyranny, and economic freedom and intellectual liberty are the best chances for national wealth and safety building; even if that does imply equality.
This isn’t about winning and losing, its about speaking the truth and arguing the points on principle because at it’s core Conservatism wants nothing more than the best outcome for as many people as possible.
Thaomas
Nov 12 2019 at 12:07pm
I have a different question, since increased immigration would create so much additional income, why don’t Republicans just incorporate that fact into their core message, like fiscal responsibility and relatively free trade used to be? Would their base abandon them for the Democrats?
Jackson Mejia
Nov 12 2019 at 12:57pm
Well, it seems like those who support the Republican Party, particularly these days, aren’t supporters of the Republican Party because it is pro-market, so I’m not sure that would be helpful. Actually, Caplan’s correspondent notes that in his message.
Matthias Görgens
Nov 13 2019 at 10:11pm
Though they could try a message of ‘if those foreigners want to come here so badly, let them pay for our taxes.’
Increases taxes and fees on migrants is one of the keyhole solutions.
Joseph E Munson
Nov 12 2019 at 12:58pm
Just bribe ’em!
The potential gains are so great, I would expect some kind of explicit and symbolically clear tax the immigrant and pay the native scheme, would have the highest chance of success, not very fair, but nothing is in politics.
Denver
Nov 12 2019 at 1:32pm
What gets me about these types of arguments is not the specific arguments being made (which others might find somewhat controversial), but the framing of the argument.
For example, even assuming everything in this email is true, why does it then follow that Republicans have to argue for restricted immigration? Wouldn’t it be better for them to advocate for increasing immigration amongst those most likely to support pro-market policies?
If you think white people are more likely to vote Republican, then why don’t they advocate for reforming immigration to bring in more people of European ancestry, instead of advocating less immigration in total?
If that’s too crass, why don’t Republicans advocate for reducing immigration barriers in total, but implenting rigorous testing for immigrants, including taking a market purity test (e.g. Bryan’s libertarian purity test), and only letting them in if they achieve a certain score?
If Republicans truly opposed immigration because immigrants are simply anti-market, then it would seem that the framing of their opposition to current immigration law would be much different.
Miguel Madeira
Nov 12 2019 at 7:31pm
I think that the point of the email is not only that immigrants are anti-market; it is that even most Americans are anti-market, and only vote pro-market because the pro-market party is also the anti-immigration party.
Floccina
Nov 13 2019 at 2:42pm
If one wanted to implement your idea they could maneuver to allow in all form Latin America how have a college degree from a reasonably rigorous university. In Latin America most of the college educated people are white, so the result would close enough.
Joseph Hertzlinger
Nov 12 2019 at 3:13pm
The Republicans can now run on a personal freedom platform, now that the Left has given it up.
The Republicans should run on legalizing straws. The Republicans should run on legalizing Big Gulps. The Republicans should run on relegalizing vapes, now that they’re back to harmless.
The basic campaign plank: Repeal the dumbest regulations.
I won’t more than mention home schooling and guns.
Alexander Turok
Nov 12 2019 at 4:59pm
I’d rather they oppose the Gai cult stuff, but support higher taxes on unhealthy food, alcohol, and tobacoo. Do plain packaging like they do in Australia. In addition to being good policy, it has the advantage of allowing Republican elites to wink-wink nudge-nudge at social conservatives to distract from their failure on the last dozen socially conservative issues. I don’t think it’s doomed to be unpopular. Prohibition was popular at a time when government was far smaller than it is today. It would also act to neutralize the Democrats “lol Southerners are fat” argument, which is quite potent.(Remember that the average person doesn’t really care about policy.)
shecky
Nov 13 2019 at 2:29am
You forgot reproductive freedom… *crickets*…
The Republican party cannot support personal freedom. Because the Republican party simply has doubled, tripled, quadrupled down against personal freedoms. There is only one personal freedom that the party supports, the freedom to own firearms. It’s been whittled down over the years to this simplism. The party is defined primarily by what it’s against. First and foremost, it’s against the liberals. Everything else follows from there.
Thomas Sewell
Nov 13 2019 at 9:46pm
By reproductive freedom, you presumably mean that as a euphemism for abortion?
Republicans just have to call it by it’s correct name rather than use the terms set by their opponents to conflate sex and birth control with killing the unborn. It’s obvious enough to everyone that the term is meant to mislead rather than illuminate.
The biggest personal freedom currently infringed on by government is the pursuit of happiness mentioned in the Declaration of Independence.
Brent Orrell
Nov 12 2019 at 5:03pm
Tom Holland, in his magisterial new book, Dominion, argues persuasively that “wokeness” is a legacy of Christianity. See this Twitter thread for more details.
https://twitter.com/holland_tom/status/1135800746086195200
Mark
Nov 12 2019 at 10:21pm
This seems like an argument that the Republicans should stir up racial resentment to get votes for an unpopular economic program. Wasn’t that supposed to be a left-wing conspiracy theory?
I see no evidence that countries with higher immigration are less pro-free market. If anything, the opposite seems to be the case–countries with a higher foreign-born percentage of population seem to also be more free-market. The latest Cato Institute report ranks the ten most free market countries as Mauritius, Australia, Canada, the UK, Ireland, the US, Switzerland, New Zealand, Singapore, and Hong Kong. Except for Mauritius and the UK, all of these countries have higher rates of immigration than the US. In fact, five of these ten countries are over 25% foreign-born. People who are willing to move far away into a totally different culture are likely to be more ambitious and adventurous, which leads to more support for free-market policies.
Mark
Nov 12 2019 at 10:24pm
Plus, aren’t we always hearing about how immigration is incompatible with the welfare state? That argument seems to suggest that immigration would shrink the welfare state and thus expand the free market.
Alexander Turok
Nov 12 2019 at 11:56pm
You could actually look at the views of immigrants, specifically the low-skilled immigrants who are most relevant to the question of open borders.(Australia, Canada, and Singapore are both known for systems of immigration biased toward the high skilled.)
Mark
Nov 13 2019 at 8:31am
Well, the book addresses this, there’s some evidence that low-skill immigrants on average are less free market, but it depends on the issue and the overall effect is not large. But if immigration makes natives less likely to support the welfare state, then that effect would swamp the effect of natives themselves.
Another point the book doesn’t mention is that a lot of economic views are mood affiliation based on dislike for the Republican Party. If you look at one free market issue that is not associated with the Republican Party, that of free trade, polls show higher support for free trade among Hispanics than either blacks or whites.
Benjamin Cole
Nov 12 2019 at 11:44pm
We have Detroitified the industrial Heartland and now we will Hong Kongify the coasts.
The average one-bedroom apartment in Los Angeles rents for $2,500.
And the solution to this situation? “More globalization,” we are told. More immigration and more imports!
So, the question becomes, who will be in the White House… Trump or Warren?
shecky
Nov 13 2019 at 2:48am
Kind of a long winded way of saying the Republican party is the party of racism. It’s all they got. It was god, guns and gays for a long while. Gays are rapidly becoming less of an issue. But the racism has been bubbling under the surface since Southern Democrats left to find a new home after the civil rights era of the 1960s.
I’ve been saying it for years, and it fell on deaf ears, drew passionate denials: Immigrants aren’t drawn to the Democratic party. They’re driven to the Democratic party, by a Republican party that fundamentally does not want them. A party that’s hostile to them. Reagan and the Bushes were good at fooling some Republicans with a smiling mask. The had a handful of minorities they liked to parade to ensure the world that they had no prejudice bones in their bodies. But immigrants aren’t stupid. They’re perfectly able to detect that the rank and file, the people who actually voted Republican, wanted absolutely nothing to do with them.
Having a black man in the White House laid out where Republicans wanted to focus effort. Trump helped distill the fundamental motivator of Republican activity, paring away the vestigial selling points to a simpler, darker core. And here we are.
Hazel Meade
Nov 13 2019 at 2:15pm
The author touches on a core problem, that due to the unique sociocultural dynamics (i.e. the dynamics of race and gender), it’s unlikely to attract the support of immigrants in the near term.
And yet, those racial dynamics, along with efforts to address them, are precisely the subject of the “Great Awokening”. Does this not strike you as ironic? By addressing racial divisions in US society, the Democrats might actually be helping Republicans in the long run, by making it possible for immigrants to assimilate more easily into while culture and hence adopt free-market values. Meanwhile, the Republicans, by fighting the “Awokening” are reinforcing the very racial divide that drives immigrants into the arms of the democrats.
The way I see it, whatever it’s excesses, the left is essentially *correct* both in identifying racial divisions as an enormous unresolved problem in US society, AND in locating the source of those divisions primarily in historical injustices. They are completely incorrect in their anti-market views, however, but there is no reason that “social justice” necessarily need be coupled to an anti-market agenda. If the Republicans could embrace “social justice” as the goal of genuine racial integration and social equality, they could combine that with a solidly pro-market economic platform. And THAT combination could appeal to immigrants.
What Republicans need to do, is to overcome their instinctive reflex to reject whatever ideas emerge from the Democratic party as automatically suspect, and instead recast them in light of long-held Republican values such as individual liberty. Embrace the origins of the Republican party in the anti-slavery party of Lincoln, the original “woke” movement. Embrace the idea that all men are created equal. Embrace the concept of “inclusion”, and reject the idea that a racially stratified society is ok and “normal”, or that America must remain culturally “white” to retain it’s fundamental values.
Now, the real question in “can Republicans afford to be pro-immigrant?” is NOT whether in the long term they can get immigrants to vote Republican. They can, if they were to adopt a more racially inclusive identity. The real question is whether doing what is needed to get immigrants to vote Republican would entail adopting positions that would alienate the core base of the party. Which is to say, are Republicans now so beholden to the racially motivated elements in the party that they *can’t* become racially inclusive, that they can’t afford NOT to be the party of white identity politics. And that is what we don’t know – is the base of the Republican party capable of embracing an agenda of racial ethnic and religious inclusion?
Mark Z
Nov 13 2019 at 11:10pm
It’s ironic that you claim the ‘Awokening’ is helping assimilate immigrants, when ‘woke’ ideology regards assimilation itself with hostility. I don’t see how wokeness could possibly increase assimilation. It aggressively cultivates salient minority identities, and does so (again, ironically) especially among middle and upper class, educated ethnic minorities, those one would expect to be most disposed to assimilation. And its favored means of addressing supposed racial inequities is to cultivate, in essence, corrective racism, in policies, attitudes, and cultural norms; that’s not even consistent with traditional liberal ideals, let alone the ethos of the Republican party. I agree that Republican should embrace an egalitarian sentiment, but I suspect we may have different definitions of equality. In any case, they’re current strategy more resembles Republicans embracing ‘wokeness’, but for their own demographic.
And how does a Republican win minority votes, including most poor immigrants, at the national level? Mere equality may not suffice, when the competitor is willing to offer special treatment. ‘Mere’ equality would probably help them appeal to Asian immigrants and their descendants, but their far fewer and less electorally relevant than the Midwestern/Appalachian working class. They also aren’t. Free market economic policies might appeal to upwardly mobile, middle/upper class immigrants, but they too are still a modest fraction of the electorate. That would be a long run strategy. How do you convince a politician running this year to sacrifice his career for the sake of brand development so someone 12, 16, or 20 years down the road has a more viable shot? Maybe the people who want to run for office in 2032 could pay off the people people running today to embark on a long run strategy, but then again the people running today are the ones with all the money, so alas, that ‘Coasean solution’ is a non-starter. And even in the long run, if outcome differences today *aren’t* mainly the result of historical discrimination (which is what I think) these problems are pretty intractable. ‘Mere equality’ wouldn’t fully eliminate the kind of observed differences that drive division, at least not for the foreseeable future.
Hazel Meade
Nov 14 2019 at 1:23pm
What does the word “inclusion” mean to you?
To me, it means having a unified society in which members of different ethnic groups are “included” in the circle of the community.
To me, “woke” is primarily about race relations between blacks and whites, and most blacks aren’t immigrants, so they can’t really be asked to “assimilate”. Instead, the definition of “American culture” needs to be expanded to include African American culture. Now, maybe I used the wrong word when I said “assimilate”, but broadening the concept of American culture to include the breadth of ethnic identities within the US acheives the same effect. You create one unified “American culture” that includes everyone, and thereby overcome the racial divisions that drive immigrants and non-whites into the Democratic party.
“Woke” IMO means “being aware of” structural racial inequalities in US society. The goal is not to create divided ethnic identities, it’s more that many white people feel defensive when those inequalities are pointed out, and when they are asked to embrace non-white culture as an aspect of American culture. I.e. If they are asked to embrace African American history and culture as part of “their” cultural identity, they interpret that as an attack on “white” culture, even though it isn’t. Embracing African American culture as part of American culture just means accepting that their history is our history, where the “our” is what makes them part of the “us” that is mainstream American society. It brings African Americans into the circle of a common community, without demanding “assimilation” into “white” society. Do you understand?
Republicans could(if they were capable), embrace the concept of cultural inclusion and “wokeness” – in that sense of being aware of the racial divide and having a willingness to expand the definition of “American” to include (as opposed to narrowing the definition of American to exclude).
Mark Z
Nov 13 2019 at 11:26pm
Eliminating the electoral college might change the incentive structure in ways that would render anti-immigration positions less profitable. Absent the EC, Republicans would have much less of a reason to appeal to West Virginia and Ohio, more of a reason to appeal to Orange County. I also don’t think it’s certain it would create the permanent Democratic majority some hope and others fear it would. Currently, the Republican path of least resistance to victory happens to be one that commonly leads to popular vote losses with electoral college victories, but I don’t think that necessarily means the electoral college is a necessity for them.
Chuck37
Nov 14 2019 at 9:36am
I’m a little confused about the premise here. Who says Republicans are “anti-immigration”? It hardly seems like that is the debate at the moment, it’s more about Democrats not wanting to enforce the law (turn a blind eye to any and all illegal immigrants) and Republican resisting that. If the world (liberals?) wasn’t crazy, we’d all agree that we should enforce our laws, then move on to discussing what the laws should be. How many immigrants per year should we bring in, and what mix? Arguing for merit based immigration (such as Canada has, for example) seems like it could be a winner for Republicans. Or seasonal guest worker programs.
As a hybrid libertarian/conservative, I agree with most economic arguments made in favor of robust immigration, but these analyses do ignore social/cultural effects, which are no less important. The US “freedom” culture is unique in the world, and it would be a shame to lose it. Non-assimilation and voting biases are both on my radar.
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