No, which is a very different question. If Frum meant “If liberals insist that only fascists will block all (or virtually all) immigration, then voters will hire fascists to black all (or virtually all) immigration”, then that would be different. But he said “defend borders”, which is very different from blocking all, or virtually all, immigration.
And liberals generally favor eating less meat than conservatives so if we leave conservatives in charge they will institute policy such that no one will ever eat an orange and we will all get scurvy.
Liberals sure get exercised about the idea of a border wall, a relatively innocuous idea. Get mad about separating families, sure. But the wall? At worst it’s a waste of money, but relatively minor compared to the bloated Pentagon budget.
It’s symbolic of hate. That’s how it came to be a political issue – to represent hatred of Mexicans (and immigrants in general). It shouldn’t be a surprise that such a symbol of hate is opposed by progressives/liberals.
“Innocuous” isn’t quite the word for it, even leaving aside the shitty symbolism that iiandyiiii mentioned. As a recent GAO report stated,
IOW, there is no clear plan for exactly how or where to build the wall, or how to maintain it or police it, which means that its actual cost and effectiveness remain completely speculative.
Trump requested $25 billion to fund it (once it became apparent that the idea of making Mexico pay for it was delusional at best). That equals nearly five percent of the Pentagon’s entire annual budget. “Relatively minor”, sure, but how is that a justification? Since when does throwing one dollar for every twenty spent on defense at a massive open-ended boondoggle, of unknown ultimate cost or usefulness except as a PR gimmick for a grandstanding huckster POTUS, constitute no big deal and something that opponents shouldn’t get “exercised” over?
Sheesh. I can remember when conservatives were supposedly strongly opposed to blatantly wasteful spending on pointless government porkbarrel. Now it’s supposed to be condoned as “relatively innocuous”? “Might as well not make a fuss about it because it’s far from the worst idea we’re promoting”?
They are not actually willing to prevent illegal immigration to the extent voters demand.
I think your argument is fine for the US, but in Europe that’s not how it’s gone at all. Not only are they having a bigger problem assimilating immigrants, but the xenophobic parties rose up in response to voter anger, they didn’t create it.
Although I would note that many liberals seem quite gleeful at the fact that whites will be a minority in the near future. That actually is massive demographic change, and liberals do in fact support that massive demographic change. There are arguments for why it’s a good thing, but it’s indisputable that liberals do in fact like the idea of a mostly nonwhite American future.
I’m not denying that Europe has had—not necessarily has now, but has had in recent years—more liberal immigration policies and more culturally disruptive immigration spikes than the US, and that a lot of the voter anger about those disruptions is genuine (and a significant part of it isn’t even particularly racist).
However, even in Europe the mainstream liberal views don’t come anywhere close to advocating for “uncontrolled” immigration or “[letting] their societies fall apart”. That type of hyperbole really is just right-wing hysteria.
The “massive demographic change” aspect of ethnicity has been going on for decades. Non-Hispanic whites constituted nearly 89% of the US population in 1920, nearly 80% in 1970, and nearly 64% in 2010. They are projected to drop to just under 50% by 2045, under rather unrealistic demographic models that don’t take into account how people actually self-identify. More realistic projections suggest that a majority of Americans will still be identifying as white for decades beyond that date. And of course, even under the more restrictive models, non-Hispanic whites will still constitute a plurality for a long time after they’ve stopped being a majority.
Meanwhile, during the past six or seven decades we’ve also seen other similarly “massive” demographic changes. For example, in religious affiliation, Protestants have decreased over the last 70 years from 69% to 38% of the US population while the non-religiously-affiliated have increased from 2% to 20%. Language diversity, on the other hand, was far greater in the early years of the nation than in the 20th century, with about 11% of the 1910 population being non-native English speakers (as compared to about 5% in 1970 and about 13% now). Likewise, drastic shifts have happened in the relative distribution of urban and rural populations, age groups, and so on.
Which raises the question: Why is the only massive demographic shift perceived to be causing severe voter anxiety and anger in the US the one changing non-Hispanic white people over the course of a century from a majority to a non-majority? Is there any significant reason for that peculiar intensity of focus on this one demographic phenomenon among many, other than racism?
IMHO, what liberals like is not any particular racial distribution, but rather the robustness of liberal principles to support democracy irrespective of racial distribution.
White conservatives who consider majority-white demographics to be a fundamental aspect of the American nation are naturally upset about losing that feature. But liberals who believe that American democracy applies equally to all races and ethnicities are okay with this demographic change, and proud of being okay with it. (I won’t claim that there’s no gleefulness at seeing a bunch of racist white conservatives shitting their pants and crying their eyes out over the prospect of losing white racial-majority status, of course.)
Is building a fence around your yard a “symbol of hate” too?
No. Unless, maybe, it was proposed and advocated for by sometime who made repeated racist (and false) claims about the danger of those who resided on the other side
Also, if you propose spending massive amounts of money to build a fence around your yard after ranting about your shitty neighbors trespassing, when the vast majority of your neighbors don’t in fact trespass on your property, and you don’t even know how much the fence will cost or how effectively it will keep out trespassers but you keep publicly proclaiming how great your fence will be and how shitty your trespassing neighbors are…
…then yeah, your fence does sound a lot like a symbol of hate.
You’re overdetermining this. Trump is a piece of shit and everything he touches turns to shit. He has demonstrated repeatedly, including very recently, that he can’t (or won’t) even fulfill one of the most basic, nonpartisan roles of the president: to respond to disaster and tragedy with soothing words. You don’t need to condemn the wall, as the man himself is more than worthy of condemnation all by his lonesome.
According to Wikipedia, “the wall” had already been constructed over nearly a third of the U.S. border by the time President Obama came into office. The project became moribund during his tenure, but we could have expected it to resume under any Republican president with a GOP Congress. So again, this is getting after Trump for routine Republicanism, which I see again and again and find frustrating because it normalizes him.
If a couple hundred more miles get built between now and January 2021, it’s going to cost nowhere near the estimates you guys are throwing around, and it’s going to inject Keynesian fiscal stimulus into the economy by funding a bunch of construction jobs. It would only continue past that date if Trump gets reelected, and once again: that would be a disaster in its own right and make laments about the wall irrelevant or at least redundant. In the meantime, histrionically opposing the wall plays into his hands, for no good purpose.
Personally I welcome this so called “white genocide.” The only true way to end racism is for everybody to have sex with everybody else until we are all the same color. But just to be Devil’s Advocate here, these demographic groups vote Democratic pretty reliably. Imagine if the shoe were on the other foot, and it was millions of white immigrants, let’s say from Russia, who voted 70%-80% Republican. Wouldn’t you start to complain?
The Democrats have no power right now. Their opposition is symbolic. If they gain power, I would consider supporting trading wall funding for something very valuable from a progressive perspective.
Especially if you insist that it will be your neighbors who will be paying for it.
No.
Though, I would see what it was about my policies that is upsetting these immigrants. If there is something that I can do to make them support my party more, then I would look into doing that.
If what is upsetting the immigrants is specifically my immigration policies and my attempts to keep them out, well, then I suppose I would double down on that, if I were the sort of party that would attempt to keep out immigrants that may be hard for me politically.
Remember, it will be many, many years before they are able to vote here.
Yep. Liberals are right on that count. My only concern is that right things should be done the right way. Americans never consented to massive immigration flows from the Americas. If anything, we were told that we would have a diverse immigration flow from around the world, not just people south moving north and becoming dominant. Now my idea for fighting that demographic change is MORE immigration. More Chinese, more Indians, more Africans. But no one really seems to like that plan. and of course we can’t do anything without the peoples’ consent.
That’s fine if that’s what happens. But if we just balkanize instead America probably would not survive without breaking up.
I have said it many times before: I don’t believe countries like the U.S. (or Australia, or Canada) have any moral ground to stand on in trying to preserve a white, Anglo-Saxon majority, when that group has no ancestors who were here 500 years ago. I think it’s quite different if Gallic French people want to preserve a country dominated by their ethnicity and culture; same goes for Japan (who generally gets a pass on this issue for some reason).
Great point.
Now you’re talking!
I’d complain about their political views, sure, just as I do about the political views of many native-born Republican voters. I wouldn’t complain that their ethnicity and/or culture is somehow “destroying” the US, though.
Also, what a lot of racists and xenophobes don’t notice enough is that members of immigrant groups often change/diversify their views as their group assimilates. Look at this Pew survey on recent changes in political affiliation among US Latinx/Hispanic voters, for example.