Why liberalism is not popular?
Why isn’t everyone an “essential liberal,” like me?
I just spent a productive half hour talking to a brilliant colleague at the Cato Institute reflecting on the sad fact that most people are socialists or fascists or racists or protectionists or “social” liberals, immune to what seems to both of us to be the obvious truths of essential liberalism.
We spoke, for example, of immigration. It’s a hot topic nowadays in the U.S., and is Donald Trump’s central appeal—that he is going to stop the “invasion” by black and brown people. My colleague pointed out that many free-market conservatives react very badly to the prediction that the rising diversity of the American population will result in Democratic Party majorities in the future. The conservatives are very willing to abandon their weak commitments to free trade in capital, goods, and labor when they imagine the black and brown people voting.
In truth, of course, the black and brown people are not permanent Democratic Party voters. In the last election for president, some of the reliably Democratic black and brown men voted for the second time against a woman Democratic candidate. And there’s a deeper, though left-brain, point that the present composition of immigrants does not predict its future distribution. Irish, Jewish, and Italian immigrants in the late 1800s to the United States or Brazil or Australia were mostly uneducated, and were anyway despised for their ethnicity by the existing population descended from British or Portuguese masters. Within a couple of generations these particular three groups had educational attainments far ahead of the masters.
My colleague and I, though, concluded that such statistical and social-scientific arguments, and especially economic arguments, are not persuasive to most people. The left-brain arguments of my economist colleagues are very nice for columns in Folha directed at intelligent people predisposed to my conclusions. I’ve told you about some of them.
Very clever, Deirdre. They’ll make fine articles in academic journals, complete with statistical demonstrations of their truth.
But they won’t change anyone’s mind. What changes people’s minds are right-brain novelties—personal stories in a movie in favor of immigrants, say; or an alarming metaphor against them, such as one that Trump deployed of a “caravan” filled with criminals and welfare exploiters and other threatening sorts of Central American immigrants, making their way north through Mexico.
Photographs, for example, can be immensely persuasive. You may have seen, as all Americans did at the height of the Vietnam War, the horrific photograph of a naked little girl burned by the napalm the U.S. bombers were dropping. It changed a lot of American minds. Or more recently, you may have seen the photo of the little Syrian boy washed up on the beach, drowned trying to get to Greece. It changed a lot of European minds.
So maybe I should stop making left-brain arguments in this column. Maybe I should just print photos of people impoverished by stupid government policies.
The majority of Americans didn’t turn against “an invasion of black and brown folks”. You are defining millions of people by the outlying negative characteristics of the very worst. Bad form!
I would be willing to make a large bet that most Americans (including the vast majority of black and brown ones) are against illegal immigration and fully open borders. The rationale for this perspective is well known and doesn’t need to be elaborated here.
This article is the worst I have ever read from you — who I have respected and followed since your trilogy started.
Ad hominem to declare that people against open borders are concerned about the color of the skin?
While it may not be your tactic, it is a common tactic employed for political
Purposes in smearing individuals.
For academics with common sense in economics, I tend to think making such comments is the result of living in the academic bubble with little to no contact with the average blue collar person.
This becomes even more true as naturalized citizens tend to have a higher polling on want for vetting of immigration and border control. Do ‘black and brown people’ have a dislike of black and brown people?
We are not living in the world, yet, where regional borders without even a turnstile is feasible.
For better, or worse, the US has created animosity and hatred in varying parts of the world. And, that does lead to want for infiltration of society to do harm. We seen it with terrorism. Two of the tallest buildings, in NY, and 2,977 people became victims.
For better, or worse, there are still parts of the world where beliefs are perpetuated to do great harm to those who disagree. Some of those ideological beliefs have either been birthed, in the US, or already have permeated Western Society, born from envy and want to be alleviated of self accountability.
None of this is going to change anytime, soon.
Over time, as the world becomes more prosperous, the dangers will shrink.
Open Borders won’t change any of this.
Where I do agree, assuming this is the case, as the conversations tend to refocus on, is to find a means to show compassion for those without Mal-intent, horrible background history, and just seeking the enormous opportunities which many American citizens take for granted.
Conversations on border control, immigration, and US foreign affairs often become subject of discussions in the non-academic world and it is rare to have someone mention the color of skin be a factor.