Im-Politic: So Trump Voters are Xenophobes and Racists on Immigration?

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assimilation, Clinton, English, Grinnell College, identity politics, Im-Politic, immigrants, Immigration, nativism, racism, Trump, xenophobia

Charges that supporters of more restrictive immigration policies are racists and xenophobes and all- around bigots are so widespread that I don’t even see the need to document this claim with links. That’s why a recent poll from Grinnell (Iowa) College is so fascinating and important. It’s full of evidence showing how overwhelming false these allegations are.

Just as important: The survey reveals strong and bipartisan support for the kinds of assimilationist approaches to newcomers that are emphatically rejected by diversity- and identity politics-obsessed leaders of the Democratic party and especially its progressive wing – although it also finds that Left-of-center backing for these views lags the national totals.

Much of this evidence comes from respondents’ views on “what it mean to be a ‘real American’.” The survey, which was taken last November (after the midterm elections) presented 12 possible answers (which were not mutually exclusive). According to Grinnell faculty who analyzed the results, agreeing with the following propositions revealed “narrow” and “restrictive” beliefs about national identity:

”To have been born in America”

“To have lived in America most of one’s life”

“To be able to speak English”

“To be a Christian”

I wouldn’t quarrel with this characterization, with the exception of English ability. How, after all, can anyone meaningfully participate in American life in any dimension without speaking the country’s dominant language?

The rest of the propositions were described by the pollsters as more values-based – and more praiseworthy.

“To respect America’s political institutions and laws”

“To accept people of different racial backgrounds”

“To accept people of different religious backgrounds”

“To believe in getting ahead by one’s own hard work”

“To believe in treating people equally”

“To support the U.S. Constitution”

“To take personal responsibility for one’s actions”

“To believe that democracy is the best form of government”

No quarrel here, either – with one major exception I’ll get to below.

According to the prevailing narrative, Trump voters should strongly support the restrictive views of American identity (i.e., those most closely associated with prejudice), and supporters of his 2016 presidential rival, Hillary Clinton, should emphatically reject them. Only that’s not what the Grinnell survey shows at all. Let’s zero in on the most clearly nativist and bigoted possible responses.

It turns out that only 33 percent of Trump 2016 voters agreed that being native-born is “very important to being a real American,” five percent view it as “fairly important” and 20 percent as “just somewhat important.” Those are higher percentages than for the Clinton voters. But 39 percent of this group regarded this criterion as being at least “just somewhat important” to “real American-ness” – including 20 percent who saw it as “very important.”

These results don’t easily jibe with the mainstream picture of most Trump voters chomping on the bit to keep out all foreigners, and the gap separating them from Clinton voters is anything but yawning. Indeed, 41 percent of Trump voters considered native-born status as “not important” (versus 61 percent of Clinton voters).

The Christian criterion generated answers more consistent with the depiction of Trump voters as prejudiced – 51 percent believed it had any importance. But only 32 percent considered it “very important,” while 43 percent called it “not important.” A quarter of Clinton voters ascribed at least some importance to a Christian identity, including 16 percent of responses in the “very important” category. Sixty nine percent dismissed it as having no importance. And the results for having lived “in America most of one’s life” generated similar numbers among both groups.

But there’s another category that can be carved out of the list of Grinnell criteria – standards supportive of the idea that newcomers need to be adequately assimilated into the nation’s culture before they can be considered “real Americans” – and in particular, need to buy into the country’s distinctive founding ideals.

It’s not an idea that dovetails terribly well with either the kind of nativism that the Grinnell researchers deplore, or with the diversity worship of the contemporary Left. But it’s hard to understand how any country can succeed without the kind of ideological and related values consensus sought by assimilation. P.S.: The imperative of this goal has been recognized and touted not only by many of the Founding Fathers, but by the early 20^th century titans of the original progressive movement.

In that vein, it’s encouraging that overwhelming majorities (more than three-quarters in all instances) of both Trump and Clinton voters agree that accepting people of different racial and religious backgrounds is “very important” to being a real American. (And yes, it’s curious that Trump voters’ score on the latter doesn’t jibe well with their responses on the Christian criterion.) Even stronger, across-the-board support was generated by the notion that “treating people equally” is crucial to real American identity.

It’s more encouraging still, if you believe in assimilation, that healthy majorities of all the Grinnell respondents concurred on the importance, for real Americans, of respecting America’s political institutions and laws, supporting the Constitution, and believing in the importance of hard work and taking responsibility for one’s actions.

But the partisan split characterizing these responses showed that Clinton voters’ support for these assimilationist values – except regarding the importance of personal responsibility – was notably weaker than the national results.

Specifically, only 68 percent of Clinton voters answered that it’s “very important” to American identity to respect those American political institutions and laws; only 55 percent put similar stock in hard work; and only 73 percent valued supporting the Constitution this highly.

Much lower still were those shares of Clinton voters who awarded “very important” status to the assimilationist values of English-speaking ability and believing that “democracy is the best form of govenrment” – at 26 percent and 52 percent. But I’ve placed these answers in a category of their own because, although the Trump voters’ levels of agreement were much higher (68 and 69 percent, respectively), they fell somewhat short of their endorsement levels of the other assimilationist positions.

President Trump often says (along with many others), “If you don’t have borders, then you don’t have a country.” I’d make the same claim for assimilation and the common ideological values it requires (again, including a working knowledge of English). According to this survey, although Ms. Clinton’s voters don’t seem nearly so sure, Mr. Trump’s voters strongly agree. And thumping majorities of the latter aren’t racists or xenophobes. That’s why their views on immigration strike me as by far the best guides to national immigration policy – and why I don’t see how any thinking adults could disagree.

Im-Politic: Where McCain Fell (Way) Short

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America First, foreign policy, globalism, Im-Politic, Immigration, isolationism, John McCain, Mainstream Media, nativism, protectionism, Trade, Trump

I spent a fair amount of this past weekend thinking of something to write about John McCain that would adequately explain why my long-time (and continuing) irritation with the late Arizona Republican Senator goes considerably deeper than my opposition to his stances on specific issues like trade, immigration, and foreign policy – and in particular why it was never offset much by any admiration for his instances of political independence, his efforts at bipartisanship, or even his military service.

Not that I don’t admire these widely noted traits and that portion of his bio. But here’s what truly rankles – and should bother you – especially amid the torrent of praise about how McCain supposedly kept the tone of American politics elevated while so many around him (notably President Trump) worked so hard (and successfully) to degrade it: When it came to the issues listed above, he rarely, if ever, resisted the temptation to to portray anyone opposed to what today are called globalist positions in the worst possible light – as selfish protectionists, as xenophobes, and as head-in-the-sand isolationists.

If you’re skeptical, check out statements like

>”Americans don’t run from the challenge of a global economy. We are the world’s leaders, and leaders don’t fear change, hide from challenges, pine for the past and dread the future.

“That’s why I reject the false virtues of economic isolationism.”  (Here’s the source.)

>“To abandon the ideals we have advanced around the globe, to refuse the obligations of international leadership for the sake of some half-baked, spurious nationalism cooked up by people who would rather find scapegoats than solve problems is as unpatriotic as an attachment to any other tired dogma of the past that Americans consigned to the ash heap of history.” (Here’s the source.)

>”We have to fight isolationism, protectionism, and nativism. We have to defeat those who would worsen our divisions. We have to remind our sons and daughters that we became the most powerful nation on earth by tearing down walls, not building them.”  (Here’s the source.)

Beliefs and accusations like these have become so commonplace – largely because they are so enthusiastically promoted by the Mainstream Media – that it’s far too easy to overlook their destructive effects. For these issues, which obviously were so important to McCain, and which not so coincidentally were central to the success of his bitter rival, President Trump, present Americans with powerful and complex questions.

Of course, there’s a compelling case that can still be made for what nowadays are called the globalist views championed so vigorously by McCain. But after the kinds of disasters and blunders represented by the Vietnam and second Iraq Wars, by a terrifying worldwide financial crisis and the worst economic downturn in decades, and by enabling the rise of China, clearly there’s also a compelling case to made for pushing back against the grandiose assumptions about U.S. interests and the nation’s place in the world that underlie them.

In fact, had the bipartisan globalist establishment encouraged, or even allowed, thoroughgoing debate over the assumptions when their vulnerabilities started emerging decades ago, some of the most recent debacles might have been avoided. Instead, the powers-that-be focused on preventing or limiting those debates, and in particular on marginalizing dissenters by casting exactly the kind of intellectual and moral aspersions peddled by McCain. And don’t doubt for a minute that this intolerance accounted for much of McCain’s adoration by a Mainstream Media whose zeal for globalism has been equally extreme, and whose determination to depict the nation’s only choices on trade, immigration, and foreign policy, as black or white has been just as strong.

In other words, the late Arizona Senator denied to his opponents on trade, immigration, and foreign policy issues the credit for good intentions – and the very aura of legitimacy itself – that he famously and laudably extended to his 2008 presidential rival, then-Senator Barack Obama, when he firmly rebuked a voter for portraying the Democratic nominee as an anti-American “Arab.”

Was McCain the worst globalist politician on this score? I’m sure I could find examples of peers who took even lower roads. But on these crucial subjects, he wasn’t notably better. For that reason alone, the election of Donald Trump, and the marked America First turn of the Republican party it has revealed, was a defeat that the McCain and globalists in general richly deserved.

Im-Politic: The Wall Street Journal Slimes both Trump and TR on Immigration

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assimilation, Cheap Labor Lobby, Im-Politic, Immigration, Jason L. Riley, nativism, progressives, racism, The Wall Street Journal, Trump Theodore Roosevelt, xenophobia

Silly me. I read the headline for Jason L. Riley’s newest Wall Street Journal article, “What Trump and Teddy Roosevelt Have in Common” and assumed he was talking about trade. That is, I thought Riley knew what he was writing about.

I’ll sure never make that mistake again! For Riley’s column was not about the economic nationalism that Roosevelt unmistakably championed – including tariffs – and that President Trump says he’s trying to put into effect. Instead, the subject was immigration – and “almost wholly incomplete” is a charitable description of Riley’s portrayal of TR’s outlook.

According to Riley, Roosevelt was a combination xenophobe and partisan hack who wouldn’t even distinguish immigrants from first generation Americans, and who sought to curb arrivals from Southern and Eastern Europe in particular because, like all Republicans, he “was concerned that too many of these latest arrivals ultimately would vote Democratic.”

Consequently, Roosevelt allegedly was all too happy to endorse the common nativist stereotype of the latest wave of immigrants as (in Riley’s words), “vermin [having] human heads with swarthy complexions, and [wearing] hats or bandannas labeled ‘Mafia,’ ‘Anarchist’ and ‘Socialist’” – not to mention assassins like Leon Czolgosz, the son of Polish immigrants who had gunned down President William McKinley in 1901.

Sound familiar? As made clear by the column, that was Riley’s intent. But whatever you think of President Trump, or current or recent immigration policy, there can be no question that Riley’s portrayal of TR renders the former president practically unrecognizable.

The heart of the legitimate case that Roosevelt harbored many of the prejudices that would shape American immigration policy between 1924 and 1965 entails the former president’s own oft-stated worldview. Entirely consistent with the main currents of progressive reform thinking of his era, he believed that different peoples of the world occupied (as one scholar has put it) “different civilization levels,” and those occupied by Americans and Europeans were at the top. Just as consistent, therefore, was Roosevelt’s support for simply cutting off immigration from China and Japan.

At the same time, his concerns may not simply have been racial. According to one scholar, as Roosevelt saw it:

“the entire ‘coolie’ class from China threatened labor relations because Chinese laborers were lured to the American shores under false pretenses and were forced to work for low wages. The deal made with Chinese labor was bound to result in a lowering of the standard of living and cause future problems. Roosevelt’s response was to close the door for Asia.”

Indeed, he reached an agreement with the Japanese government, in 1907, to resume limited immigration from Japan to the United States proper, and more extensive flows into the American territory of Hawaii. This bilateral deal also specified that the San Francisco Board of Education’s post-earthquake re-segregation of Japanese and Korean schoolchildren (with Chinese!) be reversed.

Further complicating the picture: Roosevelt’s definition of political undesirables was not limited to southern and eastern Europeans. He was just just as worried about “German-Americans active on behalf of imperial Germany in World War I.” More broadly, he by no means assumed that those ostensibly more desirable northern and western Europeans would assimilate effortlessly into American society and culture. They would need to make active efforts to give up their Old World political and religious loyalties.

And although Roosevelt’s promptings led Congress to establish in 1907 the Dillingham Commission, whose voluminous reports laid the groundwork for the ethnically restrictive Immigration Act of 1924, with the exception of the Asians, the former president, according to another scholar, “advised against discriminating on the basis of national-origin or religious beliefs.” (Asians still excepted of course.) He also opposed requiring immigrants to pass literacy tests, which were proposed largely to discriminate against newcomers from the non-English speaking world.

In addition, to a great extent, Roosevelt’s championing of urban economic and social reform stemmed from his encounters in New York City with the impoverished lives and oppressive working conditions of recent immigrants – especially from southern and eastern Europe.

Obviously, too many of TR’s attitudes on the allegedly superior and inferior qualities of whites and non-whites, and even of Europeans from different regions on the continent, are completely unacceptable by today’s standards. But a fair-minded analysis would also recognize that he was more than simply a “man of his [prejudiced] time.” In particular, unlike many of even his progressive contemporaries, Roosevelt didn’t seem to view these differing racial qualities as fixed forever by biology. He apparently believed that nurture could augment nature, and however condescending, this view unmistakably – if too implicitly – accepted the inherent equality of all.

Similarly, Roosevelt’s support for various immigration restrictions was based not on a desire to bar permanently all undesirables, however they were defined. It was based on a belief that inflows that were too great and too rapid would undercut the wages of American workers and threaten the cohesion of a country already undergoing a series of tumultuous transitions, and especially one that he and other progressives viewed as supremely important to a successful national future – the creation of a nation whose hitherto fragmented institutions (both public and private) would centralize enough to cope with the challenges of an increasingly complex and rapidly emerging economic and technological modernity.

So if a pundit or any type of analyst wanted to create a truly accurate picture of Roosevelt’s views on immigration – and their implications for America today – he or she clearly would have tried to communicate at least some of this nuance and (genuinely instructive, not exculpatory) context. But if the purpose was to produce a hatchet job aimed at serving the interests of the nation’s Cheap Labor Lobby, Riley’s column will do just fine.

Im-Politic: The Immigration History Peddled by Karl Rove and “Face the Nation” is Bunk

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2016 election, American Protective Association, comprehensive immigration reform, Donald Trump, election of 1896, free trade agreements, George W. Bush, Im-Politic, Immigration, John Higham, Jonathan Dickerson, Karl Rove, McKinley Tariff, nativism, offshoring, Panic of 1893, Populism, Republicans, tariffs, Trade, William Jennings Bryan, William McKinley

It’s a pretty safe bet that most Americans aware of who Karl Rove is would not consider him a terribly reliable authority on their country’s history. And that would make them smarter than “Face the Nation” host John Dickerson. He just made clear in last Sunday’s edition that he believes that the knowledge of the past boasted by this former George W. Bush campaign mastermind, White House aide, and Republican political operative qualifies him to “help us inform our thoughts today.”

As a result, the CBS News talk show gave Rove a national forum to push an interpretation of the presidential election of 1898, and the campaign of Republican victor William McKinley, that’s a model of tendentiousness, not scholarship.

According to Rove, author of a new book about McKinley, the then-Governor of Ohio won the White House because he ran a campaign against a divisive populist demagogue (Democrat William Jennings Bryan) that focused on “uniting the country” and in particular on “allowing the people who are up for grabs in this election, working class laborers, to vote for me.” The McKinley solution in Rove’s words: He “takes on the biggest pressure group in the country and confronts the anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic sentiment and thereby modernizes his party and creates a new governing coalition that lasts for nearly four decades after him.”

That is, Republicans in 1896 triumphed because they pursued the strategy being advocated today by Republican establishmentarians like Rove ostensibly in order to save the party from a November, 2016 disaster if the GOP standard-bearer is the divisive, anti-immigrant Donald Trump.

Although Rove acknowledges that many forces were in play in 1896, his “Face the Nation” remarks left no doubt as to those he considers most powerful. He continued:

“the largest pressure group in America in the 1980s [sic] is the American Protective Association, which has nothing to do with protective tariffs. It is a virulently anti- Catholic, an anti-immigrant group founded in Clinton, Iowa. It has millions of members, plays a huge role in voter guides to tell people how to vote. And they declare in the 1896 that one candidate alone is unacceptable on the Republican side and that’s William McKinley because he’s thought to be too close to the Catholics. McKinley is smart enough to know that the country’s changing rapidly demographically and that many of the new immigrants, industrial workers, are Catholics and not from the normal sources of immigration. They’re not from the British Isles and from Germany. They’re from eastern Europe and southern Europe and central Europe.

“And so he wants to modernize his party. He wants to win. And in order to win, he wants to get the vote of catholic voters and of urban ethnics. And he goes out to do so by Literally taking on the APA frontally, but in a very smart way. He doesn’t call them names. He doesn’t excoriate them. He mocks them….And this coalition that he creates for 40 years is large — has a significant number of Catholics and urban workers, and he’s the first Republican ever endorsed by a member of the catholic hierarchy.”

The clear lesson: The next Republican presidential nominee needs to embrace the kind of Open Borders/amnesty-friendly immigration policies that promise to generate even more important demographic and political changes than they already have.

It all sounds so convincing – until you remember what Rove left out of the history he recounted on this national broadcast. First and foremost, McKinley’s appeal to American workers of all ethnic and religious stripes didn’t rest solely, or even mainly, on his outreach to new immigrants – even though they were widely blamed for many of that era’s economic woes. McKinley also resonated with workers because his national reputation was made by his longstanding support of tariffs on imports that he insisted threatened American jobs.

Not only did one of American history’s best known and stiffest tariff acts bear his name. But according to his leading biographer (who unlike Rove was a genuine scholar) from the time he set his eyes on the White House, McKinley emphasized ‘both the economic merits of tariff protection and its role in harmonizing interests. It would restore prosperity, and continue national development.” This message was especially powerful in the 1896 campaign because once the Panic of 1893 struck and produced a major economic downturn , he was able to argue convincingly that “The Cleveland administration’s insistence on tariff reform had intensified the depression. The Democrats could not govern. Only a Republican victory in 1894 and then in 1896 would restore good times with tariff protection.”

McKinley did contend with the American Protective Association, and reject its platform. But the organization was scarcely the titan Rove portrays. According to another genuine scholar – John Higham – and his authoritative history of American nativism, the Association’s influence had peaked by 1894, at which time it “may have enrolled a cumulative total of half a million members.” Moreover, its message was primarily anti-Catholic, not anti-immigrant – a distinction that was hardly trivial in those days since its membership included many foreign-born Protestants. And McKinley’s decision to brush off the APA was much easier to make than Rove pretends (though no less praiseworthy) since, as Higham writes, by 1896 the organization had weakened considerably, with one of its biggest internal splits precisely over the question of endorsing him.

Moreover, McKinley wound up running on a Republican platform that declared, “For the protection of the equality of our American citizenship and of the wages of our workingmen, against the fatal competition of low priced labor, we demand that the immigration laws be thoroughly enforced, and so extended as to exclude from entrance to the United States those who can neither read nor write.”

So the most accurate way to explain McKinley’s unmistakable working class appeal is to note that, although he definitely downplayed immigration curbs as a cure for what ailed it, he also offered these voters strengthened protection from foreign competition. That’s a major contrast with the Rove recipe, which consists of hammering American labor both with job- and wage-killing offshoring-friendly trade policies and job- and wage-killing mass immigration policies of the type the second President Bush ardently championed.

Similarly, there’s no better way to explain the failure of both the Republican establishment and the Mainstream Media epitomized by Rove and Dickerson to discredit Trump than recognizing that they regard this policy mix as embodying both political wisdom and the lessons of history.