PC for thee, but not for me
[Trump supporters are being very naughty in the comment section, and need another spanking.]
I recently heard a reporter discuss some interviews with Trump supporters. A couple of military veterans complained that when they went to the VA hospital, lots of the doctors were Chinese or Indians. My initial thought was that they might just be a bunch of whining babies.
Then I read this excellent post by Bryan Caplan:
The most obvious case: Americans routinely grouse when immigrants publicly speak languages other than English. They get even more annoyed when they have to “press 1 for English” on an ATM machine or customer service menu. Offending Americans is the furthest thing from the immigrants’ minds; they’re just going about their business. But natives take offense anyway: “In America, we speak English!”
The same goes when Americans voice antipathy for immigrants’ distinctive appearance: The clothes they wear, the cars they drive, the sports teams they cheer. Immigrants intend no offense, but Americans take offense nonetheless.
. . .
When leftist college students fume over microaggressions, the non-academic world properly scoffs. Government shouldn’t lift a finger, and students should grow a thicker skin. Logically, the same goes for immigrants’ alleged microaggressions. Government should do nothing, and nativists should grow some tolerance. Immigration inspires some serious concerns, but natives’ hypersensitivity isn’t one them.
What about Americans’ right to “preserve their culture”? I’m tempted to call it the nativist version of a “safe space,” but cultural preservation is far more totalitarian. A “safe space” is but an enclave – a small corner of the world where politically-correct norms prevail. To “preserve a culture,” in contrast, requires a whole country to impose traditional norms on everyone. And this is crazy: You don’t even have the right to force your culture on your adult children, much less millions of strangers.
On further reflection, now I’m sure that Trump supporters are just a bunch of whining babies. Since nothing else has worked, and we know that Trump likes to present a macho image, let’s start mocking Trump and his supporters for needing “safe spaces”, just like those spoiled Ivy League students. Let’s ridicule them for cowering in fear of Chinese and Indian doctors.
For the record:
Reasonable courtesy >> loony campus PC >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> no PC at all.
Tags:
14. March 2016 at 09:09
While trashing Trump is fine, albeit ineffective, trashing his supporters is not appropriate and just attaches them to him more strongly. I once thought that ridiculing the guy would do the trick of derailing him, but that obviously failed.
Now I think it’s more important to speak to the issues that trouble his supporters, fundamentally the things that Murray talks about in Coming Apart. I.e., it’s not enough to say “cut taxes”. A compelling “clean right” message about them has yet to appear.
14. March 2016 at 09:22
With the VA in the state it’s in, shouldn’t one be happy to get care at all?
Also, I had an Indian friend in high school who became a doctor (English was his second language). Because of how much he worked and how well he did, I’m always more than happy to have an Indian doctor speaking Gujarati with his or her buddies. I’m more like to be concerned when I see an old white man who may not be up to date with the latest research.
Of course I try not to feel this way (is it reverse racism?). Who knows what that old white man knows – he could be the expert in his field. As a data & analytics professional who happens to be white, and aging, I hope others don’t develop the same prejudices against me…
Long story short, if immigrants are willing to come here and do great work as doctors, scientists, in manufacturing or picking fruit, I don’t really care. I just care about the job well done.
When I lived in Belgium, I prayed for the proverbial Polish plumber. The Belgian plumber would arrive late, overcharge and not really get the job done. Not because he was Belgian, more because he was benefiting from an insider advantage.
14. March 2016 at 09:34
“On further reflection, now I’m sure that Trump supporters are just a bunch of whining babies.”
-That would be wrong.
“Since nothing else has worked, and we know that Trump likes to present a macho image, let’s start mocking Trump and his supporters for needing “safe spaces”, just like those spoiled Ivy League students.”
-Won’t work. Trump, being two steps ahead of you, has already presented his being angry and a whiner as advantages (google Trump whiner).
“Let’s ridicule them for cowering in fear of Chinese and Indian doctors.”
-He’ll just use that to show his critics hate American workers. And I like meritocracy; I’m fine with Chinese and Indian doctors coming to this country. Only as long as they don’t get too powerful -we wouldn’t want imperialism.
No PC>>>>Reasonable courtesy>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>loony campus PC
14. March 2016 at 10:01
You have the audacity to call veterans with service-related medical problems ‘whining babies’?
Yes, immigrant Indian doctors have systemic problems with their bedside manner.
Bryan Caplan has no appreciation of the familiar in the common life (or, it would appear, with much else going on outside his skin), and therefore no one else can either?
And we need to be spanked?
You’ve been in academe too long. You seem to have no idea what this sounds like.
14. March 2016 at 10:10
If the only thing keeping a person decent is the expectation of divine reward, then brother that person is a piece of shit; and I’d like to get as many of them out in the open as possible.
14. March 2016 at 10:21
that person is a piece of shit; and I’d like to get as many of them out in the open as possible.
There are plenty of actual POSs out in the open as we speak; most of them aren’t too concerned with the sweet hearafter. If you were morally serious, they would be your priority.
14. March 2016 at 10:56
OK we realize libertarians don’t like Trump and are surprised so many Republicans ~35% and some Democrats 10% support this vulgar talking yam. (h/t Charles Pierce)
My in-laws are closeted Trump supporters and I think they best described it as “We are no longer the majority!” (Living in California this is true today.) Their concerns are reasonable even if I don’t agree with them.
14. March 2016 at 11:02
Art, You asked:
“You have the audacity to call veterans with service-related medical problems ‘whining babies’?”
Yes I do, if they complain about too many Chinese and Indian doctors.
14. March 2016 at 11:49
Beware, in lest fighting idiots you become an idiot; and when you stare too long into the Internet stupidity, the Internet stupidity stares also into you.
The reason I post mainly on Facebook these days is that when somebody says something baity or trolly or hatey or sneery, I click “Block” and then they’re gone forever. It makes for an enormously more civil and intellectually sophisticated comments section on my wall. If you’re not willing to consign your trolls to the void, then at least don’t stare at them so hard that you start writing posts to answer them.
Or as someone else put it, “Your intelligence is the average of the people you usually argue with.” It’s why I try hard to argue with Robin Hanson and Paul Christiano instead of Internet trolls.
14. March 2016 at 11:55
Yes I do, if they complain about too many Chinese and Indian doctors.
This may not have occurred to you, but doctors are not IT systems administrators. They have to interact with actual people and have the manners to do that and the sense to ask the right questions, which is why people tend to be fairly particular about who looks after them and not just their abstract skills.
I’ll file your reply under ‘applied autism’.
14. March 2016 at 11:56
Oh, by the way. Doc Martin is fiction.
14. March 2016 at 12:00
Beware, in lest fighting idiots you become an idiot;
Over many years, I could have introduced you to faculty members who spent very little time interacting with others in fora where they had a hard time pulling rank. They could still talk like idiots, but thought very highly of themselves. It’s not the internet that makes people idiots; it’s living in bubble, and few are more thoroughgoing than a department on the arts and sciences faculty.
14. March 2016 at 12:04
Half of all doctors finished in the bottom half of their class
14. March 2016 at 12:05
we realize libertarians don’t like Trump
Lots of people manage to not like this and that without developing a delusion that this and that is Mussolini. (And as we speak, ‘libertarian’ is now a catch-all term which includes goldbugs, Spicolis, and open borders fanatics; Milton Friedman is dead, Thos. Sowell is real old, and Richard Epstein isn’t young either).
14. March 2016 at 12:23
Rather than get moralistic and huffy the way Caplan does, can this be modeled in a Becker-style cost-of-discrimination model? At some margin everyone desires cultural conformity of a sort, it’s just a matter of what kind. People are willing to pay quite a lot of money in order to self-segregate in this way. I don’t mean just gated suburban communities- the West Village and the Mission District ain’t cheap either, and it’s the distinctive culture of those places that people are paying for. Naturally there is a big qualitative and natural-right difference between people willingly incurring a cost in order to get conformity and imposing costs on others to get it, but let’s not go pretending that “cultural comfort” isn’t a very real good in the economic sense (i.e., I’m not saying it’s Good in the moral sense). You have to either have no self-awareness or be borderline Aspergers to deny that it’s true for you. One of the huge improvements of Uber over most cabs is that you can reliably get a competent English speaker, and when people talk about the higher quality of service that’s one of the big things they mean. In Uber’s case, of course there’s no compulsion involved, just consumer preference, so it shouldn’t be offensive to libertarians. But with shared, public institutions, reducing the cultural match to a community represents a real decline in service quality. When it comes to say, medical care, it’s pretty sensible to override those kinds of preferences, but that doesn’t mean its always true in the general case. Much of the time it’s a matter of conflict between whose cultural comfort is going to be given official preference, with no one enjoying any moral high ground.
14. March 2016 at 12:42
@ Tom M.:
“Half of all doctors finished in the bottom half of their class”
Somewhere out there right now are hundreds of doctors practicing who barely got through med school.
14. March 2016 at 12:46
Scott, I agree with you on this! “Safe spaces,” ha… Yep.
14. March 2016 at 12:54
The moon peers down on a diseased world… There is no cure for the disease, an entire race walks mindlessly into destruction. Not even a man of colossal power, would be able to prevent the inevitable.
14. March 2016 at 13:01
Life’s barely long enough to get good at one thing. So be careful what you get good at…
14. March 2016 at 13:02
“Your intelligence is the average of the people you usually argue with.”
-Very interesting insight. Scott Sumner is a lot smarter than I, but I also argue with other professors, really smart people, and random commenters in various Internet comments sections. My IQ is in the upper 120s (I think), Sumner’s is in the 140s (I think), and Yudkowsky’s is off the charts.
“Lots of people manage to not like this and that without developing a delusion that this and that is Mussolini.”
-Exactly. Bob Murphy certainly doesn’t think Trump is the new Mussolini (or even Putin).
14. March 2016 at 13:03
@Art Deco
You are extremely afraid of any kind of initial contact aren’t you? Are you that afraid of other people? I know that by keeping others at a distance you avoid a betrayal of your trust, for while you may not be hurt that way, you mustn’t forget that you must endure the loneliness. Man cannot erase this sadness, because all men are fundamentally alone.
14. March 2016 at 13:04
@ E. Harding
People incapable of guilt usually do have a good time.
14. March 2016 at 13:06
Eliezer, Good point, but I never had much intelligence in political matters. If it starts impacting my economic analysis then let me know.
14. March 2016 at 13:09
I don’t trust guys like Bryan Caplan on immigration issues. I bet he lives in a white suburb or something very similar to that. 95% of his colleagues and friends are white upper class (some of them might be Asian/Southeast Asian/Chinese upper class – which is the same as white upper class – only even more ambitious).
And the best thing is: Not even this environment with its dozens of walls and safe zones is safe space enough for Caplan – so he is home schooling his kids. Can someone live more in a bubble world? It this even possible?
14. March 2016 at 13:19
“Good point, but I never had much intelligence in political matters”
-It shows. I think my intelligence in political matters is better than that of 90%+ of Americans, but that’s not saying much.
@Christian
-Yes; Caplan’s now complaining that Trump is intruding on his bubble.
Also, what is the general opinion among the public in Germany toward the migrant crisis? I don’t live there.
14. March 2016 at 13:27
I bet he lives in a white suburb or something very similar to that. 95% of his colleagues and friends are white upper class (some of them might be Asian/Southeast Asian/Chinese upper class – which is the same as white upper class – only even more ambitious).
McLean, Va., I think, or some similar section of Fairfax County, Va. It’s a pleasant area, though unprepossessing looking for all its affluence. Virginia does not excel in the area of town planning. Traffic can be stupefying. There are GMU faculty who can review some of the reasons for that.
I doubt Caplan rubs shoulders with too many patricians or the elite. In my Margaret Mead moments, I’ve had occasions to observe GMU faculty in their habitats. They’re congenial affluent bourgeois (with large home equity), in part I suspect because few of them are on the autism spectrum. Mrs. Caplan is a lawyer employed by Freddie Mac. She is, btw, a Roumanian import, and one or another of her vocations is presumably a job Americans won’t do.
14. March 2016 at 14:07
The patients at the VA are unhappy with their white doctors as well. Their life satisfaction is very poor all around. Its not whining … I don’t know what it is but it’s much more severe than that. The generally low quality of care most likely gets them down even more, but they tend to complain bitterly about the high quality care they receive as well.
I’m not old enough to say for sure, but it seems like something has legitimately snapped inside many of these folks. When my grandfather received VA care it had a great reputation, the reality fell short of the reputation but he and the other patients were still satisfied and happy about the care they got. He had access to private insurance and would still go to the VA for various things. I rarely see that now, and people complain that their private insurance is worse than it used to be too
I’m sure some of this is the result of actual new problems but I have to say, these old baby boomers just do seem to have a bad attitude!
anyway, I hope making fun of them could work … But I doubt it. Regardless of policy, most trump voters lives will continue to degrade over the next few decades … That’s just aging. They have already shown they do not have the maturity to face this well.
Ironically, though Trumps core constituency is a bitter aging group that knows they are being forced out, his campaign on the ground is represented by young, hungry outsider operatives who currently have no seat at the table at either the heritage action or the more traditional wing of conservative politics. Too many millennials are entering political organizing on the right at once, and the party is overwhelmed. This will continue for another decade. Hang on to your hats ladies and gents.
14. March 2016 at 14:11
The civil rights leaders of fifty years ago wanted blacks to be treated like everyone else was. But that morphed into affirmative action and later, demands for reparations. And because our leadership has often given in to demands for rewards to “victims” of almost every stripe, we now have a society in which it is advantageous for just about anyone to claim victim status. Why shouldn’t the Trump supporters get on the bandwagon? Everyone else has.
14. March 2016 at 14:26
@E. Harding
Also, what is the general opinion among the public in Germany toward the migrant crisis? I don’t live there.
There have been credible studies recently that 80% of Germans oppose Merkel’s open border policy and her refusal to even think about a refugee intake limit.
There also have been elections in three important states just this Sunday in which Merkel’s bogus Christian conservative party and the Social democrats lost dramatically. Instead a brand new and truly conservative party got unprecedented results.
In the heartland of Germany (in Saxony-Anhalt) for example they became the second biggest party out of nothing. In the last election this party didn’t even exist yet. And now they are so strong. That’s really astonishing and unprecedented in the history of Germany. They even won major cities and counties.
The similarities with America are astonishing: All major media outlets are hating this new party and are trashing it constantly. One lie after another, every day ten new ones. Nevertheless they won so much voters amongst all ages, races and classes. They are also the leading party around blue-collar workers aged 20-50 now.
14. March 2016 at 14:28
“The civil rights leaders of fifty years ago wanted blacks to be treated like everyone else was.”
-LOL. The civil rights leaders of fifty years ago were exactly like the civil rights leaders of today. Just look at those who survived. Civil rights was never about equal rights, and always about special privileges. MLK supported billions upon billions of dollars of Federal money to help Blacks integrate into White society. There’s no way to make such a program work, of course, due probably to genetics. Chinese integrate into White society fine (though they are still quite clannish relative to what should be expected of them, as well as relative to Japanese). Since the Civil Rights movement, Blacks have generally not culturally integrated into White society, but have dis-integrated away from it.
http://www.nola.com/opinions/index.ssf/2014/04/martin_luther_king_jr_explicit.html
14. March 2016 at 14:37
@Christian
-Yes, I know about AfD, but my worry is that they didn’t come in first place in Sachsen-Anhalt. But 23% there is good; clearly better than nothing. It’s a necessary corrective to a year of extravagance in migration policy.
“There also have been elections in three important states just this Sunday in which Merkel’s bogus Christian conservative party and the Social democrats lost dramatically.”
-But they’re still the party with the most votes, aren’t they?
14. March 2016 at 14:45
“what is the general opinion among the public in Germany toward the migrant crisis? ”
Spent a lot of time this week in Switzerland talking to Germans and even the ones who declared themselves as Socialist felt the immigration situation is unsustainable and want it stopped. 100% also expressed concern over who this Trump guy is. The Swiss I talked to (bankers and asset managers mainly) want Brexit, liked their strong Franc, and also are very afraid of Trump.
I assured them all that if nothing else he would not blow up the world as the retaliation would hurt his NYC real estate portfolio.
Interestingly, in Italy no one cares, nor has any opinion about anything although all trains were stopped coming in from Switzerland and the most adorable German Shepherds walked down the aisle and the Police grabbed the passports of the only 2 Arabs in my car (no one else though… not much consideration for PC in Italy)
14. March 2016 at 15:21
@Christian List,
WARNING: personal experience to follow! Don’t read if you hate those:
For what it’s worth, I’m white middle class and I grew up in a lily-white neighborhood (China Lake, CA). When I went to college (also where I live and work now, in Goleta, CA), it took me some time to get used to all the immigrants. I actually joined an anti-immigration group in college called “FAIR.” I was intrigued by the Libertarian party, but it really bothered me that they were open borders.
But within the space of two or three years, I changed my mind. In my case, my personal experiences living amongst immigrants is what caused me to change my mind and embrace immigration. I don’t live in a gated community and a large percentage (maybe 40%?) of my neighbors are Mexican immigrants, or descended from Mexican immigrants. I like my neighborhood and my neighbors. A majority of the kids I see walking to the nearby elementary school each day are non-white. I have tenants that don’t speak English. I didn’t mind learning a little Spanish. My work colleagues are mostly white, male and middle class, but my friends are all over the map racially and ethnically.
So, maybe you’re right about Mr. Caplan, but I wouldn’t necessarily assume that all white middle class immigration supporters have walled themselves off in racially pure bubbles.
And I wouldn’t be surprised if most white people who’ve had similar personal experiences to mine would also be pro or at least neutral on immigration. Actually, I can honestly say I don’t personally know anybody (outside of a black ex-girlfriend) who’s anti-immigration… even my looniest of extreme-right wing Alex-Jones loving relatives, friends & coworkers. Maybe because we all live in California and we’ve all gotten used to it?… I don’t know for sure. I don’t believe there’s a chance in hell “Prop-187” would pass today.
So when I look at the rest of country’s attitude on immigration, I want to say, (in my best California accent) “Dudes!… take a chill pill!”
14. March 2016 at 15:49
it’s not that we dislike immigrants attending our schools and diversity is important but some of my tax dollar goes to fund state schools and I wonder if some didn’t go to my alma mater. I would like an American to get a shot at attending a good college before we give that space to an immigrant, even if the American has lower grades which is increasingly the case.
Diversity is fine and my kids get a lot of it in this Boston suburb but I feel sad that some lower income Americans have neither the desire nor the grades to get into a good college.
How can we encourage our youth to go to college? No good jobs, school loans? How can we get American underserved youth to see the value in higher ed? See the report “The Good Economy” where the authors see a move to make the Senior Year a year of discovery. How about some high school course involving job training? Does anyone remember Hedrick Smiths “Re-thinking America” where he described the differences between German, Japanese and American high school education.
So don’t call all of us racists!!!!!for wanting a fair shot for our kids since we’ve been paying some bit of tax to fund higher ed.
14. March 2016 at 16:02
The civil rights leaders of fifty years ago wanted blacks to be treated like everyone else was. But that morphed into affirmative action and later, demands for reparations.
Bayard Rustin did. Perhaps some others (James Farmer? Ralph David Abernathy?). Rustin got a job on the research staff of the AFL-CIO around about 1964 and was not thereafter a figure of any influence. He was the only one I’m absolutely sure rejected the sort of racial patronage schemes that were omnipresent as early as 1971. The culture of the black political leadership as it developed after 1964 had a number of strands: Chicago and Harlem ward politics (Wm. Dawson, Adam Clayton Powell), the social work industry (Whitney Young), Edmund-Pettus-Bridge-Kitch (John Lewis, Julian Bond), quasi-charismatic mobilization politics (Jesse Jackson), public-employee-union-fellatio (Marion Berry), red-haze-vicious (Mary Frances Berry), a disposition of truculent defensiveness (John Conyers, echt practitioner), and a kiss-my-ring-m****f***a disposition (which Edward Koch and Rudolph Giuliani had to contend with from NYC pols). I think you could argue the black population is of two or three minds about their social world, and those minds do not talk to each other much. So, the reasonable muddle-through of every day life does not influence thinking about matters abstract from daily life, and the real social problems around them does not influence their political intelligence any. The result you get are the succession of cretins who’ve made Detroit what it is today, Marion Berry, Bill deBlasio….
14. March 2016 at 16:11
Government should do nothing, and nativists should grow some tolerance.
What’s egregious about this is that ‘nativists’, including and especially the wage-earners who’ve been captivated by Trump, show ‘tolerance’ every day at home and at work, certainly far more than do professors who are on the clock for about eight hours a week, show up for work in flip flops, and cannot be fired. They’re just not willing to show unlimited tolerance when they have a say about something.
14. March 2016 at 17:07
Those comments were indeed ridiculous but I see no reason think they represent the views of Trump himself or a large number of his supporters. Any sufficiently large group will have ridiculous members.
Trump has so many legitimate reasons to be criticized that it seems beneath you to suggest mocking him because a couple of his supporters are old men who can’t understand their doctors.
14. March 2016 at 18:41
I was thinking more about people like Harold Washington of Chicago. He was actually a pretty decent mayor, and had both a great sense of humor and no use at all for showboats like Jesse Jackson. And his battles with Jane Byrne and Fast Eddie Vrdolyak were fun to watch. Had he not died in office he might be mayor still.
Chicago politics used to be fun.
14. March 2016 at 18:45
Don’t worry Scott. After Cruz wins this thing, we won’t be hearing much more for Trump.
14. March 2016 at 19:25
it seems beneath you to suggest mocking him because a couple of his supporters are old men who can’t understand their doctors.
No, it’s beneath any decent person to mock elderly veterans with service-related disabilities for wanting doctors they can have some rapport with. What does that suggest about libertarians in the academy?
14. March 2016 at 20:00
Steve F, if Trump wins Ohio, he gets Ohio’s delegates, meaning he wins. If he doesn’t win Ohio, Kasich holds Cruz back, meaning Cruz doesn’t win. Heads, Trump wins, tails, Cruz loses.
14. March 2016 at 20:04
I think at this point Trump could apologize to everyone he has ever offended, promise to open the borders to all immigrants, announce that he has no idea what he’s talking about and drop out of the race and he would still win the republican nomination. You’re fighting a losing battle.
14. March 2016 at 20:19
E. Harding,
If you are saying that Kasich (and Romney) are secret agents working for Trump, you are correct.
15. March 2016 at 02:31
To use terms from Eliezer’s sequences, the least convenient world is one where the claims of HBD are true. There are places where pacification of humanity has happened and there are places where that has not happened. Inviting humans from the non-pacified places is dangerous to places where cultural norms assume a pacified population.
The solution that I think is most compatible with the current ethical climate is a distributed refugee nation, charter city style. Take current places which are refugee camps and formally federate these into a refugee nation. Let each patch be ruled like a charter city, run for profit of the corporation who gets the contract to run them. Rules could be created to slowly give shares to people who live in them. The refugee nation could not refuse migrants by law and it could be mandated that trusted NGO’s be always there to ensure that people are not defrauded. The refugee nation will be attractive to global manufacturers as cheap labour will probably be guaranteed until humanity remain venal. (i.e. forever) Have free trade with refugee nation. Refugee nation could be a haven of alternate arrangements for certification of people. Some patches could test out panopticon concepts where people could prove their character with video evidence. All of this could filter the deserving from the undeserving. People could use it as a staging area to prove themselves and get invites from other nations or continue to remain in refugee nation, building equity and moving from employee to employer.
15. March 2016 at 05:41
Prakash, I think you’re headed in the right direction but I think having many “refugee nations” with limited immigration would be better than one with unlimited immigration. Why? Because too much immigration could degrade a sense of community. That’s an important safety net for the poor, and much cheaper than a welfare state.
15. March 2016 at 05:49
Scott, you’re clearly emotional and it’s shutting down your thinking, which is out-of-character for you.
Nothing in our national social contract obligates me to support unlimited immigration, and for good reason (uncontrolled entry into any institution with value will get exploited and the institution will die). Furthermore, the potential downsides to immigration I’ve listed before, eg linguistic/cultural barriers can make productive cooperation more difficult (exactly what the veterans you’re trashing are trying to say, btw), are meaningful costs beyond just instantaneous emotional state. People using their sensitivity to object to immigration are well within their rights.
To take an extreme example, completely unrelated to immigration, if Scott were to say “I don’t like to get beat up” should myb6’s response be “jeez stop being such a pussy”? People are entitled to forms of sensitivity that reflect our collective interest.
We do have strong protections for free speech in our social contract, have repeatedly reinforced those protections, and again for good reason (to make decisions we require good information); free speech fosters productive cooperation, as even when it offends it improves the quality of information. So there’s a small cost which buys us something incredibly valuable. Furthermore, Universities are social institutions precisely intended for dialectic. People using their sensitivity to try to limit my speech and force-feed me false information are operating well beyond their rights and infringing on mine, and it’s all the more egregious when they do it in Universities.
15. March 2016 at 07:37
SMART
“Scott, you’re clearly emotional and it’s shutting down your thinking, which is out-of-character for you.”
This is true.
“Nothing in our national social contract obligates me to support unlimited immigration”
Also True.
Scott, once you and I became “Pragmatic Libertarians” and accepted the morality of progressive taxation and an ever increasing Welfare Basket…
We GAVE UP the moral authority to complain people use voting to keep cultural hegemony.
Any real Libertarian would EASILY trade a WALL and total control of the border (walls are fences and the essence of private property) to keep our taxes form being increased.
That’s the deal on offer.
We get to keep our taxes lower (Trump and rest of GOP)in exchange for keeping poor immigrants from moving here.
REREAD THAT.
——
Now look Scott, it’s FINE for you to care about improving the lives of immigrants!
You just don’t get to FORCE ME to pay for it.
And the deal on the table right now is:
1) Make the US (and Mexico) a little more Libertarian with a Wall.
2) Get lower taxes.
3) Roll back Obamacare (cut the services)
4) Place judges on SCOTUS who will make it illegal for union dues to go to Democrats be default.
And you don’t want to make the trade.
Just don’t call yourself Libertarian!
15. March 2016 at 09:29
Everyone, I’m going to skip over all obnoxious the race-baiting.
Peter, I’m not expert on the VA, but I have heard they are having problems. I recall when I went to the doctor in the UK the service was horrible, so I’m not surprised to hear that government run hospitals have issues.
Off topic, Trump won Massachusetts by more than other states, so it’s not clear his support is from the economically dispossessed. He’s also expected to do better in Florida (not affected by trade) than Ohio (hit hard by trade.)
Jeff, BTW, the two veterans who complained about the Asian doctors happened to be African Americans (who also supported Trump–go figure.)
Rick, You said:
“but I feel sad that some lower income Americans have neither the desire nor the grades to get into a good college.”
Far too many Americans already go to college, so we should treat any failure to go as a success. Even many jobs that claim to require a college education don’t really need one.
Sourcreamus, That’s right, no one should expect a candidate who becomes famous for insulting Mexicans, Muslims, blacks, Japanese, etc, would have a lot of xenophobes among his supporters.
Art, Why do you think they’d have more “rapport” with a white doctor than an Indian doctor? These were African American veterans.
I’ve had an Indian doctor, they aren’t that hard to get along with. Stop defending people who are acting like babies. You remind me of those PC extremists on college campuses; every little slight and inconvenience is blown out of proportion.
You said:
“What does that suggest about libertarians in the academy?”
Umm, we’re not bigots?
Jared, You are probably right, but I won’t give up until it’s over.
Prakash, I agree that completely open borders are not politically realistic right now. But the US would certainly benefit from more immigration of high skilled people.
myb6, You said:
“Nothing in our national social contract obligates me to support unlimited immigration”
It’s you who is getting emotional. I agree that unlimited immigration is not realistic right now. That has no bearing on Trump. Reasonable immigration reform is very feasible and is desirable. Unfortunately it’s being blocked by people with their head in the sand. But none of this has anything to do with unlimited immigration—no politician is advocating that policy, and it has nothing to do with what people object to in Trump. Indeed even Trump favors more H1-B visas.
BTW, nothing in our “national social contract” obliges you to support anything.
15. March 2016 at 10:09
Art, Why do you think they’d have more “rapport” with a white doctor than an Indian doctor? These were African American veterans.
The question doesn’t need an answer.
Everyone, I’m going to skip over all obnoxious the race-baiting.
‘Race-baiting’ is a term might apply properly to one comment by E. Harding, if that. You can certainly ‘skip over’ that without puttin’ on a show.
15. March 2016 at 10:11
Unfortunately it’s being blocked by people with their head in the sand.
The only people who might be blocking reasonable legislation are Chamber of Commerce shills, lawfare artists, and Democratic Party vote farmers. Donald Trump is not in any of those categories. Neither is Jefferson Sessions.
15. March 2016 at 10:12
But none of this has anything to do with unlimited immigration—no politician is advocating that policy,
No, Bryan Caplan, Alex Tabarrok, and Tyler Cowen are advocating that policy. Your buds. Not anyone else’s.
15. March 2016 at 10:14
hat’s right, no one should expect a candidate who becomes famous for insulting Mexicans, Muslims, blacks, Japanese, etc, would have a lot of xenophobes among his supporters.
Trump was not made famous by insulting any of these groups. That aside, what ‘insults’ has he uttered during the campaign?
15. March 2016 at 10:50
Speak of the devil and he shall appear.
15. March 2016 at 14:08
Scott,
You’re making the claim that sensitivity to immigration is comparable to sensitivity to speech. I disagree and detailed some of my reasons. You didn’t address any of them substantively.
Social contract: I couldn’t disagree more. By law, behavior, philosophy and tradition we’ve all invested heavily in agreeing not to infringe on each other’s speech. Amend it only with extreme caution and by the proper channels.
Not only have we made no such investment for PC, but PC is antithetical to that much higher value. Similarly we’ve done no such thing for the current level of immigrants. And for good reason: PC and too much immigration are harmful to our polity.
Unlimited: You’re setting the costs so low by comparing them to a college kid who doesn’t want to hear an unpleasant truth, my exaggerated “unlimited” is within-bounds as a justifiable follow-through on your logic. Saying you’re talking about, or favor, limited immigration doesn’t jive with such low costs, you’re contradicting yourself.
15. March 2016 at 14:53
Scott,
I read your post yesterday and wanted a day to consider my response. I am an econ major, but politics and its elements is my thing, so this is a topic I have more capability for input than economics.
My read on the makeup of Trump’s supporters is that they are a widely dynamic group that has some level of strong engagement in politics but not a deep engagement. They care about politics and hear stuff about politics on a regular basis, but they typically don’t dissect it as deeply as most idealists do.
They export onto Trump their own opinions. He is a receptacle where they place their most important issues and say that Trump agrees with them on those issues. This emerges from Trump’s constant utilization of suggestion, where he plays every side of every issue and lets the audience complete his sentences in their own minds.
Combined with that, his supporters’ strong yet not deep attachment to politics allows them to focus on their chief issues at the expense of all others. When they see Trump on board with their interpretation of their chief issues, they’re game, and when they see Trump on board with things they don’t like, they rationalize it away since they had already confirmed to themselves that Trump doesn’t believe everything he says.
To understand Trump, it’s important to assess the evaluations of those who are close to him, like Rush Limbaugh. Trump and Rush are more or less acquaintances, and Rush is thought to understand Trump’s motivations and ideals. Rush claims that Trump is not an idealist but a pragmatist, and that much of Trump’s strength is derived from this fact. However, I believe Rush has either wrongly evaluated Trump or is in on the game himself. Trump IS an idealist. The totality of his actions and words strongly suggest that he has many steadfast ideals and that the view that he is a pragmatist is the manipulation he’s put on everybody. Trump is deeply favorable to crony capitalism. Strong government and an organizational structure that pulls elements from corporatism and fascism appear to be where his ideals lie.
Trump’s supporters see who backs them up on what they think is important, and when he seems contrary to other things they believe, they rationalize how they’re unimportant issues or that Trump really doesn’t believe the stance he has taken.
The man is a master in his specific discipline of persuasion.
15. March 2016 at 14:59
Scott,
I didn’t expect to see so much support for Trump in your comment section. I’m guessing though that the “silent majority” of readers agree far more with you than with the Trumpistas. I’m certainly with you.
15. March 2016 at 15:07
I’m guessing though that the “silent majority” of readers agree far more with you than with the Trumpistas. I’m certainly with you.
Which part do they agree with, the part that says Trump = Mussolini or the part that says you should flip the bird at elderly war veterans?
15. March 2016 at 15:18
Here is an example illustrating my above points. Disregard that the video is from infowars.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gI9MCvK2MGs
This shows a man who holds a generic and sound conservative Republican view that welfare significantly holds back black communities and that a solution for black communities is jobs and embrace of work instead of welfare and victimhood. This shows that he is what I’ve called strongly attached to politics, yet it can be seen how he is not deeply attached to politics since Trump has given no actual reasons for any of us to believe that he has the capabilities to positively affect job growth. One way or another, he has been persuaded for Trump. His desires probably reflect mainstream conservative desires, but his understanding of how those desires become actualized through policies is lacking.
This is the majority of the Trump base. Another proportion of the base includes people like those on this site who do have an understanding of sound policy, but more or less are looking at the clear whiteboard that Trump presents them and lets them write their own ideas upon.
15. March 2016 at 15:55
@E. Harding
But they’re still the party with the most votes, aren’t they?
It depends what you mean by that. The CDU (the party of Merkel) lost in 3 of 3 states heavily.
They lost Rhineland-Palatinate even though they had a huge lead there just few months ago in polls – before Merkel started her crazy polices.
They also lost Baden-Württemberg, the economic powerhouse in the Southwest. Very important state and normally a natural habitat of the CDU since 1950. They lost it to the Green Party and got their worst result there ever. That’s like the GOP losing Texas to the American Green Party. Unthinkable but it happened. Also because of Merkels crazy policies.
They became the strongest party in Sachsen-Anhalt, the smallest state of them all, but their loses there have been extreme, too.
All their loses went to the AfD. After the elections the CDU is so power hungry that they will form new coalitions with the Green Party and the Social Democrats.
Imagine the GOP forming a coalition with the Democrats and the Green Party just to stay in power. That’s just a really bad idea and this stupidity will hurt democracy even further.
In practise there’s a uber-coalition between the CDU, the Social Democrats and the Green Party in Germany since at least 2015. Even the communists support this uber-coalition.
So what are the people that oppose this uber-coalition are supposed to vote for? They can only vote for the AfD, it’s the only alternative. Those so-called democrats are so stupid – they destroy democracy with this uber-coalitions and in the end they won’t even reach their stupid goal of destroying the AfD because this will make the AfD only stronger. It’s a similar mechanism that made Trump big in the first place, too. Those people are really ignorant, arrogant, power hungry thugs. They never learn.
15. March 2016 at 16:35
Art Deco,
Me and everyone I know are shaking our heads and laughing at the crazy Trump supporters. I think you’re all nuts and as far as I’m concerned, have no credibility on anything.
15. March 2016 at 16:51
That’s nice Scotty. Maybe you’ll get around to answering my questions. There are only two of them.
15. March 2016 at 16:53
@Art: Whether Trump is Mussolini or Berlusconi or whatever, he’s not fit to be president. You are only stumping for him because you are an unprincipled partisan. If he were a Democrat (and he kind of is one) you would be ripping him apart. But because he’s Team Red you are in the tank for him. Hypocrite.
15. March 2016 at 18:19
@Count: in Art Deco’s case it’s precisely that. I’ve never been able to understand what motivates some people like you and him to constantly trash the hosts of the blogs they frequent.
15. March 2016 at 20:36
@Count: you are boo-hooing plenty yourself, you don’t need help.
16. March 2016 at 02:11
Eliezer,
wise warning.
Scott, all,
I’d take Christian List’s analysis of German voting results this week with a grain of salt. From his tone he’s obviously partial to AfD and their programme. And from cold fact you’d see that in 2 out of 3 Laender that voted, CDU only lost marginally, while SPD and Greens had major losses. This is true for Rheinland-Pfalz and Sachsen-Anhalt. In Baden-Württemberg CDU lost heavily but so did SPD. And Greens actually won there, while fully supporting the refugee policies. Look is up yourself here (black = Christian Democrats = CDU):
http://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/wahl-in-sachsen-anhalt/
http://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/wahl-in-rheinland-pfalz/
http://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/wahl-in-baden-wuerttemberg/
It’s my old poet theory, people oscillate between socialism and national socialism. Hey, even Mussolini started as a socialist! (just to rile those who want somebody to bring up Mussolini).
So, the picture is much more complex. From recent poll results, the loss of support for Merkel seems to have bottomed out too because people start to realize that all she’s doing is Realpolitik. No one wanted this to happen, but the alternative would have been to send the army to shoot people in the woods or more so, to let the Greeks take the full brunt by closing the borders farther down.
What’s more worrisome is that Russia openly fuels nationalist and populist parties in Europe. The strategy seems to be not to present an alternative reality, but to discredit the trust in institutions and media with just enough contradictory messages. And sure enough, the AfD crowd watches German speaking Russian media because they believe it’s more trustworthy than German media. Who knows, maybe Putin actually planted Trump too?
16. March 2016 at 04:02
people start to realize that all she’s doing is Realpolitik.
No, you start to fantasize that that’s what she’s doing. The practitioner of reasons of state in Europe is Victor Orban.
16. March 2016 at 04:48
Art, You said:
“No, Bryan Caplan, Alex Tabarrok, and Tyler Cowen are advocating that policy. Your buds. Not anyone else’s.”
You really are an idiot.
myb6, If you had had your way modern America would not even exist, because the WASPs were horrified by the vastly different cultures that arrived after them, starting with the “uncivilized Irish” and followed up with Southern and Eastern Europeans.
Steve F, You said:
“The totality of his actions and words strongly suggest that he has many steadfast ideals”
What? Is this a joke? Please explain.
Scott, Yeah, I’m pretty sure 90% of my readers detest Trump.
Art, You said:
“Which part do they agree with, the part that says Trump = Mussolini or the part that says you should flip the bird at elderly war veterans?”
I would hope both. BTW, my dad was a WWII veteran, and he despised people who thought veterans should be put on a pedestal. On the other hand, I doubt he would have approved of Trump mocking McCain as a loser for spending years being tortured in a POW camp. But then you like to defend Trump, so go figure.
Steve F, Trump supporters do know that Trump’s not a conservative, don’t they?
16. March 2016 at 04:58
BTW, my dad was a WWII veteran, and he despised people who thought veterans should be put on a pedestal.
Korea era for my dad. He expected his children to have the discernment to distinguish between putting someone on a pedestal and refraining from peppering them with obscene insults.
16. March 2016 at 05:03
I doubt he would have approved of Trump mocking McCain as a loser for spending years being tortured in a POW camp. But then you like to defend Trump, so go figure.
What Trump said was: “I like people who weren’t captured”. He said it of a public figure who’d insulted his supporters, something McCain does serially (‘crazies’ ‘wacko birds’). Ron Unz compared McCain to Tokyo Rose, which is the sort of defamation which should concern you.
16. March 2016 at 05:58
Scott, that’s a tired trope. Just because something happened in the past and is part of our history, doesn’t mean we have to choose to continue it in the future. Obvious cases are obvious.
Also, the argument is highly confused. The WASPs hated the immigrants yet consented to so much immigration? (Today we’ve consented to nothing, thank PC and non-enforcement). The WASPs had ongoing, intense debate about mass immigration, but we’re supposed to follow a completely different policy silently? Americans chose in 1924 to drastically curtail immigration, but we can’t because they allowed a lot before 1924? You want to bring back the Chinese Exclusion Acts?
16. March 2016 at 06:02
PS Scott you have no idea what “my way” would even be. We can’t even get to that point of the conversation, because you won’t admit how ridiculous it is to compare veterans who want to work with their doctors to college kids who don’t want to hear uncomfortable truths.
16. March 2016 at 06:07
Art,
_No, you start to fantasize that that’s what she’s doing. The practitioner of reasons of state in Europe is Victor Orban._
The origin of _Realpolitik_ was in dealing with the communist East, not because it was popular, but because it was an outside reality that had to be dealt with, rather than being ignored.
Orban is the opposite, pandering to the worst popular instincts precisely because it is popular, and not dealing appropriately with outside realities in their larger context.
16. March 2016 at 06:16
pandering to the worst popular instincts precisely because it is popular,
The popular instinct in this case would be that Hungary is the home of the Hungarian people and a few others with long pedigree in the territory, not a hostel for troublesome people from the Near East or North Africa. That’s only the ‘worst’ instinct in the minds of addled cosmopolitans who can wall themselves off from the consequences.
If you’re interested in sustenance for actual war refugees in Syria and not muslim flash mobs from wherever, that can be accomplished in camps adjacent to Syria, in accordance with longstanding practice for handling refugee situations.
16. March 2016 at 06:29
If you had had your way modern America would not even exist, because the WASPs were horrified by the vastly different cultures that arrived after them, starting with the “uncivilized Irish” and followed up with Southern and Eastern Europeans.
That’s a rather florid way of describing ordinary alienation between disparate social groups (which, by the way, persists; it’s just that the worst practitioners award themselves plenary indulgences; the worst, are, of course, the haut bourgeois of our time, including most of the professoriate). The resultant policy was what? After 40-odd years of high levels of immigration, there followed a 40 year period of low immigration. How unutterably brutal.
16. March 2016 at 06:33
I do want to apologize for only ever commenting here when I disagree, I think it might leave the wrong impression. Mostly when I read your posts, I just find myself nodding “makes sense”, and don’t have much to add. I greatly appreciate your blog overall, all the time and energy it must consume, and your engagement with your commenters. I just think this individual post is nonsense and can’t stop myself from arguing.
16. March 2016 at 06:36
how ridiculous it is to compare veterans who want to work with their doctors to college kids who don’t want to hear uncomfortable truths.
It’s quite impossible to manufacture an academic environment without irritating disputation except in circumstances of uncommon homogeneity (think a seminary), or circumstances of utter apathy (pretty common nowadays), or circumstances wherein those not of the privileged viewpoint are systematically ejected and harassed (the preferred policy of the apparat which runs higher education in our time). They’ve pretty much gotten rid of any opposition on the arts and sciences faculty (though it can be useful to have a few Voznesenkys and Yevtushenkos knocking about, e.g. Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok). Now the task at hand is to shut the students up. You cannot get rid of them because you need the revenue.
You can, however, have salutary doctor-patient relationships as a matter of routine.
16. March 2016 at 06:38
Art, you got to realize that a lot of European nationals of some nation, Hungary or otherwise, do NOT want to be imprisoned in romanticized, incestuous visions of “my-country-as-my-jail-cell-where-all-people-are-like-me” while gleefully drinking the juice of their own homegrown socks. That’s why the EU came into existence (that and the fear of Germany). What’s next, a call for closing off the borders and declaring economic autarky? Because, you know, international trade is evil? Not to mention that Orban doesn’t seem to like Slovaks or Roma either, never mind their “long pedigree in the territory”.
And while you were talking down Merkel, it somehow escaped your attention that she’s the one who pushed Turkey (with raisons d’etat galore such as hold-your-nose financial presents and visa concessions) to do exactly what you suggest, to keep the refugees closer to Syria. While Orban was busy building fences, vociferating to his home base, and chumming up to Putin.
16. March 2016 at 06:45
Scott:
“I’m tempted to call it the nativist version of a “safe space,” but cultural preservation is far more totalitarian. A “safe space” is but an enclave – a small corner of the world where politically-correct norms prevail. To “preserve a culture,” in contrast, requires a whole country to impose traditional norms on everyone. And this is crazy: You don’t even have the right to force your culture on your adult children, much less millions of strangers.”
This clearly isn’t true. Social liberals are obviously forcing their cultural views on the rest of America. If forcing cultural views on others is totalitarian then the totalitarian winners aren’t the nativists. It’s weird that Caplan views the traditionalists as totalitarians for wanting the culture to look one way but not himself for wanting the culture to look another way.
And I’m a social moderate and all that entails for what that’s worth. This passage by Caplan is just absurdly myopic.
16. March 2016 at 08:07
@ Scott, I served in Korea 1975-76. Many of the American soldiers treated the local Koreans contemptuously. I was all of seventeen when I arrived there and was disillusioned to find that many of the worst offenders on this score were black. I had thought that their own experience of being discriminated against would make them more sympathetic to the plight of the Koreans, but the opposite seemed to be true.
I realize what I just wrote is not PC, but it was true in the mid-1970’s. I have not been in the Army since 1982, so I don’t know whether it’s still true today. I hope not.
The ethnic intolerance of so many Trump supporters in the comments section here and in other Internet forums is really depressing. I actually thought most people had gotten past all that fifty years ago, but it’s like antiSemitism, it just keeps cropping up again and again.
On an off-track note, have you seen this? Grossman and Hopkins say that the two political parties are different: The Democrats are a loose coalition of interest groups that all want stuff from the government, while Republicans are more driven by limited-government ideology. Unfortunately, Trump happened and blew their thesis out of the water.
16. March 2016 at 09:42
The ethnic intolerance of so many Trump supporters in the comments section here and in other Internet forums is really depressing.
Who, other than Harding (who’s messing with your head)?
16. March 2016 at 09:54
Art, you got to realize that a lot of European nationals of some nation, Hungary or otherwise, do NOT want to be imprisoned in romanticized, incestuous visions of “my-country-as-my-jail-cell-where-all-people-are-like-me” while gleefully drinking the juice of their own homegrown socks.
You mean ‘a lot of European nationals’ do not resemble your silly and tendentious caricature. Thanks for the education.
That’s why the EU came into existence (that and the fear of Germany).
It started out as a free trade area and then developed into a customs union and included initially just six countries, three of whom were already organized into a small customs union of their own. Jean Monnet may have harbored open-borders fantasies and there was chatter about a ‘United States of Europe’. I doubt you could have sold that to working politicians in 1957, much less the general public. I doubt it ever occurred to Monnet that the posited ‘United States of Europe’ would have included Syria.
What’s next, a call for closing off the borders and declaring economic autarky? Because, you know, international trade is evil? Not to mention that Orban doesn’t seem to like Slovaks or Roma either, never mind their “long pedigree in the territory”.
What should be next is limiting visa issuance to sojourners, temporary residents (diplomatic personnel, students, teachers, and their dependents), and a trickle of settlers. There are no sources of refugees adjacent to any European country and have not been since 1989. Your blather about ‘autarky’ is completely out of left field.
16. March 2016 at 10:27
And while you were talking down Merkel, it somehow escaped your attention that she’s the one who pushed Turkey (with raisons d’etat galore such as hold-your-nose financial presents and visa concessions) to do exactly what you suggest,
You mean there’s a possibility this tapers off given a number of unspecified ifs, after a collection of European governments failed to defend the continent against ship-trasported refugeess and after she incited new arrivals on 25 August
The hag-chancellor’s performance is just ace — if you set the bar low enough.
16. March 2016 at 12:48
There’s no point in arguing over Trump’s ridiculous con. Let them take their flaming dumpster off the cliff, the GOP can probably retake the House in 2018.
16. March 2016 at 12:52
Scott, you said: “What? Is this a joke? Please explain.”
I probably should have used the word “ideology” instead of “ideals”. Trump is said to be a pragmatist, somebody who doesn’t hold ideological political stances. This assessment looks to me to be false, as I see from Trump great implication that he is ideological towards authoritarianism, cronyism, and some elements of corporatism and fascism. He seems to believe that the role of government is to enforce authority of certain groups.
You said: “Trump supporters do know that Trump’s not a conservative, don’t they?”
Some do, some don’t. None of them care. I attempted to explain how this could be the case with my initial post. Trump’s rhetorical strategies includes a persuasion tactic that provokes members of the audience to attribute to him what they want. This is how it has gotten to the point where the typical Trump supporter thinks that he would be terrific on their most important issues, yet for all the other issues where Trump seems incompetent or ridiculous, they just think he doesn’t really believe what he says.
16. March 2016 at 13:16
There’s no point in arguing over Trump’s ridiculous con.
Who’s doing that? And to which con are you referring?
16. March 2016 at 17:06
Art
I skip over your gratuitous insults right to where you mention Merkel, August. Well, we’re in March. You should read the news more frequently. Also, ideals of the EU have indeed evolved since 1957. But I don’t mind, it goes to show that your posts are based on ordinary ignorance, blinders, and an inability to keep up with the world’s evolution.
“What should be next is limiting visa issuance to sojourners, temporary residents (diplomatic personnel, students, teachers, and their dependents), and a trickle of settlers.”
As I suspected. Why don’t we all just stay “home”, whatever that means. You don’t just want to stem the refugee flow. Ultimately, you don’t want any free movement of people. Freedom of movement is the most basic freedom of all. More so than speech or any supposed “right to bear arms” or whatever. Which is to say, if you hate freedom of movement, you hate freedom, period. My-country-as-my-jail, that is your ideology.
16. March 2016 at 18:18
myb6, I don’t follow your comment at all. How is opposition to Chinese and Indian doctors for cultural reasons any different to the anti-Irish bias of the 19th century?
Are you seriously claiming that it’s hard to get high quality medical care from an Asian doctor? Indian Americans are the highest earning ethnic group, I seriously doubt they are more incompetent than other doctors.
Jeff, Yes, unfortunately there is still anti-semitism, even where you would not expect it. Just today I got this in an email from my daughter’s very liberal high school:
“As background, in December, anti-Semitic graffiti was discovered on a bathroom wall. Since Friday’s basketball game, three more incidents of similar graffiti were discovered. In February, four racist questions were submitted via an anonymous online site as the Black Leadership Advisory Club (BLAC) was preparing for Black Culture Day. Following these incidents, I spoke with students, staff, advisors, and resource officers to insure our students felt supported and safe. In addition, I informed the attendees of Black Culture Day about these incidents and confirmed they would be addressed.”
I’ve never quite believed the GOP was the small government party. They use that phrase, but obviously don’t govern that way. They simply prefer a bit more military, war on terror, police, agricultural spending, etc., and a bit less Medicaid. About equal for Medicare.
MBKA, Very good point about the Roma. That’s the “tell” that this isn’t about immigration, it’s about racism. (At least with Orban, obviously not with everyone. Even I probably wouldn’t favor 100% open borders if I lived in a small affluent European country, and no one else had open borders.)
16. March 2016 at 19:37
Scott, I’m saying 19th Century relations between WASPs and Irish are pretty irrelevant to the modern decision.
I’m saying language and cultural barriers can be serious, particularly in a situation involving as much trust and communication as a doctor (keep in mind how risk-averse people are in this circumstance). I doubt it’s the technical skill people question. Is this statement really that controversial? I’m happy to get into detailed examples, just let me know, I didn’t think it was necessary.
Look, I don’t know anything about these vets except what you wrote. But I see *potential* for a legitimate concern, something worthy of discussion, I’m not willing to condemn that as whiners just yet, and I’ve no reason to think they’re anything like a college kid who wants to silence my statement of fact. That’s the unruly child who knows that when his parents put a controlling hand on him he can horribly embarrass them with a shrieking “you’re hurting me!” They’re taking advantage of my desire to avoid harming others to manipulate me and monopolize the flow of information. Taking a private virtue and turning it into a public vice, if you will.
Maybe this is part of why we’re not meeting minds on this: I think of PC as a much more serious problem than just some people being a little whiny. They certainly don’t limit their tactics to the whine- they also ostracize, appeal to authorities, physically threaten, etc.
16. March 2016 at 19:52
Scott and mbka,
RE Roma: this is a good example of the counter-intuitive damage that PC causes. I know almost nothing about Orban or the Roma, and in a world sans-PC would have trusted your statements, now I can’t unless you provide a lot more information.
Why? What little I do know is that even leftist sources report the very high crime rate in that community; Orban could say easily say something factual and it’d be “racist”. The severity of infraction and burden of proof for that conviction is so low, even though the punishment is so severe.
16. March 2016 at 20:03
Ultimately, you don’t want any free movement of people. Freedom of movement is the most basic freedom of all. More so than speech or any supposed “right to bear arms” or whatever. Which is to say, if you hate freedom of movement, you hate freedom, period. My-country-as-my-jail, that is your ideology.
People move freely all the time within a certain radius. They also form communities and societies. People aren’t widgets, Bryan Caplan’s illusions to the contrary, and those societies are not infinitely plastic. This isn’t that difficult to understand.
16. March 2016 at 20:06
Indian Americans are the highest earning ethnic group, I seriously doubt they are more incompetent than other doctors.
Indian doctors are still Indian doctors. They don’t mix well with everyone. That’s just life. May not matter much with a surgeon. Matters with primary care.
16. March 2016 at 20:17
MBKA, Very good point about the Roma. That’s the “tell” that this isn’t about immigration, it’s about racism.
http://www.amazon.com/Bury-Me-Standing-Gypsies-Journey/dp/067973743X
Not everyone is a truculent sentimentalist. Richard John Neuhaus offered a capsule review:
• There are perhaps eight million Gypsies in Central Europe, with the biggest concentration in Romania. In her book Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies and Their Journey (Knopf), Isabela Fonseca tries hard to be sympathetic, but she does not try to deny that they are, with exceptions, a lazy, lying, thieving, and extraordinarily filthy people. Nobody wants them around. Reviewing the book for the New York Times, Annette Kobak notes that Vaclav Havel of the Czech Republic has said that the defense of the civil rights of Gypsies is a “litmus test of a civil society.” No decent person should disagree with that. Ms. Kobak continues: “Gunter Grass in Germany took the thought one stage further, saying, ‘We need them.’” That is not taking the thought one stage further; it is a very different thought. But it is a very different thought that Ms. Kobak finds agreeable. “We need them . . . as a measure of our tolerance of the other, of ambiguities, untidiness, and unsettledness in ourselves—all vital but troubling forces, the Gypsy in us, which humanity in its most threatened and control-mad incarnations, like the Nazis, cannot bear to face up to, and so projects onto handy scapegoats.” This is the intellectual and moral untidiness of an unsettled mind. If it means anything, it would seem to mean this: We need the Gypsies and their pathologies in order to face up to our own pathologies and thus prevent ourselves from being hostile to the pathological, which turns out not to be pathological at all but only the troubling but vital force of the Gypsy in us. Such contortions of the liberal mind are apparently necessary in order to justify praising a book that makes it depressingly clear that Gypsies are exceedingly disagreeable people to be around. To suggest that they should give up their lying, thieving, filthy ways might imply that they should become more like us, and that would violate every canon in the multiculturalist code. Better to say that we must face up to the fact that we are really like them. Which, in the case of a good many intellectuals who think that way, may well be true. I do hope I have not been unkind.
Police departments and welfare departments have to deal with the grubby reality in their midst. Victor Orban is alive to that even if bloggers in Boston would prefer to pretend.
16. March 2016 at 21:32
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-europe-migrants-hungary-roma-idUSKCN0RV43E20151001
Reuters on Hungarian gypsies. They put some work into it, but you never quite understand just what is done to abuse this population.