Republicans don’t need this firewall to win; they need it to win as the party of pastoral supremacy in a city-powered republic James Madison could never have foreseen. But this Republican Party, defined by seething hostility to the urban multicultural majority, is teetering on the brink of irrelevance. Continued urbanizing migration, both domestic and international, is likely to push it over, sooner or later, which helps explain the vehemence of the GOP’s current opposition to basic norms of fair democratic representation.
We should dearly wish for the demise of the current dispensation to come sooner rather than later. When it comes at last, and the GOP can no longer clinch national elections as the minority party of pastoral supremacy, it will be forced, as a matter of political survival, to tamp down rather than inflame ethnocentric impulses, broaden its coalition, and begin hunting for nonwhite and higher-education votes inside the outer suburbs. This should set in motion a healing process of depolarization and moderating partisan
realignment. New legislation establishing robust voting rights and structural electoral reform would kickstart this process and help shift American democracy into a healthier political equilibrium in which effective governance in the public interest is once again possible. If there’s anything we can do to neutralize the toxicity of the density divide, it’s this.
As a quibble, I would point out that others see the divide differently. Colin Woodard uses his nine nations model. And there is the divide between college-educated women and non-college-educated men. Of course, these various descriptive models overlap.
As a second quibble, I just came back from a vacation that included seeing Normandy, and it is likely that this visit affected my mood when I returned and read Wilkinson’s article. Now is not a good time to presume that I would choose to side with contemporary urban hipsters in their cultural conflict with the descendants of the men who fought on those beaches.
As a more serious disagreement, I do not share Wilkinson’s view of the bias in our political system. His phrase “basic norms of fair democratic representation” is a claim that the structure of our political system is unfair to the urban majority. What he calls “effective governance in the public interest” sounds like the continuation of the project to overthrow the Constitution and replace it with the administrative state.
But I would point out that the government office buildings in our nation’s capital house technocrats who almost all share an urban progressive outlook. Inside those agencies, the urban majority is closer to tyranny than to impotence.
The philosophy Wilkinson expresses in favor of empowering the urban majority is the exact opposite of that articulated by George Will in The Conservative Sensibility. That book argues for giving priority to the Constitutional protection of liberty, even when–especially when–this goes against majority opinion.
Wilkinson, once with the libertarian Cato Institute, now comes across as a full-fledged partisan Progressive Democrat. In theory, he could argue for his new views from a perspective that respects the ideas he no longer finds congenial. Instead, he has adopted a Krugman-esque approach of painting non-Progressives as cartoon villains. I don’t begrudge him his ideological evolution. But I do fault the manner in which he expresses it.
When Progressive urban leadership was unwilling or unable to address the urban problems that afflicted many of our cities in the 1970’s and 1980’s, urban residents turned to urban outsider Republicans to fix the mess. I wonder whether Wilkinson does not see the numerous problems brewing within many of today’s Progressive urban centers, especially those located within States whose policies only amplify urban excesses. Will these problems be addressed? Will they be addressed without tearing the national Progressive coalition part? Will the interests of ascendant urban Progressives even properly represent the needs of these cities? Chicago? Finally, does Wilkinson think that when Trumpism fades (or more likely, “declares victory” over the heartland issues that propelled it), there will not be any Charlie Bakers, Larry Hogans, etc types waiting to take over, just like Richard Riordan, Stephen Goldsmith, Rudi Giuliani, etc did.
Baltimore is already a majority-minority city. Yes, it’s not the same as NYC, but consider that not every city can have Wall Street, and the world beating institutions many of these coastal cities have were built before they became so diverse.
It’s more useful to think about what this looks like in average city USA. To the extent you can break apart city and suburb data you find lots of cities like Baltimore. Philadelphia for instance has a $40k median household income while Montgomery PA in its suburbs is $84k.
Baltimore City has a median household income of $41k. This in a state with an average of $70k. It’s located within commuting distance of DC with both highway and train lines that could take you there, and have major ports, but all of this isn’t enough.
What you have is a very rich white neighborhood, Roland Park, where the household income is around $150k, and desperately poor rest of the city that is black and house a household income around $20k (the census tract right next to where the rich people go to see Hamilton performed has a whopping $15k median household income and one can routinely see drunk degenerates roaming the streets).
Nobody can live in the city because of the crime and the total lack of discipline in the black majority schools (except the Roland Park school district, where its majority white). Still even the rich mostly send their kids to 40k+/year private school, especially for high school when even the Roland Parkers are supposed to go to black high schools.
The city doesn’t pay for its own bills. Of the $17k per student spent on Baltimore City Schools, only about $3.5k comes from the city itself. The rest is paid for by the white suburban taxpayers that Will Wilkenson hates so much, whose own kids only get $14k per student spent on them.
So what I see Will calling for is ever more dysfunctional cities using welfare laden minority vote banks to loot the suburban and exurban countryside to pay for things in the city that will mostly be enjoyed by rich white liberals (when those poor black people get sick, they go to see rich white doctors in the city, and the taxpayers in the suburbs pay for that medicaid thus subsidizing the lifestyles of the rich white liberals).
Lastly, the poster children for successful urban areas aren’t that “diverse” (Asian doesn’t count as diverse). Manhattan, not diverse. SF, Seattle, Boston…not diverse. The good parts of DC are all on the west side, which are not diverse. The most diverse part of NYC, the Bronx, has a whopping $37k median household income.
A tiny group of already very wealthy very powerful people want to use unproductive and costly minority vote banks to expand their power and use it to dominate their middle class suburban countrymen. That’s what this is about. Will saw this and…made a Machiavellian career move to look out for himself too.
I often think that asdf is overly paranoid, but as the saying goes, “Paranoia is simply a higher level of consciousness.”
And I learn something from reading asdf, and never really tire of his (his?) comments, though maybe I don’t read every word.
I live in Rochester NY (suburbs) and nothing is as bad as Baltimore, except for some particular zip codes, probably. All the proportions are different from Baltimore. But the writing is on the wall that nobody knows how to stop the “inner city decay” of the “blue state model,” or a general unraveling over time of a social model where the decline manifests as “blue rot” to use walter russell mead’s lingo.
The thing that makes me paranoid is the lies and the social engineering from on high. and the constant need for more external infusions of cash.
Also, the self-congratulatory tone of the cosmopolitan urbanites (as channelled by Will Wilkinson) annoys me and activates my spidey tingly senses.
majority-minority
Mathematicians rolling in their graves, there is no such thing!
I used to read Wilkinson often. I quit. Now I remember why.
But the Gods of your fashion
That take and that give,
In their pity and passion
That scourge and forgive,
They are worms that are bred in the bark that falls off; they shall die and not live.
-Algernon Swinburne
I agree that the Constitution should be preserved even in the face of majority opposition but I doubt that skewing political representation in favor of rural areas does much to accomplish that. The rural right, like the urban left, has typically defended only those parts of the Constitution that were convenient swords and shields for them at the time.
The First Amendment is a case in point. Twenty years ago it was still the left that most often stood up for freedoms of speech and religion. Now that the culture war’s fortunes have turned, it’s the right defending religious minorities and heterodox speech against scarequoting leftist sneers; but the history of how they acted before they were culturally beleaguered makes one confident that this too is insincere, self-interested, and ephemeral.
Few points:
1. The descendants of men who fought at Normandy don’t deserve credit for the actions of their grandparents. There’s no reason to mood-affiliate with them over contemporary hipsters. Especially if the contemporary hipsters are actually right on the substance of issues. (I.e. race and immigration.)
2. What Wilkinson says “sounds like” to you might not actually be what he means. You might be misinterpreting him. Jumping from “effective governance in the public interest” to “project to overthrow the Constitution” is a pretty huge leap. Not very charitable.
3. There is no reason to side with the rural minority, merely because it is the minority. On issues such as race and immigration, the multicultural urban majority happens to be on the side of liberty. The rural minority is not. Thus empowering the urban majority in those instances, happens to align quite well with giving priority to the constitutional protection of liberty.
4. Siding with the urban majority on issues on which the urban majority is pro-liberty, doesn’t make one a supporter of the administrative state, or a partisan progressive Democrat. Rather, siding with the rural minority, simply out of an emotional response to their grandparents actions at Normandy, kind of does make one a partisan Republican.
“On issues such as…immigration, the multicultural urban majority happens to be on the side of liberty.”
And, yet, the Left rarely, if ever, argues for immigration on libertarian grounds, i.e., that markets and spontaneous order are better ways than government central planning to determine who lives and works where. So, even when a pro-liberty argument exists to support an outcome favored by the Left, they are reluctant to cite it, lest it set a pro-liberty precedent. In fact, what is the Left’s argument for immigration anyways — we should be softer on immigration because immigration restrictionists seem so mean and racist? What would happen if restrictionists adopted a nicer affect? Would the Left then turn against immigrants?
What if the immigrants were whites fleeing a collapsing South Africa? Would the left welcome them?
“In fact, what is the Left’s argument for immigration anyways…?”
Being an independent (and neither a leftie or a rightie), I have to wonder why the left does not include the following point in their arguments:
“Pretty soon, climate change is going to devastate Latin America, and anything south of the Rio Grande will be unlivable. Some 600 million people currently live south of our border and — even assuming that half of them will die in place instead of migrating — that means our current immigration centers in TX, etc., which are currently struggling to deal with a few hundred migrants, will soon have millions to deal with each *month*.”
An awfully dystopic futuristic scenario, isn’t it?
At some point, we will be forced to make a horrid choice: keep them out with guns, landmines and concertina wire (and watch as the bodies literally stack up on the other side of the border) OR allow them to come in (and watch as they tax all of our systems, especially food, which itself will be hammered by climate change).
This will not an easy decision for even the most objective independently-minded observer, but the worst thing to do is what we have elected to do, which is ignore the matter altogether.
Climate change and the immigration crisis are inextricably linked, and the as the former rapidly gets worse, its impact of the latter will increase exponentially. Its probably too late to prevent the worst impacts of climate change, no matter what we do. What we can do is decide now how we will address this tsunami of climate refugees when they arrive on our southern border.
FWIW, the Canadians should probably do the same.
Pretty soon, climate change is going to devastate Latin America, and anything south of the Rio Grande will be unlivable.
That is not at all true. In fact, climate models say the greatest temperature increases will be at high latitudes (i.e., Canada and above)
The two are not mutually exclusive. Of course the Arctic (and Antarctic) will see the largest temperature increases, but that doesn’t mean the tropics won’t be affected. I’ve read where, eventually, you won’t be able to walk outside for more than 15 minutes without gear or you’ll die from the heat.
Right now, farm workers in El Salvador are suffering from kidney problems from working in the heat.
I completely agree that there will also be warming at lower latitudes. But it will be nothing near making “anything south of the Rio Grande unlivable”. That’s as dishonestly political as saying that everyone who crosses the border illegally is a member of M-13.
Not that you’re being dishonest. I’ll bet you honestly believe that. But you’ve been fed some caca de toro.
I’m not sure if links can be attached on this platform but here goes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7ktYbVwr90&t=793s
Now, this presentation is from 2012; back in the days when it was (somewhat foolishly) assumed that we humans would slow down our production of harmful greenhouse gas emissions as the problem became more evident to all. Unfortunately, we’ve actually accelerated the process. [Worse, we’ve actually become divided along partisan lines on what is pretty clearly a very simple, fact-based issue. But that’s mostly irrelevant at this point.]
So all the dates are also accelerated. When he says 2100, that is probably closer to 2030 now. And 2100 is 2050.
A lot of this information is available everywhere on the web from accredited universities, governmental scientific institutes, private sector consortiums, and so on. As always with anything on the Internet, be wary of junk science and fake news on this subject. This shouldn’t be a politicized issue, but it is (for some reason I still can’t figure out).
But don’t believe me: do your own research on this.
Edit: 2300 = 2050
The identification of the modern Republican party as the descendants of those who fought on the beaches of Normandy and the “urban hipsters” as something else is frankly infuriating. I’m not sure if you’d call me an urban hipster, but I’m certainly on Will’s side of the cultural conflict, and both of my grandparents served in Europe, and one was wounded. Am I not their descendant? Did they not fight? Certainly Fred Trump did not fight in WWII. I get that everyone wants to associate the honored moments of our national history with their own position today, but if you truly want to respect those moments, erasing those who fought if they don’t fit into your cute little dichotomy is not the way to do it.
You may be a literal descendant, but I’d guess that you have little ideologically or spiritually to share with your veteran ancestors. A sadly large number of progressives in my big-city social circle sit around awaiting the demise of elderly white men. It seems unfair to claim the mantle of the Greatest Generation for your side while you malignantly cheer for them to die.
You don’t know a thing about what my grandparents believed. That’s the whole point. Most of the Americans who fought in WWII were drafted, and the fact that they fought tells you nothing about their beliefs. That’s why it’s so offensive for you and Prof. Kling to sock-puppet a whole generation as if they and their “real” descendants all shared the beliefs of the modern Republican party
Thank you.
I understand the comment is offensive. But it also strikes me as plainly true. Look at any survey of American values circa 1945. The draftees need not have _all_ shared the modern Republican party’s views for us to eat that, on average, they were (much) closer to Rs than to today’s Ds.
Again, you don’t know anything about who my grandfathers were, so I don’t see how you can judge it “plainly true” that I don’t share any of their spiritual or ideological positions. You’re just making shit up.
The original question was, which side, if any, gets to associate themselves with the triumph of WWII. I claim that, based on what we know about public opinion in the 1940s, 90% of GIs would select into today’s Republican party. To the degree these GIs were in the war to defend American ideals, the R party affirms that vision and their sacrifices.
As for the modern Democratic party; well, despite its erstwhile “anti-fascism” (Antifa: No border, no wall, no USA at all!), I doubt many GIs would care to associate themselves with a group that literally wants them dead. And that’s before we get to the fact that many of today’s Progressive views would have gotten you institutionalized in 1945.
Your response to all this is: “you don’t know me.” Sounds like we’re talking past each other.
That was not the original question. The original question was whether only Republicans are descended from WWII veterans, and everyone else is something else–snivelling urban hipsters or whatever. I think we agree that the answer to that question is that not all biological descendants of veterans are Republicans today. You’ve advanced the more sophisticated claim that non-Republican descendants of WWII vets are not “true” descendants of their biological forebears, because they have different views. This is again both false and offensive, because WWII vets were a diverse group of actual human beings with a wide assortment of views, and some of them would have sided against today’s republicans. Now you’re on to a third claim, which is that WWII belongs to today’s republicans because their ideology more closely aligns with the views that were popularly held in 1940s America. I disagree with that claim for a variety of reasons, but at least it doesn’t specifically dishonor my grandparents’ service or the legitimacy of my relationship to them, so that’s nice.
“Look at any survey of American values circa 1945.”
Does that include the virulent racism and anti-Semitism as well? If you take that road, you also take the good and the bad that go with it.
My WWII vet Grandfather was a card carrying communist in the 30s, and probably voted for Democrats most of his life. But really both his war fighting and his political and labor activism was about getting a better life for his descendants and his tribe. He clearly didn’t go through all that in the hope the America would become some giant third world favela were the working man lived hand to mouth.
And those democrats he voted for, they were very different democrats. The kind of democrats that wouldn’t be allowed in the Democratic Party today. So while I’m sure he wouldn’t agree with much of the modern GOP, I am ABSOLUTELY sure who he would be voting for today. The modern Democratic Party wants people like him dead and considers them deplorables.
I don’t think he’s an outlier. Veterans vote heavily Republican. Older voters vote heavily Republican. It seems logical that most WWII vets don’t see the Democratic Party as their party.
Note how even recently successful Democrat politicians are harshly criticized by today’s Democrats for once espousing positions that were totally dominant among Democrats just a decade or two ago.
On the right, “Reaganism” or at least it’s elements, are still popular, and when public intellectuals like Ross Douthat criticize “zombie Reaganism” it’s not because Reagan and his ideas were evil or wrong – quite the contrary – but only because “times have changed”.
“Economic growth reliably generates liberalizing cultural change, shifting people toward more progressive, “self-expression” social values.”
Lol – when I think of urban progressives today, “tolerant of all sorts of self-expression” is not what comes to mind.
“Diversity does not generate distrust” – Robert Putnam, call your office.
“The urban population is much more diverse in terms of both its ethnocultural and temperamental composition, which helps explain why the more homogenous nonurban population had shifted toward the right extreme faster.”
Lol again. I guess he hadn’t watched the latest Democrat primaries when this paper was issued. He might need to recalibrate his political radar gun. Or sample the distribution of political opinion in the Bay Area or “Over 90% for Clinton” DC Metro lately. They tend to think alike, but at least there is some variety of dermal melanin concentration. So diverse!
I’m trying to be charitable, but it really seems like Wilkinson is saying something like; “Once one people-groups is politically crushed and silenced, liberty and justice will reign amount the remaining people-groups”
How is that not self-refuting?
It all makes more sense if you understand the perspective of someone with terminal stage Trump Derangement Syndrome who really believes that the election of Donald Trump was the worst and most catastrophic thing that ever happened to America and the values of its people, and that anyone who helped bring that about, or anything that led to that outcome, is per se evil and illegitimate and thus worthy of cancellation (in the ‘cancel culture ‘ sense) and replacement with the people and processes that would guarantee, by any means necessary, that such a thing never ever happens again.
Frankly, I’m only surprised by the tone of urgent impatience. The GOP is as doomed nationally as it is today in all the deep blue one-party states, and had such a helpful hand in its own eventual demise that the coroner could arguably deem it a suicide with some justice. And not because of “lack of outreach” or other such nonsense. And it will all happen soon, certainly within Wilkinson’s lifetime. But impatience is the temper of our time, and so “White people, please die already!” goes viral.
terminal stage Trump Derangement Syndrome
By your own argument it’s the Republicans who have reached a terminal stage.
Personally, I kind of do wish that “white people” would just die already. But by that I don’t literally mean all white people. I mean a certain conception of America as homogenously white-Eurocentric in character, a certain “white” culture that thinks it owns the place. People want the old white-Eurocentric America to die, so that a new multi-ethnic America can take its place. And “Multi-ethnic” doesn’t mean non-white – it means inclusive of all racial groups, including the old white-European America.
I appreciate your candor.
The problem I would put to you is this: why should we think that a new “whiteless” multi-ethnic America would be any more tolerant or charitable towards other minorities once it has “slain” the whites? After that victory, either the coalition shatters into many groups each fighting for a larger share of the economic spoils, or some other minority group emerges as the New White target of hate (East Asians maybe?) serving to keep the coalition unified.
Oh, lots of things have reached a terminal stage. The GOP, stable nuclear family child-rearing, a healthy public intellectual life, the capacity for people to get jokes, the norm by which people stick to the obvious, generally understood meaning of popular words and phrases without twisting them into their own completely idiosyncratic definitions in order to keep circling back to make the same virtue signal over and over, etc. I mean, the list goes on and on.
You didn’t bother to read my whole comment. The new multi-ethnic would not be “whiteless”. Multi-ethnic is inclusive of whites.
It’s amusing how much people on the ‘racial left’ was on about dog whistles, where welfare reform or getting upset about kneeling during the national anthem are code for white supremacist sentiments… but those very self supposed egalitarians seem to derive a positive pleasure from stating sentiments that (we’re led to believe) are not really racial at all in the most bigoted terms. Maybe when people say ‘all men are scum’ they really are trying to say something else; but that they insist on saying it that way – which is completely counterproductive toward the supposed actual point – says something about their disposition.
Secondly, racial consciousness is far more widespread among ethnic minorities. I see no reason why – if you really care about black people as individuals- you should not also want “black people to die,” as such race-based self-conception is thoroughly counterproductive.
I’m having a little trouble understanding the arguments here. Arnold dismisses the idea that there is a structural bias towards rural voters, but the only argument he gives is the notion that Washington technocrats are so progressive and impose so much tyranny, it offsets the need for proportional representation.
Others jump in and argue that Wilkerson is wrong because urban voters have bad ideas, so it is a blessing that they are afforded less representational power.
This is the problem. Anger over progressive values has reached a point where core values like respect for representational democracy are let go of because they favor the enemy at the moment.
Wilkerson is right, and the comments prove his point.
Tom, I am sorry, but if “respect for representational democracy” were a core value for the Founders of this country, then they would not have written the Constitution as they did. Their goal was not to ensure that the majority was represented. Their goal was to provide a balanced system in which no one faction could dominate.
The House was designed to prevent the low-density regions from dominating, and the Senate was designed to prevent the high-density regions from dominating. Moreover, the original rules for choosing Senators kept the voting public removed from direct involvement.
If you want, you can say that the Founders were mistaken. You can say that they should have had the House, the Senate, and the President elected directly by the people, with the majority ruling. That would have ensured that the high-density regions of the country could exert dominance over the low-density regions.
Wilkinson has little respect for the Founders’ intention to protect against majority tyranny. So be it. But he has even less respect for the minority that he looks forward to disempowering. That is what I find most troubling.
I’m not sure that was their intention at all. IIRC, the Founders did not expect the formation of political parties and were disappointed when it happened. The winner-take-all allocation of votes in the electoral college did not immediately occur, but took some decades to develop. The electoral college was intended as something more like a Senate that existed solely to select the president as in a council of “wise men”. It definitely wasn’t intended to be a direct democratic vote, but it wasn’t intended to be a balance of factions either. In one case, they actually selected a President and Vice-President from two different parties. It was kind of an overly idealistic idea that a council of of regional representatives could impartially select a president. It didn’t work and now we’re stuck with this hackneyed system which people try to rationalize post hoc with the argument that it somehow balances the power of urban and rural areas (it doesn’t really).
I think Hazel Meade may be mistaken in describing the Founders’ notion of the Electoral College as a council of wise men. In Article 2, Section 1, paragraph 3 of the Constitution, it’s specified that “The electors shall meet in their respective states”. In Federalist 68, Hamilton speaks approvingly of “this divided and detached situation” of the electors as a safeguard against cabal and corruption.
The founders made a republic, if we can keep it. A republic is not meant to be a proportional democracy. This issue is actually a one of the major issues the founders faced. And as we see, it has never gone away.
>—“Tom, I am sorry, but if “respect for representational democracy” were a core value for the Founders of this country, then they would not have written the Constitution as they did. Their goal was not to ensure that the majority was represented.”
This IS historically accurate. The Founders did not want majority rule and did not think democracy was a good thing. They had in mind more of an aristocracy.
>—-“Their goal was to provide a balanced system in which no one faction could dominate. ”
This is NOT historically accurate. They deliberately designed an unbalanced system intended to insure the domination of white, Christian, male landowners. It was only within THAT group that they sought to balance the northern and southern factions and small and large state factions.
Opinions vary here on whether or not that LACK of balance is still a desirable goal for our political system.
Where did Wilkerson display disrespect to anyone?
There is a problem with the ideas of the founding fathers. Sure, it’s great to create a balance. The problem is that weighting changes over time, and their strategy doesn’t. If their strategy was durable, we would expect populations to correct over time to match the applied political structures. Instead, the density mismatches have gotten dramatically more severe.
I believe Wilkerson’s argument boils down to the notion that a move towards greater density was the natural evolution of modern societies. Constitutional strategies to protect against these density imbalances have become less and less productive.
When enough of the country migrates away from a rural life, at some point, the protection of the minority at the expense of the majority doesn’t create positive effects any more. It only perpetuates an angry divide between the evolution of the majority and the bitterness of a failed, shrinking minority.
We should worry about disempowering the minority, but we should worry over just how much we should take from the majority to accomplish this. I don’t hear a lot of arguments about balance here. I mostly hear that urban progressivism is awful, so Wilkerson’s arguments about rebalancing are wrong.
Urban progressivism isn’t even entirely awful. It’s more of a mixed bag combining basically being correct about a bunch of issues, while being insufferably snotty about how right they are. Plus also being horribly wrong about a bunch of other issues, and being insufferably snotty about how right they think they are. Basically it consists of being really opinionated and being extremely rude to everyone who disagrees with those opinions.
But that doesn’t mean that all of their opinions are wrong. It’s possible to be right about something and also be a raging jerk about it.
NB: that ought to be “snooty”. “Snot” is what flows out of your nose when you have a cold.
It would be helpful if you could list an equal number of urban progressives’ opinions that you consider right and horribly wrong.
I don’t particularly mind people being rude to me, even extremely so, for holding different opinions: I can be rude in return, deride or ignore them. Getting people fired, destroying their livelihoods, and making life arrangements they don’t like impossible and often illegal, not so much.
I didn’t read more than the quoted passage, but in Wilkinson’s defense, the modern GOP does certainly leave quite a bit to be desired, so it’s not entirely crazy to daydream that a political realignment might somehow empower a more sober and intellectual brand of conservatism than what we currently get. At the same time, however, look at the Democratic primary debates and tell me with a straight face that we’d be better off in the coming decade if these people have unassailable national majorities.
I think Wilkinson touches on an interesting point when he discusses the increasing economic cost of locating in majority white areas. At one point in the past, it probably was advantageous to self-select into mostly white areas, but with increasing urbanization and increasing diversity in the cities that is harder to do. Finding an all-white neighborhood means locating further from work and longer commutes, as well as more expensive housing.
Consequently I suspect that urban whites have increasingly adopted the philosophy of racial inclusion, not just expanding the definition of “white” but making peace with the idea that many people’s “mother country” may be India or Mexico or Vietnam, and that it’s ok for “white” people to (for instance) celebrate Chinese New Year and Cinco de Mayo, or practice Yoga. And this has happened because urban whites, for their own happiness, have become less in-group biased, because when you live in a diverse community, it is more psychologically comfortable to share holidays and activites with people around you. In other words, the same process that makes people want to locate in communities with similar religions and ethnicity also works in reverse – that when the costs of in-group bias become sufficiently high urban whites and non-white adapt by adopting some of the ethnic practices of other groups around them to create a new amalgam. IMO, this is what is happening now in cities which adds to the cultural divide – that the cities are in the process of forging a new more global “American” culture which is distinct from the old White-Eurocentric “American” culture, and the people in rural America perceive this and see that as their culture being under threat. (Although it isn’t exactly under threat because the new globalist American culture is an amalgam of the old white-Eurocentric one with a bunch of new additions).
Census track 2711.02 has a median household income of $209,167 and is only 8.6% black in a city that is 2/3rds black. It’s 81% White.
Census track 2710.01 is ACROSS THE STREET from census track 2711.02. It’s 94.3% black and has a median household income of 35k.
Naturally, that street is the demarcation line for schools. Roland Park is in census track 2711.02 and is rated a 8/10 on Zillow. Walter P Carter elementary is on the other side of the street and is rated 2/10 on Zillow. 9% of its students are considered “proficient” at math.
Both of these census tracks vote overwhelmingly Democratic. But none of the white liberals want to take advantage of the fact that real estate just across the street, even in the same physical condition as their own, would cost 25% as much. Nor do they want to share a school with their political compatriots.
This can be recreated in every single city in America. “Cities” aren’t proposers. Specific neighborhoods within cities are prosperous, and those neighborhoods are the least diverse. If you live a block away from someone who doesn’t interact with you, doesn’t share a school with you, and would get trailed by your neighborhoods security guard if they came around…are you really in any meaningful sense living with them despite the apparently short physical distance.
Page 31 of the PDF which Kling links to shows the percentage racial makeup of various neighborhoods in Los Angelas.
It shows that the average black lives in a neighborhood that is 36% white, the average asian lives in a neighborhood that is 48% white and the average hispanic lives in a neighborhood that is 37% white.
That means there are substantial numbers of white residents living in mixed race neighborhoods in cities.
Now, I think you are correct about the white/black divide, but that divide is really closer to blacks/everyone-else. Hispanics and Asians also avoid living in majority black neighborhoods, and concentrate in whiter areas. There’s a reason I didn’t list Africa – because the one area where racial integration is still not occurring (or moving very slowly) is the integration of blacks.
But in MANY places in America, being a second-generation Hispanic, or Indian, you might as well be white – nobody cares. If you speak English as a first language and don’t have an accent – you’re white. Even East Asians are starting to blend in in some places, like California, partly due to the large number of half-asian second- or third-generation residents.
Full disclosure: my manager is an Indian who was raised in San Francisco (no accent, everyone regards him as white), one of my co-workers is a Venezuelan immigrant (has an accent, but everyone treats him as white anyway), another co-worker is a German national who went to college in the US (culturally, she’s more different than the Venezuelan guy), and another one is a half-japanese half-swedish blond woman who occasionally dyes her hair black so she’ll look more Japanese. (Somehow the blond genes won out.) Everyone treats her as white also.
My point is, the new amalgam I’m talking about doesn’t include most blacks, so your point about the continuing racial divide between blacks and everyone else doesn’t really contradict it.
I’ve long stated that I think Asians don’t really count as diversity, because they are high IQ.
I’m also aware there are lots of “White Hispanics” that are majority European in genetic heritage and have fair skin that might call themselves Hispanic on a census question, but are basically white. There are lots of divisions back in their homeland over who has lighter or darker skin even though they are all “hispanic”.
But let’s take a look at LA.
https://demographics.virginia.edu/DotMap/index.html
Go ahead, zoom in on LA.
I don’t know how his PDF does neighborhoods, but I see a lot of clustering by race here. Giant blobs of orange (Hispanic), red (asian), and blue (white).
I bet if I look a the school districting map, it would do much to show why these clumping are what they are.
It’s certainly the case that Hispanics, being less genetically distinct than blacks, aren’t going to be as segregated as them. But that is a lot of segregation there. I imagine that the more European admixture one has, the less segregated things get. That’s true for blacks too.
Your example is exactly what I’m talking about:
1) Indian who was raised in San Francisco (asian, probably high IQ)
2) Venezuelan immigrant (has an accent, but everyone treats him as white anyway)
Maybe he is kind of white. 61.5% of the Venezuelan gene pool is European in origin. And if he’s an immigrant working a skill job he’s probably pretty white, or at least, again, high IQ.
3) another co-worker is a German national who went to college in the US
German = white…
4) half-japanese half-swedish blond woman
are you making my point for me…
Yes, we have already established that high IQ whites and Asians get along well. When we talk about diversity we are talking about low IQ brown people. Nobody wants them around. Rich white liberals in the city don’t want them around, do everything they can to separate from them, and their presence isn’t what is making the cities rich. This is true in LA and everywhere else.
Yeah, that’s my point. Urban whites are more inclusive of Asians and Hispanics (let’s say at least middle-class hispanics) because it’s less costly or desirable than living in an all-white exurb. Some people like living in dense cities. You don’t get the amenities of living in Brooklyn without living in a multi-ethnic community. So in order to feel comfortable in one’s community one adopts a more open attitude towards out-groups. And that change in attitudes is driving a new wave of cultural merging.
Not specifically in Brooklyn, perhaps, but generally I don’t give a bent nickel for this argument. Tokyo has all the big-city amenities — including lots of great ethnic and fusion restaurants that urban liberals love so much — without being noticeably multi-ethnic anywhere, and it doesn’t have any of New York’s disamenities which can be plausibly chalked up to diversity. E.g. you have packs of zombies wandering around literally two minutes away from Wall Street, and your NYC Metro is slow, often late, stinky, dirty, full of garbage and has fixtures like a maximum-security prison. Pfui! No school wars there either.
Hazel,
When liberals talk about diversity, they are talking about underclass brown people. Liberals are clearly NOT living and working with those people, even when they are in the same city.
I chalk the movement of middle class whites to the suburbs/exurbs to the fact that they are the only places middle class people can afford to live. If you can’t afford private school, you need to move someplace where the public schools are functional, etc. Liberal whites segregate into extremely high cost neighborhoods/private schools.
Donald Trumps immigration proposal would let in lots of Asians and college educated White Hispanics, and I haven’t seen any indication that middle class Trump voting whites have any problem with them. In fact its those people trying to get Asians a fair shake at Harvard, and liberal whites trying to keep them out.
And as to amenities, Candide is spot on. My time living in Asia confirmed for me that racism is good and that diversity is not strength.
I’d mostly agree. This is a broad view of “white” that allows for ethnic assimilation. The book Whiteshift by Eric Kaufmann advocates this.
I work with people of Chinese, Japanese, Indian, Hispanic descent who could rather easily be considered “white” in this broad sense. Or a pan-Western ethnic identity.
I know some people of Americans of Mexican descent who have embraced a Western melting pot identity and are fine with their kids speaking English at school and at home, and I know other American citizens of Mexican descent who go to great length to maintain a distinct identity, forbid spoken English at home and choose public schools that forbid the use of spoken English. The former Mexican Americans are easy to see as “white” in a broad pan-Western sense, while the latter are not.
I think it’s actually broader than an expanded definition of “white” though. When you start including east-asians, people don’t actually think of them as “white” exactly, they know they aren’t European, they just consider them some sort of new pan-American ethnic identity. Example: is Glenn on The Walking dead white? Everyone know he’s Asian (Korean actually), but nobody cares. He speaks normal English. He’s not considered “other”. He’s in the in-group. Maybe it’s just because he’s good looking, but still – that’s some sort of expansion of the in-group. It’s not a “white” identity though. People don’t think of it as “whiteness”.
There is whiteness in terms of culturally white. There exists tension between say high IQ whites and Asians. It’s why there is an Asian quota at so many elite white institutions and a “bamboo ceiling”.
And there is “whiteness” in terms of “acts like a middle class bourgeois westerner”. When black people say that other black people are “acting white” it seems to be this second one. One could just as easily say they were “acting asian”. It all sounds like “you doin your homework? stop making us look bad.”
The former is about cultural fit, the latter is about a base level of civilized behavior.
The former kind causes some consternation amongst upper middle class circles, but isn’t the end of the world. For instance, though they tend to separate a bit, whites and Asians don’t mind attending the same public schools too much. Nobody sells their house for fear the neighborhood is going Asian.
The latter brings a lot more heat, because what is at stake are things basic to the middle class life.
Hispanics, especially darker skinned ones, cause problems in terms of the second kind. But I could actually see a very light skinned mostly European descendent “Hispanic” as more easily getting passed the first kind than an Asian would.
I know dark skinned black people who are considered “white”, clearly not in a skin pigment, or in a genetic sense, but in a cultural sense. That’s what I and Kaufmann meant by broader cultural white. Although, sure, long term, it probably won’t be called “white”.
You suggest the term “Pan-American”, but that’s not a perfect term either, as it covers people in Europe and Australia and South Africa and Russia who don’t consider themselves as American.
There are also people who look completely white, could visually pass as being entirely white, may even have white genetics and ancestry, but go to great lengths to highlight their non-whiteness. Some white hispanics forbid English in their homes, and bring their children to schools that forbid English. Some white-looking Muslims, famously Linda Sarsour, she says she grew up looking like an ordinary white girl, and decided to wear a hijab at all times in public, to be clearly non-white.
asdf, I have family in Queens, New York who sold their house because the neighborhood went Asian. They don’t hate Asians or anything, the schools and property values are great, the Asian restaurants are great. But they are some of the last non-Asian white people in that neighborhood, they are treated like outsiders and socially excluded, their neighbors aren’t bad people or mean but they form ethnically exclusive social groups, which is common in urban cities.
If you look at racial dot maps in every US city, you can see patterns of ethnic segregation. The Asians/whites/hispanics/blacks all tend to cluster together. It is imperfect. there is some mixing, but visually the ethnic self-segregation is striking.
I agree that people, even high IQ people, cluster by racial groups. I mean simply that the amount of “heat” is a lot lower between high IQ groups than high IQ and low IQ.
Take being the last to sell in a neighborhood going Asian. They will likely get a very good selling price for their house. They’re time there during the transition would be reasonably pleasant. The schools would be good. No crime. If they moved to a whiter area, but within the same tax base, they would not have to worry about a collapse of public services or local economy. Shared public amenities like parks or hospitals would keep their character.
Politically, while Asians certainly skew a bit to the left, its not like they chronically elect massive incompetents to public office (consider who Baltimores blacks have elected to public office).
So while I get that they might feel some social exclusion and want to move on, there is no danger or urgency in the situation.
Contrast this with a common thing that has gone on in Baltimore County over the last few decades. When a neighborhood goes from white to black, it can happen fast, and if you’re the last one out you lose everything. The asset you dedicated most of your lifetime earnings to, worthless. Your safety and kids education for as long as you cling on, questionable. Your say in local affairs, lost.
We can expand beyond black. Where I’m from in the Northeast is was primarily Puerto Ricans and other Islanders that would cause such problems.
There is just a danger that comes from the underclass coming in, especially if they are some unified brown ethnic group, that isn’t the case with Asians. Last one out of an Asian wave sells their house high. Last one out of a brown wave sells low.
I dunno. I grew up with Asians and Jews as my friends. I’ve lived in Asia. While I get what you are pointing to, maybe I just care about it less then the average person and that’s my own bias.
@asdf,
I do prefer a certain etiquette of celebrating positives and downplaying negatives, both to individuals and to ethnic groups. Every individual and every ethnic group has pros and cons. The cons are often real and true, I’m not trying to deny them, but I don’t want to be a jerk about it either and want to keep my comments constructive and positive.
I believe I broadly agree with you. My biggest criticism with what you wrote is that it’s strictly complaining and negative, and not solution focused. Your complaints are valid, but ultimately, you can only complain so much before you work on solutions.
My comments are balanced out by the Zeitgeist of the times. If you want the pro, its coming out of every megaphone of society 24/7 with force for anyone in non-compliance.
When I talk about minorities, its in direct response to the speaker. If someone is going to claim black dysfunction is white peoples fault, at first you respond with polite Charles Murray-ism. If he continues and amplifies, you say it less politely. If the person starts calling everyone racist and insisting on a bunch of programs to “fix” what they perceive as problems then its time to stop giving a fuck about politeness.
My criticism of the modern right is that it’s too polite, and that politeness has set it on a path to irrelevance and likely persecution. I don’t want to politely lose. I’d rather impolitely win.
If losing is inevitable either way, I’d rather impolitely lose. At least you can hang on to the truth that way. The Chinese of Malaysia don’t have the numbers to stop their persecution, but at least they admit they are being persecuted and don’t deserve it.
I think the main split between the respectable right and the rest of the right is stakes. The respectable right knows that, if it’s politeness fails, it’s not really going to have to deal with the fall out at a personal level. It’s elite. It’s wealthy. It’s got the right genetics. It can insulate. If the American middle class descends into favela status, oh well. At least we “kept our principles”.
But I’m middle class, or at least I come from it and know it would be easy to return to it. My friends, family, and children will likely be middle class, or salaried professionals trying to make it in these cities at best. I’m worried about the future for myself and the people I care about. It’s not academic. It’s personal. The deplorables are my people. I’m not going to sacrifice them on the alter of politeness.
People matter more to me than abstract principles.
“balanced out by the Zeitgeist of the times.”
you are a reactionary, and that is almost a definition of reactionary.
“If someone is going to claim black dysfunction is white peoples fault, at first you respond with polite Charles Murray-ism. If he continues and amplifies, you say it less politely.”
I completely agree with your diagnosis, that many progressive arguments ultimately blame and vilify white people for various ills of society, including various problems of minority groups, like high arrest rates or low SAT scores. I agree that this is morally wrong, and should be confronted.
I completely disagree that the correct response is impoliteness. Any idiot can be a rude jerk. And people are quite justified in ignoring rude jerks. I sympathize with the temptation, but that is an unproductive road to follow.
One option that I’d recommend is taking a few philosophy classes so that you can analytically explore and polish your arguments into something you would want to publish under your real name with actual influence.
I’d recommend reading pundits that express your concerns in a thoughtful, intelligent, polite manner like Michael Anton, Eric Kaufmann, or Alain Finkielkraut.
“My criticism of the modern right is that it’s too polite…”
That is wrong and I suspect I could convince you otherwise:
Consider John McCain. He was branded as “polite”, but in reality he was a fraud. He was polite to his supposed rivals on the left. When his own voters showed up to Trump rallies, McCain insulted them and called them “crazies”, which isn’t polite. Hillary calling Trump supporters “deplorables”, but at least Hillary was insulting her rival’s supporters, McCain was insulting his own supporters. McCain championed drastic free market health care reforms in his 2008 bid for President, and then championed Obamacare repeal after that including in his 2016 reelection bid for Senate. Then he voted to sabotage efforts to repeal Obamacare. After a long Senate career with a large amount of influence, he lost or deliberately sabotaged all of the health care initiatives he championed. On immigration, McCain campaigned on “Complete the Danged Fence”, that was his actual campaign slogan, and then pushed policy in the opposite direction after he was elected. This wasn’t “polite”, it was fraudulent.
Consider “The Bulwark”. Is that the modern right? They are vicious and venom spewing. One of their stated goals is to destroy the personal reputations of people they disagree with. That is the opposite of politeness. It is the opposite of the philosophical pursuit of wisdom. They are awful in every way. They have your motivation, it’s better to be mean and vicious and win then be nice and lose. In the political arena some of this is unavoidable. I feel that Trump’s tactics are fully justified, oppo research is necessary.
I don’t know anything about The Bulwark, so I won’t comment.
I’m something of a genetic/statistical determinist. I just don’t think the arguments work too well. I don’t think love wins. I’ve seen Christian Love go up against genetics and lose. Maybe I’m a terrible Christian, but its what I’ve observed. I like Christian ideals because the Christians I’ve met are nice and I think Christianity helps people treat others in their IRL Dunbar group better (sometimes miraculously better, I continue to hang around Christians even with my own faith in tatters), but it doesn’t seem to have any answers for these sort radically unique problems we face.
We’ve been trying polite and reasoned for a long time. The Bell Curve to published in 1994. Charles has published the same basic book over and over again since then. At what point is this strategy going to have an effect? In 1994 Bill Clinton and the Democratic Party were passing welfare reform, the crime bill, and said we needed to crack down on illegal immigration. Where are we today?
Shouldn’t we just look at how things have gone over the last few decades and update our assumptions about what does and doesn’t work?
We tried polite. We tried AA. We tried political correctness. We tried HR departments. We tried, we tried, we tried…
I think the reason the left doesn’t engage with the politeness is because they don’t have to. They don’t have too because they know such politeness is toothless. They can act the way they do with impunity, and all you’ll do back is be polite. That’s not a strategy to get them to change.
Think of the Cold War. Sometimes we tried to be polite and dial it back. But sometimes we didn’t. You can only be polite with people that fear what might happen if you stop being polite.
My view of the left is they have no plans to moderate. They will accelerate their agenda as fast as demographic changes will allow them too. They have no plan to change hearts and minds, they have a plan to replace us.
So let’s unite and fight back before we are in the position the Chinese in Malaysia are in. Because by then it’s too late. Due to immigration, we can’t just hope that the truth wins out in the long run.
I dunno. I go back to Asia. They are famously polite, but they can be devastatingly blunt if you pull shit on them.
Charlie Rose: “And immigrants has [sic] been America’s strength.”
Lee Kuan Yew: “Absolutely … But, mind you, immigration of the highly intelligent and highly hard-working, very hard-working people. If you get immigration from the fruit-pickers [chuckles for several seconds at the idea], you may not get very far!”
Is that polite? No, it’s dehumanizing and flippant. He’s calling billions of people around the world worthless trash he doesn’t want in his country. He laughs at the idea of anyone thinking their existence would make their society stronger.
And yet when I’m in Singapore I see something to be proud of and in America the people who will be teaching my children believe that “merit” is a concept of white supremacy.
@asdf, i would prefer to continue this conversation by email. Email me at nikodavor@gmail.com
Perhaps the 2010 census data can inform this conversation.
It’s the suburbs that matter.
The 2010 census found 64,901,146 people in rural/small town America (21.0% of the total US population), 92,151,001 in urban areas (29.8%) and 151,693,391 (49.1%) in suburbs and exurbs. 116,680,922 whites, (or 76.9% of the white population) lived in suburbs and exurbs.
And rural/small town America is nothing like what prejudiced urban hipsters imagine it to be.
The census found 5,338,488 African Americans in rural/small town America (8.2% of the rural/small town total). The rural/small town America population grew by about 3.5 million between 2000 and 2010, about 75% of the growth was attributed to minorities with Hispanics accounting for about 1.9 million of these people.
Rural Americans are 24 percentage points more likely to approve of Trump than urban residents. But if you control for the higher share of Republicans in rural areas, rural/small town residents are only a statistically insignificant 4 percent more likely to support Trump. 30% of rural/small town voters identify as independent versus 25% in urban areas and 15% in the suburbs/exurbs.
Nonetheless, given the population dominance of the suburbs/exurbs, the independents there are the kingmakers in our lousy, rotten two party winner-take all system. And this is what has kept the US from descending into the hell of authoritarian hipster tyranny.
Of the 278 cities in the US with populations over 100,000 in 2000, 49 had lost population. The 49 that lost population had a higher percentage of African Americans than the average city. Hipsters talk a good game, but when push comes to shove, they want to live amongst their own kind. No, you say? The huge push for zoning reform in DC – you know, all the hipsters demanding the right to convert single family dwellings on Capitol Hill and in Northwest DC to multiplex low income apartments – speaks volumes.
Rolling out the welcome mat for illegal immigrants costs urban hipsters exactly nothing. It’s more of the same Yes in Your Backyard here too. In 2015, 30 percent of all students living below the poverty line were from immigrant households. Immigrants disproportionately settle in the poorest areas of the country. In these areas poverty among public school students is 46 percent and nearly a third of these students are from immigrant households. Of course, there will be many success stories among these immigrants, but overall, first-generation Hispanic immigrants and their families now comprise 9 percent of the U.S. population but 17 percent of all poor persons in the U.S. Children in Hispanic immigrant families now comprise 11.7 percent of all children in the U.S. but 22 percent of all poor children. This is doing nothing to improve educational or economic outcomes for the already poor residents. Hipsters happily ensconced in their tax-exempt sinecures in colleges, think tanks, and non-profits, are happy to rule the world but have not a clue what the consequences are for the tax paying economy.
But the important thing is that they know they are right about everything. And they are too lazy to actually do anything about the immigration laws on the books, which would mean acknowledging Trump is correct and the laws need to be reformed to emphasize increases in high-skilled immigrants.
Unfortunately, authoritarian gasbags like Wilkinson are the face of libertarianism in the US. Fortunately, extremism and incompetence keep this ideology irrelevant.
Judging racial make up is fraught with difficulty as California is Hispanic, and whites adopted the Hispanic culture left over from the Franciscans. Franciscans ruled California for 200 years or so with an advanced colonial rule that rivaled anything the Brits produced on the East coast.
Franciscan derived universities still compete favorably around the world. The Catholic church still dominated up to the great depression, and then California was integrated into the US only via the WW2 effort. Look at the language of California, its cities and roads, how they are named. Mexican food, is not Mexican. The Mexicans stole it from the Franciscans and called it their own. We effectively have two founding societies. The Mexico we know was derived from the earlier, and crud colonial system of the 1600s. California was second generatino colonial technology.
Let me add that the Franciscans were the business managers of the Catholic system then, (and mostly now). They introduced common education around Europe and California. Fremont (the white ‘founder’) liked the system, introduced it to Lincoln and we got the state college system.
If you’re eaten up by the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy as he is, then you will seethe and rage. He is immovable. He just wants to get on with his life and be left alone, but you want to fix him so that he can never be wrong about anything. He must not be allowed to be in error.
The seething of Madonna, the seething of Cher, the seething of La Streisand and Katy Perry and Will Wilkinson is that there are people who have not yet been made to conform. They must be brought into alignment. They have this seething hostility about the continued existence of the people of Flyover Country, people outside their capacity for sympathy.
The idea of the Constitution was that you could have United States and e pluribus unum. Woodrow Wilson’s idea and Will Wilkinson’s idea is to have a unitary state, one State, and no pluribus. Instead of diversity, you’d invoke the word diversity over and over, steamrolling and flattening diversity into something like a university, cleansed of dissent.
I would guess this fails the ideological Turing test.
> Wilkinson, once with the libertarian Cato Institute, now comes across as a full-fledged partisan Progressive Democrat…. I don’t begrudge him his ideological evolution.
TBH I think if you look around closely you will find a good number of fairweather Crypto-Progressives who masqueraded as Libertarians for decades many of whom were affiliated at GMU, Cato, Reason, etc where it took the election of Donald Trump to finally reveal their true preference. From Ilya Shapiro to Eugene Volokh and his brother to Tyler Cowen to Ilya Somin to Walter Olson.
These are not ideological evolutions but simple revealed truths.
Indeed.
Can you cite something in Wilkerson’s essay that revealed him as a Progressive?
I will on the condition that, to avoid the usual unproductive arguments that occur later, you first provide me with some pragmatically clear and ‘litmus-testable’ definitions of elements, tendencies, or root principles of progressivism, such that they are useful for making distinctions.
Is he promoting the wider use of government for some sort of social reform outside his more narrow argument for correcting overrepresentation of low-density populations in the US system.
emphasis added
I think labeling Trump’s brand of populism as “white-identity” falls into Kling’s progressive oppression/exploitation axis. The problem lies in the historical voting patterns of the Trump swing votes that overwhelmingly voted for Obama in the previous two elections and had never voted Republican.
I agree, however, that Wilkinson’s paper is not a progressive manifesto. I’m skeptical of the premise, though, especially since it is so tightly coupled with unstated/unexplored assumptions about the core contributions to Trump’s win.
I think there is a real danger in using Arnold’s TLP concept in that fashion, and it is particularly difficult when discussing someone’s views on Trump.
I think to make the argument that someone aligns with a particular axis in the theory, you need to show a consistent pattern of affiliation. Noting a particular reaction to Trump isn’t enough.
Trump produces reactions that may align with TLP ideas for his supporters, but not for his opponents.
I was responding to your request: “Can you cite something in Wilkerson’s essay that revealed him as a Progressive?”.
Perhaps I took your question too literally and stopped at the first citation that I thought hinted at progressivism. I am guilty of laziness and looseness in my interpretation of “revealed”.
Noting a particular reaction to Trump may not be enough but my own vitriol towards Trump manifests itself in the words “protectionist” and “mercantilist” but never “white-identity”. The TLP reference was meant to categorize the “white-identity” adjective, nothing more.
If Eugene Volokh is a Crypto-Progressive, we need more Crypto-Progressives. Especially as law professors.
Related; https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2019/07/08/kill-electoral-college-let-winners-win-force-republicans-change-column/1558858001/
“As a more serious disagreement, I do not share Wilkinson’s view of the bias in our political system. His phrase “basic norms of fair democratic representation” is a claim that the structure of our political system is unfair to the urban majority.”
Let’s forget the gerrymandering and the 7% head start Reps enjoy in the House and just go with the fact that Wyoming has a little more than half a million people and two senators. Yes, Texas and California have two. Not hard to figure out a violation of fair democratic representation is a huge problem in the US. And one that will not be fixed. The tail is wagging the dog, and the only way that can be changed is if the tail decides to give up the power to wag the dog.
And that dog won’t hunt.
Last time I checked, Vermont also has two senators, only they’re both Democrats so it’s not considered offensive. So do Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, New Hampshire and Rhode Island.
Do the math, pal.
This is a very unconvincing analysis. Measured on an individual level, Republican voters contribute more to GDP than Democratic voters. The paradox where Republican voters are higher income than Democrats but Republican areas tend to be poorer has been analyzed extensively by people like Andrew Gelman and discussed extensively over many years in the media. Hard to believe Wilkinson is unfamiliar with this. Essentially affluent voters in poorer regions vote Republican so overwhelmingly resulting in a Republican majority despite the poorer voters voting Democrat.
There is a density relationship to Republican suport but it is vastly overstated. Average county density is misleading, suburban counties can include vast areas of empty space reducing the average density to very low levels. People in Nashua, NH (2893 people per square mile) will be surprised to find that despite being part of the Greater Boston MSA, their location in Hillsborough county (457 people per square mile) qualifies them as backcountry hicks.
Note the “Winner takes all” approach used in the comparison of Republican vs Democrat counties. This results in a large difference being assumed between two counties that are 49% and 51% Republican respectively but no meaningful difference between two that are 51% and 90%.
I am unclear what his racial animus argument is. Minorities won over 50% of the vote in the Republican primaries in the Southern States. If the majority of the most conservative Republican demographic preferred a minority candidate to represent them in the presidential race, how likely is it that racial animus is their primary motivating factor? In surveys Trump supporters also express more liberal views on amnesty than the New York Times did less than 20 years ago.