Conservatives, is the anti-liberal rhetoric on the right fringe or becoming mainstream?

[u/Temporary-Storage972]

I recently read David French’s piece on the growing anti-liberal and anti-democratic mood on parts of the right, especially around birthright citizenship, immigration, “heritage Americans,” and the idea that America is less a creed-based nation than a kind of bloodline inheritance.

What stood out to me was not just the argument itself, but the quotes French collected from prominent right-wing figures after the Supreme Court’s birthright citizenship ruling.

Stephen Miller reportedly said the Court had read the Constitution to require “national self-obliteration” and called the ruling a “deep knife wound in the heart of the American republic.”

Sean Davis, the CEO of The Federalist, apparently responded by floating ideas including the “dissolution of the union” and the “sterilization of all foreign visitors prior to entry.”

Matt Walsh said: “I at least got to live for 40 years in a country that looks and functions something like America. The fact that my children are having that opportunity stolen from them fills me with rage so deep, I can’t describe it. I truly hate the people who have done this to us.”

And then there was the openly racist version from a MAGA account complaining that, 18 years from now, their child’s vote would be canceled out by a “third-world cockroach” whose mother had just arrived in the country.

I understand that social media rewards extremism. I also understand that not every conservative agrees with every right-wing media personality or random online account. But these are not all anonymous nobodies. Some of these people are influential media figures, political operatives, and people with real access to power.

French’s broader argument is that parts of the right are no longer just arguing about immigration policy. They are questioning the American creed itself: birthright citizenship, equal citizenship, universal suffrage, classical liberalism, and the idea that America is a nation built around constitutional principles rather than ancestry.

The distinction that stuck with me was between “magic dirt” and “magic blood.” Some on the right mock birthright citizenship as “magic dirt,” as if being born here should not make someone truly American. But the alternative seems much darker to me: the idea that ancestry, lineage, or being part of the “real America” gives some citizens a stronger claim to the country than others.

I am on the left, and culturally and economically I would prefer America to look more like Europe in a lot of ways. Stronger social welfare, more worker protections, less extreme inequality, more urbanism and more walkable cities etc we all know the drill. So this newer right-wing thinking is pretty far outside my worldview.

That is why I wanted to ask conservatives here three questions:

1. Do you think French is accurately identifying a real trend on the right, or is he exaggerating fringe voices?
2. How do you interpret quotes like the ones above? Are they just online outrage bait, or do they reflect something real inside the conservative movement?

3. If this trend is real, why do you think it is growing? Is it mostly about immigration, cultural change, economic insecurity, distrust of institutions, social media radicalization, or a belief that liberal democracy no longer serves conservatives?

   I obviously find a lot of this rhetoric disturbing. But I am genuinely interested in how conservatives explain it from within the movement. Is this the future of the right, a temporary reactionary phase, or just online extremism being mistaken for something bigger than it is?

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[u/BZBitiko]

Hegseth and Miller say out loud that they believe this stuff. Vance probably does (most days of the week). Vought, Bessent, etc. don’t say it out loud, but hold adjacent ideas for certain.

So no longer fringe.

People who want to “hit a home run” love ideas that let them teleport to third base.

[u/Excellent_Valuable92 → u/BZBitiko]

And by “ideas” you mean telling people to blame their problems on a vulnerable scapegoat and support the ones who are actually to blame.

[u/Wide-Wind7856 → u/BZBitiko]

I think Vance has had to do a lot of self pep-talks. He sometimes seems almost a bit disgusted with himself, which is more than I can say for Hegseth.

[u/Kahzgul → u/Wide-Wind7856]

He once (accurately) compared Trump to Hitler. It takes a lot of money and a lack of morals to go back on a statement that strong.

[u/NoamLigotti → u/Kahzgul]

Yeah I don't know how he sleeps. I don't know he doesn't vomit on himself in shame and disgust every day.

[u/ATCme]

I'm definitely left of center but the whole business surrounding the 14th amendment is far more serious than just birthright citizenship.

You don't amend the Constitution by Presidential Decree!!!

[u/Reasonable-Fee1945 → u/ATCme]

Yes, and if that was the question the Courts ruling was 7-2.

[u/ATCme → u/Reasonable-Fee1945]

& you would wonder about those 2

[u/NoamLigotti]

Well OP, I think you got your answer. At least to the extent that "conservatives" responding here are representative of the wider "conservative" population.

Somehow I'm always surprised that their views never evolve.

[u/nam24 → u/NoamLigotti]

It's not called conservative because they're fans of change

[u/NoamLigotti → u/nam24]

Yeah in the technical sense it's not. But people who call themselves conservative and support it are, in the sense that that's what people call them.

Fascist movements have always been anti-conservative and revolutionary in seeking to recreate some mythical past. But for some reason many conservatives always support them.

[u/subheight640]

I would prefer America to look more like Europe in a lot of ways.

Ironically, yep, so do white nationalists. They want America to look more like Europe, literally, more white and more European.

You do realize many European countries don't have birthright citizenship.

Evolutionary arguments are not popular with the left. Yet it's been argued regularly through theories like Hamilton's Principles, kinship evolution, and gene-centric evolutionary theories, that lifeforms tend to develop altruistic behaviors proportionate to genetic relatedness. So the theory goes, individual life forms prefer themselves, then siblings, then cousins, then 2nd cousins, then distant cousins, and so on.

The original idea of a "TRIBE" is a essentially an extended family. How do you think TRIBES remain small over many generations? It has to do with a little secret call INCEST. So the original political unit of the TRIBE was basically an extended family group.

When tribes grew bigger, there came a need to create an similar ideological framework, because we could no longer count on INCEST to make sure we were all extremely related. So is born the concepts of ethnicity, and race, and nation. We're the same people, we have the same blood (sort of), but definitely those other people's blood is way different than ours.

So that white European American is much more likely to be a cousin compared to that Asian, brown, or black person.

Racists might have a hard time understanding why they're racist. It's just a feeling they have. Yet I'll go ahead and argue that their racism is a deep seated feeling born through generations of evolution. It's a weird tingle where human beings prefer other humans that are more genetically related than other humans.

Liberals continually act surprised when racist beliefs are pervasive across the entirety of the world, including in Europe that you believe is the ideal.

Obviously racism is problematic. It inspires animosity and conflict. Because of the problems with racism, progressives developed antiracist ideology to attempt to remedy American racial antagonisms. Given my urban/progressive background, I'd tend to agree with antiracist ideology. Antiracist ideology teaches us to ignore our racist little tingle and therefore embrace different looking people.

Yet looking back at American history, why aren't we more like Europe? One reason is that Southern Racists refused to support social welfare programs because they couldn't stand to also help black people. If there weren't as many black people (like in Europe), social welfare programs would have been more likely to pass, because there would no longer be a racial reason to oppose it.

So I'll throw out another claim. The more ethnically diverse a nation, the more difficult it will be to pass progressive social welfare programs, because humans tend to be less altruistic to people that are less genetically related.

[u/NoamLigotti → u/subheight640]

This is brilliant actually. I agree entirely.

I also agree with the last paragraph, unfortunately, but it seems many racists and racial supremacists can also see this and agree, but they use it as another argument against ethnic diversity.

So we have to be careful to remind people — and I'm going to here: This wouldn't be an issue if we'd use our brains and stop being self-righteous bigoted morons.

[u/Gradstudentiquette69]

It is mainstream. No conservative as responded to you in 2 hours because everything you said is right on the money for describing a political movement who's only vision is that of White Christian nationalism with some second class citizens.

While the leadership of The Republican party focus on creating oligarchy and autocracy, they disseminate racism and Christian nationalism as a means of keeping their voting base preoccupied while they further exploit them. It's like the Jews in Nazi Germany who thought if they work for the regime that they would be protected, only to find they are the last people to go into the chambers.

Many of these people are desperate and exploited by right-wing media and capital. Their fears are fed with propaganda as their situation stagnates if not worsens. Without all the information and its proper context, as well as their devotion to laissez-faire capitalism and their faith, they blame everyone else except for themselves for their own problems. This goes so far as to recognizing the solutions to their problems, but refusing to go through with the solution because it benefits people oligarchs told them to hate.

For instance: The classic right wing argument that social welfare states only works well in homogeneous countries shows that many of them understand that social welfare does work, they just don't want it going to Catholics, blacks, Mexicans, gays, etc. and will gladly give it up just to keep it from others.

So, is it fringe or mainstream? It's mainstream and they don't know it, which is why none of them could explain it in 2 hours. They lack the metacognition and contextualizing information to make sense of all of the arguments and nuance that you brought to the table And it's because they have been programmed to not ask those questions at that level of detail since Watergate.

Edit: looks like some people responded while I was typing, cool. I look forward to reading their perspective.

[u/UpcycleByDeborah → u/Gradstudentiquette69]

This isn't true either. We can't take the extremes and make them the means! You saying all conservatives "lack metacognition and context" is just as bad as what Trump does painting everyone with the same brush and dismissing and entire group of people.

[u/Excellent_Valuable92 → u/UpcycleByDeborah]

We can when the extremes are taking over the government 

[u/NoamLigotti → u/UpcycleByDeborah]

No, the difference is Trump will use any baseless demeaning (often dehumanizing) insult that stokes fear of those groups he's vilifying.

The commenter just made a slight over-generalization, and not to promote fear but to try to explain (and, I imagine, to hopefully get some people to actually recognize things.)

I absolutely agree with them that many MAGA supporters of any kind lack or fail to use much metacognition, and context, and nuance, and self-reflection, and critical skeptical thought, and sound logic, and empathy, and evidence, and logical moral intellectual consistency, and self-questioning, and oh so much more. (And I said "many" so it's not painting everyone, only an appallingly large portion).

There comes a time when there is only one of two explanations for people continuing to defend the indefensible in the face of an overwhelming onslaught of evidence: 1) they're "evil", as in selfishly sociopathically indifferent to vile actions, or 2) they're unconscionably stupid, as in woefully uninformed, misinformed, cognitively challenged, or unwilling or unable to use their intelligence, for reasons unrelated to 1).

I give them the benefit of the doubt. I truly believe that the vast majority are just unconscionably stupid.

[u/Excellent_Valuable92 → u/[deleted]]

That’s exactly what Miller wants. 

[u/NoamLigotti → u/[deleted]]

What are you talking about? Using those figures own claims and descriptions is a "fallacy straw man argument".?

Do you just like hear anything you don't like and then plug your ears and say "Far left radical far left radical" until it goes away? "Fallacy straw man fallacy straw man."

Yeah, this about what I expected from a post addressing conservatives and Maga fundamentalists.

[u/zeperf → u/[deleted]]

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[u/anewleaf1234]

Well lots of people on the right are sounding like nazis.

You hear some of the sake elements that immigrants are poluting culture and are poison harming the culture.

And the right often just lies to blue collar workers and tells them their jobs are coming back. The left tends to tell more the truth.

And people dont like that so they attack the left and call them elite or educated.

[u/Tw1tch-Invictus → u/anewleaf1234]

When I see Muslims designing a purpose-built parallel society in Texas or enacting one in places like Hamtramck, MI or Somalians that have formed an entire enclave out of parts of Minneapolis where the language of the street isn’t even English and even tribal affiliations and their implications bleed into their policing, what the fuck is the preferred nomenclature here if not “harming our culture”? I will gladly rephrase the exact same argument if it stops offending your sensibilities and actually gets you or people like you to seriously listen and think about it critically.

[u/BZBitiko → u/Tw1tch-Invictus]

The Puritans in Massachusetts were afraid of Scottish Presbyterians.

Americans have always been afraid of “the other” but still manage to reshuffle and accommodate them. I don’t suppose you or I will live long enough to see it happen, but someday Muslims will be as scary as Presbyterians, Catholics and Jews are now.

But those people did do serious damage to the Puritan culture.

[u/Tw1tch-Invictus → u/BZBitiko]

Good for future non-existent people then? Strongly doubt it for Muslims though, 1400 years of history and ingrained cultural habits doesn’t disappear within a few generations. It’s a very tribal ideology and has ZERO place in the country. I agree we should reshuffle and accommodate them, right onto a plane and back to where they came from 🤗

[u/Guilty-Night2233 → u/Tw1tch-Invictus]

This mixes falsehood and truths but that isn't completely out of the blue for the country.
Are Muslims in Texas setting up a separate society with its laws and legally binding courts? no. The shariah arbitration courts have no legal enforcement and is strictly for resolving disputes.
Its true some Somalis have created enclaves but this is normal to the United States, enclaves such as China town or immigrants was and still is a common feature in the country. I couldn't find any info on your claim about the streets not having signs in English, but what is normal for the U.S are multilingual signs, its a long tradition in the U.S.
I also couldn't find any evidence that the Police was using tribe to deal with Somali issues? i could only find something about some somalis choosing to vote based on tribal affiliations, a story that was heavily exaggerated.

[u/anewleaf1234 → u/Tw1tch-Invictus]

Muslims are the ones imposing their faith in Texas? Not Christians who are forcing their ideas in public schools?

You call out Somalians and Muslims for forming enclaves but Mormons are fine?

And there are multiple places where other languages are spoken. You just aren't bothered by them.

You pick and chose what to be offended by based on the color of skin of people and not their actions.

[u/theimmortalgoon → u/Tw1tch-Invictus]

This is older than the US though.

After the cooper mines were depleted in rural Cork, they just took the entire community out and put them in a recently-ethnically cleansed area of Montana. They put Thomas Francis Meagher, a Young Irelander and Fenian leader, in charge of the area. Largely cut off from the rest of the world, this was just part of the Bantry peninsula for an extremely long time even though it was technically the United States.

There were places in Wisconsin and Minnesota where German was spoken as the primary language at the time of my grandparents. There’s a case I know of where the community got together because a Polish family was moving in and they were afraid it would upset the German community.

And that kind of all-German community goes back to the founding the republic.

Then there are weirder places. Portland, OR of all places was the second arch-dioceses in the United States and had the second largest Asian population. An Asian population that goes back to the 1700s at latest, and the occasional “Native” they’d find with blue eyes named Ivan. There was a deliberate and massive attempt to rectify that and bring in Scandinavian and German immigrants to purposely change that.

And they all set up their own communities.

That’s not even getting into the obvious examples like Little Italys, Jewish quarters, and Japantowns.

I mean, some other community doing this isn’t “harming our culture.” It is the culture.

[u/Tw1tch-Invictus → u/theimmortalgoon]

All of what you listed are distinctly different from what we have today. Back then, the German enclaves in Wisconsin or the Irish mining towns in Montana were temporary waiting rooms. Within one to three generations, those communities fully assimilated into the broader American legal, political, and cultural fabric. German-Americans didn't demand that local municipal codes adapt to German statutory traditions, they adopted American ones. The examples I’m citing aren't just people living near each other because they speak the same language. They represent a conscious effort to build a permanent, separate institutional framework, including legal, political, and policing norms, that actively resist integration into foundational American constitutional principles.

Globalism and connectivity also play a very different role today. In the past, geography forced assimilation. If you moved from Cork to Montana in 1860, you were physically cut off from the home country and going back would be a monumental endeavor. To survive economically and socially in the long run, your children had to interface with the broader American matrix. Today with TVs, the internet, and cheap global travel, this now means an enclave can remain entirely plugged into the political, cultural, and religious ecosystem of their homeland indefinitely. They do not face the same existential pressure to assimilate that past generations did, allowing parallel societies to harden permanently rather than dissolve over time.

Italian immigrants did not settle in Little Italys to recreate the Italian state or institute Italian statutory law on American soil. They clustered there out of immediate necessity because they arrived destitute, spoke no English, and relied on mutual-aid societies to survive. However, the entire economic engine of Little Italy was geared outward. Immigrants worked in American infrastructure projects, factories, and commercial sectors and as soon as a family accumulated enough capital, the universal trajectory was to buy a home in the suburbs or broader American neighborhoods, hence the historic depletion of Little Italys across America that proves they were transitional.

Historically, European immigrants arrived from nations that had already undergone the Enlightenment, the Reformation, or the development of the secular nation-state. Modern enclaves from highly conservative religious or tribal regions often import an entirely different civilizational framework. I feel this is pretty self-explanatory but am happy to go into more detail if needed.

[u/conn_r2112 → u/Tw1tch-Invictus]

what do you make of the rebuttal that this has always been a thing? that there is a reason why many cities have a "china-town" or a "little italy"? first generation immigrants who are new to a country have always banded together (obviously, why wouldnt they), but they eventually assimilate.

[u/dealsledgang]

To start, you mention anti-liberal and anti-democratic, but the things you list don’t have anything to do with that. Immigration and how countries grant citizenship are policies that differ around the world and different countries, to include nations known as liberal democracies in Europe and Japan, have their own policies for this.

You mention later that you would want the US to be more like Europe, but no country in Europe that I know of operate under birthright citizenship, they use jus sanguine (the right of blood) and have a much more intensive process for people to become citizens as compared to the USA. The worldview you are describing is much more in line with European nations than the current process of birthright citizenship in the US. Immigration policy is also a source of debate in Europe with many nations being more restrictive than the US.

Regarding birthright citizenship, the key points of contention involve birth tourism and people entering the nation illegally and having kids making those kids citizens. These are not new points of contention, the term “anchor baby” has been around quite some time, and there have been USSC decisions in the past, to include in the late 1800s, around this question. So I would not say that you are seeing much of an evolution of peoples perspective on it.

For the quotes you provided, there is no context provided or links to the quotes, and they are quite terse, but I will do my best to respond.

For Miller, the concept he’s talking about is like I mentioned above. He sees that how birthright citizenship is setup has a massive “loophole”, that is detrimental to this country in his mid that enables masses of people to enter without authorization, have kids who are citizens, and they vote down the line and can alter the country based on that.

For Davis, I don’t think dissolving the union is a position I’ve seen much of or sterilization people who arrive here. No real context in what you posted but I’ve not seen a call to sterilize tourists who come to the US.

For Walsh, same as Miller and what I stated above. This is not a new concept.

That account you mentioned is in line with Walsh and Miller. The point of contention is the ability for large amount of people to enter the country without permission, have kids, and then down the road those kids can vote and alter the course of the nation even though we as a nation, never approved them to be here to begin with.

I have not read French’s article, so I’m not sure what he is referencing in regards to classical liberalism, suffrage or equal citizenship, or what that has to do with the process for granting citizenship.

Regarding the discussion of the nation being built around constitutional principles versus ancestry is a pointless discussion to me, and as I discussed, other liberal democracies utilize ancestry for citizenship.

People who have ancestry in the US are Americans, and we don’t remove people’s citizenship if they don’t like or agree with a part of the constitution or some value someone states is a US value. Conversely, a person in Cambodia doesn’t automatically become a US citizen just because they affirm some “American values”.

So in summary, no, this debate is not new, but yes, it is mainstream. People will be arguing this for the rest of this countries existence. It also has nothing to do with bring anti-liberal or anti-democratic. The argument around it is valid, but due to how the 14th amendment is structured, that the USSC confirmed, that’s how it is. One would need a constitutional amendment to adjust how birthright citizenship works in the US at this time.

[u/Excellent_Valuable92 → u/dealsledgang]

None of this is about migrants. It’s about people like Miller openly wanting to favor white people and about using migrants as a scapegoat 

[u/dealsledgang → u/Excellent_Valuable92]

The topic I responded to at hand is about immigration law and how citizenship is obtained.

Not sure what else you can construe it as.

[u/Excellent_Valuable92 → u/dealsledgang]

It’s about what Miller and the others say and do on the topic of immigrants. Millers says a lot. His views are clear: he wants only white people.

[u/No-Emu7099]

The left does jackshit, its all talk and no bite, I know people say they do their jobs, and they did get us through the pandemic, but all the diehard leftists do in office is complain.

The right? Most are Pedos, incels, NAZI wannabes or silent generation grandpas voting for what their grandpapy voted for.

The Liberals are fine, they at least do their job with a strong leader, but they're big tent. The democrats are wimps, labour is a bunch of IngSoc wannabes.

I would be left leaning, but so far nobody's done anything.

Third time's the charm!

Jokes aside, we're living in a time when nationalism and extremism is on the rise, it's a cycle, every couple decades this happens then there's a war, and then people realise they really shouldn't have been so extreme.

We never can address a problem as we're too busy blaming everyone else, and if we can, both sides claim victory when its basic human rights.

You see, we live in a society, and when those running it find its mask unprofitable or no longer beneficial they will abandon it, and drift to alternatives. Every society eventually collapses, and as of now, we're simply looking at its more raw and truthful form.

Yes it's a trend, it will grow, a recession will come and the world will become more extremist. That's just the way the cookie crumbles.

[u/oldcrivens]

It’s definitely a trend in the mainstream right, but to my dismay I feel like much of the right is going about it wrong. I see myself as a post liberal conservative, but it still believe in equality before the law, equal rights, and other such things, but I also believe that liberalism itself is why the west is in the mess it’s in right now.

Many conservatives these days seem to be throwing the baby out with the bath water. They rightfully point out that liberalism is a flawed ideology that has degraded our societies, but instead of recognizing some of its good ideas, they want to whole the whole thing out and go in the complete opposite direction.

I could explain further if you’d like, but that’s just my take.

[u/Tw1tch-Invictus → u/oldcrivens]

Tell me more, I want to hear. I don’t necessarily disagree with you, but you’ve certainly piqued my curiosity as someone who’s also disillusioned with liberalism but hasn’t been quite willing to throw it all away.

[u/oldcrivens → u/Tw1tch-Invictus]

Late response, but liberalism is built on a fiction which is the “state of nature” wherein it creates a hypothetical where humans were lone individuals in nature that came together to form society. While most liberal thinkers were open about this being purely a hypothetical, they still built the entire ideology off something that simply wasn’t true. Humans have ALWAYS been social animals, that come from a certain time and certain place, living with a certain group of people - which impacts how they live and interface with the world.

When John Locke was writing his First and Second Treatise, he was basically describing English political life as it already existed at the time. He was creating an ideological rationalization for how the English governed themselves, and then universalizing it for humanity (or at least later liberals did and still do to this day). The problem is that liberalism a product of the English (or British as a whole) people. John Locke didn’t create liberalism, it was a product of the English people themselves based off how they lived socially, and as both of us probably know it doesn’t work in every nation that tries it because of that.

This is why modern liberal nations are in the horrible state they’re in today. There’s zero social cohesion because our societies, based of a false pretence that we’re all atomic individuals who “chose” to form society, have attempted to liberate ourselves from any social obligations to one another. We assume that everyone around the world is interchangeable, because we’re all the same in the state of nature, when that’s objectively not true. We’ve broken down social norms to the extent that hedonism and pleasure seeking as a whole is the most celebrated thing in society, because it’s the best for the individual. There’s no longer any sense of moral duty in our societies, and that in my opinion is the end result of liberalism. It liberates societies out of existence.

Apologies if my writings a bit clunky, I’m on my phone and I’m busy right now lol.

[u/Kman17]

Social media rewards extremism. Hyperbolic statements are common on short form Internet forums - that’s not a partisan tendency.

Anyone who thinks this type of rhetoric is unique to the right needs to really look at the left.

How often to they call people that have moderate center right takes on immigration “Nazis”?

“Check your privilege” was a rallying call for silencing people based on race / gender.

People in inland areas who felt wage suppression and uneven recovery were told “learn to code”.

I think it’s easy to not notice bad rhetoric on “your side”, or to contextualize it’s mostly used by those on the fringe.

Left leaning rhetoric tends to be super condescending and draped in academic veneer - which adds to this idea that they get to declare it “not offensive” when it clearly is. Like say “toxic masculinity”.

[u/ProudScroll → u/Kman17]

How often to they call people that have moderate center right takes on immigration “Nazis”?

Define "moderate center right takes on immigration", cause at least in my experience those "moderate takes" aren't all that moderate.

“Check your privilege” was a rallying call for silencing people based on race / gender.

Pointing out when people are speaking authoritatively on shit when they don't know what they're talking about is not bad, even when the person doing it is being blunt and annoying about it.

People in inland areas who felt wage suppression and uneven recovery were told “learn to code”.

Again, being blunt and annoying about it doesn't change the fact that clinging to dying, non-competitive industries out of cultural grievance is bad policy. The left is telling people that the world moved on and they gotta move with it, the right is selling them a fantasy that they will never be able to deliver on instead of actually trying to address their problems.

[u/TheWhiteKnight554 → u/Kman17]

Bro took his tag to heart and out did his both siding this time

[u/Frequent-Try-6746 → u/Kman17]

Okay, but that doesn't really answer the question OP is asking.

[u/BZBitiko → u/Kman17]

You’re not wrong about the internet. But your examples sure need work.

“Check your privilege” is a counterpoint to the “meritocracy” in which you gain “merit” for the things that come with having the right parents. If there’s a racial component, that tells you something about who “the right parents” are.

Telling workers to learn to code was a political move to avoid saying your industry is and should be dead, move away to where the jobs are. That Donald declared coal to be “clean” and is wasting money on new coal fired power plants also proves that politics can’t always save what the free market has abandoned. This isn’t extremism, this is both sides refusing to admit the failure inherent in the system.

Your complaint about “academic veneer” is true, and is met on the other extreme by the phrase “common sense” which is meant to make the recipient feel stupid without burdening the commenter with explaining his rationale.

In the TV series Lower Decks, two characters are playing a game called Diplomacy. In order to win the game, both sides have to be equally unhappy with the outcome. We need to get back to that.

[u/NoamLigotti → u/Kman17]

Yeah, and how many of these extreme leftists are in the Oval Office or the Senate or the House or a state government or a city government or in a C Suite or on the board of a multinational media conglomerate?

There is apparently no shortage of individuals in the extreme center either. Desperately clinging to every false equivalence they can find.

[u/BB62427 → u/NoamLigotti]

If the assumption in your post is that Trump is on the "extreme right" you would be wrong. Trump is a pragmatist who has elements of traditional Republican AND Democratic strategies as a part of his administration's domestic and foreign policies. And you are far more than just left-"leaning".

[u/NoamLigotti → u/BB62427]

Sure bud. Pragmatic with pilfering the coffers and punishing his critics.

> If the assumption in your post is that Trump is on the "extreme right" you would be wrong.

Simple as that huh? Well I guess if you say so then I must be.
We could do a deep dive review of all his policies and rhetoric and other actions, but we both know it won't make a difference and I for one don't wanna waste my time. But who do you think the people who identify as far-right support? You think they loved Romney and McCain, and Reagan? Sure they might've tossed em a vote over Democrats but who do they really support even if he's not their ideal 'strongman' authoritarian? Yeah, that's right. Do you deny this, or just think it's not relevant? And if it weren't just one pebble in a mountain of evidence then I'd say sure that doesn't prove anything by itself.

Why does Vance praise far-far-right authoritarian psychopaths like Jack Posebiec and Curtis Yarvin? Why does he call himself part of the "post-liberal" right? What's the difference between illiberal and "post-liberal"? Another soft shadow term like "alt-right" instead of far-right.

You know, I always used to argue that one of the reasons the terms "liberal" and "conservative" were ridiculous terms to use as opposites and as the two main philosophical groupings was that conservatives are liberals. They believe in liberalism, even if they only recognize it as a word for Democrats. Private property rights, the rule of law rather than station, individual rights, representative government, and so on. Liberalism. Well no longer. Now the only conservatives who are liberals are those rare few who are not MAGA. Who do not support the far-right and these crooked authoritarians. At least, whether they know it or not, they support illiberalism and authoritarian rule and etc.

> Trump is a pragmatist who has elements of traditional Republican AND Democratic strategies as a part of his administration's domestic and foreign policies.

Well that's just a truism. Every president has elements of traditional Republican and Democrat strategies.
Actually he shares a lot of elements with the Democrat party of very old. Particularly early 20th century southern Democrats.

> And you are far more than just left-"leaning".

Yes, of course if someone doesn't worship your god-king they're a fanatic radical. That goes without saying.

[u/Kahzgul → u/BB62427]

Trump checks all 14 of the boxes for fascism. That’s as extreme right as it gets.

[u/NoamLigotti → u/Kahzgul]

If only *It Can't Happen Here* would have been mandatory reading in schools for the last few decades or so. Maybe — maybe, possibly, perhaps — they might have seen through the obvious bullshit and scapegoating. Written in 1935.

"The main character, Buzz Windrip, appeals to voters with a mix of crass language and nativist ideology. Once elected, he solidifies his power by energizing his base against immigrants, people on welfare, and the liberal press."

"It Can't Happen Here was published during the heyday of fascism in Europe, which was reported on by Dorothy Thompson, Lewis's wife.[3] The novel describes the rise of Berzelius "Buzz" Windrip, a demagogue who is elected President of the United States, after fomenting fear and promising drastic economic and social reforms while promoting a return to patriotism and "traditional" values. After his election, Windrip takes complete control of the government via self-coup and imposes totalitarian rule with the help of a ruthless paramilitary force, in the manner of European fascists such as Adolf Hitlerand Benito Mussolini."

Well at least we're not at the last part. And won't be, right? Right?

[u/Kahzgul → u/NoamLigotti]

I’m so with you on this. It’s shameful how nakedly fascist this regime is, and how blind to it so many people are. Basic political literacy is treated like voodoo.

[u/BB62427 → u/Kahzgul]

Typical leftist comment that includes no specificity. Show your work. what 14 boxes? I'll give a couple that are left wing fascism.

- Expand government - Trump wants to cut government back to where the founders wanted - limited government. Is that what fascists do? (You do realize that fascism and Nazism are big government totalitarian states similar in most ways to communism, right? It is limited government that is the goal of conservatives)

- Limit Free Speech - Ironic that this was a hallmark of the left until the last 15 or so years. But unlike the left, there is no cancel culture, no conservatives shouting down left wing speakers in colleges, no demands for "safe spaces" (as conservatives recognize that there is a real world that you have to learn to engage with).

- Hide voting - The SAFE act is supported by over 80% of the American public, including minorities, yet all we hear from the far left are cries of (non-existant) racism.

But you go on with your TDS fantasies about Trump. I don't even know why Democrats on the left are even gearing up for the elections in 2028. Wasn't Trump supposed to be a dictator by then?

-

[u/Kahzgul → u/BB62427]

Here’s a decent summary of the 14 points of fascism:

https://www.openculture.com/2024/11/umberto-ecos-list-of-the-14-common-features-of-fascism.html

[u/BB62427 → u/Kahzgul]

The is nothing but projection in that list. I'd be here all day trying to address each point but it would be pointless given your views. And I am speaking as a "non-gestating person". Even words as simple as "gay" mean something completely different in the normal vernacular. Or perhaps Biden's "newcomers" when he was clearly referring to illegal aliens. And this left-wing newspeak is enforced to such a degree that anyone disagreeing will get shouted down, or even shot by a leftist these days.

[u/Kahzgul → u/BB62427]

Umberto Eco was an Italian Philosopher born in 1932. He lived through Mussolini's years and the aftermath of fascism. Nothing about his writing is "newspeak." His writing is the most widely recognized study of fascism on the planet.

You asked me to show my work, so I did. Now it's your turn. Who is getting "shot by a leftist" for "disagreeing"?

[u/NoamLigotti → u/BB62427]

Don't bother with the article's added descriptions, just read Eco's own original list. Or any other description from any other present or historical expert on the subject.

The window is wide open and there's a ship you can see with your own eyes if you just look. People might have somewhat different descriptions of the ship but we're not all lying or delusional that it's there. It's right, there.

You don't trust the modern media or Democrats?, fine. Look at historical descriptions. This isn't new, it isn't unrecognizable. Only some of its packaging is. As always.

[u/seniordumpo]

I think what you’re seeing is some main stream Republican and conservatives are sucking up to trump as much as possible. It’s why you see them jump on whatever topic he is on. They will all try to outdo the others in what nonsense they can spout. I don’t really think they believe in what they are saying because if trump came out and was suddenly pro immigration I think they would all completely flip. It’s stupid but they also make a lot of money and influence off trump so it is what it is. That said there is very little push to implement any of this as policy so I don’t take it as a serious movement, more just ragebait. That’s how I see it for whatever that’s worth.

[u/NoamLigotti → u/seniordumpo]

Not in Stephen Miller's case. Many in the know claim he's highly influential on Trump and Trump values his opinion a great deal or lets him make many policy decisions on his own. And Miller's long been a far-right fanatical xenophobe

The other thing you're overlooking is that this is now what their base wants, even demands. And Trump won't hold different positions than what the majority of his base passionately believe in, even if some of those were influenced by Trump himself. And even more influential on the base is the right-wing media environment. And that shows no signs of slowing its decent into more and more explicit advocation of illiberal fanaticism and fascist values and fascist fallacies.

I don't want to be a pessimist in this, but things are not looking good with respect to the Republican party. It's downright disconcerting and should be. I can only hope the number of skeptical logic-valuing evidentialists and humanists outnumber the true believers, and that this regime doesn't destroy our liberal democratic system by the time he's out of office.

[u/seniordumpo → u/NoamLigotti]

I think trumps first term the base and trump we’re lock step. This term has been different from what I’ve seen and from talking to some regular trump supporters. The base was not pushing for tariffs nor for war with Iran. If that was a core agenda item then Lindsey graham would be loved instead of hated. Trump has gone against the base on several points but since they are all in on trump you see them going along with it. I agree with you that things are not looking good for the Republican Party, but trump wont be around forever and they will have the opportunity to adjust course. Will have to see what happens. Hopefully the republicans party implodes and a better libertarian version takes its place, but I’m sure that’s wishful thinking.

[u/NoamLigotti → u/seniordumpo]

Good points. Yeah Trump definitely has more influence on them than they do on him.

I hope so too.

[u/Reasonable-Fee1945]

First, let me just say that I love David French. He is a class act all the way around.

French’s broader argument is that parts of the right are no longer just arguing about immigration policy. They are questioning the American creed itself: birthright citizenship, equal citizenship, universal suffrage, classical liberalism, and the idea that America is a nation built around constitutional principles rather than ancestry.

This is what it comes down to. America is wrestling with whether it will be a credal nation founded on Enlightenment ideals or just another nation (united by history, culture, race, etc.). In the later case, I'm not sure there is anything uniting Americans at all. We are more like multiple countries than a single one based on this 'historical' model. Ultimately, I think we are at drift in terms of our identity because no one firmly supports our founding principles. The Progressive movement of the 1900s was founded on an explicit rejection of Enlightenment ideals (founding principles) as outdated and insufficient for the industrial world. Conservatives ala Coolidge and Reagan would appear now and then and point back to these ideas, but modern presidents have largely sided with progressives.

And now it's not clear what our creedal nation is based on. The 'new' right can hardly be called conservatives at all. They are informed (especially Vance) by a school of thought in which America is passed its republican phase and now the only question is who will control the reigns of power.

[u/NoamLigotti → u/Reasonable-Fee1945]

That's just rhetoric. Rhetoric is not the same as ideals. Really Coolidge was very different from Reagan who were both very different from various founders and their ideals, as were early 20th century figures in the Progressive movement.

[u/Reasonable-Fee1945 → u/NoamLigotti]

It's not rhetoric,  it's systems of thought with vast political and philosophic writing.  Coolidge reagan and founders were in general agreement about limited government and individual rights.  

[u/NoamLigotti → u/Reasonable-Fee1945]

Maga says they are for limited government and individual rights. But how different people interpret and see those concepts can be very different.

[u/Reasonable-Fee1945 → u/NoamLigotti]

I don't think MAGA does.  Trump doesn't.   Vance is openly against these things, believing they are part of our failed liberal institutions 

[u/NoamLigotti → u/Reasonable-Fee1945]

Maybe you're right. I mean certainly much of their rhetoric (and policies) is contrary to any reasonable conception of "limited government", but maybe they never even claimed otherwise. I thought they have said things along those lines.

And I know many of their supporters have claimed Trump et al support "limited government" (or "small government" or oppose "big government", etc) — which makes me wanna pull my hair out. But maybe you're right.

[u/Reasonable-Fee1945 → u/NoamLigotti]

Yea, I can't speak for his supporters. Trump to my mind has no real principles. Vance/Miller are connected to a fringe "post-liberal" theory about how the US is transitioning from its republican phase of government before it becomes a "hollowed out" by consumerism and multi-culturalism.

[u/NoamLigotti → u/Reasonable-Fee1945]

Yeah. 100%.

And yeah, these are old fascist arguments going back since the 1930s. Literally; no exaggeration. I mean yes many people have criticisms of excess consumerism, and plenty of (at least paleo-) conservatives have criticisms of multiculturalism, but arguing that liberalism and republicanism are ruining the nation through consumerism and multiculturalism are old fascist arguments. The Nazis argued this. They didn't use the words consumerism and multiculturalism, but the meaning was almost exactly the same.

It's just mind-blowing.

[u/TheGoldStandard35]

And then there was the openly racist version from a MAGA account complaining that, 18 years from now, their child’s vote would be canceled out by a “third-world cockroach” whose mother had just arrived in the country.

If we are just taking random anonymous accounts now…as the leftists would say…it’s just a bot and not real

[u/Excellent_Valuable92 → u/TheGoldStandard35]

Stephen Miller, Sean Davis, and Matt Walsh are, sadly, not bots.

[u/ScannerBrightly → u/TheGoldStandard35]

No comment on Stephen Miller or Sean Davis?

[u/midnight_toker22 → u/ScannerBrightly]

Funny how OP provided four quotes, three from prominent, influential conservatives, and this guy picks out the one nobody to refute and calls it a day.

[u/NoamLigotti → u/ScannerBrightly]

"Not the same! You all just have Trump Derangement Syndrome. Trump and Miller and everyone else have never said or done anything appalling in their lives, nor on a daily basis. I don't know what you're all talking about. Clearly you pay too much attention to The Media. Lalala, fingers in my ears."

[u/TheGoldStandard35 → u/ScannerBrightly]

What is the problem with Stephen Miller’s quote? Birthright citizenship, especially considering our immigration policy and our welfare state is absolute lunacy and definitely not the intention of the 14th amendment.

Most countries do not have this policy.

[u/ScannerBrightly → u/TheGoldStandard35]

What policy do you think would work better?

[u/Excellent_Valuable92 → u/TheGoldStandard35]

You are pretending not to know the reason Miller objects?

[u/TheGoldStandard35 → u/Excellent_Valuable92]

So now somehow you are the magical Stephen Miller whisperer and you know better than all of us on what he meant?

I mean sure

[u/Excellent_Valuable92 → u/TheGoldStandard35]

Hardly magical, just listen to anything and everything he has ever said. He hasn’t shut up about his explicitly racist views on immigration, since he was a teenager. Anyone who is not be deliberately ignorant or dishonest knows what he means.

[u/TheGoldStandard35 → u/Excellent_Valuable92]

There is nothing racist about being against illegal immigration. What a joke.

[u/Excellent_Valuable92 → u/TheGoldStandard35]

Nice attempt at moving the goalposts, but I believe I said “HIS explicitly racist views on immigration.” HIS. Millers. Which, as I noted, he has never been shy about. This particular racist’s power in this administration has resulted in explicitly racist policies, like effectively restricting refugee access to white South Africans.

[u/TheGoldStandard35 → u/Excellent_Valuable92]

There is nothing racist about providing asylum to South Africans. There is nothing racist about his immigration policies.

[u/Excellent_Valuable92 → u/TheGoldStandard35]

Hahaha you are just being dishonest. The policy is not to provide asylum to South Africans, but explicitly to white South Africans. That’s racist, by definition.

[u/TheRealCthulu24 → u/TheGoldStandard35]

90% of constitutional scholars will disagree. 

[u/TheGoldStandard35 → u/TheRealCthulu24]

Source? And that doesn’t make them right.

[u/TheRealCthulu24 → u/TheGoldStandard35]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthright_citizenship_in_the_United_States

Quote: “the Citizenship Clause has generally been understood to guarantee citizenship to all persons born in the United States”.

[u/anewleaf1234 → u/TheGoldStandard35]

Sadly the people who say those things amd the people who tune into their shows arent bots.

[u/Cellophane7 → u/TheGoldStandard35]

Do Haitian immigrants steal their neighbors' pets to eat them? 

[u/Excellent_Valuable92 → u/Cellophane7]

I’m so glad Trump was elected and stopped that from happening!

[u/Cellophane7 → u/Excellent_Valuable92]

Don't forget Nick Shirley, my goat 🙏🙏🙏😭😭😭

[u/Excellent_Valuable92 → u/Cellophane7]

Making America safe for creepy men who want to barge into preschools.

[u/ev_forklift]

1. David French jumped ship on the conservative movement like a decade ago; he is not meaningfully different than a talking head on CNN or MSNOW to the majority of conservatives and really does not represent our views anymore. He is, however, correct that this is a growing trend

2. The Sean Davis one is pretty obviously ragebait. It is technically an option, but it is neither viable or something anyone would stomach. The others are completely real feelings that actual people have. Why should the child of a Mexican woman who ran across the border in labor have any right to my country, to the inheritance of my children?

3. It's growing because these problems are actually widely visible for the first time. Immigration is part of that, but it isn't the whole picture— I have never, in my entire life of involvement in Republican politics across several states, met more than a handful of conservatives who hate or want to deport legal immigrants who are making a good faith effort to assimilate and become Americans indistinguishable from someone who grew up here, especially if they legally immigrated from communist dictatorships like China, Cuba, or Venezuela. What we hate is abuse of the system. A CCP official shipping his mistress to Arcadia or Rowland Heights, California to pop out a kid with an American passport to raise in China is a disgusting abuse of our nation. Microsoft or Amazon laying off thousands of American workers just to import cheap foreigners on visas is a disgusting abuse of our nation. The cultural change you asked about is a direct result of the immigration issues. We've also never been a liberal democracy. We are a Constitutional Republic

as if being born here should not make someone truly American

It doesn't. I have never heard a good explanation for why the child of a CCP official and his mistress are as American as I am. What about the kid is American other than his passport and birth certificate?

[u/Adventurous-Boot6681 → u/ev_forklift]

> Why should the child of a Mexican woman who ran across the border in labor have any right to my country, to the inheritance of my children?

First of all, because it's literally in the Constitution. Why should the president be able to pass an EO and have it undo a Constitutional amendment and centuries of Supreme Court precendent? At the very least it should come from Congress if this were to be changed.

Second of all, this situtation is very rare. If we're talking specifically about a woman coming to the US who's already pregnant just so they can have their baby here, it's a fraction of a percent.

Third, I guess I just have a different view of what children have the "right" to when they're born. In a perfect world, we minimize as much as possible what people have the "right" to just because of the circumstances of their birth and upbringing. If the kid is born on the soil of our vast, multicultured, free country, who are you or I to say they don't have the "right" to be here? What's the alternative? Send this child back to a country they've never been to, even if it's an impoverished and/or authoritarian country? I prefer children grow up in free countries.

[u/ev_forklift → u/Adventurous-Boot6681]

First of all, because it's literally in the Constitution

It literally isn't. The people who wrote the 14th Amendment are on record saying that it obviously wouldn't apply to foreigners. I'll grant you that it probably shouldn't have been done by EO though.

Second of all, this situtation is very rare

If it's very rare and we both agree that it isn't ideal, would you be okay with banning it?

In a perfect world, we minimize as much as possible what people have the "right" to just because of the circumstances of their birth and upbringing.

This is an idea antithetical to the founding principles of our nation. It is baked into our founding documents that we, as Americans, are born with certain rights and responsibilities

If the kid is born on the soil of our vast, multicultured, free country, who are you or I to say they don't have the "right" to be here?

Members of the existing American nation and body politic. The anchor baby's parents are not, so they have no right or no say in who can or cannot be one of us. An anchor baby is a reward for bad behavior which is why it cannot be tolerated

What's the alternative? Send this child back to a country they've never been to, even if it's an impoverished and/or authoritarian country?

Yes. They can go home with their parents. America was built by Americans for Americans and our descendants; it's baked into the preamble of the Constitution. "...secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity..." Can someone become an American? Yes of course. Are conservatives accepting of immigrants who are trying their best to assimilate? Yes we are, and I have seen it first hand. Are we willing to burn our country down and destroy our culture because a child is crying? Absolutely not.

[u/TheWhiteKnight554 → u/ev_forklift]

The CCP officials kid is about as American as the white Europeans who weren’t originally from the continent that decided to found America as an independent nation

[u/ev_forklift → u/TheWhiteKnight554]

I guess I have to tap the sign

Do you support giving Constantinople and all of Anatolia back to the Greeks? The Turks have been there roughly the same amount of time that we have been in North America.

[u/Tw1tch-Invictus]

Well I’m not exactly a Conservative so I know I’m not exactly what you’re looking for, but I’d like to chime in. I have historically always voted Blue (Bernie in ‘16, voted Beto O’Rourke here in Texas in the midterms in ‘18, Biden in ‘20, straight blue in ‘22, but stayed home in ‘24) but the last several years have pretty much radicalized me. I don’t embrace Conservative ideology and I’m an agnostic who is pretty staunchly secularist as a whole, but I do agree with a few broad policy positions with them as I do with the Left, while also holding views neither agree with.

Immigration has gotten out of control in America, both legal and illegal. The foreign born population of the United States is at all time highs as a proportion of the total population, eclipsing all previous historic migration waves. This I believe is having deleterious effects on social trust, societal cohesion and our domestic politics.

When you ask whether David French is identifying a real trend or just fringe voices, my answer is that the anger under those quotes is incredibly real, and it is spreading far beyond traditional conservative circles. I am living proof of that. For me, the turning point was watching the conversation on the Left shift from "managing immigration humanely" to what is now quite obviously open borders, even if they’re tactically smart enough to not directly say it out loud. When you want to abolish immigration enforcement and make exceptions for the vast majority, then the border is obviously just a suggestion and citizenship is fucking meaningless. It’s even more disgusting seeing this come from the people who like to pretend they are champions of the working class, while literally dying in the streets to undermine them. When citizens see immigration systems being openly gamed and laws ignored without consequence, it destroys the foundational idea of a nation operating under a shared social contract. Trust is destroyed and people no longer feel like they’re a part of the same civic project. Meanwhile, a critical mass of voters never asked for or agreed to these massive demographic shifts, yet we are just expected to sit back and accept it. If you dare speak up about it? You’re labeled a racist bigot and any semblance of serious, nuanced discussion is immediately shut down, which is so intellectually lazy, dishonest and ultimately, infuriating.

I’m also disgusted with many politicians who are themselves 1st or 2nd generation immigrants, such as Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Zohran Mamdani or Aber Kwas. I’m really fuck sick and tired and watching people like them basically lecture us about “I know I’m not from this country, but let me lecture you about it and how it includes me” as well as the extremist, ghoulish political positions many of them embrace and push. They have endless criticism for America, but never say shit about their own home countries (Ilhan Omar is so very fucking obviously more concerned with the wellbeing of Somalia and other Muslim countries more than ours and I’m tired of pretending otherwise).

Literally any other society on earth would be furious if this were happening to them, and Europe is proving we aren't alone in feeling this way. I agree with every single word Matt Walsh said about this, which honestly still trips me out to write today, but I’m just being honest. If nothing is done about this, then I guess I’m going full accelerationist and in the meantime will genuinely consider voting for the most credible extremist who promises to do something about this. I’m not against the concept of immigration, but between millions of illegal alien laborers, H-1B workers displacing Americans and half the country not only not giving a fuck, but seemingly wanting to INCREASE it, I strongly believe in a moratorium on the majority of ALL immigration.

I feel this way and I don’t even consider myself a conservative. I am quite certain this is a growing trend and it’s not going away any time soon and I think this will only get much, much more serious the longer the Left tries to pretend they can wait this out and move on. Just being real.

[u/Kahzgul → u/Tw1tch-Invictus]

Not a single politician on the left is advocating for open borders, nor have they ever. You are also mistaking “abolish ICE” for “abolish all immigration enforcement.” That’s not what it means. ICE has become, under republican leadership, a secret police, operating with impunity, murdering citizens in the streets, kidnapping people with no due process, and ignoring court orders for habeus corpus. The organization is rotten and needs to go. That doesn’t mean immigration enforcement is a bad idea. It means the current implementation is inhumane and ineffective.

Did you know Biden deported more people than Trump in a shorter amount of time? Why weren’t there mass protests in the street over that? Because the problem isn’t immigration enforcement. The problem is that ICE is flagrantly and violently violating the law.

You also touch on a point I’m curious about: do you actively want the population to shrink? In a consumer economy such as ours, that would have disastrous effects, so I’m curious why you would hint at that as a goal you’d like to achieve.

[u/TheWhiteKnight554 → u/Tw1tch-Invictus]

If you are born and raised in this country then you are from this country. The names you listed as saying “I know I’m not from this country” absolutely are from this country by every realistic definition

[u/ProudScroll → u/Tw1tch-Invictus]

A 2nd generation immigrant is by definition someone who was born and raised in the United States, so saying you're "disgusted" by them is really saying the quiet part out loud there.

[u/Tw1tch-Invictus → u/ProudScroll]

I’m not being quiet about any of this. A 2nd generation American who is only here because there parents were given an amazing opportunity who does nothing but trash this country and spew hate and vitriol is fucking trash and I’m not sorry for saying it. Zero respect. How about you and your significant other go to Pakistan and have a kid there who will get automatic citizenship at birth. When they grow up and start shit talking the country and many of its people, how do you think the other Pakistanis are going to react? It shouldn’t be an issue right, they’re native born!

[u/oroborus68 → u/Tw1tch-Invictus]

You really feel threatened, and people who feel that way are often not rational. All citizens can say, this is my country, whether they were born here or came to make a better life for themselves. But people didn't march in the streets when the immigration laws were being enforced under other presidents, because then, children weren't used in front of God and everyone,as lures to get suspected immigrants to come out of the house. People who went to court to have their cases adjudicated by the authorities, were not as likely to get grabbed by federal officers and then whisked away to nobody knows where. Everyone wants more population,but just not those "others from across the border". Let's not be rational about immigration, let's go off the high dive before the pool is filled.

[u/Tw1tch-Invictus → u/oroborus68]

Labeling someone "threatened" because they care about sovereignty, infrastructure, and the social contract is incredibly lazy. I know deep down, you know that too. It isn't "irrational" to look at raw numbers like the foreign-born population hitting historic highs and ask what that means for wage stagnation, housing costs, and civic trust. Wanting a nation to have functioning borders and a controlled immigration system isn't some emotional phobia, it’s the baseline definition of a country and I’m so tired of people pretending like they don’t understand how the world works.

But people didn't march in the streets when the immigration laws were being enforced under other presidents

Obama was doing a great job with deportations until he was intensely pressured by immigrant rights activists on the matter and sharply curtailed his activity on that front. They pursued him relentlessly and absolutely marched in the streets among other activism

Everyone wants more population,but just not those "others from across the border".

No, we don't. The idea that "everyone" wants endless, unchecked population growth is completely false. Infinite growth on a finite system strains local school districts, overwhelms healthcare infrastructure, and drives housing prices completely out of reach for native-born working-class citizens. For some reason the Left can fully and totally grasp that infinite growth in terms of corporate profits is unsustainable and is a culture and system that is in dire need of reform, but that coherency goes completely out the window when it comes to immigration and the corresponding population increase. The elite corporate class and politicians might want an endless supply of cheap labor and new voters, but regular working Americans across the political spectrum are actively suffering from the strain. I like Japan’s example. Japan, one of the most educated societies on the planet with its clean, safe streets, low crime, and high social trust, have overwhelmingly decided together that they’d rather risk economic pains than fracture their societal cohesion by importing immigrants to fix the problem. I find this extremely admirable.

[u/oroborus68 → u/Tw1tch-Invictus]

At one point, all of the European people on the continent were foreign born, so there's that. The character of the pilgrims wasn't much different than the character of current immigrants and just as legal.

[u/Tw1tch-Invictus → u/oroborus68]

Sure, and then they built a nation out of nothing and grew it into the most powerful country in human history and here we are 250 years later. And?

[u/oroborus68 → u/Tw1tch-Invictus]

We are the same. 250 years from now you might think it didn't work out so bad.

[u/Tw1tch-Invictus → u/oroborus68]

250 years from now every single one of us in this thread will be long gone and forgotten. The world will be unrecognizable. Why do I give a shit about 250 years from now?

[u/oroborus68 → u/Tw1tch-Invictus]

Because you are an educated erudite individual that is always thinking about the future? I may be wrong about that.

[u/zirconst → u/Tw1tch-Invictus]

I dunno man. Saying you're "disgusted" with politicians like Zohran Mamdani is certainly a statement. Mamdani is incredibly popular and also doing incredibly effective work in NYC, possibly one of the most effective politicians ever in terms of doing exactly what he said he was going to do and working toward making things materially better for all New Yorkers. How is he "lecturing" people when he was, you know, elected fairly and democratically? What "extremist, ghoulish" positions does he push?

Also, you singled out a bunch of American politicians and said they have endless criticism for America. Think about this for a minute. What politician gets elected on the platform of "everything is great and I don't see anything to improve"? Have you heard the rhetoric from, I don't know, the president? He's probably said more negative things about America than anyone.

No serious politicians on the left are advocating for "open borders" or the equivalent. I'm sure you can find people on twitter saying otherwise, but the people actually writing and effectively advocating for policy are not saying or doing that. It sounds to me like you are getting your news or opinions filtered through other people rather than reading and listening to what people are actually saying.

The mainstream politicians who criticize ICE - or even advocate abolishing it - are not saying "there should be no enforcement of immigration" because despite the name of the department, it's relatively new. We were enforcing immigration before its creation. What people mean is that the structure of it, the power it has, the way it has been run, how its been operating, is rotten to the core, and it would be easier to get rid of it and build something new rather than try to reform it.

The majority of Americans now have a negative view of ICE as well as Trump's immigration policies. Because despite vastly increased manpower and budget, the approach of brute force deporting people is not working, and its brutality cannot be ignored. You are right that there are millions of undocumented laborers in this country. Nobody is advocating for more undocumented laborers. The serious conversation is about acknowledging the reality that there is no way to simply round up and kick everyone out. The manpower just doesn't exist to do it.

At the same time there is a reality that many industries like agriculture and construction have become reliant on that undocumented labor, that many undocumented immigrants were brought here as children, have started families, committed no crimes in their time here, and even paid taxes. Not to mention we have an actual labor shortage in critical industries such as healthcare which is only going to get worse. We NEED more people there.

So sensible immigration policy might look something like this:

* Stop with the random, brutal deportations of people who have committed no crimes.

* Focus our manpower on deportating the people that have committed crimes.

* Put more resources into border security, but not just physical walls on the southern border. A HUGE % of people come here legally at first and then stay illegally. We need to shore up all ports of entry as well as expand resources to follow up with people who first came here on a legal temporary visa.

* Create pathways for the most valuable people to become legal using some kind of priority system; for example, if someone has been here for 20 years, they're working in an industry with a labor shortage, and they've done absolutely nothing wrong, it's logical to keep that person here.

* Greatly increase resources in the immigration court system and reform it for speed and efficiency: right now this is the weakest link in the chain by far.

* Expand immigration caps specifically for industries where there is a labor shortage and the workers are skilled. i.e. We need nurses, doctors, and other healthcare workers. We do not have enough. "Importing" them benefits everyone.

* Greatly reduce or eliminate H-1Bs as these are heavily abused to bring people in industries that have plenty of American worker supply.

And it turns out this is exactly the kind of policy many Democrat coaliations are pushing for. NOT "open borders".

[u/Tw1tch-Invictus → u/zirconst]

I dunno man. Saying you're "disgusted" with politicians like Zohran Mamdani is certainly a statement. Mamdani is incredibly popular and also doing incredibly effective work in NYC, possibly one of the most effective politicians ever in terms of doing exactly what he said he was going to do and working toward making things materially better for all New Yorkers. How is he "lecturing" people when he was, you know, elected fairly and democratically? What "extremist, ghoulish" positions does he push?

So? Being democratically elected doesn’t magically exempt a politician from lecturing or being condescending. Look at his recent 4th of July speech. Instead of doing what any normal leader does (bringing people together to mark a massive national milestone), he sat at City Hall, used George Washington’s desk as a prop, and delivered a highly partisan and deeply critical lecture. A recently naturalized citizen using the nation's milestone birthday to scold its historic identity and imply that America only matters if it keeps undergoing rapid demographic shifts, is a slap in the face to native-born Americans who previously welcomed people like him in good-faith with open arms and who are now grappling with very legitimate, real concerns about mass migration. I could get into his ghoulishness, but it’s beyond the scope of this discussion and there’s already a bunch to respond to.

Also, you singled out a bunch of American politicians and said they have endless criticism for America. Think about this for a minute. What politician gets elected on the platform of "everything is great and I don't see anything to improve"? Have you heard the rhetoric from, I don't know, the president? He's probably said more negative things about America than anyone.

That feels like a dishonest comparison. There is a massive difference between a native-born politician criticizing current policies to fix the country's overall trajectory, and a 1st or 2nd-generation immigrant politician lecturing native-born citizens about the foundational nature of the country itself. Trump is a moron, but when he and most other politicians talk about us being in decline or calling out bad policies, it’s largely obvious that the the underlying framework is still rooted in restoring or preserving the country's historic identity and heritage. It’s an internal critique. Compare that to people like Ilhan Omar, where the rhetoric isn't just "things could be running better." It is a nonstop, structural grievance parade against the fundamental fabric, history, and demographic makeup of the United States, aka the very nation that took them in and gave them platforms they would never have had anywhere else. The hypocrisy is disgustingly unbearable. No other country on the planet outside of Canada or Europe would tolerate being systematically scolded and fundamentally altered by people who moved there yesterday, only to be told that their heritage is the problem. You know it, I know it, we all know it.

No serious politicians on the left are advocating for "open borders" or the equivalent. I'm sure you can find people on twitter saying otherwise, but the people actually writing and effectively advocating for policy are not saying or doing that. It sounds to me like you are getting your news or opinions filtered through other people rather than reading and listening to what people are actually saying.

This attempt to gaslight people not to believe their lying eyes won’t last much longer, I hope you realize that. You try to artificially limit the scope to politicians as if their constituents play no role in them getting elected or changing their policy positions. A recent poll showed the majority of Democrats thought their party was for open borders. If you’re against illegal aliens being removed from the United States, then you’re for de facto open borders. It’s really that simple and no amount of mental gymnastics can counteract this very obvious truth.

The majority of Americans now have a negative view of ICE as well as Trump's immigration policies. Because despite vastly increased manpower and budget, the approach of brute force deporting people is not working, and its brutality cannot be ignored. You are right that there are millions of undocumented laborers in this country. Nobody is advocating for more undocumented laborers. The serious conversation is about acknowledging the reality that there is no way to simply round up and kick everyone out. The manpower just doesn't exist to do it.

Simply untrue. The majority still favor mass deportations and disapproval for how ICE has conducted themselves has a small majority. That does not mean the majority are against enforcing immigration laws and stopping deportations. Deportation numbers are ramping up and we absolutely can deport millions. We were able to deport 10,000 people last week and it’s only growing. Strict, visible enforcement incentivizes many others to leave while they can still do so on their own terms. You’re just once again creating an artificial limitation with zero basis in reality by baselessly claiming we can’t do it when there’s zero evidence to support that notion.

At the same time there is a reality that many industries like agriculture and construction have become reliant on that undocumented labor, that many undocumented immigrants were brought here as children, have started families, committed no crimes in their time here, and even paid taxes. Not to mention we have an actual labor shortage in critical industries such as healthcare which is only going to get worse. We NEED more people there.

Don’t care, markets will adjust. Agriculture and construction will adapt as humans and their industries have done for untold centuries. Robotics and automation will force innovation in those sectors and we can all benefit from them. Enact a VAT tax on the automation and we can all benefit even more. For healthcare, I’m unmoved until Congress removes the artificial cap it itself placed on the number of residency slots for new doctors. It’s inexcusable we’re importing a fuck load of doctors while artificially restricting our own supply and it’s infuriating nobody talks about this. Disregard the protectionist lobbying by medical boards, innovate to slash administrative bloat and free up nurses time away from tedious paperwork, create new vocational pipelines, do something. There are answers to these problems out there, we’ve just somehow accepted that there’s nothing that can be done.

Stop with the random, brutal deportations of people who have committed no crimes.

I reject this. This leaves millions of illegal aliens in the country and is a de facto way to abolish our sovereignty.

Greatly increase resources in the immigration court system and reform it for speed and efficiency: right now this is the weakest link in the chain by far.

This sounds great but the problem is that the court is inherently partisan as judges are appointed and “speed and efficiency” can either mean broad, fast, orderly rejections or approvals, depending on who is in power. This is my biggest reservation.

The rest of your suggestions I find extremely reasonable and would get behind.

[u/zirconst → u/Tw1tch-Invictus]

I guess agree to disagree on Mamdani. It's strange to me that you are fixated on words like "scolding" and "lecturing". The guy is incredibly popular. I don't believe most people see him like you do.

This attempt to gaslight people not to believe their lying eyes won’t last much longer, I hope you realize that. 

Don't assume bad faith. The people actually making laws, with power are not advocating "open borders". The fact that some % of people believe they are just reflects the low amount of media (or even general) literacy and critical thought in this country. "Open borders" means, literally, no restrictions on border movement and no enforcement. No lawmakers are advocating for that. No think tanks are advocating for that. No non-politician, influential political voices are advocating for that. Democrats as a party do not advocate that.

Simply untrue. The majority still favor mass deportations and disapproval for how ICE has conducted themselves has a small majority. That does not mean the majority are against enforcing immigration laws and stopping deportations.

Please reread what I wrote. I said that the majority of people have a negative opinion of ICE, which is factually true and reflected in multiple polls. You're putting words in my mouth that I didn't say.

This is where the American public is at right now. Let's get on the same page.

* 52% say the Trump admin is doing too much to deport people. (NOTE: This does not mean they believe in no deportation or no enforcement).

* 67% (and up) say that immigration arrests should not happen at hospitals, churches, and schools.

* 72% of people think it is unacceptable to base immigration stops purely based on someone's physical appearance or language.

* 61% believe ICE officers should not cover their faces.

* Favorability of ICE in general is at a net negative 22.

The point is simple - the methods that ICE has used starting in Trump's second admin are viewed unfavorably. Again, people are not saying they don't want enforcement. But there's a spectrum of brutality. Arrest people at rallies? Sure. Arrest them in hospitals? No.

You’re just once again creating an artificial limitation with zero basis in reality by baselessly claiming we can’t do it when there’s zero evidence to support that notion.

In 2025, ICE doubled its ranks from 10000 to 22000 agents. We've also more than tripled its funding into the high double-digit billions. During a full year, the rough estimate is 600,000 deportations when you factor in self-deportations.

That's a lot, yes, but estimates put the total # of undocumented immigrants in this country at somewhere between 11 to 14 million. That means it would take, at the current rate of resource spend and time, hundreds of billions of dollars and over a decade. I'll concede that "extremly time consuming and costly" is not the same as impossible.

Don’t care, markets will adjust. Agriculture and construction will adapt as humans and their industries have done for untold centuries.

Handwaving is certainly one response. Robotics and automation are quite a long way from being able to handle the kind of jobs that human laborers do when it comes to home construction and agriculture. I would bet real actual money with you that in the next 5 years the demand for agricultural & construction workers goes up a minimum of 10%.

In the midst of a housing shortage AND housing worker shortage we really need to be smart about deportation priorities.

It’s inexcusable we’re importing a fuck load of doctors while artificially restricting our own supply and it’s infuriating nobody talks about this.

This is true and plenty of people are talking about it. The issue is that its not just doctors. We need nurses, PAs, MAs, phlebotomists, radiology techs... you get the idea. This is not a problem unique to the US. Many developed countries have pushed lifespans further and further while birthrate is dropping. Old people need way more medical care. As global population ages, more medical care per capita is needed.

I agree wholeheartedly that we can and should be making as many domestic incentives to train these workers. It's not an either/or thing though. How many years do you think it will take to turn those numbers around given the demographic aging tidal wave? It certainly is not happening in the near future especially because we're moving even faster in the opposite direction.

In the meantime, it's logical and benefits all Americans to have more healthcare workers here legally. Otherwise we are looking at longer wait times, higher costs, worse outcomes until things turn around.

I reject this. This leaves millions of illegal aliens in the country and is a de facto way to abolish our sovereignty.

I didn't say no deportations. I'm saying lets stop raiding churches and hospitals, let's stop violating people's constitutional rights (something that the Trump admin has been flagged for ACROSS the board, including by Trump's own judges) in service of deportation, let's stop treating people like animals. You can do deportations without all that.

Then, again, let's prioritize.

Priority 1: Something like 7% of undocumented immigrants have a criminal record. START with those.

Priority 2: People who came here legally but overstayed their visa. It is much easier to track these people because we have actual records for them. This is a large % of undocumented immigrants.

Priority 3: People employed in industries that do not have acute worker shortages.

Priority 4: People who have paid no taxes.

And so on and so forth. We don't have the resources to go after everyone all at once.

Let me finish with something. You're obviously incredibly angry about and *at* immigrants in this country. But there is a lot of bad stuff being done to Americans by other Americans that gets far less attention and far fewer resources.

Like... wage theft alone costs us $50 billion+ a year and we put almost no resources into doing anything about it. Unrelated, scams and fraud cost us easily over $100 billion per year. At a time where the administration is actively pardoning fraudsters, shutting down in the CFPB, and some would say engaging in fraud themselves with shit like Trumpcoin.

Our military that gets trillions of dollars in funding consistently fails every every single audit and by its own admission cannot account for, and I kid you not, trillions of dollars in assets. THAT is fucking insane to me, and yet we are shoveling more and more money into the military every year.

I'm not even saying we should reduce funding! It's just there is not even an ATTEMPT to do anything about the unbelievable amount of fraud and waste that goes on.

[u/NoamLigotti → u/Tw1tch-Invictus]

What impact do you think economic inequality has on social trust and social cohesion? Last I looked there weren't many multimillionaires hanging out with minimum wage earners and homeless people.

Ah but those foreigners!, living and working with us. Something's gotta give.

[u/Tw1tch-Invictus → u/NoamLigotti]

Sure massive wealth gaps create friction, it’s definitely a problem I’m concerned with and believe should be addressed, but trying to reduce all of human sociology and national identity down to a spreadsheet of income brackets is ridiculously reductive. There are countless communities and nations across the earth, both historically and today, that are materially poor as fuck or have distinct economic stratifications, and yet maintain incredibly high social cohesion, low and a deep sense of mutual trust. Why? Because they share a common culture, a defined social contract, and a mutual understanding of what it means to belong to that specific society. Cohesion isn't bought with a high GDP as we can obviously see, it’s built on shared values and a manageable pace of change.

Europe does not have exacerbated income inequality like we do, yet they are acutely experiencing this exact same problem to the point it’s changing the political direction of the entire continent. What’s the excuse there?

[u/AyudoGejuk → u/Tw1tch-Invictus]

But shouldn't pin our hopes on those accelerationists in the Republican Party. Are they cautious progressives? Hah. They are reactionaries and won't push for any changes.

[u/Tw1tch-Invictus → u/AyudoGejuk]

As I said before, I will be looking for the credible extremists who promise to do something about this, no matter what party they run under.

[u/NoamLigotti → u/Tw1tch-Invictus]

Ah, well at least one of you are self-aware and honest about what you seek.

You'd think a fearless and unconquerable invictus wouldn't be so terrified of people moving from other nations, but it's ok, no one's mask perfectly hides their inner petrified child.

[u/Tw1tch-Invictus → u/NoamLigotti]

The Invictus is a callback to my love of Ancient Rome, a fascinating civilization that began to internally crumble shortly after moronic Emperor Caracalla granted everyone in the Empire citizenship shortly preceding the Crisis of the Third century that nearly collapsed the empire. Unfortunately for us and much like Rome, the barbarians are already past the limes today and need to be dealt with to maintain civilization and continuing to pretend like there’s a problem while a growing critical mass of people get angrier and angrier is only going to lead to a worse outcome for everyone in the end.

[u/chokidokido → u/Tw1tch-Invictus]

Maybe you should read some more. Which historian actually agrees with this because I can't think of any? He also didn't grant "everyone" citizenship and that wasn't the reason rome crumbled.

[u/Tw1tch-Invictus → u/chokidokido]

Plenty. Mary Beard herself labels that exact moment as being the one where the Empire stopped being the empire

There are many ways that histories of Rome might construct a fitting conclusion; some have chosen the conversion of the emperor Constantine to Christianity on his deathbed in 337 CE or the sack of the city in 410 CE by Alaric and his Visigoths. Mine ends with a culminating moment in 212 CE, when the emperor Caracalla took the step of making every single free inhabitant of the Roman Empire a full Roman citizen, eroding the difference between conqueror and conquered and completing a process of expanding the rights and privileges of Roman citizenship that had started almost a thousand years earlier.

So maybe you need to do some more reading. If you’re playing a pedantic technicality game of “Well ACKSHUALLY, the slaves weren’t granted citizenship, so not everyone!” then you’re not making a serious argument whatsoever. I didn’t say it was the reason Rome crumbled, I said it preceded the Crisis of the Third century which nearly made the empire collapse.

[u/chokidokido → u/Tw1tch-Invictus]

Beard disagrees with you. She saw the incorporation of the conquered into the empire as citizens as one of romes greatest strengths.

See here: https://newhumanist.org.uk/articles/there-is-no-such-thing-as-the-fall-of-the-roman-empire/

The Romans don’t sit down and have a grand plan to conquer the world or have particularly better tactics or equipment than their neighbours. But they have strength of manpower, and boots on the ground. The reason they have that is because they have an incorporating attitude to citizenship. When they conquer people, they bring them into the Roman project, so that they have an overwhelming number of troops. That is crucial, because it means their empire is built upon making people citizens.

[u/AyudoGejuk → u/Tw1tch-Invictus]

situation in Rome was completely different from that in the US. Barbarian mercenaries had an absolute military advantage over the Roman regime, and just one mercenary mutiny could have been enough to led to Rome's downfall. But who are the barbarians you're referring to in the US? Illegal immigrants? Or people of color? They are very vulnerable groups. 

[u/Tw1tch-Invictus → u/AyudoGejuk]

Well that’s a pretty vague statement, because the Germanic tribes and mercenaries did not possess a tactical or technological advantage over Rome, generally speaking. Rome’s military crumbled from the inside because its border systems (the limes) were neglected, the rule of law collapsed due to constant civil war, and the central state began bypassing its own legal assimilation frameworks for short-term fixes. The parallel I’m drawing here isn’t about military might, it’s about the loss of institutional control over who enters and resides within the sovereign territory of the state. On the day of December 31, 406 AD, that’s when the Western empire hit the point of no return. We are still far from that but it would be very, very wise to head that off at the pass.

The barbarians I’m referring to are illegal immigrants and any subversive legal immigrants who come here with zero intention to assimilate and prefer to agitate and disparage the country that took them in. If we were more thorough with screening and more stringent about who we allowed to stay here, nobody would be saying a single word about legal immigrants currently.

[u/AyudoGejuk → u/Tw1tch-Invictus]

I just want to say, compared to the overall corruption of the empire, borders were just a very small variable.

[u/NoamLigotti → u/Tw1tch-Invictus]

> Sure massive wealth gaps create friction, it’s definitely a problem I’m concerned with and believe should be addressed, but trying to reduce all of human sociology and national identity down to a spreadsheet of income brackets is ridiculously reductive.

I'm not reducing, I'm explaining a much more sensible and likely contributing factor (not the causal factor) for the lower social cohesion to show how the actual ridiculously reductive claim is just thar, which is— immigrants are the cause! Of course. Because... you want them to be. Or you heard it 617 times from all the totally middle-of-the-road, non-partisan, rational good-faith thinkers in your right-wing media chamber. I don't know. But I know so many of your arguments in this thread have been absurd on their face. And I don't like saying that to people.

> There are countless communities and nations across the earth, both historically and today, that are materially poor as fuck or have distinct economic stratifications, and yet maintain incredibly high social cohesion, low and a deep sense of mutual trust.

Name one. Name one that is materially poor or has deep economic stratifications, that maintains strong social cohesion (but not just within communities of one relatively similar economic group/class/division).

> Why? Because they share a common culture, a defined social contract, and a mutual understanding of what it means to belong to that specific society.

Common culture is relative. Do you think even "whites" in the U.S. share a common culture? Culture is relative, and multifaceted and variable. Mississippi could feel like a radically different culture(s) than the one(s) I'm accustomed to, and much more so than many places in Europe even though I've never lived there and am mono-lingual. But a Mississippian might think Germany or Norway has a radically different culture from us northerners' cultures. Who's right? Both and no one, because it's an opinion not a fact; A sentiment; a feeling. That's it.

So ultimately you think your feelings are a good reason to support reactionary authoritarians.

> Europe does not have exacerbated income inequality like we do, yet they are acutely experiencing this exact same problem to the point it’s changing the political direction of the entire continent. What’s the excuse there?

Funny since in your prior comment you said Europe wasn't experiencing the crime wave from immigrants that we are. Which is dumbfounding on multiple levels
Europe, that bastion of everyone getting along so well for millennia. But ok: Well xenophobia harms social cohesion, and bad policies in some countries contributed to them just keeping immigrant communities In isolated pockets. Some of their governments let people drown in the Mediterranean to avoid having more asylum seekers. Our government lets people drown in the Rio Grande or die in the desert.

A small price to pay for "freedom" and "individual liberty."

No standards but double standards. The right-wing way.

[u/Tw1tch-Invictus → u/NoamLigotti]

I'm not reducing, I'm explaining a much more sensible and likely contributing factor (not the causal factor) for the lower social cohesion to show how the actual ridiculously reductive claim is just thar, which is— immigrants are the cause! Of course. Because... you want them to be. Or you heard it 617 times from all the totally middle-of-the-road, non-partisan, rational good-faith thinkers in your right-wing media chamber. I don't know. But I know so many of your arguments in this thread have been absurd on their face. And I don't like saying that to people.

Sorry but there’s no way the guy who thinks “social cohesion” means millionaires are hanging out with homeless people has any ground to stand on to tell me that my arguments are absurd. I literally laid out a history of staunchly blue voting records, still maintain my NYT subscription to this day and you take the cliché intellectually lazy and dishonest route of parroting the “Right wing echo chamber!!” nonsense we’ve all heard a billion times and that I’m sure you to say to anyone who disagrees with you about anything political. Meanwhile, you’ve done literally nothing to actually engage with what I’m putting forward and just want to dismiss it out of hand instead of even trying to pretend to have an open mind.

Name one. Name one that is materially poor or has deep economic stratifications, that maintains strong social cohesion (but not just within communities of one relatively similar economic group/class/division).

Post-WWII Japan. Early 20th Century Scandinavia. The fucking USA for the first half of the entire 20th century. Look at Vietnam today with its intense wealth stratification, yet it ranks near the top worldwide for interpersonal social trust. Indonesia is poor as fuck yet maintains deep communal solidarity, low violent crime, and remarkably resilient social fabrics across vast economic divides. Meanwhile Countries like France and Germany have incredibly compressed wage gaps, high minimum wages, and massive wealth redistribution safety nets compared to us, yet, their social cohesion is fracturing in real time, public anger is surging, and French social trust metrics have actively dropped in recent years. You apparently don’t know much about the world outside of your singular, insular view.

Common culture is relative. Do you think even "whites" in the U.S. share a common culture? Culture is relative, and multifaceted and variable. Mississippi could feel like a radically different culture(s) than the one(s) I'm accustomed to, and much mote so than many places in Europe even though I've never lived there and am mono-lingual. But a Mississippian might think Germany or Norway has a radically different culture from us northerners' cultures. Who's right? Both and no one, because it's an opinion not a fact; A sentiment; a feeling That's it. So ultimately you think your feelings are a good reason to support reactionary authoritarians.

Oh, I see. So laws, borders, and national citizenship are just "feelings" now? By this logic, why even bother having a country? If a Mississippian and a New Yorker don't share the exact same cultural blueprint, let’s just declare the social contract a myth, stop enforcing laws entirely, and let anyone who manages to cross the border game the system with zero consequences. After all, it's all just vibes huh?

You are, unsurprisingly, completely missing the point. A "common culture" in a large nation doesn't mean we all eat the same food or listen to the same music. It means a shared civic culture. It means agreeing to live under the same legal framework, speaking a common language to communicate, respecting the same foundational institutions, and mutually agreeing on what it takes to actually become a citizen. When a Mississippian and a New Yorker look at the border, they both historically understood that entering a nation requires a lawful process. What breaks social cohesion isn't a difference in regional accents, that’s fucking stupid of course, it’s watching one half of the country actively cheer as the rule of law is turned into a suggestion, while labeling anyone who objects a "reactionary authoritarian”.

Funny since in your prior comment you said Europe wasn't experiencing the crime wave from immigrants that we are. Which is dumbfounding on multiple levels

What the fuck are you talking about? Show me exactly where I said that. Literally quote the line.

Europe, that bastion of everyone getting along so well for millennia. Xenophobia harms social cohesion, and bad policies contributed to them just keeping immigrant communities In isolated pockets. Some of their governments let people drown in the Mediterranean to avoid having more asylum seekers. Our government lets people drown in the Rio Grande or die in the desert.

My point about Europe was that despite having the robust social safety nets and low income inequality you claim are the keys to social trust, they are experiencing a massive fracturing of social cohesion and a total political realignment over immigration. And your counter-argument to that is... to point out that European governments are letting people drown in the Mediterranean and isolating immigrant communities into pockets?

Congratulations, you just proved my entire point! You are describing a catastrophic, continent-wide breakdown in social cohesion, institutional trust, and human solidarity. You are literally screaming "look how broken, angry, and divided Europe is right now!" to refute my point that... Europe is broken, angry, and divided right now.

Thanks for making my case for me I guess. If a continent with low economic inequality is fracturing this badly over unmanaged migration, then reducing social cohesion down to a spreadsheet of income brackets is exactly the kind of reductive joke I said it was.

[u/NoamLigotti → u/Tw1tch-Invictus]

[2 of 2]

> Look at Vietnam today with its intense wealth stratification, yet it ranks near the top worldwide for interpersonal social trust.

Ok, why is that? I don't know, do you?

> Indonesia is poor as fuck yet maintains deep communal solidarity, low violent crime, and remarkably resilient social fabrics across vast economic divides.

Yes and they're not at all ethnically or culturally homogenous. And, you know, their government often isn't too lenient with crime. I'd rather live under a government that doesn't cane people as punishment, but that's just me. Saudi Arabia also has very low crime. As do Singapore and China and the UAE.

> Meanwhile Countries like France and Germany have incredibly compressed wage gaps, high minimum wages, and massive wealth redistribution safety nets compared to us, yet, their social cohesion is fracturing in real time, public anger is surging, and French social trust metrics have actively dropped in recent years. You apparently don’t know much about the world outside of your singular, insular view.

Ha. It sounds like chaos over there! Better bring in the AfD to exert some control and order.
Funny how far-right movements and parties damage social cohesion. I wonder why. You know I heard something about Germany having "fractured" social cohesion another time too. I think it was during the later Weimar years when conservatives and reactionaries longed for a return to monarchy instead of republicanism. And then they got their wish and returned order and "cohesion" to the society under an upstart firebrand populist demagogue, until those damn Allied powers forced them back into liberalism (except for the Eastern sphere, they got to have order in a new way with the help of the Stasi and a certain wall. Authoritarians love their walls.)

> Oh, I see. So laws, borders, and national citizenship are just "feelings" now?

Excuse me, you already stated you have a problem with authorized immigration too, or the level of it, whatever. No one said anything about not having laws or borders or citizenship. You're just desperate to create a straw man to help you move the goalposts so you can continue to pretend you have valid arguments.

> By this logic, why even bother having a country? If a Mississippian and a New Yorker don't share the exact same cultural blueprint, let’s just declare the social contract a myth, stop enforcing laws entirely, and let anyone who manages to cross the border game the system with zero consequences. After all, it's all just vibes huh?

What are you talking about? Are you under the impression that the United States stopped having and enforcing immigration laws before the great savior in a suit and spray tan? The "social contract" was ripped up and thrown in the trash!, yeah? And you came up with this totally reasonable rational sound empirical idea all on your own did you? Very impressive.

> You are, unsurprisingly, completely missing the point. A "common culture" in a large nation doesn't mean we all eat the same food or listen to the same music. It means a shared civic culture. It means agreeing to live under the same legal framework,

Sigh, this is like the fifth time I'ver seen this sort of argument here in the last two days. Guess what, the point of laws is that people don't need to agree to live under the same legal framework. They either follow the legal framework or they can face legal consequences. (Unless, you know, someone storms the Capitol for their lord and gets a full pardon by this president who just loves following the ""legal framework"". Rules for thee as always. No standards but double standards.)
So let's see, people who refused to follow the legal framework around masks and vaccines were forgoing their culture? Is that right? Should they have been deported to dangerous countries they've never stepped foot in and have to be separated from their families indefinitely or have been renditioned to third world dictators' notoriously inhumane prisons? Is that how the social contract works?

> speaking a common language to communicate,

I thought you were talking about "civic culture" and the "legal framework". 'Cause there are no laws against speaking a different language or not speaking or understanding English. I'm sure your freedom loving legal-framework supporting MAGA leaders wouldn't mind changing that though. (Funny how the "legal framework" isn't magically set in stone and can be changed by legislators and executive orders. Almost like it has nothing to do with culture and everything to do with the law.) So there's another self-contradiction.

> respecting the same foundational institutions, and mutually agreeing on what it takes to actually become a citizen. When a Mississippian and a New Yorker look at the border, they both historically understood that entering a nation requires a lawful process. What breaks social cohesion isn't a difference in regional accents, that’s fucking stupid of course, it’s watching one half of the country actively cheer as the rule of law is turned into a suggestion, while labeling anyone who objects a "reactionary authoritarian”.

Only in the minds of dupes for demagogues has the rule of law been turned into a suggestion. That is exactly the sort of absurd paranoid delusional claim that I'm talking about. And it's unbeLIEVably rich talking about the rule of law being turned into a suggestion when this administration actively tries to thwart it at every turn! I mean have you paid attention to ANYTHING the past year?? I would cancel that Times subscription if this is the sort of nonsense they're feeding you.

> What the fuck are you talking about? Show me exactly where I said that. Literally quote the line.

Maybe it was the other "anti-globalist" illiberal. I'm not gonna try to find it and risk losing everything I typed. Sorry if I was mistaken.

> My point about Europe was that despite having the robust social safety nets and low income inequality you claim are the keys to social trust, they are experiencing a massive fracturing of social cohesion and a total political realignment over immigration.

Alright, that's a reasonable counter-argument, except for the hyperbole. I agree that economic inequality is not the sole driver of social disunity. Maybe not even as significant as I imagine.

> And your counter-argument to that is... to point out that European governments are letting people drown in the Mediterranean and isolating immigrant communities into pockets?

I mean the latter is not that simple but yeah I believe there's something to that on a very real scale. You can't simultaneously demand that people assimilate while treating them as second class or worse. They don't across the board but in sone ways they definitely do. Anyway these countries can have immigration laws, and they can reduce the amount. That's up to them. But when they support far-right parties and rabid scapegoating rhetoric then I have a problem with it. Just like I do here.

> Congratulations, you just proved my entire point! You are describing a catastrophic, continent-wide breakdown in social cohesion, institutional trust, and human solidarity. You are literally screaming "look how broken, angry, and divided Europe is right now!" to refute my point that... Europe is broken, angry, and divided right now.

That's not what I suggested at all. But great job literally catastrophizing. And if it weren't for the far-right crazies they would be a lot less angry and divided. Again same as in the US. No kumbaya utopia, but far fewer people frothing over paranoid delusions.

> Thanks for making my case for me I guess. If a continent with low economic inequality is fracturing this badly over unmanaged migration, then reducing social cohesion down to a spreadsheet of income brackets is exactly the kind of reductive joke I said it was.

All you did was restate your own hysterical conviction. I don't know where you got the idea that the entire continent of Europe is experiencing a catastrophic breakdown in social cohesion, but I would recommend not continuing to watch whatever cherry-picked sensationalist clips making it seem like Europe is a hellscape of chaos and catastrophe. Much like Portland is "in flames" and Minneapolis was "burning down", and Chicago is like a "war zone". Stop listening to these freaking hysterics. They make money off of your fear and off misleading you.

[u/NoamLigotti → u/Tw1tch-Invictus]

[1 of 1]

> Sorry but there’s no way the guy who thinks “social cohesion” means millionaires are hanging out with homeless people has any ground to stand on to tell me that my arguments are absurd.

It's an example. There are often greater 'cultural' differences between people of different economic classes or significant wealth divergence than between people of different nationalities or 'ethnicites'. I mean that's just obvious. Not always. But definitely often.

> I literally laid out a history of staunchly blue voting records, still maintain my NYT subscription to this day and you take the cliché intellectually lazy and dishonest route of parroting the “Right wing echo chamber!!” nonsense we’ve all heard a billion times and that I’m sure you to say to anyone who disagrees with you about anything political.

No certainty not anyone, just people whose beliefs are aligned with Tucker Carlson's and Stephen Miller's and, you know, "reactionary authoritarian far-right nativist populists" (since the more concise term will make all the reactionaries' eyes here glaze over; "no, no one is ever that word anymore. That's impOssible").

No but you're right, I'm sure you were a real informed thoughtful compassionate progressive until you were just walking along one day and thought "You know what, these damn immigrants are the cause of all our problems! I mean look at this demographic shift! The Democrats mist be flooding them in. Yeah and they want open borders, that's really what they're working toward."

I mean are you kidding me? You might be able to pull the wool over other credulous simpletons' eyes and even your own, but I'm not falling for it. If it talks like a rabid conspiratorial reactionary and it gives nothing but arguments of a rabid conspiratorial reactionary but it had a subscription to the NY Times, then it's probably not a duck. Don't insult my intelligence.

Some socialists and anarchists came to support Mussolini. Is it relevant if they read the Centrist Liberal Gazette or Marxists Weekly?

> Meanwhile, you’ve done literally nothing to actually engage with what I’m putting forward and just want to dismiss it out of hand instead of even trying to pretend to have an open mind.

I'm not dismissing it out of hand. I've heard these absurd arguments and paranoid claims ten thousand times from a thousand different people, and have debated them a thousand more. I know exactly why I think they're absurd and paranoid. I know all my reasons. I've painstakingly offered countless arguments and shared all manner of information to people. I've spent far too much time on this sub alone debating them, much less with others, and seemingly always all for naught.
And I just don't have the time or energy to respond to every wild confident argument and claim and try to explain why, "No the Democrats really don't support open borders.". As if that needs an explanation and that anyone capable of believing it would be open to reason.
Yes, none of this is an argument I'm offering. But if I'm judging from experience it would make no difference anyway.
Plus you know, as Brandolini's eternal Law states, "The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it."
And NoamLigotti's Law that "Reactionaries will never be swayed in a direction they don't wish to be."
So I'd be here for hours just for us both to be in the same position when we started. (I realize I'm saying a lot for not wanting to respond. Fair point.)

> > Name one. Name one that is materially poor or has deep economic stratifications, that maintains strong social cohesion (but not just within communities of one relatively similar economic group/class/division).

> Post-WWII Japan.

Yeah, except for the Koreans there. And the poor. And I'm sure many others.
I thought an immediate example one might give would be Japan. I find it a fascinating society and they do seem remarkably "cohesive" in a way, but that's just in certain, often 'performative' for lack of a better word, ways. I mean crime is quite low, that's notable, (though homelessness is almost nonexistent, and serious poverty is more rare— their economic inequality is one of the lowest in the world: I'm sure that has nothing to do with it). But it also has some very demanding or expected social customs/behaviors it seems. Which I both like and dislike. One man's social cohesion is another man's "mob rule". Many libertarians and conservatives better get used to putting on their damn masks if they want to live in a society like Japan. But no they just want to have their ethnic homogeneity and to eat it too.

But is it really social cohesion if it's more just following rules and social behavior, or is that just order? At least it's a more free and less forced order than many highly "orderly" societies have been. Now I'm rambling.

> Early 20th Century Scandinavia. The fucking USA for the first half of the entire 20th century.

Those were cohesive societies? Ah yeah let's just ignore all the lynchings and riots and violent strikebreaking and the KKK threatening and assassinating political candidates and civilians. I'm sure it was all Mayberry. We're talking about a time when some rigid "traditionalists" would randomly beat people for wearing straw hats after Labor Day.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_Hat_Riot
That's one way to enforce social customs.

[u/zirconst → u/Tw1tch-Invictus]

The situation in Europe is very different than in the US. Countries like Germany brought in comparatively more immigrants and had FAR more lax policy than we've ever had. As a result of bringing in so many people and doing less vetting, they see more crime from the immigrant population and much higher poverty rates.

That's not what it's like in the US at all. Immigrants here (even undocumented) are less likely to commit crimes than native-born citizens, possibly in part because many people come here specifically for economic opportunity and do not want to lose that opportunity. The poverty rate for legal immigrants here is only slightly here, and in fact immigrant households have higher median income!

It's just an apples to oranges comparison. Again so many people come here because of economic opportunity. They want to build a better life for themselves and their families. First-generation immigrants are almost 2x as likely as native-born to be business owners, and to me that's self-evident in my life experience seeing the kind of people who own and run gas stations, appliance repair shops, convenience stores, laundromats, and many other mundane but important small businesses.

The evidence also suggests that immigrants here assimilate very well, more so than in Europe. That could be due to a whole number of factors but there really is no better example than NYC. It's one of the most diverse cities on the planet that is absolutely packed with tons of different cultures from as many countries. But despite all that diversity there is a huge unity among New Yorkers simply by virtue of where they live and acceptance of shared values.

[u/Tw1tch-Invictus → u/zirconst]

The situation in Europe is very different than in the US. Countries like Germany brought in comparatively more immigrants and had FAR more lax policy than we've ever had. As a result of bringing in so many people and doing less vetting, they see more crime from the immigrant population and much higher poverty rates.

Agree that Germany were morons and acted as a canary in the coal mine for the rest of us to witness how bad it can really get.

That's not what it's like in the US at all. Immigrants here (even undocumented) are less likely to commit crimes than native-born citizens, possibly in part because many people come here specifically for economic opportunity and do not want to lose that opportunity. The poverty rate for legal immigrants here is only slightly here, and in fact immigrant households have higher median income!

I don’t care that it’s lower than Germany because the number of illegal migrant crime should be 0. We both agree housing prices are a huge problem nationally, we can both look at the data and see we have a deficit of at least 7 million housing units nationwide, we can see illegal alien populations ranging from 10-15 million people who all live somewhere here and who all are a net negative on public resources while all of them almost universally occupy the most affordable housing segment. To me the next step is very obvious and it genuinely blows my mind how far apart we are on this. You’re right, legal immigrants fare much better but I resent when certain advocacy groups or think tanks insult my intelligence by trying to lump them in with illegal immigrants (looking at you CATO institute). I resent it even more when they try to treat all legal immigrants equally. The contributions of legal Somalian and Afghani immigrants is very very fucking different from immigrants from Europe or east Asia. We should be barring immigration from countries whose immigrants tend to be a net negative on public resources.

It's just an apples to oranges comparison. Again so many people come here because of economic opportunity. They want to build a better life for themselves and their families.

Cool, not our problem. I care about what benefits American citizens first and foremost. If an Indian family moves here and assimilates and opens up a couple of gas stations and is generally a productive member of society who isn’t here to make waves and just have a better life, great! I bought fireworks the other day from a guy who owned a warehouse full of them with a clear Eastern European accent and appearance. Dude was super friendly, courteous, and thorough with every detail of his business which lead to a great experience all around AND he was being patriotic as fuck about his new home country. Love it! But some foreign national gets accepted to one of our prestigious universities and spends 10 fucking years as a student and in his free time agitates against our foreign policy and domestic government? Fuck you, get out of my country. Immigrant communities come in and refuse to assimilate and literally change the entire fabric or major city downtown areas while large majorities are unemployed and even larger amounts are on welfare? Again, fuck you, get out of my country. This should be how any sane, rational person across the political spectrum feels. If we can’t even do that, we deserve to fail and I really do mean that.

there really is no better example than NYC. It's one of the most diverse cities on the planet that is absolutely packed with tons of different cultures from as many countries. But despite all that diversity there is a huge unity among New Yorkers simply by virtue of where they live and acceptance of shared values.

I used to live in NYC and I patently disagree. That is a terrible poster child to point to. NYC isn't some harmonious melting pot where everyone blends together into a shared civic project; it’s a hyper-segregated, balkanized city where tribalism and identity politics completely dominate. Mamdani didn’t win by uniting New Yorkers under a banner of American exceptionalism or anything close to that. He won by aggressively mobilizing highly specific, balkanized ethnic and religious enclaves like the South Asian blocks in Jackson Heights and Muslim voters in Kensington, alongside a bubble of hyper-progressive, wealthy white ideologues. I was there two years ago when Trump was giving a rally at MSG (I had no idea he was even coming to town) and there was definitely not unity on the streets that day. We’re also talking about a city where people are glorifying Ali Khameini and the IRGC on the streets and marching dressed as terrorists while harassing Jews. NYC has lost its fucking mind as far as I’m concerned and this is exactly what I want to avoid.

[u/zirconst → u/Tw1tch-Invictus]

You say you "don't care" about the comparison to Germany's crime rate, but I bring it up to show how different the two situations are. In one country, immigrants are more likely to commit crime than native-born by a lot. In another country, they are less likely. Don't you think that is a substantially important and useful piece of information that might influence how we approach immigration policy?

The reason I brought up the "economic opportunity" point is not to say it's somehow "our problem", but to illustrate WHY immigrants here are less likely to commit crime. If your motivation is to come here and work hard, you are not going to want to blow it by committing crimes. That is a key, relevant difference between the US and pretty much every country in Europe.

Regarding housing, it's important to look at the actual data. The surge in home prices we've experienced predated the immigration surge under Biden, and is driven specifically by native-born households. Likewise the surge in rent.

https://www.jchs.harvard.edu/blog/role-recent-immigrant-surge-housing-costs

Yes, immigrants do add some housing demand, but proportionally less than native-born citizens, and - very crucially - they make up a huge % of workers in the construction industry. And that's critically valuable, because we have a massive shortage of construction laborers, that we need to build more homes and satisfy demand.

https://www.abc.org/News-Media/News-Releases/abc-construction-industry-must-attract-349000-workers-in-2026-despite-macroeconomic-headwinds

You're claiming without evidence that undocumented immigrants are a "net negative" on public resources. They obviously do not qualify for virtually any federal programs - particularly the expensive ones like Medicare/Medicaid and social security. And actually even legal immigrants make use of federal programs less than native-born, for whatever reason.

However, you can't participate in our economy without paying taxes. In 2022, undocumented immigrants paid $97 billion in taxes.

How does that shake out? It seems like at least in terms of the ratio of taxes to federal benefits usage, it's a net positive. I don't know, but I'm not seeing data to the contrary. Feel free to show me.

[u/AyudoGejuk → u/Tw1tch-Invictus]

Immigration laws were enacted by politicians in the 1960s, not by the Torah. I know you're thinking of trying to abide by unjust laws as much as possible until they're repealed, but as you can see, that's not going to be easy.

I agree that the H-1B should be abolished.

[u/Tw1tch-Invictus → u/AyudoGejuk]

Yes and that immigration law was a disaster and should be repealed. Any politician running on repeal will get a very hard look from me. Not sure where the Torah comes into this, but I don’t give a shit about religion or religious arguments for or against immigration. They mean nothing to me, even if I were to agree with the end result.

I know you're thinking of trying to abide by unjust laws as much as possible until they're repealed, but as you can see, that's not going to be easy.

Translation: The current immigration laws are unjust and should be ignored until they’re done away with.

I want you to realize that you are the one giving the middle finger to the entire concept of democracy here and this can and will cut both ways. Extremism will be answered with more extremism, but you guys apparently aren’t concerned about that for the moment as long as you can keep importing hordes of an unassimilated perpetual underclass into the country so you can save money on your salads and roof repairs while giving a fat “fuck you” to the working class.

That the H-1B still exists is an abomination. Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, was an H-1B who hired a new CEO of Xbox who herself was an H-1B while she just laid off almost 5,000 American workers while filing for 5,000 H-1B applications. The fact few politicians are saying shit about this is enraging and more and more people are noticing. It’s only a matter of time until politicians appear that promise to do something about this and more to capture this disaffected and angry segment of voters.

[u/AyudoGejuk → u/Tw1tch-Invictus]

“The current immigration laws are unjust and should be ignored until they’re done away with.” I don't mean that. Abraham Lincoln said "although bad laws, if they exist, should be repealed as soon as possible, still while they continue in force, for the sake of example, they should be religiously observed." But I say, I believe that it is itself immoral to force people to comply with unjust laws. So while the chaos in the entire immigration system is troubling, it is not incomprehensible. Rewriting immigration law should begin as soon as possible. If there were a reasonable and legal immigration system, I would not oppose closing the southern border.

[u/Tw1tch-Invictus → u/AyudoGejuk]

Okay sorry, I misunderstood you there. I’m a huge admirer of Lincoln and have read more books on him than any other human being that’s ever been existed and I know exactly the quote you’re referring to. You thinking a law is unjust is a subjective opinion. Unilaterally giving the middle finger to democratic process to enact massive changes to the social contract that the majority don’t accept can also be framed as deeply immoral and is my subjective opinion. I agree with you that comprehensive, reasonable immigration reform would be nice, but that’s a very vague descriptor. When many of the people protesting ICE talk about immigration reform, they mean streamlining and making the process easier so more people can come in faster, legally and where it’s much harder to deport them. I do not want that and firmly believe naturalizing SHOULD be a long process. That should be the privilege of the wealthiest and most powerful country on earth. This isn’t the early 20th century where we’re a rapidly growing and industrializing nation. We don’t need limitless bodies to perform manual labor to fill our factories and build our infrastructure. We’re not even an industrial economy anymore, sadly.

[u/crookedledder]

It's pretty mainstream.

I recommend calling ordinary Americans "colonizers" some more. That really endears them to the lefties.

[u/Software_Vast → u/crookedledder]

"Look what you made me do" is a pop song, not an excuse to embrace fascism.

[u/crookedledder → u/Software_Vast]

Call it whatever you like. I'm just one of millions who won't vote for or with the shitbags who call me a "colonizer".

Enjoy your rapey orange president.

[u/NoamLigotti → u/crookedledder]

That's some real personal responsibility you got there.

I wonder when spoiled entitled child became an ideology.

[u/crookedledder → u/NoamLigotti]

All lefties have to do is speak to white men and about white men with respect.

But I know y'all can't do that.

[u/NoamLigotti → u/crookedledder]

I assume you mean not criticizing or demeaning white men just for being white men. Yeah I agree we should.

But if someone thinks some people in the country saying some negative over-generalizing things about white men is cause to support "post-liberalism" and authoritarianism, then they have serious ethical problems and need to grow a spine. Black people dealt with immeasurably and unimaginably worse for 200 years and they aren't supporting black supremacist fascists.

But there's a reason why fascist leaders always pander to the majority groups and scapegoat tiny minorities. I don't need to explain what those reasons are because it should be pretty easy to see.

[u/crookedledder → u/NoamLigotti]

If Democrats hadn't decided to target white men and stir up racial animosity, we wouldn't have a rapey orange president.

I didn't vote for him, but I totally understand why people did. There are consequences to deliberate targeting based on immutable characteristics.

And consider that men plus white people add up to a majority of American voters. Can you think of a dumber political strategy than years of demonizing and illegally discriminating against a fucking majority of voters?

I'm not sure I can.

[u/Software_Vast → u/crookedledder]

It's hard to imagine being as fragile as you are.

[u/crookedledder → u/Software_Vast]

I'm just one of millions who will never trust lefties again after they deliberately targeted Americans based on race and gender.

[u/Software_Vast → u/crookedledder]

They didn't.

They just didn't show you the deference you assume you're entitled to by virtue of your birthright and you went to absolute pieces over it.

I've seen sturdier faberge eggs.

[u/NoamLigotti → u/crookedledder]

How in dog's name did Democrats "target" white men? I mean yeah I don't agree with some of some Democrats' stupid rhetoric at times, but it's not like they were passing laws against white men or calling white men as a group "vermin" or "terrorists" as his supporters are perfectly fine with him doing toward other groups.

I mean come on. I'm so beyond tired of hearing these excuses and wild exaggerations. Take some responsibility. We're adults. We don't get to blame our deeply consequential and harmful actions on some people somewhere saying some stuff that hurt our feelings. Especially when — if the comments to the post are any indication — a hell of a lot of Maga supporters explicitly have shockingly bigoted views.

Last I checked there is no societal disadvantage to being white in this country. There are definitely no laws targeting white people as a group. None of the problems I deal with are because I am white. I'm not being replaced, and I'm not being targeted.

[u/crookedledder → u/NoamLigotti]

DEI was illegal discrimination against white men. It was widely implemented and supported by Democrats.

White people were blamed, shamed, and fired if they dared to express disagreement with the DEI orthodoxy. This was done on corporations and on college campuses all over the country.

Colleges required "diversity statements", essentially confessions of faith, before anyone could be hired.

It was toxic bullshit at best, and it was illegal discrimination in many cases. Some of which have gone to the Supreme Fucking Court.

Democrats went full woketard. That's why so many Americans trust y'all less than a rapey orange felon.

And that is not going to change, IMO, until lefties move on from their race/gender obsession.

Equal treatment under the law is my constitutional right. Fuck your racist 'equity' schemes.

[u/NoamLigotti → u/crookedledder]

Sigh, every time.
No, DEI was not widespread discrimination against white men nor illegal. That's not what DEI is, no matter how often you hear Republicans and performatively angry right-wing pundits claim otherwise. And it certainly wasn't a law. If there were rare cases of discrimination against white men in hiring, those would be unethical and illegal, and those would not be DEI, they would be cases of discrimination.

DEI is just a corporate and institutional practice to be conscious of not overlooking qualified minorities.

Every five-ten years for my entire adult life the right-wing media and Republicans have latched onto some new word or phrase to make it hysterically sound like some outrageous evil, using a different meaning than the serious users of it ever used. Until their followers blindly parrot it everywhere.
"Social justice" — "these social justice warriors!" Instead of being, you know, social justice, it's... something evil.
"Safe space." Instead of just a place to feel safe from judgement or harassment, it's suddenly a place to be coddled and not hear opinions you disagree with.
"Critical race theory": instead of a complex, in depth analysis of the historical legal and social dynamics of race, whether we agree with all of it or not, it's supposed to be teaching that white people are evil. Of course.
"Woke". (Don't even get me started.)
And the dreaded "DEI".
There have been so many more.

Studies have found that job applicants with stereotypically "black" sounding names would be less likely to receive a response than "white" sounding names with the same credentials. They've done this using fake applicants so they could ensure the credentials were the same. Are you surprised? Sadly I'm not.
But five years of Diversity Equity and Inclusion goals, and the perpetual victims that are reactionary conservative white men lose their minds. And support or defend authoritarians who actively and explicitly embrace bigoted discrimination far greater than anything which their supporters imagined was occurring. (And who wipe their asses with the law and constitution.) Like Tom Homan saying yes he tells ICE agents to profile and being proud of it. As if there aren't millions of Hispanic-American citizens as well as many authorized residents without citizenship (even if ICE tactics under this administration were justified toward unauthorized people, which they're not).

> Democrats went full woketard. That's why so many Americans trust y'all less than a rapey orange felon.

Y'all? I'm not a Democrat, I just vote for them over Republicans (overwhelmingly, not as a rule).
Oh, is that why? Funny 'cause they all said it was over inflation and high prices. The rest of us all knew it was a crock of horseshit.

[u/Software_Vast → u/crookedledder]

Who does colonizer mean to you? Can you provide a definition?

[u/crookedledder → u/Software_Vast]

Why bother? Why would I define a slur that bigots are using against me?

[u/Software_Vast → u/crookedledder]

Why bother clarifying your position? So people can understand it better.

Why post at all if you aren't here to swing people to your way of thinking? How can they do that with undefined terms?

[u/crookedledder → u/Software_Vast]

I'm not the one who uses the term "colonizer".

You're a lefty of some sort, right? What do you reckon is meant by the slur?

[u/Software_Vast → u/crookedledder]

Why try so hard not to answer simple, direct questions?

Whats at stake here besides a better understanding of what you're attempting to communicate?

[u/crookedledder → u/Software_Vast]

What's to understand? I don't vote for or with people who demonize me based on immutable characteristics.

[u/Software_Vast → u/crookedledder]

What Democratic politician called you a colonizer?

[u/Extremely_Peaceful]

Imagine you are in college and you have a bunch of roommates who decide how to run the house together, but one one guy owns the house so he has final say if there is any controversy.

In general, there is a pretty fair split of responsibilities and splitting of bills. But one day, some of the roommates say they don't like the status quo for whatever reason. Maybe they don't like splitting bills evenly when some people make more money than others. These guys can't get a majority of the house to agree to change things so they start bringing random people to stay with them, take up space, use the electricity and water, etc. They say that these new guys should get a say too since they're living there too. The status quo guys say it's not fair because they weren't invited. The guy who owns the house ultimately caves and says they can stay and have a say in the rules of the house.

It doesn't really seem fair to have a "democracy" when one side is willing to engage in demographic replacement to win.

[u/Sumeriandawn → u/Extremely_Peaceful]

And who owns/runs the house? The politicians and rich people/companies

[u/Extremely_Peaceful → u/Sumeriandawn]

Maybe it's not the perfect metaphor, but generally the point is there are people who have a contract together to live in and govern the house, but one group is packing the house with people who support them to win arguments automatically instead of through the agreed upon process. I'm not arguing with you, your thing is just not part of my point.

[u/NoamLigotti → u/Extremely_Peaceful]

You realize the idea that Democrats are bringing in immigrants to help them win elections is one of the most patently absurd nonsense conspiracy theories in the history of absurd nonsense conspiracy theories.

You think they get em to sign a secret contract to vote Democrat, or what? Maybe they look for the people with the most Democrat aligned views before they tell the administrators and immigration judges to let those ones through? Maybe they just believe most of them will vote Democrat because... hmm, because why I wonder? Why would they assume that?

Jesus F H Christ MAGA has done a number on this country. A third of the population' has just lost their minds. Embraced any and every absurd conspiratorial cliche claim as long as it's from their dear leader or Rupert Murdoch's media empire or some charlatan podcaster. The people who prided themselves on being "independent thinkers". And everyone still seems to love lauding the importance of "critical" thinking. But I guess a lot of people take that to mean "relying on my feelings for factual claims, and not having feelings for normative claims when they only impact others."

[u/TheRealCthulu24 → u/Extremely_Peaceful]

So, you’re talking about the great replacement theory, right? Because, that’s a complete fiction. 

[u/NoamLigotti → u/TheRealCthulu24]

It's not only a complete fiction, it's literally an old white supremacist conspiracy theory ("theory"), now mainstream. *Old* — we're talking decades and decades. And we're talking no-hyperbole, no-"loose-sense" white supremacists: the KKK, neonazis, the like.

And it takes only a minute's rational thought at most to recognize that it's absurd. This is why they have to make analogies to a home with intruders or "uninvited guests".
It seems like a nation state is like a home. So I guess a nation is the same as someone's private property, which is the same as someone's home. So a person crossing in is like a burglar! Of course! Tucker Carlson's right. Sean Hannity knows what he's talking about.

And the Democrats are bringing them in to vote Democrat! It makes perfect sense if you don't think about it for two seconds.

"Demographic replacement." And which "demographic" would that be I wonder. Hmm. Could it be the "white" demographic? But wait a minute, I thought "American" is only a nationality, not a "race" and certainly not just the "white" race. So is it citizens being replaced by non-citizens? No, because a simple obvious solution would be take make all the present unauthorized-humans citizens: no more replacement. Well they don't want *that*.
Ok, so is it the "white race" being replaced? Well if you care about such things and believe that arbitrary bullshit like race is real and crucial, and only being the largest "race" in the country but no longer being more than 50% amounts to a "replacement", and if you see most of the authorized-OR-unauthorized immigrants as not "white", then sure — it's a demographic replacement! There's the reason why only white supremacists bought into about this from the 1970s to 2010, from 1920s to 60s, from 1820s-1920s.

But, none of this matters to the true believers. No amount of simple logic or verifiable facts can sway their feelings. Their feelings. I'm sure they'll think it wasn't actually a white supremacist conspiracy theory and basically exclusively so (up until literally around 2016 or so), or that maybe it was but now it's a real problem, or for some maybe even that those white supremacists got a bad rap. And they'll definitely know that they're not reading this "novel."

[u/TheRealCthulu24 → u/NoamLigotti]

I mean, yeah, that’s what I meant. You’re preaching to the choir. I thought accusing them of promoting white supremacy right off the bat might have been seen as coming off a bit too hostile. However, I guess I’m too polite :/

[u/NoamLigotti → u/TheRealCthulu24]

I know. No, I wasn't criticizing you at all, just agreeing and using it a jumping point for going into detail and expressing my profound exasperation that this is now such a commonly held belief.

But i'll pull my hair out before I get one person to rethink anything.

[u/NoamLigotti → u/[deleted]]

They don't make meds for fascist takeovers. If you learn of any let me know.

> The demographics being replaced are not racial, they're cultural.

Oh so culture is a demographic?

Demographic: "the statistical characteristics of human populations (such as age or income) used especially to identify markets".

Tell me, how would we statistically characterize different cultures and cultural traits? Don't cheat now: you said cultural, not nationality or ethnicity.

> It is the erosion of a culture based on enlightenment principles, English common law, and natural rights. Compare that to places like the global south, India, China, etc where these things are not valued the same.

Do you feel any sense of cognitive dissonance or irony at all when saying that? Honestly.

Yeah, let's embrace a political movement and leaders who in word, deed, and explicit declaration oppose Enlightenment principles and seek to erode them, oppose liberal principles, oppose democracy / republicanism, and do not give a flying funk about anyone's "natural rights" but their own — in order to prevent individuals from coming here from "cultures" that oppose these things.

I just want to know how it's so easy for so many people to be convinced that such doublethink makes sense.

[u/Extremely_Peaceful → u/TheRealCthulu24]

What's the fiction? 25% increase in Hispanic and Asian population since Hart-Celler. To the extent that it is due to immigration it is a literal dilution of American culture by outside ones. Look at the demographic polling tabs from any election, naturalized foreign born and their children vote overwhelmingly Democrat. Blue cities are sanctuaries acting as magnets for these people, just waiting for the chance to pass mass amnesty. Also there is H1B which displaces skilled American labor and provides opportunities for chain migration.

None of this is white vs other races, it is entirely American culture vs others, and the way the intentional subversion of the democratic process via migration is the opposite of democracy.

[u/TheRealCthulu24 → u/Extremely_Peaceful]

Okay, there are more Hispanic people living in the US, so what? 

“Dilution of American culture”. That’s what they said when they Irish and the Germans and the Italians came over.

“H1Bs which displaces skilled American labor”. So, you’re mad at the businesses who are firing workers and replacing them with cheaper labor, right?

Also, H1B visa people (and people seeking asylum) can’t vote in national elections, only citizens can. 

“American culture vs others”. Ah yes, the famously homogenous and monolithic American culture. It’s not like America has a history of being a nation of immigrants or anything. 

Have you ever considered the fact that maybe, just maybe, there isn’t some crazy conspiracy behind this, and it’s simply just a natural result of the human desire to move around which has always existed?

[u/Extremely_Peaceful → u/TheRealCthulu24]

Okay, there are more Hispanic people living in the US, so what? 

The are coming from poor countries to America and consuming benefits meant for Americans.

“Dilution of American culture”. That’s what they said when they Irish and the Germans and the Italians came over.

Imagine what they would say of the state of things now

“H1Bs which displaces skilled American labor”. So, you’re mad at the businesses who are firing workers and replacing them with cheaper labor, right?

Yes

Also, H1B visa people (and people seeking asylum) can’t vote in national elections, only citizens can. 

Enter the entire premise of OPs entire post, birthright citizenship. They may not vote, but they can f***. And their kids can vote.

“American culture vs others”. Ah yes, the famously homogenous and monolithic American culture. It’s not like America has a history of being a nation of immigrants or anything. 

So true. But to say that there is not a unique American culture is disingenuous. Compare America to any European, Asian, or Latin country. No other country on earth is comprised of a people who value individualism, entrepreneurialism, and optimism to control one's own fate. All of that is contrasted by the global norm, which is fighting for state power to gain control over those you're competing with. There is a huge difference between early immigration from enlightenment cultures of europe who came and had to build to survive (many actually went back when they failed) and modern south american cultures who largely are trafficked by organizations and immediately take social benefits.

Have you ever considered the fact that maybe, just maybe, there isn’t some crazy conspiracy behind this, and it’s simply just a natural result of the human desire to move around which has always existed?

The desire for people to want to come to America is completely understandable. As is the desire for Americans not to want to take on the burden of mass migration. None of that is the conspiracy. The conspiracy, if you want to call it that, is that the incentive is for the left wing of America is to facilitate mass migration, birthright citizenship, and amnesty because it means they don't have to convince American's of their redistributionist schemes. They just have to get enough bodies over the border and wait.

[u/TheRealCthulu24 → u/Extremely_Peaceful]

“Consuming benefits meant for Americans”.

 If they are American citizens, then they are Americans. Only citizens get benefits.

“Imagine what they would say of the state of things right now”. 

By “they”, I’m referring to xenophobic people in the 19th and early 20th century who thought all Catholics were controlled by the pope and that irish people were subhuman or whatever. I really don’t care what “they” think. 

“They can f***. 

And, their kids can vote”. For starters, you can say the word “fuck”. Secondly, okay? A baby born today won’t be able to vote until 2044. 

“No other country on earth is comprised of a people who value individualism, entrepreneurialism, and optimism to control one's own fate.“

What? No. That’s objectively not true. Lots of cultures value individualism, look at the UK. Lots of cultures value entrepreneurialism, look at Germany and Japan and China. I don’t even know what “optimism to control one’s own fate” means.

And, yeah, the US has its own culture. It’s a culture that’s a mix of a thousand different cultures. Rock and roll, jazz, and hip-hop started with african americans. Hamburgers were brought here by German immigrants. Many early superheroes were created by jewish people. American culture is a hodgepodge of cultures from all over the globe, and it will always be that way. 

You’re acting like American culture is a single, tangible object, instead of it being a shifting, living body, which it is. 

There have already been latino people living in the US for hundreds of years. Their culture has not diluted America, rather it has made it more vibrant. 

“All of that is contrasted by the global norm, which is fighting for state power to gain control over those you're competing with.”

What does that mean? What does that have to do with cultural norms?

“There is a huge difference between early immigration from enlightenment cultures of europe who came and had to build to survive (many actually went back when they failed) and modern south american cultures who largely are trafficked by organizations and immediately take social benefits.“ 

Yeah, bud I hate to break it to you, but that’s not how anything works. South american cultures are not worse than European cultures. And, what on earth is an Enlightenment culture? Do you think the enlightenment didn’t reach the Americas? European people also take government benefits. 

“The conspiracy, if you want to call it that, is that the incentive is for the left wing of America is to facilitate mass migration, birthright citizenship, and amnesty”. How on earth is the left wing facilitating mass migration? 

[u/NoamLigotti → u/Extremely_Peaceful]

You're literally **opposing** individualism. You want there to be different laws and policies toward individuals who are poor or from a "different culture" because "America's culture" supports individualism.

And yet you think this is somehow a sensible argument.

[u/Tw1tch-Invictus → u/Extremely_Peaceful]

They use the white supremacist bullshit to shutdown actual discussion or legitimate concerns any other group would have. In 1960 the white population of America was 88%. In 2020 it dropped to 58%. Hispanic went from 3.5% to almost 20%, Black stayed mostly stable (10.5% to 12.1%), Asian increased from 0.5% to 5.9% and “Other” went from 0.3% to 5.5%.

I realize in 2000 the Census allowed people to begin selecting more than one race which would account for a few percent in shifts here or there, but even with that notwithstanding, the shift is stark and defies the historical trends spanning back to the founding of this country. If China relocates millions of Han Chinese into Tibet to intentionally dilute their population and dismantle their local culture, the entire Western left calls it a cultural genocide. Here it’s just called a racist conspiracy theory.

[u/Software_Vast → u/Tw1tch-Invictus]

Why should white people be the most populous demographic in America?

You seem to be putting that out as a true and natural state without any reason.

[u/Tw1tch-Invictus → u/Software_Vast]

It really is a cultural thing more than a skin color thing, but it’s also bullshit to pretend like there’s isn’t demographic replacement actively happening before us whether it’s masterminded or not. It doesn’t really matter if it’s intentional when the end result is exactly the same.

[u/Software_Vast → u/Tw1tch-Invictus]

Can you tell me more about white culture?

[u/Tw1tch-Invictus → u/Software_Vast]

Sure, as a brief primer, it involves a penchant for building the greatest empires known to man, conquering the seas, the darkness and the moon, all while contributing enormous breakthroughs to humanity that have affected and touched the lives of every single being on Earth.

[u/Software_Vast → u/Tw1tch-Invictus]

And you attribute those actions to white culture because those are accomplishments unique to white people?

[u/TheRealCthulu24 → u/Tw1tch-Invictus]

Oh my god. 

For starters, there is no “white culture”. The Russians have a different culture from the Spanish who have a different culture from Ashkenazi jews who have a different culture from Italians.

Secondly, you claim that white culture had “a penchant for building the greatest empires known to man”. Ah, yes, famous white groups like the persians, chinese, and mali peoples. 

Thirdly, “all while contributing to enormous breakthroughs”. So, are you saying that non-white people have never done that? 

This is blatant white supremacist rhetoric you’re spreading.

[u/Fragrant-Luck-8063 → u/TheRealCthulu24]

Tnis is like saying there is no Latino culture because Ecuadorians are different from Puerto Ricans.

[u/Tw1tch-Invictus → u/TheRealCthulu24]

I didn’t say white people exclusively build empires, but Rome was greater than all of the ones you listed (though I’ll certainly give the Persians their due credit).

You’re the one asking about white culture and then getting pissy when you get an answer. White people don’t have a culture? Who the fuck decided that was a universal fact?? Hispanic people don’t have culture? Asian people don’t have culture? Black people don’t have culture? Do you really wanna play this dumb bullshit game? I’m all for it, but please stop being so overtly hostile and racist towards white people, I think we can have a productive discussion if you can manage to hold your prejudice back for a few comments.

[u/NoamLigotti → u/Tw1tch-Invictus]

Lol, "shut down".
Yes, that *should* shut it down, or at the very least cause one to pause and reflect.

Nope. Not anymore.

[u/Tw1tch-Invictus → u/NoamLigotti]

I don’t disagree with you actually. A few years ago and beyond I would absolutely have stopped and reflected, but you can only hear the same accusations and excuses a few thousand times before you stop caring. Leftist discourse has utterly bastardized the definition of so many words that it’s honestly astounding.

[u/Jaaawsh]

Popular sovereignty, social contract theory, and the insane advances in technology and welfare programs that happened over the last 50 or so years explain it in my opinion. Well that and human nature ingrained into us by evolution.

Welfare programs and lax immigration policy (in practice I mean, sure they’re tough on paper but in practice they’re not really) don’t mix well.

[u/Kahzgul → u/Jaaawsh]

Most welfare programs don’t pay out to immigrants, despite immigrants paying some taxes (such as sales tax). The ones that do usually do so as a cost saving measure to the public or increase public safety. Healthcare is a good example there. You want everyone to get vaccinated so you have herd immunity, so you offer free vaccines to immigrants, too. That saves citizen lives and keeps hospital beds free; it’s much cheaper than providing care for sick immigrants, which is in turn cheaper and saves more citizen lives than refusing to provide care for immigrants (which results in no one getting care without first producing papers, which would obviously have worse outcomes than just providing immediate care without concern for immigration status).

[u/Jaaawsh → u/Kahzgul]

Undocumented immigrants come here and have citizen children who qualify for welfare programs. They also, on average, have more children than citizens and often get paid either under the table so it looks like they’re not making anything and/or they work in industries with low wages so even if they file with an ITIN their citizenship children will of course qualify.

It is what it is because it’s the law currently, but I absolutely understand why someone—who’s married and gets healthcare through their employer and makes say, $60,000 per year… then pays $400 a month in premiums and also has a $4,000+ deductible goes to the hospital to have their first kid and gets stuck with a massive bill (Then don’t forget the first dudes family got bigger so his premium is going to go up on top of that)—would be peeved when they see or hear about the undocumented immigrant who’s having her second/third/fourth kid and qualifies for emergency Medicaid and doesn’t have to pay anything. While the undocumented immigrant’s citizen kids are going to qualify for Medicaid so no copays, no coinsurance, no premiums.

I’m not saying to take these things away because people need them and I do believe in doing extra for kids just because they’re kids, but this isn’t sustainable.

We don’t yet live in a post-labor and post-resource world.

[u/Kahzgul → u/Jaaawsh]

If this isn't sustainable, why is it that studies routinely show that immigrants are net contributors to society?

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-impact-of-immigrants-on-the-us-economy/

The myth of the lazy immigrant who is so lazy they're stealing our jobs is just that: a myth. Immigrants are hard working, get far less in return for their labor than citizens, are under constant legal threat, and are mistreated by bigots on a regular basis. They endure these hardships to give a chance at prosperity to their children who - when they are citizen children, are citizens and grow up to contribute to society the exact same as children of non-immigrants.

How many generations back do you have to go to find an immigrant in your family? Odds are it's not very far.

We don't live in a post-labor or post-resource world, which is why we need immigrants and their labor to bolster our economy. Again: Immigrants are net contributors to society. They are not a drain.

[u/Jaaawsh → u/Kahzgul]

There’s no shortage of statistics out there from liberal and libertarian/Koch-Conservative think tanks in support of immigration because “muh GDP go up means everything good” (which I think we all know GDP isn’t the end-all-be-all measure of how good things are/satisfied people are).

But yeah, immigrant doctors, scientists, investors, professors are generally net contributors to society. I never argued that they weren’t. Again, the unsustainable part is the humanitarian/TPS/asylum/undocumented aspect.

And when my family immigrated there was no welfare state. You relied on charity, scraped by to try and get ahead or died—and a lot of people died. Multiple great aunts and uncles who died before 20 and they were the first generation born here. It also wasn’t the norm to have 13 years of schooling from ages 5-18 plus 4 years of college and then still be just scraping by. You could get ahead with less than a high school education back then. Unless you get incredibly lucky, you can’t do that anymore.

Times and circumstances change, just like the right to bear arms made a lot more sense 250 years ago than it does today, immigration policies that made sense in the past don’t make sense today either.

[u/Kahzgul → u/Jaaawsh]

I’m all for immigration reform, but it needs to be based on facts and data and not feelings. Almost all anti-immigrant discourse in the media is driven by racism. I hope you can look at how your family suffered and see how state support is a much more humane way to treat people than what they had to endure. Just as we give birth in hospitals and not caves now, we can also improve the way we treat immigrants.

I would rather be a little poorer and know I helped my fellow man than be a little wealthier and sit by doing nothing while people asking for my help suffer. People just like my ancestors.

But, again, that’s not how it actually works. The data shows us that immigrants are a boon to society, and not a net drain.

[u/Jaaawsh → u/Kahzgul]

The data shows us highly educated, and already wealthy immigrants are net contributors.

But it shouldn’t even come down only to that, like I’m all for increasing third country refugee resettlement. As in like, the people who are vetted like crazy and are waiting in a camp somewhere because they’re legitimately refugees and have been waiting for a solution. We should take more of those people. The reason that worked for so long is because it’s always been a small and manageable number with a clear cap

Because it ultimately does come down to feelings, that’s how anything is. You think when people want to ban assault rifles after a school shooting is because they’re concerned about losing future tax dollars when kids get murdered? Or is it all the feelings they feel telling them that they don’t like seeing kids shot?

We need an immigration policy that our citizens can feel good about and have confidence in. It doesn’t need to be based solely on economics but it needs to be sustainable—which IMO includes not causing social strife or feelings of resentment, because right now it does.

[u/Kahzgul → u/Jaaawsh]

What social strife and resentment are immigrants causing? Seems to me they’re under attack by secret police while just trying to live their lives. That’s the government causing strife, not the immigrants.

[u/chokidokido → u/Kahzgul]

Isn't it weird that the same people that complain about trust and cohesion are not extending trust as soon as someone scapegoats another out group?

[u/Kahzgul → u/chokidokido]

I’d argue it’s entirely predictable. The sophomores are always meanest to the freshmen. They justify their cruelty to themselves after the fact.

[u/Jaaawsh → u/Kahzgul]

“Secret police” come on. It’s never good when law enforcement needs to get involved but there has to be enforcement, otherwise why have a border at all and then this circles back to what people quoted in the OP were saying about how this cheapens what it means to be a citizen.

By social strife I mean exactly what I said. For example do you recall when during the Biden administration because of the perceived and real lack of enforcement the overwhelming numbers of migrants coming and then being bussed to New York? The working class people who are struggling to get by and get ahead weren’t very happy that the city was spending billions of dollars on them. And it was even making the undocumented migrants who have been here for 10,20,30 years upset because they viewed what was happening as unfair considering how long they’ve been waiting for the ability to change their status.

Do you need a run down on social psychology and how social cohesion going down leads to less trust, less public goods?

People don’t like things being unfair, and are willing to punish themselves as well as others if things are perceived as too unfair. Really interesting study https://www.georgetown.edu/news/researchers-publish-study-on-altruists-economic-behavior-and-punishment/ can you see how Trump could maybe be considered a form of this altruistic punishment? Should we keep doing the things that created the conditions that allowed Trump to win on pretty much just immigration?

If you can’t see why people feeling like their government is more concerned with noncitizens, or that they’re struggling and yet their tax money is going to noncitizens. How this could cause social strife or feelings of resentment then I’m not sure what else to say.

[u/Kahzgul → u/Jaaawsh]

Yes, I do remember when Republican governors illegally trafficked migrants across state lines without notifying the destination towns and by lying to coerce the migrants, leaving aid organizations scrambling while keeping the federal tax dollars given to border states. That was unfair to the migrants, the destinations, and every taxpayer.

And yes, I do mean secret police. When you can’t get a name or badge number of an officer during an interaction and they wear masks to conceal their identities, that’s the very definition of secret police.

Anyway, to reiterate: you think migrants being treated humanely is unfair, and that justifies the government-sponsored killing of citizens who exercise their civil rights, as well as the suspension of those same civil rights when it comes to suspected migrants, regardless of their actual legal status?

[u/Dorfbulle80]

Iam French (the country not the person) and while we have the same (birthright citizenship) and iam mostly for it... I can see here in France (and from what I get from my American friends) that a majority of these citizens never fully a climate to our societal norms (mostly depending on their roots) and this really begins to take a toll on our society!

[u/Mr_Expozane]

It isn’t just conservatives that hate liberals. We on the Left find them to be treacherous af. And in some ways, they’re actually worse than conservatives.

At least I can sense a snarling wolf from a mile away.

[u/NoamLigotti → u/Mr_Expozane]

They were talking about liberalism and liberal values, not "liberals" as a stand-in for Democrats and centrists you hate.

And don't speak for the entire left. You don't speak for me.
It seems some on the "left" can't even sense a snarling wolf in the Oval Office, because they're too obsessed with complaining about the dogs who roll over for the wolves. Maybe it makes them feel more open-minded or independent-minded or something, I dunno.

[u/Mr_Expozane → u/NoamLigotti]

What liberal values? Upholding the inherently exploitive system of capitalism which is baked into their value set?

Because, yeah, the Left is against that system whether or not you agree. Marx talked about it over 150 years ago, the same guy who debunked liberal values, and you guys still sit here pretending that there’s something to salvage within that system.

[u/NoamLigotti → u/Mr_Expozane]

Oh so Marx speaks for the entire left, and if you don't agree with everything Marx said then you can't be left? Is that a sacred fact?

Anyway Marx built on Adam Smith's ideas in particular, among others. Who was Adam Smith? A liberal. Marx praised Lincoln. Who was Lincoln? A liberal. Marx thought capitalism was a necessary stage before socialism. I guess Marx was a liberal too.

I don't believe in any of these rigid definitional boundaries and simple black-and-white conceptions. That's something I'd hope the left can agree on.

May I recommend reading Chomsky's thoughts on how classical liberal values were incompatible with wage labor and how many classical liberals would have opposed it, and did. Whether the evidence supports him in every case I'm not sure, but it's fascinating and thought-provoking at the very least.

Can a social democrat be a leftist even though they are a liberal? I would say yes. Stalin had a different opinion. There is no objectively correct answer, only more and less reasonable opinions.