Diversity or Universal Health Care. Choose one.

Here's an idea: The Democratic embrace of ethnic diversity confounds their goal of equality in a more cohesive welfare state.

Perhaps people only want to share with folks like themselves.

Over the past twenty years Democrats have shifted policy on immigration, increasingly becoming defenders of legalization and normalization of immigrants here illegally.   They defined opposition to immigration as a product of xenophobia and racism. They were abetted in this by Trump who readily took the other side, arguing that Mexicans are suspected job stealing criminals and Muslims are suspected terrorists.

Voters lined up on either side.  There became little room for a Democrat to speak skeptically about immigration because to do so implied racial animus.  Democrats could drift into that policy position in part because sympathy with immigrants, here both legally and illegally, fits with a suite of other attitudes in support of greater equality of opportunity and income redistribution.  Democrats support the safety net, and immigrants fall within it.  In that context it makes perfect sense for Democrats to support ethnic diversity, to respect and celebrate cultural differences.  Democrats like the rainbow.

Should they?  Maybe celebrating diversity confounds Democrats' other policy goals, including a better safety net, progressive taxation, and universal health care.  It can be argued that Democrats are working against themselves, with policy goals in conflict.  A California retiree wrote a comment on yesterday's blog post that I will quote below.   She expresses a point of view that I have not heard a Democrat on the national stage say clearly, not for some time.  She says that Democrats need to choose, and she prefers Democrats choose liberal, progressive policies of redistribution and support for universal health care.

Perhaps multicultural diversity ruins the social cohesion necessary for the political will to adopt universal health care.   Celebrating diversity emphasizes difference.  It slows the melting pot process.  Liberals fuss over the guilt of "cultural appropriation" when they should be emphasizing rapid "Americanization."

Barbara Jordan: progressive control of immigration.

In this analysis, Democrats hobble themselves in two ways.   One is that diversity itself, and celebration of it, creates multi-ethnic divisions, with less sharing and team spirit.  In military terms it would be called "unit cohesion", in sports terms "team spirit" and nationally, especially at times of war, "patriotism."    People are more willing to cooperate and share in a context of group cohesion. The Scandinavian social welfare states were single ethnic states with high social cohesion.

The second is political.  Democrats' acceptance of diversity energizes political opposition.  Mass immigration means that the Democratic impulse to share is boundless and every movement toward redistribution.  Where will they stop?  It is a slippery slope to totalitarian confiscation.   Fiscal concerns fie in with cultural ones.  Immigrants are outsiders.  They are different.  There is a big political market of people who feel that way and Trump found it. 

There is a conscientious, non xenophobic basis for Democrats to choose social justice and cohesion as a higher value than multicultural diversity.    It can be a choice.  Americans are fiduciaries for their own government.  Americans are not free to be indiscriminate in our affections.  We have a first responsibility to take care of our own.  Our compassion cannot be boundless.  We owe it to the poor within our group to serve them fully before taking on new responsibilities and their needs are not yet met.   This would be the approach voiced by Barbara Jordan in the clip linked to in the caption of her photo.

A Democratic candidate for President might re-cast the debate over immigration, condemning Trump for his tone and dog whistle racism, but not for his policy.   As this blog has advised before, the justification can come back to the rule of law.  We enforce the immigration laws because we enforce all laws.   Democrats erred, this blog said, in condoning scofflaws.  We express empathy but we emphasize duty within.  That would be an approach.

I personally remain committed to multicultural diversity, but the comments below serve as evidence that its complicates the effort to create social cohesion.   Not every liberal celebrates diversity, immigration, and the rainbow.  Some people want the melting pot to work better and faster.  Others want to shut it down.