Here in Franklin TN, I’m noticing two things occurring at once. First, our state and town are roaring back to life. People are buying houses faster than they can be built, bidding wars erupt over existing homes, and help wanted signs are everywhere. The post-Covid boom isn’t just coming, it’s already here.
Second, many of the people I know who are most dialed into politics are living in abject misery in this land of plenty. Even as they worship freely, speak freely, and enjoy staggering economic opportunity, they’re convinced the nation is circling the drain. We’re a country in crisis. It’s not just that we face problems (of course we do), but there’s a pervasive sense that it’s all slipping away. The nation they love is almost gone.
This weekend, David Brooks wrote about polling showing a profound sense of pessimism and fear on the right:
A February Economist-YouGov poll asked Americans which statement is closest to their view: “It’s a big, beautiful world, mostly full of good people, and we must find a way to embrace each other and not allow ourselves to become isolated” or “Our lives are threatened by terrorists, criminals and illegal immigrants, and our priority should be to protect ourselves.”
Over 75 percent of Biden voters chose “a big, beautiful world.” Two-thirds of Trump voters chose “our lives are threatened.”
In a different poll, 51 percent of Trump Republicans said that politics was more about “ensuring the survival of the country as we know it” versus the 19 percent who believe politics is more about “enacting good public policy.” Brooks’s conclusion was spot-on:
What’s happening can only be called a venomous panic attack. Since the election, large swaths of the Trumpian right have decided America is facing a crisis like never before and they are the small army of warriors fighting with Alamo-level desperation to ensure the survival of the country as they conceive it.
The evidence supporting Brooks’s proposition isn’t just found in polling, it’s found in the firehose of catastrophic reporting and commentary across the right-wing infotainment ecosystem.
It’s against this backdrop that I picked up George W. Bush’s most recent book, Out of Many, One. The book itself is beautiful. The former president painted portraits of 43 immigrants—and it’s worth paging through the book to see the presidential art alone—but it’s the stories that truly make the book a tonic for the American soul.
Each portrait is accompanied by a story, and the America described by those who wallow in crisis and catastrophe is unrecognizable to the immigrants Bush highlights. Many of the stories describe people desperate to set foot on these shores, grateful for the opportunity to breathe free air. Indeed, the sense of gratitude is overwhelming. They didn’t arrive at a nation circling the drain. They don’t live in a nation circling the drain.
I’ve been writing more and more about immigration and the necessity for the American right to have a heart change in its attitudes towards immigrants. I’ve been a bit wonky about it—highlighting, for example, the extraordinary stability of immigrant families compared to native-born families, the prosperity and industry of so many immigrant communities, and even the relative religiosity of immigrants from Africa, South America, and parts of Asia.
No, this isn’t an argument for open borders. A nation needs to know who enters the country and control the inflow. Too much immigration (especially if it’s sudden) can indeed strain social services for a time and create unnecessary tension. But we need to understand that too little immigration also carries its own costs.
Let me remain wonky for just a moment before I return to Bush’s book. In today’s newsletter, the New York Times’s David Leonhardt notes that the American population grew at the slowest rate over the past decade since the 1930s. The prime reason is declining birth rates. And lest you think that even replacement-level birth rates are just a few public policy tweaks away, understand that across the developed world (including in nations with far more generous social safety nets and family leave policies than the United States), when prosperity and education increase, birth rates tend to decrease.
The implications for the country are profound. When, as Leonhardt observes, there are “more Americans 80 and older than 2 or younger,” there is not just the risk that the smaller rising populations won’t be able to support the needs of the older population, there is also a risk of losing a degree of national dynamism and strength that will be hard to recover.
Yet America is blessed. Even as we engage in political and cultural efforts to better match American fertility with expressed American desires for childbearing (Americans tend to want more children than they have), there are millions of motivated and industrious people who want to swell our ranks. While they of course bring their own cultures and traditions with them, they don’t come with a desire to make America Salvadoran or Nigerian but rather with the desire to become American themselves.
The tragedy of the political moment is that part of the American right is not just suffering from a catastrophic sense of crisis, they also see the influx of new residents and potential new citizens (the very people who are increasingly important to maintaining our national economy and even our military strength) as a source of threat, not renewal. This is the “replacement” that people like Tucker Carlson are teaching them to fear.
Look, I’m Calvinist enough to have an appropriate view of human nature. Immigration brings imperfect people to our shores. When imperfect immigrants meet imperfect native-born citizens, tension can result. Tension will result. But it is still true when new residents arrive, they bring their hope with them, and—as Bush’s book demonstrates—that hope has power. It stands against our national despair.
There’s long been a popular and effective conservative retort to those on the far left who claim that America is rotten to its core, irretrievably and inescapably steeped in white supremacy and intolerance: “If America is so racist, then why are so many millions of people from every race eager to come to our shores?”
But now there’s a retort to the decline-addicted right. “If America is circling the drain, then why do so many millions of people still see it as a beacon of hope?” It’s not because they want to tip the balance of power between red and blue. They see a nation that still provides its citizens with freedom and opportunity at a scale rarely (if ever) seen in the history of the world.
The move to America is a vote of confidence in America. Can we not share even a fraction of an immigrant’s confidence in the nation we love?
One more thing …
Earlier this morning my wife Nancy published a new report on what we called the “worst Christian sex abuse scandal you’ve never heard of.” New sources have come forward, and Nancy has engaged in tenacious reporting to fill in gaps in the story. Her report is a tough but necessary read:
Since the publication of our first article, I have learned more from sources who have come forward daily—even hourly—with additional details.
This new information adds to the already substantial body of evidence that camp leaders sought to downplay evidence of wrongdoing, even if doing so added to the trauma of those who’d been abused and made additional camper abuse more likely. Among the new details:
Newman confessed after a Texas Kanakuk father confronted Newman and threatened to call the FBI.
Joe White discouraged the whistleblower from informing law enforcement of Newman’s crimes.
Newman allegedly created pornographic materials of children.
Experts now say the FBI should launch an investigation into possible child trafficking.
And another thing …
On Monday, the Supreme Court was very, very busy. In our most recent Advisory Opinions podcast Sarah and I broke it all down. We talked about the Second Amendment, the First Amendment, Gitmo, juvenile crime, college admissions scandals, and … Supreme Court portraits. It was a great podcast. You can listen to it all here.
One last thing …
Lots and lots of folks loved the Betelgeuse documentary I shared last week. Let’s go back to that same well. The Cool Worlds YouTube channel is fantastic, so let me share another favorite—a journey to the end of the universe:
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