The Glade 4.0

Cool, thanks Hopwin.

I'm surprised the "we need more stimulus money for infrastructure jobs!" Democrats and the "we need to build a multi-billion dollar border wall/fence!" Republicans haven't put 2 + 2 together yet.

If Democrats do that, they remove future voters.

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The Dude abides.

I think this is less of a factor than many conservatives assume. The path from increased illegal immigration today to voting citizens in the future (either by amnesty every 20 years or by US-born children of illegal immigrants in 18 years) is too long for it to be a meaningful driver of Democratic policy. That said, I do concede that Dems consider the votes of current Hispanic citizens who view enforcement unfavorably. Still, I think pitching the fence as part of a jobs/stimulus bill would make it at least marginally more likely to get done.

You say that as if illegals aren't already voting.

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"It is true that democracy undermines freedom when voters believe they can live off of others' productivity, when they modify the commandment: 'Thou shalt not steal, except by majority vote.' The politics of plunder is no doubt destructive of both morality and the division of labor."

I don't get the why hispanics aren't for following the law, even the legal immigrant ones. If I did things the right way i'd certainly want to stop the cheaters.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

Well as far as the Mexican's are concerned, it's their land anyway.


What befuddles me is why the Democrats automatically assume heavily Catholic populations will vote with them...

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

I've heard quite a few legal immigrants from Mexico get incensed about the problem not being fixed. I think they're not as vocal about it because they have a lot of family/friends that aren't here legally. They'd rather keep the peace than create friction.

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The Dude abides.

A good number of illegals believe the land is theirs. As for as Legal Mexican Immigrants, the ones I know are very vocal about the situation, They came here legally followed the rules, they are not pleased. Several of them have served In U.S. Military.
All of them love this country more than the average American. Also they are almost all conservative in thier politics and beliefs.

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History of the Condom
In 1272, the Muslim Arabs invented the condom, using a goat's lower intestine.
In 1873, the British somewhat refined the idea, by taking the intestine out of the goat first.

I don't recall the exact stats, but I've seen polls that show a split in Hispanic American opinion on the subject. That said, many Hispanic Americans have friends and/or family that are or were here illegally, which transforms it from an abstract question - "Do I want people to follow the law?" - into a personal question - "Do I want my uncle and his kids deported?" That kind of shift in thinking is prevalent among all people on a range of issues. "Do I want drunk drivers to lose their license?" vs. "Do I want my friend to lose his license because he drove home after drinking?" Or, "Do I think drug laws should be enforced?" vs. "Do I think my brother and I should go to jail for 5 years because we bought a bag of weed last weekend?" And so on.

Because Republicans are widely perceived by Hispanic Americans as being anti-immigrant and anti-minority. You're right, though; on issues other than race and immigration, Hispanics tend to align with Republican policies.

I wish I knew why we got such a bad rap in that regard. Most center-right people I know want people of all kindreds nations and tongues to have individual liberty and be able to be hard working law abiding citizens.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

Mainly because the left spends so much time calling everything the right does racist. It relies on simplicity and personal benefit over long-term gain and truely fair-mindedness to convince people who have a personal stake.

Take any kind of affirmative action program. It's a lot easier to convince a person who will personally benefit from it that it's fair and anyone who opposes it is racist than it is to convince them that it's just as unfair as any other form of racism, and that the people promoting it are racist because they don't believe minorities can succeed on their own merits.

It really doesn't matter what the merits of the position are; it simply appeals to personal interest and emotion. This is why on left websites you see so much time and effort spent on ever-greater hyperbole in describing the right, and convincing each other that they have all the right, ethical, answers.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

That goes both ways, though, DE. A big part of the reason minority Americans perceive Republicans as racist, or at least focused on the interests of white people, is that the Republican party has deliberately appealed to the interests and resentments of white people. Affirmative action is a good example. Dems play identity politics by appealing to minorities with a pro-AA platform, even though the actual benefits of AA to minorities are debatable. Reps play identity politics by appealing to white people with an anti-AA platform, even though the actual harm AA causes to white people is debatable. Like you said, it doesn't matter what the merits of the position are; it's just an appeal to perceived interest and emotion.

And, I know contemporary Republicans don't like to think about it, but they really did rise back to power in part by positioning themselves as the defenders of traditional (read: white, male dominated) power structures in the 60s and 70s. The Federalist Society and truly libertarian voters might have principled reasons for opposing aspects of the Civil Rights Act, EOE laws, AA, etc., but many of the average voters who shifted from the Dems to the Reps in that era did so because they saw the Dems consciously aligning with "them" and the Reps consciously aligning with "us".

By the third generation in the US hispanics begin to trend as self-identified conservatives.

So its easy to see that the DNC is shortsighted.

And RD,Republicans do not play to "white people" with their anti AA stance -they play to "reasonable people" who can understand that discrimination by the government -even if it benefits you -is wrong.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

The problem with that is that while the merits of AA in either direction may be debatable, the discriminatory nature of it is not. Therein lies the difference. While Republicans may be appealing to anti-AA sentiment, that is based on the legitimate beef with the inherent hypocrisy of AA that many average people have. When Democrats or the Left complain that opposing AA is racism, they both rely upon and feed the perception that opposing special benefits for minorities is racism. In other words, they simply appeal to the selfishness of those that feel AA benefits them.

You might want to say that the reverse is also true, but it really isn't. Getting upset when someone else is getting special privileges is not the same as getting upset because someone else doesn't want you to have special privileges.

Nevertheless, it's very hard to get that point across to people; Very few people are going to accept the loss of privilege happily just because it makes the law fair to everyone. The Left loves to decry people on the Right for not wanting to lose "privilege" even when that privilege isn't privilege at all but money they earned, but when it's the other way around, it's not "privilege", it's trying to remedy "racism" that mysteriously never seems to get any better, can't be quantified, verified, or falsified, and, of course, is conveniently fed by the mechanism that's supposed to combat it's effects, thereby creating AA in perpetuity.



Yes, and we're talking events removed by anywhere from 30 to 50 years from the present. The voters who shifted in that era are, at the youngest, pushing 50, and most are older or dead. Relying on sentiments that existed at that time to claim that current Republicans are opposed to AA for the reasons that Republicans 30 to 50 years ago did is absurd; it's simply Guilt By Association.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I wonder if you polled blacks what party they would tell you Lincoln was in...

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

He was in the House Party

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Darksiege
Traveller, Calé, Whisperer
Lead me not into temptation; for I know a shortcut

Everyone knows affirmative action is racist, some just believe we need it to counteract other racism in the system.

Most of the people who think we need it to counteract other racism in "the system" don't agree that it's racist. In fact I've never encountered anyone that thought it was racist but were OK with it for that reason.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

The first sentence of the quote above is true, but I disagree w/ the subsequent points. Like I said, although the more thoughtful, politically aware people may passionately oppose AA purely for reasons of principle, the bulk of voters don't get passionate about things unless they feel personally affected by them. Since most white people are never personally affected by AA in any tangible way, I think the passionate opposition to it comes from tribalism, from the sense that "we" are being discriminated against to benefit "them". The Republican party made a conscious decision to appeal to that racial tribalism in the 60s and 70s, and to a lesser extent still does so today by choosing to push issues like AA, language laws, dubious claims of illegal immigrants voting, etc., that have relatively minor practical impacts but very clear racial/tribal signaling aspects. The Democratic party made the opposite decision in the 60s and 70s, choosing to push many of those same issues from the other side, in order to appeal to the racial/tribal feelings among minorities, but as you noted in your response to Xeq, they did so in a way that led white liberals to support the pro-minority policies based on principle rather than self-interest. On issues with significant racial appeal, white liberals are pretty much the only people in the country that consistently vote against their own interests!

I think this "us" vs. "them" attitude is quite clear when you look at surveys regarding government benefits. White conservatives who claim to oppose government assistance programs in general on principled grounds consistently register high levels of support for farm subsidies, social security, medicare, unemployment benefits, small business loans, etc., while consistently opposing welfare, low-income housing, food stamps, etc. If you look at the demographics of those who receive such government benefits, the racial split is pretty apparent. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying conservatives are making consciously racist decisions about what government programs they support. What I'm saying is that people generally think of themselves and the things they do as being good, so they conclude that if "people like me" receive government program X, then government program X must be ok. Based on the racial split in which government programs they support, then, it seems likely that "people like me" is partly a racial categorization for many conservatives.



I don't think 30-50 years is actually that long in terms of political memory. Maybe it should be irrelevant now, but in practice, stuff that happened in the 60s and 70s still matters to many voters on both sides. The anti-military attitude of many liberals from the Vietnam era, for instance, still hangs around the Democrats' neck, just as the anti-Civil Rights attitude of many "conservatives" from the same time period still impacts the Republicans' reputation. More important than the time frame, though, is the lack of any subsequent mea culpa or serious change in course by the Republican party with regard to racial issues. Democrats, after all, were the party of segregation for a century, but they deliberately and vocally renounced that wing of their party in the 60s. Republicans deliberately absorbed that wing. In the decades since, the Republicans have continued to push issues, as I said, that have high racial/tribal signaling value. Minority voters see that, and conclude that Republicans remain the party of white resentment.

Its odd RD... while I think you made some good points, you missed making some very serious connections, to the point your last conclusion completely destroys any good points you made elsewhere in the body.

You're moving the goalposts. Why does it have to be "passionately" opposed?



Pushing issues that amount to "regardless of what race you are, we're going to conduct buisness in the prevalent language" or concerns about people who aren't citizens in the first place isn't really pushing racial tribalism, since the entire concept is "no special privileges". What they're pushing is eliminating racial tribalism. There is a certain cynicism to that because people vote on principle when they can afford it. However, the fact remains that



The problem with this comparison is that one's interests and one's principles do not necessarily have to be opposed to each other. The fact that white conservatives are voting in favor of their interests does not mean they are not also voting on principle. Non-white consevatives would also be voting against their own interests, but regardless the fact remains that the Left made an equally concious choice to not just claim that its form of racism was not only okay, but wasn't racism at all, and that opposing it was racism. It continues to use this tactic, hence the stigma of "playing the race card"; the tactic is worn but still effective since laying the label "RACIST!" essentially ends rational discussion.



I haven't noticed that all that many conservatives are in favor of the subsidies you claim they are. Social Security and Medicare, perhaps since there are a lot of older conservatives and they may actually be relying on those programs but I haven't seen a lot of support for unemployment or farm subsidies, and as for buisness loans, since loans are to be paid back that's different in principle than handouts. I should also point out that welfare, low-income housing and the like are primarily directed at people of working age while Social Security and Medicare are directed at the elderly and for a moderate that's an important distinction.

For moderates and moderate conservatives, there's an enormous difference between handouts for those who can work and those who can't, or who did and lost their pension, etc. Yes, more people of minorities utilize things like food stamps, but there is also no shortage of whites using them, nor are people unaware of this. I think you're drawing a racial disctinction when the real distinction is over perceived work ethic.



This is essentially a dressing up of the absurd "dog-whistle politics" claim. The Democrats have largely shed the anti-military reputation, at least in terms of the appalling behavior of the anti-war movement in the 1960s; that attitude has evolved into opposition to defence spending which, while encumbered with its own problems at least avoids both the image and the reality of abusing privates for the decisions of the government.

The Republicans have, on the other hand, not changed course or issued a mea culpa because none is called for. Once Segregation was ended and Civil Rights a done deal, the new issues became Affirmative Action; i.e. not just political equality for minorities, but programs to make them economically equal in terms of outcome as well - essentially programs to remedy the end result of -500 or so years that resulted in the economic stratification of the 1970s, justified not by institutionalized racism, but by the personal attitudes of people who had been in favor of segregation and by the aforementioned stratification.

Essentially the left discovered an endless well of political capital - call for ever more reform to remedy perceived economic injustices based on the effects of past racism, then claim that opposition to the special privileges that the reforms created racism. This created ever more resentment, which could in turn be called racism and create calls for ever more reforms and so forth.

People who opposed this, either racists who had come to accept that segregation was over and they had to live with equality, or simply people who'd opposed segregation but now were faced with the prospect of endless blame just for being white wanted this opposed. This was not about promoting racial tribalism, it was about "if we're going to have equality, lets have equality". It was and is no more racial tribalism than the Civil Rights movement was in the first place, the racial attitudes of some individuals notwithstanding.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Could you point out the missed connections, Ladas? Do you mean the alternatives DE offered, such as the age factor with SS & Medicare, in particular? As a liberal, I'm kind of on the outside looking in when it comes to understanding how Republicans and/or conservatives approach issues that touch on race, and the conclusions that I've reached thus far certainly aren't set in stone.

That said, my current view of things is basically this:

Prior to the 1960s, the power structure in the US was very much tilted toward white males. This was true at all levels of society, not just in the upper echelons of government and business, so even in terms of local and familial social interaction, white men occupied a higher rung on the ladder than women and minorities. From the 1960s onward, however, the Civil Rights movement, the Feminist movement, the gay rights movement, increasing immigration from Latin America, and the accelerating decline of the agricultural and manufacturing sectors of the economy combined to seriously undermine the existing hierarchy, and in the span of a single generation, white men suddenly found their dominant status collapsing. This bred a great deal of unease and resentment, as social upheaval always does, and given the circumstances, that resentment had a strong racial component. It also had a partisan component, because Democrats had consciously and very publicly aligned themselves with the forces of change. The Republican party took advantage of this situation by focusing on "culture war" issues related to the changes and by using anti-government, states rights, and libertarian economic arguments (which admittedly have merit on their own) to attack government policies that reinforced the changes, while conveniently ignoring or soft-peddling policies that benefited white and/or male voters.

In addition, there was obviously a lot of real racism in the 60s. That is much less true today, but the change didn't happen overnight. As conservatives quite rightly point out, you can't legislate morality, and attitudes take time to die out. By the late-70s or early 80s, it had become socially unacceptable to be overtly racist, but private racial prejudice and animus faded more gradually than did their public expression. Hence, there was a well of genuine prejudice to be tapped and channeled in more socially acceptable ways. Issues like AA, immigration, welfare, etc. provided excuses for people with underlying prejudices to vent their animosity without seeming (or feeling) like bigots, and again, Republicans consciously took advantage of that. Over time, the underlying prejudices have largely died out, at least on a conscious level, but the "us" vs. "them" associations and the exaggerated intensity of emotion surrounding the issues, remains.

So, in a nutshell, my view is that outright racism is fairly limited now, but that the exaggerated focus (relative to their tangible impacts) on things like AA, Hispanic immigration/assimilation, welfare, etc., and the intensity of opposition to them, are driven by social, cultural, and economic resentments that still have a significant racial/tribal component, and the Republican party continues to take advantage of that for electoral purposes.

This:



After patting yourself (white liberals - which brings up a whole host of other issues about elitism, etc typical to liberals), you reinforce that notion by making it appear that its only Republicans continuing to push those issues. What a complete farce. Then, you go to state that the reason minority voters have issues with the Republican party is because of this "pushing", and not the fact, as you so clearly go right early, people tend to vote what is in their best interest... ie, liberals cater to the "free" demands of entire segments of the population, which tend to be minority.