http://www.wsj.com/articles/we-arent-the-world-1483728161
“Above all, globalists should not equate concern for cultural norms and national borders with xenophobia. Large majorities of Americans, for example, welcome immigrants so long as they adopt American values, learn English, bring useful skills and wait their turn. Australia’s low tolerance for illegal immigration helps to maintain public support for high levels of legal entrants.
“We’ve created this false dichotomy that if you’re not for open borders, you’re racist,” says Avik Roy, president of the conservative Foundation for Research on Equal Opportunity and a former adviser to Republican presidential candidates. “There is some sort of middle ground between a nationalist and globalist approach,” Mr. Roy argues.
Even as committed a globalist as Mr. Obama has come to acknowledge this. Democrats, he told Rolling Stone the day after the election, must recognize that “for the majority of the American people, borders mean something.”
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This very interesting and thought provoking article by Greg Ip from the Wall Street Journal points out that the old “left – right” political struggles have been replaced by a contest between “globalism” and “nationalism” that often crosses some of the traditional political boundaries between left and right.
It also echoes some of the themes about the need to “understand where the other guys are coming from” rather than just “demonizing the opposition” that have been raised in previous blogs and comments by Thomas “Mink” Felhofer and Nolan Rappaport.
The world is definitely changing, and many of the “old norms” are breaking down. The challenge is how to find some stability in the middle that doesn’t sacrifice or run across strongly held views or principles.
When I was the Chairman of the Board of Immigration Appeals, I found one of the difficulties in reaching “consensus positions” is that, unlike a “compromise,” a “consensus” requires both ends of the spectrum to nominally support, or at least refrain from public disagreement with, the result. That’s a challenge when judges, or anyone else, have worked in the area for many years and have strong views tied to their underlying principles. For better or worse, on many occasions, the best we could do was “agree to disagree” and move on to the next case. That’s at best a “compromise” — “you win” this time but we’ll preserve our objections for the future — rather than a “consensus.” But, at least the results were very transparent and arguments for and against carefully developed for future debate.
PWS
01/07/17