* Brooks’s basic template is always ethnonationism for Israel, multi-culti for everyone else. More immigrants for the US helps break down the WASP establishment, which long ago was kind of skeptical about what Israel would do for American national interests. But it’s trickier now: many to the new immigrants don’t fall into line behind Jewish leadership either. The Iran deal was facilitated by a new Iranian-American group full of smart, politically engaged, young people. Pro-Palestinian activism on campus has the kids of refugees at its core. On the other hand, more immigrants means more canon fodder for American wars in Iraq, Iran, etc. I think that overall, continued mass immigration will lead to a foreign policy less pleasing to Brooks, but it’s a close call.
* Brooks: nationalism for me, anti-nationalism for everyone else.
* Steve, in recent years, has tried consistently to convince this sort of Jew to…rethink the matter. In principle a good idea, but I haven’t seen any evidence it’ll work.
* I’ve been really surprised at the nature of the war the Republicans have fought against Trump. Rich Lowry said Fiorina sliced his balls off, and then spent a day or so pretending to be butch in a Twitter “war” with Trump and his followers, cackling that this was the way to get Trump. It was weird. They don’t seem to realize Trump’s partly playing a game.
And then big talk now is that Trump is stalling. Really? Meanwhile, four days of excoriating Carson for his comment on Muslims didn’t seem to hurt his numbers.
It’s a weird, exciting, cycle.
As I wrote in my education policy series, I find it very revealing that the rest of the GOP candidates don’t–can’t, presumably–jump on the Trump bandwagon. They can’t adopt his message, because the elites won’t have it. I remain concerned that he’s going to be shut down, and all this talk will go away. But the really interesting thing, to me, is why. Why is there absolutely no real interest in shutting the borders?
These are rhetorical, existential questions, commentariat, so please don’t annoy me with answers. I understand the usual suspects, and worry about them myself. The real question is how long the American people will tolerate it.
* If I didn’t know any better, just from reading this Brooks column, I would walk away from it thinking that concepts like “American exceptionalism,” “American dream” and “conservatism” are meaningless trope at best and anti-white universalist weapons at worst, and therefore the obvious conclusion is that these concepts should be jettisoned.
