…because the intellectual quality of their arguments was so much higher back then. The “huddled masses” schmaltz tended to be a neoconservative Republican specialty in the later 20th century, while Democrats asked each other hardheaded questions about how more immigration would help blacks and union members.
Why, then, did immigration become America’s sacred cow in the 21st century? (…)
The more Democrats realized they could obtain permanent hegemony not by winning over the American people, but by repeopling America, the more they denounced rational inquiry into the merits of immigration. If you read the WikiLeaks transcript of what Hillary secretly told the smart guys at Goldman Sachs about immigration policy for $225,000, you’ll notice it’s just the same lowbrow tripe you hear everywhere else about how immigration is who we are.
In contrast, denouncing the rigging of elections through mass immigration has a noble history in American intellectual life. The first great work of social-science theory in American history, Benjamin Franklin’s 1754 anti-immigration pamphlet Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind, which inspired Malthus and Darwin, originated as a protest against the Proprietors’ party, which was run by William Penn’s heirs in London, rigging elections in Pennsylvania by importing German immigrants to vote against Franklin’s self-government party.
