April 2, 2013
FEAR OF A LIBERAL AMERICA
If you’re one of the dwindling number of Americans who oppose gay
marriage and think that illegal immigrants should not be allowed to stay in
this country, these are not good days for you. On both issues, seemingly at the
same time, the national conversation has turned decisively in the other
direction. Several new polls have found that a majority of Americans support
same-sex marriage; according to a CBS poll, fully a third of those asked changed their mind in
favor over the past decade.
An NBC poll found that support among black and working-class Americans has increased dramatically in just two years, by around thirty-five per cent in each group; the only Americans whose support has actually diminished are Hispanics, those between fifty and sixty-four, and rural voters.
An NBC poll found that support among black and working-class Americans has increased dramatically in just two years, by around thirty-five per cent in each group; the only Americans whose support has actually diminished are Hispanics, those between fifty and sixty-four, and rural voters.
On immigration,
during the years between 2006 and 2011, Gallup found
that more Americans wanted to prevent illegal immigrants from coming to the
U.S. than find a way to legalize the status of those who were already here.
Last year, the balance shifted the other way, and last month, in a Pew poll, more than two-thirds of Americans expressed support
for legalizing the status of undocumented workers in the country, while barely
a quarter wanted them to be sent home.
These are the numbers that explain the
sudden “evolution” among politicians of both parties on both issues, and their
haste to embrace positions that, just a few years ago, seemed like electoral
death. Red-state Democrats like Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Jay Rockefeller
of West Virginia, and Jon Tester of Montana have just come out for gay
marriage; so has Rob Portman, the Ohio Republican whose son came out to him two
years ago. Hillary Clinton—late to the prom, as a New York Democrat—has also
joined the surge. Meanwhile, House and Senate Republicans, having crushed two
efforts at immigration reform under two Presidents over the past seven years,
are busy drafting bills that might be finished in just a few weeks.
These dramatic movements are the
culture-war equivalent of the spring and summer of 1918, when both the German
and Allied armies suddenly advanced dozens of miles across France after years
of stalemate in the trenches. According to the Venn diagram of polls on both
issues, if you’re over fifty, white, male, vote Republican, didn’t get past
high school, and live in a rural area of Kansas or Kentucky, the chances are
high that you’re not a bit happy about it.
There’s been so much written about
changing political demographics since President Obama was reëlected last
November that you could be forgiven for believing that we now live in a country
called Liberal America, where the emerging
majority of citizens are twenty-five years old, have a Hispanic mother and a
Jewish father, reside in a big city, have doubtful employment prospects, spend
most of their waking hours on social media, care intensely about pot
legalization, and can’t fathom the fuss over gay marriage, while carrying a
load of college debt they believe the federal government should force their
lender to forgive. Over time, the forty-eight per cent of American voters who
opposed Obama last year will somehow melt away or die off, and journalists will
stop visiting those vast tracts of red America between the coasts, only to be
reminded of its existence when a ban on assault weapons dies in a Senate
committee. And as the prospect of perpetual defeat drives the Republican Party
into the kind of public nervous breakdown that used to be the normal mode for
post-election Democrats, it’s easy to think that Liberal America is the future.
Then you come across the comments in
response to this Times editorial “The Immigration Spring.” Web commentary is
a poor substitute for opinion polling and old-fashioned reporting. Still, a lot
of people have written in to rain on the editors’ optimism. “If cheap labor was
good for our country, then my home of California should have been always in the
black. The opposite has always been true,” writes Donn Longstreet, now living
in Pleasant Lake, Michigan. “Cheap labor, high volume consumers, and a docile
populous; these are the true reasons for open immigration, and they are the
antithesis of what this country was created to protect.” A lot of Times readers, who live in places like
Pompano Beach, Florida, Malvern, Pennsylvania, and Vancouver, Washington,
apparently feel the same way. You can hear in their tone the angry bewilderment
of people who know that the country is moving away from them. They don’t sound
like winners of the information age, or self-reinventing social entrepreneurs
of the flat world. You heard a similar tone from anti-gay-marriage protestors
outside the Supreme Court last week.
Writing recently on their behalf, Ross
Douthat noted the
“triumphalism” of gay marriage’s liberal supporters, and told them to be
“magnanimous in what increasingly looks like victory,” before acknowledging,
“magnanimity has rarely been a feature of the culture war.” Just ask Newt
Gingrich. Douthat didn’t say why liberals should have malice toward none,
charity for all. Here are some reasons: Because the wheel of history never
stops turning, and no majority is permanent. Because the inhabitants of my Venn
diagram, and millions more like them, have not disappeared—they will go on
being compatriots of the triumphant citizens of Liberal America. Because
neither side has an absolute lock on the truth.
Photograph by Andrew
Harrer/Bloomberg/Getty
Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2013/04/changing-american-opinions-on-gay-marriage-and-immigration.html#ixzz2PLjrqEDv
Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2013/04/changing-american-opinions-on-gay-marriage-and-immigration.html#ixzz2PLjrqEDv
No comments:
Post a Comment