If James Bennett is remembered for anything, it’s the formulation: “Democracy, immigration, multiculturalism . . . pick any two.” A lot of people—in America, in France, all over the place, really—have come to see this proposition as reasonably serious.
At its heart, that’s what this French election is about. That’s what Brexit was about. It might even have been what Donald Trump’s election was about, too. So here’s a question for you:
Would you trade aggressive immigration restrictions and enforcement for single-payer healthcare?
Yes, this is a hypothetical and no, it’s never going to happen. But let’s not parse it too carefully. Just take it at face-value: We have a bill that will build a wall, beef up immigration enforcement, and cut back on the levels of legal immigration, too. In addition, it will establish a Canadian-style single-payer healthcare system.
If you’re a Republican (or a conservative, for that matter), would you take that trade? Why, or why not?
Perhaps just as interestingly, do you think people on the left would take it? I suspect Sanders supporters might; I doubt very much that the identity-politics wing would.
The reason I ask is because the question clarifies ideological priorities in a relatively clean way. Both items are goals that their respective movements have been chasing after for a generation. Both items are seen as bedrock expressions of their movement’s priorities.
And by the same token, both goals are anathema to a core-belief of the opposition. Conservatives can’t abide single-payer because it runs counter to their belief in the efficacy of markets; liberals can’t abide immigration restriction because it runs counter to the supremacy of multiculturalism. So to accept this bargain is to let go of one of your guiding precepts.
In short, this little hypothetical is almost a stand-in for Trumpism. Or more accurately, for what Trumpism would be if it weren’t a set of ad-hoc policies thrown together by whim with the ideological framework TBD.
