The Coming Great Divide in American Political Culture

Michael Barone's occasional forays into sociology are always a pleasure to come across. Like the rest of his work, they are concise, well-researched, original, and always marked by clarity. Barone goes where the data takes him, and never seems to have an agenda or an ideological ax to grind.

All this is true of his latest such piece, "The Realignment of America" which appeared in the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, May 8. While going through recent census estimates, Barone discovered a pattern until now overlooked: the old coastal cities, or "Coastal Megalopolises" are steadily becoming dominated by immigrants, while at the same time native Americans are repopulating the thriving heartland cities.

At the same time, cities such as Orlando, Charlotte, Phoenix, and Tampa have had dramatic leaps in native-born population, in all cases exceeding 10%, and in that of Las Vegas approaching 20%. So while the coastal cities remain static in population numbers despite the turnover, interior cities are booming.

What does this mean for our political culture? Barone touches on the question, noting that "The economic divide in New York and Los Angeles is starting to look like the economic divide in Mexico City and São Paulo", but doesn't go much further. But if the process continues, the implications will be profound.

If Barone is correct - and there's no reason to believe he isn't - then we're headed for an even more serious social schism between the heartland and the coastal metropolises. The heartland (along with smaller cities and towns on the coasts) will be comprised of melting-pot Americans, the coastal cities a bewildering melange of immigrants from all points of the compass, topped with an exceedingly thin layer of ultra-wealthy natives.

Miami, as it has been for the past thirty years, can serve as an example, with these differences: the Cubans represented a single homogeneous group; they had very good reasons - hatred of Fidelista communism above all - to appreciate American society; and they already understood American culture. This will not necessarily be the case with the new arrivals. Above all, PC and multiculturalism have removed all reason for immigrants to adapt to their new country.

With no particular pressure to fit in, the new immigrants will cling to their traditions, worldviews, and customs, many conflicting with ours and with those of other immigrant groups. NYC's asinine decision to establish a madrassah in Brooklyn is only the opening wedge - now all hundred-odd ethnicities residing in New York will demand the same treatment, and they will get it. The result will be Babel.

So thank the Archangels you're not living in NYC. But there are implications that may affect us all. Many of these people will have emigrated from failed polities of one type or another. Too many of the countries of Africa and Asia and Latin America, are operating in something resembling free fall, to put it kindly. Government is whoever has the most guns; civil society goes its own way with little reference to governmental activity; whatever political entanglements that can't be avoided are dealt with in the most primitive manner conceivable, through processes characterized by kinship and tribal relations, bribery, and paternalism. It's those conditions many people were fleeing when they came to the United States.

But it's those same conditions that, even with the best will in the world, they are going to bring with them. People cannot shed elements of their culture the same way they may change the dishdash for slacks and shirt. They are going to look for the Big Man. They are going to wonder whom to bribe, and how much. They are going to gravitate toward whoever operates in the manner closest to their country, region, or tribe. They will, without the least intending to, recreate in the U.S. the same situation they were fleeing from back home. With the added complication that dozens of other ethnicities will also be trying to grab the political levers to ensure that things are done their way, all at once.

It's difficult to see how this is particularly congruent with American democracy as we understand it today. Nor that there is any way to make it compatible with any form of democratic practice. So something will have to give. And it seems likely that what will give will be the members of America's sole native criminal class, the politicians.

What politician could resist such an opportunity? Masses of helpless, ignorant, and needy people requiring guidance, requiring a protector, requiring a leader. We've seen this before. Consider how the black vote has been manipulated by Democratic politicians since the days of the New Deal. Multiply that by a few dozen ethnicities, and the magnitude of the problem becomes manifest. (What's that? New immigrants can't vote? Do you really think so?)

But let's not be unfair to Democrats. If you think the GOP would hesitate a minute to leap into the same role, your introduction to practical politics remains before you. All the same, the Democrats are the prime suspects here, seeing how they control the surviving political machines in cities up and down the Eastern seaboard. Many of these machines have been in operation since the last big immigration wave early in the 20^th century. Adapting them to the new conditions will simply be a matter of integrating the new arrivals into the places once held by Italians and Irishmen.

But there's another factor at work as well - even as the pols are gathering in the new flock, the new flock will be exerting pressure on them to conform more to the style that they're used to. How are they going to resist becoming something along the lines of a tribal chieftain? Many of them think of themselves in similar terms in any case. And with that shift will come a level of corruption that will make New Jersey or Louisiana look like the Palace of the Just. If you think that New York resembles a third-world country now... you ain't seen nothing yet.

At the same time, we'll have a native-born American population that has reconnected with its roots, and very likely, after years of dealing with terrorism, undergone a resurgence of patriotism, much as Great Britain did in the course of the lengthy Napoleonic Wars. (And, as Barone points out, will have grown more Republican, too.) This will represent quite a contrast to the teeming multilingual coasts, and create inevitable and unavoidable grounds for conflict.

We can dismiss any thoughts of civil war. Conflicts in advanced societies aren't settled that way, and a situation in which isolated urban areas are opposed to the country at large doesn't lend itself to such an outcome. But there are plenty of other ugly possibilities. (And some benefits as well - the coastal cities, which wield far too much influence today, will find their sway over the rest of the country dwindling, no doubt a good thing.) Most of the downside factors will involve native politicians released from any responsibility to the population of the country as a whole, a nightmare in and of itself. Corruption will grow to proportions not easy to imagine today, particularly as it takes on an international dimension.

Mayors, representatives, possibly even governors and senators, will be running their own sub rosa foreign policies in order to fulfill the wishes of their foreign-born constituencies. Foreign groups and organizations of all types -- religious, political, social, and criminal -- having no current connection to American society will establish strong beachheads by manipulating and playing off native politicians. This will create new challenges for law enforcement, particularly as it shades into foreign intelligence. Questions of national security will begin to take in the policies of the administration the next town over.

Potential solutions are less than obvious. Education of new immigrants as to what the American system is and how it works would appear to be the key, but who would handle that? With the educational system as it exists, enraptured with the doctrines of multiculturalism, the cure would be worse than the disease.

It may in the end merely be a matter of muddling through, of using law enforcement and social pressure to hold the fort while the new immigrant masses ever so slowly adapt themselves to this country (or, rather, their children and grandchildren do). It doesn't seem like much, but it may be the best we can hope for.

Barone's article is a must read.

Values Message (General David Petraeus) with reporting from Michael Yon

Big Business Proposes Health Care Reform - A jackpot or a worker rip-off?

Giuliani Opposed Welfare Reform in Order to Protect Illegals

From time to time, I’ll ping on noteworthy articles about politics, foreign and military affairs. FReepmail me if you want on or off my list.

Both. The narrowness of the scope invalidates the essay. What is happening in NYC and LA etc. in the U.S. is also happening in London, Paris, Berlin, Hong Kong, Tokyo, etc. These cities are becoming international cities — nodes — from which money, technology, media etc. flow.

What’s more, they aren’t multicultural — the moronic term multiculural describes a phenom that simply doesn’t exist. They are becoming uni-cultural. In effect creating another country not defines by geography or clear borders.

The talent, money and expertise flowing to these centers are being drained from the remainder of the world. That is to say — the smartest, richest, Indian guys may not live in India, ditto the smartest richest Americans, French, British, etc. In fact, they may not live anywhere — bouncing from one node to another as they do.

People are mostly content when they are well fed, fat and happy so to speak. If we see disruptions in that, the chaos you speak of becomes more likely. Yet there's not a compelling sense of discontent presently as a disconnect from political reality. We see it, we read about it, but it's like the war...so far away that it doesn't really impact us.

The discontent that I see in our future lies with state and local governments and their fiscal predicament. Everyone talks about the babyboomers drag on Social Security and Medicare, but the federal government has a printing press to print money. The public pension obligations owed to babyboomers is tremendous and there are many states and local governments that will be very hard pressed to meet those obligations. Of course the federal government has bailed out just about anyone who has made promises that they could not keep, but public pensions to babyboomers is going to be big test for the social welfare state as it now exists.

Get back into that bed and start reproducing! No more two-child families! Do your duty!

In the middle of Wyoming. I am the 13th of 16 kids. We have 7 children, and 23 Grandchildren.

We are producing taxpayers and voters.

Both. The narrowness of the scope invalidates the essay.

That's debatable. Some folks view demographics as destiny. The globalism you describe is generating increased resistance. I find this megalopolis increasingly congested, expensive and authoritarian. We'll see how it turns out.

I was born here. I can't wait till I leave. If it wasn't for family and friends, I'd be gone already. The only things I would miss besides those are the geography and architecture.

The narrowness of the scope invalidates the essay. What is happening in NYC and LA etc. in the U.S. is also happening in London, Paris, Berlin, Hong Kong, Tokyo, etc. These cities are becoming international cities — nodes — from which money, technology, media etc. flow.

Good point.

Christopher Clausen uses the term "post-cultural."

The people who are leaving the cities are those who can no longer afford it or who have skill sets that aren’t particularly valued. Those who are arriving — and there are many of them — are those with the type of skill sets and compensation that allow for $900 dinners, $2,000 suits and $3 mil apartments.

What many see as increased authoritarian government is the type of environment that creates a safe haven for these folks. It’s required.

Sounds like a play on “post modern.” There is a distinctive culture. Some of it has to do with the “death of distance” as in emailing, “Hey,Joe! How goes it in NYC? Here’s a song I heard last night at a club in Berlin! Can’t beat the beat! I promise it’ll be on your iPod play list...pass it along! See you in Paris on Wednesday.”

One thing in Barone's article that Dunn doesn't give much attention. It's not just interior vs. periphery. A lot of America, inland or coastal, isn't growing much by either immigration or natural increase.

Barone talks about the "rust belt" and the "static cities." Immigrant coastal megalopolises and booming sun belt growth meccas are only a part of the total picture, though an important one.

He writes:

Twenty years ago political analysts grasped the implications of the vast movement from Rust Belt to Sun Belt, a tilting of the table on balance toward Republicans; but with California leaning heavily to Democrats, that paradigm seems obsolete. What's now in store is a shifting of political weight from a small Rust Belt which leans Democratic and from the much larger Coastal Megalopolises, where both secular top earners and immigrant low earners vote heavily Democratic, toward the Interior Megalopolises, where most voters are private-sector religious Republicans but where significant immigrant populations lean to the Democrats.

It's an interesting picture, though I don't know about whether those growing inland cities are megalopolises in the same way that New York and Los Angeles are. The fly in the ointment is that the more newcomers arrive the less Republican those growing sunbelt cities will be.

I’ve become fascinated with this culture over the past several months. There are a couple of hotels in NYC that cater to it. One particular hotel has a bar that is something like the “mothership” of this international culture. To reach the bar in the hotel, you have to pass through no less than three different security check points — you don’t see them, but they’re there. Once inside the bar, it’s not unusual to hear people who have just met negotiating which language they’ll speak. English, of course, is one choice, but so is French, German, Japanese and Chinese. It is not unusual to see an Indian guy speaking perfect Chinese with a German.

That's not necessarily so. Many can go to other places and enjoy a much higher standard of living, quality of life, etc. Call it what you will. It depends on their skill set.

What many see as increased authoritarian government is the type of environment that creates a safe haven for these folks. It’s required.

Who wants to live in a police state? Without a sustainable middle class, I don't see how it remains viable.

The middleclass may be an American fiction or unnecessary in certain environments.

Those who move to enjoy a higher standard of living cannot afford a high standard of living in NYC or LA or SF or London or Berlin etc.

In regards to a “police state” you can ask the same question about gated communities, which are growing in popularity.

Those who move to enjoy a higher standard of living cannot afford a high standard of living in NYC or LA or SF or London or Berlin etc.

Again, that's not necessarily so. I think living in rural areas and enjoying the outdoors is much more preferable. Urban living doesn't appeal to me. I never liked returning to the city since I was a kid. It was an accident of fate that I returned to NYC.

BTW, were you born here?

Pretty much born here. But have also spent time in rural areas.

Despite the false impression that NYC is “socialistic,” the city is about nothing but work. It’s the center of capitalism in the U.S.

What fascinates me are the people that say, “NYC is socialistic liberal nest...” and then say, “Nothing is more important than family.” They misunderstand NYC, but are sincere in their belief in family. NYC, of course, is not about “families.” It’s about capitalism.

Two things that must be prevented at all costs "illegal immigration reform (legalization)" and the push by democrats to get rid of the electoral college.

If we fail on these two we will see tyhe beginning of the demise of what is left of the west. And it will be a very fast decline indeed.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.