Crisis of Responsibility

by David L. Bahnsen

  I confess that this chapter has little chance of not bothering someone, due to the aforementioned polarization. Yet this issue begs for thoughtful people to carefully consider both premises and conclusions in a nuanced way. I have certain conclusion sympathies with some people, and yet have little sympathy for how they get there. We must consider national security concerns, both from jihadist enemies and violent gang or drug trafficking criminals. Yet legitimate national security concerns are sometimes clouded by bogus economic concerns. My sincere hope is that this chapter will take the high road in the conversation, offering a way to think about this issue that respects rule of law, seeks an appropriate public policy resolution, prevents scapegoating, and, most importantly, reframes the conversation around values identity, with an eye toward sincere patriotism, not mere labor protectionism.

  Multinational immigration in the days of Ellis Island was, indeed, a hallmark of American history. It spoke to what was special about the United States of America—people wanted to come here from all over the world, because they desired a better life for themselves and their families. The country’s national character, her free enterprise economy, her religious freedom, and her opportunity society were the envy of the world—and for good reason. The nation not only had plenty of room for the immigrants, she benefitted tremendously from the increased population so pivotal to economic growth. The economy needed more producers and consumers—it got both from a multiplicity of countries. And while the immigration was multi-continental, a heavy volume of immigrants came across from the European continent.

  The difference between what drove immigration then and now is key to our national discussion. America’s free enterprise system drew people here 125 years ago. Too often today, our welfare state and public entitlements act as immigration magnets. I say “too often,” because it would be too broad of a generalization to suggest they are the exclusive magnets today. Well-intentioned people who desperately want to create a better life for their families frequently cross the U.S. southern border. They come prepared to work hard to earn a living and care for their families, including other generations and family extensions in Mexico or Central America. I do not condone their illegal entry, but how we approach the immigration of a hardworking, devoted family man should differ from how we view the grifter looking to exploit America’s social safety net.

  I know a great deal of Hispanic immigrants want to flee poverty. Nevertheless, the abuse of our welfare state by illegal immigrants has infuriated the American people and done irreparable harm to a liberal immigration framework. Living off the public dole never occurred to the Ellis Island immigrant, while many twenty-first-century, southern border immigrants happily take the handouts of benefits. This reality is more a critique of our welfare state than of immigration itself, but I have to accept that the two cannot be divorced in this dialogue any longer. However, the most problematic aspect of the situation today is not the generous entitlements often received by immigrants.

  Multiethnic, Not Multicultural

  Ellis Island immigration was multinational, but committed to assimilation. Not so today. In fact, the polar opposite is true. Our societal commitment to a squishy form of multiculturalism accompanies much of today’s immigration. Consequently, immigrants are no longer expected to learn the language, know the history, understand our civic life, or appreciate national unity. Long gone is the day when immigration implied entering into the American social contract with a solidly American foundation.

  America’s immigration heritage is indeed multiethnic, but not multicultural. It was, in fact, proudly multiethnic, but it was also proudly committed to Americanization. Our culture’s family structure, national language, and proud civic heritage were all natural expectations for the immigrants of past generations. There were no controversies about whether or not students would learn and recite the pledge of allegiance to our flag in class. No one debated whether the American national anthem could be played at a sports game without offending attendees. These were cultural givens.

  The breakdown of this cultural context is the real reason the subject of immigration has gone nuclear. Fusing intense multiculturalism with liberal immigration created the unworkable situation we now have today. The model of assimilation we enjoyed for so long in America shaped a successful immigration history. Pride in ethnic heritage was never discouraged, as evidenced by ethnic celebrations of customs, food, music, and even holidays. As James Bennett said, “Ethnicity was a sort of style rather than fundamental identity.”

  I go to great lengths to clarify the three points that follow because they’re crucially important to my own ideology, and I earnestly desire to maintain your ear for a final point I must make (one sure to ruffle radical isolationists).

  In a post-9/11 world, we have every right and every responsibility to vigorously defend ourselves, to keep out those who want to get in to harm our country. In this sense, I vehemently support the national defense objective of a hawkish immigration policy, carefully vetting those who would enter.

  For those who desire to enter American society, the goal of creating a better life for themselves and their families is a noble one. Their ingenuity, work ethic, and productivity should be encouraged and embraced. However, the idea of making our entitlement systems available to noncitizens should be vehemently rejected and, until it can be rejected, should significantly inform our national immigration policy.

  If America is to maintain an immigration invitation, she must restore a culture of assimilation that prizes America’s heritage, ideas, ideals, and values. Our national and cultural distinctions should not and cannot be denigrated or negotiated away. Our departure from successful immigration precedent caused much of the angst and even toxicity we face on the subject now.

  With this healthy, balanced, and nuanced firmly laid, what room is there, if any, for the disgruntled American worker to blame immigrants from the south for their economic plight today? Has there been an “invasion from the south” responsible for “taking their jobs”? Did low-cost Hispanic labor replace American factory workers in Buffalo, New York, or Aliquippa, Pennsylvania? What do sound economic principles say? Or has this issue been used to feed our cultural addiction to blame, further exacerbating our crisis of responsibility?

  Economic Absurdities of the Southern “Invasion”

  It is anti-American and anti–free enterprise—the idea that any individual or group should be protected from those willing to work at a lower cost. This chapter will never end if I must qualify every statement I make with the three points I emphatically summarized above. I’m not defending the aspects of this issue that I’ve already condemned. I am trying to purposely isolate the economic aspect of the subject. In what way, in and of itself, is a lower-cost worker a “threat” to another or an “invasion” of some sort?

  If you separate the question from the toxicity of the current debates, it becomes an absurd proposition. No one would ever try to protect a Stanford computer science PhD from an invasion of lower-cost programmers from India. No one would claim a real estate broker working for 2 percent commission to be an affront to the long-established broker in town who has always charged 3 percent. Negotiation over the cost of labor is as American as, well, negotiating over the cost of anything. It is at the heart of a free enterprise society. The mere willingness to do work at a lower cost does not represent an ipso facto offense.

  The law of comparative advantage is in play here. Our economy becomes more productive when we have more customers to sell to. When many jobs for low-skilled laborers are filled, the opportunity moves upstream where more skills and experience (and therefore higher wages) can be utilized. Immigration creates a higher supply of workers while simultaneously creating higher demand. That truth is an economic given that cannot be disputed without overturning basic conventional economic orthodoxies.

  The supply of workers allegedly diluting the labor pool also buy food, shop at the mall, seek s
helter, and otherwise stir the invisible hand of the marketplace. This expanded need in the economy creates a greater need for labor to serve it. Plus, if immigrant labor finds itself on the lowest end of the wage spectrum, it provides greater opportunity for somewhat higher wage labor elsewhere. To deny this is to imply that the smallest countries should be the richest ones, and the largest countries the poorest ones. But of course, the opposite is true.

  The reality is that in economic booms and economic contractions we have a long history of low-skill labor shortages. Often immigrants did the work no one else could be found to do. Many who bemoan the economic impact of immigrants do not intend to direct their fire at the job demand itself, but on the wages that go with the jobs. In other words, they advocate for economic protectionism.

  But all serious study of this issue has shown that areas with high immigration show no statistically material difference from areas with low or no immigration when it comes to wage impact. In fact, an analysis of immigration’s impact on the wages of American natives with comparable educations suggests an effect of no more than 0.4 percent over a twenty-year period.38 In addition, the employment rates for immigrants and native-born Americans move in nearly perfect tandem with one another, disputing the idea of one camp taking “market share” from the other.39 To the extent that we saw greater labor success for immigrants versus natives after the 2008 financial crisis (both disputable and infinitesimal), it can be traced entirely to mobility. Immigrants were simply more willing to move in response to the changing local labor markets.

  American immigration is pivotally important to our long-term economic health. I say that with the aforementioned principles and commitments firmly in mind. For example, high-skilled immigrants have become vital to our economy for their contributions to technology innovation. The labor force of our country has faced a secular decline, led by the social deterioration we talked about in chapter 3, and by shifting demographics that have worked against the active labor force (baby boomers retiring, etc.). Immigration represents an important feed of needed supply into the labor force, not to mention to the national customer base. We need population growth for economic growth. The ideas, labor, and commerce that come from increased immigration are not merely good, but required for continued economic health.

  There can be no perfect equilibrium on this immigration issue. Yes, there are certainly situations in which a competitive immigrant worker who is in the country illegally displaces an American worker. It is totally unnecessary to the broader points I am making to deny that reality. My intent is not to minimize or trivialize those situations. Rather, it is to demonstrate that such a problem is not systemic and cannot be the final point in the conversation. Only a crisis of responsibility would allow a worker to conclude that there are less educated, less capable workers of another ethnicity doing work for less than what I would like to be paid, so I give up. And, of course, most Americans would never say as much.

  Perhaps if the three points I laid out as foundational to this complex subject were in place, the discussion of immigration’s impact on labor markets and wages would be moot. I suspect that to be the case. My skepticism that the American worker is being economically assaulted by immigration does not dilute my impassioned plea for a sensible national security solution for immigration, the elimination of magnetic welfare benefits for immigrants, or a return to American assimilation as fundamental to the immigration process.

  Regardless of the exact plight any American worker experiences as this complicated immigration subject works itself out, the basic principles of rugged individualism must drive our thinking. No worker is entitled to a given wage. Our society desperately needs a return to the rule of law. Our immigration policies require a thoughtful and comprehensive redo that will reinforce the greater good of American civic life. Self-refuting and futile economic protectionism need not play a role.

  Yes, the “establishment” needs to get the policy paradigm right on this complex and multilayered subject. But there is no magic panacea to be found for the American worker. Eliminating the immigrant labor pool will not solve our deficiencies regarding mobility, individualism, and cultural commitment to work. In fact, doing so would simply shrink the aggregate demand in the economy and further diminish the very healthy competition that drives productivity.

  Only a crisis of responsibility could assert that what is keeping the native working class from a chance at success is the presence of mostly unskilled and uneducated laborers. It is not true. We know it from a study of the data and, if we are being honest, from our own intuition, as well.

  Our cultural crisis of responsibility gets no waiver from the immigration issue.

  9

  HIGHER EDUCATION’S

  SAFE SPACES

  Kerosene on the Crisis

  A university is not a political party, and an education is not an indoctrination.

  –DAVID HOROWITZ

  Campuses are bubbles, artificial environments that insulate students from the life of the competitive marketplace. The more exact truth is that our campuses offer students the privileges of liberty without the corresponding responsibilities.

  –PETER AUGUSTINE LAWLER

  If the path to a free and virtuous society must go through collegiate academia, our quest to restore responsibility is going to be a rough and tumble ride. As I’ve already argued for the importance of labor dynamism and educational choice, clearly the path must take us through the “safe spaces” that our colleges and universities have become. The only question is how things might look as students emerge on the other side.

  We have a major problem in this country if we aspire to a culture rooted in responsibility, accountability, and free and independent thinking—higher education is pouring kerosene on the fire that is our economic, moral, and cultural crisis. It’s a multipronged problem. Higher education has damaged the very concept of responsibility and facilitated economic irresponsibility by encouraging a student debt system that has exceeded any notion of common sense. It has engendered resentment in so many millennials who were sold a bill of goods about the value of a college degree in their portfolio. By promoting relativism on college campuses, the higher education industry has wreaked havoc on the basic definition, if not the very existence, of values, character, and responsibility.

  I vacillate between two distinct schools of thought in the world of higher education critics. I find common cause with both and do not see them as mutually exclusive. One approach emphasizes the ghastly fiscal recklessness of the present system that creates an incredible gap between reality and expectation for anyone receiving an undergraduate college degree from a university not considered one of the elite twenty-five schools. The other approach laments the extremely radical indoctrination of students into secular humanism being presented as common fare. The truth about the sad state of higher education is not either/or but both/and.

  The American university system now offers families the worst of both worlds—inherit insane debt and receive little preparation for adult responsibilities, while being indoctrinated with propositions that undermine the foundational values of Western civilization. That’s right. One can now go broke being taught to think incorrectly.

  Truth be told, my two major categories of concern in academia (economic and ideological) have been overshadowed in recent years by a third. The infantilizing of young adults on campus—the “snowflake factor”—represents the worst of our present crisis of responsibility.

  Much has been made of “safe spaces” on college campuses and the extent to which universities are going to make sure students are never offended, challenged, or intellectually stimulated. Fear of offense is a one-way street, of course. Christian and politically conservative students routinely face harassment and belligerent hostility while being made the pariahs of university life. Cable news overflows with stories of conservative speakers being uninvited, harassed, or threatened. In several case
s, full-blown riots have met respected, conservative intellectuals invited to address a student club or organization. Academic censorship is problematic enough, and antithetical to the very cause of higher education just one generation ago. But the real cause for concern is the objective behind it: the belief that young adults need to be protected from anything and everything that causes them discomfort.

  If a “religion of irresponsibility” is taking hold in our culture today, our college campuses serve as that religion’s church. Basic adult characteristics of resilience, patience, tolerance, respect, humility, acceptance, inquiry, and discovery—all have been sacrificed at the altar of the “snowflake factor.” My agenda is to repudiate the victimhood culture at all levels, especially in the college years where it is programmed into the minds and hearts of our young people. The good intentions behind these efforts, if any exist, are no good to us. The very vernacular being used—microaggressions, safe spaces, and trigger warnings—form an easy bridge into a life of victimhood.

  What’s the best way to reprogram the message that you’re entitled to never hear contrary opinions? Real life. This book is about seeing a better real life for the millions of Americans feeling left out of that possibility. Our colleges are programming fragility, when they should be programming the opposite. Fragility is the enemy of a good life.

  The Good Old College Lie

  It’s not my intent merely to oppose the coddling of young adults (though I surely do). The snowflake factor is but one of three major categories of cultural challenges stemming from higher education. It is a self-reinforcing one, however, because when people encounter real-life problems—after being convinced they had a right to live offense-free—they tend to fall deeper into the woes of victimhood. Unfortunately, those who embrace victimhood inevitably find ways to remain a victim. But if we eliminated the snowflake charade tomorrow in its entirety, we’d still be left with a failing ideological framework and a university business model that would be laughable if it weren’t so fatal.