IS APPEALING TO THE BASEST CRAZIES THAT WISE?

The Democrats have been doing what they can to antagonize what we used to understand as mainstream Americans for years: deplorables, insurrectionists, science deniers.  That sort of playing to the faculty lounge has collateral effects, and Ruy Teixeira suggests those effects won't be good for Team Jackass Donkey.

Asians are worried about public safety and leery of a Democratic party that has become associated with “defund the police” and a soft approach to containing crime. Another is that Asians, like Hispanics, are a constituency that does not harbor particularly radical views on the nature of American society and how it must be remade to cleanse it of intrinsic racism and white supremacy, a viewpoint increasingly identified with Democrats. They are far more interested in how they and their families can get ahead in actually-existing American society.

Which brings us to the key issue for many Asian voters: education. It is difficult to overestimate how important education is to Asian voters, who see it as the key tool for upward mobility—a tool that even the poorest Asian parents can take advantage of. But Democrats are becoming increasingly associated with an approach to schooling that seems anti-meritocratic, oriented away from standardized tests, gifted and talented programs and test-in elite schools—all areas where Asian children have excelled.

These demographic aggregates bother me. "Asian" includes people from the subcontinent and the 'stans and China and the neighboring islands and peninsulas whose traditional writing uses characters, but don't call them Chinese. You can do similar disaggregations on "black" or "Hispanic" or "white." And there are plenty of opportunities for those recent arrivals to put that academic excellence to work.  Glenn Loury, who knows a thing or two about human capital (and technology diffusion) called attention to those opportunities.

Let them come. I mean, in fact, that’s the only way we’re going to survive the challenge of the Chinese behemoth going forward another generation or two, because if I look at what’s going on in the legacy population — white and black — of the United States of America, I see a lot of mediocrity, I see a lot of laggardliness, I see a lot of decay and corruption and so forth, of people not realizing the full human potential […] I don’t know what the alternative is.

He made those statements in the middle of a conversation with traditionalist law professor Amy Wax, who saw in the immigration that same Democrat plot to change the demographics so better to win elections, never mind that "soft on crime" and "your business is not essential" and "you can afford to pay more taxes" aren't exactly winning arguments with law-abiding or successful people.  She raised a slightly different objection to importing human capital.

It doesn't mean that the influx of Asian elites is unproblematic. I actually think it's problematic. I think it's because there's this danger of the dominance of an Asian elite in this country, and what does that mean? What is that going to mean to change the culture?

I'm inclined to bet on emergence. People emigrate to the United States because living here is less unpleasant than staying where they came from. As long as the new arrivals buy into the country, and the country buys into the new arrivals, the cultural changes strike me as more likely to be for the better than not.  Take it away, Fiona Harrigan.  "When we welcome foreigners to our soil—either because of the persecution they are fleeing or the skills they bring with them—we preserve our competitive edge and ensure that the best ideas and talent can prosper within our borders."

Rather, it is the vanguardist attempts to impose cultural change, whether by school busing or pronoun protocols or cancel mobs on social media, that are the danger.  But Professor Wax was on a roll.

“In the case of Asians in the U.S., the overwhelming majority vote Democratic,” Wax argued. “I find Asian support for these policies mystifying, as I fail to see how they are in Asians’ interest. We can speculate (and, yes, generalize) about Asians’ desire to please the elite.”

“As long as most Asians support Democrats and help to advance their positions, I think the United States is better off with fewer Asians and less Asian immigration,” she added.

Wax’s anti-Asian comments soon went viral on social media.

Not surprisingly, the cancel mob has formed, with the predictable cautions that censuring or discharging a professor for comments outside the classroom can have consequences inside the classroom.  She has defenders, including a former student who takes on the "vote Democratic" claim directly.

Professor Wax’s greatest concern is that Asian-Americans overwhelmingly vote for the Democratic Party. As a Republican in Philadelphia, it is hard to imagine that you would not share this concern. The Democratic Party has done more to set back the rights, opportunities, and safety of Asian Americans (both recently and historically), than any political force in American history. But even beyond that, the agenda of the Democratic party is rattling the classical liberal foundations upon which our nation stands. With progressive prosecutors, militantly anti-religious politicians, and an army of young followers that despise genuine free expression, this party makes us unsafe in our own communities, attacks our faith relentlessly, and seeks to punish us for any speech that is deemed politically incorrect.

As of Tuesday, the Tax Prof compilation of commentary on the role of a professor as public intellectual has approached Friday short Takes proportions.

For my part, I'd just as soon see both major parties make more of an appeal to people who would prefer to just get on with their lives and not have to worry so much about what some public official has in store for them.