David Frum Rethinks Conservatism - The New York Times - 0 views
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I came of age inside the conservative movement of the 20th century,” he writes in a new, post-coronavirus introduction. “In the 21st, that movement has delivered much more harm than good, from the Iraq war to the financial crisis to the Trump presidency.”
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Frum’s intellectual journey is what makes this book so fascinating. He can look at our current condition with fresh eyes, earned through humiliating experience.
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Frum’s boldest proposal involves policy, not governmental structure, and it goes back to the notion that too many Americans — Trump supporters, mostly — see government benefits going to the “wrong” people
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He proposes a political trade: a severe tightening of immigration rules in return for the passage of much-needed social and climate legislation — a comprehensive national health care system, a carbon tax (that would include products imported from polluters like China and India).
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Immigration has always been tangled up in our “tortured racial history.” A century ago, Jews and Italians were the nonwhite interlopers; it took generations for them to be seen as “us.” It is possible, he observes, that stopping the human flow from Eastern Europe, and creating a more homogeneous America, made it easier for Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson to pass their enormous social programs.
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rum’s proposal seems prescient: Covid-19 may have pushed the national mood toward the deal he posits — a stronger health care system and stronger borders.