Thirty Years of Charter Schools: How Do They Score?

The recent Senate elections in Georgia delivered a victory to Democrats, with Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff edging out incumbents Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue. Beyond symbolic significance (Ossoff and Warnock will be the state’s first Jewish and African-American senators, respectively), the results from Georgia mark a sea change in the political fortunes of President-elect Joe Biden. With Democrats (narrowly) in control of the Senate, Biden will no longer have to rely on Republican votes to confirm judicial picks and cabinet members. Several of the President-elect’s nominees raise serious red flags (like abortion zealot Xavier Becerra for Health and Human Services), while others seem patently unqualified, if unoffensive (like Pete Buttigieg for Transportation). Still others have largely flown under the radar, like Biden’s nominee for Secretary of Education, Miguel Cardona, currently Connecticut’s education commissioner and a former public school administrator. He will likely be a shoo-in, not least because unlike a disconcertingly large number of Biden’s nominees, he’s fairly qualified for the position he was nominated for.

Arguably the most prominent issue in the American educational landscape today is that of school choice. On this matter, Cardona gives reason for hope. Upon becoming Connecticut education commissioner two years, he stated that “Charter schools provide choice for parents that are seeking choice, so I think it’s a viable option.” Since 2019, he has established an innocuous (if sparse) record on school choice, reauthorizing all 25 of the state’s charter schools, with none closing or opening during his year-long tenure. In contrast, Biden, once a school choice proponent, is now fiercely opposed, having vowed on the campaign trail that charter schools will be “gone” if he is elected. No doubt the teachers unions, with their deep pockets and tantalizing endorsements, are largely to blame for this. In a November 2019 video published by the National Education Association (NEA), the nation’s largest teachers union, NEA president Lily Eskelsen García tells Biden that charter schools are “very misguided school reforms.” She goes on to say, “You know how we feel about charter schools,” to which Biden responded, “Same way I feel.” He followed up by vowing that “No privately-funded charter school will receive a penny of federal money — none,” a shocking reversal from 2008 and 2012, when the Obama–Biden educational platform called for more charter schools. 

If Biden and his fellow public school zealots represent one extreme, the other lies with public school skeptics like former Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, a charter school advocate who in 2015 dismissed traditional public schools as “a dead end.” Before being tapped to join President Trump’s cabinet, the billionaire heiress devoted decades — and a chunk of her family’s fortune — to promoting the school choice cause. As the chair of the Alliance for School Choice, she spearheaded efforts to introduce charters and school vouchers in her home state of Michigan, with mixed success.

How can an issue like charter schools inspire such wildly different opinions? Are charter schools the panacea, as proponents argue, for the struggling American public education system? Or do they underperform, and drain public school budgets, as opponents claim? As it turns out, the answer is somewhere in between — and although charter schools are not perfect, they remain an invaluable option for underprivileged families in struggling school districts in cities across the country.

Part of the problem with making sweeping plaudits or condemnations of charter schools is that there are simply so many of them. America’s first charter school, City Academy, opened in Saint Paul, Minnesota, in 1992. In the nearly three decades since, their numbers have grown exponentially: the most recent federal data from 2016 records approximately 7,000 charter schools nationwide, educating three million students. In some states, charter schools are an unquestionable success. In Florida, for instance, the most recent data shows charter school students outperforming their public school counterparts on 83 percent of measures. Meanwhile, in New York, charter school students gain on average, over the course of the school year, two months more of math and one month more of English compared to public school pupils.

However, in other states, like California, Michigan, and Ohio — to name a few — charters perform about the same or worse than public schools. In these states, inadequate laws and regulations are a key part of the problem. Charter schools exercise a degree of autonomy from public regulations and oversight on the condition that they are accountable for achieving good results. If a charter school is underperforming, the government should be able to close or replace it. However, a Department of Education survey found that more than half of charter school authorizers encountered difficulty closing underperforming schools. In addition, of the twelve percent of all charter schools that have closed, more than two-thirds did so because of financial inviability, not poor performance. In other words, because oversight bodies lack the teeth to enforce high standards, charter schools generally remain open as long as they can pay the bills, regardless of whether they are achieving positive results for their students. When looking at the issue state-by-state, charter schools generally appear to be about as good as the oversight and regulation governing them; Michigan, for example, which has some of the laxest oversight laws, also has some of the worst-performing charter schools, particularly in the city of Detroit. Few states have the mechanisms in place needed to enforce quality control among charter schools – last year, only five states received scores of “mediocre” or above by an educational watchdog agency. This lack of adequate oversight is understandable when considering that charter schools are such a recent phenomenon, but still, without comprehensive, enforceable laws and regulations in place, the door remains open to incompetence, fraud, waste, and abuse.

Still, even in states where charter schools appear to underperform, there is a silver lining. In Arizona, for instance, charter schools reportedly perform slightly worse than public schools – on paper. However, a recent analysis that factored out virtual schools, juvenile detention programs, and schools serving primarily overage students or late transfers, found that charters actually had slightly higher — not lower — test scores and graduation rates. Another example is California, where on average charter schools perform about the same as public schools — except among low-income black and Latino students, for whom charter schools provided math and reading gains greatly exceeding those of local public schools, according to a Stanford University study. These distinctions were especially pronounced in urban areas, where many minority students are concentrated. Studies of charter schools in cities including Boston, Chicago, and New York have replicated these findings. What this means is that while charter schools may not always perform comparatively better in already-good suburban school districts serving predominantly white, middle-income students, they are succeeding where they are needed most: in struggling urban school districts serving low-income, largely minority student bodies.

Of course, test scores and graduation rates are not the only consideration — but charter schools are valuable for other reasons. For one, they are useful for expanding the educational footprint in resource-strapped states and school districts, as well as in areas experiencing population growth. Though charter schools receive public funding, the costs of actually starting a school — like constructing new buildings — is usually footed by the operating organization itself. Additionally, because charter schools are not required to provide the same level of transportation, food offerings, and student support services as traditional public schools, they are less expensive to operate.

An example of where these advantages have proven especially important is Arizona, whose warm climate and inexpensive housing makes it a unique draw for both retirees and young families. In the 2000s, the state was experiencing a population influx and, with a limited budget, was struggling to build and expand enough schools for its fast-growing student population. Rather than settle for overcrowding, Arizona turned to charter schools to fill in the gap. In addition to allowing for the construction of numerous new schools the state would not have otherwise been able to afford, academic performance has increased statewide. Last year, Arizona’s eighth graders demonstrated math skills that rivaled those of its ninth graders back in 2003. As its population continues to age, the United States will need to address a version of the problem faced by Arizona: with more money going towards programs like Social Security and Medicare for retirees, federal and state budgets will have increasingly less leeway to boost spending on schools. Charters will be an evermore appealing option for states that want the best of both worlds: high-quality care for their seniors, and state-of-the-art schools for their children.

Still, test scores, graduation rates, and cost analyses aside, the strongest evidence in favor of charter schools is simply how popular they are. Even with more than 300 new charter schools opening each year, over a million children and teens sit on waiting lists, hoping that a spot will open up for them. More so than with ballots, people vote with their feet — and on this issue, millions of American families have made themselves heard: they want a choice. It may seem like a radical concept — until just thirty years ago, for generations the norm was that every student attended a school chosen for him by his school district. But in reality, for those with means, that was never the only option. If an affluent family was unhappy with the public schools in their district, they have always been able to move to a community with better schools or pay tuition to send their kids to a private school. Even as today’s leading Democrats rail against school choice, they take advantage of a version of it in their own lives: Elizabeth Warren’s son attended an elite private school, while Joe Biden sent his sons to Catholic schools.

School choice has always existed – the only difference was that until thirty years ago, it was the sole privilege of middle- and upper-income families. Charter schools have leveled the playing field by providing different educational options to lower-income families who cannot afford private school tuition or housing in better school districts. Public school partisans – like Bernie Sanders, who during his primary campaign stated, “We do not need two school systems” – may argue that such choices are superfluous. If charter schools often perform little better than traditional public schools, they may ask, then what is the point of having such a choice? Such a premise assumes that test scores are the only measure of a school’s worth. In the real world, families are drawn to a school not just by its academic performance, but other factors as well. Sports, facilities, location, special courses or programs, or a spiritual/cultural atmosphere may all be important considerations. Even students hailing from excellent public school systems may elect to attend a private school for any of those reasons and more. Charter schools extend a degree of that opportunity to families of all colors, incomes, and ZIP codes. Politicians on the right and left have been arguing and pontificating on the issue of charter schools for as long as they have existed, and they likely will for years to come. But for the families of the four million children who attend — or are waiting to attend — charter schools, the question has long been settled.

In spite of the efforts of powerful teachers unions and their Democratic toadies, there are few issues less partisan and with broader general support than charter schools. A poll released last January by the American Federation for Children found overwhelming bipartisan support for school choice, with nearly 80 percent of parents in favor of the option to choose the public school their child attends. More so, the survey found that 58 percent of Democratic primary voters, 62 percent of African-Americans, and 65 percent of Latinos said they would be less likely to support a presidential candidate in favor of eliminating federal funding for charter schools. If not because it is morally right, perhaps political expediency will be reason enough for Biden to return his erstwhile support to the charter school cause. If he truly wants to “united the country” as he says, getting behind school choice would be a perfect starting point. Incoming Secretary Cardona has potential, but he can only succeed on this issue if the President-elect is willing to lead.

Enough.

What happened at the Capitol yesterday was nothing short of a national disgrace. The storming of the legislative building of the United States of America – the beacon of freedom and liberty for all of humanity – irreparably dishonored the nation, and represented a display of the highest form of treachery. This behavior, wholly and entirely unacceptable in any free nation, was the culmination of a long and dangerous trend in American political life, on both sides of the isle: the wholesale disregard of truth and reality. Elements of the American Left have long since fallen into this trap, which was clearly visible in the disgraceful riots and false narratives that were purveyed throughout the past year. But the Left is a subject for a separate analysis, and was not the cause of this latest display of un-American behavior. What happened at the Capitol was the crudest manifestation of a cancerous development in the American Right. 

Only coming to a head in the past couple of years, some sectors of the Right have increasingly taken up the same characteristics of the radical Left, eschewing evidence and objective truth in favor of concocted ‘facts,’ rumor, and political expediency. Part of this is due to the state of American media, which is effectively inseparable from partisan interests, and has no compunction with twisting the truth to fit its desired narratives. In an environment where the traditional purveyors of truth are no longer trustworthy, it should be of no surprise that people begin to create their own ‘truth’ according to the whims of the moment. But that is only part of the problem. There are three other concerns that are the focus of this article: the cult of personality that surrounds Donald Trump, the turn away from objective truth and evidence-based politics, and the complete disregard for principle that accompanies the populism Trump embodies. 

Donald Trump is undeniably a ‘larger than life’ figure in American politics – a quality that is simultaneously both to his advantage and potentially dangerous. He has managed to become the standard bearer of the fight against radical leftism (itself likely the greatest threat to the nation), but with that his personage has sucked most of the proverbial air out of the room. He has come to represent the end-all be-all for many people, the last standing bulwark between leftist tyranny and the American way of life. Further, his personality is entirely domineering – he leaves no room for alternative voices. Because of these issues, he has developed a cult of personality around him, whereby people do not so much identify with the principles of conservatism than they do with the way that Trump supposedly embodies them. In other words, they identify with the man first and the ideas second. Trump in his person, for many, determines the definition of conservatism, the platform of the Republican Party, and anyone who disagrees is simply a ‘RINO’ (Republican in name only) or a traitor, someone to be discarded. In the absence of a trusted source of truth, Trump has become the truth. 

Trump’s claims of election fraud and the ‘steal’ of the election are, indeed, utterly unfounded. Yes, there was very likely some fraud in the 2020 presidential election, probably more so than in 2016 because of the vast expansion of mail-in balloting. Yes, some states bent the constitutionally-established rules for elections. But the fraud was, by all available evidence, nowhere near enough to make up for the substantial deficit in votes that Trump currently has, and the state legislatures have certified the electors, which is final. The courts have reviewed the allegations, and they have unanimously rejected them as either unfounded or severely lacking in evidence. Many of the judges who presided over these cases were Trump appointees. So unless the entire judicial system is utterly corrupted and Trump’s judicial appointments were horrible, it should be clear that the election was won fairly by Joe Biden. 

But with the wholehearted support of Trump and in the environment of distrust that the media has created, there have been widespread rumors and supposed ‘evidence’ floating around that have severely undermined confidence in the election. Many on the Right, with the weight of Trump backing them, have produced an echochamber of sorts, throwing around allegations about widespread fraud and criminality. A now-famous uncontextualized video of hundreds of ballots in Georgia being taken out of suitcases continues to serve as primary evidence for many, despite the fact that its contents have been thoroughly explained by election officials. There are claims of Dominion voting machines being hacked or parts being changed – claims which even Newsmax retracted because they had no evidence to support them. The assertion that the Vice President could overturn the election results during the January 6th certification, which is partly what spurred the riot, is equally erroneous and unconstitutional. These make up but a small fraction of the untruths spread since the election. But Trump continues to echo these and numerous other claims, and people buy into them, not because they are backed by evidence, but because they come from Trump and his allies. 

If Americans cannot operate on the basis of hard evidence and truth, then there cannot be a functioning polity. If the word of a few larger than life politicians is sufficient to serve as proof,  if uncontextualized and uninvestigated information is turned into fact, and if there is a complete unwillingness to think critically and question sources, then Americans are jettisoning the very qualities that make human beings unique among animals: reason. If everything is relativized, with the Left having its ‘truth’ and the Right its own ‘truth,’ there is little to expect other than the collapse of the nation, something terrifyingly close to what was witnessed at the Capitol.

The populism that Trump represents has its own dangers. Populism, by its very definition, lacks principles. The foundations of populism shift with the fleeting whims of the people, whatever is in ‘vogue’ at the time is what the populist politician will latch on to. The Right has long prided itself, rightly, on its principled nature, with respect for the Constitution, the rule of law, equality under the law, and individual rights. But if the Right continues to embrace populism, it will abandon the feature, principle, that distinguishes it from the Left. Further, lack of principles is itself inherently dangerous. Anything is acceptable when principle is thrown away. There are those who argue that storming the Capitol was somehow justified. There are those who argue that overturning an election without adequate evidence is justified. What exactly is not justified in the name of some ever-changing (because there are no principles) goal? The deficit of principle also means that populism means vastly different things to different people, for there is no constant and accepted foundation. For one person populism can be a slightly modified conservatism, while for another it can mean some variant of radicalism. The inherent danger, then, is that there are no definitional limits to what populism can result in, and if history serves as any guide, government without limits is very undesirable.

It is worth noting Trump’s response to the egregious display at the Capitol, as it embodies some of what has been discussed in this article. In a video recording addressing what was then the ongoing storming of the Capitol, Trump said the following:

I know your pain. I know your hurt. We had an election that was stolen from us. It was a landslide election, and everyone knows it, especially the other side. But you have to go home now, we have to have peace. We have to have law and order, we have to respect our great people in law and order. We don’t want anybody hurt. It’s a very tough period of time. There’s never been a time like this where such a thing happened, where they could take it away from all of us — from me, from you, from our country. This was a fraudulent election, but we can’t play into the hands of these people. We have to have peace. So, go home. We love you, you’re very special. You’ve seen what happens. You see the way others are treated that are so bad and so evil. I know how you feel. But go home, and go home in peace.

He may have included the obligatory call for peace, and asked the rioters to go home, but it is immediately followed by a statement that completely contradicts such a message. Claiming (again, without evidence) that the election was a fraud, and that “they could take it away” is just reaffirming why the rioters stormed the Capitol to begin with! And to express sympathy and appreciation towards the very people who just committed one of the most un-American acts of the last century is equally absurd. There is no respect for the institutions of America, and there is no respect for the Constitution. This was the time that the nation most needed a national address from the President, but it did not receive one. Instead, it received a half-hearted plea for the rioters to go home while simultaneously feeding their fire. Principle, or more importantly, respect for the nation, would necessitate the wholehearted condemnation of the violence. But, of course, there is no principle to be had here.

The American Right needs to return to its Reaganesque roots, and to the principles of traditional American conservatism. It must refuse to follow the Left towards relativism and principle-free politics. It must reject the cult of personality that Trump has managed to create. This does not, and should not, mean a return to the days of Mitt Romney – far from it. It means that the Right must take the good things that the Trump presidency brought, particularly in the realm of confronting the tyrannical culture of the Left, fuse those good things with traditional conservatism, and move forward as a united, principled, and just force with which to confront the incoming Democratic government. Conservatism is just, it is right, and it is the best path forward for the nation. Trumpian populism is not.

Those that participated in the storming of the Capitol must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, and should be utterly ashamed at their sickening behavior. Events such as this must never happen again on American soil. Not only are they criminal, but they also provide a propaganda coup for the enemies of freedom. This is the antithesis of the kind of politics the Founders envisioned – there is no justification for what occurred, and there never will be. Now more than ever, the nation needs your prayers. 

'Anti-Racism': Creating More Racists?

In a June 19 letter, following the death of George Floyd, Father Boroughs declared Holy Cross’ intention to be an “actively anti-racist organization.” To accomplish this, the message stated, the College would abide by a new Anti-Racism Action Plan to “promote a culture of anti-racism” at the “individual, departmental, and institutional level.” The plan provides for training workshops, new curriculum, lectures, and other resources — like a new anti-racism website — for students and faculty alike. Despite an ongoing pandemic that has already cost the College more than $15 million in extra spending this year, these measures included the funding of a new — seemingly superfluous — “Associate Provost for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion,” and questionable programs like “Self-Care Conversations for Social Justice Activists.” Having already withdrawn at least $5 million from the endowment since March, the College could surely find more pressing uses for these funds, however modest. But the bigger issue with the College’s Anti-Racism Action Plan has nothing to do with finances, but rather, the very essence of “anti-racism” itself.

At first glance, “anti-racism” might seem benign. Opposing racism? What could be wrong with that? The problem is that — despite the name — the “anti-racist” movement in America today doesn’t actually oppose racism as it is traditionally understood. The Oxford Dictionary defines racism as “prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against a person or people” on the basis of race. Ibram X. Kendi, author of the 2019 bestseller How to Be an Antiracist, has a very different understanding. He defines racism as a “marriage” of “policies and ideas that produces and normalizes racial inequities” [emphasis added]. Individual prejudices and discrimination are irrelevant in the eyes of the new “anti-racists.” Instead, policies resulting in inequitable outcomes between different races are the problem. In other words, people aren’t racist, institutions are; discrimination isn’t the problem, disparities in outcome are. 

In Kendi’s mind, different outcomes between different racial groups in any area of life can only be explained as the product of racist policy. Thus, being race-neutral is actually racist — instead, society must become actively anti-racist. The biggest issue with this ideology isn’t even that it is based on fallacy — the best-educated and most successful immigrant group in the country is actually Nigerian-Americans, suggesting that factors other than racism are responsible for some African-Americans’ lack of upward mobility. More problematic are the policy prescriptions Kendi and others propose to address America’s perceived institutional racism. Whereas normal opponents of racism might call for reducing discrimination, today’s “anti-racists” call for more — so long as it is in the service of “creating equity.” This flies in the face of the essential elements of the American experience — individual rights, equality of opportunity, impartial application of the law. At its worst, “anti-racist” ideology verges on totalitarianism — in a recent Politico op-ed, Kendi calls for constitutional amendment to establish a “Department of Antiracism” to ensure that all federal, state, and local policies result in equality of outcome (which, of course, is impossible to achieve).

Orwellian proposals like this would be terrifying if they weren’t so ludicrous. Nevertheless, such ideas are not inconsequential, not least because they distract from real, visible instances of racism that can be actionably addressed in society. Kendi, preferring to focus on broad statistical disparities and policy impacts, dismisses the significance of individual actions, despite the fact that the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights resolved nearly 5,000 discrimination complaints in the last three years alone. “Anti-racist” ideology — with its vague, unworkable solutions for broad societal disparities — appears to actually make the work of combating racism much harder. In the last three years, the Trump administration closed twice the number of racial school-discipline cases and six times as many sexual-violence cases than the “anti-racist” Obama administration did in the three years prior. And it was President Trump, not Obama, who addressed perhaps the most prominent remaining example of structural racism in the United State today — mandatory minimum sentencing — with the 2018 signing of the First Step Act. As Kenneth L. Marcus, assistant secretary of education for civil rights between 2018 and 2020, put it in the Wall Street Journal, “It turns out there is a price to be paid when we take our eyes off of racial (or sex) discrimination.” As he explained, resolving systemic failures is often accomplished by addressing many individual incidents. If you neglect individual cases, as Kendi and the “anti-racists” do, you can never solve racism at the structural level.

If individual instances of racism are inconsequential, what do the “anti-racists” propose we focus on instead? Apparently, anything and everything. In one laughable example, Kendi told Vox’s Ezra Klein in a recent interview that even a theoretical capital gains tax reduction would be racist, since black Americans own proportionally fewer stocks compared to whites. Such an all-encompassing mindset not only precludes finding workable solutions, but inevitably leads to a dangerously fatalistic worldview in which racial resentments permeate every aspect of life. Ta-Nehisi Coates’ bestselling 2015 book Between the World and Me provides a prime example of this phenomenon in action. Although Coates writes that he intends to illuminate the “racist violence that has been woven into American culture” for centuries, the book instead illustrates the bitterness, contempt — and even hatefulness — that define the fatalistic view of race relations shared by Coates, Kendi, and other “anti-racists.” In this mindset, white supremacy is written into America’s DNA, and is effectively impossible to overcome. Like Kendi, Coates provides sweeping, abstract condemnations of the current system, but balks at offering solutions. To provide just one example — the systemic denial of mortgages to black people in the past rightly infuriates Coates, but so does the granting of mortgages to them today, because they are likely to experience foreclosure, which he views as “plunder.”

So what is the solution here? Apparently, there isn’t one — but Coates might be fine with that, because more than anything else, he just wants to express his deep contempt for America. This is made clear through vivid descriptions of events that, to a normal person, would seem fairly innocuous — but to Coates are defined by noxious racial dynamics. One example Coates revisits repeatedly in the book is an incident in which his four-year-old son was pushed in a New York City escalator by a white woman who said, “Come on,” to get him to move. This surely must have been unpleasant, but it hardly seems extraordinary. I have to imagine a great deal of shoving and rudeness occurs daily in New York — presumably, much of it white-on-white as well. Was this the result of a woman late for her morning commute? Or just plain inconsideration? Preposterous! As Coates tells it, this represented a form of modern-day slavery. “Someone had invoked their right over the body of my son,” he writes. In another example, he recalls seeing a young white couple pushing strollers down the sidewalk in Harlem, their toddlers beside them. A sign of gentrification? Sure. Nevertheless, to most people this would be a fairly inoffensive sight — but think again. To Coates, this sight sends a nefarious message of racial superiority — he writes “The galaxy belonged to them, and as terror was communicated to our [black] children, I saw mastery communicated to theirs.” Ideally, such a response to the sight of children playing on the sidewalk might warrant an appointment with a psychologist. But because it is Ta-Nehisi Coates, observations like these have now earned an esteemed place in high school and college libraries across the country.

Unfortunately, this worldview is not just confined to the “benign-but-ludicrous.” At its worst, it surpasses bitterness and verges on hatred. In perhaps the most astonishing portion of his book, Coates writes that his “heart was cold” while witnessing the September 11 attacks. He explains, “I could see no difference between the officer who killed Prince Jones [a black man killed by a police officer] and the police who died, or the firefighters who died. They were not human to me. Black, white, or whatever, they were the menaces of nature… which could — with no justification — shatter my body.” Hyperbole aside, Coates provides little rationale for why firefighters should be disparaged over the issue of police violence — let alone why the 98.9 percent of 9/11 victims who were not police officers deserve such callous disregard. But then, hatred is rarely rational.

Unfortunately, such vitriolic tendencies are not unique to Coates — the aforementioned Kendi, today’s most prominent “anti-racist” advocate, is another prime offender. On September 26, following the Supreme Court nomination of Amy Coney Barrett (who adopted two children from Haiti), Kendi tweeted,

“Some White colonizers ‘adopted’ Black children. They ‘civilized’ these ‘savage’ children in the ‘superior’ ways of White people, while using them as props in their lifelong pictures of denial, while cutting the biological parents of these children out of the picture of humanity.”

As Fraser Myers writes in Spiked, “The language he employs sounds anti-racist… But the conclusion one surely has to draw from his reasoning is racist.” But don’t just take it from him — the white supremacist Richard Spencer soon retweeted Kendi’s post, adding “Not wrong.”

This may be controversial (hear me out), but if your opposition to racism is bringing you into common cause with… well, racists… you’re probably doing something wrong. But maybe that shouldn’t be so unexpected. After all, racists and “anti-racists” today seem to have an awful lot in common — most importantly, an all-consuming obsession with race, and a preoccupation with racial preservation. Whereas past racists used segregation to keep blacks away from whites, today’s “anti-racists” create segregated spaces to keep whites away from people of color. This is not to denigrate the legitimate value of having groups for people of minority racial and ethnic backgrounds to find support and solidarity, but when such spaces are undergirded by premises of perpetual victimhood and oppression, they can only be harmful to race relations — and to people of color themselves, by handicapping their ability to succeed in a multiracial society. This is best exemplified (again) by Kendi himself. In How to Be an Antiracist, he describes his first, frightful night in Virginia, “worried the Ku Klux Klan would arrive any minute.” But Kendi is 38… and this was in 1997. The shackles of racial fear and victimhood are surely not conducive to mental health — and certainly not success in competitive educational and professional fields. Racism (often in muted forms) still exists, but adding fictitious racial bogeymen, and sowing seeds of racial distrust and resentment on top of that, is the last thing black Americans — and the country — need. Such a fatalistic victim mentality, if allowed to spread, will only create a self-fulfilling prophecy of degraded race relations and poor socioeconomic mobility among underprivileged people of color.

To return to our own institution, it is worth asking what Holy Cross has to gain from embracing “anti-racism.” As it turns out… very little that is not already being done. One of the major goals of the Anti-Racism Action Plan, for example, is to recruit a more diverse body of students and faculty. But according to data from this semester, the College’s student body is already 26 percent nonwhite, higher than the percentage for Massachusetts as a whole (22 percent). And of tenure-track faculty hires in the last five years (before the anti-racism plan was adopted), 36 percent were people of color, already higher than the nonwhite proportion of recent doctoral graduates (33 percent). Evidently, the College has already been able to make great strides in recent years to achieve a racially-balanced faculty and student body. Holy Cross should continue to seek out diverse talent — but it needn’t self-flagellate and kowtow to the polarizing, unsavory “anti-racist” ideology while doing so. The best alternative would be to reject peddlers of hate like Ta-Nehisi Coates and Ibram X. Kendi, and embrace the visions of true anti-racist leaders like the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who famously said, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”

2020 House Elections: Foreshadowing a Post-Trump GOP

In recent times, the Republican Party has had a reputation of being a white, monoethnic party while the Democratic Party has maintained a reputation of being a racially diverse, poor and working class party.  However, the 2020 US House of Representative Elections deviate from these reputations.  

 In the 2018 elections, Republicans had a net loss of 10 women compared to Democrats’ net gain of 24 women.  Realizing this unsettling gap, incumbent Republican Congresswomen, such as Elise Stefanik (R-NY21) and Susan Brooks (R-IN05), worked hard between 2018 and now to recruit 277 female GOP candidates, 94 of whom won their district’s Republican nomination, and 31-32 of whom won their respective race.  

House Republicans added a record number of women to their ranks, so many, in fact, that this year was coined “The Year of the Republican Woman.” Republicans will add 18-19 new women  (one race outstanding) compared to Democrats’ 9; Democrats will only net gain 1 woman, for they lost 8 women either to retirements or losses to Republicans.  This compares with Republicans’ net gain of 16-17 women since only two GOP women retired while none lost re-election. In fact, of the 12 Democratic seats flipped so far by Republicans, 9 of them were flipped by Republican women. 

Additionally, the GOP doubled the number of ethnic minorities in their House Conference.  While the House Democratic Caucus will still be more ethnically diverse than the Republican Conference, the incoming freshman class shows a troubling trend for Democrats - a diversifying Republican Party.  

Republicans added twice as many Hispanics/Latinos to congress this year than the Democrats (4 GOP, 2 Dem). While the Democrats will still have a large majority of Hispanics/Latinos in Congress, this upward trend for Republicans is consistent with the voting shift of Latino populations in Florida and Texas.  Many majority Hispanic/Latino districts and counties shifted several percentage points toward Trump and the GOP, showing how large this shift is.  Prime examples of this are FL-27 and TX-15 as well as Miami-Dade County, FL and Val Verde and Zapata Counties, TX.  FL-27 shifted 8 points, TX-15 shifted 18 points, Miami-Dade, FL shifted 14 points, Val Verde, TX shifted 18 points, and Zapata, TX, a county last won by Republicans in 1920, shifted 38 points toward Republicans.

In addition to welcoming more Latinos to Congress than the Democrats, the Republicans also gained 2 Asian-American Republicans in the House, while the Democrats netted 0 (They added 2 representatives but also lost 2 representatives.).  Congresswomen-elect Young Kim (R-CA39) and Michelle Steel (R-CA48) are two of the three first Korean American women elected to Congress (the other being Rep-elect Marilyn Strickland (D-WA10)). Democrats will still have a majority of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in Congress, but the fact that Democrats netted 0 Asian American/Pacific Islanders while Republicans added 2 should catch Democrats’ attention.

Republicans also added 2 African-Americans to Congress, Congressmen-elect Burgess Owens (R-UT04) and Byron Donalds (R-FL19), compared to Democrats’ 6. Taking into account retirements and defeated incumbents, Republicans have a net gain of 1, and Democrats have a net gain of 5. (Rep. Will Hurd (R-TX23) retired, and Rep. Lacy Clay (D-MO01) lost re-nomination.) 

While the Democrats still added three times the amount of African Americans to Congress, Republicans ran many prominent African-American candidates such as Kim Klacik (MD07), Tamika Hamilton (CA03), Joe Collins (CA43), and Wesley Hunt (TX07). Klacik and Collins both gained national attention for their social media advertisements, Klacik walking through “real Baltimore,” and Collins critiquing Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA43) for living in a mansion outside of her impoverished district.  Hamilton and Hunt outperformed all polls and predictions and came within single digits of defeating their opponents in Democratic-leaning districts.  These Black Republican candidates, though unsuccessful in their bids this election cycle, have bright futures in a changing, post-Trump GOP.

Republicans also elected the first Iranian American Representative, Stephanie Bice (R-OK05), as well as former-Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA50) of Lebanese descent, giving Republicans a majority of Arab/Middle Eastern Representatives in Congress.  The Democrats added no Arab/Middle Eastern Americans this year.  In fact, they will have 2 fewer Arab/Middle Eastern Representatives than they had in the previous Congress; Rep. Donna Shalala (D-FL27) and Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (D-FL26) lost re-election. These Republican gains and Democratic losses of Arab/Middle Eastern Representatives are in spite of attempts by Democrats to paint the GOP as the party of Islamophobia.

Republicans also added Yvette Harrell (R-NM02), a member of the Cherokee Nation, to Congress, while the Democrats added no Native Americans this election cycle.  This will give the GOP a majority of Native Americans in the House during the 117th Congress.  This is yet another troubling result for Democrats, especially since they are unlikely to make electoral progress in the House under a Biden/Harris Administration.

In addition to Republican women and ethnic minorities added by Republicans this year, the GOP also added 4 members who are naturalized citizens: Young Kim (CA39; South Korea), Michelle Steel (CA48; South Korea), Carlos Giménez (FL26; Cuba), and Victoria Spartz (IN05; Soviet Union/Ukraine).  This compares to the Democrats’ 0 naturalized citizens added this year (-1 net loss when considering defeated incumbents).

Here is a chart showing new women, ethnic minorities, and naturalized citizens to the House this year:

Here is a chart taking retirements and defeated incumbents into account:

In response to the Left-wing “Squad” that includes the infamous outspoken Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY14), four incoming Republican members who either grew up under Socialist regimes or are children of refugees from Socialist regimes have formed an anti-Socialist “Freedom Squad.”  These Representatives-elect are Carlos Giménez (R-FL26), Victoria Spartz (R-IN05), Nicole Malliotakis (R-NY11), and Maria Elvira Salazar (R-FL27).  Malliotakis, the only Republican Representative from New York City, stated the purpose of forming the Freedom Squad: “Freedom for a strong economy. Less government. That’s why our families fled oppressive regimes. Our families fled from oppressive countries with the very same policies that AOC and the Squad are promoting.”  

It is clear that the election predictions and polls were wrong in many House races.  For instance, 11 House races were won by republicans that at least two major political pundits rated as ‘Lean, Likely, and/or Safe D.’  These districts are from across the country, from the South in Texas and Florida, to the West Coast in California, to the Midwest in Iowa, to the East Coast in New York.  Each of these races were flipped by a Republican woman or ethnic minority.

Republicans outperformed in almost every race, even coming close to flipping many “Safe D” seats across the country.  A prime example of this is Texas-15, an 80% Hispanic and normally Safe Democratic district, where the Republican nominee, Monica De La Cruz-Hernandez, came within 3% of unseating Democratic incumbent Vicente Gonzalez.  This compares to Gonzalez’s comfortable 20% margin in 2018. The same pattern is manifest in certain districts of Virginia, New York, Illinois, Arizona, Pennsylvania, and California.  The Democratic representatives for these seats should especially be concerned for 2022 and 2024.

Overall, the 2020 US House elections show a bright future for the post-Trump GOP.  While the GOP lost the Presidency and at least 1 Senate seat, they still gained seats in the House despite election predictions and polls.  The newfound diversity of the House Republican Conference strikes a blow to the false assertion that all Republicans are white supremacists and male chauvinists; it foreshadows the post-Trump GOP being a mulit-ethnic party. Assuming that 2022 follows historical precedent, the Democrats are likely to lose seats - and even the majority - in the House, especially if they continue the leftward trend of the Squad.  These trends should scare Democrats and excite Republicans for down-ballot races between now and 2024, and even “Safe Democratic” seats are not safe from the hands of the diversifying post-Trump GOP.

The Resurgence of Marxism

As George Santayana once said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” There is an alarming trend among academics and younger generations to embrace Marxist ideas that have consistently resulted in abject failure. Recent YouGov data indicates that communism is viewed favorably by more than one out of every three Millennials, with even higher percentages for Gen-Z. According to academia.org, self-identifying Marxist professors in the United States outnumber their conservative counterparts four to one. 

 An idea is only as good as its results. The causes of fairness and equality espoused by youthful generations are noble in intent and should be pursued. Poverty and inequality are the natural enemies of any developed state, but the means by which Marxist groups have sought to achieve equity have never produced more equitable societies. Instead, these ideas have destroyed states and created a dismal quality of life. If ‘equality’ means equal misery for all, then the new wave of Marxism is correct in its advocacy. The responsibility for this resurgence of collectivist thought rests on the public and higher education systems for excluding Marxist failures from basic curricula.  

There have been many iterations of Marxism and many different types of Marxists. This evaluation addresses overlapping, core principles, such as the abolition of private property, the forced redistribution of wealth, the centralization of state planning, and the censorship of dissident groups. The majority of the Marxist movement is fueled by an ignorance of Marxism’s failures, while a minority of its followers dismiss all criticisms with the excuse, “It hasn’t been implemented properly.” Evidently, it is somehow unreasonable to hold up any of the numerous Marxist failures to the same real-world scrutiny and analysis that other economic systems receive. To address the majority of American Marxists, one must undertake a basic review of Marxism’s murderous history. To address the ‘enlightened’ minority, one must examine the motivations of human behavior ‒ imperfection, greed, laziness, malign external influences ‒ that preclude the functioning of Marxism. 

There is an additional sect of the left that mischaracterizes Scandinavian countries as models for ‘democratic socialism’. This faction, spearheaded by Senator Bernie Sanders, seeks to use the Scandinavian model as justification for the advancement of fundamentally Marxist principles. By examining these countries’ corporate tax systems and policies, it becomes clear that Denmark, Sweden, and others have rejected Marxism, and have prospered under capitalism.

A RECORD OF FAILURE

From the Soviet Union to Cuba, Marxist principles have caused mass starvation, violence, hyperinflation, and civil strife. This section will provide an overview of several Marxist experiments. The World Bank index of economic freedom ranks countries based on rule of law, government size, regulatory efficiency, and market openness. This and other indexes offer strong context for an examination of Marxism in practice.

Exhibit A - Venezuela

The Venezuelan downfall began as a socialist proclamation of ‘equality and fairness,’ and has resulted in an oppressive dictatorship at the hands of Nicolás Maduro. The regime is one of the least economically free countries in the world, coming in second to last on the Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom. Venezuela was once a wealthy and prosperous country with a high average quality of life. But a series of ‘progressive’ steps have resulted in 90% of its citizens being unable to buy enough food. In 1992, it became the third richest country in the northern hemisphere. In 2001, it voted for a socialist president, Hugo Chavez, who promised to alleviate ‘income inequality.’ In 2004, private healthcare was completely socialized. By 2005, most private farmland, companies, and shops were seized and nationalized by Chavez. As Marx stated, “the theory of the communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property”.  In 2009, the Venezuelan socialists banned all private ownership of firearms (because Hitler, Castro, Quaddafi, Stalin, Idi Amin, Mao, Pol Pot, and Kim Jong-Il all agree that gun control works). In 2012 Bernie Sanders praised Venezuelan ‘progress,’ calling it “The American Dream”. In 2014, the government imprisoned many opposition leaders because they were a threat to the socialists’ lust for power. By 2016, food and healthcare shortages had become widespread. In 2017, the country’s Constitution and elections were suspended. In 2018, Venezuela’s inflation increased by 65,000%. Citizens are massacred in extrajudicial killings by their own government and the Maduro regime looks to rule indefinitely. Venezuela’s government documented 5,300 killings in 2018 alone by security operations for cases of “resistance to authority”. It took less than twenty years for ‘equality and fairness’ policies to bring Venezuela from a global power to a humanitarian relief subject. 

Exhibit B - Cuba

In the 1950s Cuba had Latin America’s third-highest per capita income, third-longest life expectancy, and lowest mortality rate. But like many other Marxist experiments, it was only a matter of time before ‘equality and fairness’ ruined the entire state. Fidel Castro was 31 years old when he seized power in 1959 and was instantly revered by the young leftists of the 1960s. Socialist Cuba was meant to be a model of ‘revolutionization’ by Marxist intrigue and utopianism. Today, empty shelves are a common sight for most Cubans. The private sector accounts for no more than 7% of GDP, while Cuba is one of the lowest-ranked countries on the Economic Freedom Index. Poor centralized management sees citizens using depressingly low state issued salaries, sometimes less than a dollar a day, to pay exorbitant sums for food on the black market. The Communist Party of Cuba suppresses many types of speech and opposition through raids, beatings, and imprisonment, namely of Unión Patriótica de Cuba (the main dissent group in Cuba) members. The Cuban Regime cracks down on artistic expression as well. Decree 349 requires Cuban musicians, dancers, artists, and writers to seek government permission for their work. For the young Marxists today who proclaim their love for diverse culture and art, it is notable that this very ‘diversity’ and ‘rebellion’ is nonexistent in Cuba and every other place where communism has been implemented. Many millennials and Gen-Z-ers adore Instagram, Snapchat, and other social media platforms. But in Cuba, independent media exists only online, and is made prohibitively expensive by the Communist Party. Instead, Cubans may purchase the state-sanctioned internet and media at a ‘discounted’ price. The Cuban government does not offer Snapchat, unfortunately. 

Exhibit C - North Korea

According to the Economist and the World Bank, North Korea is among the most authoritarian and least free states in the world. Most North Koreans, malnourished and without access to the internet, live on rations provided by the government. Marketplace lists the obscure state’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita at $665 (by comparison, the United States’ is about $63,000). The North Korean state runs the economy, employs people, and decides prices and wages. While North Korea officially replaced communism with Juche, or ‘for the state’ ideology, Marxist principles remain central. There is a command economy, with total state control of industry and agriculture, collectivized farms, and state-run education and healthcare. Similar to the Soviet Union, North Korea launched various five-year plans for industry and agriculture with centralized state planning. Aside from the economic mismanagement that plagued these efforts, a series of natural disasters exacerbated the situation. The centrally-planned system was too inflexible to manage floods and droughts. According to the Vienna University of Economics and Business, 60% of North Koreans live in absolute poverty today. One might ponder why the North Koreans have not switched to a new type of economy. The truth is that the North Korean power structure, like many other Marxist models, cements a certain group at the top. Once in control of the state resources and police, this regime can retain its absolute power by oppressing the general populace and silencing dissidents. Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch, commented “Kim Jong-Un has picked up where his father and grandfather left off, by overseeing a system of public executions, extensive political camps, and brutal forced labor.” A system as terrifying as this would seem a far cry from the ‘equitable’ paradise that modern collectivists believe they can achieve with state control.

Exhibit D - Cambodia

The Khmer Rouge communist regime, in power from 1975-1979, ruled brutally and killed nearly two million people. Pol Pot, the head of state, forced millions of people from the cities to work on communal farms in the countryside, with entire families dying from starvation, disease, overwork, and execution. The Khmer Rouge was known as the Communist Party of Kampuchea, the name used by the communists for Cambodia. The supporters of this movement detested capital, and believed that they had no need for money. Pol Pot, upon seizing power, abolished money, private property, and religion. Anyone believed to be intelligent, or an intellectual, was executed. Swaths of the educated middle class were killed, along with others deemed to be threats to the Marxist agenda. The attempted genocide of the Cham and Vietnamese minorities was merely the Khmer Rouge’s means of promoting peace, equality, and equity. 

Exhibit E - The Soviet Union

Ludwig Von Mises theorized three years after the Russian Revolution that communism would fail because the government had no market prices to guide the planning of production. Mises’ prediction, unsurprisingly, came true. The central planning of the USSR was meant to ensure ‘plenty’ for everyone. Instead, millions of Russians starved in the 1920s and 1930s. All materials, labor, tools, and machines used by the Soviet Government were owned and controlled exclusively by government planners, and the resultant unexchangeable nature of goods and services prevented the development of market prices. In making decisions, planners must understand the relative or market values of numerous factors of production along with a myriad of other factors of the market, and doing so is effectively impossible. Without market prices, the coordination of production activities can never meet consumer needs. As Mises wrote in 1920, “Every step that takes us away from private ownership of the means of production and from the use of money also takes us away from rational economics.” Of course, if a Soviet citizen merely suggested an alternative to the failing central planning, he would be reported by his neighbors, blacklisted, captured by the KGB (secret Soviet police force), and hauled off to the Gulag to labor endlessly to death in abhorrent conditions. It would demonstrate tunnel vision to claim that a single economic factor was wholly responsible for the collapse of the Soviet Union. There were many dimensions and pressures behind its fall, but the central planning model was the prime catalyst for mass starvation and chaos.

THE MISCHARACTERIZED ‘SOCIALISM’ OF SCANDINAVIA

Politicians like Bernie Sanders regularly assure their supporters that they want the ‘friendly Swedish model’ of ‘democratic socialism,’ rather than the hard boot of Soviet-style communism. There is, however, a glaring flaw with this contention: Scandinavian countries are not socialist. Instead, they are generous welfare states paired with capitalism. Sweden, Norway, and Denmark are all within the top echelon of the World Bank and Heritage Foundation Economic Freedom Index. The trio is on par with the United States’ index ranking. In Sweden and Norway, some surprising absences are a federal insurance contributions tax (FICA, the Social Security tax), minimum wage, and estate and inheritance taxes. 

It is true that these three countries all have government-sponsored college education, paid parental leave, and state-subsidized healthcare. But the means by which funding is raised for these programs differs from Sanders’ propositions of highly progressive taxation for corporations. To pay for more social programs, the Scandinavian countries extract a very high, optimized tax from a large portion of the population (the middle class pays about the same rate as the top 1% in taxes, which is exactly what Sanders and his ilk claim not to want, but would clearly have to implement to pay for their policies), while mostly leaving businesses to do business. By providing a friendly and transparent regulatory and tax environment for businesses, Scandinavian countries are able to tax individuals at a higher rate. 

Scandinavian entrepreneurs thrive. These countries are regularly ranked among the world’s best places to start a business. Forbes even ranks Sweden as the second best country in this area. The corporate tax rates in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, are 22 percent, 24 percent, and 21.4 percent, respectively. These figures are competitive with the EU average of 21.3 percent and the current U.S. rate of 21 percent (which most on the left want to raise substantially). The economic environment in Scandinavia is also attractive because of regulatory efficiency and transparency. Denmark, for example, allows employers to adjust their workforces rapidly in response to changing market conditions. The corporate legal systems in all three countries process cases transparently and efficiently. 

Finally, Scandinavian economies are open and encouraging to foreign investment. With lower tariff rates than the EU average of 2.8 percent for non-agricultural products, Denmark and Sweden facilitate large flows of investment. Norway’s rate is slightly higher, at 3.1 percent, but the country’s investment code is efficiently administered. 

HUMAN MOTIVATION AND BEHAVIORAL AVERSION TO MARXISM

Human nature constitutes a core aversion to Marxism in practice. The inherently human characteristics of imperfection, greed, and laziness are significant parts, although not the entirety, of this picture. To define human nature is virtually impossible —and is equally unverifiable. However, it is argued that the majority of people operate more towards the polar of self-interest than that of pure altruism (the desire to help others). This concept is well established in the theory of psychological egoism, which states that behind every action is a selfish motive. The theory especially holds that ‘altruistic’ actions, or ones performed for the good of others, are actually performed for the benefit of the performer. This benefit could be in the form of a will to go to heaven, a desire for public recognition, or even for the simple pleasure of emotional gratitude that comes in helping others. Psychological egoism is not entirely accurate, because there are select instances when people act more for the good of others than for themselves. But the vast majority of people, in most of their actions, act foremost for some personal gain.

Epicurus, a famous Greek philosopher, once commented, “Pleasure is the first good. It is the beginning of every choice and every aversion. It is the absence of pain in the body and of troubles in the soul.” Since Epicurus’ arguments in the first century BCE, modern science has provided strong evidence that humans prioritize pleasure. Serotonin is the chemical in our brains that is associated with feelings of happiness. When a person moves up in any hierarchy, their brain makes more serotonin available. Hierarchy means the natural social systems and corresponding competition that are established in any environment, by any given group of people: the tribe, the firm, the high school class rankings, the NASCAR race, or even the TikTok views. In each of these structures, people are moving up or down in terms of position relative to the top and bottom of a hierarchy. 

As psychologist Jordan Peterson explains, most hierarchies are natural, because most people need to organize themselves into groups to solve complex problems. However, some hierarchies are good, and some are bad. A blood drive is a good hierarchy with competition because it benefits the health of society. A well-functioning company that provides a valuable and affordable product while allowing meritable employees to advance in rank is a good hierarchy. A country that allows free and open elections and has a constitution for individual rights while actually ensuring those rights equally is a good hierarchy. The common component in each of these examples is consent. People, on their own initiative, voluntarily give something up ‒ a good, service, time, effort ‒in exchange for an advancement in the situational hierarchy, and in turn, for a spike in serotonin (again, chemical happiness). 

Given that consent is the common denominator in positive scenarios, the opposite, coercion, must serve as the underpinning for negative hierarchies. Here is where bad, unnatural hierarchies form. These can be labeled as ‘bad’ and ‘unnatural’ because they are built upon coercion, such as fear, violence, or threats. A drug lord extorting money and possessions from the residents in his domain constitutes an unhealthy power structure for two main reasons. First, the top position, the drug kingpin, is occupied through coercion. Second, the other movers in the hierarchy, the regular residents, have no options to improve their position without either furthering coercion or being coerced. They can either join the kingpin’s gang in committing crimes, or they can defend themselves and their property, in turn risking punishment from the druglord. A racist and coercive system such as the Jim Crow South represents another negative, unnatural hierarchy with the same criteria. George C. Wallace, the racist governor of Alabama in 1972, occupied that top position by enforcing and promoting racist coercions. During Jim Crow, African Americans in Alabama and other states were severely limited in hierarchical mobility, and were at constant risk of being coerced or murdered. Finally, the overall system itself was clearly not beneficial to anything besides racism and oppression, and so it was rightly toppled. Coercive hierarchies tend to crumble after a period of evident failure and injustice. 

In this distinction between consensual and coercive hierarchies lies the difference between capitalism and communism. In a consensual system, the people are incentivized, and able, to move up and down the power structure because this movement corresponds to their pleasure and happiness. In a coercive system, the people are rarely able to move up and down the power structure, and are therefore less incentivized to do anything (and, it is worth noting, coercion is often required if one is to move up or down). A consensual system is active while a coercive system is static, and stagnation accurately describes Marxist structures. A Soviet citizen once said, “They pretend to pay us and we pretend to work.” People in the USSR had little reason to work if they could not receive the true benefits of that work and the ensuing opportunity for social mobility. Russian economist Grigory Yavlinsky, who eventually became an important advisor to Gorbachev, once commented, “The Soviet System is not working because the workers are not working.” In chapter II of the Manifesto, Marx attempted to quell worries about laziness in a communist system, “It has been objected that upon the abolition of private property, all work will cease, and universal laziness will overtake us.” These objections mostly became true, not only in the USSR, but in numerous other communist countries where production dropped significantly. In each Marxist example, an individual or group occupies the top of the hierarchy by coercion or force, prevents individuals from moving up and down freely, and does not create positive results for a majority of the unit. Along these lines, humans, with their desire for pleasure and mobility, do not, and can not, function well within a Marxist system. 

CONCLUSION

Marxism has always resulted in a rigid power structure built on coercion, with suffering and poverty for the citizens and power for the ruling regime. The two major flaws in Marxist thinking are the belief that equality of outcome is possible, and the notion that people are not hungry for power. Once schools begin teaching about the dire history of Marxism, perhaps more students will come to understand the flaws of the doctrine. Unfortunately, many curricula now paint Marxism in a positive light. For students in California, capitalism is defined as “a form of power and oppression” and is used to “dehumanize” people. California school committees would not be pleased to find the ethnic cleansing or oppression that have occurred in numerous nations influenced by Marxism. Capitalism is not a perfect economic system, but it is undoubtedly superior to a model that has failed one-hundred percent of the time it has been implemented. 

Republicans Must Move Past Trumpism — Or Remain a Permanent Minority

With Georgia the last state to be called for Joe Biden, it is clear that President Trump has lost the election. Though lawsuits and recounts are ongoing, they are unlikely to change the final outcome in any of the battleground states, let alone the race as a whole. As of Friday, the Trump campaign has lost 26 of at least 40 cases contesting state election results, with the remainder still pending. And despite several ongoing recounts (most notably in Georgia), the margins in most states are nowhere near close enough to expect any of them to flip red. A recount may change results where the initial margin is in the hundreds, but not the tens of thousands.

President Trump himself seems to see the writing on the wall. While he has yet to concede, he has admirably authorized the government to begin the official transition process with the incoming Biden administration. He reportedly already has his sights set on 2024 — “If this doesn’t work out, I’ll just run again in four years,” the President said on a call with North Dakota Senator Kevin Cramer. If he does choose to run, the nomination will likely be his for the taking — a recent Politico poll found that Trump has the support of 53 percent of Republican voters in a hypothetical 2024 primary. The next two runners-up were Vice President Mike Pence and Donald Trump Jr., with 12 and 8 percent of the vote, respectively. Candidates outside the Trump camp, including Senators Ted Cruz, Mitt Romney, and Marco Rubio, and Nikki Haley, each received less than 5 percent of the vote.

Trump’s appeal is understandable. In just four years, he cut taxes for middle-class families, nominated three excellent Supreme Court justices, oversaw the defeat of ISIS, brokered three Arab-Israeli peace deals, pulled the US out of both the Iran deal and the Paris Agreement, avoided embroiling the country in new foreign wars, and (until the pandemic) presided over one of strongest economies in recent American history. That being said, many of his accomplishments — tax cuts, conservative judicial appointments, a robust foreign policy — would be expected of any Republican president. It is not a denigration of Trump’s record to acknowledge that at least a portion of the credit he gets for many of his achievements comes by virtue of him simply exceeding low expectations. Nor does it downplay Trump’s place in history as an effective conservative president to recognize that Republicans can, and must, do better. 

As commendable as much of Trump’s record is, it is undeniable that his tone, character, and undemocratic tendencies have harmed the public discourse and alienated many past and potential Republican voters. In the future, Republicans will need candidates who attract new constituencies into the party instead of relying on an aging, increasingly white base. To be fair, exit polls have shown that Trump improved his performance with black, Asian, and Hispanic voters in 2020 compared with 2016. However, contrary to Trump’s claim that this was “largest share of non-white voters of any Republican in 60 years,” it was actually only the best showing in 12 years, and represents a recovery from the GOP’s sharp drop in minority votes during the Obama era more than anything else. George Bush, in fact, won the largest share of minority votes since 1960, in the 2004 election — not coincidentally, this was the last presidential race in which the Republican candidate won the popular vote. 

Trump’s improved standing among minorities is worth celebrating, but simply making up for lost ground is not a recipe for success in a country that grows less white by the day. This has been a consistent problem for Republican presidential candidates in recent elections. In 2012, Romney — like Trump — lost overall, but was similarly commended for his performance among minority voters. In fact, polling revealed he bested the GOP’s previous showing against Obama virtually across the board, outperforming John McCain among men and women, whites and blacks, independents, older voters, and even Millennials. If Romney had run in 2008, he would have easily won the election — but by 2012, the country’s demographic makeup had shifted so significantly in favor of black, Asian, and Hispanic voters that Obama was able to keep his edge, despite decreased margins among whites and minorities alike.

Not only were Trump’s gains among minorities insufficient, they were offset by losses among other groups that are normally safe for Republicans. Edison polls showed that in 2020, Trump lost ground among white men, voters over 65, and college-educated white voters. Trump’s margin of victory among white, college-educated men — which was already lower in 2016 than for previous Republican candidates — plummeted from 14 percent to just 3. Some might argue losses among groups like this are inconsequential, and point to white working-class voters — who helped propel Trump to victory in 2016 — as an alternative core constituency of the GOP. This is shortsighted. While every effort should be made to keep working-class whites in the fold of the Republican Party, they are not sizable enough to form a viable base going forward. In 2019, they formed just 40 percent of the population — down from 60 percent in 1990 — and are expected to continue to decrease both numerically and as a percentage of the population. Hedging bets on a shrinking constituency while settling for losses among cohorts of the population that are growing will only make each successive presidential election a steeper uphill battle for Republicans.

It is worth mentioning again that of the past three elections going back to 2000 in which the Republican candidate won the presidency, only in one — 2004 — did he carry the popular vote. While losing the popular vote but winning the electoral college is an entirely legitimate path to victory, Republicans should not be satisfied with letting this become the party’s modus operandi. Without the popular vote, even the most decisive electoral college victory leaves the winning Republican candidate with a weak mandate to enact the conservative policies this country so desperately needs. Without neglecting white working-class voters, the GOP must find a way to rejuvenate its appeal among white college graduates and people of color, lest it become relegated to the position of a permanent minority.

Who can accomplish this feat for the GOP in 2024? Not Trump, if the 2020 results are any indicator. Nor Donald Trump Jr., who somehow exceeds his father in boorishness and divisiveness. A good option might be Nikki Haley, a staunch conservative with an immigrant background — not to mention a woman of color  — who could appeal to voters of diverse racial and socioeconomic backgrounds. As the popular governor of South Carolina, a state with a relatively blue-collar, less-educated population, she knows how to speak to working-class voters. She also has a conciliatory side — in 2015, after the Charleston church shooting, she called for the removal of the Confederate flag from South Carolina’s statehouse grounds. If she were to run, she could capitalize on her background as a Trump administration alum (she served as his UN ambassador in 2017–18) to keep his coalition intact, while also potentially winning back Never Trumpers and other wayward Republican voters who went blue in 2016 and 2020.

Anyone who works in marketing will tell you that perception matters as much as reality, and presentation as much as the product itself. Much of Trump’s record has been great, but his tone, rhetoric, and personal character often bely his substantive successes. If the GOP wants to win in 2024 and beyond, it will need to find a candidate and message that appeal both to Trump’s largely white, working-class coalition, and to the educated and minority voters who will increasingly dominate the American political landscape. Besides Nikki Haley, other potential candidates who might fit this mold include Ted Cruz, Tim Scott, Josh Hawley, Tom Cotton, and Ron DeSantis. Republicans like Marco Rubio or Charlie Baker would probably represent too much of an establishmentarian reversion, while potential nominees like Kirsti Noem, Mike Pence, Tucker Carlson, Trump Jr., and of course, Trump himself, would lead the party further down the same failed path as in 2020. Finding a candidate who can bridge the gap between both wings of the GOP will be difficult but necessary if the party is to remain viable in the future.

Trump’s loss aside, the 2020 results as a whole were fairly rosy for Republicans. Of the seven Senate races classified as “tossups” by the New York Times, five so far have been won by Republican incumbents, and polling for the remaining two (runoffs in Georgia) looks favorable for the GOP as well. Republicans also flipped 11 House seats, cutting Democrats’ margin of control in half. Remarkably, all 11 GOP candidates who defeated Democratic incumbents were women or minorities, as are half of the roughly 40 incoming Republican House freshmen. Many of them were recruited by Elevate PAC, led by Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, who herself is a paragon of exactly the kind of Republican the party needs. A small-government, pro-life Millennial woman, she combines staunch conservatism with an independent streak, breaking ranks with Trump and other Republicans on issues like climate change, immigration, and net neutrality. If Stefanik is a bellwether for Republicans of the future, there is cause to be hopeful about the party’s prospects in congressional, Senate, and presidential races going forward.

But the GOP cannot take this for granted. With the exodus of college-educated, suburban, and white female voters from the party since 2016, it may already be too late for the Republican electorate to shed — or at least mitigate — its Trumpist tendencies by 2024. But then again, maybe some of them will return, empowered by Trump’s loss in 2020. Either way, it won’t be too hard to find a 2024 candidate with less baggage and better rhetorical skills than our 45th president — so long as Trump himself is not the nominee. If he is, the change the party needs will have to wait until 2028. Whether it is in four years or eight, whichever Republican nominee comes after Trump will have a difficult task ahead of them — they must keep Trump’s coalition (working-class whites) energized and loyal, bring the voters Trump lost (white women and college grads) back into the fold, and make significant gains among fast-growing Democratic constituencies (blacks, Hispanics, and Asians). To do so will require walking a thin line, and Republicans cannot afford to gamble on another wild card nominee à la Trump. What the GOP needs is a candidate whose moral qualities align with their public stances; a candidate who can energize voters without peddling untruths and conspiracy theories; a candidate whose persona is suited to the dignity of the presidency. Anything else would be a death wish for the party and a disservice to the country.

A Thanksgiving Wish to my Students

As our last classes before the Thanksgiving break approach, I want to wish each of you and your families, just as I do each year, a very happy holiday.

But this year, particularly in view of the violence, intolerance, and endeavors to disown our nation’s history, exemplified  by denunciations of our remarkably successful constitutional regime of freedom, and the tearing down (or proposed tearing down) of monuments to our country’s greatest heroes – including, incredibly, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and even Frederick Douglass! -  I wanted to add a special wish. As you will recall, 2020 marks the four-hundredth anniversary of the landing of the Pilgrims on our shores – the event that truly launched the American experiment in self-government. Yet, amazingly, this event is being marked to my knowledge by no national commemoration whatsoever. Indeed, the trustees of Plymouth Plantation, the living-history museum that has explained the Pilgrim settlement to schoolchildren and tourists since 1947, have recently announced a change in the institution’s name to “Plimoth Patuxet” (the Wampanoag name for the location) as a way of signifying, in effect, that we should think of the spot as still really belonging to the “native Americans” who previously inhabited it. The trustees are apparently signaling that they are embarrassed by the charge it has fallen on them to uphold. Instead, as many of you will be aware, the New York Times has launched a “1619 Project” for inclusion in schools across the nation, designed to teach children that our “real” national beginning occurred when a Spanish pirate ship landed the first cargo of African slaves in what was later to become the colony and then state of Georgia (but before that state, let alone the United States, had any actual existence).  

According to the original description of the 1619 project (since slightly modified on its website, in response to a welter of denunciation of its factual inaccuracies by a bevy of distinguished historians, most of them political liberals), its purpose was to demonstrate that America’s purpose, from the outset, was chiefly to promote the institution of slavery; that the American Revolution was fought mainly for that purpose; that the Constitution itself (contrary to the vehement denials of Lincoln and Douglass) was a “slave document”; and hence (we are led to infer) that Americans today have nothing to be proud of, but instead should either be atoning for our supposed “white privilege” (whatever our economic status, ethnic background, or when we or our ancestors first arrived in this country) or else demanding “reparations” for the oppression that the United States has inflicted, and continues to inflict, on members of certain “minority” groups (African-Americans, so-called “indigenous” people, and even Latinos – nearly all of whose ancestors, if not they themselves, arrived in the U.S. long after the end of slavery and approaching six decades after the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act). Joining in the trend of self-flagellation not merely for the sins of our country, but for those of the European explorers who first discovered the Americas in a manner that paved the way for their lasting settlement, Holy Cross’s administration this past fall announced that the holiday previously celebrated as Columbus Day would henceforth be commemorated as “Indigenous Peoples Day.”

As anyone with the barest modicum of historical knowledge should be aware, slavery, and its attendant horrors, was anything but an American, or Western, invention. As the scholar Robert Royal has pointed out, it has been “a universal in human history from ancient Greece and Mesopotamia to China, classical Greece and Rome, as well as Russia, the scattered kingdoms of Central Africa, the First Nations of Canada, various other North American tribes, the great empires of the Mayans and Aztecs, the Ottoman Empire,” as well as the antebellum American South. The vast majority of African slaves brought to the Americas were shipped to Iberian South America, not the land that later became the United States. What distinguished America from this worldwide tradition was not the practice of slavery, but rather our political founding in a declaration that all human beings are naturally equal, and equally entitled to the protection of their rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness – which became the ground of the world’s great movement to abolish that evil institution. (The English abolition movement, which also began in the late 18th century, affected far fewer people. And it was the English, after all, who first planted the institution on our shores – against the strenuous efforts of the great liberal philosopher and statesman, John Locke, who inspired the Declaration of Independence, to combat its spread.)

As for lamenting the European conquest of the Americas from their previous “indigenous” inhabitants, this condemnation rests in part on a myth that those inhabitants shared a sort of Edenic, pacific, nature-respecting existence prior to the arrival of the new settlers. This impression is utterly false. Long before the Pilgrims’ arrival, local Indian tribes, as Royal observes, practiced “continual tribal warfare with … scalpings, kidnappings, and torture of captives.” And in 1776, the very year in which Americans declared their independence, he adds, “the Lakota Sioux conquered the Black Hills, where Mount Rushmore” (the site of anti-American demonstrations this past year) is located, “wiped out the local Cheyenne who held it previously,” and who themselves had conquered it from the Kiowa. Slavery, too, “was a part of Native American traditions, both before and after” the European arrival, with at least 4,000 black slaves perishing along the Trail of Tears, the series of forced migrations of Indian tribes from the American Southeast to the West during the early nineteenth century. (See Royal, “Discovering Columbus,” Claremont Review of Books, Fall, 2020).

Respect for nature? When our daughters were young, while on a tour of American and Canadian national parks out west, we stopped off (on the enthusiastic recommendation of a multiculturalist from our hometown) at the “Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump,” a UNESCO World Heritage site in Alberta – where we were invited to admire the “wisdom” of Native Americans who had devised means of tricking huge herds of buffalo (with the aid of fires lit at night) into jumping over a cliff, to their death, so as to harvest their remains. Imagine how many carcasses of those large, if not particularly intelligent, mammals must have been wasted! (By contrast, the Chicago stockyards at their worst seem far less cruel – and certainly less wasteful.) Finally, it must be remembered that the great urban civilizations of middle and South America, such as the Incas and Aztecs, were  built, Royal observes, “by conquest over neighboring peoples, and maintained by human sacrifice to bloodthirsty gods who required human blood” to maintain the world’s “equilibrium.” (The Spanish explorer Cortes was able to defeat the Aztecs with only a small number of troops because he was aided by members of other indigenous peoples desperate to escape the sacrifices imposed upon them by their native, imperial overlords.)

But enough of the relatively remote past. Most black people aside, the vast majority of present-day Americans who are not themselves immigrants are descended from immigrants (including, in my case, my father, and my mother’s family) who came to this country seeking liberation from the oppression they endured abroad, and the opportunity to advance in life that was denied them by the oppressive rule of the Russian Tsars, the British in Ireland, French aristocrats, Turks oppressing Armenians, Chinese and Japanese dynasts, and so on. In recent decades, their ranks have been swelled by millions of refugees and asylum-seekers (both legal and illegal) from the Spanish-speaking nations south of our borders – as well as many thousands from the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa, India, and the West Indies. To lament the European conquest of the Americas is to wish that all of our immigrant forebears had remained in the often-crowded “old countries” whence they came, and that we ourselves (assuming that our antecedents had survived such events as the Nazi Holocaust and the mass murders perpetrated by villainous despots like Stalin and Mao) had inherited the mantle of serfdom and permanent poverty. (It is also to lament the development of the single world power without whose efforts the Nazis’ and Communists’ pursuit of world domination might well have succeeded.) 

It will serve no purpose to stress here a fact that everyone knows: the continued existence in our country of large inequalities in income, education, opportunity to advance, and susceptibility to criminal violence among different racial and ethnic groups. The reasons for these inequalities are complex, but they are not typically the result of legal obstacles placed in the way of people’s advancement. The causes, identified by numerous highly competent social scientists, include the continuing rise in single-parent families (a growing problem among “whites,” but much more serve among blacks and Latinos), which provide a poor environment for children, and one in which criminal gangs flourish; poor public schools, suffering from a failure to enforce discipline, and teachers’ unions that make it almost impossible to dismiss incompetent or unmotivated teachers, while doing their best to block the establishment of charter schools, and programs of vouchers that enable kids from poor families to attend private and parochial schools; minimum-wage laws that make it harder for young people to obtain entry-level jobs (along with other market restrictions, such as requiring individuals engaging in personal-care activities like hair braiding and shampooing to obtain special licenses), and insufficient policing (polls show that a majority of African-Americans do not favor “defunding the police,” but rather wish the police presence in their neighborhoods to be either maintained at present levels of increased). 

Unfortunately, so long as considerable differences in crime rates among people of different racial appearance, or living in different neighborhoods, remain, it will also be the case that perfectly law-abiding members of certain minorities will continue to suffer the indignity of being stopped by police for the offense of “driving while black,” or (in cities which still allow this) being randomly stopped on suspicion of carrying illegal firearms. Nonetheless, politically incorrect as it is to point this out, the vast majority of violent deaths of African-Americans come at the hands not of the police, but of other black people. (See, for instance, Jason Riley, False Black Power, and Heather MacDonald, The War against Cops).

Regardless of  difference of race or ethnicity or religion, the United States continues to offer greater opportunities for poor people of all backgrounds to advance in life than any other nation on earth. The proof of this is the desperate quest of so many people from around the world to enter this country. Notably, black people from countries like Ghana, Somalia, and Nigeria along with the Caribbean, and Latinos from many impoverished and poorly governed nations to our south (poor government being the chief cause of impoverishment)  continue to migrate here, and often to prosper. (My weekly Sunday tennis partner is a dark-skinned woman in her early 30’s from the West Indies, who attended Xavier University, a “historically black” college in New Orleans, earning a degree in biology; then moved to Massachusetts to take a significant job with a biotech firm, while at the same time completing an M.A. at Worcester State University. She is a bundle of energy and cheer, as well as a devoted daughter to her single mom. She will go far in life.) If America is a racist country, why are so many poor people of color seeking to enter rather than flee it?

So as to avoid disclosing family confidences, I have not spoken here of my remarkable biracial grandchildren and their parents, on one side, or of my other impressive family of Orthodox Jews on the other. Who in history, prior to the founding of the United States, could have imagined a country in which a single family, as religiously, ethnically, and racially diverse as mine, whose forebears include slaves and also Jews who escaped  Tsarist oppression (the latter having left behind relatives who refused to emigrate and  who were later wiped out by the Nazis), could flourish as we have done?

Contrary to those aiming to achieve prominence, wealth, and even public office by spewing race hatred. America is not a country best characterized today as suffering either from widespread racism or “White Fragility.” As the distinguished African-American scholar Shelby Steele recently observed, in contrast to the claims of the “grievance industry,” since the era when the Civil Rights Act was enacted (1964), the threat of anti-black racism has greatly receded, to the point that “we blacks aren’t much victimized any more. Today we are free to build a life that won’t be stunted by racial persecution. Today we are far more likely to encounter racial preferences than racial discrimination. Moreover, we live in a society that generally shows us goodwill – a society that has isolated racism as its most unforgivable sin” (“The Inauthenticity Behind Black Lives Matter,” Wall Street Journal, November 23, 2020, A17). And as journalist Heather MacDonald, who was allowed to address a Holy Cross audience last fall (limited by a black student organization who had occupied half the seats in auditorium, departing after five minutes with assurance from the Administration that none of the students waiting outside to enter the hall would be allowed to take their places) pointed out, students at colleges like Holy Cross, whatever their race or economic status, are among the most privileged people on earth. The College provides a devoted faculty, extensive library resources, remarkable athletic facilities, and numerous staff aiming to help all of you succeed. Even more than most Americans, you have every reason to be grateful. 

But beyond your particular privileges, I beg you, above all, to celebrate not only a happy Thanksgiving, but a thankful one, expressing your appreciation at least by memory to all those who have given their lives – often literally, on the field of battle – to secure you and your families, along with the rest of your fellow  Americans, the blessings of liberty. Attend not to the slanders hurled at our country by race-baiters and demagogues like the Times editors, “the Squad,” and Ta-Nehisi Coates (who named his son, the addressee of his 2015 book Between the World and Me, after a late 19th-century African leader who according to Royal “captured and sold black slaves” in order to finance his empire-building). Contrary to Coates and the Times editors, the great African-American abolitionist expressly denied (just as Lincoln did), in his justly renowned 1852 Fourth of July Oration, that the American Constitution was designed to support slavery (since the words “slave” and “slavery” appear nowhere in it), but rather “a GLORIOUS LIBERTY DOCUMENT” (his caps), whose full promise only remained to be fulfilled. And back in 1849, in his essay “The Destiny of Colored Americans,” Douglass refuted those who would separate black people (once emancipated) from their proper place in the American polity, calling this nation – rather than Africa – “the abode of civilization and religion.” Those like ex-quarterback Colin Kaepernick who express their contempt for our country’s flag and all it represents while raking in millions merely for playing a game and turning themselves into media celebrities are guilty of the extremest form of ingratitude. Douglass, a man of enormous pride as well as heroic achievement, would I am confident have had nothing but scorn for such behavior.

Please, this Thanksgiving, be thankful. In the future, do your best to acquaint yourselves with the thought and achievements of America’s greatest thinkers and statesmen – and of the liberal political philosophers who inspired them. And – when you find the time – please watch Ken Burns’s marvelous documentary film series “The War,” which originally appeared on PBS a decade or so ago. It depicts  the inestimable sacrifices that ordinary Americans made, both on the battlefield and at home, to keep our country, and the world, free during the Second World War.  

Speaking for myself and my wife, I  can never cease to be grateful that her and my respective fathers and grandparents, who possessed practically no material wealth at the time, were allowed to enter this country and become citizens, a century and more ago. Like so many other immigrant parents, they worked like hell so that we and our siblings and children could attend college and graduate school and enjoy opportunities that are unsurpassed in the world, and are of a kind unrivaled by anything that anyone but  kings, aristocrats, and despots might have enjoyed in the world’s previous history. (And yes, our parents and grandparents, along with other Jews, lived amid a good deal of anti-Semitic discrimination and prejudice in this country through at least the first half of the twentieth century: for instance, it was practically impossible for a Jew to be hired as a college professor nationwide until sometime in the 1950s. And in Worcester, a surprisingly backward place, a remnant of such discriminatory attitudes and practices  towards Jews and other “minorities” in secondary areas of life had only recently eroded by the time my wife and I arrived in the mid-‘70s. But that never reduced our parents’ or our own appreciation of America’s greatness and the justness of its fundamental political principles, or the fundamental goodness of its people.)

Again, I wish you and your families a happy, blessed, and thankful Thanksgiving.

Demographics Are Not Destiny for The Democrats

For decades, pundits predicted that the Republican Party will eventually wither and die due to changing demographics. This thesis was the basis for a highly regarded book, The Emerging Democratic Majority. The authors of this book posited that the Democratic hold upon racial and religious minorities, immigrants, college educated voters, and women would drive the Democrats to a permanent progressive majority. While there has been some evidence in the past that substantiated this theory, this month’s results have shown that changing demographics and high voter turnout in minority communities will not always benefit the Democratic Party and their candidates. 

Even after countless allegations of racism, President Trump performed better in minority communities than any Republican presidential candidate has in decades: according to the exit polls conducted by Edison Research, President Trump received the highest share of the minority vote since Richard Nixon’s first campaign in 1960. This claim is further supported by the Cooperative Congressional Election Study, an online academic study that includes over fifty thousand likely voters. According to their findings, which actually underestimated Trump’s levels of support, President Trump would perform eleven percent better amongst the Latino community and three percent better amongst the Black community. 

President Trump’s increased levels of support among minorities is excellent news for the future of the Republican Party, and if the trends continue in this direction, they are ominous for Democratic chances in our rapidly diversifying nation. However, Republicans should not take these voters for granted. In fact, they are the least stable component of the Republican coalition. If the Republicans go back to the establishmentarian politics expressed by George Bush, Mitt Romney, and now Nikki Haley, they will lose these voters. Many of these voters are first-time voters who specifically registered to vote for Donald Trump and against elements within the Democratic Party that are moving to the far-left especially on abortion and energy issues. They voted for the economic nationalism championed by Trump and against the growing left-wing of the Democratic Party. 

An example of this realignment is the small city of Central Falls, Rhode Island where President Trump performed nineteen and half percentage points better than he did in 2016. Central Falls is a poor, densely populated, immigrant-heavy community that is primarily composed of Puerto Ricans, Guatamelans, and Colombians. These are not your stereotypical Trump supporters, not even your stereotypical Latino Trump supporters. However, Trump did better in this community (which was ravaged by the coronavirus) than any Republican since 1988, when it had a significantly lower Latino population. James Diossa, the Mayor of Central Falls and a young, progressive Latino, has attributed this massive shift to controversy over abortion and increasing levels of support for socialism in the Democratic Party. 

This massive vote shift is not just happening in Central Falls. It is in every corner of our nation. From Lawrence, Massachusetts-- where there was a twenty-one point shift towards Trump-- to the South Bronx, to Doral, Florida,--the home of the Venezuelan exile community which Clinton won by forty points in 2016 and Trump won by a single point this year—and to the Rio Grande Valley in South Texas. In fact, the swing was nowhere as pronounced than in South Texas. 

The Rio Grande Valley and South Texas have historically been the most Democratic areas of the Lone Star State. Many of these counties have never voted for a Republican. President Obama carried this area with over seventy percent of the votes, and in 2016, Donald Trump even underperformed Romney’s drastically bad numbers. However, something changed in the last four years, and it does not seem to be a historical aberration. There seems to be a beginning of a long-term trend towards the Republican Party in the most Hispanic area of the nation. For example, in the 2018 Texas Senatorial Election, Beto O’Rourke massively overperformed Hillary Clinton in every suburban area of the state and achieved the highest Democratic vote shares in many suburban counties since the days of the Solid South. However, he massively underperformed Clinton in the Hispanic counties of South Texas. In Maverick County, where over ninety percent of people speak Spanish at home, O’Rourke underperformed Clinton by over ten percent. This pattern is evident throughout the entire Rio Grande Valley—where he underperformed Clinton in every single county.

This trend continued and massively accelerated in the 2020 Presidential Election. Many analysts expected Trump to slightly outperform his 2016 numbers in the area due to his increased share of the Hispanic vote in the polls. However, he blew past all expectations. In 2016, Trump lost this region by about thirty-three points. This year, he only lost it by seventeen points. Going back to Maverick County, Trump improved his vote share by twenty-four percent, even when turnout increased by over twelve percent. These new voters that Democrats hoped would flip Texas blue actually voted for Trump. This pattern was found throughout the entirety of South Texas, where Trump flipped counties that are over ninety-five percent Hispanic and hadn’t voted for a Republican in over a century. Some counties had an over fifty-five percent swing in the vote that benefitted President Trump. This swing is practically unheard of and virtually impossible in politics. However, it happened, and if it continues to happen throughout the nation, it will spell disaster for the Democratic Party and the stability of their coalition. 

Donald Trump did not just increase his vote share amongst Hispanic communities. The swings in Asian communities, especially Vietnamese and Korean communities, were almost as large as the ones in Hispanic communities. For example, in Westminster, California, the home of Little Saigon and the capital of the Vietnamese diaspora in the nation, saw a twenty-three percent swing towards Trump. Similarly, Garden Grove, California, a rapidly diversifying city where less than twenty-five percent of the population is white, saw a twenty-one percent swing towards Trump. This pattern was also replicated in Black and Native American communities, especially in rural areas. 

Robeson County, North Carolina is one of the most racially diverse counties in the nation, and it is also heavily voted to elect President Trump. Robeson is approximately forty percent Native American, twenty-five percent black, thirty percent white, and the rest identify with other races or as mixed-race. This area is not stereotypical Trump territory. Before 2016, it only voted for a single Republican candidate in its entire history, however, Trump won it in 2016 by around four percent. This economically depressed area with a large minority population was perfect ground for a Trump surge, and it happened. On Election Day, Trump won Robeson County by around eighteen points, and it voted straight Republican in almost every single down-ballot race. 

The typical consensus during this election, and especially in Texas, was that higher turnout, specifically minority turnout, would dramatically benefit the left and usher in a blue wave that would wash across the nation. However, it should be obvious to anyone who has paid attention to the results that this did not happen. In fact, the unprecedented wave of minority turnout actually helped Trump. Trump improved his margins and vote share in almost every single American city including Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Miami, and Milwaukee. He also improved in minority-heavy rural areas like the Black Belt, Robeson County, and South Texas. These results show that the consensus was just wrong, and that there is a shift up and down ballot for the Party of Lincoln, Roosevelt, Eisenhower, and Trump. While Trump definitely did not win this election, he laid the groundwork for the party’s future electoral success.

It is sort of ironic that Donald Trump of all people was able to collect the highest share of the minority vote in the past sixty years of Republican electoral history. The man who ran as the antithesis of the famed 2012 Republican autopsy by campaigning on limiting immigration, law and order, and building a wall won the very voters that Republicans have been wanting for decades. If anything, it shows that the political class honestly does not understand the voters of this nation, and they really do not want to. A typical Republican would have run on increasing legal immigration and lowering cultural tensions. However, Trump, to his credit, threw out this playbook and created the least racially polarized electorate in American history. One must admit that it truly is bizarre that this happened, but it honestly should have been expected. Many of these voters are working class, culturally conservative, economically moderate, and fled from nations that have a history of popular right-wing populist caudillos and unpopular socialist leaders. It should have been obvious that Trump, who is personally more economically moderate and culturally conservative than most Republican politicians, would win these voters over. However, most prognosticators, once again, got it wrong, and if this trend of minorities towards the Republicans continues it is only bad news for the Democrats unless they can drag a sizable part of the Republican coalition into their party.