Civic Passport

For a few years now the country has been dealing with skyrocketing housing prices that were driven by a variety of factors. A large factor is that the supply of housing never actually caught back up after the Great Recession. Combined with increased demand during and after the pandemic, along with interest rates that were sent up because of inflation, pushed housing costs beyond what many are able to afford.

In the current election cycle, both candidates have (sort of) put forward policies to address the price of housing. Vice President Harris wants to incentivize the building of more housing as well as provide inducements for first time home buyers to help with costs. Former President Trump wants to deport millions of illegal immigrants because he blames housing prices on the immigrants “invading” our borders. It seems plainly obvious to me that the Vice President’s plan is much closer to actually addressing the problem of housing costs. Supply has simply not kept up with demand in any meaningful way.

Given how close the polls are, I want to stop and think about what if Trump wins. Undoubtedly, many of his supporters believe his rhetoric about illegal immigrants causing housing inflation, and even those who don’t agree, but vote for him still probably don’t have a problem with that rhetoric. If Trump wins, without any movement to actually build more housing, I’m inclined to think that people don’t actually want more housing built. There are perhaps more people that are NIMBYs (not in my backyard) than YIMBYs (Yes in my backyard) people. Perhaps, what people actually want isn’t to address problems in the country, but rather to have a scapegoat to blame the ills of the country on and take it out on said scapegoat. In this case the scapegoat being undocumented migrants coming across the southern border. Illegal immigration (and “bad” trade deals) really have become the blame for anything and everything that has gone wrong in this country. If we simply get rid of illegal immigrants and set tariffs across the board at 10-20%, then Trump will have made America great again.

Now none of this is actually true. Illegal immigrants have not caused the inflation in housing prices or in general. Illegal immigrants have not caused massive crime waves. In fact, undocumented migrants are less likely to commit crimes than native-born Americans, regardless of anecdotes people have. But we increasingly live in a society where evidence and facts don’t matter. What matters whatever our tribe says against them. Throughout history the scapegoat mechanism has been responsible for the deaths of millions of people. Rene Girard laid out a theory of the scapegoat and his theory of mimetic desire. He actually had a quite original atonement theory in Christianity where Jesus is the final scapegoat. The Jewish leaders blamed him for all their problems as did the Romans in that region. Christians should know better, and yet too often we don’t.

If our country really is in the place where so many of our fellow citizens would rather scapegoat an entire people rather than deal with facts and evidence to actually address the real situation, then we are not in a good place as a society and I fear where that will lead us. Hopefully November 5 doesn’t turn out that way.

The current state of the race is fascinating.

1. We have a strong economy, even though many don't feel that way.
2. Unemployment is near historical lows.
3. Inflation is back down to roughly where the Fed target is.  Also, short of a severe 	
recession or depression, prices are not going back to where they were before the 
recent inflation spike.
4. Gas prices have remained far below the pace of inflation.
5. Border crossings are the lowest they've been in years and violent crime has fallen 		
to historic lows.  

What is so interesting is that with all that said, solely because of the recent bout of inflation and immigration surge, if it was Nikki Haley or any other sane Republican, I’m convinced the Democrats would be getting trounced right now. But Republicans decided to nominate Trump for a third time and thus have a seriously close election on their hands. Republicans have only themselves to blame if Trump, once again, lets them down.

There is a thought exercise I have when thinking about liberalism in the classical sense. Imagine that you live in the U.S. 50 years from now, but there was an infusion of Indian immigrants and there is now a large majority Hindu population. Meanwhile the evangelical Christian numbers have shrunk to make up a small minority of the population. Now, imagine that Hindus make up a majority of the Republican party in this future and the conservatives have passed a bill that would make it illegal to farm cattle and eat beef of any sort. After all, cows are sacred and the slaughter of them is a holocaust that is offensive to the nostrils of Hindu’s and is a reflection of the truth in their religion. Does it not matter that there is a Christian contingent, amongst other groups, whose beliefs differ and say that eating beef is acceptable? It should, but not according to the Hindu majority.

Now transfer back to modern day America. Evangelicals believe just as strongly as that Hindu majority that abortion is evil in the eyes of God as well as same sex relationships. Does it not matter that there are others who do not hold to these beliefs? In a liberal society, the protection of the beliefs and rights of minorities and smaller groups is paramount. Although it would be great if, as Aaron Ross Powell argues, we could celebrate differences, at a minimum a pluralistic society requires toleration. Unlike the “Dont Tread on Me” cry, it requires us to instead advocate that the government “Don’t Tread on Anyone”. To advocate for the rights and liberties of those not strong enough to be in the majority. This thought experiment doesn’t answer every question and conflict, it does serve me well as a guiding thought. Christians should not advocate that our religious views apply to others via law because legislating morality doesn’t work, but because from the perspective of governing, politics is not the place to hash out those differences in values.

I’ve attempted to write about this before. My junior year of high school, I lost the innocent certainty in my faith I had had since childhood. At first I thought that loss of certainty was a loss of faith, but I now see that it wasn’t that. Or at least not quite so. Doubt became a constant companion of mine. I spent the next ten years trying to assuage that doubt by throwing myself headlong into the evangelical Christian practice of apologetics. Apologetics is the practice of presenting evidence or defenses of one’s faith or beliefs. I read books, listened to podcasts, took courses and more in an effort for what I thought was going to be presenting to unbelievers convincing proofs, but was actually me trying to regain the certainty I had lost in high school. Sometimes that effort was fairly benign and innocent and at other times to the point of being obnoxious towards others. I think it is likely that I felt if I could convince others that Christianity was true, then maybe that would aide in regaining my own certainty. Ten years ago, I looked back on all those years of effort, only to realize that my doubts were the same as they had been, if not more so.

In thinking through what it would mean to be certain, one can imagine two different states of mind. One is an emotional feeling of certainty that one is in the right. The other is the logical process of coming to a conclusion that cannot be doubted. Although the two can overlap, after all if something logically cannot be doubted, then a feeling of certainty should come along with that, I think most people seek to have the feeling of certainty, without the logical deduction that should rightly be a prerequisite to feeling certain. The fact is that I had the feeling of certainty growing up. Sure, I could imagine being wrong, but I saw no particular reason to think I was. It was all I knew after all. Still, I’ve never been sure what cause me to so readily doubt, but it happened anyways.

Many years after were spent trying to line up the logical end so as to regain that feeling of certainty that would rest on being able to reason to a conclusion beyond reasonable doubt. However, the ability to reason through evidence and deduction to a point of certainty would seem to defy the point of faith. After all, as the book of Hebrews says in the Christian Scriptures, faith is the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen. It is the project of the enlightenment and modernism to use the scientific method and reason to arrive at knowledge. The Christian faith comes down to us from premodern times, and while historical claims can and should be subject to scientific procedures, we are speaking of metaphysical claims that are reasoned through logical arguments that simply go beyond where science is able to go. Science may inform those arguments and discussions, but it cannot give final say. However, this means that faith and certainty are in a certain sense at odds with each other. The strength of one’s faith is not the ability to believe without having any doubts, but the ability to be faithful to God. I’m sure I will spend much more time on this in the future, but this is a broad overview on some of my thinking.

The world currently seems to be in a state of decoupling, and has been for the past several years. Free trade is seen as a deal for suckers and nationalisms of various sorts and degrees on the rise. I see this inevitably leading to a rise in conflict, which is already occurring. This is not just because we are going from a unipolar world dominated by the United States to a multipolar world with various regional powers. Indeed we might just be in a diminished unipolar world. It is also because we are reversing centuries of global integration. I’m not sure the world will ever be a completely peaceful place. I think there will always be conflict of varying degrees. But the best way found to mitigate war and conflict is through greater integration of the world and economies. Not getting rid of nations per se, but integrating closer together. True, you can end up with other forms of conflict. That surely has been part of the rise of Islamic terrorism as religious fundamentalists deal with a smaller world. However, nationalism and populism will definitely bring about conflicts similar to what we have seen in the past and it will not be good for anybody.

There has been a recent myth circulating that is counter to an earlier myth. The view is that if we integrate our economy with China then they will become more politically free as their economy becomes more free. The more recent myth is that because this didn’t happen, obviously economic interdependence was a mistake that didn’t get us anywhere but stuck with an economy with fewer jobs and the possibility of conflict anyway. I would argue though that it is not the case that we necessarily would turn China into a liberal democratic capitalist state by integrating our economies, although it is still possible that it could happen down the road. However, it is the case that integrating our economies reduces the possibilities of conflict, and by decoupling our economices we not only increase the possibilities of conflict but remove the possibility of China further liberalizing.

This is a short piece following on one that Nate Silver wrote in his substack on the growing split between liberals and leftists. His article is anchored to the Israeli-Hamas conflict that grew out of the attacks of October 7. He focuses on the leftists who support the Palestinians versus the liberals who largely support Israel. Nate uses the example to model the spectrum slightly differently as a triangle with MAGA conservatives in one corner, social justice leftists in the other corner, and liberals in the bottom corner. I think this is a fair model, but I would take it one step further, as his spectrum doesn’t include space for those who are conservatives, but not of the MAGA variety. Yes, we can get really nitpicky here, but I think there needs to be a recognized distinction between those conservatives who are all aboard the Trump train (or nationalist conservatives), as opposed to those who are anti-Trump, and embrace liberal values and principles.

My spectrum would thus resemble more of a trapezoid with the bottom corner broken into two corners, but closer together so that one is right-liberals and the other corner is left-liberals. Liberals after all share some core principles in common, but emphasize different elements. Right-liberals are more conservative socially, but still recognize that rights rest inherently in individuals, just as left-liberals do. Left-liberals are much more comfortable with market regulations and redistribution of wealth, but share with right-liberals a key commitment to free markets of varying degrees. The spectrum as it has been is growing rather long in the tooth, and if differences continue to keep emerging between left-liberals and leftists, and right-liberals and MAGA conservatives, I can see the possibility of new coalitions forming within the parties. I’m sure Nate Silver would not necessarily disagree with this model as his focus was more on the cleavages occurring within the left.