I think a few readers are missing my point about the difference between the issue of immigration and the story of immigration. Derb calls the story “flapdoodle” and that’s fine if it’s his opinion. He also says that Americans don’t typically care very much about immigration. I think he’s probably right. But so what? Let’s take racial preferences. Now, American attitudes towards racial preferences — even among blacks — are decidedly harsh. Large majorities in major polls have found that Americans of all races take a dim view to racial preferences. And yet, racial preferences are famously difficult to get rid of. Why? Because it’s very hard to win these arguments when you’re on the wrong side of the American story of ever-expanding tolerance. That story may have a very high flapdoodle quotient too, but Americans like that story. For the sake of argument you could even call it a Sorelian myth (though I don’t think it is). Every culture needs its myths.

And yet, even though it’s worse to be called “anti-black” than it is to be called “anti-immigrant,” conservatives have been much more effective fighting racial preferences than they have been at fighting illegal and legal immigration. Why is that? I can think of several reasons, chief among them a better understanding of the challenge. Conservatives take enormous pains to be clear they are not “anti-black” merely anti-quota. We have excellent black spokespeople like Ward Connerly, Shelby Steele, John McWhorter and others who can make the case for colorblindness in distinctly American terms, casting liberals as the ones with condescendingly racist attitudes.

(I’ve long thought that American politics were ripe for a Latino politician to make the restrictionist case for immigration in the same way so many conservative blacks have. After all, we know that legal immigrants get ticked-off by illegal immigration and surely third and fourth generation Mexican Americans are not delighted to be lumped in with illegal immigrants.)

Though it’s fine for discussions in the Corner, I can guarantee you that the politician who tries running for president or governor on a platform which calls the “nation of immigrants” story “flapdoodle” will go down in flames — and not just among immigrants.