Well, it turns out that Trump isn’t fading that much. He might even be surging a little. I admit that when I hear various criticisms of him, I still respond (to myself) either that you’re not really touching him or that he might actually have a point there. His judgment that this or that beautiful woman is no longer a “10″ doesn’t hurt him among his fans. And neither does all the Fourteenth Amendment “birthright” stuff. I’m emphatically not softening on the prospects of that clown actually becoming the Republican nominee.
The new theory is that the delay of the real campaign really helps Cruz. He has the resources to survive bad performances in Iowa and New Hampshire. It’s not clear who else does. I’m not saying that Trump vs. Cruz will be the final showdown. But even if it’s, say, Trump, Kasich, Carson, and Cruz, I can see why someone would say Cruz at that point would have the advantage. I hope you know that it doesn’t please me to imagine that outcome; I really and truly think there are various disastrous tipping points that might be avoided only if we get a Republican president in 2016. Cruz would lose. And so the sooner we get to the real campaign, the better. The guys from Florida — Bush and Rubio — need to upgrade their efforts and especially their brands soon. It’s probably too late for Walker and Paul. Fiorina?
Yuval made the excellent point that some Republican has to get savvy enough to propose a genuine compromise — based on serious deliberation — on immigration. The liberal or cosmopolitan point of view has some merit; America’s greatness is, in significant measure, as a home for the homeless. But so does the populist or nationalist or, as I prefer, citizenship point of view. It’s instructive that both Sanders and Trump appeal to the latter point of view, at least some. Together, they seem to have more than half the voters with them now.
Citizenship, as I keep saying, has fallen on hard times. Libertarians confuse it with the “rent seeking” of a vested interest. There’s crony capitalism, and then there’s crony Americanism. Professors, at my college and elsewhere, say that it’s our job to prepare our students to be citizens not of the United States but of the world. ”Cosmopolitan,” of course, means being a citizen of the world. That’s okay on the level of philosophy or even the Church. But one problem among men is that “human rights” have to be secured and protected, and that’s what nations do. Someone told me today he’d be for open borders, except for criminals and terrorists. So let’s open the borders completely as soon as the criminals and terrorists — not to mention more formidable threats to our enjoyment of our rights — disappear.
“Cosmopolitan” these days often means people are basically free individuals understood as consumers and producers and nothing more. Free individuals should be able to go wherever the market leads them, and no nation should get in the way of that maximum possible mobility. I see some truth there, but only some. That’s because citizenship — or republicanism — is a real part of our freedom, a part that generates genuine privileges and admirable and indispensable responsibilities.
For most practical purposes, “global citizenship” is an illusion. While the privileges and responsibilities of being an American citizen are quite real! Where would we be without citizens willing to die for their country? And it’s the nation that makes genuine self-government possible, as the Europeans are now just starting to figure out, we hope not too late.