After decades of participation and reflection, here is my proposal for the most basic truth of politics: Human beings know if they are welcome at a party or not. I imagine there are good evolutionary reasons for this — an offered mastodon steak or an offered Cosmopolitan cocktail might easily be an ambush. For this reason, effective ethnic politics (and not just ethnic politics) is actually a form of hospitality: Please make yourself at home. “People don’t care how much you know,” said my old boss, the late Jack Kemp, “until they know how much you care.”

Sometimes politics really is this simple. After all the arguments about economics and assimilation, people understand if they are viewed as a threat to the predominant culture. They know if their voice is not welcome in the national chorus. And this does have implications for political philosophy. Kemp — the GOP congressman and vice presidential candidate who described himself as a “bleeding-heart conservative” — passionately believed that human beings, as a rule, are economic and social advantages, the ultimate sources of energy, creativity and wealth. This included anyone, of any background, who happened to be in front of him and smothered by his enthusiastic attentions. Kemp strongly rejected the notion — common in every generation — that the current cohort of immigrants are somehow inferior to immigrants past.