Why, using the spectrum that’s more commonly accepted, is it “far right” to limit mass migration? Barbara Jordan was considered a left-liberal. She opposed mass immigration. Similarly, socialist Bernie Sanders warned for years against mass immigration to the U.S. because he believed (correctly, I think) that the phenomenon was lowering the wages of working class Americans.

And now that illegal immigrants are flooding leftist strongholds like New York, mainstream liberal politicians are starting to balk. (Let’s remember, too, that the main groups immigrating to the U.S. share religious views and cultural values less alien to this country than the views and values of the main groups immigrating to Europe are to those nations. Therefore, European opposition to immigration is all the more understandable.)

It’s true that in recent years most Democrats balked at meaningful restrictions on illegal immigration. But was this reluctance driven by ideology or by raw politics?

I believe it was probably the latter — the desire to (1) appeal to Hispanic voters (which the Dem position on immigration may or may not have done) and (2) the desire to transform the American electorate.

[I think it’s less complicated than that. The WaPo and other US media outlets see anything that diverges to the conservative side of progressive orthodoxy as “far right,” and they have pecuniary and political interests in painting their advocates as such. That hides the fact that the progressive orthodoxy is itself radical in nature, which has been thoroughly exposed in the post-October 7 period. — Ed]