You know the world is getting weird when I agree (mostly) with Ross Douthat.

He doesn’t touch on it much (perhaps just for reasons of fixed column length) but as I’ve been pounding on here, desiring to live in a community of people similar to you isn’t racist. It’s just human nature. (I personally believe that this is fairly immutable, too, save large genome-level changes.)

This is apart from the neoliberal reasons of desiring high immigration, which is to depress wages and to distress society so other alterations can be made.

Yes, yes, I know — economists pull out fancy charts and graphs showing that “immigration doesn’t depress wages” and that “outsourcing jobs via NAFTA has no effect.” Have you ever examined these numbers? Really deeply looked at them, read the papers and parsed through their data analyses? I have, to the extent of my abilities.

And to a one, they are massaged to show exactly what the people directly or indirectly paying those economists’ salaries wish them to demonstrate. Economics is the most political academic field there is by far, and politics runs on money. And money directed this way distorts and corrupts everything.

But mostly agreeing with Douthat. Damn. Politics really is getting weird.