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Comment by roundandround | Hacker News Reader

I don't see how it is a criticism of a rainbow coalition that they are able to redirect people away from intolerance even if the only motivator is self interest.

This is in fact why the republic is structured as it is, should we pretend people are inherently good and switch to a simple democracy that can vote for its first genocide next week?

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In a democracy, it absolutely is a criticism of a political party that it can’t win elections among an electorate that is securely rooted in the country, and must instead rely on newcomers who will put aside their own values because of their precarious circumstances. Democracy is about allowing people to create the society they want to live in, not maximizing individual freedom from moral regulation. Using immigration to enact social change that is undesired among both the people already here and people coming here undermines democracy.

So at what point did immigration become unacceptable instead of part of our system with natural political consequences? Do we need to take the vote away from Irish Americans and re-examine whether the Know Nothings should have won elections and controlled the shape of America so that it might please the majority of white rural Americans? Of course not the portion that would be dragged behind pickups for seeming too queer or having a possibly black grandfather.. But the majority.

> In a democracy, it absolutely is a criticism of a political party that it can’t win elections among an electorate that is securely rooted in the country, and must instead rely on newcomers who will put aside their own values because of their precarious circumstances.

It can be useful to think of immigration as a species of (or perhaps just analogous to) the Monte Carlo method [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monte_Carlo_method

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