Race for the Future Excerpt

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ARACEFORTHEFUTURE How Conservatives Can Break the Liberal Monopoly on Hispanic Americans

MIKE

GONZALEZ


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Copyright 2014 by Mike Gonzalez and the Heritage Foundation

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Crown Forum, an imprint ofthe Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC,a Penguin Random House Company, New York.

www.crownpublishing.com

CROWN FORUM with colophon is a registered trademark ofRandom House LLC.

Library of Congress Cataloging- in-Publication Data is available upon request.

ISBN 978- 0-8041-3765-2eBook ISBN 978- 0-8041-3766-9

Printed in the United States of America

Book design by Lauren Dong Jacket design by Andrew S. Janik

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

First Edition


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PREFACE

By the time this book is printed, hispanics may have be-come the largest population group in California. When thatline is crossed, surely by the 2016 presidential election, His-panics will have a plurality in the Golden State, followed by non-Hispanic whites, with Asians coming in third at roughly twice thenumber of African- Americans, who will be a distant fourth. Noone group will account for more than 40 percent of the popula-tion. Every group enumerated as a distinct ethnic identity by theUS Census will be a minority in California.

California, in so many ways emblematic of America, symbolizesthe profound demographic change the nation has undergone in the

last few decades.Hispanics have been the majority in Los Angeles County forseveral years. With 9 million residents, LA County has a popula-tion greater than that of Michigan or forty other states. But unlike Michigan, which brings up Rust Belt images of failed industriesand decrepit cities, LA County is the home of the beautiful peo-ple. Beverly Hills, Pacic Palisades, and Rodeo Drive are the per-fect sun-soaked backdrops. Los Angeles houses the one industry in

which we are indisputably the leader: Hollywood, the Dream Fac-tory. The people who tell our tales and present our image back to


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2 / Mike Go nzal ez

California: the land that for many in my generation symbolizedthe American Dream: the Beach Boys, the Brady Bunch, Disney-

land, Annette Funicello. It is now more the Mexican- AmericanDream and, to a lesser extent, the Salvadoran- American Dream andthe Guatemalan- American dream.

By 2013, Hispanics accounted for 38 percent of the population,and non- Hispanic whites for 39 percent. The population statisticsfor those two groups have been going in the opposite direction ofeach other for years. Not only are Hispanic birthrates going up, but whites are also having fewer babies. Whites also are eeing Cal-ifornia in the thousands every year for Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and Texas. From 2000 to 2010, California lost 1.5 millionmore people to other states than it gained from them, reversing aninow trend that had held for decades during the heyday of Cali-fornia Dreamin.

For the vast majority of non- Hispanic white Californians, thepurpose of the ight isnt to escape minority status. Its to leavebehind the crushing taxes and the asphyxiating regulation thatis making all these Atlases shrug and refuse to keep carrying theburden.

When they escape to Texas, refugees from Californias welfarestate nd a low- tax, low-regulation booming economy in whichHispanics, again mostly of Mexican origin, are also fast approach-ing the tipping point of parity with non- Hispanic whites. They nowconstitute 38 percent of the states population, compared with 45

percent for whites, and are growing at a much faster rate. Accordingto the 2010 Census, the Hispanic population rose by a staggering42 percent in the rst decade of this century, accounting for two-thirds of the states population growth.

Texass mostly Mexican- American Hispanics have a lower un-employment rate than Californias, are more entrepreneurial, owntheir own homes at a higher rate, go to church more often, havestronger family units, and have children who perform better aca-

demically. They also vote Republican at a higher rate than Califor-nias Mexican- American Hispanics. Unsurprisingly, the Democratic


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A RACE FOR THE FUTURE / 3

Hispanics more like Californias. They are concentrating resourcesin the Lone Star State for a big voter push and have set as their

target the states Mexican- Americans. If the Democratic Party suc-ceeds at turning Texas blue, it could win every presidential electionas far as the eye can see.

The nationwide demographic change also has been eye- popping.Some 50.5 million US residents checked the box for Hispanic orLatino in the 2010 Census, accounting for 16.3 percent of a totalpopulation of 308.7 million and making the United States the sec-ond largest Hispanic country in the world after Mexico. Only ten years earlier, the Hispanic population of the United States had stoodat a mere 35.3 million. In fact, our Hispanic- origin population is 20percent larger than Spains. Hispanics are now the second largestgroup in the United States, easily edging out African- Americans, who currently account for 12.6 percent of the nations population.

Hispanics lopsidedly voted 7129 for Barack Obama in 2012 andplayed a pivotal role in such battleground states as Colorado, Ne- vada, New Mexico, and Florida. After November 2012, the conservative movement to which I belong nally began to pay attention tothe demographic question in earnest. Did this result mean that His-panics had gone permanently to the liberal side? A debate quicklyensued among conservatives about what to do as liberals rubbedtheir hands at the prospect of having a lock on the Hispanic vote.Demography is destiny became their battle cry.

But is any of that true? More important, how did America get

here? How did demography, so important in a democracy, changeso massively and so rapidly? What does a future in which one- thirdof America is Hispanic hold?

HOW WE GOT HERE

This book will try to shine a light on facets of the Hispanic pres-ence in this country that receive little attention elsewhere. It is a

book about who Hispanics are, how they got here, and whatshappened to them since their arrival. It also will focus on what


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Poverty programs, the civil rights era, and the sexual revolution,among them have meant for them. It is an in-depth look at how

liberals have achieved dominance over Hispanic voters and offersproposals for how conservatives can turn things around over thelong term. Finally, I care about Hispanics having the opportuni-ties they need to better themselves, to become upwardly mobileand make this land even better than it was when they arrived inother words, to take up the path every other immigrant group hasfollowed. The choices Hispanics make politically will affect howsuccessful they are.

Hispanics, of course, have been a permanent presence in thisland since Admiral Pedro Menendez de Aviles landed in Floridaand claimed it for Spain in 1565. Most Americans dont know thishistory, but they ought to. Three decades after Menendez, his com-patriot Don Juan de Oate arrived in the Rio Grande Valley, andthe two poles of Hispanicism in North America Florida and theGreat Southwest were established. It all happened decades before Jamestown and Plymouth Rock.

The great population bulge that is having such a deep impact onour demography and our democracy has little to do, however, with Menendez and Oate, as important as they may be.

The rapid rise in Hispanic numbers in the last half century wasnot the result of the natural growth of the Hispanic populationthat was in this country by the mid- twentieth century but mostlythe consequence of government at. It was Congress that altered

Americas demography by taking sweeping, consequential actions while blithely ignoring underlying economic forces. Congressionallegislation also created a problem we now regularly tear ourselvesapart trying to solve and one indelibly associated with Hispanics inthe public mind: illegal immigration.

It was Congress that decided in 1964 to end the successful bra-cero temporary guest worker program, which had been around fortwo decades, balancing our labor demand with Mexicos surplus

labor supply. It was also Congress that in 1965 passed the Immigra-tion and Nationality Act. After our leaders acted, the demographic


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In 1960, there were fewer than 7 million Hispanics in a countryof 150 million, mostly Mexican- Americans and accounting for less

than 4 percent of the overall US population. If their numbers hadgrown at the same pace as the rest of the country, Hispanics today would number around 15 million, not 50 million.

Illegal immigration was negligible or nonexistent in 1960, butafter Congress did the unions bidding and ended the bracero pro-gram, illegal immigrants rushed the border to ll jobs left vacantby the disappeared migrant workers. They were welcomed by will-ing US companies. Illegal immigration wasnt a problem at all, letalone one tearing the country apart, until Congress created it.

Soon after that, federal regulators decided to create Hispanics. Thats right: Hispanics, the subjects of this book, do not exist assuch before the 1970s. The term is a bureaucratic contrivance in- vented by the federal agencies to co- opt growing numbers of Mex-icans, Cubans, Puerto Ricans, Central Americans, and others intothe Great Society afrmative action programs created by the John-son administration.

How America absorbed the post- 1965 immigrant wave will bethe subject of much of this book. Since 1965, millions of peoplehave come to this country from Latin America and the Caribbeanincluding my family and meseeking freedom and the chanceto make a better life. A series of social changes, groundbreakinglegislation, and policies that changed the course of history and,many argue, may in time change Americas character have con-

spired, however, to constrain the very mobility Hispanics comehere seeking. The fact that this potent combination of related upheavals co-

incided with the start of one of the biggest demographic changes America has ever experiencedthe Hispanic upsurge means that we can properly speak of trends set on a collision course. They in-clude the following:

The establishment of a massive welfare state that, whatever itsintentions, has been very destructive to the human and social


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The breakdown of the American culture of marriage and thesense of community, particularly in working- class areas in

which Hispanics are overrepresented

The bureaucratic creation of an articial Hispanic ethnicitythat was put in place to give this new group protected status

The introduction of an alien minorities discourse that em-phasizes group differences and seeks to maintain them inplace under the banner of multiculturalism, something newand divisive in American culture

The end of the schoolhouses function as the primary institu-tion that taught the values needed to maintain a republic andthe shared knowledge necessary to grasp complex conceptsrich with cultural references

These changes accentuated and exacerbated, but did not whollycreate, cultural traits the Hispanic immigrants brought with them,including these:

An initial unfamiliarity with a unique volunteer culture thathas built American civil society

An expansive concept of the family that puts sending money

to extended family members overseas ahead of saving forneeds here in the United States such as emergencies and col-lege tuition

A process of continuous immigration, mostly in the case of Mexican- Americans, that produced a series of rst genera-tions from the 1840s to the present and thus sharpened eth-nic differences

These challenges have often combined to keep too many His-


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to an underclass status indenitely unless we act. It is immaterial whether these results are the very opposite of what most of the

architects of these changes intended; the outcomes are the same. The impact that government has had on the mobility of Hispanics, whether newly arrived or here for generations, has often been ne-farious yet often goes unexplored.

More often than not, Hispanics come to this country with astrong work ethic, intact families, and alert children ready to learn. The harsh reality is that for a not insignicant number many of theseadvantages disappear over time because the social fabric of theneighborhoods where they live has been eroded by the changes thatstarted in the 1960s.

This is why social scientists use the term downward assimilation. This means that contrary to popular belief, Hispanics are assim-ilating; the problem is that too many are assimilating downwardinto pathologies that have been created among working- class com-munities in the America of the twenty- rst century. This book isbeing published as we mark fty years since President Johnsons War on Poverty speech. Hispanics are in many ways the casualtiesof this war.

It isnt surprising that many social indicators are much worsefor Hispanics than they are for people in this country on average. The Hispanic illegitimacy rate, the most troubling of all becauseit stands upstream from most other dysfunctions, is 53 percent,much higher than the non- Hispanic white rate of 29 percent. As

with everything else, there are distinctions the rate is worse forsome nationality groups than for others but the overall trend forall Hispanic groups is not good.

All this probably helps explain why generational progress seemsto be stalling for many Hispanics, not just compared with non-Hispanic white Americans but also in contrast to previous gener-ations of immigrants. This is not what we want to see with such alarge and young demographic. Hispanics can succeed in America

today, and many, many do, but the overall trends should concern us. The national debate since the 2012 election has not been about


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the 45 million Hispanics who are here legally. Instead, the countryspent a good part of 2013 and the start of 2014 arguing over whether

to legalize 11 million people who are in the United States illegally,of whom an estimated 8 million are Hispanic. As this book went toprint, it was still unclear whether the White House and Congress would agree on a bill. Either way, it is far more vital to address thedeeper cultural issues. The ght over illegal immigration can bestbe seen as a proxy war for feelings and attitudes that lie beneath thesurface and that are linked to an evident lack of mobility amongmany Hispanics. In fact, if all politicians do is alter the legal statusof illegal immigrants and do nothing about the issues addressed inthis book, it is unlikely that the standard of living of the Hispanicpopulation will improve or that the voting patterns of Hispanics will change.

Therefore, we will leave the debate over what to do with theillegal population to the politicians and in this book concentrateinstead on Americas radically changing demography, how we mayhave hampered Hispanics upward progress through social pro-grams and cultural transformations, and what we can do differentlyin the future.

Even though we are dealing with some harsh realities, we canbroach these subjects by hitting the optimistic notes that werestruck by Jack Kemp and Ronald Reagan. If we remove the obsta-cles we have put in the way of their success, theres no reason whythe immigrants who came here from Latin America wont react the

same way as did those who came here from other parts of the world,succeeding and becoming a part of Americas mainstream, not aminority apart from it.

HISPANICS?

Before we discuss Hispanics, however, we need to know who theyreally are. In this book I will use the term Hispanic when I have no

other choice in referring to people of very different backgrounds(and even Latino, which, as I will explain, is a very silly idea), but


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cated by bureaucrats. It does not correspond to the realities of thedifferent national groups that it includes, and in Part I we will go

through who the different groups are. The use of the Spanish lan-guage by all these groups has created for outsiders the illusion thata monolithic group exists. But Hispanics dont much think of them-selves as such but rather as Cubans, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, andso forth. Its important for the reader, therefore, to understand thedifferences in backgrounds and the way they inform each groupsexperience in America.

Mexicans and Dominicans are more different from each otherthan Polish- Americans are from German- Americans. Even peo-ple as racially and geographically close as Cuban- Americans andPuerto Ricans can be as distinct from each other as Boston Irish arefrom South Carolina Scots- Irish. As anyone who knows anythingsociologically about those two groups can tell you, you dont relateto them the same way.

Consider Cubans, who are generally more conservative politi-cally and have more years of education than the other Latino groupsin this country. Cubans mostly came here for political reasons, es-caping from Fidel Castros communist dystopia, unlike Puerto Ri-cans, who are here for economic reasons and are American citizens who easily go back and forth between their island and what theycall the mainland.

Puerto Ricans can have different outlooks depending on wherethey live in the United States. Those in New York the so- called

Nuyoricanstend to be at the lower end of the income scale and vote liberal. Those in Florida, a growing cohort, more often havemanagerial jobs and occasionally pull the lever for Republicans,though they refused to do it for Romney.

And there are more: Central Americans escaping rst civil warsand now drug violence, Dominicans vying to establish an identity inthe Northeast that is neither Puerto Rican nor African- American. And Mexicans, by far the largest nationality group numerically,

the most important culturally, and the ones who have been in theUnited States the longest.


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10 / Mike Go nzal ez

their distinct realities. The reaction of our political leaders and reg-ulators to the sudden inow of Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Salvador-

ans, Cubans, and the rest was basically to say: We cant deal withthis; we need to neatly t all of you into a neat round hole.

The creation of the term Hispanic was also an attempt to t therecent immigrants into a new racial paradigm emerging in the 1960sand 1970s. Nobody bothered to ask the subjects at hand what theythought of such an experiment. If they were going to be homoge-nized, many might have opted for attempting to join the commu-nity of all Americans rather than being classied as members of anofcial minority. Given an opportunity, they would have wanted toemulate the American values of constant self- improvement, thrift,strong families, and religious observance that had produced, afterall, the prosperity and freedom that beckoned them here in therst place. It was these characteristics, which they knew as Ameri-can from watching old movies in their home countries (I say oldbecause Hollywood no longer portrays America in such virtuouslights), that in their heart of hearts they wanted to adopt. No oneimmigrates here to be balkanized into a minority and to slide intourban dysfunctions.

In other words, the rule makers blithely ignored the potentialconsequences of their actions.

THE PERFECT STORM

In Part II well deal with the perfect storm that took place whenthis large immigrant inux suddenly washed up on a country that was itself going through a vast social tornado that was tearing upnorms that had been in place for two centuries.

The new immigrants Puerto Ricans in the 50s, Cubans in the60s, and Mexicans throughout but especially after the end of thebracero program came as America was going through the civilrights struggle, the sexual revolution, the emergence of what Tom

Wolfe has aptly termed the Me Generation, the creation of a mas-sive welfare state, and profound changes in the classroom.


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would deal with Hispanics. The regulators took their cues from thechanges taking placethe decision to grant special privileges to

African- Americans to make up for past wrongs and reacted to theincoming immigrants by creating a new minority that they couldpark alongside African- AmericansHispanicseven though forthe millions coming in there were no past wrongs to remedy. His-panics soon appeared in the list of protected minorities under sev-eral federal laws, and the Equal Opportunity Commission starteddemanding that private employers report employment informationon them. Hispanics subsequently found a place as a group on theUS Census form.

Up to this point Americans hadnt divided their world betweenminorities and whites or thought in terms of a people of colorideology. Immigrants had streamed into America since before it be-came a republic. Sometimes, as in the case of Jews and Italians, theyhadnt been thought of as white at rst but then were transferredover to whiteness through a process of racialization, the term so-ciologists use to describe the creation of a racial identity where onedid not exist before.

By forcing the new Latin American immigrants into a minoritystraitjacket, the policy makers created roadblocks to assimilationinto values that created a society worthy of leaving everything be-hind to join. The public sphere, where all Americans were supposedto come together as one culture to the benet of one another andthe commonweal, became atomized to the detriment of the new-

comers and their children. Barriers, which always exist when immi-grants come to a country, were reinforced by bureaucratic labeling. The impact such unprecedented cataloging had on the Hispanic

immigrant population is rivaled only by the effects the sexual revo-lution and the new welfare state had on them. The Age of Aquariusand the Great Society continue to affect the whole country, butthe consequences they had on immigrants were magnied becauseimmigrants constitute such vulnerable groups they come not just

bereft of goods but also bereft of memories of what the countryused to be like.


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by Manhattan Institute scholar Kay Hymowitz, transformed acountry where marriage and stable families were the norm into one

in which today more marriages fail than succeed and 41 percent ofbirths take place out of wedlock. The consequences of such turmoilare sweeping and foretell much societal instability to come.

The growing national consensus of the Left and the Right in acountry where consensus doesnt happen anymore is that childrengrowing up without the benet of a mom and a dad severely under-perform those who grow up with them. This is not nger waggingor puritanism but common sense and social science. Brookings andthe Heritage Foundation dont agree on much, but we agree on this:children from broken homes will have greater cognitive difculties,drop out of college at a higher rate, and end up incarcerated moreoften.

The welfare entitlements created by President Lyndon Johnsonand enlarged by every president since, Democrat or Republican,have played a part in breaking up families or stopping people frommarrying in the rst place. They penalize couples, as a mother maysee her income drop substantially if she agrees to live with her chil-drens father.

In addition, the welfare state encourages irresponsibility by its very nature. If a man knows that he does not need to act responsiblybecause the government will step in, what is it that will keep himat home? Social conventions? Those are gone. As Charles Murraypointed out back in 1984 in Losing Ground , controlled government

experiments carried out in the late 1960s and 1970s on the impactthat the negative income tax, or welfare payments, would have onmarriage formation were conclusive: Does welfare undermine thefamily? As far as we know from the NIT experiment, it does, andthe effect is large. Murray wrote of changes in the law in 1970 thatmade it hard or impossible for the imaginary welfare recipient cou-ple Harold and Phyllis to marry and keep their benets:

From an economic point of view marriage is dumb. From a non-economic point of view, it involves him in a legal relationship


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of Phyllis and fatherhood, the 1970 rules thus provide a furtherincentive to keep the relationship off the books.

Kay Hymowitz noted that the same thing happened from a womans perspective: Enabled by welfare, the women let the menknow they could manage without them.

The Great Society thus created vast pockets of welfare depen-dency. Government inevitably tears up social and human capital inthose communities where it intrudes, as it crowds out churches andother volunteer organizations in which people came together formutual aid. Once a government agency starts to provide a benetto a community, it obviates the need for civil society to act. One ofthe big problems is that it was those volunteer organizations thatgreased social and economic mobility.

All these ills hit many of the new Hispanic immigrants wherethey livedliterally. One of the unprecedented parts of the socialtransformation of the last three decades in America is that not allcommunities have been hit the same way. The dislocations of thelast few decades have been dramatically felt at the lower incomelevels, in which order is collapsing, whereas in the upper- level com-munities the social fabric has held more or less intact.

To put it another way, one of the results of the 60s is that in America today we have increasingly a multiethnic upper- incomeclass and a multiethnic lower- income class. They live in differentneighborhoods, go to different schools, and have throughout their

lives very little interaction with each other. Mobility between theclasses, once one of the hallmarks of this country, has been reducedfor those with damaged social infrastructure.

Many Hispanics have thrived, earn high incomes, and are re- warded by living in leafy neighborhoods with good schools. As newimmigrants or the descendants of recent immigrants, Hispanics,however, are unsurprisingly overrepresented in the lowest incomequintiles, not in the stable neighborhoods with good schools.

Those Hispanics in the lowest income quintiles will be increas-ingly trapped there, along with poor African- Americans and non-


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however, are the articial barriers to integration that our institu-tions have thrown in their way.

It isnt as if the schoolhouse will level the playing eld for His-panics. Strategically used since the Founding Fathers to teach American and immigrant children civic values such as the volun-teerism and hard work that are needed for successful adult lives anda successful republic, schools gave up that role at midcentury. Goneare the texts that once taught all Americans, native or immigrant,how to be an upstanding citizen with the civic knowledge needed tohelp the republic survive.

As they taught civics to all, the schools had also taught knowl-edge that would be tacitly shared by all members of society. Schoolsin all parts of the country instilled in all Americans the same cul-tural code, derived from sources as varied as the Bible and the McGuffey Readers. Without this shared knowledge, we cant com-prehend statements that are permeated with cultural references. An oft-cited example is a news report on a cricket match. Unless you are versed in the terminology of the sport, chances are that you wont understand anything even though you would know every word. Likewise, democratic debate breaks down if we dont all un-derstand what is meant by community, the franchise, and lib-eral values.

When schools stopped teaching the same content to all Amer-icans, the nations reading comprehension levels began to fall offthe table. This hit Hispanics particularly hard. Because so many

are new to the country, the sudden halt in instruction in a unifyingculture created informational lacunae that are harming the societyat large.

These were all policies put in place if not by progressives, atleast by people in both the Republican and Democratic parties whofavored big government solutions and by policy makers and bureau-crats who get paid to always think of government involvement. Butconservatives have not been very helpful either.

Traditionally conditioned to be wary of the alien and not hav-ing been taught to recognize the value of the Hispanic culture in


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failed to pull up the welcome wagon. What has happened as a re-sult is that progressives have had a monopoly on explaining to His-

panics their vision of America. Allowing liberals free access to thehearts and minds of such a great number of people makes no sense,especially when one considers that many of the Hispanics who donot vote (and Hispanics have the lowest voting participation of allthe groups recognized by the US Census) tell pollsters that they arelargely conservative. Nobody has courted their vote!

The liberal indoctrination has been conducted through subtleand not so subtle means. Schools and social institutions controlledby the Left send out their messages mostly subliminally. Not so theUS Department of Agriculture, which with a heavy hand has evencrafted radio soap operas in Spanish to persuade Hispanics to droptheir natural resistance to being a public burden and accept foodstamps.

What this has created is a self- fullling prophecy. By letting lib-erals be the ones to integrate Latinos, conservatives in many caseshave gotten exactly the immigrant alien they feared.

SO WHAT TO DO?

The question now is how to proceed. To address these problemsand craft a long-term strategy for conservatives it is best to appealto the social sciences and think in terms of the three different typesof capital that are essential to success in America.

The rst is nancial; its the stuff in your pockets and in yourbank account as well as all the other material assets you own. His-panic immigrants, like all immigrants, come here with preciouslittle of it. That does not have to be insurmountable because in America the next two forms of capital, though not material, are stillimportant for success.

One is human capital: education and other acquired skills, as well as the traits that used to be known as character the habits

of persistence, honesty, work ethic, punctuality, thrift, and the like. These character traits we carry with ourselves across borders, and


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transmitted to us, we are in charge of them and only we can allowthem to deteriorate. Hispanic immigrants like all before them

have tended not to come with long lists of college degrees but havemade up for that with perseverance, thrift, and a strong work ethic. They self- selectedthe ones here are the ones who had the get- up-and-go spirit that is a requisite for emigration.

The third might be the most important: social capital. This lastform of capital consists of the social networks people create in theirinteractions with others: families, church associations, the BoyScouts, bowling leagues, the PTA, neighborhood sports teams, andthe like. Immigrants to America were always good at building thesenetworks, from neighborhood clubs to the Knights of Columbusto the Ancient Order of Hibernians. Social capital is the way socialscientists refer to the voluntary institutions that make America ex-ceptional.

Success in this country, more than in other advanced societies,depends on the interaction of all these forms of capital. Hispaniccommunities have some deciencies in all three that must be ad-dressed. To be sure, whites and blacks in the lower income classesalso lack these forms of capital, but because immigrants come here without money and nd themselves without an extended familynetwork, a settled tradition, or real estate they can call their own,they must busily re- create human and social capital. The differencetoday, as opposed to centuries past when the Irish, Czechs, andEast European Jews were streaming in, is that our current political

and economic systems actually discourage the virtues that lead tothe creation of the types of nonnancial capital and in their placeinstill the vices that produce entropy.

The interactions among these kinds of capital are complicated, which is one reason government programs tend to be ineffective atpromoting mobility, wrote the Heritage Foundations Stuart But-ler in a seminal National Affairs article in 2013. Distant, unwieldygovernment bureaucracies are not capable of identifying precisely

which cultural inuences need to be changed, or of changing themin ways that address local circumstances and guarantee improved


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Obviously, our political leaders must persist in the hard workof reforming our welfare system, starting by putting back in place

the mandatory work requirements that President Obama in 2012sought to waive in the welfare reform law signed by President Clin-ton in 1996. Requiring work in exchange for benets reduces theattraction of depending on government. Capping the growth of theeighty-plus means-tested welfare programs is also a must.

But we need more, because fty years of growing perverse in-centives and dependence on government have devastated entireneighborhoods and the families in them. As the author Peter Weh-ner once put it to me, What do you do, withdraw the knife andlet the wound heal by itself? In other words, we need to study andsupport institutions that work to transform neighborhoods wherethe social foundation is gone into communities that are thrivingonce again.

The questions for Part III, then, will be about building capital:How do we help Hispanics caught in the welfare trap break free ofit so that they can repair their human, social, and nancial capital? A strategy of rebuilding the three different types of capital may bethe only way to mend the damage caused by the War on Poverty,the sexual revolution, the minority rights revolution, and so forth.

What we need are ideas and policies that will help Americansof Latin American origin succeed as previous waves of immigrantshave. To achieve this we need to include all aspects of conservativecivil society (donors, social welfare groups, foundations, churches)

as well as the involvement of any Americans across the politicalspectrum who really are serious about alleviating poverty. With-out education, intact families, a savings habit, safe neighborhoods with thriving volunteer institutions, and a generally healthy civilsociety, the only way immigrants and natives can get ahead is alltoo often through crime. The gang has a strong pull because it is anaberrant form of social capital; it gives individuals that which we allneed: something greater than ourselves.

Those of us who get the importance of keeping the Hispanicfamily together and reversing the rise of illegitimacy must promote


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Americans, who often come in with strong nuclear families but watch that asset dissolve over time.

Turning to education, the struggle to give all American childrenthe instruction they need to face twenty- rst-century challengesis happily on the verge of no longer being entrapped by the Left-Right disputes that plague so many other issues in America. Theabject failure of so many of our public schools, especially in theinner city, is so clear that even Hollywood is starting to make doc-umentaries about it.

And Hispanics are indeed huge fans of school choice and charterschools, anything that will give parents the opportunity to hang onto their children and not lose them to drugs and gangs.

Saving gets little attention, but it is one of the most importantpredictors we have of whether someone will be able to make it outof the lower income quintiles and into the higher ones. The re-search shows, incidentally, that it is not a matter of how much onesaves but the fact that one has a habit of saving. Saving is also im-portant for home ownership and as a source of start- up capital forsmall businesses.

But civil society cant repair the three types of capital on its own. The majority- producing machine that liberals have erected the lastfty years is nearly in place. The only way to reverse the process isfor political leaders to rise up and make the case to Americans toHispanic Americansin the political arena. Whoever becomes theRepublican Partys presidential candidate must be able to speak this

language. The political vision must be compelling: the case must bemade that there is a way out, that communities can heal.Conservatives should see sending Hispanics a mobility message

as a grand project, something only they can do. Allowing liberals tohave a monopoly over Hispanic outreach has certainly not workedout for Hispanics. As George Will wrote in 2013, Americas lim-ited government project is at risk because the nations foundationalfaith in individualism cannot survive unless upward mobility is

a fact.Conservatives who care about the survival of this project should


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understand that Hispanics are the trophy in the philosophical con-test being waged between progressives who see a large role for gov-

ernment and conservatives who prefer a much more limited one.One state, in fact, epitomizes this conict: Texas. There a battle isbrewing pitting economic mobility against dependence on govern-ment, or what I call the Texas model versus the California one. Idevote a whole chapter to it because it is so important politically forthe rest of the country.

Will speaking in these tones persuade Hispanics to vote forRepublicans? There are no silver bullets, but lets put it this way:harsh tones and talk of self- deportation by a man who, howeverdecent he was, seemed out of touch with people like us produceda 29 percent level of support. A message that lets Hispanics knowthat conservatives understand their contributions to the making of America, specically those made by Mexican- Americans, and rec-ognize the struggles of their schools, their communities, and theirfamilies and have alternatives to offer will get political leaders afoot in the door and will over time bear fruit.

A welcoming message is an assimilationist message; therefore,its best to state up front why assimilation is desirable, why it is agoal we should not blithely consign to the dustbin of history. Amer-ica, quite simply, is unique not just in the present world but his-torically. It is, as Lincoln called it, the last, best hope of earthbecause it is humanitys rst experiment in the proposition thatmen and women are able to gather voluntarily in communities large

and small to solve a great variety of issues without government in-terference. Government here is, in fact, strictly limited to powersenumerated in the Constitution, and it is set up only to safeguardrights that men and women received from their Creator, not froma legislator or a bureaucrat. America, being of earth, cannot ex-pect to have heavenly perfection, and America hasnt been perfectalways. But the experiment has proved successful enough, attainingthe greatest freedom and prosperity for the greatest number. This

is why America attracts to its shores immigrants from all cornersand lately a lot of people like me from former Iberian colonies. This


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This is an important debate that can no longer be swept underthe nations rug. Ignoring the roots of these questions has not

helped Hispanics, even if the intent to conceal it might have beenlaudable, such as celebrating immigration or protecting Hispanicsfrom bigotry.

Some critics have claimed that Hispanics are unassimilable. This was said about the Jews, the Italians, the Poles, and manyothers before them, and so it should always set our radar buzz-ing. Hispanics are eminently assimilable. They are just looking,in the words of Leo Grebler, for assimilative opportunities. Theproblem is that our government and cultural institutions are busythrowing up barriers to integration.

It will help if all of us stop thinking of Hispanics (or Latinos)as a homogeneous, uniform group. The term has outlived its use-fulness and creates more confusion than clarity. Salvadorans camehere for very different reasons than did Puerto Ricans, behave dif-ferently, and even look different.

Continuing to ignore these issues may put at risk Americasunique construct. The blueprint under which America operatedfor its rst two hundred years saw the nation as a liberal democ-racy in which individual rights were safeguarded and everyone en- joyed equal protection under the law. In this model lets call it theFounding Fathers Model the country had a common civic cul-ture in the public sphere, where individuals voluntarily formed lit-tle platoons to solve mutual problems. Immigrants from all corners

of the planet were not immediately welcomed into these social andcivic organic groupings, but soon they or their children cracked thecode and were accepted.

Fans of a multicultural model see the Hispanic demographicbulge as the force that will nally tip the country into their model. This would be their vindication after having lost the debate be-tween assimilation and multiculturalism to the assimilationists inthe 1910s.

One reason the assimilationists won the debate back then, andcan again, is that it is their model that holds the most attraction for


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22 / Mik e Gon zal ez

economic success, yes, but theres more. The American Dream en-compasses something larger than a house in the suburbs with a two-

car garage, as it is often synthesized, or minimized, by the media. The American Dream that shines through is the whole package,the goodness of a family-oriented, civic-minded citizenry encap-sulated in the direct democracy of New England town meetings orbarn raisings across the Midwest; immigrants know that whatevertheir supposed betters in Hollywood and academia tell them, therereally is a Norman Rockwell, Frank Capra America out there, asSenator Mike Lee put it at an antipoverty conference in 2013 anation of plain ordinary kindness, and a little looking out for theother fellow, too. If given a choice, Hispanic immigrants and theirdescendants would elect to t into this America. Thats why they wecome.

This vision, properly called a dream because it is the epitomeof every working persons aspiration but one that is attainable too,has many, many advantages over the liberal alternative, which atbottom can be described as nihilist, the dictionary denition of which is the belief that traditional morals, ideas, beliefs, etc., haveno worth or value.

The question is, then, what are conservatives prepared to do?Since the Democratic Party as it is currently constituted is the agentof the welfare state, it will fall mostly to Republican policy makersto create and promote the alternative. Abdicating any responsibilityfor helping Hispanics assimilate is no longer an option. The result

of this neglect has been to allow the Left to have something close toa self-serving monopoly on the Hispanic heart and mind. Voices onthe right warning conservative politicians that theyre wasting theirtime with Hispanics because they are a lost cause, that we must justreform the welfare state and everything will fall into place, thuspreach a dangerous counsel. Harvards Robert Putnam hit the nailon the head when he admonished us that it would be ahistorical forconservatives who see themselves as the keepers of the national

ameto walk away from the challenge to social solidarity posedby Latin American immigration. Conservatives must break the


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weaker communities votes for politicians who promise even moregovernment support) not only because it would benet the Repub-

lican Party or even because it would benet Hispanics but becauseit would benet the country something conservatives care about.

As they reach out, however, conservatives should make sure theyhavent bought into the uncaring caricature of themselves that themedia have held up and thus heed the warnings of Yuval Levin at theEthics and Public Policy Center. Conservatives, he writes, oftenmake a mistake when we talk about the welfare state. We talk interms of it creating dependency. In fact, dependence is the humancondition. Everybody is utterly dependent on others. The questionis: are you dependent on people near you who are also dependent on you, and who therefore can help you develop certain kinds of habitsof responsibility, or are you dependent on a distant provider of ma-terial benets that asks nothing of you in return? The latter is notso much dependence as a kind of false independence.

At the very heart of conservatism, in fact, are community and theinterdependence on one another it brings. The man said to bethe founder of modern conservatism in the late eighteenth century,the Anglo- Irish political philosopher Edmund Burke, famouslysaid that to love the little platoon we belong to in society, is therst principle (the germ as it were) of public affections. It is the rstlink in the series by which we proceed toward a love to our country,and to mankind. This is a philosophy so much at the center of theconservative American view of the good life that Heritages presi-

dent, Jim DeMint, devoted an entire book to it in 2014. The littleplatoon is only a better term for social capital, the most importantof the three types of capital.

The welfare state will be changed only when politicians joincommunity institutions to make the case for reform to all, includ-ing Hispanics. You have to push on both fronts, politics and civilsociety, Yuval Levin told me. What we have at hand is a race for thefuture; the side that wins it will see its vision implemented. The side

that wins, wins America.But before they can convince Hispanics that the full prom-


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