Nearly twenty years after the first publication of Mexifornia, Hanson offers an update on the continuing tragedy of illegal immigration. At the same time, he remains hopeful that our traditions of integration, assimilation, and intermarriage may yet remedy a predicament created by politicians and ideologues.

America has always been committed to the idea that citizens can work together to build a common world.  Today, three afflictions keep us from pursuing that noble ideal.  The first and most obvious affliction is identity politics, which seeks to transform America by turning politics into a religious venue of sacrificial offering.

When and where was America founded? Was it in Virginia in 1619, when a pirate ship landed a group of captive Africans at Jamestown? So asserted the New York Times in August 2019 when it announced its 1619 Project. The Times set out to transform history by tracing American institutions, culture, and prosperity to that pirate ship and the exploitation of African Americans that followed. A controversy erupted, with historians pushing back against what they say is a false narrative conjured out of racial grievance.

Most American young people, like their ancestors, harbor desires for a worthy life: a life of meaning, a life that makes sense. But they are increasingly confused about what such a life might look like, and how they might, in the present age, be able to live one.

America’s traditional values of liberty and equality have recently been overshadowed by a new ideal:  diversity. This ideal claims that group differences matter more than commonalities, personal freedom, and individual rights.

In Diversity: The Invention of a Concept, Wood told the story of how this hitchhiker on the Constitution has gained popularity since the 1970s. Diversity Rules covers what happened after Justice Sandra Day O’Connor bestowed the Supreme Court’s kiss of legitimacy on diversity in 2003. O’Connor opened the door to the promotion of identity politics, open borders, global citizenship, and the Green New Deal. More than a legal principle, diversity is a cultural edict that attempts to tell us who we are and how we should live.

Americans have never been more divided, and we’re ripe for a breakup. The bitter partisan animosities, the legislative gridlock, the growing acceptance of violence in the name of political virtue—it all invites us to think that we’d be happier were we two different countries. In all the ways that matter, save for the naked force of law, we are already two nations.

In April of 2002, a mosque in Cambridge, MA run by the Islamic Society of Boston (ISB) posted an appeal on its website: “Chechen refugee family needs temporary place to live until they complete their permanent refugee status in the US. Husband has good business knowledge, auto-mechanic experience and construction.”

This book is a running commentary, week by week, on the New England Journal of Medicine, one of the most important general medical journals in the world, during the year 2017. It demonstrates that the conclusions of many of the papers in it are not only flawed, but obviously flawed – though for lack of time, many doctors will not examine them closely and will therefore be taken as authoritative. In some cases there is the suspicion of actual corruption.