Amy Wax’s America

Immigration, “cultural distance,” and the racism problem: a dark moment for American conservatism

More than two weeks after the “National Conservatism” conference held in Washington, DC as a launch party for a Trumpian intellectual movement, people are still talking about it —and nothing is causing more controversy than the talk by University of Pennsylvania law professor Amy Wax, who was accused of crossing the line into outright racism or white supremacism for suggesting that we should prefer white over non-white immigration. Or at least that’s what her critics said, while her defenders fiercely objected, saying that she was talking about the importance of maintaining American cultural norms.

The defense hasn’t rested yet. This week, two new pieces praising Wax and pushing back against the charge of racism have appeared in mainstream conservative venues: one by the president of the National Association of Scholars, Peter Wood, in the U.S. edition of the Spectator, and one by First Things senior editor and Emory University professor Mark Bauerlein in the Wall Street Journal.

The rush to embrace Wax shows that American conservatism is in a very bad place right now.

Here, I should pause to say that I know Wax — mostly from conferences and other events — and that our…