Isaac Chotiner at the New Yorker introduces us to an academic who thinks white people are Superior:

Amy Wax, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, is the academic who perhaps best represents the ideology of the Trump Administration’s immigration restrictionists. Wax, who began her professional life as a neurologist, and who served in the Solicitor General’s office in the late eighties and early nineties, has become known in recent years for her belief in the superiority of “Anglo-Protestant culture.”…

Last month, in a speech at the National Conservatism Conference, in Washington, D.C., Wax promoted the idea of “cultural-distance nationalism,” or the belief that “we are better off if our country is dominated numerically, demographically, politically, at least in fact if not formally, by people from the first world, from the West, than by people from countries that had failed to advance.” She went on, “Let us be candid. Europe and the first world, to which the United States belongs, remain mostly white, for now; and the third world, although mixed, contains a lot of non-white people. Embracing cultural distance, cultural-distance nationalism, means, in effect, taking the position that our country will be better off with more whites and fewer non-whites.”

“Let us be candid” – that’s academic for “This is not politically correct but.”

Also, does the US belong to Europe and the first world? Are we sure? It’s an outlier on a hell of a lot of metrics – proportion of the population locked up in prison; maternal mortality rates; infant mortality rates; proportion in poverty; levels of inequality; number of people in debt; murder rates; gun violence – and so on. Does that look very first world?

Chotiner interviewed her.

During our conversation, which has been edited for length and clarity, Wax expounded on her beliefs that people of Western origin are more scrupulous, empirical, and orderly than people of non-Western origin, and that women are less intellectual than men. She described these views as the outcome of rigorous and realistic thinking, while offering evidence that ranged from two studies by a eugenicist to personal anecdotes, several of which concerned her conviction that white people litter less than people of color.

He asked her if she was promoting cultural-distance nationalism, and she said she was.

I was basically speaking to my fellow-conservatives. I was speaking bluntly, and with elision. I was saying, “Well, if you do discuss it or you even advocate for it, people are going to say, ‘Oh, you are saying we are better off with more whites than non-whites. That is the equivalent of the position you are taking, and that is going to spook conservatives.’ ” Not knowing that there would be this limousine-liberal meltdown, I probably should have spelled out in more explicit terms that the media and people on the left are going to interpret your neutral criterion as a racial one, or at least they will be upset that it has racial effects, and you will be tarred with that.

Ah yes, limousine-liberal, because liberals are all rich and conservatives are all poor but honest. Trump for instance – never seen a limousine in his life, or even a golf cart. Did not take a golf cart while the other G7 leaders walked that one time.

The rest of the interview is just bizarre because there’s no mention of scholarship or research, it’s just Wax talking off the top of her head about trying to figure out why some countries are So Awesome and others are shitholes, and she offers up some explanations she thought up inside her own head. But the subject is an empirical one, and there is research on it. I’m pretty sure Jared Diamond brought a lot of it together in Guns, Germs and Steel and I’m also pretty sure there are syntheses for more scholarly readerships too. It’s not a subject people can figure out by just thinking about it and offering examples of what they see when they visit France.

We can make observations about this, and, frankly, every summer I do the grand tour of the upper-middle-class, cognitive élite watering holes to visit all my friends, and I notice that these are places that people love to go. They love to go and hang out with other people from the quote-unquote “same ethnicity” in nice, quasi-European, decorous, neat, clean, quiet, litter-free, beautifully maintained, orderly places. That’s where they like to go.

People like to hang out with people of the same ethnicity. Is that what you said?

Yes. Yes, they do. I mean, I was recently in the Berkshires. If you look around, it’s ninety-eight-per-cent white. Why do people go there? It’s not very vibrant. It’s not very diverse.

You think they go there to be with other white people, you mean?

Well, I don’t think they think about it that way, but that’s the result.

Is that why you go there, or that’s why you think other people go there, or both?

I go there because it’s nice.

When you asked—

That’s how we have nice things. It’s nice. We go to places that we consider nice.

There’s a funny bit where she explains how Trump has his good points.

I mean, the President is impulsive, crude, boorish. He’s indecorous. That whole indictment is absolutely right. But, on the other hand, there are many things he says and does that I think are completely consistent with our core values. He engages in locker-room boasting about grabbing women, but, the fact is, he’s a serial monogamist but at least he’s gotten married. He’s never fathered a child out of wedlock.

Chotiner delicately hints that she doesn’t actually know that, but if I’d been there I would have zeroed in on the “at least he’s gotten married” bit. Well, yes, but he was violent to Ivana and he was fucking Stormy Daniels while Melania was recovering from childbirth so, you know…how does that count as a plus, exactly?

But, anyway, he does believe in freedoms. He does believe in free speech. He does believe in democracy.

Inexplicably, Chotiner ignored that one. He what? The hell he does. He believes in free speech for himself; for everyone else it’s subject to conditions, especially the condition “how does it affect Donald Trump?” And he doesn’t believe in democracy either; he’s trying his best to suppress the vote of anyone who might not vote for him. He insults everyone in government who doesn’t kiss his ass. He insults people who don’t vote for him, he insults whole states, he insults Democrats and liberals and independents and socialists, he pretends he can make us do what he wants just by saying “I hereby order.” He loves Putin, he loves Kim, he loves the Saudis. He doesn’t in the least believe in democracy.

The University of Pennsylvania Law School is apparently embarrassed by her.