Ross has been parrying with our interlocutors very admirably, so I'll (try to) be brief.

Kerry suggests that the program advanced in Grand New Party is nationalist, and she is right. But my sense is that analytical nationalism is a pretty pervasive failing, from the perspective of the cosmopolitan libertarian, of pretty much the entire partisan landscape. That's not to say that this is thus excusable by Kerry's lights, and yet GNP is an intervention that at least gestures in the direction of engaging the political scene as it is, not necessarily as I'd like it to be.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I'll note that my own normative impulses are a mix of nationalist and cosmopolitan. For example, whenever U.S. politicians talk about renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement, I tend to agree with them -- that is, I agree that Mexico and to a lesser extent Canada were severely disadvantaged by some of its key provisions, and that they have every reason to demand redress. Or, more comprehensively, I have a hard time seeing how rising prosperity in Asia represents a threat to American prosperity. And yet I also think that the global economy grows and changes in the context of a world of strong states. The mercantilist would then go on to suggest that we cut off our nose to spite our face, i.e., to mimic the most retrograde economic policies of our supposed international "rivals." I certainly wouldn't say that. I would say, however, that maintaining a robust defense establishment is not optional in such a world. That means that a coercive apparatus designed to raise resources for the national security state is all but unavoidable. And to my mind, drawing on Michael Blake, that coercive apparatus has to be justified to those subject to its authority. Hence my Rawlsekian sympathies, which is to say my belief that the justification of state power will likely involve some degree of redistribution, some thin and effective welfare state. To be sure, the force of American coercion extends well beyond the borders of the United States -- which is one reason why I do think that the United States should act magnanimously in its relations with other states, and more importantly with individuals who do not hold U.S. passports.

Which leads me to the question of exclusion. Do we aim to exclude low-skill Latino immigrants from our nationalist vision. Well, this is thorny, and it highlights the arbitrariness of some of our categories. Ross and I place a high premium on the distinction between documented and undocumented immigrants, to use the term of art. But of course the broader normative questions apply in both cases. Why does the documented/undocumented distinction matter at all? My sense is that it matters politically because it relates tightly to question of public order and fairness. Some anti-immigration sentiment is motivated by ethnic animus. I suspect that far more is motivated by a basic befuddlement: wait a second, so ... wait, undocumented means illegal, but it's totally okay?

Some of the most impressive, admirable people I know are lawbreakers and rebels. My family is from Bangladesh, a state that is simultaneously fairly resilient and threatened with ecological collapse, and a country or ethnie that's flourished through a kind of demographic imperialism -- you'll basically find Bangladeshis wherever there's an airport, or even selling trinkets on remote Greek islands. This is a survival skill that I have a hard time condemning. It is at least one reason I do think we need a more just, humane, and sane means of regulating global migration.

When it comes to our relationship with Mexico, however, there are a lot of weighty questions. Does the present arrangement make sense through a social justice lens, given the relative weight of, say, affluent Mexicans versus Congolese? Lant Pritchett's proposal strikes me as far more coherent and normatively appealing than the status quo. One can imagine a more modest version that would also prove more politically appealing.

My own sense, and I don't want to speak for Ross here, is that our relationship with Mexico is to a very great extent a strategic relationship, one that ought to be treated as such. The United States and Mexico are deeply intertwined. Mexico exports a large slice of its population, disproportionately male, and of course some choose to work temporarily while others settle permanently. In that latter camp, many would prefer to work temporarily, yet our incoherent border enforcement policies constitute a formidable deterrent. Part of the reason Mexico exports so many Mexicans is, as Douglas Massey has argued, a function of dysfunctional credit markets, not to mention the persistent income gap. Then there is the role of patriarchy in exacerbating the family income picture for the Mexican poor, but I'll leave that aside for now. The Clinton Administration and its Republican allies argues that opening trade with Mexico would alleviate this income gap -- it would increase prosperity and thus tamp down the illegal influx. But of course Mexico was explicitly denied the policy space it would need to tackle the dislocations caused by the changing structure of its domestic economy. That was a mistake.

Remaking our bilateral relationship with Mexico is, in my view, a really high priority. So how to do it? I think we need an arrangement that combines a deeper economic relationship with accountability. Hey Mexico, the United States will help you built a more prosperous economy. In return, we ask that you help us control the flow of migration.

Why do we need to control the flow? The impact on state and local governments certainly comes to mind, and of course only the feds are empowered to do something on the strategic scale.

This is all very narrow and pragmatic, I realize, and it's no less nationalist for it. Look at my use of terms -- I am referring to the United States and Mexico as though there are coherent entities that can "relate" to each other. For better or for worse, that is the terrain in which these policies are framed.

I won't lie: I find analytical nationalism highly abstract and unconvincing at the edges myself at times, but I do think it's useful and instructive.

Then there is a deeper question about nationalism. One thing I find striking about the American left is how its self-conception is rooted in the civil rights era, which was a lot of complicated, interrelated things -- a movement built on black solidarity, but also a human rights struggle that engaged the conscience of many nonblack Americans, framed in classically liberal terms. The American left has, historically, been a liberal left.

But of course the most successful center-left movements have been social democratic movements that, implicitly and often explicitly, are straightforwardly nationalist, insofar as they are premised on a high degree of homogeneity.

So is Grand New Party an attempt to counter the liberal left from the left, through appeals to organic solidarity? This is a critique I haven't heard, exactly, and of course I don't think it's true. American nationalism is highly atypical, even among settler nationalism, perhaps because of the characterological openness of Americans. So the "solidarity" we have in mind is of the social trust variety -- for example, low crime societies tend to be happier and healthier, in part because one feels secure in engaging strangers. Our aim in framing an effective anti-crime policy is not to feed a "hysterical fear of black crime" -- rather, it is to enable exchange across our various cultural and racial barricades.

Anyone, by the way, who blames entrenched native-born poverty on Mexican laborers is wrongheaded. I certainly don't think that, say, the economists George Borjas and Lawrence Katz were doing that when they described the impact of the Mexican influx on wage dispersion.

Briefly, on gender and family structure, I'll just note my favorite statistic, which I first encountered via the great Christopher Jencks. Only one-third of Swedish fifteen-year-olds are raised in disrupted households -- that is, without both biological parents. The numbers are similarly high in France and Germany. In the United States, the number is half. This is obviously a pretty consequential number. It's worth noting that many of these intact households in Sweden are led by cohabiting couples. So clearly there are deep cultural differences at work here -- cohabitation doesn't work the same way in the United States.

Another striking Swedish fact: women are heavily concentrated in low-wage, low-skill work. Much of the paid labor done by Swedish women is in sectors that are, in the United States, dominated by household labor, i.e., non-market labor.

So what is the appropriate mix? Should all labor happen outside of the intimate household context? I tend to think that the answer is no, and that some pluralism is appropriate.

Yet here I'm the victim of a contradiction. The agenda that I care most about relates to economic inclusion, or extending the economic mainstream to include, for example, inner-city men who, by virtue of punishing effective tax rates, are deterred from legal jobs. That is, I think extending the market is crucial to their economic flourishing. Why is this not true for the work that, say, fathers and mothers (but still mostly mothers) do to raise children? And do we need a radical restructuring of gender norms?

I wouldn't say I'm neutral on this question, exactly. Though I gather most of you will find this pretty implausible, my political engagement is rooted in the sense that my mother was in various ways disadvantaged by her gender. But I also don't have a clear, patterned sense of what gender justice much look like. I've been heavily influenced by Catherine Hakim, and the view that there are deep and enduring differences among women regarding the appropriate balance between market and household labor, and that these differences are fairly robust across different political-economic regimes.

I will say that there is an interesting interconnection between the shape of the household economy and, to name but one example, migration. The explosion of outsourcing of household labor has created a voracious appetite for migrant labor in the United States. This explosion is related to human capital and tax policies pursued by the U.S. government, for reasons entirely unrelated to the consequences I have in mind. As much as I like and admire the ideal of state neutrality in these intimate arenas, it is, I fear, pretty darn unlikely.

Then, of course, there is the whole wonderful Michael Pollan riff about Earl Butz and the Nixon Administration. We live in a crazy world. That or I'm wearing crazy glasses, which is a distinct possibility.

Before I leave you, I wanted to make a quick note about a handful of British politicians who've had a massive effect on how I see the world: I highly recommend reading and following Oliver Letwin, David Willetts, Danny Kruger, and the great Tim Montgomerie. You should check them all out. Also, George Osborne gave a great speech recently about the interconnection between family breakdown and economic life that you might find provocative and engaging. They're all very attuned to these unpredictable interactions, and they've actually been elected to office. It blows my mind.