(Near Portsmouth, NH) I have a mini-essay over at the Hope Street Group blog. The Hope Street Group promotes broader and fairer participation in the market economy. I share many of its underlying principles and objectives. There is, however, a potential tension between democratic or civic engagement and the Hope Street Group’s strategy. That tension involves the role of managerial expertise. Many HSG members are entrepreneurs and business executives who believe that poor management of the public sector frustrates economic opportunity. For example, some of our public school systems are adequately funded but have been managed very wastefully; and the victims are our poorest children. Importing managerial reforms from the private sector could help. Sometimes, it is very “civically engaged” Americans who stand in the way of these reforms: union leaders; school board members and their most active constituents; single-issue pressure groups; and communities that organize (for example) to preserve their own neighborhood’s schools even when enrollments have shrunk.

In my mini-essay, I alert the business folks who make up Hope Street Group that not only the market sector is innovative; there’s also innovation in civil society. Engaging citizens no longer means public meetings or local elections that are dominated by interest groups. We now have a much better repertoire of techniques and styles of engagement. And we need high-quality citizen participation to improve our institutions.

I’m traveling from Syracuse, NY to Portsmouth, NH today, by various conveyances. I’m not going to the Granite State to announce my late entrance into the presidential campaign, nor to campaign for anyone else–nor to count young voters for CIRCLE. I’m just going to attend a long-scheduled meeting. However, I wouldn’t be surprised if I bump into some political or media celebs on my way there or back to DC on Tuesday evening.

I’ve already had one brush with fame. When I was in an airport recently, I heard the following announcement: “Will Boston passenger John McCain please board immediately at gate A16. Last call for Boston passenger John McCain.” I thought: there are lots of people called John McCain. But sure enough, along came the Arizona senator, hustling, grinning, and looking a little sheepish, all by himself and carrying nothing but his briefcase.

The sober analysis by CIRCLE is here. Youth turnout rose from 3 percent of eligible young participants in 2000 to four percent in 2004, and then to eleven percent last night. [Update: we’re now saying, based on the last counts, that youth turnout rose to 13 percent: more than a three-fold increase.] The more dramatic version is what Mark Ambinder writes on The Atlantic.com: “REVOLUTION FOR CHANGE BEGINS? ON STRENGTH OF NEW CAUCUS GOERS, YOUNG VOTERS AND INDEPENDENTS…..OBAMA WINS DEMOCRATIC CAUCUSES……..”

This year should be interesting for those of us in the youth civic engagement business.

On what grounds can a principled conservative oppose immigration?

One strain of modern conservatism is explicitly Christian and fundamentalist, in the specific sense that it uses the Bible as its “foundation.” The New Testament seems a poor foundation for restrictions on immigration. The apostles are given the gift of tongues so that they may emigrate and convert everyone, everywhere. They show no respect for borders. “Then Peter opened his mouth, and said, Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons: But in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with him” (Acts 10:34-35).

Another strain is libertarian. Libertarians criticize the state for its use of force to restrain individual choice. They do not regard any state as intrinsically legitimate, but only as a tool for preserving liberty. Nothing could be more forceful than stationing agents with guns on a border to prevent individuals from moving freely across it. Immigration restrictions should be anathema to libertarians.

A third strain is free-market utilitarianism. The idea is that unrestricted markets are best for the most people–they are maximally efficient. That assumption should apply to labor markets as well as capital markets, and should therefore support free flow of people across borders. Possibly, it’s good for the median US citizen to restrict the in-flow of poor people. But if we take utilitarianism seriously, it requires the most good for the most human beings–anywhere. If we are free-market utilitarians, we should favor free immigration.

A fourth strain is Burkean–skeptical about any radical changes, especially if they are engineered by law or regulation. On Burkean grounds, opening the US to massive immigration may have been a mistake in the 1960s, but reversing that policy would be equally foolish today.

A fifth strain is communitarian/traditionalist. The most attractive version of that philosophy says: Our community may not be better than anyone else’s, but it gives our lives meaning and shapes our identities. We have the right to preserve its traditional outlines and to guide its growth. One might add that the traditional culture of some parts of America is English-speaking, Protestant, and of European origin (or of European and African origins). But that’s no argument against immigration to New York City or LA, where the local traditions revolve around diversity and migration. Nor is it obvious that the real driver of cultural change in rural America is migration across national borders. Old ways would hardly be preserved if the newcomers were sent away.

Some conservatives have already decided that a few specific issues, such as abortion, have transcendent significance. It’s not clear why they should also be opposed to immigration. In fact, new immigrants are less likely to favor abortion rights than native-born Americans are. Immigration may be a path to conservative social policy.

Finally, there’s the idea of “rule of law.” Actually, that’s a complex idea with several components, but one element surely is the principle that a clear, written law must be obeyed and enforced. As some of the anti-immigrant activists ask, “What is it about ‘illegal’ that you don’t understand?” I too am concerned whenever formal laws are massively disobeyed. This probably causes some loss of legitimate order and security; it also gives agents of the state too much discretion about when to enforce. But I’m not sure that rule of law is a specifically conservative principle. It is in tension with all the elements of modern conservatism listed above–and with many principles of modern progressive thought. I’d prefer to see it as a separate idea that has considerable merit when balanced against other values. (Of course, one way to respect the rule of law is to relax immigration regulations so that they are no longer widely disregarded by migrants and by American industry.)

I conclude that principled conservatives should not adopt an anti-immigrant posture. It’s therefore disappointing the Republican presidential candidates should be united only by their opposition to immigration.