Which ones don't make sense?

> > Universities that advocate equality, discriminate against Asian-Americans in favor of African-Americans.

There is a pretty fundamental divergence between most people and the left about how to define "discrimination" (a critical thing in a multi-ethnic society). To most people, the absence of "discrimination" means race-neutrality. Most people on the left have embraced the idea that discrimination between groups can be justified to achieve more equal outcomes.

> Some people are held responsible for things that happened before they were born, and other people are not held responsible for what they are doing right now.

This is how my wife's grandmother perceives a lot of the discussion of "white privilege" and "whiteness."

> $5 billion for border security is too expensive, but $1.5 trillion for “free” health care is not.

I think there is an increasing number of people on the left don't care about defending the border. They may not be fully "open borders" but within their intellectual framework, they really can't articulate what the legitimate purpose of controlling the border would be and thus aren't willing to spend money on it.

> If you cheat to get into college you go to prison, but if you cheat to get into the country you go to college for free.

There is a major push to offer tuition-discounted or tuition-free community college to undocumented immigrants, including in Oregon. A number of states that offer tuition-free community college are extending those programs to undocumented immigrants.

Traditionally, the view was that welfare benefits should be for those here legally. There is a great discomfort about the idea of extending those benefits to people here illegally. On the left, and in much of the liberal media circle, the prevailing view is opposed to distinguishing between Americans and non-Americans in provision of welfare benefits.

> killing murderers is wrong, but killing innocent babies is right.

There is again been a real shift in how abortion is conceptualized. Roe was justified on universal principles of bodily autonomy. Today, the right to an abortion is treated as axiomatic. And increasingly, there is a push to conceptualize it as "healthcare."

My point is that we're seeing quite a major divergence in basic assumptions about society, which has become particularly acute because most in the media have embraced these new axioms while most of the rest of the country have not. Whatever logical framework causes some people to view the term "unbearable whiteness" as not a racist term is just one example of that divergence.

Moreover, because, for the left these things are increasingly axiomatic, there is no way for them to talk to my wife's grandma about these issues. If you view abortion as a balance between bodily autonomy and the developmental advancement of a fetus, you can have a discussion between someone who supports abortion and someone who doesn't. If you view abortion as "healthcare" you can't have that conversation.

Or, if you have a diluted concept of "citizenship," you can't formulate a response to why anyone would oppose free college tuition for undocumented immigrants other than "bigotry."

RBG was a fan of reopening the privileges and immunities clause (NB: in the 14th Am) jurisprudence and justifying the right to abortion via gender equality. In that light she saw Roe as a stopgap.

Whoah. There's a lot here.

Last thing first: Abortions are at their lowest rates since Roe. Abortions are health care. Frankly, the idea that people should be alarmed by a supposed reframing of abortions as health care is incoherent. People who oppose abortion should be happy that's how it's seen. I come from a very large, very Catholic family, I went to 12 years of Catholic school, my godmother aunt who has made multiple pilgrimages to Međugorje and pickets hospitals still gives me presents every year, and I will relate to you the previous conception pro-life culture had of abortion: a cosmetic convenience.

If our outlook on abortion has changed, it has empirically gotten more conservative. I agree that conservative white people are alarmed by change no matter what form it takes. But we can't reasonably discuss that here while suggesting that destabilizing conservative shifts are somehow attributable to elite left discourse.

(Also, next time you think about how people casually look at abortion as "health care", I'd ask you also to consider that Catholic organizations control huge chunks of the health care infrastructure in this country, and they deny routine medically necessary procedures and medications to women because the church has deemed them abortifacient. I'm a parent and a Catholic and I've seen this firsthand; it's a real problem in Chicago. There is more going on with the "reproductive health care" thing than you're acknowledging here.)

Moving along:

The tuition programs you're talking about build on the DACA framework. They don't reward adults who cross the border with free tuition. Instead, they seek to acknowledge that people brought here as children, a huge portion of whom have known no other life but that of an American, are for all intents and purposes American. This notion is wildly popular in the US; it gets something like 3/4 in favor in surveys. (Would it be more popular if it hadn't been set in motion by executive order? Sure. But that supports my point, which is that the concern you have about destabilization has more to do with partisan politics than it does with ideas).

One of the problems with our discourse on immigration --- surprised if you disagree --- is that we used to be proud of our inclusiveness. People don't pay enough attention to how strict European countries are about immigration. We have birthright citizenship! The left spends too much time rhetorically tearing down American institutions, and the right spends too much time tacitly conceding and expanding on the left's criticisms. That's a shift rightward.

I just don't see what health care costs have to do with border security costs. The problem with $5B for border security is that it's a joke; you can't physically secure the border with that much money. It's a grift, a jobs program for cronies and a monument for Trump. If immigration hawks were serious, their next move would have been nationwide mandatory E-Verify. But more to the point: I have trouble believing that your grandmother-in-law is really tallying up the Trump Wall against health care in the first place.

Nobody is being held responsible for things that happened before they were born. When your grandmother-in-law says that, do you ask her what, specifically, she means?