Capitalism and Freedom

Philip Giraldi faults Michael Hayden for his about-face on torture. In response to Donald Trump’s endorsement of “enhanced interrogation tactics,” the former Air Force general and Bush administration spymaster has said that military officers can refuse to carry out orders that conflict with existing laws. Giraldi notes that Hayden was a proponent of torture during Bush’s tenure. He also supported the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping program while director of that organization. Finally, he played a role in crafting the Obama administration’s system of remotely targeting terrorists, a system that resulted in the execution of American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki without a trial. Hayden supported aggressive anti-terror tactics during his time in office. His memoir denigrates those who perceived the policies he executed as an attack on the Bill of Rights and due process of law. Criticizing Donald Trump for his views on torture, Giraldi concludes, is hypocritical of Hayden. Like other neoconservatives, the general is perturbed by Trump’s willingness to talk openly about the Iraq debacle.

Stella Morabito has commented on the pitfalls of socialism. She aptly chronicles the brutality of Stalinist Russia and socialism’s tendency to concentrate power in the hands of a small oligarchy, suppress freedom of speech, and fracture human relationships. However, her piece could have been more precise. The Soviet Union is a peculiarly appalling example of socialism. Since Russia was overwhelmingly agrarian in the early 20th century, the Bolsheviks felt that a radical elite was needed to expedite the proletarian revolution. Among socialist elites, the Bolsheviks were the most elitist. Stalin’s paranoia was also unique. Furthermore, Bernie Sanders is not advocating that the United States scrap its market economy, his “democratic socialist” label notwithstanding. He is calling for the implementation of the “Nordic model” of capitalism, which entails increased taxation and spending. Fiscal liberalism is not socialism. However, Morabito’s piece is a much needed cautionary tale for teenage revolutionaries unaware of the benefits that accompany free market capitalism.

Rich Lowry has compared Donald Trump to George Wallace. Both are populist demagogues adept at garnering media attention. Both denigrate protesters to the delight of their supporters. Both are despised by their respective party establishments. (Though he has changed his party affiliation five times since 1987, Trump now claims to be a Republican.) Finally, neither politician truly believes in the brand of populism they espoused. In the case of Wallace, the Alabama governor wanted to exploit the frustrations of Nixon’s “silent majority” amid the domestic turmoil of the 1960s. Trump has become the tribune of a white working-class that has seen its cultural and economic power evaporate in the 21st century. Neither man, writes Lowry, is worthy of trust.

Iain Murray has lambasted latter-day Luddites who wish to curtail the 21st century’s revolution in information technology. Unlike their 19th-century counterparts, writes Murray, today’s Luddites enjoy the support of an invasive government. Ridesharing apps like Uber and Lyft face protectionist legislation from entrenched taxi companies. Bitcoin is stymied by government’s monopoly over currency. Restrictions on 3D printing prevent the manufacture of firearms. Legislation, Murray writes, cannot keep pace with technology. Consequently, regulators should set limits on the time period in which new regulations are valid.

“You take the boy out of Bandera, not the other way ’round.”

Trump’s Illiberal Liberalism

Scott McConnell has advised Donald Trump about which foreign policy experts he should bring into his administration. McConnell lists a series of international relations professors who opposed the Iraq War. They are all realists, skeptical of American interventionism. All of them are renowned within international relations circles. Richard Haass, for instance, edits Foreign Affiars and Jacob Heilbrunn edits The National Interest, both prestigious journals. By incorporating such people into his cabinet, writes McConnell, Trump can deliver on his promise to rely on the “best people” to compensate for his lack of government experience. Like Patrick Buchanan and the other editors of The American Conservative, McConnell exaggerates the influence of neoconservatives within the Republican Party. Opposition to Trump comes from the damage he has done to the conservative brand and from his opposition to free trade, as well as his dovish foreign policy views.

David Marcus writes that Donald Trump cannot withstand democratic scrutiny. His reluctance to appear before protesters in Chicago shows that he is unwilling to compete in the marketplace of ideas. Freedom of speech, writes Marcus, entails competition. In order to compete, speakers must rely on the moral authority and the persuasiveness of their ideas and not resort to violence when they fail to convert their opponents. Trump’s preference for fawning audiences and the violent suppression of dissent is lacking in this regard. (In an interview with MSNBC’s Chuck Todd, Trump noted that his campaign is looking into providing legal support to the man that sucker-punched a protester at a previous rally.) His appeals to national unity notwithstanding, Trump is only willing to speak to people that already adore him.

David French has criticized Jerry Falwell, Jr.’s comparison of Donald Trump to King David. Whereas David repented for his sins, writes French, Trump luxuriates in his serial adulteries. Trump has explicitly denied ever asking God for forgiveness. These shortcomings augment the oft-repeated reasons Evangelicals have to oppose Trump, his previous support for Planned Parenthood and his misidentification of Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians foremost among them. Conservative Christians continue to flock to him. Ben Carson recently endorsed Trump, joining former Arkansas governor and prominent Baptist Mike Huckabee. Pat Robertson has embraced Trump and declared the New York liberal an inspiration to Evangelicals. The paradox of Evangelicals widely supporting Trump is the most peculiar feature of this year’s primary.

Jeffrey A. Tucker has argued that the welfare state is incompatible with diversity. Studies reveal that ethnically heterogenous nations are less committed to redistribution than homogenous states, 19th-century Germany being the paradigmatic example. Tucker notes that this statistic makes sense: People are unwilling to part with their assets if they think they are being used to help people who are not like them. The upshot, The Economist has concluded, is that liberals and conservatives must choose between inclusiveness and a vibrant welfare state. Ethnic diversity tends to undermine the latter. The correct response, argues Tucker, is classical liberalism, an ideology that encourages free market capitalism and peaceful coexistence between diverse groups of people.

“Well, I moved back to Austin to try to make a livin’…”

Turkey, Iraq, and the White Working-Class

Philip Giraldi has harangued Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s consolidation of power in Turkey. The Turkish president, writes Giraldi, is more interested in suppressing Kurdish insurgents than fighting ISIS. He suggests that Erdogan may have orchestrated a recent bombing of Turkish soldiers to justify a crackdown on Kurds. A telephone recording in 2014 had the president planning a similar “false flag” attack at the shrine of an Ottoman sultan with his intelligence chief and foreign minister. Erdogan, argues Giraldi, is a lackluster ally in the war against the Islamic State. His fanatic suppression of Kurds and saber-rattling with Russia distract from the goal of reclaiming territory taken by Sunni extremists.

Rachel Lu has reflected on the plight of working-class Americans who support Donald Trump. On the one hand, she writes, their exploitation narratives differ little from Black Lives Matter and Occupy Wall Street. To question their grievances is to identify with the privileged “establishment” that is causing their demise. On the other hand, Lu writes that white working-class resentment is indicative of larger social defects. Trump’s fixation on immigration is misleading; automation and outsourcing both pose larger threats to working-class jobs, though low-skilled immigration does exert some downward pressure on wages. However, meaningful work is lacking. Moreover, families and religious institutions are decaying. Without these three props of human happiness, white working-class men are riven by alcohol-induced liver failure and opiate addiction, as chronicled by Kevin Williamson. Lu suggests expanding jobs in much needed sectors, such as police forces, as one potential remedy. Job training in expanding industries and a renewed commitment to religious institutions are also critical to revitalizing the working-class.

Victor Davis Hanson has criticized our collective amnesia regarding the Iraq War. The poor management of the U.S. occupation from 2003 to autumn 2007, Hanson writes, alienated much of the long-standing bipartisan support that had countenanced Saddam Hussein’s overthrow. President Bill Clinton and his Secretary of State Madeleine Albright both expressed concern about Hussein’s support for terrorism and his flaunting of U.N. sanctions, going so far as to bomb Iraq in December of 1998 without prior congressional approval. When George W. Bush inherited the problem from Clinton in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, he obtained overwhelming bipartisan support from Congress to remove Hussein from power. Not all of the 23 writs approved by the House at that time pertained to weapons of mass destruction, though congressmen received independent briefings from CIA officers about the “slam dunk” case for Iraq’s possession of WMD’s. Barack Obama organized his bid for the presidency around his opposition to the invasion of Iraq, but he tempered his rhetoric when it appeared as if the surge was working. Critics of the Iraq invasion, Davis insists, are quick to forget the role they played in developing consensus about the need to remove Hussein from power.

I have never served in the military, so I can’t support Hanson’s claim that we withdrew troops too soon without eliciting rightful accusations of chicken hawkishness. However, Hanson does remind us, as my high school cross-country coach was fond of saying, “Success has a million fathers. Failure is an orphan.”

Have a good Tuesday.

 

Iraq, the Crusades, and Christian Charity

Rod Dreher has applauded Donald Trump’s confrontation with Jeb Bush at the last GOP debate. The Republican Party, he writes, is loath to acknowledge its mistakes. When it does, the apology often sounds petulant. Though Trump overstepped when he alleged that George W. Bush and his administration lied to the American people before the invasion of Iraq, this transgression is venial. Exposing the GOP’s reluctance to admit fault for major foreign policy failures is important as the party gears up to confront a Democratic nominee with her own interventionist streak. Dreher has also diagnosed the unpopularity of traditional marriage. Our society values personal choice and individual autonomy above all other considerations. Demonstrating in our own lives why this model is unsustainable, writes Dreher, is incumbent on traditional conservatives.

Bruce Frohnen has argued against the abandonment of the Crusader as a school mascot. The Christian armies that assembled in Europe between the 11th and the 13th centuries, writes Frohnen, were composed of humans. Consequently, they perpetrated the crimes that humans have always perpetrated during wartime, including rape, pillaging, and the wholesale slaughter of innocent bystanders. However, the strategic goals underlying the Crusades were defensible within the context of organized warfare. The Byzantine Empire wanted to repel from its doorstep a rival bent on violent expansion. The Catholic Church wanted to retake pilgrimage sites it lost when Muslims conquered the Levant in the 7th century. One could argue that we have a tendency to glorify and sanitize warfare, and should abandon such mascots as the Crusader and the Spartan for that reason. Viewing the Crusaders as peculiarly violent, aggressive, or immoral, however, is historically inaccurate.

Douglas E. Baker has argued that a belief in American exceptionalism is incompatible with acceptance of the Christian Gospel. Franklin Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln, among others, tried to yoke the authority of divine Scripture to the policies they pursued in office. Likewise, John Kasich responds to conservatives who critique his expansion of Medicaid as governor of Ohio with Matthew 25’s injunction to care for the less privileged. Baker’s focus is on how this tendency to reach for divine sanction leads to the idolization of the state. It is important to note that this has implications for the tone of our political discourse, too.

As we saw in the debate over Syrian refugees, liberals make much of conservatives’ purported hypocrisy in championing Christianity but not formulating policies that reflect its precepts. However, as Arthur Brooks of Syracuse University has found, conservative families are likely to give 30 percent more of their income to charity than liberal families, even though they are on average 6 percent less wealthy. Conservatives, on average, also give more blood. I refer to these metrics not as categorical proof that liberals are less charitable than conservatives. The important point is that conservatives don’t see government as a legitimate mediator for their generosity. They trust their own ability to shepherd resources charitably more than that of the government. Acknowledging this fact would make disagreements over public policy much more productive.