Trump Explanation to Flatter the Right

William Voegeli writes,

When Trump says political correctness cripples our ability to think, talk, and act against terrorism, he’s signaling that our response to terrorism is severely compromised by Islamophobia-phobia—the closed-minded, contrived, overwrought, unwarranted, misdirected, counterproductive fear that accurate threat assessments and adequate self-defense might hurt a Muslim’s feelings. “Public sentiment is everything,” said Lincoln of a republic’s political life, which means that those who mold public sentiment are more powerful than legislators and judges, because they make “statutes and decisions possible or impossible to be executed.” Our molders of public sentiment have made citizens more worried about accusations of bigotry than they are determined to report possible terrorism. A man working near the San Bernardino shooter’s home, according to one news account, “said he noticed a half-dozen Middle Eastern men in the area” before the attack, “but decided not to report anything since he did not wish to racially profile those people.”

The essay is long, but I recommend all of it. Along the way, Voegeli quotes Megan McArdle approvingly and refers to Bryan Caplan disparagingly.

Voegeli links Trump’s surge in popularity to the high-profile attacks by Islamic terrorists. While I believe that those helped him, and that another one could hand him the election, I am inclined to believe that he would have obtained the nomination even if those attacks had not taken place. If my guess is correct, then by seeing Trump support primarily as a reaction against political correctness, Voegeli is overly uncharitable to the left and he is overly flattering to the right.

Voegeli sees Trump as comparable to Senator Joseph McCarthy. Voegeli sees each as a champion of a good cause, which they ultimately discredit with their idiosyncratic and erratic behavior. My thoughts:

1. McCarthy’s cause was anti-Communism. His enemies complained of anti-Communist hysteria. I am so steeped in David Halberstam that I am not ready to concede that McCarthy discredited anti-Communism or to concede that the anti-Communists had it right. What discredited anti-Communism was the Vietnam War, which the anti-Communists got wrong.

2. I think that Voegeli somewhat mis-characterizes Trump’s cause. Trump does not want to slay the dragon of Islamic radicalism. In my reading, Trump’s cause is anti-cosmopolitanism. Cosmopolitans see the world through the eyes of an affluent tourist. Foreign countries are places that take Visa, with interesting foods and friendly people speaking accented English. Anti-cosmopolitans might see the world through the eyes of an American soldier sent to Iraq or Afghanistan. Foreign countries are places where barbarians lurk. Even when we succeed for a while at protecting ordinary people from these barbarians, the people are neither grateful to us nor inspired by us to keep the barbarians from returning.

The anti-cosmopolitan motto might be “Keep the U.S. out of the Middle East, and keep the Middle East out of the U.S.” The conservative establishment is heavily invested in keeping us in the Middle East. The liberal establishment is heavily invested in allowing Middle Easterners to come here. Perhaps it was inevitable that the champion of anti-cosmopolitanism was an outsider with many off-putting personality traits. But it could be that a loss by Trump will only discredit Trump, and anti-cosmopolitanism will, for better or worse, remain a force that affects American policy going forward.

17 thoughts on “Trump Explanation to Flatter the Right

  1. The anti-cosmopolitan motto might be “Keep the U.S. out of the Middle East, and keep the Middle East out of the U.S.”

    In 2006, Steve Sailer wrote:

    As I’ve been pointing out for some time now, rather than doing something simple and sensible such as increasingly disconnecting America from the chaos of the Muslim world, the Grand Strategy of the Bush Administration in the half decade since 9/11 has contradictorily consisted of

    Invade the world

    Invite the world

    In hock to the world

    The prodigious young blogger Daniel Larison similarly sums up the Bush Administration agenda as: ” Imperialism, Immigration, and Insolvency.”

    http://www.vdare.com/articles/five-years-after-911-why-did-bush-blunder

    Stripped of the “In hock” part, the characterization has become somewhat popular on the anti-establishment right, applied to many politicians, commentators, etc.

    You can actually do a nice two by two matrix of where people fall on the “invade” and “invite” axes.

    Sailer’s characterization has some of the feel of an old Joe Sobran quote:

    If you want government to intervene domestically, you’re a liberal.
    If you want government to intervene overseas, you’re conservative.
    If you want government to intervene everywhere, you’re a moderate.
    If you don’t want government to intervene anywhere, you’re an extremist.

  2. To me, the simplest explanation for Trump is a good portion of the Republican base have economically suffered the most since 2001. The voters have WAY too much of a sunny view of 1966 America and wish we had a society today that seemed more functional back in the day.

    I say the biggest problem for Republicans is the best way to create get conservative voters is get young people working, married, homeowners and having daughters/children. In the modern economy, it takes young people ~30+ years to get there.

    • That said I amazed more Hispanic leaders are getting louder here as this is their election to prove to both Parties and all Americans that belong in this nation.

    • Quite frankly, 1966 was fantastic. I’m sick of this “past that never existed” crap. It did exist. It’s right there in the numbers.

      Do you own research on marriage, crime, real wages, etc. Go look at Charles Murray’s comparison of Fishtown in 1960 vs 2010.

      Or just talk to someone from the era. I talked to a man at the 4H club museum at the state fair the other day. He grew up in the 50s, was in the navy, joined a blue collar trade. He certainly thought the 1950s were awesome, better then today, and had a museum full of evidence to prove it.

      • Being born in 1970 I did not obviously live in 1966. Of course I think a lot of today people thought graduating High School in 1966 was great but probably don’t realize the men were being drafted to go to Vietnam. And I think a lot of it cultural youth nostalgia as I tend to think the US greatest era was Later 80s through the Clinton years.

        Of course the question is what the hell happened in the 1970s?

  3. “conservative establishment is heavily invested in keeping us in the Middle East”

    I think it is both party’s establishments. They see the Gulf Arabs as a buyer of US weapons and a source of think tank donations. The Arab government leaders they meet are also likely English speaking and partly westernized unlike the ordinary Arabs US soldiers encounter.

    • Mass immigration has had big support from the Republican party and the Koch brothers as well as other conservative, political right affiliated groups.

      Hillary is considered a liberal, but she has been quite hawkish on aggressive military intervention in the middle east. Ron Paul is Republican and is more extremely isolationist.

  4. For my money, Jonathan Haidt has the most cogent explanation for Trump’s appeal (and one that flatters neither the left or right):

    http://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/07/10/when-and-why-nationalism-beats-globalism/

    I’m not finding it very easy to excerpt, but this might be a good start:

    People don’t hate others just because they have darker skin or differently shaped noses; they hate people whom they perceive as having values that are incompatible with their own, or who (they believe) engage in behaviors they find abhorrent, or whom they perceive to be a threat to something they hold dear. These moral concerns may be out of touch with reality, and they are routinely amplified by demagogues. But if we want to understand the recent rise of right-wing populist movements, then “racism” can’t be the stopping point; it must be the beginning of the inquiry.

    And this is pretty good, too:

    If this argument is correct, then it leads to a clear set of policy prescriptions for globalists. First and foremost: Think carefully about the way your country handles immigration and try to manage it in a way that is less likely to provoke an authoritarian reaction. Pay attention to three key variables: the percentage of foreign-born residents at any given time, the degree of moral difference of each incoming group, and the degree of assimilation being achieved by each group’s children.

      • It’s a good piece, but to be blunt leftist don’t care anymore because they have the numbers now. When you run any kind of likely voting patterns through the demographic picture things like the Bush coalition are finished.

        If an election or referendum does go wrong, there is always the supreme court or bureaucracy to neutralize it.

        Leftists aren’t going to learn because they don’t need to learn. They won, they imported enough clients to win a permanent majority, and they are going to take their spoils.

  5. Nothing like a war on terror to create more terrorists. Nothing like overturning a dictator to unleash barbarism beneath. As with most dichotomies, both extremes are likely misguided, intervention leading to destruction and more need for intervention and nonintervention resulting in disasters and spillovers until even greater intervention is needed. Similarly, making more enemies doesn’t increase our safety nor does welcoming them decrease our risk. It is all a matter of balance, one that needs continual adjustment, to do what we must, not what we can or cannot.

  6. ” I am so steeped in David Halberstam that I am not ready to concede that McCarthy discredited anti-Communism or to concede that the anti-Communists had it right.”

    Mr. Kling, may I introduce you to Alger Hiss? You are familiar with the Venona cables? As Ron Radosh explains, there were all sorts of Soviet spies in the U.S. (and Great Britain) but most had been discovered or shut down by the Soviets by the time Joe McCarthy came along. The problem, however, was that his wild accusations (which pre-date Vietnam by roughly 10 years) helped Americans forget about the real spies that did exist and/or give cover to the few that remained:

    https://newsrealblog.wordpress.com/2009/09/30/ron-radosh-what-conservatives-need-to-know-about-joe-mccarthy/

  7. “What discredited anti-Communism was the Vietnam War, which the anti-Communists got wrong.” <<
    NO.
    After the 1973 Paris Peace, the US left Vietnam and got its POWs back (like McCain). Then in 1975, after Dem Party Congress majority of 1974, Congress stopped aid to young, weak, ally S. Vietnam. Soon after that, Soviet supported N. Viet commies invaded and won, while in Cambodia Pol Pot commies won.
    The Dems ran away and lost the Peace.
    In Vietnam, thousands were murdered; in Cambodia, millions murdered by commies in the Killing Fields.

    How many would have to be murdered by barbarous commie Peace-violators before you'd say the anti-commies were right?

    In fact, the anti-War Dems who complained about US killing Vietnamese, didn't really care them as people, they were just "convenient victims" to be used politically, by Kerry and others. I'm utterly disgusted that, again in Iraq, there was a military based stabilized Iraq that the Dems ran away from and Lost the Peace.

    Were America to run away more in Europe, and allow Russia to attack further in non-NATO Ukraine, would that mean NATO was a failure? Not quite, but running away and losing doesn't mean fighting against evil was wrong.

    But like Ron Paul, if Trump prefers to not be there, and let them kill themselves, this is at least better than getting in, then later running away.

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