The LA Times hosts a symposium. Max Boot writes,
I want Trump to succeed as a conservative president for the good of the country. But I remain skeptical about whether this is possible for someone as unmoored and erratic as he is.
In the meantime, I can no longer support a party that doesn’t know what it stands for — and that in fact may stand for positions that I find repugnant. After a lifetime of being a Republican, I have re-registered as an independent.
I am not registered as an independent, because in Montgomery County, Maryland that would mean being disenfranchised. I am registered as a Democrat, so I can vote in the primaries, where votes have a (distant) chance of mattering.
Jonah Goldberg writes,
The Republican Party, which in many ways is at the historic height of its power, really isn’t having a crisis — but the conservative movement is. The differences between a white-nationalist, protectionist populism and the traditional conservative reverence for classical liberalism and limited government are too great to paper over indefinitely.
Suppose that you are cosmopolitan conservative. What are your choices?
a) Suddenly discover the virtues of mercantilism and strict immigration controls, sort of like a liberal economist who suddenly discovers the virtues of raising the minimum wage.
b) Try not to worry about what might become of the Republican brand, and meanwhile enjoy whatever conservative legislation gets signed and whatever sensible deregulation takes place.
c) (Continue to) distance yourself from Mr. Trump, and hope for a more cosmopolitan conservatism to make a comeback.
For me, (a) is too dishonest. Meanwhile, (c) sounds much less plausible after a Trump victory than a Trump defeat. You wind up in the same wilderness as libertarians. That leaves (b) as the only realistic alternative. Although if the cosmopolitans over-play their hand, the anti-cosmopolitans may feel like victims of a bait-and-switch.
A political party is a coalition, it’s not a think tank. There are plenty of things that I didn’t like about Max Boot’s Republican party, like the bloody and ruinous wars, but I still supported the party. Max Boot and the Hillary hawks are representative of a tiny and inconsequential group that are suddently standing on principle because they are losing power.
This is the hazard, actually, that the anti-cosmopolitans don’t get enough of what they want; but these are the things that threaten the progressives the most and cause the cosmopolitan conservatives angst about being respected by their progressive friends.
Could we dispense with the conceit that Max Boot is somehow “conservative”? A conventional progressive who favors democracy crusades in third-world hell holes is not “conservative,” no matter how long he’s voted for the Republican Party.
Maybe Arnold will fill us in sometime (instead of just assuming the answer is obvious) on the “virtues” of importing hordes of unskilled Central American peasants at precisely the same time we’re on the verge of a vast expansion of automation through I.E. Also, perhaps he could tell us what “cosmopolitan conservatives” are trying to conserve. Maybe they’re just cosmopolitans who prefer free market economics, and the “conservative” label is not really descriptive – like the absurd “liberal” label for leftists.
“I.E.” should be “A.I.”
The free flow of people and ideas.
The problem with the low-human capital immigrants is we have the worst situation. We dont have free migration we have subsidized immigration. As even Chris Matthews said on election night “the Democrats want the votes.” He did not mention the extra step as to why they are assumed to be reliable voters for democrats. That is the de facto subsidy at work.
Still, it really isn’t our big problem.
What do we – American citizens (ordinary citizens, not manufacturers of toilet paper or affluent professional women who want inexpensive child care) – get out of a “free flow” of indigent, unskilled, uneducated people who will be provided with extensive government help whether they work or not?
I guess supporting their inflow lets politically oblivious libertarians virtue-signal to their leftist associates, who still won’t give libertarian ideas a hearing. Of course, Chris Matthews was just stating the obvious – the Democrats want these people to turn the country into a one-party state.
If the presence of these people is such a great boon to whatever country they happen to live in, why are their home countries so eager to see them off?
No prize for guessing what “ideas” the “refugees” from Syria, Somalia, etc., whom Obama is stuffing into the country, are bringing with them.
The article you referred to in “Jonathan Haidt on the State of Politics”, by Scott Alexander, seems to show pretty conclusively that there isn’t much of a white nationalist movement in the US.
The left-leaning parts of the media have dredged up every nazi-esque wingnut to buttress their attacks on Trump but I haven’t seen any evidence that there is a substantial population that could be so qualified.
The internet gives everyone a mouthpiece and makes it really easy to search for extremist rhetoric. It’s simple to support any point of view with the whole internet to dredge from.
If there were a big slice of extremists, one would expect to have seen them at Trump rallies. A quick image search on Google doesn’t turn up much besides the regular posters against illegal immigrants and “Crooked Hillary”.
Conclusion: the left-leaning parts of the media have succeeded in using Trump’s campaign to taint the Republican Party, but the party itself is not as extreme as it is portrayed to be.
Apparently it’s not that easy to find images of real racists at Trump rallies, so people make their own:
http://www.snopes.com/make-america-white-again-trump/
Goldberg is right. Well, in a sense; things always get tricky with political labels that shift meaning over time and ‘movements’ the political-ideological structure of which get periodically reformulated to glue together the evolving coalition.
And the ‘conservative movement’ Goldberg is talking about is one particular reformulation that got to capture the political label and intellectual leadership of the party, matured in the Reagan era, and which gradually marginalized and pushed out a lot of dissenting currents, having deemed them either liabilities or superfluous. See George Hawley’s prescient book. The role of the post-war, anti-relativist Straussian program is something to consider as well.
But there’s been too much water under the bridge, and too many things have changed too much, so the old formula is past its sell-by date and isn’t tenable any longer. (One ccould argue it was largely responsible for this and inevitably self-defeating, but that’s a long story).
But the trouble is that many intellectuals become particularly attached and stubbornly wedded to the old vision and keep pushing the same rhetoric thinking it to be holy orthodoxy and a manifestation of timeless perfection instead of the binding narrative of a kind of continuously-renegotiated tacit bargain which must evolve and adapt to changing conditions, at least, if it wants to acutely have a shot at maintaining a hold on power.
Robin Hanson is right: this group wasn’t innovating and the old business model wasn’t working anymore. The Trump team innovated away from their inertial conceptions and prevailed, and because that unavoidably lowers the status of the old ideas and those that hew to them, we are bound to witness a lot of them venting their bitterness.
Well, I think most conservatives are taking b) approach but I do wonder how that effects the conservative name long run. In the case of a), this could be a huge pushback of conservatives, as Trump’s policies altogether could send dormant inflation over 5% fairly quickly. Trump is putting the exectuive from the steel industry on his trade board in which 20% tariffs would cost this nation a lot money for the creation of 500 to 1,000 jobs. (I don’t have the math but there are 85K steel workers so the impact would be limited.) Just think what happens to farm prices (IA, MN, WI (?)) if China and Mexico react to corn and soybean tariffs?
Also, if Trump allow Paul Ryan to pursue privativation of Medicare and Social Security that might them with a lot of WWC voters than went Trump 2016.
For a President who won with his opponents scandals hurting her campaign, Trump’s mixing his business interest with foreign policy is a terrible strategy for his Presidency. Even if there is relatively nothing there, the optics will be terrible.
Someone please tell Max Boot that there is a healthy distance between white nationalism and the simple, common-sense skepticism that fundamentalist Muslims and illiterate Guatemalan teenagers are going to be prove to be as valuable a group of immigrants as, say, European Jews fleeing fascism in the ’40’s.
I agree, except the few European Jews fleeing fascism who got here arrived in the 30s. By the 40s it was too late.
Another guy who doesn’t understand that The Tea Party and Trump are punishment OF the Republican party for people like Max Boot. Ironically, this one happens to be Max Boot.
Option d) don’t fall for the mood-affiliation with “the very serious people” who probably started out with Republicans when the Democrats were seen as more histrionic. Now that Democrats and Republicans have swapped places with Democrats siding with elites and experts, those people are switching jerseys.
Just wait and see if Trump moves toward you. Today we learn he has no interest in prosecuting Hillary, which likely puts her at even less legal jeopardy than even under Obama!
If one insists on it being anti-cosmpolitanism, then perhaps consider that maybe globalism has gone too far and too fast for people to keep up and they just want to pull the reins a little. Try taking the win.
I have a serious question that the current zeitgeist probably makes sound like snark.
Isn’t Max Boot amongst the folks who want to make a desert and call it cosmoplitanism? Who knows what Trump will do, but why is “extreme vetting” more anti-muslim than wars?
Put me in as another (b).
Okay, we know that Liberal is an ironic use of the word, but this election has revealed something of the psychosis of both parties. Goldberg really believes “the traditional conservative reverence for classical liberalism and limited government” is a real thing. Charles Murray did a post at AEI to illustrate that excepting Reagan, Republican presidents have done nothing to slow government spending or the growth of regulations in the last 60 years. And both parties are illiberal parties of special interests when push comes to shove. And both have become champions of socialism of their favored variety.
“The champions of socialism call themselves progressives, but they recommend a system which is characterized by rigid observance of routine and by a resistance to every kind of improvement. They call themselves liberals, but they are intent upon abolishing liberty. They call themselves democrats, but they yearn for dictatorship. They call themselves revolutionaries, but they want to make the government omnipotent. They promise the blessings of the Garden of Eden, but they plan to transform the world into a gigantic post office. Every man but one a subordinate clerk in a bureau, what an alluring utopia! What a noble cause to fight for!
–von Mises, Ludwig (1945). Bureaucracy.
I’m an anarchist wearing conservatarian camoflage. Put another way, I prefer anarcho-capitalism, but I know there is zero chance of that, so my more realistic preferences line up with conservatarians most closely. Thus, I’ve voted Republican pretty much constantly until this election.
Put me down for (b) with a heavy dose of Never-Trump (c). I guess I’m sort of still in the party, but I no longer participate in its local events, and I tell the groups I used to donate to that they can stop calling me until the President after Trump gets elected.
I believe that Trump will be as to the American right what Berlusconi was to the Italian right. But I will be happy if I am wrong about him.
You don’t have to discover the virtue of mercantilism, just grim trigger strategies.