Regimes, however intellectually disreputable, rarely are unable to attract intellectuals eager to rationalize the regimes’ behavior. America’s current administration has “national conservatives.” They advocate unprecedented expansion of government in order to purge America of excessive respect for market forces, and to affirm robust confidence in government as a social engineer allocating wealth and opportunity. They call themselves conservatives, perhaps because they loathe progressives, although they seem not to remember why.
To hear what he is talking about, listen to this podcast with J.D. Vance. Vance argues that we need industrial policy, because
a) we already have one
b) China is bad
c) we should have neuroscientists working on the cure for Alzheimer’s not in social media
When I think of industrial policy in America, I think of Solyndra and other “green energy” companies backed by the government. Industrial policy is an even worse idea in a democracy than in a dictatorship, because in a democracy you have to serve interest groups.
And it’s not as if the NIH isn’t funding a lot of Alzheimer’s research as it is. My guess is that the marginal return on additional funding is negative, because you probably entrench scientists who are pursuing dead ends.
I think conservative intellectuals should not try to build an ideological scaffolding around the Trump presidency. Just focus on trying to bring rigor back into academia.
This is simply not true. The quoted author reacted to the Trump election with an angry, furious rage, is consumed with emotion, he writes with the emotional temperament of a toddler throwing a tantrum, and he has the entrenched position to write influential opinion pieces, where he can get away with that.
I’d like to see a more open, market driven thriving academic and intellectual culture that isn’t owned by government institutions, or nominally private, but quasi-government institutions.
So your argument is that Will is emotionally unhinged?
Yes…
At the least, he fails to pass the Ideological Turing Test. Most Trump advocates wouldn’t agree with Will’s characterization. Nor do they support “unprecedented expansion of government” or “purg[ing] America of excessive respect for market forces”. Both of those are really outrageous and unfounded claims.
Lol that’s hilarious. Of all people to accuse of that. Who’s next, Brian Lamb?
I think of industrial policy as an offshoot of international relations that promotes domestic producers in foreign markets. That is probably too narrow a view, domestic policies certainly matter especially in developing countries.
The problem with China is that they following the same playbook that all of the Asian Tigers followed; trade protectionism to give domestic industries a foothold in an emerging economy. Unlike the Asian Tigers, China is/will-be a major global economy. Are we destined for perpetual trade wars between the U.S., China, and the EU? The voices promoting Adam Smith’s notion of unilateral free trade seem to have little influence on the world stage.
J.D. Vance’s claim that it was a mistake to “allow” China into the WTO seems to emerge from a zero-sum view of the world.
To play devil advocate on Vance’s and palo-conservative POV, is the US economy has a long term family formation issue as the age of first marriage and birth rates are getting later in life. And they would like to return to the days when ‘what is good for GM is good for the country’ ideas of the 1950s and 1960s.
1) This is a form of identity politics that industrial policy will return to the glories of the 1965 economy. (Honestly I have no idea why anybody would think manufacturing jobs that has declined from 17.5+ in 1980 to 14+ to today.)
2) Outside of Israel, who is the middle of Cold War, very competitive global economies all have low birth rates. South Korea now has 1 baby per female! Or look at Japan that had 2.2M births in 1950s now has 50% less people being born (~1.1M) with declining populations. Show me an economy that grow long term with declining populations.
3) Even US birth rate is heading down and may continue. (Note it is heavily with single motherhood so it is the right reasons.) Palo-conservatives see that this will lead to decline of economic growth in the US. (And they do rationalize the Replacement too much.)
Perhaps the issue is that national growth should be measured in GDP per person rather than in the aggregate. If economic growth is a proxy for the creation of new value (consumer and/or business value), then maybe it was always a mistake to conflate it with population growth.
Well we measure GDP and GDP per person and lot of other data for good reasons. We want to know the root cause and GDP per person is a very important measurement. It is important to see that Japan’s GDP per person has been relatively equal to the US the last 20+ years. However, I still think the long impact of lower population growth will create issues.
1) I agree with the Professor that government debt in the developed will have a crisis at some point. And looking at Japan the government debt per person is increasing and I still believe their government will crash before US. High birth rates improves government debt ratios long term.
2) There is some evidence that economic innovation and new business creation slows down with slow population growth. The US highpoint of new business creation was 1978 when the boomers were reaching working age. (Yes, I know 1978? here)
3) The best to turn young people conservative is get them married, have kids, have a mortgage and a defined career. Then they tend to switch their identity to adult career not other things. And this is not happening today until 32 – 35 which is a problem for conservatives.
4) It does seem very weird the richer we are the less society can afford children reality here.
There are some issues where GDP (and similar aggregate figures) is a better measure of well being or national strength than GDP per capita. It says a LOT about modern America that we spend 700 billion dollars on the defense department each year; saying we spend 2000 dollars on soldiers for each of us wouldn’t mean much if we had a nation of just one or two million people — we could be Luxembourg and make the same claim? Are there even three soldiers in Luxembourg? Do the Russians and Chinese quake at the thought of what might be inflicted upon them by the mighty Luxembourger Army?
I am specifically speaking about growth, i.e., the rate of change. I think growth is usually reported as GDP Growth. When population declines, it might be more useful to report GDP per Capita Growth.
I think Collin’s example of Japan is a good example where GDP per Capita Growth is a better metric.
I agree GDP is a useful measure but it is not decoupled from population growth/decline and sometimes that decoupling is important.
Regimes, however intellectually disreputable, rarely are unable to attract intellectuals eager to rationalize the regimes’ behavior.
Could not agree with Will more on this.
Indeed this is one of the main reasons I opposed Trump’s nomination, and then his election. Despite the fact that many people argued for him on the grounds that he would be constrained by his party and by Congress, I knew that once elected, the inexorable logic of power would ensure that the Republican party would change to fit him, and not the other way around.
+1
I have played Reagan speeches for my kids and they can’t believe Ronnie was not endlessly complaining about Mexicans.
Trump speeches do not endlessly complain about Mexicans either. You are implying that he does. That is simply not true.
This was their simple reaction and they really don’t follow the news much. (And this was in 2017 and two of them best friends are Hispanic-Americans.) Honestly, I think they ‘wrong’ here as his rally speeches are endless ramblings about the latest topics like he is conservative talk radio host.
See, this is why it would be so hard to have an Ideological Turing Test for criticism of Trump supporters. Like Trump himself, they have given themselves permission to deny anything negative, no matter how obviously true it is.
Is this some petty semantic criticism? Trump’s speeches all end at some point? I’ve heard him talk about other things? Sometimes he switches to Hondurans?
There’s a giant difference between saying that the US has a moral and legal right to choose and enforce it’s own immigration policies and limits, which is what Trump does say, and between frequently demeaning or criticizing Mexicans as human beings, which is what you are saying, which Trump generally does not do.
This is not petty semantic nitpicking. It’s simple accuracy.
It’s not at all unreasonable to expect people to pass and Ideological Turing Test regarding defending Trump or immigration restriction. Many people who disagree with Trump and oppose immigration restrictions can pass an Ideological Turing Test very well. If you are emotionally unhinged and in rant and vilify mode, then it’s absolutely hard to do, which is precisely the type of behavior that the Ideological Turing Test is intended to discourage or disqualify.
Trump literally called Mexican Immigrants rapist in his opening Speech! He has tweeted a lot of Caravan’s and bring crime to our nation. What do you mean infrequent? And people simplify.
Honestly, I still say the chance for Trump’s reelection is for him to lose his phone charger and let somebody else run a banal twitter account sends lots of congratulations to gold medal winners. And then run Reagan 1984 Morning in America of Trump hanging with kids from all backgrounds.
Even with that infamous speech, Trump issued lots of compliments and kind words to Mexicans as well.
The migrant caravans Trump spoke of in 2018 were mostly not Mexican people, but nationals from other countries like Honduras and Guatemala and El Salvador.
And while you and other Americans might lump all migrants from Latin America in the same group, they often do not. Mexican people have long pressured the Mexican government to crack down on migrants trying to enter Mexico. The Mexican government has acted much more brutally than the Trump Administration has ever even considered. Mexicans often don’t mind so much with migrants just passing through to the US, but poor migrants trying to stay and live in Mexico have upset Mexican nationals. This dynamic has changed in recent years with far more global attention and publicity.
Immigration simply wasn’t publicly discussed that much and was not a publicly heated topic during Ronald Reagan’s term in the 1980’s.
If people wanted a benign, boring president, they would have voted for someone like Jeb Bush. They didn’t vote for Jeb Bush. And even in a hypothetical 2016 general election of Jeb vs Hillary, we can’t know for sure, but I bet Jeb would have lost by a landslide. Trump does fuel negative partisanship on both sides. There are people like you, where Trump seems to drive hatred for the Republican party that might conceivably support the Republican Party with a Jeb Bush or a Marco Rubio. Trump also fuels negative partisanship towards his rivals and drives Democrats to lose their minds in ways that push many voters over to the Republicans. I’m definitely not a poll expert, or a fortune teller, but I find your election analysis unconvincing.
Actually, I think Marco beats HRC and I do wonder if Jeb would have beaten her as well. Very likely Jeb would have gotten a higher percentage of votes but still lost the election as Trump won with the right combination for the electoral college.
In reality, Reagan was very kind to Immigration and Immigrants as Governor of California. I always assumed he liked immigration to break Chavez’s Union organizing although Asian Immigrants from 1960s/1970s were thriving in the state as well. I assume the nation did not have much of an Immigration discussion because:
1) It mostly effected California, Florida, and New York with minimal impact elsewhere.
2) A lot of Illegal Immigrants did not become longtime residents and many returned to home country. When NAFTA impacted Mexican corn farmers, the number of returns decreased over time.
3) We need the Great Recession and slow recovery to get people to think it was important. These issues diminish in growing economies.
4) California did have these issue with Prop 187 in 1994 which passed by a sizable margin but it impacts were the legends of the campaign.
The last “scaffolded” Republican was Reagan, and that platform did not last beyond a one-and-done Bush term. I would say that Clinton was “scaffolded” by centrist Democrats. Bush II’s “sympathetic conservatism” or whatever it was did not survive the wars and the trillion dollar bailout.
It does not appear that Obama is getting “scaffolded”.
The problem for the left is, their ideas on race, gender and the economy change so fast, there is nothing to build a scaffold around. It is all tactical, and they are very good at that.
The problem for the right is, no Republican will ever get any positive reinforcement from the MSM. So there is no agreed-upon “official history” that can form the basis of doctrinal, scaffoldable ideas. Trump is, when not being categorized as “an actual hitler”, is portrayed as purely tactical/reactive/not in control. It will be hard to distill a long-lived “Trump Doctrine” out of that – except that if it continues to work out, we’ll get more of whatever it is.
They advocate unprecedented expansion of government in order to purge America of excessive respect for market forces.
Not only is this an exaggeration, as Niko points out, but it is actually close to the opposite of the truth as many in the Trump Administration have actually worked to reduce the size and scope of the Administrative state (including efforts to appoint judges who will be sympathetic to Constitutional arguments that Congress has ceded too much power to bureaucrats.)
https://www.heritage.org/government-regulation/commentary/heres-how-much-red-tape-trump-has-cut
As a policy matter, obviously Trump and key Administration officials disagree with Will about trade and immigration. Not clear to me (and others) that being a libertarian on these issues is the same thing as being a conservative (and more importantly, especially when it comes to immigration, it is certainly not clear that a libertarian policy will benefit America!)
Looking forward to Ron Howard’s J.D. Vance movie!!
I’d say they had better focus on survival first, as they are a highly endangered species, not just the “yesterday’s progressive” type which have it hard enough, but especially given the way ‘conservative’ would have been understood a generation or two ago, and specimens who have conserved approaching those beliefs are practically extinct in academia, and nearly so in almost any elite circle.
But actually, all non-progressive intellectuals of any stripe know that they actually have one meta-level job and struggle, which is to find clever ways to be allowed to argue and advocate for their legitimate positions without being slimed as a bigot of some kind and thus effectively excommunicated from polite society – which is the leftist rhetorical and social superweapon against all heretics.
Handle,
You say, “I’d say they had better focus on survival first,” — this reminds me that you wrote one of the best and most interesting critiques of “The Benedict Option” on the internet; however, what is the Ben Op if not an attempt by Rod at figuring out a way that conservatives can carve out a space for themselves to be left alone from crazed liberals?
One must ask what ‘left alone’ means? You could maybe break it down into something like substantive and procedural categories. What is the content of the set of actions and behaviors that one could do without interference, for the former, and what is the nature of the basis for the lack of interference for the latter.
There are two broad interpretations for that basis.
The first implies something like voluntary tolerance or even sufferance, endurance, acquiescence, etc. There is no possibility whatsoever of being left alone in that respect. If not resisted by a balancing opposition, then why should the extirpation of sin or the perfection of the world stop at any arbitrary point if there is no higher limiting principle to halt the march? Smashing bad guys on the other team is fun and people will do it just for the lulz, not to mention the ability to take advantage of any remaining signalling opportunities, which are in increasingly scarce supply in phases of “mopping-up operations”.
The second implies deterrence. Countries with desirable real estate are ‘left alone’ because (and only so long as) they can react to unwanted interference by resorting to terrifying military force.
Dreher rightfully criticizes most fair-weather Christians for being naive and willfully blind about the need to prepare for hard times.
But he writes as if there is, at least potentially, a whole wide space of possibilities regarding successful approaches and strategies that don’t involve organizing for deterrence. Well, half the time. The other half of the time he chronicles the tightening noose around the neck of remaining ‘left alone’ space. That’s either Straussian, or also very naive.
Just as Dreher writes that American Christians and other religious / social traditionalist need to come to grips with the gloomy reality of their situation if their ways and ideas are to survive, Conservative intellectuals, if there are even to be any remaining worthy of the name in a generation, need to come to grips with the need to focus on fair representation, organizing for deterrence, and playing hardball with regards to any policy that would undermine that capability. Or else they are going to go extinct.
“The first implies something like voluntary tolerance or even sufferance, endurance, acquiescence, etc. There is no possibility whatsoever of being left alone in that respect.”
This is dark…maybe I’m too much of an American optimist to come to grips with this (if it is reality.)
As if on cue, Dreher addresses this subject today from two different perspectives:
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/in-defense-of-evangelical-cultural-pessimism/
I spent a good bit of time doing government-funded research (call it 15 years, mas o menos). For the physical sciences (and also for heavy industry), industrial policy wears camouflage*. Literally. I was funded by various military entities for that whole phase of my career, and I spent four years at Army labs.
Effectiveness is about what you’d expect, if you’re extremely cynical. One of my friends used to say “our big secret is that we don’t have any big secrets”.
One time I actually came up with a feasible, cost effective idea to address a soldier-defined military need. My career never recovered. I wish that was a joke.
* To prevent accidents, safety orange was generally worn over the camouflage. That says it all, really.
It is a marginal game played by approaching the center from your base. The behemoth moves slow, we end up with two political parties looking for the center line. The concept of winning by philosophical victory won’t work. We have to recognize the feeble government institutions.