Yesterday’s post drew a variety of comments and criticisms.
I think I need to clarify my view of how conservatism relates to Mr. Trump. I see Mr. Trump in populist terms, exemplifying the honor culture. A pure conservative recoils from Mr. Trump. But conservatives live in a world in which he represents the main alternative to progressives, to which they also recoil.
The Saldin and Teles book, NeverTrump, captures the anguish that conservatives felt as they chose how to resolve this issue. You can think of them as adopting one of three positions.
1. Nevertrump. Do not reconcile with him. He is bad for conservatism and bad for the country.
2. Accept Mr. Trump as the best current alternative to progressivism.
3. Fully endorse Mr. Trump as spokesman for a future conservatism that is done with free-market ideology and globalization.
I myself feel most comfortable with those who chose (2), next most comfortable with those who chose (1), and least comfortable with those who chose (3). But all three positions have problems.
A big problem with (2) is that it goes in the direction of making conservatism a group identity, defined by its opposition to progressivism. The main problem with (1) is that it does not offer a constructive way forward. And I cannot go along with (3) because I still favor free markets and globalization.
The way I see it, Mr. Trump took some voters away from progressives, but he took many more voters–and most Republican elected officials–away from conservatives. Now conservatives are in the same place as libertarians, on the outside of the political process looking in.
I still favor free markets and globalization.
Globalization is only going to keep working if China keeps going along with it. There are serious indications that China won’t.
Globalization can continue without China. China isn’t the world. I expect that given Xi’s weaponization of trade with the West and his performance throughout the pandemic, a lot of countries will reconsider their dependence on Chinese products.
If China were to peacefully isolate, that’s true. But that’s not the vibe I’m getting. China has been pushing the message that COVID-19 is an American bioweapon. This is a lie of the same type as “Saddam was behind 9/11”; it’s obviously objectively false but it builds a case for war among people who leaned that way already.
Arnold;
The biggest thing that President Trump, at this point, stands for – is the concept that the progressives don’t have the authority to define acceptable values, behavior, and discourse. Accusations of identity politics violations, for example, are not grounds for expulsion from the public space. Everybody who refuses to have that sword held at their throat arbitrarily must, like it or not, support his legitimacy because nobody else was willing and able to stand up to them; and the progressives have staked everything on eliminating him. It’s a paradoxical space – but nobody else has the personal insensitivity, prior connections, and resources to weather the politics of destruction.
I started out as NeverTrump (1) and voted third-party in 2016. I shifted to 2 when he appointed good people to cabinet posts and chose good judges. I shifted back to 1 when he got rid of the good people around him and replaced them with sycophants and when he went full-vendetta after the impeachment. Trump2 is likely to be far worse than Trump1; winning re-election will convince him of his own omniscience. I’ll vote third party again in 2020.
Just a not: the word “done” in 3 can be read as “completed through” or “finished with”. Only after reading it a few times did I understand you meant the latter.
Judging the actions of the Trump Administration: is that irreconcilable with free-market ideology and globalization. The 2017 tax cut? Cutting capital gains taxes? The 2017 health care efforts that didn’t pass? Exiting the Paris Agreement? The efforts to cut regulations? The judge appointments guided by the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation? Ajit Pai’s FCC repealing net neutrality laws in favor of “light-touch” regulation? Betsy DeVos’s push for school choice and Title IX changes? Ben Carson’s push for deregulation in housing? How about Art Laffer and Stephen Moore? Are they anti-free market? I’d like to read a Kling review of the book, “Trumponomics”.
The tagline to this blog is “taking the most charitable view of those who disagree”. This isn’t a remotely charitable view of the Trump Administration.
When Tyler Cowen recently supported Elizabeth Warren for President who has a $52 trillion dollar health care plan, who would break up big tech, who would ban fracking, responsible for ~$3.5 trillion dollars of stock market gains, who would push some marginal tax rates for the wealthy above 100%, who would “forgive” all student debt at a cost of $1.6 trillion, make college “free”: is that a better free market advocate in the Kling view?
Agree with Gregory Joe above that: “3. Fully endorse Mr. Trump as spokesman for a future conservatism that is done with free-market ideology and globalization.” is ambiguous. I only understood it after reading the next paragraphs.
As a liberaltarian, I am much more dismayed by 2 and 3 than you. And I see Never Trumpers aligning with the Democrats (there is a recent Fivethirtyeight about this). That has its own uncomfortable alliances.
“I myself feel most comfortable with those who chose (2), next most comfortable with those who chose (1)”
-1
Yuck! 1) is the only reasonable option, Trump is an embarrassment and not just for political reasons. And, when it comes to the stimulus and pretty much everything else government spending related, what exactly is the difference between Trump’s and that of the progressives?
ASK just got downgraded (sorry).
One reason why one might choose (2) rather than (1) is the systematic disadvantage that fiscal conservatism/libertarianism faces against progressivism. Much of the progressive agenda involves the creation of new entitlements and programs that, once created, will be almost impossible to eliminate—vide the ACA, the mortgage-interest deduction, or sugar price supports. The changes wrought by a progressive administration will not be reversed by a conservative administration; the only way to keep the ratchet from advancing is to ensure that progressives don’t gain control of the legislative and executive branches, however despicable the soi-disant conservative alternatives may be.
This seems particularly true of the present administration. Trumpism is at its core a cult of personality, so won’t outlast Trump: much of the evil that he does will be interred with his bones. On the other hand, a Biden presidency, especially given a Congress led by Pelosi and Schumer, will produce ill effects that will be for all intents and purposes permanent.
Or 4, you might say Trump won a very close election because Hilary Clinton chose to dismiss white, working class Americans as a basketful of deplorables, and a majority of independent voters simply didn’t trust her.
However amusing it is that libertarians don’t recognize themselves for the identify group that they have become (“Minorities are not physically safe at NASCAR events” is a matter of doctrinal faith) , it is worth exploring this labeling scheme a bit further.
So what is meant by “honor culture?”
Wikipedia states “Honour (or honor in American English) is the idea of a bond between an individual and a society as a quality of a person that is both of social teaching and of personal ethos, that manifests itself as a code of conduct, and has various elements such as valor, chivalry, honesty, and compassion. It is an abstract concept entailing a perceived quality of worthiness and respectability that affects both the social standing and the self-evaluation of an individual or institution such as a family, school, regiment or nation. Accordingly, individuals (or institutions) are assigned worth and stature based on the harmony of their actions with a specific code of honour, and the moral code of the society at large.” But presumably, since Dr. Kling is using it as a slur, this is not what he means.
Perhaps, he is referring instead to a “strong honor culture” which Wikipedia informs us “In strong honour cultures, those who do not conform may be forced or pressured into conformance and transgressors punished physically or psychologically. The use of violence may be collective in its character, where many relatives act together.[9] The most extreme form of punishment is honour killing. Dueling and vengeance at a family level can result in a sustained feud. “ This would be more in the spirit of the slur.
So how would Trump exemplify such a culture? Prone to violence? No, that would be the pure conservative Establishment Republicans who could never stop getting into wars and their progressive offspring, Mr. Obama, who indulged in random acts of savagery about the globe willy-nilly. Trump’s efforts at peace making and removal and abstention from new conflicts has only been derided by the pure conservatives, progressives, and libertarians.
Perhaps, Dr. Kling feels Mr. Trump is forcing or pressuring someone into conformance? Hard to see that. The Resistance has never been stronger and Mr. Trump has been singularly inept in exercising any control over the unspeakably vile and corrupt bureaucratic forces that have waged war on him since before he was even elected.
And if Mr. Trump has any code of honor, it simply that which he shares with average working Americans. Push back, don’t take guff. Speak your mind. Ironically, it is the disdain for this type of code which perhaps is the backbone of the libertarian identity group, most especially within the cosmopolitan libertarian identity group whose blatant hatred of average people makes it perhaps the most identitarian of all identity groups.
The notion that Mr. Trump represents an end to globalism and free trade is very amusingly divorced from any grounding in reality. The USA still has among the lowest average tariff rates in the world and imports have increased in every year of the Trump administration so far. Trump says that is for free trade and he he signs free trade treaties. Where he fails the libertarian purity test is in failing to submit to Chinese domination.
Since libertarians are generally opposed to democracy on the grounds that religious people might disagree with them on abortion, infanticide, or senicide. And because they also feel threatened that working class voters might want to cut off federal subsidies to their places of employment and might want to replace taxes the incidence of which is limited to workers in tax-paying industries with a broad consumption tax spread more widely that might have the effect of increasing the imported luxury items that are so important to signaling their social and moral superiority (libertarians are nearly exclusively Bo-Bos), libertarians exhibit a strong behavioral and ideological preference for Chinese global dominance. Of course they will tell us that they do no such thing, but their only way forward is abject submission.
The strongly culturally identitarian cosmopolitan libertarians are all in for Joe Biden even despite his “Trump is weak on China” posturing because it appeals to their natural sense of cynicism: “Biden is just playing to ignorant masses to get elected, but we all know when he is elected he won’t do a thing.” Cosmopolitan libertarians and pure conservatives are more solidly united behind Biden than even progressives, the extremists of whom have a sort of sense of honor. Thus a return to the old school politics as usual, restoring the old game of say one thing and do another, and putting a smile on pure conservative and libertarian faces.
Do you seriously believe that?
Yes. Of course. I might have worded it differently if we were not in a two-party winner take all system. I am bitter. I especially resent people whining about being on the outside looking in who do not advocate constitutional reform to create a system of proportional representation. I further reject the cult of personality that is the soul of presidential systems and call for a move to a parliamentary system. Parliamentary systems have provided much better experience than presidential systems. Washing your hands of the mess by voting third party is no better than staying home. My heroes are people like Macaulay and Thomas Paine who won radical reforms and believed in democracy. If these little rants ever succeed in discomfitting the lords of the day I will have done my duty to humankind.
+1
This comment is the closest to my view of reality. Kling’s argument that endorsing Trump is abandoning free market and trade is entirely detached from reality.
I’m sure some small fragment of populists can be accurately described as “honor culture”. Like the Proud Boys. But I don’t think that’s an accurate or reasonable characterization for the broader myriad of factions and concerns that would be considered populist.
I meant to reply to Edgar
“The main problem with [NeverTrump] is that it does not offer a constructive way forward.”
How about just advocating and teaching timeless conservative and libertarian principles under the view that widespread and shared values eventually drive election results? Unless one is a public official, influencing values is more important than supporting or opposing particular candidates. As Bryan Caplan has pointed out, voting is irrational as each individual has negligible impact on election outcomes. It may make sense for, say, Republican officeholders to horsetrade with Trump. For all others, including public intellectuals, better to focus on the long game of influencing values.
I wonder how we can reconcile Kling’s original three languages of politics with the now four political types.
1) Libertarianism: libertarian principles and philosophy are expressed most naturally along the liberty-coercion axis, so this one is straightforward.
2) Conservatism: conservatives’ disposition to believe that traditional institutions are needed to overcome humans’ bad inclinations also straightforwardly leads to barbarism-civilization language. No problem here.
3) Populism: honor culture is naturally expressed in oppressor-oppressed language, where the “oppression” refers to perceived insults to one’s honor. No surprise that right-wing populists sound a lot like social justice warriors except that the populists view themselves as victims.
4) Progressivism: here is where we need an update. The oppressor-oppressed axis only matches “Progressivism is a group identity. Progressives are convinced above all that they are the good people,” with respect to social justice war.
It doesn’t fit as well to climate change and lockdowns. Progressives talk about lockdowns using the same language as climate change, but that language is not about oppressors and oppressed. On these two issues, progressive language reflects the misanthropic disposition of conservatives, but the progressive solution is to turn not to traditional institutions but to progressives’ self-assessed superior judgement. The language takes the form of, “Ordinary people are too ignorant, selfish, parochial, etc. to effectively deal with climate change and coronavirus. We progressives must combine our expert intellect with our more civic-minded morality to save humanity from itself.”
I would say that progressive oppressor-oppressed social justice language is just a special case of this broader “scolding” language. Progressives are drawn to rhetoric that scolds the general public’s attitudes on a broad range of issues: social justice, climate change, and coronavirus lockdowns. That’s why progressivism draws adherents from both the historically marginalized and the most privileged, educated, and affluent. Both groups share a common interest in scolding the middle.
Well said! And on both climate change and lockdowns (COVID), a valid counterpoint to the scolding from progressives is:
“Leave us (the planet) alone…things are not so bad as you make it out to be…we will be fine.”