Aug
22
2024

Parties Fighting for the Steering Wheel

On the Car Barreling Down the Road to Serfdom

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Peter Suderman delivers the bad news for Hayek fans: Economic Liberty Now Has No Place In Either Political Party.

For years, populists on both the left and right have griped that Washington is in the thrall of libertarians, market fundamentalists, or perhaps neoliberals—despite the rarity of any politically powerful figure identifying as such.

Recent events should put those complaints to rest: With the elevation of Sen. J.D. Vance (R–Ohio) to the Republican presidential ticket, and, in a different way, Vice President Kamala Harris, American politics is now in the grips of a kind of neopopulism, one implicitly founded on the rejection of that synthesis, and in particular on the abandonment of the free-market, limited-government worldview.

That, in turn, has created a new class of politically homeless: Call them fusionists, call them classical liberals, call them libertarians—but those who prioritize economic liberty have essentially no place in either major party. That's a significant shift away from foundational American values—and an unsettling departure from the worldview that made America prosperous and powerful.

One possible response is inebriation, and Suderman works in a link to his relevant substack.

Veronique de Rugy is also on the party beat: How Similar Are Harris and Trump's Economic Policies? Let's Take a Look..

As we approach another pivotal election, voters are once again being bombarded with messaging that paints the two main candidates as opposites. We're told Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump represent radically different visions for America's economic future. They don't. When it comes to economic policy, there's far less daylight between Harris and Trump than either would care to admit.

Let's start with trade policy. Trump's protectionist stance is well-known, with his administration imposing tariffs on a wide range of goods, particularly from China. He has since announced that he would like to impose an across-the-board 10% and then 20% tariff on imports to the U.S., on top of the those already in place.

But Harris' stance is hardly better. She has embraced a "worker-centered" trade policy that looks suspiciously similar to Trump's "America First" approach. Both emphasize protecting existing American jobs and industries, even at the cost of higher prices for beleaguered consumers, fewer resources to start new firms that will lead to more opportunity for the next generation of workers, and reduced economic efficiency. And let's not forget that during the last four years, the Biden-Harris administration has imposed its fair share of tariffs while keeping many of Trump's.

Also in common: "industrial policy", aka corporate welfare; continued fiscal profligacy; expensive subsidization of home ownership.

Also of note:

  • Continuing on that theme… Deirdre McClosky has Reflections on the Libertarianism vs. Conservativism Debate.

    Part of the problem with a conservative versus liberal debate is that conventional politics has long depended on positing a left-right spectrum, from the seating arrangement of the French National Assembly in the early 19th century. It is supposed to characterize all political opinions. Admittedly, nowadays, the conventional spectrum is getting out of focus all over the place, in Britain and France and the United States, in favor of cultural warfare unpredictable from the old left-right ideologies. Yet most people still think that this spectrum is all you need to know about politics and keep forcing everyone to declare their place on it. For example, journalists of a certain age simply cannot think of Cato-style liberalism as anything but conservative. The conservative debaters know well that such a thought is false.

    Every position along the conventional spectrum supposes that it is a fine idea to have a large and coercive state, larger and larger, more and more coercive. See any book by Daron Acemoglu. The only dispute is what or whom the state should coerce. In the old left-right disputes, the right wanted liberty for the boardroom yet wanted state coercion for the bedroom; the left the other way around. The middle wandered in between.

    We true liberals at Cato live in a treehouse well above the spectrum, sending amiable messages down to our friends on the spectrum, saying that they might want to consider whether the state is too big, too coercive, or too careless of liberty. Consider again the authoritarianism of Anthony Fauci, which most people fell for—even, to my shame, me.

    Deirdre's bottom line: "Do what you want, but don’t scare the horses."

  • Dropping the veil. Seth Mandel looks at the current set of Hamas cheerleaders: Why Israel’s Critics Stopped Pretending To Want a Ceasefire.

    The pro-Hamas protesters both outside and inside the Democratic National Convention may be poor folk singers and off-key banjoists, but at least they are honest.

    The banner briefly unfurled by activists inside the convention while President Biden was speaking said “STOP ARMING ISRAEL.” Outside, it was the usual band of explicitly genocidal Hamas fans singing the praises of the October 7 slaughter. Well-connected Pennsylvania Democratic activist and Kamala Harris delegate Morgan Overton, meanwhile, was quieter but no less honest about it. She backed a Pittsburgh BDS petition that would, as the Washington Free Beacon reported, “cripple the city’s Jewish organizations and punish its largest hospital system.” (The petition was shelved for this election cycle amid a dispute over signature requirements.)

    The specific demands made by Overton and her fellow signatories: that Israel end its campaign in Gaza and agree to a final settlement of the conflict that creates either a one-state solution (in which the Jewish state would be dissolved) or a two-state solution that Hamas opposes.

    What happened, you might ask, to the ceasefire? Isn’t that the cause animating the progressive throngs in the streets? Aren’t they motivated by a sincere desire to see peace?

    Well, no, obviously not. But why would they completely drop the CEASEFIRE NOW organizing principle they’ve been disingenuously running with since October 7? The answer is because Israel indirectly called their bluff. (I say “indirectly” because it’s not as though Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is making decisions based on what tentifada pups claim to want.)

    Since it's become clear that Bibi's not the roadblock to a cease-fire agreement, the "tentifada pups" have needed to become more honest about their ultimate goal: the destruction of Israel as a Jewish state.

  • Shocker: Israelis are short-sighted. Jeff Jacoby makes the case that An Israeli hostage deal with Hamas only guarantees future atrocities. Unfortunately, such a deal is popular: "Nearly two-thirds of Israelis" favor one. But:

    Yet it is also all but certain that the result will be more innocent Israelis killed, wounded, and kidnapped in future atrocities — atrocities carried out by some of the very terrorists Israel releases. That has been the outcome of every such deal Israel has agreed to in the past.

    In 1985, for example, the Jewish state set 1,150 Palestinian security prisoners free in exchange for three Israeli captives. Dozens of those freed prisoners returned to terrorist activity. Among them was a Muslim Brotherhood activist named Ahmed Yassin, who founded Hamas a few months later, launching an unimaginable train of slaughter and savagery.

    In 2011, to liberate a kidnapped soldier named Gilad Shalit, Israel released 1,027 imprisoned terrorists. Among them were two prominent Palestinian murderers, Yahya Sinwar and Rawhi Mushtaha. Today Sinwar is Hamas's senior commander and Mushtaha (until he was killed last month) was among his closest confidants. The Oct. 7 nightmare, in other words, was planned by terrorists who were released in the Shalit deal. Israel was overjoyed when Shalit was freed, but the price of that freedom has been unspeakable: thousands of Israelis murdered, raped, and kidnapped, to say nothing of the tens of thousands of Palestinian lives lost in the current fighting.

    I don't want to tell Israel how to run its war but… what's wrong with demanding Hamas's unconditional surrender? As Jacoby points out, that's what ended the Civil War and WWII.

  • Also demanted: the media's coverage of it. David Harsanyi thinks: There Is Something Really Demented About Tim Walz's Lying. Most recently revealed are his false claims that he and his wife used In-vitro fertilization (IVF) to start their family. That was not true.

    So how does the media frame this revelation?

    The New York Times contends that the Walz camp has “clarified” his statements. An Axios piece on the matter is headlined, “Gwen Walz sheds light on fertility journey, clarifies they did not use IVF.” CNN says, “Gwen Walz reveals she underwent a different treatment, not IVF, in new details about fertility struggles.”

    She revealed new details? What are they talking about? Tim Walz was caught lying about IVF and now his camp is compelled to admit it. They aren’t “shedding light” on their “fertility journey” or “clarifying” a story. This wasn’t hyperbole or “sloppy” rhetoric, just a lie.

    A weird, demented lie.

    Granted, he's no Trump. But definitely in the same ballpark.

  • Time to homeschool the kids. Wokeness may be in retreat elsewhere, but Katherine Kersten notes its victory in the Minnesota government schools: Tim Walz Brings ‘Liberated’ Ethnic Studies to Minnesota.

    Tim Walz was a schoolteacher before entering politics, so what is his approach to teaching? The Minnesota Department of Education will soon release the initial version of a document that lays out how new “liberated” ethnic-studies requirements will be implemented in the state’s roughly 500 public-school districts and charter schools.

    Mr. Walz signed the law establishing this initiative in 2023. The department’s standards and benchmarks, approved in January, require first-graders to “identify examples of ethnicity, equality, liberation and systems of power” and “use those examples to construct meanings for those terms.”

    The real "systems of power" here are the systems that are able to impose this claptrap on first-graders.

  • Not giving up on gun-grabbing. Jacob Sullum reads it so you don't have to: The Democratic Platform Completely Ignores the Second Amendment. And recalls the heady days of the 2020 campaign:

    Although Vice President Kamala Harris' current campaign website is short on specific policy positions, the platform confirms what we already knew: She does not see the Constitution as an obstacle to her gun control agenda. Back in 2019, when Harris was vying with Biden for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, she promised to impose new gun policies—including "universal background checks, an assault weapons ban, and the repeal of the NRA's corporate gun manufacturer and dealer immunity bill"—by executive fiat if Congress failed to approve such legislation during her first 100 days in office.

    That was too much even for Biden. "There's no constitutional authority to issue that executive order when they say 'I'm going to eliminate assault weapons,'" he said. "You can't do it by executive order any more than Trump can do things when he says he can do it by executive order." Asked about that comment during a Democratic presidential debate, Harris laughed and blithely replied: "Well, I mean, I would just say, hey, Joe, instead of saying 'no, we can't,' let's say 'yes, we can.'"

    Biden objected. "Let's be constitutional," he said. "We've got a Constitution." He also suggested that Harris should "check with constitutional scholars" about whether her plan was consistent with the separation of powers.

    While Biden aspired to "be constitutional," in other words, Harris replied, in essence: "Constitution, schmonstitution. Why should that get in the way of my agenda?"

  • And I couldn't help but notice that gold prices seem to be close to an all-time high, $2,497.64/oz. Over the past year, gold is up over 30%.

    Past performance, etc. Still, wish I'd known this a year ago.