On April 29, 1945, U.S. troops of the Seventh Army liberated the Dachau concentration camp.
A lot of people were impressed by the reasonableness of Donald Trump’s foreign policy speech yesterday . . . despite the usual hyperbolic promises of “best” and “great” and “beautifully.”
Its general tenor? Refreshing. Rejecting post-Cold War foreign policy for a return to “national interest” and “America first”? Long overdue. Like Trump, I think we should eschew nation building.
But still there is that one big problem: Trump is a mercantilist. He believes in protectionism. He thinks that trade has to be “fair” in order to benefit both participants. He thinks NAFTA and similar trade agreements (which generally promoted trade while still reserving a lot of room for government futzing about) are what hurt American industry. Trump is always blaming the “bad deals” made with Mexico and China, rather than placing the blame where it squarely belongs, on
- America’s world-high corporate income tax, and
- chaos of regulatory excess, and
- impenetrable tax code.
But protectionism makes sense to a lot of people. They are incredulous when they hear the (well-established) idea that free trade — even unilateral free trade — is a benefit to the people who live under it.
Surely, they snort, when you target aid or protection to some industries, you are doing good, right?
Wrong. Oh, yeah, of course protectionism protects the chosen few, the advantaged. That’s what it obviously does. But it doesn’t protect the general interest – consumers pay more and producers allocate resources to less valued uses.
You have to look beyond the obvious (“the seen”) to get the full picture (“the unseen”).
Trump’s at his most dangerous right here — forget his loose talk — by continuing to pretend that protectionism helps America.
We cannot afford another Smoot-Hawley.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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On April 28, 1789, Lieutenant William Bligh and 18 sailors were set adrift by the rebel crew of the HMS Bounty, which returned briefly to Tahiti and then set sail for Pitcairn Island.
On the same date in 2001, millionaire Dennis Tito became the world’s first space tourist.
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Mary Wollstonecraft
I earnestly wish to point out in what true dignity and human happiness consists. I wish to persuade women to endeavor to acquire strength, both of mind and body, and to convince them that the soft phrases, susceptibility of heart, delicacy of sentiment, and refinement of taste, are almost synonymous with epithets of weakness, and that those beings are only the objects of pity, and that kind of love which has been termed its sister, will soon become objects of contempt.
Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792).
The other day, Fox News Network’s Bill O’Reilly asked University of Chicago economist Austan Goolsbee a question. The subject was the socialistic gimme-gimme attitude of youthful Bernie Sanders supporters. The previous segment, “Watters’ World,” had paraded interviews with a handful of college students, asking them to clarify just how much free stuff they wanted.
It was a funny segment, if you think young people talking foolishly about government is funny.
Calling Sanders “the Giveaway King,” O’Reilly asked Goolsbee his general impression of the gimme-gimme attitude. It was the softest of softball questions. “What do you think about that?”
Talk about open-ended. Any response given thus says a lot about the interviewee, seeing how broad he may answer.
“Well, look, I’ve told you I’ve never been a big fan of socialism,” spake President Obama’s famed advisor. “I’m an economics professor.” Chuckling, he went on. “I’ve got the sense you don’t want these people getting free air to breathe. You’d like them to mail in their checks to make sure they work for it.”
Goolsbee could have started off as sensibly as he ended: “I’m against free stuff. Socialism doesn’t work. . . .”
He didn’t. He immediately reduced O’Reilly’s position to that of a straw man, using the reductio ad absurdum.
Why? For levity’s sake? Well, both O’Reilly and Goolsbee were jovial. . . .
But his nasty quip fulfilled a purpose, making sure that ideologues on the left continued to have license to think the worst about their opponents.
Thus Austan Goolsbee, despite his protests, carried water for crazed socialism.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Wollstonecraft & Spencer
On April 27, 1759, English philosopher and author Mary Wollstonecraft was born. Wollstonecraft married anarchist philosopher William Godwin and the couple had one daughter, Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus. Wollstonecraft herself wrote one infamous and valiant effort in the emancipation of women, A Vindication of the Rights of Women, in 1792.
English philosopher, psychologist, sociologist, and political theorist Herbert Spencer was born in Derby, England, on April 27, 1820. Among Spencer’s most famous books are First Principles, Principles of Ethics (chiefly its first part, The Data of Ethics), The Study of Sociology, The Man versus the State, and two editions of Social Statics. Spencer was an evolutionary theorist as well as a religious and political philosopher, and coiner of the phrase “survival of the fittest.” He called the basic principle of a free political order “The Law of Equal Freedom.”
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J. H. Levy
Joseph Hiam Levy, The Outcome of Individualism (1892), Chapter Two.
Looked at from an economic point of view, I hold socialism to be the active or direct distribution of products by the state. Regarded from its more general or political aspect, I designate as socialistic any extension of state interference or activity beyond the point up to which that interference is necessary in order that freedom may be at the maximum. Individualism postulates that some government — that is, some compulsory cooperation for political purposes — is needed in order to keep freedom at this point, that so much government is justifiable and good, and that all government beyond this is unjustifiable and mischievous. This quantum of government desiderated by the individualist constitutes a norm from which anarchism diverges on one side and socialism on the other. If we are suffering from a poison we find it advantageous to take a second poison, which acts as an antidote to the first. But, if we are wise, we limit our dose of the second poison so that the toxic effects of both combined are at the minimum. If we take more of it, it produces toxic effects of its own beyond those necessary to counteract, so far as possible, the first poison. If we take less of it, the first poison, to some extent, will do its bad work unchecked.
Today’s Maryland Primary features a competitive race to replace Democrat Senator Barbara Mikulski, a 30-year veteran. Two House members, Chris Van Hollen and Donna Edwards, are seeking the Democratic nomination.
“[T]his is a contest between two candidates,” National Public Radio’s Kojo Nnamdi notes, “who agree on 99 percent of the relevant issues.”
The campaign got interesting, however, with an attack ad first run by a super PAC, Working for Us, and then by Rep. Edwards’s campaign. The ads hit Van Hollen for a special deal he had made trying to get his 2010 DISCLOSE Act passed. The legislation aimed to force non-profit groups to disclose their donors to the government.
Fearing the hostility of the National Rifle Association, Van Hollen cut a backroom deal exempting the gun rights group, along with several other powerful liberal organizations.
Whatever one thinks of the DISCLOSE Act — and I’ll proudly disclose my contempt — shouldn’t we all agree that drafting laws that apply to most groups except those with political clout is flat-out wrong?
Rep. Donna Edwards, an original co-sponsor of the DISCLOSE Act, wasn’t amused by Van Hollen’s sell-out. She withdrew her support.
I don’t agree with all her principles, but I am glad she has some.
In Washington, it’s lonely for the principled. President Obama came to Van Hollen’s defense. So did the Washington Post, praising Van Hollen (editorially) as a “leading champion of gun safety,” and via Glenn Kessler’s Fact Checker column, which twisted logic to award the Edwards ad three Pinocchios. Democratic congressional leaders, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, also lauded Van Hollen and attacked Edwards.
Washington: city of celebrated sell-outs.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Also, please consider showing your appreciation by dropping something in our tip jar (this link will take you to the Citizens in Charge donation page… and your contribution will go to the support of the Common Sense website). Maintaining this site takes time and money.
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Sibyl’s Ride
On April 26, 1777, Sibyl Ludington, aged 16, rode 40 miles to alert American colonial forces to the approach of the British. Her ride was over twice as long as the more famous Paul Revere’s.
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William J. Locke
We have the richest language that ever a people has accreted, and we use it as if it were the poorest. We hoard up our infinite wealth of words between the boards of dictionaries and in speech dole out the worn bronze coinage of our vocabulary. We are the misers of philological history. And when we can save our pennies and pass the counterfeit coin of slang, we are as happy as if we heard a blind beggar thank us for putting a pewter sixpence into his hat.
William J. Locke, The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne (1905).