Bannon vs. Musk

Who's right?

A libertarian friend recently sent me a book: The Law, by Frédéric Bastiat. (He did not send me his own book blaming NATO for allegedly provoking Russia into invading Ukraine.) I read Bastiat’s book, and the only word that came to mind to describe it was “puerile”. Why?

The answer has to do with a topic I have discussed before: the tension between cultural conservatism and libertarianism. I have long maintained that conservatism seeks to conserve something. What? A society; a culture; a civilization. It sacrifices absolute freedom for the stable transmission of heritage. It may well be that one of the traditions we want to conserve is a collection of freedoms, especially freedom of conscience, freedom of speech, and protection from a too-powerful government.

I believe the American Founding Fathers could hardly be classified as socialists. Nevertheless, they enumerated certain responsibilities for collective action by the government: roads and post (infrastructure); national defense; and “general welfare”. A country without these items would be a collection of isolated preppers in booby-trapped underground bunkers, without a shared cultural space or much of a heritage to transmit.

Bastiat was greatly distressed by his duty to pay taxes and tariffs. Presumably all such government revenue should be voluntary, based on user fees. Unfortunately, roads will not magically appear when one needs them. They must be constructed in advance by someone with foresight. This kind of thinking is like the person with a generous income who refuses to save, and cries poverty due to his or her lack of planning.

The timing could not be better, as I read of the battle royale between Stephen Bannon and Elon Musk. I am very appreciative that Musk stopped the censorship of COVID truth and related matters. Nevertheless, it is clear that he does not respect national boundaries. A lecture in one of my courses discusses the four levels of participation of a business in international trade. The ultimate level is transnationalism, in which, according to the textbook, the business acts as if there are no national boundaries; labor and capital flow freely across borders.

I submit that transnationalism has not worked out well for America, Europe, or the Anglosphere, especially as we have lost the will to enforce cultural assimilation. Musk’s version of America first means transnationalism for the elites, and welfare for laid-off American workers. Bannon believes that America first means Americans first.

For those who have joined me since the days of the old blog, let me inform you that Mrs. Surak is an American by choice, given refuge in America over three decades ago as someone fleeing communist persecution, at a time when the fraction of foreign-born Americans was far lower. She has a graduate degree. She has rejected her birth culture emphatically in favor of Western civilization.

It should go without saying that I am not anti-immigrant. We do agree that all illegal aliens should be deported, and the border wall should be built. Legal immigration should be suspended until the share of foreign-born Americans falls below 10%. We should reject multiculturalism, a dangerous doctrine that has not been adopted in most of Africa, Asia, Latin America, or the Middle East.

Vivek Ramaswamy argues persuasively that the quality of American education has deteriorated severely over the last few generations. He is correct. However, the solution is not to import new people who may or may not have a better work ethic, while Americans are being laid off after training their replacements.

Rather, we have to fix Western education. It would help if businesses would stop promoting CRT-DEI-LGBTQ woke social justice in education, and started promoting reading, writing, and arithmetic. Yes, arithmetic. One of my college senior students a few years ago did not know the value of six minus three. A few months later, she walked down the aisle as a happy college graduate.

It would also help if RFK, Jr could achieve making America healthy again, especially for its young people, who are our future. But that sounds like a separate column.