I am not rowing back on my dislike and distrust of Trump for a host or reasons. (To give just one, when he spoke about his desire to spend big on infrastructure in his acceptance speech, I fear the worst about the direction of public spending. Let’s hope he is bluffing and will have to face some hard financial realities.) However, even a small-government conservative/libertarian such as I, who thinks most government actions can be performed from the back of a truck or from an insurance office, enjoys the discomfiture of the Left at his victory, and the defeat of Clinton. The worries about what a Trump administration can do can wait a few days. Let’s wait until Monday.
Here is Rod Liddle in the Spectator:
The deplorables are rather wonderful people, aren’t they? Both here and in the United States. The people’s revolution continues apace, defying the odds each time, defying the pollsters, defying the elite. I cannot tell you how pleasurable it was to scamper downstairs on Wednesday morning to check out the reaction on the Guardian’s website. It kept me cackling for hours. The previous morning the paper had concluded its fatuous leader column with the words: ‘Americans should summon a special level of seriousness and display a profound responsibility when they go to the polls.’ That alone had made me yearn for a Trump victory — the arrogant, chastising tone which liberals, especially European liberals, always adopt when dealing with commoners and plebs, the people who do not buy into their palpably failing and idiotic worldview.
So yes, let’s bask in this. But like I said, enjoyment will be limited, not least because I worry that people such as Liddle are so keen on Trump. Consider, Liddle holds socialist or “Blue Labour” views on economics. He likes big public spending, taxing rich people, economic protectionism, and stopping immigrants from taking “our jobs”, as he has written in the past (he subscribes to the lump of labour fallacy, as far as I can tell). Mixing Big government, a form of socialism and nationalism is not a brew I want to drink at any time of the day. He is only libertarian in the sense, as far as I can see, that he thinks it means being naughty and offensive and forgets the economics bit – all Saturday Night Live and no Milton Friedman.
Of course, I know quite a few small-govt. types who are hoping that the GOP-controlled Congress will, despite owing Trump a favour for his victory, will resist some of the more outlandish attempts to hike spending, bash cheap imports, etc. Once again we will read from the “liberal” (in the American perversion of that word) commentariat about the need for checks and balances on the Presidency (funny, that); such calls went quiet during the Obama years when the Lightbringer was firing off his executive orders and zapping people in drone strikes. Maybe Trump will pleasantly surprise us – let’s hope so. In fact, expectations perhaps have been so low that his ability to surprise on the upside could be quite big. He is known to be able to turn on the charm and let’s face it, his ability to keep going during this campaign, despite some setbacks (partly self-inflicted) shows a certain bullish grit.
Richard Epstein’s essay at the Hoover Institute on the election is a must-read.
Gene Healy’s exploration of the “imperial” presidency, published by CATO a few years ago, is also good.
He has already fixed the TPPs wagon within 2 days.
Not a bad start.
I don’t even mind a decade or so of economic socialism in the West, as long as they get immigration under control. That’s the real threat to the West. Socialism can be recovered from. Turning into a semi-Saudi Arabia can’t.
Cal, you think a “decade or so” of economic socialism can be recovered from. Not so easy. The very fact that Europe has been so socialist, and therefore economically up the creek, is precisely why it is vulnerable to mass migration from groups who wish it ill. The two are connected.
If Trump really wants to protect America, autarky and Big government aren’t the way to go.
>The very fact that Europe has been so socialist, and therefore economically up the creek, is precisely why it is vulnerable to mass migration from groups who wish it ill
I don’t agree with that. Europe is vulnerable to mass migration because the left has deliberately undermined the borders, thinking this is the way to overcome racism and white patricarchy, etc. And the US left that has power over these things has deliberately chosen not to deport ‘ethnic’ illegal immigrants (and has in fact greatly encouraged them), but is very robust when it comes to deporting white illegal immigrants.
There are plenty of socialist countries that manage to have strong borders.
(I’m not saying a decade or two of socialism is easy to overcome, just that it can be.)
As far as Liddle’s views go, he’s pretty vague. I agree with the general themes you (Jonathan) have identified, but I don’t think he’s someone with a coherent, worked-out view of things (which I expect you’d agree with).
Cal, the fact that so much of Europe has built a massive welfare state surely makes a huge difference to whether the influx of cheap labour is a disaster or a boon to the host nation. As the late Milton Friedman liked to point out, one can have mass immigration or a welfare state but not both.
Of course socialist countries have strong borders. I haven’t tried getting into the utopian paradise of North Korea lately, but I am sure it is quite difficult.
Watching the collective freak out of the liberals has given me endless joy over the last two days.
A friend of mine called it a “schadenboner” and I fear that I may need to seek medical advice as it has now persisted for 48 hours.
The massive welfare state (coupled with a rich economy) is a big reason why so many immigramnts want to come to Western Europe, yes, but it’s not the reason why so many are allowed in, or not deported once they’re in.
Schandenboner – oh that is brilliant.
😛
Personally I don’t think mass immigration beyond a certain level is a boon to any country, no matter whether it has a welfare state or not. Not when hostile, or at least, crappy cultures are imported wholesale. That’s just cultural suicide.
Cal, the US was build on mass immigration.
Heh, let’s make America Indian again!
With all due respect, Cal (and forgive the snarkiness), let me fix that for you:
I’m definitely stealing schandenboner, as well as make America Indian again!
What if Trump works towards making government as efficient as his election campaign was? http://observer.com/2016/11/donald-trump-didnt-just-win-he-won-with-unprecedented-efficiency/
It’s probably mathematically possible to cut spending without cutting back on net handouts, at least somewhat.
Rob, I don’t think the two kinds of spending can be compared apples to apples. For one thing, I don’t give campaign spending as much importance as many do anyway – especially not in an election like this one. It’s like with all kinds of advertising: it helps, but you can’t sell people a product they don’t want. Here’s a very good (longish) article on this very subject: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/10/theres-nothing-better-than-a-scared-rich-candidate/497522/
JP : his desire to spend big on infrastructure in his acceptance speech, I fear the worst about the direction of public spending
Yes, but….if the government insists on spending money, infrastructure spending is waaaaaay better than most other stuff. First, you do usually actually get something in return. OK it’s never as useful as people claim, and there’s loads of graft and you get $1’s worth for every $5, but you do get something. And second and much more important it isn’t the baked into the budget to spend again next year and the year after and so on out to infinity. You can cut it next year. Increased welfare benefits not so much.
Alisa : I don’t think the two kinds of spending can be compared apples to apples
True. But a politician who recognises – with resect to any kind of fruit – that more spending is not always and necessarily the answer is the sort of unicorn that should be loved, cherished and sustained
You have a point Lee. That said, didn’t Trump also spend some of his own money? The article only mentions donations, unless I missed it…
I think you’re right that he spent some of his own money, but everything I’ve seen on the internet suggests his campaign spend about half what hers did.
Then I think his spending should be compared to that of his predecessors – such as Romney or McCain.
Also, my impression is that his heart wasn’t fully in it at the beginning – more like just another publicity-grabbing reality show. So he may have well made a business decision regarding spending, and stuck to it even after the game took over him and he went all the way in for the prize on an emotional level (which again is my impression as to what happened).
Government spending is a whole different game, and it’s Congress who hold the purse anyway.
Whatever the policies of Mr Trump may be, and I am filled with doubts about that, his victory has enraged all the “right” (i.e. left) people.
Seeing these degenerates whine and riot shows the world just what the left are.
Although I find Trump faintly repulsive and cringe every time I hear him speak, I cannot stop smiling.
He is clearly a very mixed bag and one can only hope that the better flavours predominate, but for now we should indeed allow ourselves briefly to revel in our opponents’ tears. There has been so much to stomach stoically for so long that a second brief celebration is surely in order.
Of course, I have to appear long-faced at my place of work. To do otherwise would be regarded as almost the ultimate betrayal in a university.
My stepmother, a psychoanalyst, has already had several of her patients shouting their incoherent rage in her consulting room and suspects it will be quite good for business.
I note without further comment her suggestion that all her patients will be devastated by the result…
Have to say I’m not keen on his ‘lets all be friends and work together’ statements recently. No, let’s not. I hope Trump realises that making friends with these people isn’t going to do him much good for his re-election chances.
Who says he will want to be reelected?
>Cal, the US was build on mass immigration.
And that didn’t turn out great for the American Indians, did it?
Also, it’s a myth that the US in the earlier years of the twentieth century just let anyone in. They had pretty strict criteria, and if you didn’t pass muster, you didn’t get in. It wasn’t mass immigration in the sense of ‘let millions of unchecked Mexicans come in and do what they want’.
(Trump, BTW, wants to increase legal immigration.)
Yeah I am totally as one with Paul on this. As deep as my reservations about Trump are, watching the shitstorm of tears is just delightful 😀
Nice entertaining post. Just one point to keep in line with the fact monkeys, be sure that Obama’s “executive order” count was actually quite reasonable, however, most of his directives were “presidential memorandum” which is where he excelled.
As far as Trump is concerned, like they had to do with Reagan, I think we’ll have to wait …
And that didn’t turn out great for the American Indians, did it?
Well indeed, which is why I point out the absurdity of Americans now decrying immigration en masse, when their country was built by immigrants.
By the way, some people – not on this blog – have in my recollection likened Trump to president Andrew Jackson (“Old Hickory”). Well, among other things, Jackson, victor of New Orleans over we Brits, was also known for his fierce campaign to oust Indians as the Republic pushed into the West.
Yes, I know it is the case that at times the US has slammed on the brakes regarding immigration, and there were times of considerable influx. The huge immigration wave in the latter part of the 19th century and early 20th century did indeed get followed, post-war, by a halt, and there were later periods of influx, such as from Asia (Vietnamese, Cubans, etc). In general, my impression is that immigration has been overwhelmingly a plus for both sides, and that those arguing to the contrary might as well argue against the United States in the first place as being just another country run on zero-sum principles of economics.
Migrants who want to work and embrace the ethos the culture is built on is on thing.
Rapidly imported left-voting “Piss-on-freedom-so-long-as-we-get-the-goodies-without-the-work” freeloaders and bad culture crew who think rape and throwing acid in girls faces is A-OK–not so much.
“ . . . the absurdity of Americans now decrying immigration en masse . . . ”
??
There is a widespread desire to return to the days when an aspiring immigrant had to show that the US would benefit, or at least not be harmed, by her admission into this country.
But I’ve seen next to nothing (beyond the usual crazies) calling for shutting down all immigration.
Where are you getting this?
I agree with those saying immigration is inherently a good thing for the hosting country. Mass immigration? Well, we all here – supporters of immigration as above – stipulate a market (labor and otherwise) free or nearly free of government interference. But I doubt that immigration under such conditions would be likely to be characterized as ‘mass’ – unless the hosting country underwent some extraordinary disaster that wiped out large parts of its working population.
I am also beginning to doubt that those historical large waves of immigration into the US proved to be of net benefit to the latter in the long term – I suspect they were among the contributing factors to the growth of the Left in that country, resulting in the Democratic party as we know it today, and the prevalence of left-wing politics in general.
I was waiting for Perry to post that Arnold clip. Given that Hillary ran solely on her gender (she has no real accomplishments to point to, so her campaign can be reduced to “vote for me because . . . vagina”), and she succeeded in garnering a solid majority of the female vote, the phrase “lamentations of their women” acquires a special savor.
Shouldn’t “schadenboner” (no “n” in the first syllable, by the way) be spelled with an umlaut (“schadenböner”)?
Everything looks better with the heavy metal umlaut, Laird. Sämizdätä
Thanks for the link to that article in The Atlantic, Alisa. Very interesting.
Glad you liked it. BTW, their articles are very good, for the most part.
Breitbart has a Lena Dunham meltdown, no idea who this person is, but she seems to have escaped from a Peter Simple column into real life.
: his desire to spend big on infrastructure in his acceptance speech,
Perhaps you missed where he wanted to create an ‘Infrastructure fund’ where Private people could invest and get a return. will it work – don’t know – but this would not come from tax receipts or more borrowing.
And the Daily Mail tells us how Huma is doing.
Surprising that PMO has not yet referred to the effects of Robert Michels’ “Iron Law” on the Progressives’ party; plus Pareto’s Rise and Fall of the Elites.
>>And that didn’t turn out great for the American Indians, did it?
>Well indeed, which is why I point out the absurdity of Americans now decrying immigration en masse, when their country was built by immigrants.
I don’t get your point. Mass immigration in that case was bad for the existing culture. Why is this a reason for current Americans to oppose mass immigration now? Because they benefitted from what the early settlers did? That’s not much of an argument.
Good to see mention of Robert Michels and Vilfredo Pareto — although i don’t get how RRS thinks they are relevant here. Of course, the Iron Law of Oligarchy is relevant to every single political issue: the question is not whether it is relevant, but how.
Also, i don’t know what PMO is supposed to mean.
Paul Marks Organization
The original European immigration into the Americas is a special case: except for the Aztecs and Incas (and to my knowledge that’s it) there was no State in pre-Columbian America, and therefore one could make a case that all the land outside Aztec and Inca jurisdiction was Res Nullius.
More relevant historical comparisons could be:
Texas: the Mexican government allowed mass American immigration, until the Americans became the majority and decided (reasonably, in my opinion) that they did not want to be ruled by Mexico.
Hawaii: American immigrants did not become the majority, but they had most of the guns, and again decided (unreasonably, from what i understand) that they did not want to be ruled by the native King.
South Africa: it was not a State when the Europeans started immigrating, and eventually outnumbered the native Bushmen. The relevant comparison is to Bantu immigration into the then-majority-White South Africa, until eventually the Bantu vastly outnumbered the White people.
Israel: you knew this was coming, i suppose. Jewish immigration to Palestine was encouraged by the Ottomans, and by the time of the founding of Israel, the majority was Jewish. Oddly, the same sort of people who want open borders in the US and Europe, decry the effects of Jewish immigration to Palestine.
Please feel free to point out where i have distorted or grossly oversimplified history.
I did not mean to make a specific point, anyway: just wanted to point out where to look for relevant comparisons.
There is, however, a point that i want to make about the Iron Law of Oligarchy and its relevance here; maybe tomorrow.
Snorri: For Texas, it would be more accurate to say that the Texians and Tejanos didn’t want to be ruled by Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, who abrogated the liberal constitution of 1824 and declared himself dictator. Two other Mexican provinces revolted at the same time and for the same reason as Texas, and were brutally crushed.
Snorri Godhi (November 11, 2016 at 10:20 pm) the large majority of US acreage was acquired by legal sale from native american tribes. Almost always, the sale was to the US government, who banned private deals between US citizens and indian tribes because of the legal complications it caused (readers here, seeing the government impose a monopoly, may suspect there were other reasons, but the ostensible one had content). The US government typically treated the tribes and/or chiefs as competent to make these deals. Your idea that they were not a state can be defended in one sense of the word state, but the US government treated them as states for the purposes of these transfers.
A much lesser acreage was acquired by cession after conflicts in which the PC notion of peaceful and noble savages being unprovokedly set on by greedy whites ranges from being seriously one-sided to being a travesty. Again, this shows the US government treating the tribes as states for purposes of war and peace treaty.
Early on, they were quite simply treated as independent states by the British and then the US government. Later, the US asserted suzerainty, similar to what Britain claimed over the Boers before the final Boer war, i.e. claiming they could not have foreign policy dealings with other European powers, etc. Their legal transition to being simply subjects and citizens of the US was not completed till the 20th century and the relics of earlier treatment leave several legal tangles.
Some acreage was treated as Res Nullius by Andrew Jackson, who ridiculed the idea that a tribe owned land that “they had once glimpsed from a mountain top, or seen in the chase” (quoted from memory), so drew the border of certain tribes more narrowly, leaving empty space between. The tiny native american populations ensured that other land was simply not claimed at all by any tribe, so was de facto Res Nullius.
As regards Israel, the Jews were the recognised owners until Hadrian (Hadrian-may-his-bones-rot, as I believe the Jewish phrase has it) drove them out with slaughter after they objected to worshipping him and his catamite as gods. Hadrian assumed the survivors would soon become good Graeko-Romans, but whereas other groups from classical times disappeared, the Jews remained and never accepted their dispossession; during the next two millennia, all subsequent occupiers of the territory were well aware that the Jews maintained their claim to it.
” . . . the PC notion of peaceful and noble savages . . . .”
Just as a side note:
Here in the Midwest, a/k/a the Great Plains States, the history of the Native American populations has been studied extensively.
The consensus now is that the continent most resembled a more bloody and barbarous Somalia, with murderous warlords ruling their own areas, much bloody battle, human sacrifices, slavery, and lives that were mostly “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.”
Oh, and they always cried when they saw litter.
“I am also beginning to doubt that those historical large waves of immigration into the US proved to be of net benefit to the latter in the long term – I suspect they were among the contributing factors to the growth of the Left in that country, resulting in the Democratic party as we know it today, and the prevalence of left-wing politics in general.”
Alisa – absolutely correct.
I am a product of those waves and my wife is an immigrant. But any dispassionate look at the result would no doubt lead to your conclusion. Progressivism was the result of white “top men” at the turn of the century who were intellectually captured by the Prussian model – but it would never have survived and captured the cultural ethos of the US without the demographic changes and mass immigration waves that followed.
That said, I thank G-d that my father and grandparents escaped from the hellholes that they were born to.
Before white men settled in America the Indians walked around naked, didn’t have metal for tools, didn’t have horses, written language etc, etc.
On American Indians, a possibly unusual take here.
On modern Israel, most local Arab’s land was similarly purchased fair and square by Jewish immigrants.
Josh B.: indeed, speaking as an immigrant myself.
Also, while mass immigration may have not worked for the better in the US, the opposing case can be made in Israel, quite strongly so, with regard to the mass immigration of Jews here from the disintegrating former Soviet Union.
Laird is quite correct, schadenböner is better with umlauts.
But if we’re going all metal then obviously we actually need an appropriate font.
I present the improved schadenböner for your downloading pleasure
http://di2.nu/pix/schadenboner.jpg
Cal, the point is obvious: the US was built on the back of high immigration and I have pointed out that it’s therefore rum indeed that people today want to halt or, as Mr Trump has implied by his comments over Mexicans etc, to reverse it.
On a different subject I see there are suggestions that Trump might not reverse Obamacare in toto. That didn’t take long.
Josh B: your point surely that ultimately, immigration isn’t just about the “mass” but a story of individuals.
Nice one Francis. Still like the look of Sämizdätä with heavy metal umlauts.
Yes Jonathan, but the politics of it – and politics in general – is all and nothing but about masses.
Many good points, Niall Kilmartin. I’d only add that some historians postulate a near-extinction level plague among the American Indians, shortly before the Settlers arrived. Thus explaining why they weren’t wiped out, like the Vikings who preceded them were.
On Hadrian – to be fair, he did build a wall.
Hadrian was from a town near what is now Seville, in Hispania. So hispanics and walls go back a long way.
Nice font, FrancisT. Perhaps Sämizdätä could incorporate that into its logo?
The other rob (November 12, 2016 at 1:40 pm), it is not exactly that there was one plague at one time.
As each tribe came into contact with the settlers, two things interacted:
1) The tribe tried to monopolise trade with the settlers, forcing further-away tribes to accept them as a reseller of settler goods. This typically caused inter-indian wars as the distant tribes tried to punch through the nearby tribe to trade with the settlers directly.
2) Simultaneously, the disease experience of the two groups equalised and the tribe took losses, after which they needed less land and their wars with their neighbours began to alarm them.
Thus they became keen to sell to the settlers their outlying territory that they could no longer defend from their enemies.
The above is one of a number of contexts for my comment above.
Hearing the lamentations of their pajama boys is also pretty satisfying.
I had a schadenboner that lasted more than four hours.
I didn’t call my physician, I called everybody.
Precisely, look how that worked out for the Amerindians!
Perhaps President Trump could issue an executive order changing America’s name, as described here.
>Cal, the point is obvious: the US was built on the back of high immigration and I have pointed out that it’s therefore rum indeed that people today want to halt or, as Mr Trump has implied by his comments over Mexicans etc, to reverse it.
It may, or may not, be ‘rum’, but just because you have (or may have) benefited from a policy in the past doesn’t mean that policy is the right one for now, especially if it looks like causing you trouble.
And as I said, the successful US immigration programs of the twentieth century did not involve letting millions of illegals in unchecked, and then granting them citizenship afterwards.
Snorri
For those still tuned in, here is my take -in a letter to the ONE (count them, 1) “conservative” writer at the Boston Globe:
Mr. Jacoby:
Given your academic exposures you may be familiar with the “Iron Law of Oligarchy.” If not, you might “Google” that phrase.
The attachment of “Political Parties,” above, is to an English translation of Robert Michel’s work of that name which established the term and outlined its operation. (way back in 1911 !).
Understanding that law’s relevance to developments of American Political Parties can provide a different perspective from yours that “Nov. 8 marked a stunning victory for the Republican Party -.” This difference of perspective is not “partisan,” and, at this juncture, may more markedly disclose what has occurred in the Democrat Party structure.
Both parties have become oligarchies (in their power structures).
The Oligarchy (popularly “the Establishment”) of the Republicans was first fractured (but not fragmented) by the 2009 Tea Party movement, which not only diverted conservative voters (and public) from the oligarchs, but actually displaced many of them completely; probably due to the regional, less centralized nature of the Republican Party Oligarchy. That fracture opened a wedge (as the conservative “establishment” or oligarchy lost cohesion – still not recovered).
Meanwhile back at the Democrat ranch, the trends, sensed by Senator Underwood in “Drifting Sand of Party Politics,” took form in the art of James A Farley, as a party of coalitions of constituencies, with predominant but dispersed oligarchies (originally city “machines” and Southern regional interests). As the varieties of particular interests grew (and constituency building with it), the constant adding on of constituencies apparently led to the need for centralization of the oligarchical powers, and that party became dominated (in its recent end) by a centralized oligarchy whose internal relationships (for position and power)
detached them from sufficient relationships with the memberships of original constituencies (who have now turned elsewhere to have democratic effects).
The highly centralized Democrat Party oligarchy is now adrift, having been somewhat fragmented by the fragmentation of what were its constituencies – many of the members of which have now “invaded” the territories of the Republican Party oligarchies, and taken over that party’s capacities to direct the course of politically determined actions.
This may be a corollary to, or have a corollary in, Pareto’s “Rise and Fall of Elites.”
Laird & Perry
The font I’m using is fette haenel fraktur font
It produces a very nice Samizdata logo in fact
http://di2.nu/pix/samizdata.png
And now I’ve figured out how to do this in unicode and even emboldened
??̈?????̈??̈ ?????????̈???
??̈?????̈??̈ ?????????̈???
Belatedly, i reply to RRS. Perhaps nobody will read this comment, but it will serve as a draft for comments that will have to be written in the future, i fear.
My take on the role of the ruling class is not incompatible with RRS’s take, but nonetheless different. My take is that libertarians who think that multiculturalism/diversity is compatible with freedom (from coercion) are, to put it bluntly, delusional. That is because they do not think about the inevitability of the ruling class, and the incentives that individuals in the ruling class are facing. As long as there are ethnic groups who can be convinced that they are getting a raw deal, somebody in the ruling class is bound to peddle that notion to them; and as soon as one group starts voting in its own interest, Pandora’s box is opened: more and more groups will come to the conclusion that the best way to improve their lot is to vote in their group interest.
Note that the notion that minorities can be exploited by the ruling class, in a number of roles (including scapegoats) is not new: iirc it is in Aristotle’s Politics, and then in Ibn Khaldun’s Muqaddimah. It is also implicit in the last chapter of The Road to Serfdom; though Hayek was too naive to think about the incentives faced by the ruling class.
An orthodox Marxist (not Frankfurt School) would probably conclude that all ethnic groups must unite against the ruling class; but that is to miss the point that every collective action is directed by a ruling class; e.g. the Bolsheviks were a ruling class in waiting, before the October Revolution.
Instead, i suggest that the proper response is (a) to be aware, and to spread awareness, of the central role of the ruling class in promoting conflict between the ruled classes, and between ethnic groups, WITHOUT advocating collective action; and (b) to try to at least slow down any increase in “diversity”. I still won’t take responsibility for whatever Trump will do, but i note that he has made a commitment to (b), and at least a token effort at (a), by telling American Blacks that they have been exploited by the Democrats.