Hard to believe someone would use economic freedom as an argument for Trump. Against Hillary, sure.
I have a friend who is very learned and intelligent. He is a brilliant writer. Philosophically, he used to be an old-time Tory but perhaps with a libertarian streak. Yet he supports Donald Trump. How can he?
My readers should not think that I favor Hillary Clinton. Against her, I am all with my friend. Trump’s political incorrectness is refreshing; perhaps that is what my friend fell for. I also much appreciate Trump’s defense of the Second Amendment, as long as it lasts, but it may be the kiss of Juda.
One of my friend’s pro-Trump arguments is economic freedom. He has argued that only Trump can stop the decline of economic freedom in America, as reported by the Fraser Institute’s and Heritage Foundation’s economic freedom indexes. The former index, however, clearly indicates that economic freedom has declined for reasons that Trump’s proposed policies would only render more destructive.
In the Fraser Institute’s Freedom of the World index, 2000 marks the year that American economic freedom started receding. From then on, the US fell from the 2nd rank in the world (after Hong Kong) to the 16th. Major causes are found in two sub-indexes or “areas”: Freedom to Trade Internationally, and Legal System and Property Rights. If these two areas had retained their values of 2000, the US would now rank first in economic freedom.
Now, Trump is precisely running on a nationalist and protectionist platform that would push America much below the 74th rank (among 157 countries) it now occupies in the area Freedom to Trade Internationally. Trump has also expressed his preference for eminent domain, both in his political pronouncements and in his behavior as a real estate tycoon. More generally, he seems to have no respect for, or understanding of, private property. He even suggested that a Trump administration could cut private remittances to Mexican families.
A related argument invoked by my friend is that Trump’s nationalism and protectionism are merely an actualization of the natural sentiment that makes one prefer one’s fellow natives to foreigners. But preferring nice fellow citizens, agglutinated in a big national loving blob, to bad foreigners is not what nationalism and protectionism are mainly about. They are more about harming some nationals in order to benefit other nationals. Protectionism discriminates among fellow citizens.
If tourist visas are restricted, some nationals are prohibited from receiving in their country foreigners who are their friends or lovers. If immigration visas are restricted, some nationals are not able to bring in their fiancés, and national employers are stopped from hiring foreign workers. If imports are restricted, national consumers are prohibited from getting lower prices out of the country. If Trump restricted imports from China, his white redneck supporters would have a shock when they buy their next fishing rods at Walmart.
My friend argues that nationalism and protectionism are good conservative ideas which, while potentially dangerous in other countries, are naturally benign in America. In fact, nationalism and protectionism are and have been constant threats to the American idea of liberty. Think about the treatment of American Indians, the internment of American citizens of Japanese origin during WWII, or McCarthyism. Or just reflect about the Pledge of Allegiance, invented by socialist Francis Bellamy (a cousin of Edward Bellamy), that millions of Americans have recited, starting on school benches, to the glory of their national state.
In his recent book, Illiberal Reformers, Princeton scholar Thomas Leonard reminds us how nationalism blended with eugenics, racism, and xenophobia during the Progressive Era.
The worst old-style conservatives were even a more dangerous species than the progressives. An extreme 19th-century incarnation was Southerner George Fitzhugh, who defended nationalism, protectionism, and slavery. “Admit liberty to be a good,” he wrote, “and you leave no room to argue that free trade is an evil – because liberty is free trade.”
Enlightened conservatives and a fortiori libertarians have no good reason to favor Trump. He would fuel the very causes that made America less great.
