Donald Trump, Javier Milei, Nayib Bukele, and Liz Truss all participated in the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Maryland last Saturday, posing as political brothers (see “Trump Says He Is a ‘Dissident’ Under Siege from Thugs in Bleak Speech” and “Argentina’s Milei Meets Trump After Hosting Biden Officials,” Financial Times, February 24, 2024). The newspaper reports:
In a video of the two leaders meeting backstage, posted on X by a Trump adviser, an exuberant Milei thanks the former president [Trump] “for all [his] work” and says: “I hope to see you again and the next time I hope you will be president.”
To be fair to the Financial Times, it also admits:
Milei has previously said in interviews that he mainly shares with Trump the goal of opposing socialism—a message he returned to at the end of his CPAC speech on Saturday.
The day before, the same newspaper reviewed a book where Tim Aberta, a Christian, bemoans the Trump idolatry that has seized the evangelical movement (“Why Are So Many Evangelical Christians in Thrall to Trump?” February 23, 2024). The story features an extraordinary photograph of evangelicals praying with and for Trump, while a preacher directs the trance; you have to see it! Derek Brower, the journalist, writes:
But Alberta shows that much bigger ideas [than abortion] are now also at work. Many evangelicals consider Trump to be ordained by God, and see the US as uniquely blessed; a Christian nationalism has become rampant in the movement. Hence their fervour for men such as David Barton, an author famous for pseudo-history books that argue America’s true origins are as a theocracy. …
Lauren Boebert, the gun-toting Republican congresswoman from Colorado, said: “I’m tired of this ‘separation of church and state’ junk . . . The church is supposed to direct the government.”
Underlying all this, there seems to be a dangerous philosophical confusion between classical liberals and libertarians on one side and, on the other side, the current intersection of the Trumpian, evangelical, and old-conservative movements. This Trumpian connection, as we may call it, shows little interface with the values and philosophy of classical liberalism. The main and perhaps only interface is that both sides are opposed to collectivism of the left, but the Trumpian connection welcomes the collectivist right. In a recent EconLog post, I explained the “unbearable lightness of collectivism”: both shades of collectivism favor the supremacy of collective choices; they just want to force different collective choices on others. The danger is not socialism, but collectivism of the left or the right.
Can we imagine, say, Friedrich Hayek or James Buchanan wanting to be associated with the Trumpian connection? A paradigmatic case is trade, whether internal or external does not matter. Anybody who does not agree that trade should be a private matter cannot be part of the broad liberal-libertarian tradition.
From Anthony Downs’s 1957 book An Economic Theory of Democracy, we know that “parties formulate policies in order to win elections, rather than win elections in order to formulate policies.” This result follows from the assumption that politicians are no less self-interested than ordinary individuals: their first goal is to be elected in order to benefit from the perks and glory of power. We should therefore not be surprised that philosophical coherence is typically not a priority of politicians. But instead of providing a justification for general cynicism, this observation should give a reason to limit government power and reject confused rabble-rousing.
In my view, there are two related reasons why classical liberals and libertarians should dissent, and be seen as dissenters, from the Trumpian connection. First, as I emphasized, the (classical) liberal philosophy is individualist and stands at the polar opposite of the collectivism and authoritarianism of those, on the right or on the left, who want to impose their ideas and whims by force. Second, we, in the liberal galaxy, should try hard not to be seen as what we are not philosophically. The contrary would be a self-defeating strategy in the longer run. To say it more crudely, and at the risk of hurting some intelligent and well-meaning friends, if everybody thinks we are idiots, our task will be even more difficult.
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Featured image generated by ChatGPT: OpenAI. (2024). ChatGPT (4) [Large language model]. https://chat.openai.com, February 26, 2024.
READER COMMENTS
Mactoul
Feb 28 2024 at 10:13am
Please provide a single example of a politician, present or past, who is not a collectivist by the libertarian standards.
To be a politician, to seek votes from a national electorate, is itself a fundamentally non-libertarian undertaking, since the libertarianism has no need for political process.
steve
Feb 28 2024 at 10:39am
It seems to me that the commonality between Trump and Milei is the willingness to resort to authoritarianism to achieve their goals. Both seem to relish a bit of personality cult. Milei does seem to have an ideological/intellectual base of beliefs while Trump seems to be almost purely transactional or self serving.
Steve
TMC
Feb 28 2024 at 1:18pm
” willingness to resort to” is an odd way to state ‘reduce’.
Both Trump’s and Milei’s supporters are supporters for the increase in personal liberties and reduction of government power these two bring.
Pierre Lemieux
Feb 28 2024 at 3:37pm
TMC: I am interested to know what you think Trump did, and said he would do, to increase “personal liberties.” I don’t think he once mentioned “personal liberties” or “individual liberty,” which is probably the expression that’s most meaningful and compromising. (Granted that he nominated better Supreme Court judges than his predecessor or successor , but that’s because, for once, he took and followed advice from people who knew something, i.e., the Federalist Society, and because he thought that it would buy him an out-of-jail card (even in that, he did not have a clue how the world works).
robc
Feb 28 2024 at 9:25pm
One of the biggest negatives (in some corners) of Trump is he lowered the respect for the office of the President.
I consider that his greatest achievement.
TMC
Feb 29 2024 at 10:08am
Trump is 3rd in lowering the respect of the office – in the past 10 yrs alone.
TMC
Feb 29 2024 at 10:26am
Yes, the Supreme Court nominations are a good start no matter what his reasoning was.
There is an article by a pretty smart fellow regarding the CEA’s report on Trump’s deregulation. https://www.hoover.org/research/trumps-deregulatory-successes
Read the article. David Henderson from here has done a nice job listing some the the deregulatory wins Trump had. There is a twisted logic of how using the power of the office to provide more freedom is authoritarian, but I don’t buy that reasoning.
They calculated this has added $3100 to household income through increased freedoms alone. I also consider the tax reductions to be adding additional freedom. Keeping one’s own money is taking power back from the government. Instead of 2-for-1 reduction in regulations, he eliminated 8 old regulations for every 1 new regulation adopted.
Trump also instituted “Right to Try,” allowing terminally ill patients to use potentially lifesaving, unproven treatments.
Pierre Lemieux
Feb 28 2024 at 3:48pm
Steve: I may understand what you mean but note that leaving individuals free to engage in the peaceful activities they choose to engage in is not authoritarianism.
Craig
Feb 28 2024 at 10:46am
“The main and perhaps only interface is that both sides are opposed to collectivism of the left, but the Trumpian connection welcomes the collectivist right.”
The issue is really the question of degree, not principle. The reason is because the issue of principle was lost back in the New Deal. One cannot stand around and argue for a constitutional order along the lines of the Lochner era anymore, it’ll do you no good.
“Now it is true that I believe this country is following a dangerous trend when it permits too great a degree of centralization of governmental functions. I oppose this–in some instances the fight is a rather desperate one. But to attain any success it is quite clear that the Federal government cannot avoid or escape responsibilities which the mass of the people firmly believe should be undertaken by it. The political processes of our country are such that if a rule of reason is not applied in this effort, we will lose everything–even to a possible and drastic change in the Constitution. This is what I mean by my constant insistence upon “moderation” in government. Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history.” — Letter from Dwight D. Eisenhower to Edgar Newton Eisenhower (1954)
https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/letter-to-edgar-newton-eisenhower/
The Republican party, as an institution unto itself, is subject to competitive pressure of elections and to survive as an institution it must adapt to competitive evololutionary pressure, ie pragmatism demands it to abandon dogmatic principles.
Essentially Eisenhower’s thoughts here show how the Republican Party had to concede that the left had won massive political victories from the New Deal through the election of Eisenhower and this sets up a post war era where the difference between Republican and Democrats is merely one of degree, not really one of principle with respect to the role of the federal government in society.
Richard W Fulmer
Feb 28 2024 at 11:32am
The rise of national populism is, in part, a reaction to the success and perceived success that the left has achieved by “breaking the rules” – that is by subverting democratic processes through its march through the institutions, using the government’s coercive power to advance its ideas and interests, and using the law to punish political enemies. The populist right aspires to fight fire with fire by adopting the left’s tactics.
Much of the work of people like Patrick Deneen, Sohrab Amari, Adrian Vermeule, Michael Anton, and Rod Dreher are attempts to wrap an intellectual veneer around the right’s tactical shift. The problem is that ends are inextricably tied to means; consequently, the new right’s policies and goals converge with those of the left.
Laurentian
Feb 28 2024 at 4:09pm
Why did the moderate, sensible pre-Trump Republicans fail to stop this though?
Also how does one unsubvert institutions?
And doesn’t this require enough people to get upset about subverted institutions?
Richard W Fulmer
Feb 28 2024 at 5:10pm
I think that Republicans and others on the right failed to use the legal powers at their disposal to stop the left’s abuses of the system. In addition, Republican leaders were unable to articulate a compelling defense of (classical) liberalism – George W. Bush and Donald Trump were two of the most inarticulate presidents in the country’s history.
Worse, while Republicans claimed to be the party of smaller government, the federal government often grew more under Republican administrations than it did under Democratic ones. Politicians on both sides of the aisle learned that they could buy votes with taxpayers’ money – and, increasingly, with borrowed and printed money. That money wasn’t free, though. It came with strings, regulations, and oversight – corrupting the institutions that it was purportedly subsidizing.
I believe that to “un-subvert” our institutions, we need to return the federal government to performing those few duties that the Constitution assigns to it, rather than increasing its powers further as the nationalists wish to do.
My recommendations are:
Education
– Stop forcing children to go to bad schools.
– Stop preventing parents from sending their children to the schools of their choice.
– Stop letting teachers’ unions prevent schools from firing bad teachers.
– Require that teachers have degrees in the subjects they teach.
– Stop promoting students to the next grade even if they haven’t learned the material.
– Stop emphasizing self-esteem above accomplishment.
– Stop adding fad courses to the K-12 curricula that leave less time for students to learn the basics.
– Stop teaching children that they are either oppressors or oppressed by virtue of their skin color.
– Stop teaching minority children that the deck is stacked against them and that they have no hope of bettering their lives or those of their loved ones through their own efforts.
Employment
– Eliminate minimum wage laws, which make it difficult for the least employable (that is, the least educated, least skilled, least experienced, least physically and mentally able, and most discriminated against) to find jobs.
– Reduce job licensing restrictions.
– Reduce business startup regulations.
Welfare Programs
– Stop paying people to be unemployed.
– Stop paying women to have children out of wedlock.
Housing
– Stop imposing rent controls, which create shortages of low-cost housing.
– End or reduce zoning restrictions, which also create shortages of low-cost housing.
– End housing policies that encourage people to take out mortgages they can’t afford.
Economy
– End the Fed’s loose monetary policies.
– Reduce regulation.
– Reduce (or, better, eliminate) the capital gains tax.
– Reduce tariffs. Eliminate tariffs on goods from allied nations.
– End public unions.
– Eliminate farm subsidies.
– Eliminate corporate subsidies.
– Stop bailing out financial institutions and thereby creating moral hazard and with it increased financial risk.
– Stop increasing investment risk with complex laws and regulations whose meaning can be determined only after the fact in a courtroom.
Law Enforcement
– End civil asset forfeiture, which encourages cities to use their police forces as revenue collectors and are especially hard on the poor who cannot afford to hire the legal talent needed to recover their property.
– Stop letting police unions prevent bad police officers from being fired.
Healthcare
– Require all healthcare providers to post their prices.
– Eliminate “certificates of need” that allow entrenched healthcare providers to decide whether they’re willing to compete with newcomers.
Thomas L Hutcheson
Mar 3 2024 at 7:14am
Employment amendments:
Replace minimum wage laws with larger EITC
Eliminate employer “provision of health insurance; give workers tax credits for private insurance like ACA
Shift financing of SS/Medicare/unemployment insurance from wage tax to VAT.
Housing amendments:
And outdated building codes
Eliminate “free” street parking
Economy amendments:
Continue FAIT
Shift income tax to progressive consumption tax
Eliminate taxation of business income
Revise regulations to pass cost benefit tests
Law enforcement amendments
More police officers
More resources for prosecutors
National system for tracking sources of gun used in crime
Tate Barnes
Mar 4 2024 at 5:42am
I’m an Australian living in Singapore….. AUS is moving ever left and Govt. involved in everything, everywhere, all at once.
Singapore, for all the criticisms it receives re democratic process, is a classical liberal wonderland.
Laurentian
Feb 28 2024 at 12:55pm
Eh, laissez faire economics was hated long before 2016. They already thought you were a bigoted reactionary. I mean that is Nancy McLean is trying to do to Milton Friedman.
Also there is the fact that the neocons and Republican moderates never liked libertarians in the first place. Remember how much Goldwater and Reagan were hated at the time, especially by certain Republicans? And that Eisenhower quote that Craig posted is emblematic of the attitude of almost all of the moderate sensible nice guy anti-Trump Republicans.
And the reason Evangelicals love Trump so much is because he doesn’t despise them.
Pierre Lemieux
Feb 28 2024 at 3:27pm
Laurentian: I am not speaking about love, but about credibility. And I don’t think that viewing politics as love explains much, if only because the more politics there is, the more a politician gains some voters’ love at the price of some others’ hate. You remember when Trump defended Kim Yong-Un by saying, “he loves his country very much” (quoting from memory); open North Korea’s borders and you will see how much he is loved.
vince
Feb 28 2024 at 1:10pm
How do you suggest that such dissent should be expressed?
Pierre Lemieux
Feb 28 2024 at 3:43pm
Vince: By explaining again how an autoregulated society can work and what are the values underlying it; and, consequently, expressing our strong dissent from, and repudiation of, political authoritarianism in America and elsewhere, as many of us already do.
Laurentian
Feb 28 2024 at 4:43pm
What are those values? Isn’t that rather collectivist? Also if society constantly evolves and changes then how can there be consistent values? For example Macaulay’s and Spencer’s ideas of modernity and civilization are significantly different from yours.
Alro how do you ensure that “creative destruction” won’t undermine those values as outdated?
Also didn’t classical liberalism collapse because it was considered an outdated 19th concept? Same thing is happening to neoliberalism.
Pierre Lemieux
Feb 29 2024 at 11:23am
Laurentian: There is of course nothing collectivist in values, since they can reside nowhere else than in individual minds. But, as obviously, individuals can share values or have opinions on values. My “Tradition or Change as Wish for 2023 (and Beyond)” is an attempt at discussing the trade-offs between “creative destruction” and tradition, which you correctly raise as an important issue.
To further help your reflection, here is an interesting thought about “outdated” 19th-century values by Anthony de Jasay, the liberal anarchist theorist (see my forthcoming Econlib “Liberty Classics” review of his 1997 book Against Politics):
Bernard
Feb 29 2024 at 7:06am
Huge key point:
The danger is not socialism, but collectivism of the left or the right.
Democrats, Republicans & whatever are distractions, painful and disgusting one….
B
Thomas L Hutcheson
Feb 29 2024 at 9:18am
Trump is plenty into the “collectivism” of immigration restriction, abortion criminalization, and trade restrictions, the airline bailout, the PPP and does not mind running up deficits so long as he is President. Trump’s connections with the classical liberal strain of “Conservatism” is tenuous at best.
Pierre Lemieux
Feb 29 2024 at 11:25am
Thomas: Yes, that’s part of my point and part of what we agree on.
Jose Pablo
Feb 29 2024 at 11:48am
Looking at Trump, you can only admire the prescience of Hayek. The concept of “socialist of all parties” is tailored to Trump.
All non-Trump Americans serve, in Trump’s mind, the only purpose of providing him with prayers to the god emperor. The individuality of all non-Trump Americans is totally irrelevant. A mere nuisance for the god emperor to deal with.
And the main difference between Trump and Milei is that Milei can articulate his “political philosophy”. Trump, on the other hand …
Both share a meaningful, and worrying, lack of sense of (intelligent) humor.
Roger McKinney
Mar 1 2024 at 12:05pm
While everything you write is true, so what? Trump is our best option. No true libertarian could get close to the presidency. Libertarians must do a better job of selling liberty to the people, the voters for a libertarian candidate to have a snowballs chance in hell.
Trump isn’t even conservative, let alone libertarian. He is a typical politician. But keep in mind that his Court appointments have revolutionized the Court, turning it back to the Constitution for the first time in a century. Roe v Wade was aborted and the Chevron doctrine faces the same. Great things have come from his Court and continue to come.
Trump doesn’t like war. Had he been president he would likely have negotiated a peaceful end to the Ukraine war. And he is the only president who required two regulations be canceled for every new one from federal agencies.
Trump is confusing. He has no coherent political philosophy, but he governed much like a classical liberal except on trade abd immigration.
Cyberike
Mar 2 2024 at 1:08pm
Trump has no moral compass, no ethics at all. I believe he is corrupt to his core. Instead of being the best option, he is the worst possible option. All this talk of whatever good he might have done is meaningless because it comes from a place of selfishness and greed. I do not believe that any good, ever, can come from such a place.
Pierre Lemieux
Mar 5 2024 at 11:14am
Roger: I don’t think he “governed much like a classical liberal” at all, even outside trade and immigration. For a comparison with Biden (including Trump’s adding $7.2 trillion to the public debt and being the main generator of inflation), see my “Is ‘Bidenomics’ Just ‘Bidenology’ or ‘Trumpology’?“. On his supposed “deregulation,” see my “Was Trump a Deregulator?” And as I wrote to TMC above, I grant that he nominated better Supreme Court judges than his predecessor or successor, but that’s because, for once, he took and followed advice from people who knew something, i.e., the Federalist Society, and because he thought that it would buy him an out-of-jail card, which he suspected he would need. I won’t repeat here many other points, except that he “managed” the Covid crisis like a run-of-the-mill authoritarian, including by proclaiming the Defense Production Act, nominating Navarro as his “equipment czar,” and prosecuting “price gougers.”
Daniel Shapiro
Mar 7 2024 at 7:29pm
Thank you, Pierre, for this excellent article. Milei’s palling around with and gushing over Trump is a clear sign, for me, that Milei cannot be trusted.
Comments are closed.