Dialectic Buchananism Reveals Tribalism

Patrick Buchanan is a person worth researching. Polemical prose in print, and presidential primary proclivities tell me so. An expose on what makes him tic would be a tremendous addition to the political landscape. This is not that. Though he calls himself conservative, and runs The American Conservative, his military views are far from it. If one heard him rail against Republican Senator John McCain and the Iraq invasion, steered at the helm by a Republican president, Pat Buchanan would seem liberal. In his repudiation of overseas adventurism, he is a champion of liberty. Sadly, his affinity towards liberty stops there for foreign policy. Buchanan's views on peaceful exchange between nations is radically illiberal. It is isolationist to the core. It is divisive from the root up. The radical liberal that I am, I will venture to uproot his arguments and expose them for the vestiges of Jim Crow bigotry that they are (I will assume here that bigotry qua bigotry is objectively wrong).

Pat Buchanan, in the December issue of The American Conservative, writes a piece that promotes protectionism. How dare we allow the

opening of America's borders to all goods made by our new friends in the People's Republic of China.

Mercantilism lives. It is beyond me how Buchanan could have worked with Murray Rothbard, when Rothbard held a burning hatred for protectionism (read Rothbard in the mercantilism link). Rothbard calls it a "wall of privilege around inefficient manufacturers". 19th century French economist Frederic Bastiat used satire to swallow whole the pathetic reasoning of local businessmen to enlist Leviathan's blade in suppressing voluntary exchange between individuals across nations. It is fitting that Bastiat chose to enlist the Sun to melt the self-aggrandizing arguments of French mercantilists. He points out how "unfair" the Sun is to the candle industry, because it provides light to everyone on Earth for the mercilessly ruinous price of free. Bastiat's classic can be found in its entirety here.

I made the falsehood of mercantilism clear in my post about the illusory nature of beasts' rights

 Humans do not have to exchange with one another, but they do. Ricardo's Law is apodeictic. The division of labor benefits even those producers who are more effective than others. Even the most talented of humans gains from voluntarily exchanging goods and services. 

 In modern discourse the term "isolationist" has become a pejorative used to deride the greatest statesman for liberty, Doctor Ronald Paul. Time after time, newscasters from all over the accepted political spectrum that Tom Woods affectionately refers to as the 3.5 inches between Secretary Hilary Clinton and Governor Willard Romney. The 4th branch does not disappoint its namesake. These tele-prompt readers claim that reducing the U.S. military presence in Germany and Japan is isolationist. They claim pulling troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan is isolationist. The surface level displays a reduction in aggressive interaction with other countries. Admittedly, this reduction of interaction can appear to be the actions of a hermit unless the unseen consequences are noted. The peaceful interactions, or trade, of producers and consumers across nations is diametrically opposed to isolation. This is in fact the essence of being human. Peacefully interacting with one another. The only way the State can allow this to flourish is to get its mangey hands off of products. To scram or 23 skidoo. Cease and desist its tariffs, taxes and any other form of theft it can conjure up. Buchanan supports Ron Paul's views of the military, thus is no isolationist in this regard. Buchanan is an isolationist in regards to his promotion of domestic producers over foreign producers. If his advocacy did not involve requesting the State to bloody its mitts, then he would be no isolationist. He could choose to only pay for American made goods, and tell his friends to do the same. Instead, he tells the State to steal portions of the gains made by foreign producers, that benefit local consumers.

Statists thrive as all dictators do. Their survival hinges upon the maxim of divide and conquer. Fragmenting society into factions that compete for the treasure chest of stolen goods, State coffers, is the way to purchase votes and keep helming "the calm sea of despotism". Chris Sciabarra, while writing for The Freeman, elucidates Ayn Rand's linking together of statism and tribalism.

Racism, in Rand's view, was the most vicious form of social fragmentation perpetrated by modern statism... Rand argued that racism was an immoral and primitive form of collectivism that negated individual uniqueness, choice, and values. Psychologically the racist substitutes ancestral lineage for self-value and thereby undermines the earned achievement of any genuine self-esteem. Holding people responsible for the real or imagined sins of their ancestors, wielding the weapon of collective guilt, the racist adopts, the associational, concrete-bound method of awareness common to all tribalists. This anti-conceptual tribalism is manifested in the irrational fear of foreigners (xenophobia), the group loyalty of the guild, the worship of the family, the blood ties of the criminal gang, and the chauvinism of the nationalist.

Buchanan is affiliated. He belongs to the pleasantly plump, rosy cheeked, red-blooded American tribe. Their tribe views recent immigrants,  and any folk living outside the U.S., as inferior to the WASPy South and Midwest. Buchanan values the jobs of Protestants of European descent over the jobs of browner people. His bigotry is not even consistent. A consistent bigot would promote U.S. consumers, everyone in the U.S., reaping more benefits than brown consumers elsewhere. He could put that into effect by advocacy of free trade with all nations irrespective of reciprocity. But then again, that would be liberal.

Even more liberal, and radical would be a call to end all State barriers to voluntary trade between humans. Not just those invasions, barriers, initiated by the U.S., but the invasions that any State currently has in place. This would be a victory against bigotry. Without States, voluntary human interactions would increase. Globalization in this inexorably shrinking world of digital and communicational wonders would bring humans together. It would make us one.

The illiberal policies of protectionists wrought "Tribes at War" and their regurgitation today serves the causes of aggression and chaos. To achieve peace we need liberal policies. To bring about spontaneous order, we need anarchy.