Tag: theodorerooseveltnationalism

2020 Election, Antitrust & Trade Regulation, Domestic Policy, Immigration, International Trade, Politics

An American Nationalist Voting Index – The Square Deal

Bob Claude |

This is part of a series examining the issues in the presidential election. To see other articles in the series, click on the “2020 Elections” link on the Home page

Score

Biden -.5   Trump +2

Roosevelt’s commitment to the working man was born of two incidents of violence in his life that challenged his fundamentally conservative impulses. The first was the assassination of President William McKinley by an anarchist, which led to Roosevelt’s succession to the presidency. The anarchists were the Antifa/Islamic terrorists of their time and arose out of the economic inequality and discontent that were byproducts of the Industrial Revolution. The second was his service with the Rough Riders in the Spanish-American war.  TR saw bravery in both poor cowboys and privileged Northeastern elite in the charge up San Juan Hill and believed their government owed them a “square deal” for that bravery, which he defined as follows:

But when I say am for the square deal, I mean not merely that I stand for fair play under the present rules of the game, but that I stand for having those rules changed so as to work for a more substantial equality of opportunity and of reward for equally good service.

At the same time, he expected the average worker to respond by contributing to his family, community and country, not simply demanding a handout from the government.

In today’s economy, we need to change the rules on economic concentration, trade and immigration to give American workers a real chance to achieve the American Dream of stable and independent financial security. Biden and Trump have verifiable records with successes and failures on these issues.  

Antitrust Law

The abuses of Big Tech have revived interest in antitrust policy and exposed its deficiencies in today’s world economy.  The problem lies in the fact we are still trying to regulate these 21st century monopolies using 19th century laws.  We learned in the 2008 financial crisis that allowing companies to become “too big to fail” created a new form of monopoly rents by allowing elites to privatize profits while socializing their risk of loss.  Meanwhile, Big Tech was finding new ways to leverage customer data to monopolize the Internet advertising and product sales market.  

The Trump Administration’s challenge to the ATT-Time Warner merger attempted to build a case against bigness itself by attacking vertical mergers.  Unfortunately, the DC Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the merger on the grounds it created useful efficiencies, which completely misses the point. They also recently filed a lawsuit against Google over their use of their monopoly power over Internet searches to raise advertising prices. However, Trump failed to pursue modernization of the antitrust laws themselves. Despite this failure, these two innovative suits earn Trump a + .5.

The Obama Administration also had an active antitrust docket and challenged several mergers with limited success.  The losses in both the Obama and Trump Administrations emphasize the need for a modernization of the rules. The Democratic House just released a comprehensive report on Big Tech’s abuses of their market power that could serve as a start for a re-tooling of the statutes. All of this suggests Biden should be given a +.5 on the issue  as well.

Trade

Protecting America and its workers from unfair international trade practices has been an area where the Trump Administration has shined.  They understand the importance of a strong manufacturing sector and have not subjugated American policy to the slow and sometimes hostile mechanisms of the World Trade Organization.  Alan Tonelson of RealityChek has pointed out that the tariffs against China and others have not prevented the manufacturing sector form succeeding during the pandemic without a loss of jobs (see his post from October 19). At the same time, the administration preserved the strategically important partnership between the US, Canada, & Mexico by concluding the U.S.- Mexico-Canada Agreement. Trump deserves a +1 for these achievements.

Biden’s record and positions are almost the polar opposite. He wants to return to the multilateral approach, ignoring America’s unique great power interest in preserving its internal economic strength.  However, he has also said he would relax the Chinese tariffs gradually and only upon concessions from the Chinese. Biden says he would prioritize developing an international coalition to challenge Chinese state capitalism as well.  The latter positions reduce his negative score to a -.5. 

Immigration

Trump’s’ actions to restrict illegal immigration have been divisive, haphazard and often poorly justified on ethnic nationalist grounds. However, they have changed the dynamic and started to limit the use of immigrant workers to compete with Americans (see my post “Immigration – The New Slavery).  However, Trump failed to seize the opportunity to pass comprehensive immigration legislation when he had a Republican Congress.  Because of this failure, he deserves only a +.5 on the issue.

Biden and the Democrats have understandably concentrated on the necessity of legalizing immigrants that have been here for years. They then oppose any real future controls on immigration and would expand the number of HIVB-style visas, thus allowing big companies to use foreign workers to continue to pay substandard wages.    As a result, they deserve a -.5 on this issue.  

Conclusion  

Many other changes in the rules of the game are necessary to give American workers the economic opportunities they deserve.  Mere income redistribution is not enough.   Americans simply want their government to give them a fair chance to compete and contribute; in short, the square deal that TR believed in and for which he fought.

2020 Election, Politics

An American Nationalist Voting Index – Character and Final Score

Bob Claude |

This is part of a series examining the issues in the presidential election. To see other articles in the series. click on the “2020 Elections” link on the Home page.

Final Score

Issues (linked to past articles)BidenTrump
Governmental Reform0-1
Foreign Policy-2.5+1.5
Antitrust & Trade Regulation-.5+2.0
Conservation & the Environment+.5-.5
A Strong America-1.5-1.0
Character(0*2)=0(-3*2)=-6
FINAL SCORE-4.0-5.0

The American presidency is unique in the western world because it combines two functions of government generally separated in other countries – chief of state and chief of government. The chief of state is a unifying figure, often a king or queen, that symbolizes the history and values of the nation. In short, he or she symbolizes its character.  In contrast, the chief of government is usually a prime minister elected through a partisan democratic process and tasked with advocating and implementing certain public policies. Theodore Roosevelt filled both roles as well as any President in history precisely because he had a strong and intelligent character.

Up to now, this series has concentrated on the policies an American nationalist president should pursue; i.e, his role as prime minister. However, the chief of state role is equally important.  An American president who cannot symbolize the nation and its character cannot really be said to be nationalist.  Thus, the score for this role will be doubled to reflect this importance.

Which brings us to Donald Trump.  History may conclude that Trump’s most important accomplishment was winning the 2016 election and shattering the ossified political culture that existed over the previous generation. In one fell swoop, Trump proved the intellectual and political bankruptcy of the foreign policy of liberal hegemony and the domestic policy of small government conservatism.  He had a unique opportunity to develop a new political coalition around a nationalist agenda. Instead, he relied on a self-centered, divisive and authoritarian appeal that left American politics coarser and thus weakened our national character. His attempt to blackmail the Ukrainian government to dig up dirt on Biden justified impeachment (see my post here). His juvenile insults of his opponents reflected his own weakness as a democratic leader, not theirs (see this post).  He seemed to have utter contempt for the basics of American constitutional democracy. Finally, his erratic leadership on the coronavirus pandemic and recent dangerous statements about the efficacy of masks abdicated the chief of state’s role to soothe the nation and unify it to fight a common enemy.  These are just some of the ways Donald Trump has shown his complete inability to serve as an American chief of state.  Roosevelt would have been disgusted and horrified by such a lack of character in a President.  He thus deserves the worst score of -3, which, after doubling, becomes a -6. 

Biden comes off better only in comparison to Trump.   His years in the Senate and then the Vice-Presidency have given him both an appreciation of American democracy and the negotiating skills necessary to navigate the system successfully.  He is not a left-wing woke firebrand, though the same cannot be said of his running mate Sen. Kamala Harris. Her presence on the ticket raises the issue of how often a Biden-Harris Administration would descend into divisive identity politics.  Finally, Biden has definitely shown his age on the campaign trail and in the debates. Does he have the energy and the will to face down the firebrands in Congress or his own appointees (as TR did) and unite the country, or will he be simply a figurehead?  These uncertainties cannot support anything but a zero for Biden, and two times zero is still zero.

As the negative scores above show, we are faced with the sad fact that, once again, there is no true American nationalist running for President on a major party ticket this year.   Even if you exclude the character score, Trump only earns a net +1 for his policy accomplishments.   American nationalists are thus left with the agony of choosing the least globalist candidate in the race.

A Personal Decision

Given these scores, I cannot recommend or endorse either candidate in this election.  I admit that a small disagreement on the scores on any issue could tip the scales significantly either way.  However, Roosevelt’s comment about the importance of national character haunts me.   The decision comes down to whether Trump’s character and behavior best represents the American character.  I strongly believe it does not.

It is a bitter pill to swallow, but I will be voting for Biden in today’s election.  His administration will require strong oversight to control his globalist tendencies and thus I will be voting Republican for Congress. It is especially important that the Senate remain Republican since its confirmation powers over treaties and presidential appointments give it key powers in the foreign policy arena.   After this election is over, American nationalists will have the difficult task of rescuing the nationalist brand from the damage Trump has done to it and building for the 2022 and 2024 elections.

Go vote, and God bless America!

2020 Election, General, Politics

Whither American Nationalism Now?

Bob Claude |

As we move on after the wreckage of the Trump administration, this call to courage from Theodore Roosevelt is both sobering and hopeful.  Nationalists made a mistake in putting their hopes in Donald Trump.  He damaged the nationalist brand, but not irreparably. The occasional successes of the last four years point the way to repairing the damage and rebuilding it on a positive policy platform. 

First, we have to accept the reality of the damage. True American nationalism seeks to build a common American identity across cultural and other boundaries. Instead, Donald Trump associated it an ugly white ethnic nationalism that fed identity politics, rather than fighting it.  A movement to create a progressive conservatism that strengthened America and the middle class instead enacted a major tax cut that benefited globalist corporations without requiring any corresponding investment in the nation. (see this previous post). Worse, it ended, not with a celebration of American culture and symbols, but with a sickening attack on the Capitol building, one of the citadels of American freedom itself.

However, there are unmistakable signs of success amidst these failures. The blue wave anticipated by Democrats never really materialized.  As this article illustrates, Trump’s nationalist trade and immigration policies were popular not only with white voters, but also minority voters. The shift towards a realist foreign policy and the withdrawals from Afghanistan and the Middle East caused heartburn among mainstream neocons and liberal hegemonists, but fulfilled Trump’s major foreign policy promises. All of this forced candidate Biden to talk about buying American, creating good jobs and getting tough on China. Thus, while Trump’s rhetoric often failed to meet the reality, there were still solid accomplishments.

American nationalists now need to hold President Biden and Vice-President Harris accountable for results that matches their rhetoric. Biden’s Democratic Party is still led by a Senate majority leader that represents Wall Street and a Vice President and Speaker of the House from the headquarters of Silicon Valley and Big Tech. Their goal of union-wage level jobs is commendable, but will be worthless if companies shift production to China and elsewhere overseas as they did during the Obama Administration. Calls for unity are nice, but are hypocritical if they result in a new woke identity politics that essentially is a left-wing echo of Trump’s ethnic nationalism.

In order to recover from this setback, American nationalists need to highlight our common concerns by building coalitions across party and other boundaries. If Biden pursues policies that really create secure good-paying jobs that strengthen America, we should cheer for and support such policies.  We also should remember the old maxim that all politics is local and start to build grass-roots organizations at the city, county and local level. Finally, we should avoid social issues so long as tolerance is observed on both sides.  

TR’s life was a study in indomitable courage against seemingly insurmountable odds, whether political, intellectual or military.  He experienced numerous failures as well as historic successes. As fellow American nationalists, we are called to pick ourselves up and continue the fight for a strong America and the American Dream for all.