P.J. Kellogg:

After four tumultuous and divisive years, it feels as though we may no longer be the UNITED States of America. It seems like we haven’t been this polarized, this pulled apart, in a long time, at least since the Vietnam era.
But perhaps it’s time to focus on what we still have–or SHOULD have–in common: the values that set us apart as Americans, the values that define us and that we should all hold dear, no matter our party affiliation, no matter whether our candidate won or lost this election.
Before we are Republicans or Democrats or any other subset, we are Americans. We should care less about party affiliation, and care more about what we can accomplish by uniting. Blue or Red, left or right, we are all Americans, and we should all want what is best for the country, and for ALL Americans. We should stop listening to politicians and media that seek to splinter us into warring factions and tribes.
We believe our country IS great, because of the high ideals we aspire to: freedom, equality, opportunity. We recognize that we haven’t always lived up to those ideals, and we have done some shameful things in the past, and, sadly, we still do some of them. We seek to learn from our mistakes and not repeat them as we go forward. We are nowhere near perfect, but we strive to be better tomorrow than we were yesterday. Our trajectory should always be rising. We should be a better country tomorrow than we were today.
We were founded on the notion of rugged individualism. You decide what you want to do, you work hard at it, and if you are successful, you get rewarded for your hard work and risk. We believe in upward mobility. You can achieve what you want to achieve and be successful, so long as you do so honestly and don’t harm others in the process.
We also have a long and strong tradition of pitching in. Pilgrims, pioneers and farmers helped their neighbors. They came together to raise barns, harvest crops and put out fires. This nation of rugged individualists knew that everyone needs a hand sometimes. Today I help you, tomorrow I may need your help. This nation was founded on the value of loving your neighbor. Individual freedom doesn’t mean you turn your back on the community. We help those who need help. If your new neighbor needs help moving in, you grab some boxes and help. If someone in your community is sick, you make them a casserole, or the community pulls together to raise funds to help pay for medical care. It isn’t weakness to lift someone up when they are down. Compassion is strength. Sometimes we help another person one on one. Sometimes we combine our efforts with others through a church or a charity. Sometimes we do so through government–that’s all government is, really: it’s citizens pitching in and helping others.
We believe in science. We are always learning, always discovering. That’s how we developed the airplane, the automobile, how we eradicated polio, how we put a man on the moon, and invented the personal computer and the internet. We experiment, we try, we test, we learn. And we pay attention to the scientists and experts who have studied and experimented more than we have. Knowledge is a good thing.
Americans are action-oriented. We work. We see problems, and we find ways to solve them. Individuals, companies, and governments are all seeking to solve problems, overcome obstacles, move us forward. We believe in pragmatism and efficiency.
In America, we are all free to live our lives how we want. The Constitution clarifies that we are endowed by our Creator with the right to pursue happiness how we see fit–provided we don’t harm others or infringe upon their rights. Do what you want to do, love who you want to love, believe what you want to believe. But one person’s happiness does not require that another person suffers. Live and let live.
We believe that governments are necessary, and it is vital that they be effective and efficient. While we cherish the rights and powers of the individual to live as one chooses, there are some things that individuals cannot or should not do alone. The individual cannot defend the nation from foreign attacks. The individual cannot maintain streets or educate children or do a thousand other things. That is why we have elected through our democratic process representatives at the municipal, county, state and federal levels do act in certain roles on our behalf. And we willingly pay taxes to fund these necessary services. Government is not supposed to do everything of course; the Constitution sets limits on its powers, Government can help, when necessary–and should be as small as practical, as effective and as efficient as can be. Those things we want government to do, it should do well. Americans do not want to live without government, but we do not want to be ruled by it, either.
We firmly believe that all people are created equal and are entitled to equal treatment under the law. No one should get special privileges because of their wealth or race or gender or religion, nor should anyone suffer discrimination or face extra burdens or obstacles because of the same. This is not controversial and is not open to discussion. We are a nation that accepts all. And the laws and system should treat all the same. But we realize that not everyone will have equal outcomes. Everyone is unique and different, we all have different skills, talents, and abilities. We take different risks and have different work ethics and luck.
We are and always will remain a capitalist country. We believe in and support free markets, free enterprise, free trade, and fair competition. The government is not in the business of telling people what business they can or should be in, nor should it be picking winners and losers.In the USA, you are free to start your own business, you are free to innovate, and you have the freedom to fail. As citizens, we can and should strongly support our neighbors’ small businesses, which is where most people are employed. Big businesses should not expect nor receive much help from the government.
We have always been and should always be a melting pot. We welcome people from all over the world, We encourage them to come here legally and live the American Dream. We should remain the shining beacon, that city on a hill that people long to reach. We should streamline our immigration process and welcome those who wish to come here, assimilate into the U.S. while simultaneously honoring their heritage. We know that diversity is a strength, not a weakness. America is richer and more vibrant because we are a nation of immigrants, people who have come here from every possible shore, in search of a better life.
Our Constitution guarantees us freedom of speech, freedom of the press to investigate and report facts, and the freedom to exchange ideas. With that freedom, some people will inevitably lie or say ugly and offensive things. You are still free to express your opinions–and with social media we all have more ways to do that than ever before. But people are also free to shoot down your opinions, to attack them, deride them, fact-check them, and to call them out for being incorrect, irresponsible, racist, etc. In America, we speak our minds. We are often direct, blunt, and informal. But we do not have to be rude, insulting or hostile. We are also free to choose civility; we can decide to disagree without being disagreeable.
We believe in the freedom to practice whatever religion one chooses, so long as you are not harming someone else. This country was settled by people who wanted to practice their religion without persecution. You can believe what you want to believe, worship as you see fit, and you are just American as anyone else. If you choose not to believe, that is also your freedom of choice. While the United States was founded by Christians with Christian values and a common belief in the Protestant work ethic, and that is all undeniably part of our collective history and cultural fabric, we are not by any definition an exclusively Christian nation. It is much more important that we be a moral nation, full of good people who seek to do what is right–irrespective of creeds..

Though this has been severely put to the test recently, we are a nation of people who believe in the Rule of Law. We must always seek to have good and fair laws that are applied equally and protect the rights of all citizens. We must have good people in government seeking to make and implement and uphold these laws, and we believe all private and public individuals and entities are to be held accountable under the law. No one is above the law, not presidents or Congress people, not billionaires or police, not anyone. We believe government power is limited by our national and state constitutions.
We are a country of innovation and invention. From mobile phones to the internet, traffic lights to GPS, many great things have been invented right here that have changed the world for the better. We believe in change. We like change–change is often (but not exclusively) positive. Change requires that we adapt, change how we do things, maybe give some things up that are obsolete and step out into the unknown. That’s how we grow, both as individuals and as a society. Progress is good. Stagnation is bad. We have changed a great deal over the past 245 years, and we will–we must–continue to grow, adapt and progress as we move forward.
A fiercely independent people, we like to be left alone (although we haven’t always done a good job at leaving others alone), but we stand up to bullies wherever they may be in the world. We believe in justice (even if we sometimes get it wrong). We are not warmongers, but we fight when we have to, when it’s the right thing to do. We help our allies and we stand up to threats. We don’t turn our back on the world. While “America First” sounds good, it’s very easy for that to morph into “America Alone.” We’re all in it together. The world is a better, stronger, safer place when decent democracies stand together, trade together, and cooperate with each other.
We believe in law and order. We absolutely hate mob rule and chaos and violent anarchy. That is not who we are. We are a nation of laws and we believe in the Rule of Law. Play by the rules. Do unto others as you would have done unto you. No one is above the law. If you harm others, there are consequences. We also believe in compassion and fairness. Anyone can make a mistake, but you are more than your mistakes. We believe in redemption and second chances.
We love this land. We are all about constant improvement. As Baden Powell taught his scouts long ago, “try and leave this world a little better than you found it.” We want to do the same. That means we respect the land, the environment, we seek to have clean air, clean water, healthy soil and a vibrant ecosystem. We believe in conserving the most beautiful parts of nature so they remain beautiful and so all of us can enjoy them. We believe that harming our environment is harming each other, and we are not jerks.
>We are an optimistic people. While we revere our past and what made us who we are, we are forward-looking. We believe our best days are yet ahead of us. Rather than being stuck on tradition, we dream about the best possible future, and then work to achieve it. Where we are going is more important than where we have been, or who we came from. There are always things that we can–must–change. If something isn’t working the way it should, we put our collective heads together and figure out a way to fix it.
We look back–not just on the last four chaotic, divisive, destructive years, but on the last decades–and we believe, we KNOW, that we can and must do better. We should be better than hatred and division, better than ignorance and indifference, better than disease and death and deception. We need better leaders, better political parties (or better still, NO parties), better media. But we need to BE BETTER CITIZENS. All of us. We need to love our neighbors, even if they are in a different party or speak a different language or are in a different tax bracket. And we need to be more informed, more thoughtful, and more empathetic. We need to think about the consequences of our choices and votes, and stop letting others manipulate our emotions.
We can and we will bounce back from this crisis, as we have many other crises in the past. We made it through a Civil War where the country nearly tore itself in two over the evil of slavery. We made it through the 1918 Flu pandemic. We survived two world wars, as well as the divisive Vietnam/Watergate/civil right era. We have endured economic hardships and disastrously bad leaders before. We can survive this era as well, if we pull together and focus on the values that unite us, rather than the ideologies and culture wedges that divide us.

If only. For one thing, Democrats do not believe America is great (the test is if you believe that American greatness is based in who’s in charge, or if you believe that certain fundamental changes are required before American greatness). Democrats certainly do not believe in “rugged individualism” (too much WMC). Democrats don’t believe in science (for instance, genders other than male and female). Democrats certainly don’t believe in freedom to live your life however you want. And we have seen selective love of “law and order” (Trump supporters bad, BLM and Antifa good).
So pardon the skepticism. We haven’t been united since 9/11. And nothing is going to change that.

With two days left in the Trump administration, a decent respect for the opinions of mankind requires an assessment of Trump’s economics.

Jeffrey A. Tucker:

There is some bitter irony embedded in the original campaign 2016 presidential pitch to “Make America Great Again.” One looks around the country to observe catastrophe without precedent. Making sense of all the events that led to this will take years of investigation and reflection. It will require untangling good policies from bad, intentions versus realities, and many layers of causes and effects. My attempt below is not intended to be partisan; it’s an attempt to tell the sad story I saw unfolding before my weary eyes.

My quick summary: Trumpian economics failed not because of its initial deregulatory push, tax-cut agenda, and judicial appointments. Rather the MAGA agenda failed because of its turn against international trade, its autarkic approach to migration, and, most of all, due to a wildly inconsistent and essentially catastrophic response to the pandemic, all of which trace to a fundamental philosophical pathogen. The post-election antics, culminating in the mob breach of Capitol Hill security, merely put a fine point on it.

Philosophy

From 2015, even from his first public speeches following his presidential run, it was clear that Donald Trump was not a conservative in the Reagan tradition but was selling something of which we had no experience in politics during most lifetimes. He was reviving what I’ve called right Hegelianism that imagines the trajectory of history culminating in the ideal of a nation-state unified and managed by a great leader. In other interactions of this ideology in the interwar period, this unity is economic, social, cultural, religious, and racial.

This is not an American ideal. It’s not about freedom, rights, the rule of law, much less the limits on government. It imagines not a head of state that manages the government but rather an overarching central leader that manages the whole country in all its aspects. The US Constitution was structured not only to prevent such a system but to work as a rebuke to it. The first three words, “We the People,” were chosen carefully to embrace a self-managing society, not one ruled by a person over and over everyone else.

There are many instantiations of right Hegelian ideology but all end up rallying around trade protectionism, migration restrictions, and the centralization of power in the executive. These were the main themes of the 2016 Trump campaign. These themes were not, however, what drew the Republican rank and file to his candidacy. Instead, what the party regulars liked about him was his brash and aggressive willingness to stand up to his enemies. His anger and relentless attacks thrilled people in the party who were fed up with playing nice with the left. That allowed them to overlook the aspects of his ideological push that stood in hard contradiction to anything like traditional American conservatism, much less classical liberalism.

Trade

Trump’s first year began with a more traditional Republican agenda of tax cuts, deregulation, and non-progressive court appointments. Those who had worried that his right-populism and nationalism would predominate felt a sense of calm that things would work out after all. His regulatory appointments were solid free market people who believed in market forces and less centralization. My own grim predictions, made in Newsweek July 16, 2015, had begun to seem overwrought. Even I began to think I had been far too pessimistic.

That all changed on January 22, 2018. That was the date that marked the end of peaceful trade relations with China. The Trump administration slapped high tariffs on the importation of solar cells and washing machines from China. This was the beginning of the trade war that would expand to Europe, Canada, Mexico, most of Asia, and ultimately the entire world. Some apologists claimed that this was nothing other than an attempt to gain trade concessions so that free and fair trade would be achieved. There was no evidence for that, however, apart from the periodic and perfunctory claims by Trump himself that he was not against trade.

The problem was that his actions belied his reassurances. Every policy decision was more extreme than the last. “Trade wars are good” and “easy,” tweeted Trump on March 2, before slapping tariffs of 10-25% on steel and aluminium. Administration spokesmen assured the public that there would be no retaliation, a prediction that defies all known experience.

Thus did it all unfold as the year went on. His one-man campaign to reverse 70 years of progress in trade culminated in a vision more astonishing than anything I could have predicted. Foreign Policy put a fine point on it: Free Trade Is Over.

The Trump administration went one further and imagined that it could and would decouple the US economy from China entirely. In a digital age with infinitely complex and interlocking supply chains extending the world over, this hope amounted to violence against a major source of prosperity since the end of the Second World War. What he ended up seeking was nothing short of trade autarky. This not only pillaged Americans of $63 billion in one year alone; it dramatically reduced US influence in the world, not only over trade deals (China keeps making them, even with the UK) but also over fundamental issues of democracy and human rights (Hong Kong has effectively lost its independence and the US was powerless to stop it). To top it off, a trade war designed to push exports over imports ended up reducing the export contribution to US GDP to the lowest level in ten years.

There was bitter irony associated with his one-man rule over US trade policy. The US Constitution clearly grants that power to Congress. But following the 1930 disaster of Smoot-Hawley tariffs, Congress began systematically to turn that power over to the executive. The belief is that the White House will always be inhabited by a well-educated person who will understand how important global trade is to peace and prosperity. Mostly that has been true. The plan worked until it did not. For fully three years, the world watched in astonishment as one man’s autarkic vision prevailed over the interests of every member of Congress, one hundred plus countries, and hundreds of millions of exporters, importers, and consumers.

Migration

Alongside the hope for national economic independence there was of course the immigration agenda. It began early on with a policy most conservatives embraced: an end to illegal immigration. If you listened carefully, however, you would notice that this was more than a concern about bad actors getting across US borders. Trump frequently spoke about job displacement – which should have been a sign that his immigration agenda was not, at its core, about security or race but was a mere extension of his protectionist trade policies. He intended to keep out both goods and people because he believed, sincerely, that this was the way to make America great.

There were grave consequences of his policies both economically and politically. The US population is growing more slowly than in many decades. In effect, he cut countable immigrants by two thirdsof the pre-Trump levels. This has caused the US to experience a labor shortage in retail and hospitality, at least until lockdowns so severely harmed those industries. It’s profoundly affected the tech industry as well as building, construction, and agriculture. Immigration has made a mighty contribution to economic progress, so slashing of the legal levels – and effectively abolishing immigration in 2020 – has had devastating consequences.

Even before the lockdowns of the Spring of 2020, the business community, which one might have supposed would favor his capital-gain tax cuts and deregulatory pushes, turned decisively against the Trump administration and Republicans who failed to stop his dramatic departure from a Reagan-style economic agenda. This created an unprecedented shifting in business community support for the Democratic Party and turning ideologically left.

Lockdowns

The Trump administration’s nationalist push was regrettable enough in its trade and immigration policies. But when it came to the coronavirus, it became absolutely devastating and ultimately wrecked the presidency. The turning point was January 31, when a ban of flights from China took effect. Trump reports he did this on his own, against the advice of everyone around him. It had previously been a well-established principle that flight bans do nothing to curb or mitigate viruses, especially since the virus was already here.

The hope here was surely propagandistic: the belief that the guilt for the virus itself could be pegged on China. Just as they are stealing intellectual property, selling us too-cheap goods, and dishing out compromised technology, so too are they sending us pathogens on airplanes. As with goods, the answer is to use the power of the state to stop the virus. That also put in motion a dangerous trajectory. Why allow any flights from anywhere? For that matter, why should states allow visitors from other states? If the goal of pandemic policy is to minimize exposure, even among non-vulnerable populations, the result would have to be a fundamental upending of life itself.

Sure enough, on March 12, Trump addressed the nation with a disastrous message in which he announced his complete change of mind on the virus. Having dismissed it previously as just another flu, he now saw the opportunity to be the savior to the nation by battling the virus with all his power and prowess.

At the end of the message, he made a shocking announcement. In four days time, all flights from Europe would be blocked. Just incredible and certainly without precedent outside of wartime. Indeed, such travel blocks are fixtures of war, deployed in the name of disease mitigation. The panic around the world was palpable, as people scrambled to book flights back as soon as possible. Huge crowds mingled for many hours in international airports, trying desperately to get back to the US before it was too late. Those travel restrictions were not lifted at any point in the remainder of his presidency.

It was the same with embassies and consulates issuing visas for coming to the US. It was all shut down. No more students. No more workers. No more tourists. The actions on the part of the Trump administration were so draconian and despotic. Though the president would variously claim that his actions saved millions of lives – as many as 4 million even – there is no evidence that blocking these flights and migrations achieved anything. The virus was already here and the US became the world’s leading hotspot. His actions caused a policy and political panic throughout the country. By March 16, most of the country was shut down with stay-at-home orders, limits on hospital use, closed schools, and blocked public gatherings. The lockdown was here, courtesy of the Trump administration, and the economic costs were astronomical.

We often hear people denying that this was the Trump administration’s doing – Trump would later become an advocate for opening up – but it clearly was. The administration’s own Department of Health and Human Services released on March 13 a classified edict: “The U.S. Government COVID-19 Response Plan.” It recommended school closures and business shutdowns. The federal government worked closely with all the states to follow this document, which had clearly been in the works for weeks if not months. Three days later, stocks crashed 13% – not because of the virus that had been here for months but rather because of Trump’s initial lockdowns.

After two weeks to flatten the curve turned into two months, and governors of many states continued to keep their economies closed, Trump began to smell a rat, wondering whether he had been tricked into destroying his own presidency by wrecking the economy. By mid-April, he began to call for opening up the economy. But even here he had doubts. Georgia became the first state to open in late April, but Trump tweeted against it, claiming that it was too soon. Thus did his messaging become completely confused. Was he for or against opening, did the shutdowns save lives or not, should states seek normalcy or keep stringencies?

This lack of clarity, this toggling back and forth between claiming the lockdowns saved millions of lives while at the same time demanding an opening, continued through September. Good sense at the White House did not arrive until public health specialist Dr. Scott Atlas of the Hoover Institution arrived finally to convince the president of the science and the facts. In doing so, he had to battle what amounted to a pro-lockdown fifth column within the White House itself.

By then, it was far too late for the administration to gain control of the narrative. The economy had been smashed, people’s lives wrecked, children and parents traumatized, and the country had become consumed with mass disease paranoia and virus avoidance. Leading into the final days of the campaign, and probably convinced that he had been gaslighted all along, Trump took a different strategy of avoiding the topic of the virus completely.

Carnage

To everyone’s complete astonishment, 2020 became the deadliest year in US history, and not only because of the pandemic. Deaths of despair due to lockdowns, murder, drug overdoses, and other deaths due to throttled medical care in other areas were also major contributors to the year of tragedy. By now, there are at least 28 studies proving that lockdowns do not work. Meanwhile, in China, the country that Trump had targeted three years earlier, had long ago abandoned the lockdowns it had sold the rest of the world and clocked a 6% GDP growth in the fourth quarter year over year.

In addition to this calamity, US government spending soared 47% while the money supply registered record increases as measured by M1. The effects of this debt and money printing will be felt through next year. In addition, New York City is in shambles, Washington, D.C. looks like an armed camp, and most states still have terrible stringencies in place enforced by police power. At least 150,000 businesses are dead, 1 in 4 women with children have left the workforce, millions of kids have lost a year’s worth of schooling, in addition to other staggering costs.

None of this is great. It is a nightmare.

Counterfactuals are impossible but nonetheless tempting. What if the Trump administration had not alienated virtually the whole of the business community with its attempt to reverse 70 years of progress in global trade? What if it had pursued the path of sincere diplomacy rather than coercive belligerence with China? What if it had pushed legal reforms in immigration rather than executive edicts? And what if in January the White House had consulted traditional public health experts rather than allowing career bureaucrats to talk the president into locking down?

We can never know the answers to these questions. But it is likely the case that the country and world would be a very different place than it is today, perhaps even a greater place. The economic policies of the Trump administration constitute one of the greatest lost opportunities of the postwar period. We’ll be paying the price for decades. The fundamental problem traces most fundamentally to an illiberal philosophy behind the seeming policy chaos. Repairing that problem is essential to laying the necessary groundwork to recover what has been lost.

The Biden administration, for however many days it lasts, will of course learn the wrong things from Trump’s four years, because Democrats are not now and never will be about economic freedom.