By Neland Nobel

Written by Neland Nobel

Estimated Reading Time: 5 minutes

Continued civil dialogue is the best antidote to our divisions 

As part of The Prickly Pear’s role as a source of information and opinion for Conservatives, Republicans, and others interested, we have always tried to provide a variety of views from the Libertarian Right, Paleoconservatives, and Neoconservatives. We have agreements with over 40 different organizations and think tanks to use their material.

Most of this content is available outside the paywall and is free to all. Some of our personal views and reflections are behind the paywall, and we hope you will soon become a VIP subscriber.

We don’t always agree with every article we post, and likely you don’t either. Nevertheless, we think the dialogue is healthy.

We must communicate with each other, even if we disagree. It would not be desirable to go the way of the Left and demonize, deplatform, and generally hate those who might have a different opinion. Reasonable men(and women) can reasonably differ.

It is discouraging sometimes to see MAGA-hating Conservatives and Libertarians. Sometimes we think it comes from envy. They had been in charge of the movement for decades and presided over a series of stinging defeats.  People got tired of losing and were looking for a fighter, a disruptor. Then comes along this interloper, Trump, who pulls off a somewhat hostile takeover of the Conservative establishment. Being now left out by their self-exile, they fume from the sidelines.

The Prickly Pear generally supports Reagan’s 80% principle. If you can agree with a politician about 80% of the time, that is about the best it gets in real life.

We have had our criticism as well, but MAGA is the best vehicle right now to advance the cause of liberty. Grumble you may at times, but realistically, where else are you going to go? Support AOC and Bernie Sanders?

Debate among ourselves is helpful in that it sometimes flushes out poorly formed ideas, thereby sharpening all of our rhetorical and analytical skills. Sharp skills are a must as our conflict with the Left will likely last for years, if not forever. As you advance in age, evidence suggests that some brains are more inclined towards a Leftist tilt, while others lean more towards the Right. But there is also a large swath of people who are open to persuasion.

It is therefore not surprising that most people on the Left or the Right come with a “package” of views. We would give betting odds that for example, if a person believes in “open borders”, they think America stands on “stolen ground”, believes in universal healthcare, income redistribution, and that transgenderism is not a mental illness.

Conservatives come with a package of ideas, too. We generally believe in moral agency, which holds that while people are influenced by their environment, they are not a product of it.

Conservatives also believe that preserving liberty, rather than support and care, is the primary function of a limited government. Thus, personal liberty and free markets are intertwined, and limited government and free markets are the optimal social and political arrangements.

This is not meant to be an exhaustive exposition of each camp’s “ideological package”, but rather to suggest such an identifiable package exists. Think about it and create your own sense of what this package looks like.

Within each camp, there is plenty left to argue about.

For the Conservative movement at this time in history, the two fault lines that seem most apparent right now are the issues of tariffs and the proper philosophical framework for foreign policy.

The Libertarian right believes that free trade is an organic part of free markets and limited government, and regardless of the social or national security consequences, unilateral free trade (we practice it, others don’t), provides the best market outcomes (price and efficiency).

The Prickly Pear believes that while it is true under the principles of comparative advantage, unilateral free trade may be more economically efficient, that efficiency alone is not the only criterion that forms public policy.

For example, we can’t have vital supply chains related to military production, pharmaceuticals, and advanced technology, mainly resting in the hands of a Communist dictatorship in China. They are our rivals, if not our existential enemy.

Some will argue that without free trade with China, one is betraying the principles of free markets. Our response is that you can’t preserve limited government and free markets by losing to a Communist dictatorship.

Could you, in theory, lose free markets and personal liberty in a self-imposed policy meant to counter the Chinese?  Yes, that is something we must be careful to avoid. But tariffs don’t do that. Tariffs existed for more than a century and were quite compatible with this nation when it was much freer than it is today.

We also differ with our Libertarian friends in that they are fierce critics of Trump’s tariffs, but have been largely silent under the previous system. That system, we insist, was decidedly NOT free trade. It was managed trade. Often managed through corrupt domestic politics, but more often, the yielding of domestic sovereignty to international organizations and their trade-regulating appendages.

Free trade should mean that we trade with other nations without tariffs AND non-tariff barriers. But the existing system was highly complex and allowed other countries to cheat. The social cost of losing millions of jobs and some 90,000 factories cannot be ignored.

Frankly, even though we follow current events fairly closely, as this debate has developed over the past decade, it has been both amazing and horrifying to discover how badly the nation has been taken advantage of and how badly close trading partners like Canada have exploited us.

The current trading system is about as far from “free trade” as mercantilism, which China is overtly practicing.

We are asked by some of our friends to repeatedly recite cant about “free trade” and its benefits, when the current system does not resemble free trade in any meaningful way.

Our Libertarian friends repeatedly set up the existing system as a “free trade” totem to judge one’s fealty to the free market. Therefore, if you argue against the status quo, you are, by definition, against free trade and free market capitalism.

We believe tariffs are a national security imperative, given the threats posed by Russia, Iran, and China.

We should also note that we would expect other nations to take advantage of us when they can.  What we can’t contend with is that our political leadership put their needs first, and the needs of Americans last.

We think tariffs can be used to good effect to force others to join us in genuine free trade. We believe they could both be a source of needed revenue and a means to establish better trade relationships with nations that have taken advantage of us.  Middle-class America has gotten the short end of the stick in past trade agreements struck by our ruling elites. It needs to be corrected.

If you can’t have actual free trade, and we have to muddle through with the existing “managed trade”, we need it managed for the benefit of the American people. That’s not a condemnation of the free market, but rather a recognition that we need a better deal in what is not truly a free market in trade.

There is a danger of going too far, of course. We don’t want to see the country move to outright protectionism or what economists call autarky.

Autarky is not a word one sees often. What does it mean?

Autarky refers to a policy of extreme national self-sufficiency, where a country aims to produce all its needs internally. It thus severely restricts trade with other nations. Protectionism can involve various measures to shield domestic industries, which is something our country has practiced since the time of Alexander Hamilton. We know of no conservative arguing for autarky.

No, we don’t want autarky, and we would take a greater degree of free trade, provided others did so as well.  However, we believe that unilateral free trade does not work well, nor do we think that past managed trade arrangements were effective.

Our libertarian friends may disagree. Fine, let’s keep the discussion going and maintain a civil dialogue.

Part II, coming up, will look at the divisions in foreign policy.

*****

Image Credit: ChatGPT image generator

Sourced from PRICKLY PEAR