Tag Archives: foreign policy

Income (In)equality and Freedom

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It is the view of some that the primary task of our government is to engage in wealth redistribution so as to tend to equalize income—to equalize the results of individual effort, regardless of the level or quality of that effort.  There are problems with this asserted purpose, though, historical, practical, and moral.

During the extended discussion of our nation’s blueprint, James Madison wrote in The Federalist No. 10, for instance [emphasis mine],

The diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate, is not less an insuperable obstacle to a uniformity of interests. The protection of these faculties is the first object of government.

But these differences must, inevitably, result in different degrees of wealth, and of different degrees of income on the path to the accumulation of that wealth.  This diversity, though, is not a failing, but one of the strengths of our nation, one of the things that makes us exceptional, as we’ll see shortly.

Madison added, perhaps in anticipation of today’s debates, this:

The apportionment of taxes on the various descriptions of property is an act which seems to require the most exact impartiality; yet there is, perhaps, no legislative act in which greater opportunity and temptation are given to a predominant party to trample on the rules of justice.

This is especially a propos in light of the present effort to use taxes explicitly to achieve that wealth redistribution, rather than let men effect their own redistribution through a free market, wherein they freely exchange their wealth among each other as they exchange their goods and services—and money—at freely agreed prices.  The inevitable outcome of these exchanges is that all participants are richer after them than they were before, since all participants, after the exchanges, have gained something of value to them that they had not had before.

This takes me to the practical aspects of the failure of government-driven wealth redistribution.  Our nation’s principles statement acknowledges that all men are created equal.  The only way a government can redistribute wealth is to take from the wealthier and give to the less wealthy—i.e., to tax some more heavily than others, and then to give the proceeds of those taxes to the those less taxed—or today, to those not taxed at all.  But consider what happens when this is done.  Those from whom the fruits of their labor are taken—of necessity, arbitrarily—will have less incentive to continue their labors, and to the extent they do continue, it will not be with their original zeal.  What would be the point?  Their compensation for their labor will only be arbitrarily reduced.  Similarly, those who receive the fruits of others’ labor without having labored to the same extent or quality (those differing faculties) will have a reduced incentive to continue trying with their original zeal: they’re going to receive from government those others’ wealth, in any event.

Yet if each is left to his original equality of opportunity, to use to the fullest his own skill, work ethic, innate ability—his own faculties—he will be free to achieve his fullest potential—and yes, that will be differing levels of income and of wealth.  But that freedom to satisfy one’s own full potential, without government interference, is a part of that exceptionality of the United States.

It’s easy to see how this has played out over the last few decades of ever more active government-driven wealth redistribution.  Taxes on the middle class have been steadily reduced, the yet lower income classes have had their taxes reduced to near nothingness (and often receive tax credits—the wealth that others have earned).  This has been balanced by ever-increasing taxes on the upper classes—the so-called rich, the “millionaires and billionaires.”  Over the years until the 2010 mid-term elections, for instance, the top 10% of income earners have seen their share of the nation’s total income tax rise from 66% to 70%, while the bottom 50% of income earners have seen their share of the nation’s total income tax fall from 4% to 3%.  Yet the recipients of this wealth redistribution are even worse off—as Progressives insist with their plaints about today’s “increasing” income and wealth disparities.  Wealth redistribution, income leveling, doesn’t work by their own offered evidence.

This brings me to my third point, the morality of income redistribution.

Again from our principles statement, we understand that among our natural, inalienable rights is each man’s right to pursue his own happiness.

Here, John Adams is instructive.

All men are born free and independent, and have certain natural, essential, and unalienable rights, among which may be reckoned the right of enjoying and defending their lives and liberties; that of acquiring, possessing, and protecting property; in fine, that of seeking and obtaining their safety and happiness.

Taking from some and giving to others denies to each their moral obligation.  One of the obligations resulting from all men being equal and all men having (an equal) right to pursue their own happiness is the obligation of each man to not be, routinely, a burden on other men either directly, or by imposing on each man’s obligation to help his fellows in their hour of need.  That hour cannot be allowed to last indefinitely.

Government-forced taking and giving denies the one the opportunity to satisfy his moral duty to see to his own happiness, and it denies the other the moral outcome of having seen to his happiness. Further, by routinely imposing on the obligation of the better off, the one imposing (or the government imposing in the one’s name) is, in effect, asserting a dominion over the one who is better off: he owes me because I exist, and he’s richer.  (And never mind that diversity of faculties that are spread across us all.)

In the end, equality of wealth, or of the income that contributed over time to the wealth, is not guarantor of individual freedom.  Indeed, this is quite the opposite: it is the destruction of freedom, since government, in ensuring greater “equality” must also ensure lesser freedoms through the necessary mandates and takings inherent in the redistribution.

A Bipartisan Government?

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In yesterday’s The Wall Street Journal, pollsters Doug Schoen and Patrick Caddell had an editorial that urged President Obama to do the honorable thing and withdraw from the Presidential campaign in the manner of Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson.  Although interesting in its own right, it was another remark of theirs that caught my eye.  “[Hillary Clinton] is the only leader capable of uniting the country around a bipartisan economic and foreign policy[,]” they wrote.

To have a bipartisan government, though, there must be fundamental agreement on the nature of American values and on the role of government in protecting those values.

To have a bipartisan government within the present framework of partisans, modern Conservatives—Americans—must accept into their governing principles elements of the empirically demonstrated destructiveness of Progressives’ ever-rising taxes and Keynesian spending.  Americans must accept the legitimacy of the destruction wrought by the Progressives’ 2009 Stimulus Bill.  Americans must accept as legitimate that government need not be responsive to its American employers, as it was unresponsive with the passage of Obamacare.  Americans must accept the Progressive attacks on business, large and small, of Dodd-Frank and its wholly unaccountable Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the latter with an unlimited budget.  Americans must accept the legitimacy of the Progressives’ Stimulus Light, which masquerades as a jobs bill.  Americans must accept the blowup of the Supercommittee from the Progressives’ demand for a $1 trillion tax hike, coupled with their refusal to cut spending or reform entitlement programs in any way, or there can be no agreement—more of that rising taxes and profligate spending.

To have a bipartisan government within the present framework of the partisans, modern Conservatives—Americans—must accept into their governing principles elements of the empirically demonstrated destructiveness of a foreign policy of apology and retreat.  Americans must accept the premise that there’s nothing special, nothing exceptional, about the United States or our values, and we must apologize for our having touted them in the past.  Americans must accept the legitimacy of the Progressive insistence that we have no right to defend ourselves, and so we must forego a missile defense system—because Russian feelings might be hurt.  Americans must accept the Progressive view that Russia and China must have veto authority over our foreign policy and so, given Russian and Chinese objections, we do nothing serious to prevent Iran getting nuclear weapons.

In short, to have a bipartisan government Americans must accept into their governing principles elements of an ever-expanding and intrusive central government, abandonment of the primacy of individual liberty and of Federalism, and a retreat from our global responsibilities to our friends and allies.  How can there be compromise, how can there be bipartisanship, when one of the partisans so plainly does not share the values of limited Federal government and individual responsibility, or does not see the importance of American global leadership?

How is such “bipartisanship” possible, and the United States to survive as an independent political entity in today’s world of an active, militarily strengthening and increasingly aggressive People’s Republic of China that does not at all have the interests of a strong America at its heart?  How is such “bipartisanship” possible, and the United States to survive as an independent political entity in today’s world of an active, soon-to-be-nuclear armed Iran, whose sole purpose in obtaining nuclear weapons is to obliterate Israel and to give nuclear warheads to terrorists so the latter can use them in American cities—and European cities?

No.  The destructive policies of the Progressives, however heartfelt or well-intended, have led our nation to the brink of oblivion.  These policies must be utterly, completely repudiated; only then can we begin to repair the horrendous damage done by them.  Indeed, I wrote earlier how our President had made himself a laughingstock on the world’s stage.  After three years, he’s made our entire nation a laughingstock on the world’s stage.

America’s Future—Foreign Policy Principles, Part III

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I have written earlier on this subject here, here, and here.  In this post, I’d like to address the remaining two principles that give substance to our national interest: protection of American citizens while they are abroad and assured access to the resources we need for our economy.

One of the purposes of our government, within our social compact, is to see to the safety of our citizens: to protect each of us from the others of us and from those outside our compact.  This protection, of course, cannot stop at our national borders; it must be extended to our citizens wherever they might be.  All that changes with location is the means by which that safety is effected.   It remains as important to protect our citizens while they are in foreign lands as it is while our citizens are home, and this is so for a number of reasons.

The Romans used the citizenship status of Roman citizens as an instrument of power projection.  Rome operated under the modus that even if a Roman citizen, within another nation’s borders, violated that nation’s law, punishment of that citizen by the host nation would be taken as an attack on Rome itself, with appropriate Roman response.  Further, this attitude that only the nation of citizenship could prosecute a citizen’s violation of host nation law persisted into the 20th century, primarily as a tool of colonialism.

While the United States does not use our people’s citizenship status as a means of power projection, the safety of our citizens abroad is a manifestation of American power.  Attacking Americans with impunity demonstrates that the United States is a paper tiger and that we can be manipulated according to the imperatives of our competitors and our enemies.

There is a practical reason for protecting the safety of our citizens, also.  Beside tourism, our citizens travel to third world nations on goodwill missions and to provide concrete assistance to their citizens, often in dangerous conditions.  That personal foreign aid (the Peace Corps, for instance) not only does concrete good for these nations; by doing so, it helps spread American influence, and the interaction exposes those people to American values, also to our mutual benefit.

Our citizens also travel to other nations—friendly nations, competitor nations, and third world—on business matters.  This interaction, too, exposes others to American values, and the mutual benefit from the business and values interaction also contributes to the spread of American influence.

If our citizens are not protected in those environments, the aid cannot be provided efficiently, if at all.  The trade exchanges cannot be worked out, and the values learned are those of American timidity.

And there is a moral reason.  These are American citizens; they are entitled to the protection of our—their—government wherever they are.  This does not mean that, like a Roman citizen, an American can act with impunity and without regard to the host nation’s laws, but it does mean that while Americans are acting lawfully, they must be free from harassment or outright persecution, and our government must be prepared to step in—using all means necessary—to help our citizens leave or to extract them if they are not safe.  It does mean that our government must be prepared to ensure our citizens are treated lawfully and humanely—and yes, that means our definition of humane—when our citizens do violate local law, including extracting them by any means necessary here, too.  To be sure, it’s a fine line between this stricture and the Roman impunity, but it’s one we must have our government prepared to walk.

That trade, and the spreading influence from both trade and aid, lies at the heart of the third principle, assuring access to resources critical to our economy.  There are, in the end, three fundamental mechanisms for assuring access to critical resources that are outside our borders.  One is to seize the resources through force of arms, and another is to seize the people and, by making them a colony, bringing the resources within our borders.

Both of those mechanisms were extant well into the 20th century.  Quite aside from their moral deficiencies, these two mechanisms are economically suboptimal.  The moral deficiencies are illustrated by the principles of our Declaration of Independence: all men are created equal.  Flowing from this is the principle that all men have an ownership in their property, their labor, and the outcomes of their labor.  Taking resources, then, either by force of arms or by force of colonialism, violates our own moral tenets.

The third fundamental mechanism for assuring access to those critical resources is free trade.  Agreements freely entered into by both parties to the trade agreement are sound and durable for a number of reasons.  The first is fairness: the parties to the trade agreement are, by definition, getting goods satisfactory to one at prices satisfactory to the other.  From such an arrangement, both parties are better off than they were before the agreement: both parties have gained something which they wanted and did not have before the trading.

Another, closely related reason, is the wealth creation that such free trade generates.  As just noted, both parties have gained something of value to them that they did not have before: one has gained a good that it wanted, the other has gained wealth from the sale of that good, whether money, another good that it wanted and didn’t have, future considerations, and so on.

A third reason that free trade is mutually beneficial is the positive feedback loop that is generated, and this is one aspect of what makes free trade the optimal means of access.  We’ve seen that free trade increases wealth creation.  That increasing wealth facilitates further trade: more goods can be produced, development of new goods can be afforded, infrastructure for that development, and for the transportation, of tradable goods can be built.  All of this then leads to lower costs, yet more revenue, for the citizens of the nations involved.  With more readily available goods, more varied goods, more easily transported goods, and so on, prices to the buyer must inevitably come down, while that increasing volume and new good development maintain and increase total revenues to the seller.  In the end, nations don’t buy things from nations.  People buy things from people; businesses and nations simply act as intermediaries for these transactions.

And finally, the national good will between the nations engaged in free trade is greatly facilitated, and this is another aspect of what makes free trade the optimal means of access.  Free trade did not create the strong relationships the US has with Canada, Great Britain, Japan, the Republic of Korea, and so on, but it has helped maintain and strengthen those ties.  Free trade between the US and third world nations—as opposed to colonialism or naked resource seizure—has helped us to gain influence in those areas.  The US is a very powerful nation, militarily, but it was not only that strength that led Somalia to ask for US soldiers earlier this month, and it was not only that strength that led the Libyan rebels last spring to call out, “Bring Bush!”  The values for which we stand contributes to such requests, and those values are made apparent from the interactions inherent in the trade which we conduct that third world nations experience directly or that they see by observing their neighbors interact with us.

America’s Future—Foreign Policy Principles, Part II

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In an earlier post, I wrote about the necessity of redefining the basic principles of American foreign policy in order to have a successful future.  In that post, I also expanded on one of them, the need for American national interests to come ahead of all other considerations in our global relations.  In this post, I’d like to talk about another of those principles, the need to support our friends and allies.

It is possible, though enormously expensive, for us, among a very few nations, to satisfy our national needs unilaterally—that is, we do what we need to do without regard to the imperatives of any other nation.  Even for us, however, it’s also possible only for a short period of time, before both we run out of funding and resources and enough of the rest of the world joins together to overwhelm us.  Thus, while it is imperative that we retain the ability and the will to act alone when necessary, it will be more efficient and cheaper to work with other nations, informally, via a specific treaty, and/or via alliance to achieve our ends.

When it comes to supporting our friends and allies, though, we need to answer some additional questions, for these answers must shape the nature of our relationships.  These questions are first, why should we support our friends (or, why not leave them to their own devices?), followed by understanding who are our friends and why are they our friends, as well as who our enemies are, and why they are so.

Why, indeed, should we support our friends?  The simple utilitarian view is that it’s more efficient to support friends because then they will support us.  Most actions on the global stage are done more cost effectively if done with the assistance of others than if done by us alone, bearing all the costs, even if we then retain all the benefit.  The benefits are greater from the greater joint effort because the mutual support magnifies the benefit/cost ratio.

More importantly than a pecuniary reason, though, it’s our moral duty to support our friends.  The protection and enforcement of the natural rights of all men, rights we acknowledge explicitly in our Declaration of Independence, require that each of us act to support our fellows when those rights are threatened.  Such an obligation, further, is made explicit by the social compact that free men form when we create our nations.  So it is among these free nations.  When a nation that is a friend of the United States is threatened, it is our duty as fellow men to aid the men of that nation, and to do so explicitly in our common cause.

To do this effectively, though, we must know and be willing publicly to acknowledge who our friends and our enemies are.

I suggest that there are two types of friends and two types of enemies.  Of those who are friends, some are so because of our shared heritage and our common interests.  Others are so through our common objectives and/or the threats we both face.  This is not a symmetrical relationship, though; commonality is not a guarantor of a relationship; it only makes such types of relationship more likely.

While not everyone with whom we have some commonality will be our friend, most of them can be, and few of them will be hostile.  One example is Great Britain.  We were colonized primarily by Great Britain; although a significant minority of our forebears came from continental Europe.  We fought a number of wars, both shooting and economic, over the several decades surrounding our breakaway.  We’ve since stood shoulder to shoulder when one or the other of us needed support, even when we disagreed with the means used to answer the crisis.  This friendship is greatly facilitated by our common heritage and by our common interests: respect for the individual liberties of all men, respect for the power of a sound, free economy in supporting and enhancing that freedom.

Commonality of objectives or threats contributes to a measure of friendship; although the ties are not necessarily as strong.  Japan is an example of this.  Even though in the aftermath of WWII, the Japanese government was replaced with a Western-style democracy, Japanese culture remained largely intact and is only slowly—and in accordance with Japanese needs—moving closer to a Western nature: it remains Japanese in its essentials.  Nevertheless, we face together powerful foes in the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China, as well as the destabilizing risk of an irrational, nuclear-armed northern Korea.  Aside from the common objective of facing down these threats, we have other common objectives that tie us together: an interest in free trade, the economic welfare of our citizenry, the rights of our citizenry to have a powerful voice in our respective governments, peaceful, profitable relations with our neighbors.  Working together in supporting these objectives has created a strong association between the two of us.

Of those who are our enemies, some are so because their cultural imperatives drive them to open hostility toward any culture different from their own.  Others are so through political or economic philosophical competition and/or through competition for the same critical resources.

Iran is an example of an enemy from its cultural imperatives.  Iran’s political culture drives it toward the bigotry of considering it appropriate to exterminate whole peoples solely because those peoples worship differently than the ayatollahs.  Iran’s historical culture drives it to attempt to control its neighbors simply because Iran needs the control; it cannot bring itself to trust to the peaceful intentions of those neighbors.  These are antithetical to everything for which the United States stands, and so Iran has concluded that we must be its enemy as well as the nations of its immediate region.  We must clash because Iran is intent on destroying a close ally, Israel.  We must clash because Iran is intent on acquiring nuclear weapons and then delivering them to terrorists for their use.

The People’s Republic of China is an example of a nation whose enmity toward us flows from its competition for resources (oil and innovation talent) and for political thought (the sovereignty of the people vs. the sovereignty of the government).  As long as these competitions exist—especially the political-philosophical competition—the PRC will remain hostile to us.  We must clash because the PRC feels itself threatened by the competition over political ideas.  We must clash because the United States supports the right of a people to determine for themselves their future and their government, which puts our two nations specifically at loggerheads over the future of the Republic of China.  We must clash because the United States, as most Western nations, insists on protecting the intellectual and inventive products of its citizens, while the PRC freely seeks to acquire that output through any means possible.  We must clash because we insist on the right of all nations to have access to the resources on sea floors beneath international waters.

In another post on this subject, I’ll expand on the matter of identifying who our friends and enemies are, and why they are our friends or enemies.

Eric Holder and Gun Running

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Is he making it up as he goes along, or are these further examples of our Attorney General’s incompetence, or is it something else?

Last spring, Attorney General Eric Holder could have apologized, or otherwise acknowledged his responsibility as head of the DoJ for Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry’s death, to Terry’s mother when they crossed paths at the May Police Week in D.C., but he did not.

Last Tuesday (8 November), during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Holder flatly refused to apologize to the Terrys, and more amazingly, he further testified that he hadn’t even bothered to speak with them.  When pressed by Senator Cornyn (R, TX), all Holder would offer was weasel words and “regrets.”

Now, through Politico, Holder reveals a letter characterized as “private” that he wrote to the Terrys wherein he does express his sorrow over their son’s death.  There are two things of interest with this revelation.  One is Holder’s decision to publicize the letter even before the Terrys had received it.  So much for the “private” nature of the communication.  The other is that the letter is dated last Wednesday (9 November)—the day after Senator Cornyn’s questioning.  Is the letter at all sincere?

It’s also interesting that, although Holder’s letter references a letter the Terrys had written Holder on 1 November (in which they wrote, among other things, “We have been irrevocably harmed because of Operation Fast and Furious and its deadly ramifications. We seek accountability from our government….”), the DoJ insists that Holder did not receive that letter until after the hearings mentioned above.  For Holder to get out a letter to the Terrys by the day after those same hearings represents an astonishingly fast turn-around for any government bureaucracy, much less Holder’s, whose junior bureaucrats routinely screen his correspondence and determine for themselves what is fit for him to read.

In the meantime, Holder is continuing actively to obstruct a government investigation, as he refuses to present 11 witnesses whom the House Oversight Committee have called in order to interview them about his “Fast and Furious” gun running operation.  I have to wonder why Holder is so anxious to prevent independent investigators from learning the details of his failed operation.  Is it because Holder’s own IG is investigating?  Nah—the two investigations have no need of interfering with each other as they pursue their independent looks.  Police forces do this all the time.  Surely two Federal government investigations can do the same.

On top of all this, Holder, as recently as that Judiciary Committee hearing three days ago, still is insisting that

It’s [Operation Fast and Furious] a federal law enforcement operation that was of local concern. It was not a national operation.

Hmm….  Operation Fast and Furious was designed to allow guns to leave the United States and enter Mexico.  How is an international operation only of “local concern?”  How is an international operation “not a national operation?”

What’s up with this guy?  Why does Obama insist on keeping him on the Federal payroll?