Why Nationalism Trumps Conservatism

The conservative critique of Donald Trump is that he is not a conservative.  This tautology begs the question of why it is necessary to be a conservative to secure the Republican nomination and the Presidency.  Americans care little for ideology but care a great deal about putting the interests of all Americans first, so conservatism isn't a winning electoral strategy.  The people are looking for a system to ensure that they are provided a level playing field and the opportunity to better their lives.  The unexpected popularity of Trump and Sanders suggests that Americans think that neither conservatism nor liberalism achieves those ends.  In theory, both philosophies claim to do so, but in practice, not so much.  When a nationalist candidate comes along and tells Americans they are getting a raw deal from their government; it resonates, and for the socialist as well.

Both parties talk to a tough line about helping the average American, but the selective application of their principles results in benefits redounding to special interests which destroys trust in the system.  For example, Republicans had the opportunity, with big majorities under George W. Bush and a reasonable excuse, the war on terror, to put an end to illegal immigration.  Illegal immigration puts downward pressure on the salaries of the lower middle class.  Later, when Obama, supposedly the champion of these same folks, made the problem worse; conservatives beat their chests but did nothing practical to stop his extra-legal executive orders.  There could have been hard-nosed negotiations that put money for extending a wall or other effective measures to deter illegal immigration, but the conservative party just resigned itself to defeat.  Meanwhile, abuse of the H1B visa program by employers such as Disney and big tech firms goes uninvestigated.  Employees, that is average Americans, lack the ability to easily move between jobs, which is well documented.  Allowing foreigners to compete for jobs inside this country, either because of illegal immigration or visa abuse is an unfair tilt of power to employers; but the conservative party cares not.

Meanwhile, Republicans seem willing to push for policies that help large corporations and Wall Street while claiming to do so in the name of the free market.  But we end up with a battle to end just one egregious program, the Export-Import Bank, which many Republicans fought with a zeal we wanted applied in opposition to Obama's illegal amnesty programs.  Further, conservatism has resulted in budgets that just continue the status quo, because it suits the big money backers of the GOP just fine.  Name a single program killed by the GOP when they held legislative majority over the last 30 years?  They are happy to talk a good game and collect rents from big business.

On the left, the ACA (Obamacare) was purportedly intended to help the uninsured.  It's only real effect has been to provide a few new customers to insurance companies and the pharmaceutical industries, who effectively wrote much of the legislation.  80% of those who were uninsured prior to the ACA's passage remain uninsured; 20% is usually a failing grade on any scale.  It is so bad, that Bernie Sanders can truthfully run a campaign to end the problem of the uninsured.  A second example: The financial crisis of 2008 swept the Democrats into power in D.C. In response, they passed the Dodd-Frank so called financial reform measure.  Rather than addressing the problems causing the crisis, they essentially promise to bail out big financial institutions by enshrining the "too big to fail" doctrine into law.  The bad lending and the perverse incentives will continue to enrich the banking class, while the liberals claim to be fighting Wall Street for the common man.

But enough of the failures of liberalism as practiced by the modern day Democratic party.  The second reason that nationalism wins is identity.  When I am at work, out shopping or watching a football game; I think of myself as an American, a Christian, and a San Diegan.  (Californian? Not so much anymore.)  My identity as an American is much stronger than my merely political identity as a conservative, and I am a very political person.  For the average voter, the national identity is even more dominant.  Identity trumps ideology, always.  I am an American long before I think about being a conservative or Republican.  Further, nationalism serves as a glue that binds us together across classes.  The overlooked story of the last two decades is the extent to which American elites no longer see themselves as Americans per se, but as part of a global elite.  Zuckerberg of Facebook is seen in Germany undermining nationalism there, by suppressing anti-immigrant sentiment.     The average person sees this and sees a political system where the establishment of both parties is in league with internationalists to the detriment of their own interests.  How else to combat the tilted playing field than to embrace that our identity as Americans and the candidate who most explicitly makes the case to work for our interests, not the interests of the elite and not the interests of the poor and oppressed around the globe.   Conservatism is the answer to a situation of low trust across our society; Nationalism is a glue to engender greater trust.

The other reason for nationalism is that we are again at war with a global ideology.  Communism, fascism and Radical Islamism (by which I mean the current Wahabbist strain of Islam) were and are ideologies intent on remaking the world.  Fascism wasn't defeated by democracy, but by nations acting in their own self-interest; intending to maintain their own identities.  Ditto for communism.  The Soviet Empire crumbled from within because its constituent nations successfully achieved autonomy for their own peoples.  That autonomy didn't usually take the form of democracy, but powerfully destroyed a communist empire nevertheless. Right now, Radical Islamism is attractive because the boundaries of the Middle East have not been drawn to align tribes and peoples into true nations.  Nationalism will be needed to eventually defeat this form of Islam and allow Islam to recede to a  religion and shed its identity as a political movement.  Ultimately, we need nationalism to secure the peace, with each tribe to its own country, secure within its own borders.


P.S. Just after I published this, I saw a link to a John Derbyshire article on the meaning of nationalism that highlights and amplifies some of what I have said; alas more eloquently.

A Real Liberal Health Care Bill

Signing a bill that still won't cover everyone and will drive up costs.

I have wondered why liberals have allowed the Democratic party to destroy their good name over health care. If you look at the goals of liberals in the health care debate and then look at the result of the health care law, the two couldn't be further from each other. So I was thinking about the health care law I would pass if I were a liberal. These would be my liberal goals.

• Ensure everyone can afford health insurance.
• Ensure that those with pre-existing conditions are covered.
• Reduce the cost of health care to the average American.
• Ensure that any law doesn't reward corporations at the expense of taxpayers.
  

We might debate the wisdom of these goals; but if this were the liberal position, I could respect that. We could write a pretty simple health care law, not a 2700 page monster. The key policy prescriptions:

• Provide a federal subsidy for the "working poor" to buy health care if they lack it. Continue to use Medicaid for the rest of the poor.
• Make insurance portable between employers, so those with pre-existing conditions can keep their insurance when changing jobs.
• Provide a subsidy for those with pre-existing conditions, if they haven't already obtained insurance.
• Subsidize college education for doctors and nurses, reducing price by increasing supply.
  
• Limit the ratio of administrators to doctors at hospitals and reduce paperwork needed for doctors, reducing price by reducing cost.
  
• Create a special H-1B visa category for doctors, nurses, physicians assistants, and nurse practitioners, to increase the supply of providers, reducing price by increasing supply.
• Don't have an individual mandate or any of the other sops to various insurance and big pharma lobbies.
  
• Allow the re-importation of drugs from countries where price controls artificially reduce their cost of drugs at the expense of Americans, reducing the price of drugs.

Nowhere in this plan would a good liberal mess with what was already working for most Americans, who were generally happy with their insurance prior to the ACA.

When the dust settles on this statute, if it is not repealed, there will still be a significant portion of Americans who will lack health care coverage. Amazing. 2700 pages and the Democrats masquerading as liberals couldn't manage to cover all Americans for health care. They also increased the costs, and caused many Americans to lose their employer provided coverage. I await a liberal response as to how this furthers the ends envisioned by liberalism.

Why Liberals Should Hate Obamacare

Imagine, if you will, that you are a liberal, that your conscience tells you that no one should be denied medical treatment because they lack the ability to pay. Imagine that you examined the facts of the U.S. health care system in 2009, before the passage of the "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act." Would you support its passage? Of course not.

I got thinking about this subject after discussing it with my niece's husband, who holds such beliefs. I decided that even liberals (as opposed to leftists) were sold a bill of goods regarding this execrable measure. The pressing social issue that Obamacare was supposed to solve was the problem of the uninsured. This problem set included subgroups of those who supposedly couldn't afford insurance and those who couldn't get coverage because of pre-existing conditions. But what were the facts? In 2009, it was widely quoted that 46 million Americans lacked health insurance. But this fact requires some explanation. First, almost 1o million of those were not actually American citizens. One might argue that we have a duty to also cover the non-citizens, but it doesn't change the fact that this part of the problem wasn't created in our country. Second, many of the uninsured have annual household incomes above $50,000 to the tune of close to 18 million (admittedly using 2007 data.) Many other of these people were actually eligible for government insurance programs such as Medicaid, almost 14 million. (See American Spectator for source material.) I'll let the reader do the math, but that means that the number of Americans who cannot afford health care is rather small compared to the total population. One could also remember that medicaid provides health care to the very poorest Americans and no emergency room may turn away a patient with an a life threatening condition.

So what could have been about the problem that remained. The U.S. population in 2009 was 305 million. That meant the vast majority of Americans had health care through their jobs, private funding or eligibility as a family member. If one were to attack the alleged problem of the uninsured then a program to subsidize those who were poor but not in poverty and a law to allow portability of health care when changing jobs to prevent pre-existing conditions from being a cause to deny care would have achieved those ends.

What did we get instead? So much more than we knew was in the bill. But consider this gem, despite Obama's promise that you would be able to keep your health care, we get this admission from Dr. Howard Dean.

Dean told Morning Joe, “The fact is it is very good for small business. There was a McKinsey study, which the Democrats don’t like, but I do, and I think its true. Most small businesses are not going to be in the health insurance business anymore after this thing goes into effect.”

This admission gives the lie to the promise that we could keep our current insurance. Further, it will blow a hole in the deficit reduction efforts. Why should liberals care? Because the increased burden on the federal budget will cause people to be denied care through queuing or other methods designed to limit access and therefore cost. The deficit math is compelling and no amount of increased taxation will totally close the federal deficit, so it is inevitable that increased participation in government funded health care will result in cost containment. If your goal was to increase health care insurance, your result was less of it.

Liberals have been sold a lie by the left. Obamacare is a Peronist take over of an industry disguised as compassion. The endless rules that only the Secretary of HHS can waive have led to a waive of cronyism regarding those waivers tied to campaign contributions and other forms of support for the administration (see Darden restaurants.) Further, why would liberals love a program in which the end result is an explicit transfer of the cost of doing business from corporations to the tax payer? How is that liberal? Or conservative, for that matter? I would ask my liberal friends to re-think their support of Obama and leftism. It does their cause no good and undermines their desire to provide a social safety net for all Americans.