On Stuttaford and crunchy conservatism

Bubba,

Once again, confronted by the smugness and self-satisfaction I have come to expect from your posts, I descend into the mire in hopes of achieving some greater measure of clarity.

I have argued, both here and elsewhere, that our own history as a nation confounds the claim that advocacy of tariffs and prohibitions on outsourcing of manufacturing and insourcing of cheap labour, whether blue or white collar, constitutes advocacy of statism. When we find in our own history a coincidence of these things, which we do in considerable measure, at times when the American goverment could scarcely be characterized as authoritarian, and American society as statist, it becomes manifest that these policies and 'statism' bear no necessary relation, whether conceptual or political. Since, then, there exists no necessary relation between these contested concepts, I cannot be reproached for exhibiting statist tendencies for advocating the policies at issue. The inference is unwarranted on its own terms, quite apart from considerations related to my neglect of your demand to flesh out a political theory. Given what you already know of my political views, that is, the inference of statism is unjustified.

The fact that you persist in making this inference indicates to me, as I have argued, again, here and elsewhere, that you have supposed a certain conception of the relation of the economic to the political as normative, and exhaustive of the bounds of conservative rectitude. The mere citation of conservative alternatives to this conception - which, on your own admission, is all I have done - suffices, given the nature of the argument, to disprove the assumption that I have departed from conservatism to advocate statism, and to demonstrate that you have simply begged the question of the doctrine from which you launch your critiques, and that, again, quite apart from the issues related to my "vague" allusions and refusal to specify a political philosophy to your requirements. In other words, in addition to arguing in favour of your favoured politico-economic philosophy as normative conservatism, you would have to demonstrate that agrarianism, distributism, the reactionaries, and the crunchies are all statists, centralists, and crypto-socialists, had you the desire to prove me a statist apostate from the High Holy Church of Conservatism.

Good luck on that.>

Bubba,

You are elevating point-missing to an art form.

In the first place, support for tariffs does not equate to support for big government and statism, as our own history, and the fact that a conservative sympathetic to any number of philosophies - philosophies which cannot be deemed statist under any rational analysis - might - might - reason from the tenets and objects of those philosophies to support for tariffs, along with the other policies we've been - is this arguing? - about.

Subsidies for small farmers? I haven't supported them explicitly; if I've addressed them at all, it has been under the aspect of public deliberation, as in: the people are responsible enough to deliberate concerning such policies, and don't need to be hectored by intellectuals that such things are inherently statist - given that, as with tariffs and the like, any particular subsidy is oblique to statism.

As for remarks concerning one-dimensional conceptions of freedom - those remarks refer to the absurd notion that support for tariffs, bans on outsourcing and insourcing, and so on, constitute support for unfreedom. There were times in American history when tariffs were collected as a significant source of revenue (and there was no income tax - hardly a statist result), and when manufacturing for our market (and for export) was performed here), and when, oh, Indian computer programmers weren't brought in to displace guys I know for a third of the wage - and despite all this! America was a free (in some instances freer) nation! The point is that if some conception of freedom requires as essentials an absence of tariffs, outsourcing, insourcing, and whatever else we are ostensible arguing about here, is is flat-out dubious, because radically counterfactual to history, to say the least.

If, as you concede, support for such things as I have mentioned does not equate to statism, why the fuss? Is it because I have not bothered to mention my opposition to such things as the Dept. of Ed., Medicare, Social Security, and so on? These programs, if they are to exist at all, should be local in scope and adminstration, never Federal. I'd even like to repeal the income tax, although I imagine that to be another one of my unfulfilled political fantasies; and I can scarcely conceive of an America in which there were tariffs, and in which our stuff was actually produced here, but lacked a Federal entitlement system and an income tax, as a statist hellhole.

Is that a bit clearer?>