Mocking left-wing cognitive dissonance is a favorite and lucrative pastime for many on America’s Right. It’s easy to do and the base loves it. The Left preaches against the evils of anthropogenic climate change, for example, but does so only from the comforts of private jets and exotic destinations. Outrageous, yet amusing. But unfortunately, the Right’s ironic sense of humor has not entirely inoculated us against our own forms of cognitive dissonance.
Nowhere is this truer than when it comes to the debate over globalization.
On the one hand, most conservatives firmly oppose political globalization—supranational organizations like the United Nations or the European Union. They see them as wastes of money, and threats to national sovereignty. Yet on the other, the Republican Party has relentlessly pushed for economic globalization—convoluted free trade deals and so-called open markets—since the Nixon Administration.
This is the height of cognitive dissonance: economic and political globalization are but two sides of the same coin—both lead us ever-onward into the hands of would-be global tyrants.
Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely
Conservatives love Lord Acton’s famous but often misquoted observation: “power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” For this reason, conservatives are generally skeptical of entities governed by faceless elites with shadowy pasts, by people who are not accountable to voters. Organizations like the U.N. or the EU necessarily concentrate power in the hands of a few and are, predictably, rife with corruption.
A good example is the EU’s authoritarian management of the European debt crisis. Recall how the EU appointed a special council, the Troika, to control Greece’s spending and reduce their debt. Of course, controlling Greece’s finances meant controlling Greece itself, and the nation was essentially occupied by EU bureaucrats who overturned elections, stripped Greece of its sovereignty, and egregiously violated the Greek population’s property rights in order to prop up the country’s insolvent financial institutions.
Nigel Farage, then a member of the European Parliament, compared the EU to the USSR in its Byzantine machinations and authoritarian predilections:
the European project . . . was about taking away democracy from nation states, and handing that power to largely unaccountable people . . . This European Union is the new Communism. It is power without limits. It is creating a tide of human misery, and the sooner it is swept away, the better.
Most conservatives agree with Farage: the European Union concentrates political power in the hands of faceless men and women without names. The same is true of all other global organizations. Although they wield enormous power, few Americans can name the head of the United Nations, and fewer still the head of the World Bank. This disconnect between the rulers and the ruled is antithetical to the freedoms enshrined in the U.S. Constitution, and to the democratic principle itself.
Even so, the same people who oppose political globalization for the above reasons often support economic globalization—which causes the same problems and has the same result.
A good example of this kind of cognitive dissonance on the Right is embodied by the popular conservative commentator Ben Shapiro. He argues vociferously against global political entities, calling the U.N. a “deep, virulent evil“; yet he writes glowingly about the European common market, and trade agreements such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).
My question for Shapiro and so many others like him: Who negotiated NAFTA? How about the U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement (KORUS)? Or TPP?
He does not know. Neither do you. No one knows.
These “free trade agreements” are so insurmountably long and immeasurably complex that no elected representative (or ordinary citizen) ever read them. Neither would they be likely to understand them if they tried. Feel free to browse the text of NAFTA and you will see my point. In the end, these deals are negotiated by bureaucrats behind closed doors, written by third-party lawyers—politicians simply rubber-stamp them. Who influences the bureaucrats? Who pressures the politicians? The true power rests with the faceless men who represent neither you nor I.
Such absolute and anonymous power is corrosive: consider how recent documents from Wikileaks reveal the multitude of hidden goodies and kickbacks written into the impending Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA). If ratified, TiSA would be the most important piece of legislation since the Affordable Care Act, and yet it might as well be invisible. It is nowhere in the public imagination.
The bottom line: multilateral trade agreements concentrate enormous economic power in the hands of an unaccountable few, and the system is rife with abuse. If you oppose the United Nations on these grounds, you logically oppose NAFTA too. But as always, logic has to be exercised.
Killing Westphalia, Or How Globalism Usurps Sovereignty
Aside from King John’s Magna Carta and Emperor Justinian’s Corpus Juris Civilis, the Treaty of Westphalia (signed 1648) is perhaps the most important legal document in Western history.
This is not because it ended the gruesome wars of religion, laying the political foundations for the age of Enlightenment, but rather because it redefined the notion of national sovereignty and created the modern nation-state. The treaty affirmed, for perhaps the first time since the fall of Rome, that a nation has supreme authority within its own borders—to the exclusion of supranational organizations like the Catholic Church or the Holy Roman Empire. This specific (and new) notion of sovereignty has been the modus operandi for political thinkers ever since.
This type of sovereignty is what conservatives seek to protect from international organizations like the U.N. or the EU—the stronger they grow, the weaker each nation is. This is obvious: for a supranational entity to work, each member state must surrender specified powers to said entity—it loses a piece of its sovereignty. Sometimes losing a bit of sovereignty is a fair trade. For example, most nations agree to respect each other’s territorial integrity or face international discipline, in exchange they receive the same guarantee.
But when too much trust is placed in these supranational organizations, we expose ourselves to real dangers. How long until the EU commands the independent military it craves? How long until the U.N. is able to enforce its particular brand of Human Rights on its members? Americans are right to guard jealously their nation’s sovereignty and cling to every root and branch to avoid ceding all sovereignty worth having to a claque of international elites with no concern or feeling for the particular interests of their citizens.
And yet, American conservatives are often the first to advocate more economic globalization—which undermines national sovereignty in precisely the same way. In fact, it is even more pernicious than the political variety, because trade deals have built-in sanctions for noncompliance.
For example: Nigel Farage claims some 75 percent of Great Britain’s laws and regulations are either imported from the EU, or must conform to standardized EU codes; while according to Hansard evidence submitted to parliament by Boris Johnson the number is 60 percent. Either way, the majority of Great Britain’s laws are not actually British, they are European. Furthermore, they were crafted by unaccountable commissioners no one has ever heard of—the faceless men.
Most importantly: these laws were all adopted in the name of economic efficiency; what began as the European Coal and Steel Community has evolved into a sprawling system with a single currency, open borders, and open markets—Hillary Clinton’s dream. In surrendering power to the EU to facilitate more trade and closer economic ties, the European nations have been completely emasculated, reduced to mere vassal states.
The EU is no outlier. Just consider how TiSA would give multinational firms the right to sell financial derivatives, including those not yet invented, in all participating countries—nullifying domestic laws to the contrary. Likewise, it would ban national restrictions on the transfer of electronic information by financial service suppliers (like Google), thereby voiding state and federal laws.
The surrender of sovereignty is the end result of all trade deals: unified economies require unified governance, trade deals homogenize nations. Period. Even if such deal may improve the country’s overall bottom line—at least on paper and in abstraction from particular sectors of the economy—does homogenizing with the rest of the world tend to improve or degrade our national political character? To imagine the two can be totally separated is folly.
Globalization’s Sons: Fragility and Contagion
Politics is a complex, not a simple system—it works more like the weather than a washing machine. A washing machine is a simple mechanical system governed by first-order causality. That is, we know what causes what—no surprises. The weather, on the other hand, is a complex system governed by second-order causality, meaning that a known cause interacts with the system in a non-linear way—it may be magnified by subsequent effects, have unpredictable effects, or have no effect at all. It is out of respect for the complexity of political systems, and a fear of an all-encompassing catastrophe, that conservatives prefer strong state governments to a strong federal government—if something goes wrong in California, it need not directly harm Texas. The same logic applies to international organizations and treaties. Consider how all of Europe was drawn into World War I because of their political connectivity, while distant places like Argentina and China were barely affected.
Fragmented systems are more robust than connected systems. They are insulated against catastrophe.
But yet again, conservatives ignore their natural inclinations and argue in favor of increasing global trade because their eyes are on an increasing and ever more efficient bottom line. Economic globalization is a double-edged sword: while freer trade may increase global economic efficiency, it also increases the risk of contagion. For example, an academic study found that the frequency of economic crashes in America has doubled since the 1970s, when we abandoned the gold standard, dropped tariffs, and began accumulating a trade deficit. Why? Increased connectivity allows the spread of economic contagion around the world—often it magnifies it. The poster child for this is the European debt crisis: debt problems in tiny Greece brought all of European to its knees—a butterfly flapped its wings and a hurricane was born.
The Inseparability of Political and Economic Globalization
The final, and most damning, piece of evidence against economic globalization is that it invariably leads to political unification.
The perfect example is the evolution of the EU. The EU’s foundations were laid with the creation of the European Coal and Steel Community in 1952, a trade agreement that harmonized supply chains of said critical resources. Not only would it be economically expedient, it was marketed by its architect Robert Schuman in 1950—and like many another vain hope before it—as something that would “make war materially impossible.” From the beginning, European technocrats realized that economic integration would inevitably lead to political integration.
History proved them right. Trade agreement after agreement followed, each justified on economic grounds, and supported by conservatives—who could say no to free trade or to the prosperity it promised? And perhaps the EU did enrich Europe, but at what cost? A single market requires a single law: European nations sacrificed their political independence upon the altar of economic interdependence—Europe now shares an increasingly powerful legislature, single currency, and constitution.
We laugh at the Left for its cognitive dissonance on a host of issues, but we should be careful not to commit the same sin. Make no mistake, political and economic globalization are more than siblings, they are the two faces of Janus—by placing our faith in one, we venerate the other. It is time we returned to the measured and deliberate isolationism that America’s Founders recommended.
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Indeed! And ‘Bobbins Not Gold’ is a great book!
Thanks for the kind words my friend
Excellent article, Spencer!
Thanks for reading Bob
I’ve heard a similar argument before: “Capitalism is bad because …” and then they give many examples of crony capitalism. Should we get rid of capitalism because corporations corrupt the government? No.
We should consider free trade on its merits but “reject” unwanted politicization in economic treaties.
And if we reject ‘free trade” that does not guarantee there will be no political encroachment into whatever “non-free” economic treaties we enter into.
If you truly support Free Trade, then you should call for the end of sanctions against Iran, North Korea, and Cuba.
I’d love to see a debate between Ben Shapiro and Spencer Morrison on “Free Trade”! Shapiro is obviously the establishment’s attempt to rebrand their tired, old talking points of Conservatism, Inc. with a new face as he offers nothing new. Shapiro is basically the establishment’s replacement for Bill Kristol who so hilariously self-destructed during his NeverTrump hysteria!
I don’t think a debate would be possible: for there to be a debate, there must be relative parity between the opponents & a shared knowledge base. Likewise, there must be a point of common ground.
For his part, Shapiro has a very limited understanding of economics & almost no knowledge of history—parity does not exist in terms of knowledge. Furthermore, we have little common ground on the topic, given that I’m a nationalist & he’s a globalist.
I expect a debate would be as one-sided as this article:
https://www.nationaleconomicseditorial.com/2017/04/04/ben-shapiro-economic-globalization/
Call him out on Twitter and go to one of his events where he’s taking questions from the crowd.
I’ll keep that in mind.
Thoughts on multi-party trade agreements and conservatives:
The TPP was a trojan horse for the loss of American sovereignty. It had a trade commission meant to morph into an EU like uber gov’t. And it would have jurisdiction over all sorts of things – working conditions, environment matters and anything that could be connected to trade. And the U.S. would be just one member, which could be outvoted by the others (as Canada and Mexico can outvote the U.S. in NAFTA). These agreements weaponize trade against us, suck out our jobs and lose our sovereignty.
It is an oxymoron to equate “free trade” with these mammoth multiparty deals. They are exercises in loss of sovereignty and weapons against America (NAFTA and TPP and WTO) and Britain (the EU). What’s “free” about them? They become exercises in coercion.
What we have recently been learning about so-called “movement conservatives” is, like the Dems, they don’t actually like traditional working America very much. NRO was willing to print the Kevin Williamson article telling unemployed Rust Belt America to go crawl off and die somewhere.
Most so-called conservatives also embrace the social-democratic welfare state and think the government has responsibility for “managing” (as opposed to the nasty socialistic “planning”) of the economy, so their confusion on trade is hardly surprising.
Our country was founded on individual liberty and the political principle that legitimate government exists to protect our inalienable rights and property. That means a domestic free market. Regarding the rest of the world, it means reciprocity in terms of trade. Our government is not engaging in some nefarious attack on free-market capitalism if it prevents other governments from doing to our economy what all conservatives don’t want our own government doing to our own economy. The idea that trade is “free” in the absence of tariffs but in the presence of treaties empowering governments to regulate it is absurd, and a thought that applies only to people who think the domestic economy is free if government taxes and regulates everything that moves and breathes.
I tell my friends that it would be in US interests to see the breakup of the European Union and we should be actively working toward that end. They look at me like I am a madman. But the EU is a threat to US interests. The British have already discovered this as they have found out that it likely too late for Brexit. I wonder when the British will wake up and begin actively working with whomever to actively undermine the EU.
Excellent article. Fully agree that uncritical support of economic globalization and “free-trade” is bad for the U.S. Every trade deal should be evaluated on its own merits. Locking-in negotiated treaties guarantees that money and jobs will flow down the wealth concentration gradient, i.e. out of the U.S.
nothing like rejecting free trade
after all, who wouldn’t want to spend 20 dollars on a pair of socks
what farmer wouldn’t like to lose all his export markets
American Greatness has turned into bernie sanders diklik
America’s economic growth rate per capita peaked between 1945 & 1973—likewise the real purchasing power per household peaked in 1973. Since then both have been declining decade-over-decade.
Not coincidentally, 1973 was when we began opening up our markets to (state-backed) foreign competition, and abandoned the last refuges of the gold standard in favor of fiat currency. This led to a system of managed inflation & spiraling debt—to pay for the endless imports. Basically, our economic problems started as a result of our embrace of economic liberalism on a global scale.
How do you libertarians square this circle: (1) you oppose government intervention in the economy while (2) you want more trade with China—knowing full-well that China’s an authoritarian command economy. All you’re doing is substituting the American government for China’s government.
This is simply madness.
Furthermore, your argument is predicated on a false understanding of how economic growth works (I’ve linked an article on the topic that you should read), and are regurgitating liberal talking points regarding the merits of globalization. Remember, it was Clinton’s wish to have “open markets and open borders” while Trump (and real conservatives & nationalists) oppose them both.
https://www.nationaleconomicseditorial.com/2017/01/09/economic-growth/