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Most intelligent people don’t like Trump. Heck, polls suggest that most unintelligent people don’t like Trump. Nonetheless, I feel that libertarians often focus on the wrong issues regarding Trump, and this leads outsiders to wonder why we are so narrow in our focus.

Bob Murphy (who doesn’t support Trump) has a post reflecting on the lessons of the election. I disagree with much of it, but I suppose all the points are defensible, taken one at a time. Unfortunately, the overall impression is that libertarians are tone deaf.

Much of the post is devoted not to attacking Trump, but rather to attacking his critics or pointing out that some of his issues have merit. Fair enough, it’s his prerogative to do so. But when it comes to free trade Bob pulls no punches:

Immigration Policy Is Debatable Among Libertarians, but Trump’s Trade Rhetoric Is a Disaster. I personally think that much freer movement of people across sovereign borders would be a good thing, for Americans and foreigners, and both in material standards of living as well as intangible civil liberties. In particular, a giant wall to keep illegal immigrants out might make it that much easier for a future regime to keep dissidents in. Having said that, I should acknowledge that libertarians are divided on questions of immigration. Although I agree with my colleague Ben Powell on the economics of greater labor mobility, some libertarians understandably worry about the negative consequences of letting in people who will vote for a larger welfare State. Yet when it comes to the free movement of goods, then the Trump phenomenon is clearly misguided. As a free-market economist, I will unfortunately have to spend much more time during the next four years explaining to Americans why more regulations and taxes—levied on their choice to buy foreign products—won’t make America richer.

No discussion of the vile racism, misogyny, anti-disabled, anti-POW or anti-Muslim bigotry, beyond an allusion to Trump’s “boorish comments about women”. Nothing on his pandering to the alt-right, or hiring the publisher of a leading alt-right outlet to be his campaign manager. Nothing about his support for much worse types of torture than waterboarding. Nothing about his comments that we should steal the oil of countries when we conquer them. Nothing about his support for assassinating the family members of terrorists. Nothing about his embrace of brutal authoritarians like Putin. Nothing about his promises to stop the media from printing anti-Trump stories. Nothing about his bizarre embrace of numerous nutty conspiracy theories. Or his comments in favor of nuclear proliferation. Or his contempt for facts, which I’m afraid goes far beyond the lies we see with even Hillary/Nixon-level politicians.

Look, I’m also opposed to tariffs on Mexican goods. But when people read posts like Bob’s they are going to think that libertarians just don’t get it. One defense is that Hillary is also horrible. I agree, she’s much worse than Obama. So put in a, “To be sure, Hillary also has many faults like militarism and support for the war on drugs” or something like that. But Trump’s outrages go far beyond anything I’ve ever seen in American politics, and if we write posts mostly attacking his critics and then throwing in a few lines about tariffs, we are just giving ammunition to the people who troll libertarians as insensitive on issues such as race and gender (I don’t recall specific examples, but I’m thinking of people like Noah Smith, Brad DeLong, Paul Krugman, etc.) Lots of female GOP intellectuals (who earlier criticized Bill Clinton) are disgusted right now with the GOP, and their reasons go far beyond “boorish comments”. They don’t understand why the men in their party don’t get it.

Moving beyond Bob’s post, I’m glad those “sore losers” are out in the streets protesting Trump; I wish there were millions of people protesting (peacefully of course.) I’d be disgusted with this country if people simply bowed down to Trump because he won. The fact that he won more states than Hillary doesn’t magically transform him into another person; he’s still the appalling, disgusting, evil person he was on November 7th. A man with literally no good qualities (with apologies to Musil). All that’s changed is that he’s now a government employee.

Sometimes I wonder why we even have a public education system. When I think back to all the “social studies” classes I took in high school, there were lots topics covered. But much of the history (back in the 1960s and 1970s) we covered actually boiled down to one basic point: “Do not ever, ever, ever, ever vote for a demagogic politician who engages in the big lie, is contemptuous of civil liberties and demonizes minorities and foreigners. Just don’t do it.” And if we can’t even get that one basic point, then can someone tell me what these civics classes are for? What’s the point? And please don’t tell me that all politicians are demagogues, of course that true to some extent. But Trump’s a textbook definition of what we were warned to shun at all costs.

If libertarianism doesn’t rise to the occasion and loudly proclaim that Trump is completely beyond the pale, then we are going to make the same mistake those leftists made in the 1950s and 1960s, when they spent more time criticizing anti-communists than they did criticizing the unprecedented evil of global communism. Of course Trump’s not that sort of threat, he’s probably too incompetent to do much harm (one key difference from Hitler), and our democracy is quite strong (another key difference). Maybe he won’t even impose those tariffs—I have no idea what he’s going to do. But in symbolic terms the issues are just as stark, and we need to reject Trumpism without any qualifications, even if Trump were to bring about small government and NGDP targeting. Otherwise libertarianism will be tarnished by this sad episode of American history.

PS. You might say I didn’t mention Hillary’s scandals. That’s right, but I also didn’t mention’s Trump’s, which even more extensive. Cheating on his taxes. Using a charitable foundation for personal profit. Creating a fraudulent “university” to scam students. I agree that Hillary has scandals involving emails and the Clinton Foundation, but Trump is a walking non-stop scandal. I didn’t think those were even worth adding to the list above, because I was trying to focus on the things that were completely outside the range of normal American politics. Scandals are a dime a dozen.

PPS. This is good news:

President-elect Donald Trump said in an interview to air on Sunday that certain areas of his promised border wall with Mexico, a key part of his White House campaign platform, could be fence instead.

Just as stupid, but cheaper stupidity!

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This entry was posted on November 13th, 2016 and is filed under Libertarianism, Trump Derangement Syndrome. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or Trackback from your own site.



