Am I so out of step with the term "individualism"?
Pogue says Vance is against "individualist liberal ideology", but I don't read anything like that in what Vance says or writes (and I've read his book). At the philosophical level, it's basically the same old libertarian concept that big government (especially as it exercises more control over big business) crushes the individual. And that's bad.
Tracinski, on the other hand, offers something that sounds like individualism ("people of a nation, one-by-one, choose the kind of society they want and take control of their own fate."). But really, that's limiting "individualism down to your ability to flee, fight, or be slaughtered. The "society" that's being built is a product of war, coercion, brutality, and denial of individual rights.
I think this gets to something kind of basic. Generally, I see the American right as for the primacy of the individual. I think the American left sees the individual as the base material of whatever collective they feel at the moment is most important.
"New Right is ... a bunch of people who believe that the system that organizes our society and government, which most of us think of as normal, is actually bizarre and insane. Which naturally makes them look bizarre and insane to people who think this system is normal."
This sentiment has been around forever, and especially since the post WWII global reordering. What has changed is the opinion has gone from a fringe group to a substantial faction. This growth is happening because the "system" has become increasingly more obviously insane.
In every facet of our lives we encounter destructive regulations, policies and philosophies that are based on ideologies fully embraced or fully tolerated by the "establishment".
That is insanity.
And yet because the establishment would rather endure failure than admit the "anti-intellectuals" are right, we get more failure
Pride does come before the fall, and mainly because pride prevents the people who could fix the system from fixing it.
Re: "Whether that is true depends on whether hawkish or dovish views would have been the first to mobilize."
A deep point. If (a) multiple equilibria are possible and (b) equilibrium will emerge quickly by cascade, then first movers can determine the equilibrium.
Re: "it is not so clear what the Ukrainians are choosing."
Ukraine has a mixed population, which includes a substantial, geographically concentrated (but not neatly segregated) subset of 'Russians'. Ukraine has a complex history of internecine strife, intertwined with international relations. Thus majority rule and federalism (decentralization) are deeply contested in Ukraine. Reports focus on massive emigration to Poland and other EU countries. Is there also massive internal migration -- sharper regional ethnic sorting, northwest vs southeast -- within Ukraine?
Despite large divisions in our society, many people have noted that a civil war is impossible. There are no red states and blue states, just blue cities and red surrounding areas. How would you break things up?
Ukraine wasn't like that though. It was a situation were if you got 51% of the vote you got it all. And you weren't nice to the losing side.
Crimea is a nice geographically distinct area where the Ukrainian claim is extremely weak. It probably should have been let go, and formally so. I don't think sanctions over Crimea in 2014 helped anyone, and shutting off their water was idiotic.
Donbass is tougher because it's not a geographically distinct area. Where does Donbass end? If the DPR had done well in 2014 why stop at Donbass, why not keep marching to Kiev? In fact this writes itself, wasn't the Maiden coup basically just as illegitimate as a Donbass army marching to Kiev and reversing it. You can see how "give these people independence and it probably won't end there" is a reasonable belief, however tragic.
It would have been better to find some solution once the front lines died down. But Kiev didn't want to give up "territory", and Moscow didn't actually want independence for these regions (it wanted puppet legislatures with a veto in Kiev). The people of Ukraine elected Zelensky to cut this Gordian knot but he couldn't get it done.
However the war in the east turns out, once the front solidifies one hopes we can just declare possession 9/10th of the law and end the war.
The USA also has a governance problem due to the power of the executive branch to arbitrarily make law in sweeping ways.
Consider that Biden winning the electoral college vote meant wholesale changes in US energy and foreign policy. It also resulted in a Covid jab mandate for the military & federal government workers and an attempt to jab federal contractors.
We like to say the American president is not a monarch but you can't fool me. How much unilateral power can an individual exercise over the lives of citizens before he / she is by all reasonable interpretation a dictator?
I agree & believe that the blue cities in a sea of red is a workable compromise. This political compromise is shattered when the federal government can not only impose one sided policies on everyone but make these policies on one person's whim!
> Ukraine [...] was a situation were if you got 51% of the vote you got it all. And you weren't nice to the losing side.
That's not true. If you got 51% you got to be president. This was a much more powerful position in 2013 than it is now, but one still had the parliament to contend with. The parliament of Ukraine represents the barons (industrialists, traders and so on) at least as much as it represents the people. Even when, as today, there is a nominal single party majority, it does not mean virtual dictatorship of the sort you seem to be imagining. First of all, there are no political parties with mass memberships or mass organizations, only party brands (co-owned by party leadership and their sponsor barons) and personal brands of the more popular and/or influential politicians, public persons and barons, who engage in marketing their brands, log-rolling and horse-trading. Second, there is no 'party discipline': all attempts to introduce what is called in local political lingo the 'imperative mandate' (a system by which all MPs elected on a given party's list are subservient to their party leadership and must vote as they are told or be stripped of their seats) have failed, because such a system would have greatly harmed the barons' representation. The lack of 'imperative mandate' and of any effectual means of recalling MPs once elected makes them to a large extent free agents. This situation is similar to that which obtained in British Parliament a few centuries ago, when anyone with money and connections could buy a rotten borough for his protege or agent if not for himself.
> Maidan coup ... reversing it
What you call Maidan coup was not a popular, demotic coup. The people who assembled in the Maidan square had no voice of their own, they did not elect any representatives and were not present at the political negotiations in any capacity. Neither did they assault much less occupy any government buildings: they occupied a public square with parts of adjacent streets and a couple of unimportant public buildings, notably the Trade Unions building. It was a parliamentary coup effected by those free agent MPs, including many from Yanukovich's own party. Here is the voting roll for the 21/02 law restoring the 2004 constitution under which the president's powers were very limited [http://w1.c1.rada.gov.ua/pls/radan_gs09/ns_arh_golos?g_id=382807&n_skl=7]. It got 386/450 ayes at a point when Yanukovich was still in his chair and the capitol district was still under control of the riot police and national guard units. 140/192 of Yanukovich's Party of Regions caucus voted aye. This indicates that at that point the MPs elected under his brand were no longer happy with his activities and preferred the political settlement brokered by the Western and Russian representatives, under which Yanukovich would have remained a lame duck president for most of his remaining term of office. On the next day, after Yanukovich had failed to obtain the support of the military and skedaddled, 74 of those PoR MPs voted to remove him from power (34 voted with the PoR caucus, 40 had left the caucus earlier that day and voted as independents). The total was 313/450 ayes [http://w1.c1.rada.gov.ua/pls/radan_gs09/ns_arh_golos?g_id=385607&n_skl=7], still well above the 2/3 majority threshold for constitutional amendments. This should be enough to show that talk of 'marching on Kiev to reverse the coup' is nonsense. (Besides, although you might not know it, there was quite a crowd of Yanukovich's supporters up around Mariinsky park throughout, keeping things sorta-symmetric.) Of course, both of these actions by the parliament were technically unconstitutional, but Americans have no standing to criticize others on such technicalities, with SCOTUS finding civil rights in penumbras and emanations etc.
> I don't think sanctions over Crimea in 2014 helped anyone, and shutting off their water was idiotic.
Maybe it was idiotic, but Russia's mode of action left Ukraine with no good alternatives. If a mugger takes your wallet, you call your bank to block your credit cards. You don't allow the mugger to use them in order to not look mean. The same considerations work for "giving up territory". When you are mugged, you can have recourse to police who will arrest the criminal if found, and who will take your side even if they can't recover your stolen property. If you have no such recourse, then there is nothing to prevent the mugger from coming for more except for his goodness of heart. In 2014-2015 Western powers preferred to swallow the expropriation of Crimea with a bit of growling and some token sanctions, and to treat the Donbas as an internal Ukrianian matter. This almost certainly had a role in encouraging Russia to invade this February. It looks like it counted not only on a prompt collapse of Ukrainian resistance, but also on a tepid Western response.
> However the war in the east turns out, once the front solidifies one hopes we can just declare possession 9/10th of the law and end the war.
Unless Russia's new offensive fails as badly as its first one in the north did, a NK-SK style DMZ seems quite likely, but a necessary component of such a solution is a Western military alliance of some kind (one might say that it already exists in fact, if not on paper), or it will be no-recourse mugging all over again: even if Putin croaks soon, Russia is almost certainly not going anywhere in the foreseeable future.
One has to wonder whether these so-called doves have read any of the materials on Ukraine written and published by official Russian sources, including Putin himself, or listened to Putin's speeches. "The advance of Russia and of the New World", the article which was prepared in anticipation of a walk-over, briefly published by RIA on the morning of the third day of the invasion and quickly removed, or the more recent article by Soloveitsev on the meaning of "denazification" in the same publication, would give them a good idea that Russia’s aspirations are not limited to 'legitimate security needs' (what about Ukraine's legitimate security needs?) and that they cannot be reconciled with Ukraine’s right to self-determination. Past the early phase of the Cold War, USSR sponsored many movements for world peace, to which Western intellectuals (Noam Chomsky being one of the more egregious examples) were happy to give aid and support. It appears that the same script is being implemented again. Indeed, the same Noam Chomsky who had i.a. denied that anything untoward was happening in Cambodia under Khmer Rouge, and later denied having denied that, is among the so-called Ukraine doves today (https://www.currentaffairs.org/2022/04/noam-chomsky-on-how-to-prevent-world-war-iii).
"To me, it is not so clear what the Ukrainians are choosing. Many of them are choosing to leave. They are voting with their feet against submission to Russia. But they also may be voting with their feet against continuing the war." - as far as I know nearly all of the refugees are women, children, elders and disabled. Ukrainian government does not let out man who can fight. This is very visible in Poland (first hand observation here - I host three women with a child, my brother a women with a daughter, my sister another women and daughter, a friend an older couple). And not only man don't flee - lots of them left their jobs in Poland and returned to Ukraine to fight - there is now in Poland a huge shortage of workers in jobs that Ukrainian man were often taking.
"Near the end, Tyler says “The Vietnam War would not have lasted a week with Twitter.”
I wonder if appealing to the "Silent Majority" would make sense then? I guess social media renders this concept useless, breaking society into isolated, chattering segments.
Bryan Caplan's left-vs-right "model" is excellent indeed. But due note the natural end of any pure-market economy is either (1) a pharaoh or (2) the Soviet Union.
Note also that Caplan himself created the model in part to help people not just make sense of but also escape the paradigm. You don't have to pick either (lousy) option!
There are some contradictions--or at least "tensions"--in Pogue's piece:
<i>individualist liberal ideology, increasingly bureaucratic governments, and big tech are all combining into a world that is at once tyrannical ...</i>
Now, you can say lots of things against "liberal individualist ideology" but it very much opposes tyranny. That's perhaps the most basic thing about it.
<i>Vance believes that the regime has sold an illusive story that consumer gadgets and social media are constantly making our lives better, even as wages stagnate</i>
If wages stagnate, you can't buy more consumer gadgets. If you think that what people buy doesn't make them fulfilled, doesn't give their life any meaning, then why should anyone be concerned that people can't buy so much?
I think that the new right would say to libertarians, "So what that you philosophically oppose tyranny. The reality is that your individualism weakens all of the forces in society that can fight tyranny, so it enables tyranny." While libertarians win on gay marriage and weed, they lose liberty everywhere else. I think it's a pretty strong argument, although not strong enough to make me want to give up libertarianism for new rightism
That may be pretty strong. But I'd like to see the argument made in more detail. Is it really just "gay marriage and weed"? Why do libertarian arguments (or libertarian successes!) make "liberty lose everywhere else"? I suppose an atomized society looks to intrusive governments (and private actors) for safety. Anyway, something to think about.
Re: "I like markets, free speech, and processes that reward talent and effort."
1. Markets tend to reward talent and effort. What other processes do so? One might reply, for example: elections. The politician who wins a contested election probably has talent at fundraising and coalition-formation, and puts in long hours. Another example: bureaucracies. Presumably, it takes some sort of talent and considerable effort to rise to the top of a public-health bureaucracy, and stay on top.
Merit (talent + effort) ≠ 'Markets fail, use markets'
2. Why reward talent per se? Talent is a natural endowment, which one can use conscientiously, waste (for lack of effort), or misdirect (perhaps with great energy).
I like institutions that (a) harness talent and (b) direct and encourage effort -- towards relatively good outcomes.
It is far from a perfect analogy, but lately I've been thinking about the "blank check" in July 1914 that Germany gave to Austria-Hungary in dealing as harshly as they wished with Serbia after the Franz Ferdinand assassination. Austria "cashed" the check, Russia felt obliged to defend Serbia and there was then a chain of mobilizations and declarations of war.
The United States is coming close to giving Ukraine a blank check in its actions and rhetoric insofar as we seem determined to ensure a Ukrainian "victory" whatever that might mean. It's hard to believe that US actions and rhetoric do not have a profound effect on what both Ukraine and Russia are willing to settle for in a peace agreement. It also seems clear that our policy is prolonging the war. I don't think that's the right policy, but I also recognize that any honest view has to be made with uncertainty and humility.
I wonder how Vance thinks a Russian Ukraine would help reduce drug use in Ohio? Or more progressive taxation, or allowing in lots of highly skilled immigrants or lower deficits, or a TPP, or teaching kids about the Tulsa massacre would make it worse?
Is the "dovish" position on Ukraine really so marginal I think most of the people favoring continued assistance to the Ukraine government would be quite happy with a status quo ante bellum solution. Russia gets out of Ukraine (eventually an internationally supervised referendum in Crimea and Dunbas, war crimes trials only for specific acts) and Ukraine does not join NATO. I doubt that Putin has not been made aware that such a solution is available.
The officials Ukrainian and Western position is that its 1991 borders are sacrosanct. The will of the people involved are largely irrelevant to this position. People in Crimea and Donbass would have left Ukraine if they had been allowed.
Most likely. The principles of inviolability of borders (which even China supports - it never recognized Russia's annexation of Crimea and stated that it is against nations gaining independence through referendums, see http://en.itar-tass.com/world/760944) and of self-determination (good discussion at https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/who-gets-self-determination) are both a mess, but it's not like anyone is offering better alternatives.
Interesting that david roberts brought up the assassination of Franz Ferdinand above. He was the heir-apparent of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which included a large number of people who were counted in the Empire's census as Serbs (all subjects were put into one of eleven "nationalities"). On the Empire's southern border was an independent country of Serbia that wanted to include all those Serbs and the land they lived on (and, to be honest, a lot more). Just as Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) has provided training and money to non-state actors, so did parts of the Serbian government support violence against the Empire. Franz Ferdinand was on a goodwill trip in a mixed Serbian/Croat/Muslim area of the Empire when he was killed by one of the people the Serbian government had supplied.
The Empire dilly-dallied before over-demanding punishment of the Serbian government, which then refused, and got supported by the Russian government. Germany supported Austria-Hungary. France supported Russia. Everyone moved troops into position ("mobilized") and fearing "use it or lose it", the European powers "stumbled into war".
Would things have been different if the Austo-Hungarian government had just given majority-Serb areas to Serbia? We'll never know. The "inviolability of borders" may be a net positive, but it sure creates problems.
The very desire by Serbia to include all those Serbs who were under AH rule was the result of the development of nationalism, which implies self-determination almost automatically. In middle and early modern ages rulers did not much care which vernaculars were spoken in their territories, but by the time Franz Ferdinand got iced, European nationalism was at least 100 years old, arguably having started in Germany during the Napoleonic conquest.
Depending on how you define nationalism, it may be much older. Azar Gat's book Nations: The Long History and Deep Roots of Political Ethnicity and Nationalism argues (contra Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities) that lots of people for a long time have felt they were part of some "kin-culture community". Many rebellions use the rhetoric of "our people", "our land", e.g., Robert the Bruce "Braveheart" (1274-1329). It's quite an interesting book.
Many thanks for the article on Sweden. I had been wondering about how Sweden was doing with COVID. As you say: "Just listen to the science>"
Am I so out of step with the term "individualism"?
Pogue says Vance is against "individualist liberal ideology", but I don't read anything like that in what Vance says or writes (and I've read his book). At the philosophical level, it's basically the same old libertarian concept that big government (especially as it exercises more control over big business) crushes the individual. And that's bad.
Tracinski, on the other hand, offers something that sounds like individualism ("people of a nation, one-by-one, choose the kind of society they want and take control of their own fate."). But really, that's limiting "individualism down to your ability to flee, fight, or be slaughtered. The "society" that's being built is a product of war, coercion, brutality, and denial of individual rights.
I think this gets to something kind of basic. Generally, I see the American right as for the primacy of the individual. I think the American left sees the individual as the base material of whatever collective they feel at the moment is most important.
"New Right is ... a bunch of people who believe that the system that organizes our society and government, which most of us think of as normal, is actually bizarre and insane. Which naturally makes them look bizarre and insane to people who think this system is normal."
This sentiment has been around forever, and especially since the post WWII global reordering. What has changed is the opinion has gone from a fringe group to a substantial faction. This growth is happening because the "system" has become increasingly more obviously insane.
In every facet of our lives we encounter destructive regulations, policies and philosophies that are based on ideologies fully embraced or fully tolerated by the "establishment".
That is insanity.
And yet because the establishment would rather endure failure than admit the "anti-intellectuals" are right, we get more failure
Pride does come before the fall, and mainly because pride prevents the people who could fix the system from fixing it.
Re: "Whether that is true depends on whether hawkish or dovish views would have been the first to mobilize."
A deep point. If (a) multiple equilibria are possible and (b) equilibrium will emerge quickly by cascade, then first movers can determine the equilibrium.
Re: "it is not so clear what the Ukrainians are choosing."
Ukraine has a mixed population, which includes a substantial, geographically concentrated (but not neatly segregated) subset of 'Russians'. Ukraine has a complex history of internecine strife, intertwined with international relations. Thus majority rule and federalism (decentralization) are deeply contested in Ukraine. Reports focus on massive emigration to Poland and other EU countries. Is there also massive internal migration -- sharper regional ethnic sorting, northwest vs southeast -- within Ukraine?
Despite large divisions in our society, many people have noted that a civil war is impossible. There are no red states and blue states, just blue cities and red surrounding areas. How would you break things up?
Ukraine wasn't like that though. It was a situation were if you got 51% of the vote you got it all. And you weren't nice to the losing side.
Crimea is a nice geographically distinct area where the Ukrainian claim is extremely weak. It probably should have been let go, and formally so. I don't think sanctions over Crimea in 2014 helped anyone, and shutting off their water was idiotic.
Donbass is tougher because it's not a geographically distinct area. Where does Donbass end? If the DPR had done well in 2014 why stop at Donbass, why not keep marching to Kiev? In fact this writes itself, wasn't the Maiden coup basically just as illegitimate as a Donbass army marching to Kiev and reversing it. You can see how "give these people independence and it probably won't end there" is a reasonable belief, however tragic.
It would have been better to find some solution once the front lines died down. But Kiev didn't want to give up "territory", and Moscow didn't actually want independence for these regions (it wanted puppet legislatures with a veto in Kiev). The people of Ukraine elected Zelensky to cut this Gordian knot but he couldn't get it done.
However the war in the east turns out, once the front solidifies one hopes we can just declare possession 9/10th of the law and end the war.
The USA also has a governance problem due to the power of the executive branch to arbitrarily make law in sweeping ways.
Consider that Biden winning the electoral college vote meant wholesale changes in US energy and foreign policy. It also resulted in a Covid jab mandate for the military & federal government workers and an attempt to jab federal contractors.
We like to say the American president is not a monarch but you can't fool me. How much unilateral power can an individual exercise over the lives of citizens before he / she is by all reasonable interpretation a dictator?
I agree & believe that the blue cities in a sea of red is a workable compromise. This political compromise is shattered when the federal government can not only impose one sided policies on everyone but make these policies on one person's whim!
> Ukraine [...] was a situation were if you got 51% of the vote you got it all. And you weren't nice to the losing side.
That's not true. If you got 51% you got to be president. This was a much more powerful position in 2013 than it is now, but one still had the parliament to contend with. The parliament of Ukraine represents the barons (industrialists, traders and so on) at least as much as it represents the people. Even when, as today, there is a nominal single party majority, it does not mean virtual dictatorship of the sort you seem to be imagining. First of all, there are no political parties with mass memberships or mass organizations, only party brands (co-owned by party leadership and their sponsor barons) and personal brands of the more popular and/or influential politicians, public persons and barons, who engage in marketing their brands, log-rolling and horse-trading. Second, there is no 'party discipline': all attempts to introduce what is called in local political lingo the 'imperative mandate' (a system by which all MPs elected on a given party's list are subservient to their party leadership and must vote as they are told or be stripped of their seats) have failed, because such a system would have greatly harmed the barons' representation. The lack of 'imperative mandate' and of any effectual means of recalling MPs once elected makes them to a large extent free agents. This situation is similar to that which obtained in British Parliament a few centuries ago, when anyone with money and connections could buy a rotten borough for his protege or agent if not for himself.
> Maidan coup ... reversing it
What you call Maidan coup was not a popular, demotic coup. The people who assembled in the Maidan square had no voice of their own, they did not elect any representatives and were not present at the political negotiations in any capacity. Neither did they assault much less occupy any government buildings: they occupied a public square with parts of adjacent streets and a couple of unimportant public buildings, notably the Trade Unions building. It was a parliamentary coup effected by those free agent MPs, including many from Yanukovich's own party. Here is the voting roll for the 21/02 law restoring the 2004 constitution under which the president's powers were very limited [http://w1.c1.rada.gov.ua/pls/radan_gs09/ns_arh_golos?g_id=382807&n_skl=7]. It got 386/450 ayes at a point when Yanukovich was still in his chair and the capitol district was still under control of the riot police and national guard units. 140/192 of Yanukovich's Party of Regions caucus voted aye. This indicates that at that point the MPs elected under his brand were no longer happy with his activities and preferred the political settlement brokered by the Western and Russian representatives, under which Yanukovich would have remained a lame duck president for most of his remaining term of office. On the next day, after Yanukovich had failed to obtain the support of the military and skedaddled, 74 of those PoR MPs voted to remove him from power (34 voted with the PoR caucus, 40 had left the caucus earlier that day and voted as independents). The total was 313/450 ayes [http://w1.c1.rada.gov.ua/pls/radan_gs09/ns_arh_golos?g_id=385607&n_skl=7], still well above the 2/3 majority threshold for constitutional amendments. This should be enough to show that talk of 'marching on Kiev to reverse the coup' is nonsense. (Besides, although you might not know it, there was quite a crowd of Yanukovich's supporters up around Mariinsky park throughout, keeping things sorta-symmetric.) Of course, both of these actions by the parliament were technically unconstitutional, but Americans have no standing to criticize others on such technicalities, with SCOTUS finding civil rights in penumbras and emanations etc.
> I don't think sanctions over Crimea in 2014 helped anyone, and shutting off their water was idiotic.
Maybe it was idiotic, but Russia's mode of action left Ukraine with no good alternatives. If a mugger takes your wallet, you call your bank to block your credit cards. You don't allow the mugger to use them in order to not look mean. The same considerations work for "giving up territory". When you are mugged, you can have recourse to police who will arrest the criminal if found, and who will take your side even if they can't recover your stolen property. If you have no such recourse, then there is nothing to prevent the mugger from coming for more except for his goodness of heart. In 2014-2015 Western powers preferred to swallow the expropriation of Crimea with a bit of growling and some token sanctions, and to treat the Donbas as an internal Ukrianian matter. This almost certainly had a role in encouraging Russia to invade this February. It looks like it counted not only on a prompt collapse of Ukrainian resistance, but also on a tepid Western response.
> However the war in the east turns out, once the front solidifies one hopes we can just declare possession 9/10th of the law and end the war.
Unless Russia's new offensive fails as badly as its first one in the north did, a NK-SK style DMZ seems quite likely, but a necessary component of such a solution is a Western military alliance of some kind (one might say that it already exists in fact, if not on paper), or it will be no-recourse mugging all over again: even if Putin croaks soon, Russia is almost certainly not going anywhere in the foreseeable future.
One has to wonder whether these so-called doves have read any of the materials on Ukraine written and published by official Russian sources, including Putin himself, or listened to Putin's speeches. "The advance of Russia and of the New World", the article which was prepared in anticipation of a walk-over, briefly published by RIA on the morning of the third day of the invasion and quickly removed, or the more recent article by Soloveitsev on the meaning of "denazification" in the same publication, would give them a good idea that Russia’s aspirations are not limited to 'legitimate security needs' (what about Ukraine's legitimate security needs?) and that they cannot be reconciled with Ukraine’s right to self-determination. Past the early phase of the Cold War, USSR sponsored many movements for world peace, to which Western intellectuals (Noam Chomsky being one of the more egregious examples) were happy to give aid and support. It appears that the same script is being implemented again. Indeed, the same Noam Chomsky who had i.a. denied that anything untoward was happening in Cambodia under Khmer Rouge, and later denied having denied that, is among the so-called Ukraine doves today (https://www.currentaffairs.org/2022/04/noam-chomsky-on-how-to-prevent-world-war-iii).
The Cold War analogy answers that though, doesn't it? The Russian goals and methods now are illegitimate, just like the USSR's were.
But even though the USSR's goals and methods were, basically, evil, we didn't refuse to negotiate and occasionally compromise with them.
Fascinating read. Check out my substack. I often grapple with both the intellectual history and contemporary implications of individualism. Thanks!
"To me, it is not so clear what the Ukrainians are choosing. Many of them are choosing to leave. They are voting with their feet against submission to Russia. But they also may be voting with their feet against continuing the war." - as far as I know nearly all of the refugees are women, children, elders and disabled. Ukrainian government does not let out man who can fight. This is very visible in Poland (first hand observation here - I host three women with a child, my brother a women with a daughter, my sister another women and daughter, a friend an older couple). And not only man don't flee - lots of them left their jobs in Poland and returned to Ukraine to fight - there is now in Poland a huge shortage of workers in jobs that Ukrainian man were often taking.
"Near the end, Tyler says “The Vietnam War would not have lasted a week with Twitter.”
I wonder if appealing to the "Silent Majority" would make sense then? I guess social media renders this concept useless, breaking society into isolated, chattering segments.
Bryan Caplan's left-vs-right "model" is excellent indeed. But due note the natural end of any pure-market economy is either (1) a pharaoh or (2) the Soviet Union.
Note also that Caplan himself created the model in part to help people not just make sense of but also escape the paradigm. You don't have to pick either (lousy) option!
There are some contradictions--or at least "tensions"--in Pogue's piece:
<i>individualist liberal ideology, increasingly bureaucratic governments, and big tech are all combining into a world that is at once tyrannical ...</i>
Now, you can say lots of things against "liberal individualist ideology" but it very much opposes tyranny. That's perhaps the most basic thing about it.
<i>Vance believes that the regime has sold an illusive story that consumer gadgets and social media are constantly making our lives better, even as wages stagnate</i>
If wages stagnate, you can't buy more consumer gadgets. If you think that what people buy doesn't make them fulfilled, doesn't give their life any meaning, then why should anyone be concerned that people can't buy so much?
I think that the new right would say to libertarians, "So what that you philosophically oppose tyranny. The reality is that your individualism weakens all of the forces in society that can fight tyranny, so it enables tyranny." While libertarians win on gay marriage and weed, they lose liberty everywhere else. I think it's a pretty strong argument, although not strong enough to make me want to give up libertarianism for new rightism
That may be pretty strong. But I'd like to see the argument made in more detail. Is it really just "gay marriage and weed"? Why do libertarian arguments (or libertarian successes!) make "liberty lose everywhere else"? I suppose an atomized society looks to intrusive governments (and private actors) for safety. Anyway, something to think about.
Thanks.
I also thought it was strange to conflate individualism and tyranny.
Re: "I like markets, free speech, and processes that reward talent and effort."
1. Markets tend to reward talent and effort. What other processes do so? One might reply, for example: elections. The politician who wins a contested election probably has talent at fundraising and coalition-formation, and puts in long hours. Another example: bureaucracies. Presumably, it takes some sort of talent and considerable effort to rise to the top of a public-health bureaucracy, and stay on top.
Merit (talent + effort) ≠ 'Markets fail, use markets'
2. Why reward talent per se? Talent is a natural endowment, which one can use conscientiously, waste (for lack of effort), or misdirect (perhaps with great energy).
I like institutions that (a) harness talent and (b) direct and encourage effort -- towards relatively good outcomes.
Larry is having a picnic with his claims about inflation. As always it depends on how the government pays its new debt and the timing of the payments.
It is far from a perfect analogy, but lately I've been thinking about the "blank check" in July 1914 that Germany gave to Austria-Hungary in dealing as harshly as they wished with Serbia after the Franz Ferdinand assassination. Austria "cashed" the check, Russia felt obliged to defend Serbia and there was then a chain of mobilizations and declarations of war.
The United States is coming close to giving Ukraine a blank check in its actions and rhetoric insofar as we seem determined to ensure a Ukrainian "victory" whatever that might mean. It's hard to believe that US actions and rhetoric do not have a profound effect on what both Ukraine and Russia are willing to settle for in a peace agreement. It also seems clear that our policy is prolonging the war. I don't think that's the right policy, but I also recognize that any honest view has to be made with uncertainty and humility.
I wonder how Vance thinks a Russian Ukraine would help reduce drug use in Ohio? Or more progressive taxation, or allowing in lots of highly skilled immigrants or lower deficits, or a TPP, or teaching kids about the Tulsa massacre would make it worse?
Is the "dovish" position on Ukraine really so marginal I think most of the people favoring continued assistance to the Ukraine government would be quite happy with a status quo ante bellum solution. Russia gets out of Ukraine (eventually an internationally supervised referendum in Crimea and Dunbas, war crimes trials only for specific acts) and Ukraine does not join NATO. I doubt that Putin has not been made aware that such a solution is available.
The officials Ukrainian and Western position is that its 1991 borders are sacrosanct. The will of the people involved are largely irrelevant to this position. People in Crimea and Donbass would have left Ukraine if they had been allowed.
Most likely. The principles of inviolability of borders (which even China supports - it never recognized Russia's annexation of Crimea and stated that it is against nations gaining independence through referendums, see http://en.itar-tass.com/world/760944) and of self-determination (good discussion at https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/who-gets-self-determination) are both a mess, but it's not like anyone is offering better alternatives.
Interesting that david roberts brought up the assassination of Franz Ferdinand above. He was the heir-apparent of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which included a large number of people who were counted in the Empire's census as Serbs (all subjects were put into one of eleven "nationalities"). On the Empire's southern border was an independent country of Serbia that wanted to include all those Serbs and the land they lived on (and, to be honest, a lot more). Just as Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) has provided training and money to non-state actors, so did parts of the Serbian government support violence against the Empire. Franz Ferdinand was on a goodwill trip in a mixed Serbian/Croat/Muslim area of the Empire when he was killed by one of the people the Serbian government had supplied.
The Empire dilly-dallied before over-demanding punishment of the Serbian government, which then refused, and got supported by the Russian government. Germany supported Austria-Hungary. France supported Russia. Everyone moved troops into position ("mobilized") and fearing "use it or lose it", the European powers "stumbled into war".
Would things have been different if the Austo-Hungarian government had just given majority-Serb areas to Serbia? We'll never know. The "inviolability of borders" may be a net positive, but it sure creates problems.
The very desire by Serbia to include all those Serbs who were under AH rule was the result of the development of nationalism, which implies self-determination almost automatically. In middle and early modern ages rulers did not much care which vernaculars were spoken in their territories, but by the time Franz Ferdinand got iced, European nationalism was at least 100 years old, arguably having started in Germany during the Napoleonic conquest.
Depending on how you define nationalism, it may be much older. Azar Gat's book Nations: The Long History and Deep Roots of Political Ethnicity and Nationalism argues (contra Benedict Anderson's Imagined Communities) that lots of people for a long time have felt they were part of some "kin-culture community". Many rebellions use the rhetoric of "our people", "our land", e.g., Robert the Bruce "Braveheart" (1274-1329). It's quite an interesting book.