This is simply false. Not all post-liberalism believes in the government directly securing "economic and social well-being." Vance is merely claiming that the government needs to set policy by aiming towards the "economic and social well-being" of the whole country, and not just capital owners. Most Americans have nothing to sell except their physical or intellectual labor. Allowing mass immigration, H1-B visas, and "free trade" by predatory mercantilist powers like China simply so Walmart and the tech company management and owners can make more profit while reducing the benefit that accrues from that economic activity to other Americans is just bad policy. It is also dangerous as once uniquely American technical knowledge and industrial capacity is disseminated to foreign competitors and military adversaries.
That isn't "leftism." That's just America first.
Best post ever!
Your post sounds kind of leftist.
Mark!
‘Vance is merely claiming that the government needs to set policy by aiming towards the “economic and social well-being” of the whole country, and not just capital owners. ‘
Capitalism under the rule of law because “to secure these rights governments are instituted among men” (or something like that).
A fine observation,
This is a week in which Canada's China "rebranding" through Canadian companies is being reported, with Carney and his ilk angry at tariffs,
As to the comments about Catholics ( I am not one ), one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence was a Catholic.
Libertarians pretend to be conservatives, but free trade means open borders, more or less, which liberals love. So when citing conservative principles, one should be clear that letting products made with low wage labor in China ravage American jobs is not "America first."
JD Vance Takes on Milton Friedman (And Disappoints)
"American economic policy on the right is now much more Alexander Hamilton than it is Milton Friedman. I think that's obviously a good thing."
Obviously? Here’s the whole interview. The segment in the economy and Milton Friedman starts at the 32 min mark.
Starting point is 00:31:51 So looking ahead to 2028 and beyond, if there's this thing going on even beyond you, this restructuring of what it means to be a conservative, then if it's not creative destruction, tax cuts for wealthy people exclusively, and, you're a restructuring of what it means to be a conservative, then if it's not creative destruction, tax cuts for wealthy people exclusively, and, I don't know, just like GDP ticking up. Yeah. What is... Well, first of all, I think that people need to appreciate how fully they lost the argument. So to the point that they've really moved the goalposts. I mean, if you remember when Donald Trump ran for president the first time, the idea of tariffs on imported goods was a heresy in the GOP. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:32:31 It is now the baseline position that virtually every Republican politician adopts is like, Of course, we shouldn't let foreign countries like prey on American workers and prey on American industries. Immigration restriction. Again, there is, obviously, there's a cultural and crime and law and order element to it, but there's also a very powerful economic argument that we don't want to let the wages of immigrants undercut the wages of Native American workers. Again, that is just boilerplate at this point in the GOP. And I mean, even things like when the president said a few weeks ago that, you know, yeah, he absolutely wanted to like seize, seize the equity of the AI companies. And, you know,
Starting point is 00:33:11 you're not supposed to say that. And it's like, guys, he's the president and he sets the agenda and he just said it. And by the way, nobody really even protested. Yeah. So, like, the president has already, and obviously I'm biased I'm as vice president, but the president has already, like,
Starting point is 00:33:25 completely reordered the conversation towards what you might call an American developmentalist approach. Like American economic policy on the right, right, is now much more Alexander Hamilton than it is Milton Friedman. Yeah. I think that's obviously a good thing. You might disagree, but that's just a normative statement.
Starting point is 00:33:45 Notice, though, what you've just said, because for the people who say that betraying some nostalgic retconning of a caricature of the 1980s, that to change that in any way would be abandoning American history and the tradition, you said, hold on, I just went from Milton Friedman to Hamilton. And to some degree, George Washington. Right. 200 years backwards in history, actually. That's very much a foundation of American developmental economics and economic policy. And I do think, you know, I don't want to say you can go back to the future or, you know, forward to the past. But I do think fundamentally that Hamiltonian tradition is going to be what we see on the American right
Starting point is 00:34:28 and will dominate American conservative economic thinking for the future. Yeah. Which is not laissez-faire. It's actually much more about building the kind of tools, building the kind of infrastructure that allow human beings to flourish, that allow national and native industries to flourish at the expense of a hyper-globalized economy. And I think those are the basic principles
Starting point is 00:34:51 that are going to carry us into the future. But to me, it's fundamentally about the dignity of the human person. The economy is a tool to service the dignity of the human person. if a set of economic policies make it easier for a person to raise a family, to earn a living wage, to give back to their community, to maybe go to church on Sunday, or to actually spend some leisure time building the kind of life that matters, like that is the sort of thing that we want to be supportive of. Now, obviously, to do those things, you do need economic development. But if you turn economic development into a sort of idol, then you end up sacrificing a lot of the things that matter. most. And I do think that, you know, for our friends who are sort of on the more laissez-faire side of the American right, in hindsight, part of why Milton Friedman's ideas made more sense in the 1980s is because they were being advocated in a country that still had a very rich and powerful institutional Christianity. And so, like, being laissez-faire in a world where there are
Starting point is 00:35:59 Christian guardrails on everything is a much different proposition than being laissez-faire in a world where globalized liberalism has become the sort of status quo of American elites. Of course, because so much of that liberalism, classical variety or a more modern variety, it is resting upon a foundation that it did not create, you know, and a foundation that in many ways weakens. So obviously really... I think that's exactly right. I think you could say this, You could say that about, you know, I have a British friend who has been in British conservative politics for longer than I have, maybe longer than I've been alive. He's, you know, on the older side of things. And he was making this observation about Margaret Thatcher to another British
Starting point is 00:36:43 conservative who was just scandalized by it, but couldn't push back against it in anything besides an emotional way. He said, you know, Margaret Thatcher, an amazing human being, like a true giant in the history of Western politics. But, you know, he said, you know, Margaret Thatcher, an amazing human being, But fundamentally, Margaret Thatcher was trying to preserve the shop and the community around the shop that her father had when she was a little girl. And yet, if you look at modern Britain and the result of Margaret Thatcher's policies, you would say that her policies actually got Britain further away from that ideal and not closer to that ideal. That's not, by the way, criticizing her. I think she was trying out something in a very new era in a situation where things were quite broken. But we have to be honest, like what worked and what didn't work.
Starting point is 00:37:30 And I think, unfortunately, I would say Thatcher's politics and a lot of 20th century conservative politics was, it sort of bought the premises of modern liberalism and was not infused enough with the basic Christian underpinning of the West. Yeah, Ayn Rand is not going to save your culture. It's not going to happen. So then we're throwing around all these names, all of our good dead friends. Yep. five figures off the top of your head. Thinkers, intellectuals, or statesman perhaps. Okay.
END OF TRANSCRIPT
I will add, that Vance also can’t pronounce laissez-faire correctly. That’s pretty cringe.
Now…let’s be a little fair. He’s 42 years old. Someone is feeding him this content. Maybe he’s still figuring it all out.
When Reagan was 42 - in 1953 - he had gone from supporting Truman in 1948 to supporting Ike. Reagan resigned as SAG president November 10, 1952, but remained on the board.
It is doubtful that Reagan was the Man he became back at 42 years of age.
I’ll give Vance a chance. He’s not a leftist. But he needs to turn this around.