THE
POVERTY OF PROTECTIONISM
Apparently
not, but consistency was hardly this particular crowd's
forte, as they chanted "One, two, three, four – we
don't want free trade no more!" Simultaneously, their
crackpot spokespersons were warbling to the media that
what they wanted was "global democracy." But the democracy
of the market – in which consumer choices are votes
– is disallowed. Meanwhile, Stephen Clarkson, professor
of international economics at the University of Toronto,
and a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center,
was denouncing the proposed free trade agreement because
it wasn't free enough. On
the PBS News Hour, Professor Clarkson complained
that "The U.S. won't give up its antidumping and countervail
duty actions against its partners, so we don't really"
have free trade. Taking the example of Canadian steel,
Clarkson explained that "there's so many antidumping actions
launched against Canadian steel that Canadian companies
are now having to invest in the United States if they
want to sell there." It is a commentary on the intellectual
poverty of protectionism that its advocates have to resort
to this sort of argument, counterposing the perfect as
the enemy of the good. Yet this only underscores the complete
victory of the principle of laissez-faire, at least intellectually,
over the special interests and their fellow troglodytes
on the ultra-Left.
THE
NEW "IDEALISM"
The
basic contradiction at the heart of the anti-globalization
movement, the intellectual emptiness and exhaustion at
its core, was exposed in Quebec over the weekend for all
the world to see. Here were black-clad, helmeted, gas
mask-wearing hooligans, throwing bottles, trashing stores,
and hurling tear-gas canisters back at the police, in
the name of – what? There is no clear single
answer coming from the collection of Luddites, dreadlocked
white-boys, Trotskyites, and globalist do-gooders who
converged on Quebec City to register their protest. The
conventional wisdom, however, was summed up by an
Associated Press article that explained it this way:
"The
prospect of the huge free trade zone has galvanized a
generation of activists as the Vietnam War and nuclear
arms did previously. They say it is designed to benefit
major corporations, not Latin America's millions of poor."
AT
WAR WITH ECONOMICS
Let's
see if I get this straight: the protesters climbing fences,
launching assault after assault on phalanxes of police,
the hundreds arrested, was all over – a trade
issue? This is the focus of the idealism and passion
of the younger generation: how many tons of steel are
to be exported to Canada? Can this really be true? I doubt
whether the average protester could have articulated a
message any more coherent – or telling – than
the sign described by our on-the-scene Washington Post
reporter,
"It's
strange what people leave behind at ground zero: chunks
of concrete; splattered eggs with runny yolks; a shoe;
a stuffed Barney whose eyes have been pulled off; balloons
tied to the fence that came down; vomit; a sign tied to
the wire fence and left as if that was the only way to
send a message: 'What is new is that the economy has engaged
humans in open warfare, not just in terms of limiting
possibilities in life, but on life itself.'"
A
LOSING BATTLE
The
anticapitalist message of the protesters couldn't have
been phrased more aptly, for these social misfits perceive
themselves to be in a war against not only economics,
but geography – and reality itself. They live in
a dream-world, a fog of shifting images and mental constructs,
and hold contradictory notions that clash, and erupt,
angrily, in sudden spurts of exhibitionistic violence.
Their intellectual spokespersons only articulate the confusion
of their rank-and-file followers. The opponents of the
FTAA claim that jobs and investment are flowing southward,
and they also claim that the poverty and joblessness
of Mexican and South American workers is increasing. But
they can't have it both ways: given their zero-sum economics,
someone has to win (even if, given their invalid
premise, it's as a result of someone else's loss). The
trendy-lefties pose as friends of the Third World, yet
to oppose a measure that would clearly benefit the small
farmers and industrial workers of the underdeveloped Southern
hemisphere puts them in an awkward position. They try
to obscure this contradiction with cloudy rhetoric about
"defending workers rights" in Central and South America,
but fail to address the question of how they will magically
raise living standards without getting rid of trade barriers.
They are truly in a state of "open warfare" with economics
– and, as in any battle against objective natural
law, this is one they are bound to lose.
FREE
TRADE AND SOVEREIGNTY
Professor
Clarkson was asked by PBS interviewer Margaret Warner
if the elimination of all trade barriers was "a fair description
of what a free trade area is," and he replied that "it
would be if it was only about trade, but these agreements
are much more. They're really investment agreements that
give transnational corporations much greater rights investing
in other countries." Clarkson explains away increasing
prosperity as a result of dropping some trade barriers
as due to Canada's dollar devaluation, but then goes on
to say:
"So
there has been a lot of trade expansion, but the public
– and the reason people are demonstrating in Quebec
City – the public is really concerned that we have
in effect a new constitution which prevents our governments
doing the kind of environmental, social, public health,
education policies that it used to do. So we've really
transformed our state as a result of signing the WTO and
the NAFTA, and now this will presumably deepen and strengthen
those constraints on our government."
GLOBALISTS
FOR NATIONAL SOVEREIGNTY
The
intellectual opponents of global laissez-faire frame claim,
on the one hand, to oppose all efforts to limit national
sovereignty, yet their public rhetoric and pronouncements
– even the names of their organizations – are
suffused with a utopian globalism: 1960s
activist David Dellinger spoke at an anti-free trade
rally on the US-Canadian border under the auspices of
the "Vermont Mobilization for Global Justice" and "global
democracy" is one of their big slogans, right after "capitalism
sucks."
WHERE
WERE THEY?
But
aside from this baffling inconsistency, what is troubling
about this traveling road show of "vegans" and professional
"activists" is their curiously misplaced passion: if they
are so goddamned concerned about the assault on national
sovereignty, then where were all these dreadlocked crunchy-granola
types when the most blatant and violent assault on national
sovereignty was allowed to occur without hardly a peep
from anyone? Somehow, the rape of Yugoslavia did not engage
the imagination of these young people, at least not in
sufficient numbers to be noticeable. We didn't see black-clad
boot-boys decked out in red bandannas tearing down fences
and battling police in the streets during the bombing
of Belgrade. That didn't enrage them – but
the prospect that a farmer in Mexico might sell his oranges
in San Francisco without paying a debilitating tariff
is enough to drive them into a frenzy of fury. I
can't figure it out – can you? Speaking of the Balkans:
this weekend in Kosovo there
was another kind of demonstration, one that, in contrast
to the over-reported Quebec protest, was really about
something.
ANOTHER
KIND OF PROTEST
While
the trendy-lefty crunchy-granola crowd was basking in
its own self-indulgence up in Quebec, down in Kosovo Serbs
were protesting a UN-imposed customs tax on goods coming
in from the rest of the former Yugoslavia. Setting up
roadblocks, and rallying in the thousands, the remnants
of the Serbian minority in Kosovo defended the last vestiges
of their sovereignty, their history, and their dignity.
For the imposition of the tax means that NATO and the
UN overseers have decided to drop the pretense that Kosovo
is still a part of the former Yugoslavia, in violation
of the peace terms: they have also given notice that those
Serbs who have so far managed to escape the ethnic cleansing
campaign will shortly be delivered to the tender mercies
of the Kosovo "Liberation" Army (KLA). The 15 percent
tax is a painful reminder – an extra slap in the
face – to the Serbs that they have, in effect, been
abandoned by the "international community."
MEANINGFUL
RESISTANCE
KFOR
troops shot tear-gas canisters at the protesters, who
lobbed them back and refused to be moved, and UN bureaucrats
were urged to stay out of the area for fear they would
be taken hostage. As thousands cheered, Dragisha Djokovic,
a speaker from the Democratic Party of Serbia led by Yugoslav
President Vojislav Kostunica, demanded the immediate abolition
of the tax and saluted the protesters, urging them to
continue the roadblocks. The running battle between KFOR
and the Serbs of northern Kosovo continued over the weekend,
with a 62-year-old woman dying on route to the hospital
after inhaling tear-gas and a man who lost a hand after
trying to throw a stun grenade back at KFOR "peacekeepers."
Unlike the protesters in Quebec, the Serbs actually put
up some meaningful resistance: KFOR
was forced to fly in tax collectors, who could not
get past the roadblocks.
DILETTANTES
AND HEROES
The
bravery of the Serbs in Mitrovica, who are locked in a
death-struggle with their NATO overlords, contrasts sharply
with the weekend revolutionary dilettantism of the Quebec
crowd, epitomized by Roberto Nieto, 30, of the "Anticapitalist
Convergence," who pompously proclaimed: "We want to show
them that some people are ready to receive pepper spray,
tear gas and rubber bullets. We don't believe in social
clauses and reform clauses. We believe [the agreement]
should be scrapped. The president of Mexico said this
is a luxury to demonstrate. I went up all the way to the
fence. I got pepper-sprayed. I don't call this a luxury."
But it is a luxury when you can always go back to your
school dormitory, or artists' loft, or whatever,
and escape from the exploding tear gas canisters and the
gendarmes coming down the street. For the Serbs of Mitrovica,
there is no escape.
WHY
I HATE THE LEFT
It
is clear where the sympathies of the Quebec protesters
would be if they got it into their empty heads to even
take a position on events in Kosovo: by their standards,
the protectionist NATO-crats are the good guys, with the
dastardly Serbs standing up for free trade. This is why
I hate the Left, and why you didn't see any coverage
of the Quebec farce on these pages. These pompously self-important
products of Western affluence, who are so impressed with
their own alleged heroism, are morally retarded: they
lack even a minimal sense of moral priorities. It is somehow
okay, from their warped perspective, for the West to bomb
some of the oldest cities in Europe into submission, but
not okay for goods to cross borders to the mutual
profit of buyer and seller. With their passion directed
at the dry-as-dust passages in the FTAA proposal, and
their curious lack of it when it comes to the question
of war and peace, the Quebec protesters (and their clones
at Davos, Seattle, and other venues) exhibit a colossal
failure of the moral imagination. Whether this is a product
of the curious listlessness of today's youth, the extreme
passivity that makes them putty in the hands of their
New-Leftish professors, or some other, more serious disability
– perhaps genetic, perhaps it is something they put
in school food – is an interesting question, but
one that, I'm afraid, will have to wait for another column.
UPCOMING
Meanwhile,
those who follow my work may be interested to know that
I have a few upcoming articles appearing in the print
media: in the Summer 2001 issue of Free
Inquiry my essay, "Making Progress Backwards,"
an analysis of the anti-libertarian direction of the "gay
rights" movement, will appear. This is an excerpt from
my (so far unpublished) book, The Ideology of Desire:
The Tyranny and Absurdity of Gay Identity Politics.
The
American Enterprise, the bi-monthly magazine of
the American Enterprise Institute, will publish my review
of Alan Ebenstein's Hayek:
A Biography, in their next issue. Finally, the
Rockford Institute's Chronicles
– my favorite magazine – has published "Civil
Rights or Property Rights," which deals with the depredations
of multicultural capitalism on our system of formerly
free enterprise.
SUMMER
SCHOOL
We
have received a lot of letters about when and if
we are going to have another Antiwar.com conference. While
this is a great compliment to the success of the last
one, your overworked Antiwar.com staff is not about to
commit itself one way (or the other) just yet. However,
those who must go somewhere this summer might be
interested to know that I am lecturing this year at the
Rockford Institute's Fourth
Annual Summer School, whose theme is "The American
Midwest." I will be giving two hour-long talks on the
relationship between Midwestern populism and the growth
and development of the non-interventionist movement in
America, from World War I to the present day. Featuring
Dr. Thomas Fleming, editor of Chronicles, and President
of the Rockford Institute, William Mills, author of The
Arkansas: An American River, author and Chronicles
editor Chilton Williamson, and others, this conference
is going to be an exciting event. Come learn about such
literary figures as the novelist Louis Bromfield (who,
by the way, presciently had a lot to say about the trade
issue and the prospect of a hemispheric trade zone), Hamlin
Garland, Sinclair Lewis, and Laura Ingalls Wilder: Come
hear about the progressives, populists, copperheads, and
America Firsters – the real dissidents in the American
tradition. The conference will be held at the Cliffbreakers
Convention Center, in Rockford, Illinois, July 24-28.
Full registration including tuition, lodging, meals, etc.,
is $450, but there is a "commuter" registration rate of
only $195. Call Chris Check for details: 815-964-5811.
