I'm mostly agreed with the points you're making here. Even though I voted for Trump I am hardly a MAGA fundamentalist, and hearing people on the Right say that the border with Mexico is open because the Biden Admimistration chose to defend Ukraine's border instead is pathetic; these same people were complaining about the Mexican border long before the Ukraine War so they ought to be aware that it's open because a lot of people in Washington simply want it to be open... but they ignore their own knowledge in order to rail against foreigners (and they bury their own chances of ever fixing the border in the first place.)
This makes me think of the people in the 1960s and 1970s who were big supporters of the Vietnam War - people who hated draft dodgers and even lawful peace protestors, who sent letters to President Nixon begging him the pardon the people who did the My Lai massacre, who gloated over the Kent State shootings (not noticing or perhaps just not caring that two of the students who died were bystanders who were just trying to walk to class.) But when Saigon fell and lots of Vietnamese who had risked life and limb for the American war effort were fleeing to America as refugees... these "conservatives" generally got really angry and didn't want them in their neighborhoods.
It was never about protecting Asians from communism. It was always about having someone to hate - and that "someone" need not even be a foreigner as the situation with Kent State showed.
"owning the libs at all costs" as Tyler Cowen put it. What's a few million dead Africans if I can get one over on the purple-haired feminist on bluesky?
That's not a fair characterization of how Trumpists actually think. The reason that DOGE is going so hard on USAID is because a lot of the stuff they spend money on is just meddling in foreign elections or promoting ideas about sex that don't even have majority support in America (and pointlessly antagonizing foreign power-brokers whose goodwill we ought to want). I am hopeful that, when this stuff starts producing lawsuits, the DOGE/USAID kerfuffle will get sorted out in a way that lets the AIDS and malaria people go back to work.
Trump, for all his flaws, is a necessary weapon in the struggle for a less insane government. I wrote a piece back in August called "Why it Doesn't Matter if Tim Walz is a Moderate Democrat."
My thesis is that, even when Democrats on the ballot run as moderates, they still in practice give power to the most extreme and destructive people in their coalition (in the judiciary, civil service, labor unions, etc.) So if, for instance, you care about the housing shortage, or want to see less urban crime, or want fewer racial quotas in government hiring... then you need fewer progressive judges and activists in positions of power. Hence my vote for Trump.
No that is 100% a fair assessment of Trump supporters. Humans are at a base level cruel, selfish, petty, dishonest and vindictive. Conservatives believe this and exploit the hell out of it with their supporters without care for the consequences, while liberals are uncomfortable with that characterization of human nature. You, Twilight Patriot are a perfect example of the base nature of humans, but you’re also a mealy-mouthed coward.
"It was never about protecting Asians from communism."
I don't think that was ever really claimed, even by the pro-Vietnam-War side. The primary goal was to contain and drain the Communists, preferably while far away from home. Of course, the leftie protesters at home were seen as communist sympathizers, almost traitors, so little sympathy there.
Nationalism is primarily an aesthetic movement, not a rational or consistent political ideology. It is partly a positive movement, but also a negative movement borne out of the repugnance of rival aesthetic movements, i.e. multiculturalism or internationalism. Nationalism is not coherent logically, but visually. It does not spread because of its arguments, but because it is amenable to one's taste.
You ignore the issue of compulsion. I want to be free to donate to local or foriegn charities including those that a help foreign country to defend itself. I do not want government to decide which charities I MUST contribute to through taxation.
You could say that about almost everything! Are you upset you're forced to pay taxes to support social security, Medicare, food stamps, etc., or just foreign aid?
Nothing wrong with being a hardcore libertarian and opposing all spending, but it's odd to only be upset when a tiny bit of your taxes are sent to foreigners.
Surely you understand that collective action is often more than the sum of its parts, right? We don't have privately-funded police or military, you can't opt into or out of public goods like roads or hospitals or a legal system. Sometimes you need to centralize an effort to make it reach a productive scale. Our foreign aid is very much targeted at things that Americans prioritize and/or make the world safer for Americans. For decades, since Camp David, the vast majority of US foreign aid went to 3 countries - Israel, Egypt and Jordan - basically to ensure that they didn't have big regional wars like in the 60s and 70s. It has worked for 45 years. Most of the rest is with anti-terrorism in mind, with pretty small amounts to support governments in sub-saharan Africa and send food to their people so they don't descend (further) into anarchy. Afghanistan likewise. We saw what happens if we don't, so we spend a few billion a year as an insurance policy to mitigate that risk. And it buys us a seat at the table and some leverage with these governments, too, which often has its uses.
Even if all you're concerned about is the safety of Americans, and everyone else worldwide could drop dead for all you care, there is a realpolitik justification for our foreign aid spend. Which was part of the point of Richard's article. Why focus outsize attention on a small fraction-of-a-percent of the budget, when there are clearly much bigger things to worry about that affect the welfare of many more Americans? If we zeroed out foreign aid, it would hurt middle east stability (= potential for US to get drawn in), terrorism risk mitigation, hurt our diplomatic and moral-image position, and deprive us of our leverage with the poorer and less-stable parts of the world, all of which have value to us - and in exchange for an amount of savings that would not meaningfully change our capacity to deal with the bigger domestic problems facing us. Seems like a poor trade!
Theres a difference between taxes spent to provide security and taxes that aren't. Put simply, I would rather not be robbed, but if I am going to be anyway I would prefer to be robbed through a democratic political process. Roads, military, police are all first degree national security requirements. Many social welfare programs are also for public security, since without social security, Medicare, and food stamps there would be mass revolt. Foreign aid sometimes fits but mostly doesn't.
This is literally just a generic anti-tax argument, you could just as easily apply it to your tax dollars funding public libraries, viagra for veterans, drug rehab centers, etc.
Yeah the idea that leftists care more about foreigners (or animals) than Americans just shows how little these people have actually interacted with the political left. The vast majority of leftist energy goes towards "first world problems" that affect mostly Americans, like legalizing abortion, trans medical care, etc. And many leftists will get extremely outraged if you try to imply that maybe they should be vegan, yelling about "no ethical consumption under capitalism" and whatever other excuses they can think of to justify not wanting to change their behavior. It's true that the left cares more about foreigners than the right, but only in the same sense that a millionaire cares more about a nickel they see lying on the ground than a billionaire does.
Yes. Bryan Caplan once likened these folks to National Socialists (he didn’t mean they were literal Nazis, just nationalistic in terms of their priorities). Many of these folks like a safety net for themselves.
I don't think anyone believes the US government is spending more on foreigners than americans, I think the point was that the government should not have the right to spend any significant amount of taxpayer money on any cause that doesn't benefit americans, either directly or indirectly.
Yes, the question is why anyone would make that a priority given that helping foreigners is not a significant drag on American living standards nor responsible for any substantial part of the trouble the country faces. When people hyperfocus on something that is a small issue by their own stated value system, which is caring for their own nation here, we need to ask why.
Obviously foreign aid benefits Americans, though? "See this our way or we'll cut off the food aid you depend on and your people will riot" is a pretty good foreign policy tool. In some situations likely more effective - and cheaper - than "see this our way or we send the military."
And so, for that matter, is "see this our way and we'll commit $X million to build schools / hospitals / power plants." Surely it's sometimes more effective to be able to offer carrots as well as sticks.
Unless you want to argue that doing foreign policy at all provides no benefit to Americans?
Not only that, but fostering development in poor countries helps everyone in the world, including Americans, by making those countries into potential trade partners. And it produces goodwill for America, which is useful in case of a global conflict.
The number of people that hate on "welfare" and receive social security and medicare is a good example even in our own country. There is an EHC argument that they are just receiving a government administrated "pension" rather than welfare benefits ... but the LHC view is just oblivious.
I can't believe how dumb this article is. Is the author actually this dense, and just had some good ideas early (on why everything is woke, reading v tv, etc) before running out of late? He sure is one-note lately, that note being how stupid conservatives are and how embarrassed he is to have to vote for them. I used to feel the same about my fellow Democrats; now I am a Republican. Thus I expect Hanania to go woke soon.
On to the stupidity. The entire article is a strawman, and no august reader seems to spot it. Let's go to Mr Vance again:
"You love your family, and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country, and then, after that, you can focus on and prioritize the rest of the world. A LOT OF THE FAR LEFT has completely inverted that" (caps mine, there is no font editor in Substack).
He did not say "the government". He did not say "the percentage of federal spending". He said "a lot of the far left", as a way to remind people that these folks control one of two major parties and in fact, seem to hate them and their own country.
The biggest priority of the far left is climate. In their telling, the rapacious west, but mostly America, have caused the world to burn; and it is on us, not "developing" countries, to deal with the problem. The "developing" countries include China, India, etc. They are blameless on this view, even though they are now responsible for the bulk of current emissions.
Instead, Americans should embrace radical regrowth, and we should pay "developing" countries so they can use our intellectual property on solar, wind, etc, and not have to sacrifice their own growth.
On to immigration. It is the express will of the American people, for generations, to reduce or eliminate illegal immigration. It is the position of the left that Americans can go pound sand--it does not matter what we want; it does not matter how we vote. The left will fight ITS OWN COUNTRY to prevent enforcement of the law; it will defend illegal aliens' right to everything from healthcare to education to being given flat amnesty from ever being removed (ie, from ever having to face the law). They afford Americans no such consideration.
Should we do Gaza? And the overweening concern the left has for brown people anywhere, no matter how sick their actions and beliefs, versus their hate for "whiteness", also know as their fellow countrymen?
Thus the "thesis" of this article is garbage. Once you spot the strawman, you can't unsee it. For me, I am disappointed that the writer that cannot see issues any longer except through his current hobbyhorse.
As a leftist and pro-immigrationist, I do defend illegal aliens being given amnesty from being removed. You write "they afford Americans no such consideration." Au contraire! I also would oppose you or Richard Hanania being deported. Even though you're white!
Maybe I'm way out of scope with most leftists, but I haven't heard of a huge "we should deport Real White Americans" caucus. Although you can probably find some indigenous activists who do support the deportation of all colonizers.
"States and localities spend practically nothing on non-Americans, except in cases where there is a large number of immigrants, though they also pay taxes."
That "except" is doing a lot of work. NYC spent $5 billion on migrants in just the last two years. That is five times what we spent on parks.
"Yet they ignore the fact that analysts have produced a great deal of research and economic analysis arguing that such policies are good for Americans."
The is probably no pressure in academia greater than the pressure to demonstrate that mass migration is great and has no drawbacks. The left and corporate right both insist on it. So forgive me for being skeptical.
“ The is probably no pressure in academia greater than the pressure to demonstrate that mass migration is great and has no drawbacks.”
That’s delusional. Being anti-immigration is one of the most mainstream right wing views there is, regularly given a hearing in the MSM and endorsed by Democratic politicians. But nativism is rejected by economists because they’re the ones relatively good at math and logic.
Was mass immigration of muslims in europe great and without any consequences whatsoever? I think you're intellectually dishonest or delusional yourself when you say it's irrational to be worried about mass immigration.
Indeed. Though I think Hanania is really mostly talking about immigration from an American perspective, where muslim immigration is relatively small compared to latinos. Honestly I'd much rather exchange our muslim immigration here in Europe with latinos. Yes, they both bring gangs and crime but at least the latinos are a lot more culturally compatible.
“But nativism is rejected by economists because they’re the ones relatively good at math and logic.”
One of the complaints a college-educated libertarian friend of mine with a solid education in PPE pointed out to me is that economists are often PC (like most EHC), so they ignore the externalities imposed on those who see racial homogeneity as a kind of consumer good. Therefore, the “math and logic” doesn’t include these externalities (which can be massive) because they think they shouldn’t count. (Racism is “irrational”!)
Think of it this way: Imagine a nation of smokers who prefer a shorter life to a longer, but smoke-free, life. Then along come some economists who have an EHC bias against smokers (Ew! Low class! Smoking is irrational!) and advise the state that eliminating smoking will boost GDP—but completely ignore the massive costs to smokers. That’s what’s going on with pro-immigration economists. (Imagine so-called economists who don’t consider externalities/costs!).
The only way to know the optimum amount of immigration is to privatize roads, streets, etc. (Markets!) Moralizing against racism just reinforces the idea that EHC wants to impose its preferences (and it does).
Have you unironically considered whether right-wing views are just more wrong overall? If we are against DEI in academia, we must be against DEI of the ideologies in academia also. Meritocracy, where only the most substantiated, well-reasoned, scientifically-backed arguments should be considered.
Right wing ideas, given how populist they've become and how they seem to be almost-exclusively taking refuge in the minds of the uneducated, wouldn't seem to tick any of the checkboxes.
I don't know about "right wing ideas" in general, but at least I know that there are by now plenty of studies that show that mass migration, especially from muslim countries, here in Europe, is at least costing a lot of money and produces increasing social and cultural frictions. Not to mention an obvious and endless string of "incidents" of violence, terror, murder, intimidation etc.
Although of course only the economic part is possible to research somewhat properly and even then the people who do the research are viciously attacked and smeared in the media. I've heard countless stories of inconvenient studies and reports and findings on this topic being swept under the carpet because they go against the progressive dogma that migration is always good, and we can turn Muslims into liberal westerners just by having them live in our society long enough, while all the evidence points to the opposite.
Hanania views migration only through the lens of economics and perhaps it's true that in the USA migration is a net economic benefit. In Europe it has proven not to be. Look at the UK. Yes total GDP is up, obviously, after letting in millions of "Asians". But GDP per capita is down since the early 2000s. This goes for many European countries. Here in the Netherlands, serious studies have shown that immigration of non-Western migrants costs the taxpayer several billion a year due to low education, bad integration, and continued high reliance on benefits. But it's not easy to study these things in academia, for obvious reasons.
And all that, again, is not mentioning the increased cultural impact and tensions this has brought, and I can tell you with 100% certainty that all efforts of academia are focused on trying to prove that it's all just fine because god forbid we might have to conclude that some cultures are incompatible with Western liberal values.
I think this comment is emblematic of what I mean. You try to act like it's self-evident that there is a disproportionate string of "incidents" of violent crime by immigrants, and then further make your claim unfalsifiable by saying that OBVIOUSLY no research can be properly conducted on the matter, it's what you would expect! You refer to a few stories you heard online about researcher's who claim to have had the truth but were SILENCED by the media. You then act like the serious liberal/leftist position is that immigration is ALWAYS good and we should just import the entirety of the world into America. Also, yes, GDP per capita will obviously go down if you are letting immigrants in, because immigrants are poor. But that's why stats are meaningless without context, because the per capita average GDP is meaningless to any one person. If I am a millionaire, and then 100 poor people enter the country, that doesn't change the fact that I myself am still a millionaire. Further, you completely ignore the giant elephant in the room as to why the UK has stagnated for the past 15 years. It starts with "Aus" and ends in "terity". The big, glaring reason as to why the UK sometimes feels like an East European country might have to do with the cuts the Tory government did.
This isn't the standard of discourse that we should be having, and it's not a standard of discourse that a young adult who is able to reason intelligently would find attractive. Given that young adults who have a higher proclivity to reason intelligently and introspectively are more likely to be the ones at university compared to those who drop out or who go into manual labour, it's no surprise that ideas as half-baked, disorganised and anecdotal as the average Republican idea just... Isn't worthy of discussion on its own merits. You're asking a butcher to try to get meat off a rock.
Sure...foreign aid on the dumbest liberal agendas and often most of that "FA" went in people's pockets first. But there is just as much crookery and theft in domestic aid as well.
The entire government is a slush fund for those who refuse to be productive, who are too lazy to work a real job, or are too dumb to work any job and who finally realized that they could be big time thieves with zero chance of ever being caught. And many have been for decades.
The government produces nothing of value and takes away from those who would. It's prime time socialism and the death of humanity.
As a government employee myself, I drive a ferryboat. We take a few thousand passengers every day. These people mostly seem to think that I am offering a productive service.
Maybe you are arguing that my working for the government rids me of the ability to run my own, more efficient ferry? But the first cuts to be made would be our least ridden routes at the start and end of the day, and a lot of people who work graveyard shifts would probably be upset about that.
"After that, if we have time, we can focus on x" is just a deceitful way of saying "fuck x'. We reading this already live in an abundance that nearly every human past and present (not to mention our nonhuman relatives) would envy. Someone with the concentric circles hierarchy articulated by Vance is always going to find a reason to feel unfinished with the well-being of the inner circle.
I think nationalists can't really Steelman their argument because of their low human capital.
There is a genuine issue around the intrinsic lack of accountability when spending on people who can't vote. Especially in Congo but also Haiti, Yemen and Somalia there is a huge issue where "taxes" on aid workers helps support various armed and sustains civil wars but I don't think that is something that animates nationalists.
There is also a better noticed issue that many effective aid groups are deeply anti-american and far left and express such views openly. I am unsure if western aid to starving people should be stopped because the people handing it out put out press releases calling for climate reparations and the abolition of capitalism.
Yes, foreign spending is comparatively quite small. Nationalists care much more about DEI, immigration and the government funding leftist (enemy) organizations. What should we do when someone is complaining about X but there are actual problem is Y. It's good to correct them on X and it's also good to address the Y they care about
Problem is that when you correct them on X and fix Y, they claim that their insistence on making X an issue was correct all along.
See: Trump threatens big tarrifs on Trudeau. Trump and Trudeau have a call. Trudeau pledges a bit more money to fix the border.
The problem is that Trump could have had a phone call first and worked out a border deal without the tarrifs. But because he led with this crazy tariff strategy, the tariffs had been legitimised and people touted them as a success, claiming that Trudeau "folded".
That's the problem here. Republicans complain about USAID. They claim it's too much money. You know their TRUE dislikes that they won't voice (Woke/DEI/funding leftists), but if you affirm that now, it gives them ammo that their claims on USAID being bloated were correct all along.
TLDR: Republicans can think in terms of nothing but "Post hoc, ergo propter hoc"
One thing that is zero sum: political attention. So anytime anything vaguely political comes up, many people will seek to tie it to what they care about
I am not a nationalist or an America Firster, or a MAGAnite, or a Republican. Nor do I have any faction.
But my take on the issue is that the purpose of Government is to handle domestic public goods such as defense, courts, law and order, safety nets and such. It is not to spend money on what (we can for the sake of argument assume are worthwhile) foreign charities.
I guess I could see the value in certain good will ambassador type actions, and/or programs which help us AND whomever (overseas Ebola research?)
My uneducated impression of this type of aid is that a significant share of it is a spoils system of handouts and grants to friends of whomever is in charge. And the friends getting rich aren’t distant the distant poor and war torn as much as it is fat cat rent seekers in DC.
Let’s start over and do it right, preferably with minimal damage of the good programs as we transition. That said, I too have doubts that either Elon or Trump is the right person to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. They seem better at breaking eggs.
The vast majority of foreign aid is in the form of military aid (= money that goes to our defense contractors) to Israel, Egypt and Jordan. That was the case for 40 years until Ukraine spiked up in 2022. That was established to help prevent the sort of regional wars that had embroiled those countries in the 50s, 60s and 70s. It has worked. But point is, this isn't a check we write, it's in-kind goods and services we provide. Nobody in Cairo is getting rich off of the next missile or tank shipment to the Egyptian military.
>But my take on the issue is that the purpose of Government is to handle domestic public goods such as defense, courts, law and order, safety nets and such. It is not to spend money on what (we can for the sake of argument assume are worthwhile) foreign charities.<
This is almost certainly a Republican (or at least a libertarian-ish) view of the "purpose of Government." Now, there's nothing wrong with being a libertarian or a Republican (at least not on this substack), but I don't see the need for your previous self-effacing comment. Moreover, I don't think your perspective on the "purpose of Government" is necessarily a universal one: there are many people in the country who would argue that foreign aid is a necessary (albeit non-vital) component of government functions. This is not to say that they are right, only that they disagree with you on the presumed "purpose of Government," which in turn means that you have to spell out WHY you think foreign aid/charity is not a proper function of government (other than viewing it as a spoils system for people you don't like, i.e. rich educated liberals).
I am not a Libertarian or Republican either. I am just trying to address the comment in the original piece about people blindly supporting their factions. I don’t have one (a faction) or want one. I assume your saying it would be all right to be one was facetious, and it did make me smile.
I agree with you that some people think the purpose of government might apply to foreign charity. I think that it is best to focus an organization at its core mission and allow other organizations (such as actual charities). When the people disagreeing with me are in charge, then that is probably how they will act, and the only thing I will do about it is not vote for them. Seems like that is how democracy works.
Speaking of which, I get the impression that this whole kerfuffle is just the current regime’s tactic of stirring up a controversy over a topic that is almost certain to get the average voter to think government is a total joke. The lists of stupid things (however small) we are funding makes government look wasteful. Just having the argument is a win for Trump. He is framing it to his advantage.
One last thing. It isn’t just rich educated liberals who are fat cat rent seekers.
National debt isn't as simple as the kind of debt an individual faces. 37 trillion in debt SOUNDS scary, but the alternative is to essentially suck up 37 trillion dollars from your economy.
This debt is also mostly domestic. Things like bonds.
My understanding of national debt is not expert, though.
Many nationalists are ex-lolberts and share its assumptions. In the United States, many a man consuming freedumb content has not been winning at life. This was bad for conservatism in general, as it lost to Obama twice. To sell the corporate point of view, it needed different marketing, namely, that libertarianism would work if our countries were not overflowing with furriners. Some, like Yarvin, add that libertarianism wouldn't lead to the poor house if our governments were not democratic. Others sell conspiracy slop and go full Idiocracy. Oligarchs have made their peace with slop of every variety as libertarianism, as it cuts funding for cancer research and other mischief, is its own kind of slop, telling tall tales such as cutting taxes for the elite somehow balances budgets.
All of this stuff is schizo. With the nationalists in particular, there are good arguments for a wise industrial policy and an intelligent immigration policy versus the free-for-all we have now. But these arguments are a package deal with respecting expertise, regulation, and central administration, especially if you value a high quality of life for yourself and others.
"We might ask what evidence there is that the left, or the “far left,” whoever that is, prioritizes foreigners over American citizens."
Using our own tax money to bring in 10,000,000,000 migrants while using FEMA money to for for migrants instead of Americans in North Carolina, etc. etc.
The left DOES care about their family and friends, as evidenced by all the money-laundering from our taxes to them, but actively hates the rest of us.
Except, of course, a great deal of FEMA money was and is being spent on North Carolinians, and the migrants mostly brought themselves. Americans used to kidnap people and bring them to this country, but then we had a whole civil war about it and we don't do that anymore.
What US government funded media sources shaped your perception of world events? North Carolina looked EXACTLY like it did months ago until Trump sent the Army engineers down there, and it's undisputed that FEMA spent money to immigrant hotels in NYC..in fact, they just tried to send another $59,000,000 to that same migrant hotel, but were busted. Do provide your source of "a great deal of FEMA money was spent on NC".
Can you provide a source for your claim that taxes were spent to bring migrants across the border? Can you provide a source for "North Carolina looks exactly as it did," because it appears NC Gov. Stein disagrees. Can you explain what you mean by "busted"- what laws are you alleging were violated and why?
Do you really believed Biden administration moved over 10,000,000 migrants here in his four years...and then paid for their care once here....without money? Since when does FEMA pay for migrant housing? Since they were repurposed, along with every other government agency.
I'm mostly agreed with the points you're making here. Even though I voted for Trump I am hardly a MAGA fundamentalist, and hearing people on the Right say that the border with Mexico is open because the Biden Admimistration chose to defend Ukraine's border instead is pathetic; these same people were complaining about the Mexican border long before the Ukraine War so they ought to be aware that it's open because a lot of people in Washington simply want it to be open... but they ignore their own knowledge in order to rail against foreigners (and they bury their own chances of ever fixing the border in the first place.)
This makes me think of the people in the 1960s and 1970s who were big supporters of the Vietnam War - people who hated draft dodgers and even lawful peace protestors, who sent letters to President Nixon begging him the pardon the people who did the My Lai massacre, who gloated over the Kent State shootings (not noticing or perhaps just not caring that two of the students who died were bystanders who were just trying to walk to class.) But when Saigon fell and lots of Vietnamese who had risked life and limb for the American war effort were fleeing to America as refugees... these "conservatives" generally got really angry and didn't want them in their neighborhoods.
It was never about protecting Asians from communism. It was always about having someone to hate - and that "someone" need not even be a foreigner as the situation with Kent State showed.
"owning the libs at all costs" as Tyler Cowen put it. What's a few million dead Africans if I can get one over on the purple-haired feminist on bluesky?
That's not a fair characterization of how Trumpists actually think. The reason that DOGE is going so hard on USAID is because a lot of the stuff they spend money on is just meddling in foreign elections or promoting ideas about sex that don't even have majority support in America (and pointlessly antagonizing foreign power-brokers whose goodwill we ought to want). I am hopeful that, when this stuff starts producing lawsuits, the DOGE/USAID kerfuffle will get sorted out in a way that lets the AIDS and malaria people go back to work.
Trump, for all his flaws, is a necessary weapon in the struggle for a less insane government. I wrote a piece back in August called "Why it Doesn't Matter if Tim Walz is a Moderate Democrat."
https://twilightpatriot.substack.com/p/why-it-doesnt-matter-if-tim-walz
My thesis is that, even when Democrats on the ballot run as moderates, they still in practice give power to the most extreme and destructive people in their coalition (in the judiciary, civil service, labor unions, etc.) So if, for instance, you care about the housing shortage, or want to see less urban crime, or want fewer racial quotas in government hiring... then you need fewer progressive judges and activists in positions of power. Hence my vote for Trump.
No that is 100% a fair assessment of Trump supporters. Humans are at a base level cruel, selfish, petty, dishonest and vindictive. Conservatives believe this and exploit the hell out of it with their supporters without care for the consequences, while liberals are uncomfortable with that characterization of human nature. You, Twilight Patriot are a perfect example of the base nature of humans, but you’re also a mealy-mouthed coward.
"It was never about protecting Asians from communism."
I don't think that was ever really claimed, even by the pro-Vietnam-War side. The primary goal was to contain and drain the Communists, preferably while far away from home. Of course, the leftie protesters at home were seen as communist sympathizers, almost traitors, so little sympathy there.
It was pretty frequently used under JFK and LBJ so the admin could present the war as morally just to humanitarian-minded liberals at home.
Nationalism is primarily an aesthetic movement, not a rational or consistent political ideology. It is partly a positive movement, but also a negative movement borne out of the repugnance of rival aesthetic movements, i.e. multiculturalism or internationalism. Nationalism is not coherent logically, but visually. It does not spread because of its arguments, but because it is amenable to one's taste.
More here: https://substack.com/@philosophyintheoilsands/p-155596065
You ignore the issue of compulsion. I want to be free to donate to local or foriegn charities including those that a help foreign country to defend itself. I do not want government to decide which charities I MUST contribute to through taxation.
You could say that about almost everything! Are you upset you're forced to pay taxes to support social security, Medicare, food stamps, etc., or just foreign aid?
Nothing wrong with being a hardcore libertarian and opposing all spending, but it's odd to only be upset when a tiny bit of your taxes are sent to foreigners.
Surely you understand that collective action is often more than the sum of its parts, right? We don't have privately-funded police or military, you can't opt into or out of public goods like roads or hospitals or a legal system. Sometimes you need to centralize an effort to make it reach a productive scale. Our foreign aid is very much targeted at things that Americans prioritize and/or make the world safer for Americans. For decades, since Camp David, the vast majority of US foreign aid went to 3 countries - Israel, Egypt and Jordan - basically to ensure that they didn't have big regional wars like in the 60s and 70s. It has worked for 45 years. Most of the rest is with anti-terrorism in mind, with pretty small amounts to support governments in sub-saharan Africa and send food to their people so they don't descend (further) into anarchy. Afghanistan likewise. We saw what happens if we don't, so we spend a few billion a year as an insurance policy to mitigate that risk. And it buys us a seat at the table and some leverage with these governments, too, which often has its uses.
Even if all you're concerned about is the safety of Americans, and everyone else worldwide could drop dead for all you care, there is a realpolitik justification for our foreign aid spend. Which was part of the point of Richard's article. Why focus outsize attention on a small fraction-of-a-percent of the budget, when there are clearly much bigger things to worry about that affect the welfare of many more Americans? If we zeroed out foreign aid, it would hurt middle east stability (= potential for US to get drawn in), terrorism risk mitigation, hurt our diplomatic and moral-image position, and deprive us of our leverage with the poorer and less-stable parts of the world, all of which have value to us - and in exchange for an amount of savings that would not meaningfully change our capacity to deal with the bigger domestic problems facing us. Seems like a poor trade!
Theres a difference between taxes spent to provide security and taxes that aren't. Put simply, I would rather not be robbed, but if I am going to be anyway I would prefer to be robbed through a democratic political process. Roads, military, police are all first degree national security requirements. Many social welfare programs are also for public security, since without social security, Medicare, and food stamps there would be mass revolt. Foreign aid sometimes fits but mostly doesn't.
This is literally just a generic anti-tax argument, you could just as easily apply it to your tax dollars funding public libraries, viagra for veterans, drug rehab centers, etc.
Yeah the idea that leftists care more about foreigners (or animals) than Americans just shows how little these people have actually interacted with the political left. The vast majority of leftist energy goes towards "first world problems" that affect mostly Americans, like legalizing abortion, trans medical care, etc. And many leftists will get extremely outraged if you try to imply that maybe they should be vegan, yelling about "no ethical consumption under capitalism" and whatever other excuses they can think of to justify not wanting to change their behavior. It's true that the left cares more about foreigners than the right, but only in the same sense that a millionaire cares more about a nickel they see lying on the ground than a billionaire does.
Yes. Bryan Caplan once likened these folks to National Socialists (he didn’t mean they were literal Nazis, just nationalistic in terms of their priorities). Many of these folks like a safety net for themselves.
I don't think anyone believes the US government is spending more on foreigners than americans, I think the point was that the government should not have the right to spend any significant amount of taxpayer money on any cause that doesn't benefit americans, either directly or indirectly.
Yes, the question is why anyone would make that a priority given that helping foreigners is not a significant drag on American living standards nor responsible for any substantial part of the trouble the country faces. When people hyperfocus on something that is a small issue by their own stated value system, which is caring for their own nation here, we need to ask why.
Obviously foreign aid benefits Americans, though? "See this our way or we'll cut off the food aid you depend on and your people will riot" is a pretty good foreign policy tool. In some situations likely more effective - and cheaper - than "see this our way or we send the military."
And so, for that matter, is "see this our way and we'll commit $X million to build schools / hospitals / power plants." Surely it's sometimes more effective to be able to offer carrots as well as sticks.
Unless you want to argue that doing foreign policy at all provides no benefit to Americans?
Not only that, but fostering development in poor countries helps everyone in the world, including Americans, by making those countries into potential trade partners. And it produces goodwill for America, which is useful in case of a global conflict.
That assumes aid works and is popular
Pretty sure people whose life is being saved from deadly diseases by U.S. foreign aid like U.S. foreign aid.
Why?
People aren't logical, foreign aid is unpopular in recipient countries often because of conspiracy theories.
The number of people that hate on "welfare" and receive social security and medicare is a good example even in our own country. There is an EHC argument that they are just receiving a government administrated "pension" rather than welfare benefits ... but the LHC view is just oblivious.
Malice is indeed the right word.
It’s an emotional show where main cast are running the emotionally charged punitive policy that is not even consistent.
Our hope is that this implodes sooner rather than later.
I can't believe how dumb this article is. Is the author actually this dense, and just had some good ideas early (on why everything is woke, reading v tv, etc) before running out of late? He sure is one-note lately, that note being how stupid conservatives are and how embarrassed he is to have to vote for them. I used to feel the same about my fellow Democrats; now I am a Republican. Thus I expect Hanania to go woke soon.
On to the stupidity. The entire article is a strawman, and no august reader seems to spot it. Let's go to Mr Vance again:
"You love your family, and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country, and then, after that, you can focus on and prioritize the rest of the world. A LOT OF THE FAR LEFT has completely inverted that" (caps mine, there is no font editor in Substack).
He did not say "the government". He did not say "the percentage of federal spending". He said "a lot of the far left", as a way to remind people that these folks control one of two major parties and in fact, seem to hate them and their own country.
The biggest priority of the far left is climate. In their telling, the rapacious west, but mostly America, have caused the world to burn; and it is on us, not "developing" countries, to deal with the problem. The "developing" countries include China, India, etc. They are blameless on this view, even though they are now responsible for the bulk of current emissions.
Instead, Americans should embrace radical regrowth, and we should pay "developing" countries so they can use our intellectual property on solar, wind, etc, and not have to sacrifice their own growth.
On to immigration. It is the express will of the American people, for generations, to reduce or eliminate illegal immigration. It is the position of the left that Americans can go pound sand--it does not matter what we want; it does not matter how we vote. The left will fight ITS OWN COUNTRY to prevent enforcement of the law; it will defend illegal aliens' right to everything from healthcare to education to being given flat amnesty from ever being removed (ie, from ever having to face the law). They afford Americans no such consideration.
Should we do Gaza? And the overweening concern the left has for brown people anywhere, no matter how sick their actions and beliefs, versus their hate for "whiteness", also know as their fellow countrymen?
Thus the "thesis" of this article is garbage. Once you spot the strawman, you can't unsee it. For me, I am disappointed that the writer that cannot see issues any longer except through his current hobbyhorse.
Makes for bad writing, and terrible analysis.
As a leftist and pro-immigrationist, I do defend illegal aliens being given amnesty from being removed. You write "they afford Americans no such consideration." Au contraire! I also would oppose you or Richard Hanania being deported. Even though you're white!
Maybe I'm way out of scope with most leftists, but I haven't heard of a huge "we should deport Real White Americans" caucus. Although you can probably find some indigenous activists who do support the deportation of all colonizers.
"States and localities spend practically nothing on non-Americans, except in cases where there is a large number of immigrants, though they also pay taxes."
That "except" is doing a lot of work. NYC spent $5 billion on migrants in just the last two years. That is five times what we spent on parks.
"Yet they ignore the fact that analysts have produced a great deal of research and economic analysis arguing that such policies are good for Americans."
The is probably no pressure in academia greater than the pressure to demonstrate that mass migration is great and has no drawbacks. The left and corporate right both insist on it. So forgive me for being skeptical.
“ The is probably no pressure in academia greater than the pressure to demonstrate that mass migration is great and has no drawbacks.”
That’s delusional. Being anti-immigration is one of the most mainstream right wing views there is, regularly given a hearing in the MSM and endorsed by Democratic politicians. But nativism is rejected by economists because they’re the ones relatively good at math and logic.
Was mass immigration of muslims in europe great and without any consequences whatsoever? I think you're intellectually dishonest or delusional yourself when you say it's irrational to be worried about mass immigration.
Indeed. Though I think Hanania is really mostly talking about immigration from an American perspective, where muslim immigration is relatively small compared to latinos. Honestly I'd much rather exchange our muslim immigration here in Europe with latinos. Yes, they both bring gangs and crime but at least the latinos are a lot more culturally compatible.
“But nativism is rejected by economists because they’re the ones relatively good at math and logic.”
One of the complaints a college-educated libertarian friend of mine with a solid education in PPE pointed out to me is that economists are often PC (like most EHC), so they ignore the externalities imposed on those who see racial homogeneity as a kind of consumer good. Therefore, the “math and logic” doesn’t include these externalities (which can be massive) because they think they shouldn’t count. (Racism is “irrational”!)
Think of it this way: Imagine a nation of smokers who prefer a shorter life to a longer, but smoke-free, life. Then along come some economists who have an EHC bias against smokers (Ew! Low class! Smoking is irrational!) and advise the state that eliminating smoking will boost GDP—but completely ignore the massive costs to smokers. That’s what’s going on with pro-immigration economists. (Imagine so-called economists who don’t consider externalities/costs!).
The only way to know the optimum amount of immigration is to privatize roads, streets, etc. (Markets!) Moralizing against racism just reinforces the idea that EHC wants to impose its preferences (and it does).
You can be good at math and logic and be oblivious to your own blind spots and motivated reasoning.
And how represented are mainstream right wing views in academia again?
Have you unironically considered whether right-wing views are just more wrong overall? If we are against DEI in academia, we must be against DEI of the ideologies in academia also. Meritocracy, where only the most substantiated, well-reasoned, scientifically-backed arguments should be considered.
Right wing ideas, given how populist they've become and how they seem to be almost-exclusively taking refuge in the minds of the uneducated, wouldn't seem to tick any of the checkboxes.
I don't know about "right wing ideas" in general, but at least I know that there are by now plenty of studies that show that mass migration, especially from muslim countries, here in Europe, is at least costing a lot of money and produces increasing social and cultural frictions. Not to mention an obvious and endless string of "incidents" of violence, terror, murder, intimidation etc.
Although of course only the economic part is possible to research somewhat properly and even then the people who do the research are viciously attacked and smeared in the media. I've heard countless stories of inconvenient studies and reports and findings on this topic being swept under the carpet because they go against the progressive dogma that migration is always good, and we can turn Muslims into liberal westerners just by having them live in our society long enough, while all the evidence points to the opposite.
Hanania views migration only through the lens of economics and perhaps it's true that in the USA migration is a net economic benefit. In Europe it has proven not to be. Look at the UK. Yes total GDP is up, obviously, after letting in millions of "Asians". But GDP per capita is down since the early 2000s. This goes for many European countries. Here in the Netherlands, serious studies have shown that immigration of non-Western migrants costs the taxpayer several billion a year due to low education, bad integration, and continued high reliance on benefits. But it's not easy to study these things in academia, for obvious reasons.
And all that, again, is not mentioning the increased cultural impact and tensions this has brought, and I can tell you with 100% certainty that all efforts of academia are focused on trying to prove that it's all just fine because god forbid we might have to conclude that some cultures are incompatible with Western liberal values.
I think this comment is emblematic of what I mean. You try to act like it's self-evident that there is a disproportionate string of "incidents" of violent crime by immigrants, and then further make your claim unfalsifiable by saying that OBVIOUSLY no research can be properly conducted on the matter, it's what you would expect! You refer to a few stories you heard online about researcher's who claim to have had the truth but were SILENCED by the media. You then act like the serious liberal/leftist position is that immigration is ALWAYS good and we should just import the entirety of the world into America. Also, yes, GDP per capita will obviously go down if you are letting immigrants in, because immigrants are poor. But that's why stats are meaningless without context, because the per capita average GDP is meaningless to any one person. If I am a millionaire, and then 100 poor people enter the country, that doesn't change the fact that I myself am still a millionaire. Further, you completely ignore the giant elephant in the room as to why the UK has stagnated for the past 15 years. It starts with "Aus" and ends in "terity". The big, glaring reason as to why the UK sometimes feels like an East European country might have to do with the cuts the Tory government did.
This isn't the standard of discourse that we should be having, and it's not a standard of discourse that a young adult who is able to reason intelligently would find attractive. Given that young adults who have a higher proclivity to reason intelligently and introspectively are more likely to be the ones at university compared to those who drop out or who go into manual labour, it's no surprise that ideas as half-baked, disorganised and anecdotal as the average Republican idea just... Isn't worthy of discussion on its own merits. You're asking a butcher to try to get meat off a rock.
Sure...foreign aid on the dumbest liberal agendas and often most of that "FA" went in people's pockets first. But there is just as much crookery and theft in domestic aid as well.
The entire government is a slush fund for those who refuse to be productive, who are too lazy to work a real job, or are too dumb to work any job and who finally realized that they could be big time thieves with zero chance of ever being caught. And many have been for decades.
The government produces nothing of value and takes away from those who would. It's prime time socialism and the death of humanity.
As a government employee myself, I drive a ferryboat. We take a few thousand passengers every day. These people mostly seem to think that I am offering a productive service.
Maybe you are arguing that my working for the government rids me of the ability to run my own, more efficient ferry? But the first cuts to be made would be our least ridden routes at the start and end of the day, and a lot of people who work graveyard shifts would probably be upset about that.
"After that, if we have time, we can focus on x" is just a deceitful way of saying "fuck x'. We reading this already live in an abundance that nearly every human past and present (not to mention our nonhuman relatives) would envy. Someone with the concentric circles hierarchy articulated by Vance is always going to find a reason to feel unfinished with the well-being of the inner circle.
I think nationalists can't really Steelman their argument because of their low human capital.
There is a genuine issue around the intrinsic lack of accountability when spending on people who can't vote. Especially in Congo but also Haiti, Yemen and Somalia there is a huge issue where "taxes" on aid workers helps support various armed and sustains civil wars but I don't think that is something that animates nationalists.
There is also a better noticed issue that many effective aid groups are deeply anti-american and far left and express such views openly. I am unsure if western aid to starving people should be stopped because the people handing it out put out press releases calling for climate reparations and the abolition of capitalism.
Yes, foreign spending is comparatively quite small. Nationalists care much more about DEI, immigration and the government funding leftist (enemy) organizations. What should we do when someone is complaining about X but there are actual problem is Y. It's good to correct them on X and it's also good to address the Y they care about
Problem is that when you correct them on X and fix Y, they claim that their insistence on making X an issue was correct all along.
See: Trump threatens big tarrifs on Trudeau. Trump and Trudeau have a call. Trudeau pledges a bit more money to fix the border.
The problem is that Trump could have had a phone call first and worked out a border deal without the tarrifs. But because he led with this crazy tariff strategy, the tariffs had been legitimised and people touted them as a success, claiming that Trudeau "folded".
That's the problem here. Republicans complain about USAID. They claim it's too much money. You know their TRUE dislikes that they won't voice (Woke/DEI/funding leftists), but if you affirm that now, it gives them ammo that their claims on USAID being bloated were correct all along.
TLDR: Republicans can think in terms of nothing but "Post hoc, ergo propter hoc"
One thing that is zero sum: political attention. So anytime anything vaguely political comes up, many people will seek to tie it to what they care about
I am not a nationalist or an America Firster, or a MAGAnite, or a Republican. Nor do I have any faction.
But my take on the issue is that the purpose of Government is to handle domestic public goods such as defense, courts, law and order, safety nets and such. It is not to spend money on what (we can for the sake of argument assume are worthwhile) foreign charities.
I guess I could see the value in certain good will ambassador type actions, and/or programs which help us AND whomever (overseas Ebola research?)
My uneducated impression of this type of aid is that a significant share of it is a spoils system of handouts and grants to friends of whomever is in charge. And the friends getting rich aren’t distant the distant poor and war torn as much as it is fat cat rent seekers in DC.
Let’s start over and do it right, preferably with minimal damage of the good programs as we transition. That said, I too have doubts that either Elon or Trump is the right person to put Humpty Dumpty back together again. They seem better at breaking eggs.
The vast majority of foreign aid is in the form of military aid (= money that goes to our defense contractors) to Israel, Egypt and Jordan. That was the case for 40 years until Ukraine spiked up in 2022. That was established to help prevent the sort of regional wars that had embroiled those countries in the 50s, 60s and 70s. It has worked. But point is, this isn't a check we write, it's in-kind goods and services we provide. Nobody in Cairo is getting rich off of the next missile or tank shipment to the Egyptian military.
https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/countries-that-receive-the-most-foreign-aid-from-the-u-s
Thanks Steve. These seem like they may very well be reasonable.
>But my take on the issue is that the purpose of Government is to handle domestic public goods such as defense, courts, law and order, safety nets and such. It is not to spend money on what (we can for the sake of argument assume are worthwhile) foreign charities.<
This is almost certainly a Republican (or at least a libertarian-ish) view of the "purpose of Government." Now, there's nothing wrong with being a libertarian or a Republican (at least not on this substack), but I don't see the need for your previous self-effacing comment. Moreover, I don't think your perspective on the "purpose of Government" is necessarily a universal one: there are many people in the country who would argue that foreign aid is a necessary (albeit non-vital) component of government functions. This is not to say that they are right, only that they disagree with you on the presumed "purpose of Government," which in turn means that you have to spell out WHY you think foreign aid/charity is not a proper function of government (other than viewing it as a spoils system for people you don't like, i.e. rich educated liberals).
Thanks for the reply, Elie.
I am not a Libertarian or Republican either. I am just trying to address the comment in the original piece about people blindly supporting their factions. I don’t have one (a faction) or want one. I assume your saying it would be all right to be one was facetious, and it did make me smile.
I agree with you that some people think the purpose of government might apply to foreign charity. I think that it is best to focus an organization at its core mission and allow other organizations (such as actual charities). When the people disagreeing with me are in charge, then that is probably how they will act, and the only thing I will do about it is not vote for them. Seems like that is how democracy works.
Speaking of which, I get the impression that this whole kerfuffle is just the current regime’s tactic of stirring up a controversy over a topic that is almost certain to get the average voter to think government is a total joke. The lists of stupid things (however small) we are funding makes government look wasteful. Just having the argument is a win for Trump. He is framing it to his advantage.
One last thing. It isn’t just rich educated liberals who are fat cat rent seekers.
We're 37 TRILLION in debt. We've helped enough. Any amount is too much after 50+ years and TRILLIONS in foreign aid and charity.
National debt isn't as simple as the kind of debt an individual faces. 37 trillion in debt SOUNDS scary, but the alternative is to essentially suck up 37 trillion dollars from your economy.
This debt is also mostly domestic. Things like bonds.
My understanding of national debt is not expert, though.
Many nationalists are ex-lolberts and share its assumptions. In the United States, many a man consuming freedumb content has not been winning at life. This was bad for conservatism in general, as it lost to Obama twice. To sell the corporate point of view, it needed different marketing, namely, that libertarianism would work if our countries were not overflowing with furriners. Some, like Yarvin, add that libertarianism wouldn't lead to the poor house if our governments were not democratic. Others sell conspiracy slop and go full Idiocracy. Oligarchs have made their peace with slop of every variety as libertarianism, as it cuts funding for cancer research and other mischief, is its own kind of slop, telling tall tales such as cutting taxes for the elite somehow balances budgets.
All of this stuff is schizo. With the nationalists in particular, there are good arguments for a wise industrial policy and an intelligent immigration policy versus the free-for-all we have now. But these arguments are a package deal with respecting expertise, regulation, and central administration, especially if you value a high quality of life for yourself and others.
"We might ask what evidence there is that the left, or the “far left,” whoever that is, prioritizes foreigners over American citizens."
Using our own tax money to bring in 10,000,000,000 migrants while using FEMA money to for for migrants instead of Americans in North Carolina, etc. etc.
The left DOES care about their family and friends, as evidenced by all the money-laundering from our taxes to them, but actively hates the rest of us.
Except, of course, a great deal of FEMA money was and is being spent on North Carolinians, and the migrants mostly brought themselves. Americans used to kidnap people and bring them to this country, but then we had a whole civil war about it and we don't do that anymore.
What US government funded media sources shaped your perception of world events? North Carolina looked EXACTLY like it did months ago until Trump sent the Army engineers down there, and it's undisputed that FEMA spent money to immigrant hotels in NYC..in fact, they just tried to send another $59,000,000 to that same migrant hotel, but were busted. Do provide your source of "a great deal of FEMA money was spent on NC".
North Carolina Newsline states $3 billion in federal disaster relief. That seems to be more than $59 million, which was paid for, it seems, by a fund that was appropriated to pay for migrant housing, which is unrelated to disaster relief efforts. https://ncnewsline.com/2025/01/28/trump-freeze-on-federal-aid-billions-funding-north-carolina/
Can you provide a source for your claim that taxes were spent to bring migrants across the border? Can you provide a source for "North Carolina looks exactly as it did," because it appears NC Gov. Stein disagrees. Can you explain what you mean by "busted"- what laws are you alleging were violated and why?
Believe what you want....still a free country thanks to our constitution and those upholding it!
No, come on. You asked me for a source and I provided one. I asked you for a source in return and you can't be bothered?
If you're busy right now that's fine. There's no deadline. I would like to know more whenever you have the time.
Do you really believed Biden administration moved over 10,000,000 migrants here in his four years...and then paid for their care once here....without money? Since when does FEMA pay for migrant housing? Since they were repurposed, along with every other government agency.