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Have the Right and Left Converged?
To my surprise, and somewhat to my puzzlement, the American right seems thrilled by Brexit. And so does the American left. For very similar reasons. Indeed, the reasoning seems so similar that it’s hard to tell the editorials apart: If you didn’t know the ideological leaning of the publication, you wouldn’t be able to guess. Broadly, both right and left think this represents a blow against globalization; the proper comeuppance for pointy-headed elites, academics, bankers, and journalists; a victory for people everywhere who think immigration is out of control; and a rebuke to European snobs. I think all of that’s incorrect — and both sides are wrong — but help me to understand what’s going on with the American right that it sounds the same, these days, as the left. Perhaps we’re not as polarized as we think?
For evidence that they sound the same, here are some recent opinion pieces about Brexit. Try to guess if the author is right- or left-leaning:
- The failure of the economic arguments to sway the vote may spell the end of economic rationalism which began with Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. It may be that the vote against the EU was in part a protest vote against the long term changes in economic structure of the UK economy which has destroyed many working and middle class lives. … Insofar as the decision represents a retreat to economic nationalism and closed borders, it may highlight the diminishing appeal of globalisation. Free movement of goods and services, lowering of trade barriers and cheaper foreign labour has not benefitted everybody. Conservative American politician Pat Buchanan’s observation in Pittsburgh Post Gazette on 3 January 1994 remains uncomfortably accurate: “ … it is blue collar Americans whose jobs are lost when trade barriers fall, working class kids who bleed and die in Mogadishu … the best and brightest tend to escape the worst consequences of the policies they promote … This may explain … why national surveys show repeatedly that the best and wealthiest Americans are the staunchest internationalists on both security and economic issues … ”
- I am enjoying the tantrum of Britain’s elites as much as anyone. From listening to the BBC on the radio, it seems like Britain’s fanatically pro-EU elites are building an alternative universe where they ignore survey research that shows little support for a second referendum, and instead focus obsessively on anecdotal stories about Leave voters begging forgiveness from bankers and professors. Forgive them oh Chancellor Merkel, for they know not what they have done. …
- I’ve been watching the TV coverage to get my fill of MSM reaction. And what you say of [Gillian] Tett [of the Financial Times is typical of what Lambert rightly labels the credentialed class — that 5% (some would put it higher at 10 or even 20% but I think the real paid-up members of the credentialed class are in that bracket) who explain to the proletariat what the elites are doing and Why It Really Is In Your Best Interests — they are simply struck dumb. There’s something you don’t see every day.
- Most of all, Brexit is the consequence of the economic bargain struck in the early 1980s, whereby we waved goodbye to the security and certainties of the postwar settlement, and were given instead an economic model that has just about served the most populous parts of the country, while leaving too much of the rest to anxiously decline. Look at the map of those results, and that huge island of “in” voting in London and the south-east; or those jaw-dropping vote-shares for remain in the centre of the capital: 69% in Tory Kensington and Chelsea; 75% in Camden; 78% in Hackney, contrasted with comparable shares for leave in such places as Great Yarmouth (71%), Castle Point in Essex (73%), and Redcar and Cleveland (66%). Here is a country so imbalanced it has effectively fallen over …
- Yes, Brexit was a rejection of Thatcherism and the rest of the neoliberal twaddle … but that doesn’t mean Scotland would actually be better off in 2020 in the EU separate from UK. …
- Stafford, Cannock, Wolverhampton. Different towns, same message: “There’s no decent work”; “the politicians don’t care about us”; “we’ve been forgotten”; “betrayed”; “there’s too many immigrants, and we can’t compete with the wages they’ll work for”. Nobody used the word humiliation, but that’s the sense I got.
- The current panic reveals a clique of embedded London journalists. The debate, such as it is, has been entirely antagonistic, veering between scaremongering and sanctimony. Often I wonder who is being addressed. A lot of us are not. … When people say: “Why is my pay so low? Why can’t I get a doctor’s appointment? Why is there no school place?”, the answers cannot merely be abstract nouns such as “austerity” or “globalisation”. We may as well blame the weather.
- Brexit is an expression of English — more than British — nationalism and is part of a decades-long decline in British unity. But the England that wants out of Europe is the England of vanished industry in the north, rural poverty in the southwest and people clinging to middle-class lifestyles in the suburbs of once-great cities that feel increasingly alien to them. Scotland has shuttered factories of its own, of course, but frustration at that fueled Scottish nationalism. English nationalism was reinforced by resentment of Scottish nationalism. But it grew and took on a populist character in reaction to real problems that seemed to have been brushed aside by many leaders in all major political parties. Brexit is a rejection of “Cool Britannia,” the 1990s branding of a cosmopolitan, creative and united Britain as a part of a happy vision of globalization.
- The Remain campaign tried to tamp down this anger with lectures, talking down to the rubes in the backwoods and explaining how they didn’t know what was good for them. This has been pre-eminent rhetorical technique among globalization enthusiasts for decades: that they would fix everything if the public would only listen. What they have fixed is a transition of wealth into financial centers and corporate coffers, and a denuding of societal character in favor of a global monoculture …
- A restless, beaten-down public has drawn the first blood in a rebellion against a neoliberal economic orthodoxy committed to globalization that has sucked the life out of whole communities and blighted the future of a generation. …
- The nerve of the leader of one of the world’s oldest democracies to actually let the voting public decide the future of the nation. … Cameron surely would have been much smarter to follow the lead of the political elites in other countries and to ignore the rising hostility to a union that seems to be stifling progress rather than increasing prosperity for all. Instead, he committed the unforgivable sin of allowing democracy to function, a debate to be held, and voters to choose. In doing so, Cameron has opened a Pandora’s box of insurgency against the political elite in Europe.
Tell me which quotes sound like they came from rock-ribbed American conservatives and which sound like they came straight off Noam Chomsky’s website.
After that, tell me what you think it means that it’s so hard to tell. Is it possible that the American right and the American left have found an issue about which they agree completely?
Do you think these views actually have anything to do with Britain or Europe? Or is the whole thing just a giant political Rorschach test?
Published in General
You read Pat Buchanan in the Post Gazette, of all places?
That’s like getting NFL news from Al-Jazeera.
1 left
2 right
3 right
4 right
5 left
6 right
7 right
8 left
9 right
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11 right
PS I love Noam.
This. How can a binary vote about something as multifarious as the EU tell you something about “Europe” or “the People” or “neo-liberalism” or any other entirely nebulous concept. Let’s face it: political analysis is a literary form, not a scientific undertaking. It’s about entertainment, not truth.
They converged a long time ago on Ricochet. Don’t be so surprised.
What I’m reading, and it could never be as much as Miss Berlinski reads, on the left is that disorder will result, that globalism is at risk etc. From conservatives, that it’s a good thing because a remote bureacracy, the administratative state is undemocratic and gives rise to stagnation. I think the reactions are a perfect example of the different visions Thomas Sowell discussed in Conflict of Visions. Or in Hayekian terms, order does not come from central governace and economic management it comes from simple laws, clarity and freedom and these are cultural as well as legal and work best close to the people. Orderd chaos is the best humans can do. Central governance gives rise to disordered chaos and dysfunction. Given time ordered chaos, freedom under simple law gives rise to human flourishing. Disordered chaos thwarts flourishing as bureucrcies get frustrated with their inability to control, their reach grows, interests proliferate and consolidate around the rule shaping process and stagnation turns gradually to repression. Of course there are the anti trade/immigration/technology groups on both sides. They are always a mixed bag because technological change, trade and immigration affect different groups at different times. These reactions tell us about the stagnation and slow adjustment bureaucracies impose but they are always with us and are always a challenge to economic freedom.
Thanks for putting the list together, it is an interesting read.
Whether left or right I think everyone is painting much more significance on this event than it merits. The market dislocation is largely over and was a product of leveraged institutions seeking an edge and getting badly burned in the process. Had MP Jo Cox not been murdered the markets would’ve been tame.
Is it possible the EU project fails? Yes. It was possible before the vote.
Is this some huge vote for a new Thatcheresque shift to conservative governance in Britain, not at all. This is Britain exerting more influence over its own hyper regulated bloated welfare state. If that passes as conservative as it now does in America, then it is as much a reckoning of the end of liberty.
It’s news to me that anyone in the mainstream American left thought Brexit was a good idea (not saying I don’t believe you, Claire, just that you’re providing new info). Haven’t seen any sympathetic takes in the Washington Post. But it’s not news to me that some very left types may agree with the right on an issue or vice-versa. That happens all the time.
I’ll tell you why I like Brexit: subsidiarity and self-determination. Seems like two bedrock principles of conservatism to me. I never really understood the argument for the EU, and the only halfway decent argument I’ve heard against Brexit is that the separate European countries have had a tendency to go to war with each other. I have two answers to that. First, it seems to me the EU is as likely to cause friction among those countries as it is to ease it. Second, it seems to me the point of all those centuries of war was not to have to listen to the French and the Germans. If you’re going be in the EU, you might as well have just lost.
I’ll let everyone else play before I reveal your score.
Note:
Reads well without the struck-through.Claire,
Please stop with the stupid tricks and tests.It’s okay to provide a list of left and right commentaries, but please cite the source so we can make judgements. Much of this list seems to me not American sources, but British or European sources. Nobody in the US describes Buchanan as an “American Conservative”.From what I have seen the vast majority of the liberal media (i.e. NY, WashPo, etc) have unitarily decried the Brexit vote.
There may be some old school anti-globalist left out there celebrating, but it is mostly in opposition to the Remain camp support among the Financial types.
Brexit is a victory for citizen sovereignty against the undemocratic elites.
What is so surprising about supporting a vote for self government? Westminster over Brussels.
There is no other convergence there.
I’ve always been deeply skeptical about whether it’s possible; I could envision the thing cracking up in acrimony way before it was fashionable:
But my sense that history was working against the EU project isn’t an argument against the EU. The arguments for the EU — if it could be made to work — are actually quite compelling. I explained what I thought they were recently in Mosaic. They’re all the more compelling given that there’s a non-zero chance the US will reduce its commitment to NATO, and a near-certainty that the US won’t take the lead role in stabilizing the Middle East and north Africa.
France and Germany seem to be thinking about this the way I do; this is the latest plan. They apparently drafted it before the Brexit vote. It seems very sensible to me: I can’t see any realistic alternative, since no single European country is strong enough to provide security for the whole Continent, but absent that security — well, first, lack of security is inherently bad, no one wants to be a Russian vassal or to be overrun by ISIS; but second, every country in Europe needs the others for trade: everyone on the Continent has a huge interest in common defense and economic growth. The bloc will definitely get more advantageous trade terms if it negotiates together.
God knows what remains of the EU does need to secure its external borders, maintain internal and external security, undertake a rational shared strategy to cope with inward migration, and either complete the EMU or abandon the Euro. All of this is long overdue; it’s been British objections, chiefly, that have held it back. Can they make it work? There’s a lot to suggest they can’t; the construct may still be too artificial. But it’s certainly the most rational strategy for dealing with a rising China and India, a threatening Russia, state failure and collapse in the Islamic world, and a US that’s retreating inward. Perhaps necessity will make the rump EU work. I hope so.
It seems to me a more natural political unit than the EU with Britain. While the history of inter-European fratricide militates against the idea of integration and cooperation, in truth, the cultural differences among the European countries are almost trivial. To suggest that Italy and the Netherlands are so different that they couldn’t function as part of a federal state is an indulgence of the narcissism of small differences. This is especially obvious if you get off a plane anywhere in Europe having flown in from another continent — most European countries have a similar cultural heritage, are at the same stage (more or less) of economic development, are committed to roughly the same political values. There’s no real reason it couldn’t work, and lots of reasons to think pooling sovereignty on defense, and on some economic issues, would benefit everyone here.
It will be interesting to see how it goes. There is a common European identity, but is it enough to create a federal state? Open question.
Hmmm…the only ones I have any idea on are that the ones that say “neoliberal” are left since that’s a liberal buzzword.
I will concede the socialist’s point on the matter of the EU. The problem with it is that it is a half measure. A common currency, free trade bloc, with no mechanism to balance the very large disparity in productivity between north and south or more specifically Germany (and to a lesser degree France) and everyone else.
I lay this problem in Berlin for their insistence of having cake and eating it while the rest of the bloc begs crumbs from Germany.
Britain had it correct. Join the free trade zone, and retain its reserve currency, but the conflict between Brussell’s bureaucratic dreams and Germany’s fiscal demands will ultimately wreck the Euro Zone with the biggest damage done to Germany. Thankfully they are so overrun with migrants and moved so far to the left that I don’t think they are a militaristic threat any longer.
How unpopular do you think the EU is with the peoples of the important states in the EU?
What do you think is likely to make it less unpopular?
Do you think it matters to the legitimacy of the EU whether it will ever have rulers who could be called popular?
Do you think it likely any will emerge?
Do you think any version of the Germany-led EU can seem legitimate to the European peoples?
I don’t even know what to say it would take much more time than I have but I don’t think you understand how the EU works, or more appropriately, doesn’t work. It is trade protectionist to anyone outside the EU, it is an almost completely unelected and unaccountable bureaucratic nightmare. Do you know that trade negotiations between the UK and other countries, such as India are consistently Vetoed to protect companies inside the EU? There is very little about the EU that protects Liberty. As to many on the left that supported Brexit I cannot for sure say why except the immigration issue does cross party lines, more then the leaders of the left would want you to know, also a lot of money goes to the EU and they were promised it would be spent on the health service and schools, the left loves their welfare.
Some are not easy calls because they are brief, it is unclear if they approve of the outcome, or out of context they are presenting positions arguendo. Still, I’d be pretty surprised if my guesses proved fairly random.
I really don’t see what the confusion is. First, here in the US, the mainstream left is universally aghast at the result. The right cheers Brexit because it generally sees centralization as counterproductive social engineering at best and a source of deep corruption, cronyism, and paternalism when worse. The mainstream left does not see the cronyism but rather a tool for the best and brightest to govern rationally over the stupid & uneducated poor. Those hard left cheering Brexit do so because they have an Occupy Wall Street view of government motivation: they think the current panjandrums are part of the crony betrayal of the progressive dream.
Both right and hard left cheer Brexit because they see the corruption in centralization, but their prescriptions going forward remain vastly different. This is because the hard left thinks that the problem is not the system but the particular people in charge. The right objects to the system itself.
That the right and left cheer Brexit does not mean they have merged. Their arguments remain radically different.
Not an astounding success in its third generation!
Let’s add something. Frau Merkel has a position of authority unseen in Germany in a long time; the country’s running on a grand coalition that’s practically canceled politics. This is not likely to last forever; nor is it likely to be followed by an even more obedient electorate assenting quietly to an even more united administration. It looks to me like we’re going downhill so far as German authority is going–& I would not applaud German management of the European crisis…
Yes and we all know how accurate the polls are.
To address your introduction, Claire, are you also surprised to find the American right objecting to the increased centralization of Washington power and the unconstitutional usurpation of the prerogatives of the States? And the right’s cheering whenever, rare as it is, Washington gets slapped down by the courts or voters on this count? Because I can guarantee you that the left doesn’t mind Washington usurpation a bit.
I’m eager to see how I did on your quiz.
Well, I don’t suppose the polls are all wrong; what we have recently learned about the direction in which polls are wrong in Europe does not flatter the EU.
Now, how to get people to pay attention to this problem of unpopularity I don’t know. It just seems like people are intent for the sake of order on governing people without regard for the people governed…
But what were these same people saying before the vote??
Even people on the left can recognize what happened and talk about it – that doesn’t mean they approve or were in favor of Brexit.
“… the answers cannot merely be abstract nouns such as “austerity” or “globalisation”. We may as well blame the weather.”
Given how much is already blamed on “climate change”,many people are already blaming the weather.
The UK has been bargaining until now as part of the EU. The EU has signed extensive trade agreements with India; the value of EU-India trade grew from €28.6 billion in 2003 to €72.5 billion in 2014. Trade in services quadrupled in the past decade. The problem isn’t EU protectionism, it’s Indian protectionism, although the European Commission has secured some significant concessions recently: India suspended some of its preferential procurement policies in electronic goods and telecom products and opened the possibility of foreign ownership in the telecoms sector. The barriers are on India’s side, though.
As for unelected and unaccountable, that’s really a myth. Across nearly every measurable dimension, the EU is at least as democratic, and generally more so, than its member states. Any basic constitutional change in the EU requires unanimous consent from 27 member states, followed by domestic ratification – a threshold far higher than in any modern democracy, except maybe Switzerland. Legislation in Brussels has to surmount higher barriers than in any EU member’s national system. It has to secure: (a) consensual support from national leaders in the European Council before it can be placed on the agenda, (b) a formal proposal from a majority of the Commission, (c) a formal 2/3 majority (but in practice, a consensus) of weighted member state votes in the Council of Ministers, (d) a series of absolute majorities of the directly elected European parliament, and (e) transposition into national law by national bureaucrats or parliament. With so many actors in the mix, it’s utterly impossible for Brussels to legislate secretly, quickly, or in the interests of a single narrow group. It’s more transparent than any national government, not less.
Nearly every critical decision-maker – national leaders, national ministers, European parliamentarians, national parliamentarians – is directly elected. The European Parliament is comprised of directly elected members. Any European citizen can vote their representative out. European law is then translated into domestic law by the same national parliamentarians, officials and governments who handle domestic statutes. The only actors in the legislative process who aren’t directly elected, or directly responsible to someone who is, are European Commissioners and their officials. And the commission’s power has steadily declined in recent decades. Its ex ante agenda control has been overtaken by the European Council, which is directly elected, and control over amendments and compromises has been assumed by (directly elected) European Parliamentarians. Except in a few regulatory areas, such as competition policy, its authority is weak.
Certain decision-making bodies are insulated from direct democratic control: the European Central Bank, the European Court of Justice, competition authorities, trade negotiators and fraud investigators. But this is exactly the way it is in any country: They’re precisely the same governmental functions that national governments customarily insulate from popular pressure. That’s what’s meant by an “independent” judiciary, which is held to be a good thing, usually.
The arguments against it — which actually do work — are better.
Miss Berlinski, I am tempted to try my hand at witty remarks when I read yours above–but it seems to me you are completely devoid of irony just now.
Let me try a gentle reminder that as a matter of fact, the ratification of the Treaty of Lisbon after the failure of the proposed EU Constitution was entirely based on avoiding democratic votes, which were deemed a deadly risk, for good reasons, of course.
I shake my head at what you say. Was it really different with Maastricht?
There is always a non-zero chance of anything. Would you scale your estimate as one in ten, or more on the order of Poincare time?
The EU is not going to be more effective than the UN or NATO or MNF-I or CSTC-A or any of those other agglomerations at “taking the lead” in stabilizing anything until the argument prevails that the use of force is about force not argument. If Italy is invaded and feels like resisting, then willing assistance from real allies will supplant reluctant assistance from countries saying “I only joined this outfit for the
free collegetrade benefits.”Claire, your reflexive faith in larger and more complex institutions and systems is really gobsmacking. I can see why intellectuals are attracted to the complexity of the EU – it is precisely the same reason why accountants I know love the IRS’ tax code.
I am all for increased autonomy, self-determination, and competition between nations. Indeed, from a historical perspective one could argue that the reason Europe (and not China or someplace else) ended up dominating the world is because Europe had so many states competing with each other in so many ways and on so many fronts.
EU centralization does to Europe what a central Chinese government did to China: lock in the stasis. While Brexit is a step back in the direction of what made Europe so dynamic in the first place.
Successful national governance and economic growth would go a long way — it’s just too tempting for politicians to blame the EU for their own failures. Some humility would also go a long way. At some time in the near future, it would do the EU and Europe good were the EC to admit the Euro was a dangerous mistake, one that can’t be rectified, and call humbly for a restoration of national currencies. There’s no way that Greece or Italy is going to survive very much longer in a currency union. They should also admit honestly that Greece was cooking the books and they knew it, the responsibility is thus joint, and Greece should not be disproportionately punished.
Freedom of movement within the EU seems on the balance unpopular, and probably needs to be reconsidered.
Yes, probably. But I can’t see an obvious solution to that problem.
I find it hard to imagine, because anyone with a personality big enough to play that role would frighten too many people. What do you think?
Possibly. But it’s awkward: It was much easier for Germany to push for certain policies backed up by the UK than it will be for them to do that on their own. What do you think?
I think there is a snowball’s chance Germany goes back on the DMark.
I agree with your comments re Greece. Greece is a feckless debt ridden society, but its northern European drug/debt dealers do not have clean hands.