Economic Populism, America First, and Cheers for Gay People at the RNC

Source: The New York Times

Republican National Convention
We watched the final night of the Republican National Convention (RNC) and Donald Trump's acceptance speech so you didn't have to. Here's what you missed:

First, a Positive Disclaimer
I have a fantastically low bar when it comes to watching the two major parties. In effect, I'm expecting it to be uniformly bad. When it's not, I'm pleasantly surprised and those are the things that stand out to me. Naturally, that's what I emphasize in the analysis below as well. It's not that I don't notice the horrifying parts as well; I just take those as a given. If you'd prefer a more balanced or negative take, there is no shortage of apocalyptic overviews for you to seek out. Like this one.

Cheers for Gay People
One of the most encouraging aspects of the evening came from a risky inclusion in the speaking lineup--billionaire entrepreneur and libertarian-leaning Peter Thiel. You may be asking, what's one more billionaire amongst friends?

Well, Thiel was risky for a Republican convention because he's an openly gay man who was expected to address LGBTQ issues--not exactly the bread-and-butter of the GOP. After raucous disapproval of Ted Cruz the night before, there was a solid chance that Thiel would be greeted with boos when discussing his sexual orientation.

The exact opposite happened.

In the speech, Thiel chastised Republicans for getting distracted by "fake culture wars" in general and worrying about the North Carolina transgender bathroom kerfuffle in particular:

When I was a kid, the great debate was about how to defeat the Soviet Union. And we won. Now we are told that the great debate is about who gets to use which bathroom. This is a distraction from our real problems. Who cares?

Indeed.

Then, in what may have been the highlight of the night, Thiel declared his identity and received a standing ovation:

I am proud to be gay. I am proud to be a Republican. But most of all, I am proud to be an American.

That got loud applause at the RNC. And it was followed by chants of "USA! USA! USA!" It was as beautiful as either of the two major parties can be circa 2016.

A similar moment also occurred during Trump's own remarks after he discussed the Orlando shooting and vowed to protect the LGBTQ community from hateful ideologies. Cheers broke out, and Trump explicitly acknowledged them:

And I have to say, as a Republican, it is so nice to hear you cheering for what I just said. Thank you.

This line wasn't in the original draft of his speech. Apparently, Trump was as relieved as the rest of us that Thiel and the discussion of the LGBTQ community received a surprisingly positive reception.

America First
Trump's foreign policy comments remained predictably inconsistent in his acceptance speech. He vows to defeat ISIS quickly in one breath (implying an invasion of some sort), but then opposes nation-building and regime change. He opposes regime change, but can't stand the most prominent instance where diplomacy was used in lieu of regime change (Iran). He correctly blames Hillary Clinton for advocating the intervention that destroyed Libya, but then blames her--the woman who counted Egypt's former dictator Hosni Mubarak as a family friend--for supporting / engineering the Egyptian dictator's overthrow, which is clearly false. He also criticizes Obama for not drawing a firm "red line" on Syria, but had that "red line" been more firm, it would have meant regime change in Syria--which, again, Trump is supposed to oppose.

You get the idea. He can't help but contradict himself all over the place. Some of it's good, some of it's bad, and it can't all fit together. Given how obvious many of these contradictions are, one wonders how they persist. Do his advisers really not understand this? Or maybe it's just some form of political compromise to the hawkish elements of the party? Tough to say for sure.

What is clear, however, is that Trump is pushing the America First theme. This phrase, or some variant of it, occurred repeatedly in his remarks, as an explanation of his priorities on foreign policy and immigration. The term is historically associated with a prominent antiwar movement, and we have to believe Trump knows this. Whether he truly favors this approach, or is simply using it as a marketing ploy is anyone's guess. But it does bode well for the antiwar cause in the upcoming debates. He may not be consistent, but Trump is setting himself up to take the more peaceful stance relative to Hillary Clinton.

Also worth noting here is another great line from Peter Thiel's speech: "It's time to end the era of stupid wars and rebuild America."

Incredibly, that was an applause line at the RNC. One wonders if similar remarks will be heard at the Democratic National Convention, given their nominee.

Economic Populism and Outreach
Another major theme of the evening was economic populism. Trump may want to cut taxes (at least in this speech), but that shouldn't be confused with him wanting to shrink the size of government. Quite the opposite.

Trump's daughter Ivanka highlighted the (highly misleading) idea of a gender wage gap in her speech, attributing it primarily to challenges faced by working mothers. In response, Trump plans to advocate for an affordable child care system and possibly new employment laws preventing discrimination. While superficially appealing, it's not likely these will work well in practice. Do you want to send your kids to the daycare equivalent of the VA? I didn't think so.

Trump's own speech naturally focused on bad trade deals. Light on details but heavy on emotional appeal, he vowed not to sign another deal that harmed workers, and that American companies who tried to shift jobs overseas would face consequences.

Given this mood, you may not be surprised to learn that Trump was making very direct appeals to the Bernie Sanders voters, by favorably referencing the Democrat's populist candidate multiple times. He also referred to the economic plight of African-Americans and Latinos at a couple places in the speech, emphasizing how his policies would help them and all Americans suffering from the "rigged political and economic" system. Of course, this was a theme that Sanders drove home often as well.

With the exception of tax cuts and a few half-hearted nods to deregulation, Trump's economic policies will turn out poorly. But politically, that does not matter. Last night, Trump committed to branding himself as the candidate of the working man--his policies, his rhetoric, and even the personal anecdotes shared by the other speakers were all designed to convey this message.

The End of #ImWithHer

Trump concluded the evening by coining a response to Hillary's ubiquitous slogan #ImWithHer. Instead, Trump offered a different pledge to the American people: I'm with you.

Love him or hate him, this was brilliant.

In effect, it says that Hillary is in this race to just enhance her own personal power and influence and her supporters are pawns to help her achieve this end. On the other hand, Trump is the candidate who is in the race for selfless reasons, just to fight for the American people. Again, it doesn't matter whether you actually think this is true or not; it's a powerful message that fits his strategy.

And if I was a betting man--that is, if it was not illegal for me to wager large sums of money on political outcomes--I'd bet that Trump's strategy is going to work.

Hate, Rage, and "Others"
Disclaimer in mind, Trump's remarks were more moderate and more positive than I expected. The Hillary campaign already issued its verdict, which is exactly what you'd expect, summarizing it as "more fear, more division, more anger, more hate". 

And to be sure, there was some of that. But not as much as you'd think.

Trump still wants a wall and is still worried about illegal immigration. He also called to stop all immigration from countries where terrorism is rampant. But in both cases, his remarks were less categorical than usual.

On immigration, he was no longer fixated on all ~11 million illegal immigrants estimated to be in the country. Instead, his focus was on some 180,000 who were illegal immigrants that committed crimes. One might question what crimes are included and whether this number is right, but this is clearly an improvement over calling for all illegal immigrants to be deported. Similarly, on the terrorism question, he no longer called for a ban on Muslims as such, he wanted it to be based on country. That position won't win any points with libertarians, but it is certainly better than banning people explicitly based on their religion.

In Trump's worldview, at least as expressed last night, the relevant distinction is not (legal) immigrant or non-immigrant; not black, white, or Latino; not Evangelical Christian or LGBTQ. It is American or not American. And he wants to put Americans first. 

Of course, nationalism has a dark side too. If Trump ultimately wins, we may be reminded just how dark it can be. But last night, nationalism convinced a room full of conservative Republicans to cheer enthusiastically for gay people. I say that's worth celebrating.

Reject the Nationalism of Bernie Sanders

One of the central principles in Bernie Sanders's campaign for the Presidency is a belief in equality. It lies at the heart of his critique of the American economic system and the billionaire class. It's part of his criticism of the healthcare system in which poor people cannot access the same kind of treatment as richer individuals. It's also fundamental to his criticism of the criminal justice system, in which poorer individuals and minorities tend to be treated differently and worse.

In short, it's everywhere.

But a closer examination reveals that Bernie doesn't really believe in equality for everyone. He only believes in equality for Americans. Bernie Sanders is a nationalist as surely as Donald Trump is. And thinking people should oppose this.

Before we get into the details of this argument, let's first address some likely objections.

The other candidates are nationalists too. Why pick on Bernie?
It's certainly true that Bernie Sanders is not the only candidate that's a nationalist. We're focusing on Bernie because he is perceived to be consistent and principled in a way the others are not. Additionally, Bernie's degree of alleged consistency is sometimes compared to Ron Paul, which I for one, find to be a grave distortion of reality.

Bernie is running to be President of the USA, not to lead the UN.
Obviously true. But we must acknowledge that many policies that are allegedly in the interest of Americans are directly opposed to the interests of citizens of other countries. My purpose is to argue that any sincere belief in equality requires one to care about their interests as well.

Those issues aside, we'll proceed by first defining equality, and then highlight two policy positions that highlight Bernie's indifference to it.

Defining Equality

For the sake of this discussion, we'll adopt a definition that is hopefully acceptable to libertarians and liberals alike. Thus, a belief in equality means supporting equal treatment and equal consideration of an individual's interests. By equal treatment, we're referring primarily to treatment under the law. So, for example, we want a white person and black person to be accorded the same due process rights. By equal consideration of interests, we mean acknowledging that like interests should be treated the same. But we also must acknowledge that some types of interests are inherently superior. For instance, a Lockheed Martin executive's interest in making a profit by selling bombs to the US government is clearly inferior to a civilian's interest in not being struck by said bombs and remaining alive.*

So why do we believe in equality? There may be many good answers to that question, but the answer is most definitely not that we believe all people are literally equal. Our experience in life disproves this on a daily basis. Whether we consider charisma, intelligence, creativity, height, etc., the fact is all people are not equal. It's also true that we can statistical trends across different races or ethnicities as well (e.g. people of German or African dissent tend to be taller than Chinese people). But in spite of this, most of us still think they should be accorded the same basic respect and treatment.

The real reason is because we don't believe in punishing or treating people differently based on factors outside of their control. That's the essence Martin Luther King's dream one day people "will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." You can't control your race, ethnicity, or many other characteristics you are born with, so you shouldn't be treated worse as a result of them. You can only control your actions, so that's the only thing you can be judged on.

Of course, there are some of these basic characteristics that we have some control over, but the barriers to doing so are pretty high. People do change religion, for example, but the enduring geographic distribution of religions suggests most people stick to whatever they were born with. Similarly, some people now physically change their sex, but doing so requires a significant amount of money. Again for the most part, people remain whatever they were born as. Thus, many people (as well as US law) treat these things as a given and hold that members of any group should be offered the same basic treatment and respect as anyone else.**

I would argue that nationality belongs in this same category. People can't control where they are born. And they can only change their nationality after great personal expense and successfully navigating often complicated immigration rules. If we accept this principle then it follows that at least, ethically, we cannot prioritize the interests of Americans over others and still remain consistent with our belief in equality.

And note that the fact you or I happen to be American is not a defense. To see this, consider the following phrase: "Well, I favor Americans because I'm American." When you replace American with white, Christian, etc., you realize you have the exact same justification as every powerful group that has ever persecuted a minority. Clearly, that's not an argument we can embrace.

So if you want to be consistent and you really believe in equality, that belief has to extend to people beyond US borders.

Bernie's Nationalism
All of this brings us back to Bernie Sanders. One of the major platforms of Bernie's campaign is his opposition to major international trade deals. There are good reasons one might oppose these deals, if they gave handouts to established corporations for instance. But this is not Bernie's focus. Rather, his concern is that these trade policies have driven down American wages and cost US jobs. And in certain industries, this is probably true.

But why did this happen? Well, people in China and Mexico and elsewhere were willing to work for a lower wage. And given that both of these countries have a lower standard of living than the US, we should assume that the average person there was actually more desperate. Thus, on what ethical basis can we prioritize the American's interest over theirs? I would argue there isn't one. And this is particularly true when one acknowledges the dramatic increases in productivity created by freer trade, that have made all of us richer on average.

Now a potential objection here may be the working conditions in these other countries. And to be sure, they probably are worse than the prevailing conditions in the US. But unless we assume the workers in these countries are being forced against their will to do so,*** that means these individuals perceive a low-wage job in less-than-ideal conditions to be the best opportunity available to them. We can be sad about that. But it still means that denying them that opportunity would make them worse off.

Moving beyond economic policy to foreign policy, this distinction becomes even more clear. To take one example, Bernie Sanders has said that he will continue the use of drone assassinations. This is a policy that has undeniably killed many civilians, and none of the actual targets are ever proven guilty anyway. So even in the best case scenario, the drone program amounts to assassination based on probable cause for the target. And for the inevitable bystanders, it's assassination based on their association with an alleged bad actor.

In contrast, Sanders has made criminal justice reform a key platform position in the US. He has specifically focused on ending police brutality and disparate sentencing against minorities by the criminal justice system. And he has also expressed opposition to the death penalty in general.

Obviously, it goes without saying that these views are basically impossible to reconcile. Is capital punishment no longer capital punishment when it's done by a missile instead of a syringe? Is there an Arab exception for due process that I don't know about? If there was an alleged terrorist sitting in Central Park, should we drone strike them?

The questions answer themselves. The difference between drone assassinations and police brutality, is that one set of victims are Americans living in America. The others are not.  That's nationalism at work.

Summing Up
As we said at the outset, Bernie's nationalism is not unique among presidential candidates. He's only unique in that he's perceived as holding consistent principles, while the others are not. But a closer examination reveals that Bernie's not consistent either, and his candidacy shows us how nationalism is fundamentally incompatible with a belief in equality.

*The general formulation is an extension of the one offered by Peter Singer in "All Animals Are Equal," which is really an exceptionally thought-provoking piece even if you don't buy the full vegan argument.

**I'm here assuming that the growing trend of Islamophobia consists primarily of people that weren't too concerned with equality in the abstract beforehand. And again, I'm using equality in the narrowly defined way above.

***I'm not denying here that this may exist in some cases and some countries. But by and large, the scandals surrounding outsourced labor that I'm aware of relate primarily to poor working conditions rather than slavery.