National Review has sunk to a new low by publishing this unsupported and unsupportable hatchet job in "The Week":
Mike Huckabee’s rising poll numbers make him the exciting new face in the presidential race, much as Fred Thompson was in the spring. But let’s get serious. Huckabee was an undistinguished governor; both Romney and Giuliani had more executive accomplishments. Huckabee has a better feel for the public’s concerns over health care and wage stagnation than other Republicans; but his distinctive solutions, such as protectionism, would be terrible public policy. Some conservatives fantasize that Huckabee would expand the Republican coalition. But as Patrick Buchanan demonstrated, the blue-collar protectionist voters that populism attracts do not make up for the free-market voters it repels. Huckabee isn’t even the complete social conservative he has been made out to be: He opposes school vouchers. Huckabee is a compelling orator. Would that he had more compelling things to say.
(By the way, the only assertion of fact here--"he opposes school vouchers"--is factually wrong. All the rest is an inflammatory statement of opinion.)
Why is National Review being so negative about Huckabee, when he is 100% solidly pro-life and pro-family, doesn't support the horrid violation of the 1st Amendment that is the McCain-Feingold Act, and is an effective and genuinely likable spokesman for conservative ideals and against big-government disasters like Hillarycare?
I think it is because the popularity of Huckabee highlights the ongoing breakdown of fusionism, which is National Review's foundational philosophy.
What is fusionism, you might ask? It is fusing together two distinct dogmatic beliefs: the invisible hand of free markets will always result in the greatest economic good, and personal moral conduct should be governed by standards revealed by the Judeo-Christian religions.
The odd thing about fusionism is that when you accept the proposition that free markets always produce the greatest economic good, you must reject the idea that government economic policies should ever be governed by standards revealed by Judeo-Christian morals. Government should not show any special care for widows and orphans: the free market is the tide that lifts all boats, and anyone left without a boat must simply hope for some non-governmental charitable act to save them.
In other words, under fusionism, we take our religion into the public square, except we leave it at the market door. There's a great deal of tension inherent in this view, especially since Judeo-Christian morals teach us lessons of corporate responsibility to lift up those who are economically vulnerable.
Moreover, pure, Darwinian free markets are on a cataclysmic collision course with the traditional family. In our post-agrarian society, children are no longer an economic asset for parents. Instead, they are a huge economic drain, in direct costs and opportunity costs for parents who can't devote themselves as much to their jobs. Our industrial and service-oriented economic system rewards the childless and the people who focus on work outside the home. The economic incentives are all wrong when it comes to families. As Jennifer Roback Morse has argued well, the laissez-faire family doesn't work.
The internal contradictions in fusionism have always been fairly evident, but somehow it still worked for a long time. When many women still stayed at home to raise children and the government tried to control prices, the push toward a more laissez-faire economic policy actually helped families. But today is a different story. Wages have been depressed because of so many more women working (and unchecked immigration), housing prices are out of reach for many middle class families in many areas now, good jobs are moving overseas, the entry ticket to a middle class job (the college degree) gets much more expensive every year, and the retiring Baby Boomers are about to crush the economic future of our children. Unless we change the economic incentives for families, we're on track for the demographic winter that is already crushing Europe.
National Review sometimes acknowledges these issues--particularly Mark Steyn, who often writes about our demographic doom. And a couple years back there was the "crunchie con" edition, acknowledging the conservatives who want to "act local" to reclaim traditional families and communities and resist the dehumanizing trends of globalism. But just as often, or more often, they publish articles in which rising personal consumption is presented as a good thing, and any limits on globalism as apostasy.
Huckabee takes the side of Mark Steyn and the crunchie cons, and says No to Darwinism in all its forms. He isn't a fusionist, he's just conservative. Conserving life, conserving the environment, conserving family bonds. And by golly, the people of faith in America like that! What if the conservatives don't need the extreme economic liberals (in the old sense of the word liberal) to form a governing coalition? What is the future of fusionism then?
Perhaps there isn't much of one. In which case, there may not be much of a future for fusionism's greatest herald, National Review.
5 comments:
Great article!! I kept wondering why National Review presented Huckabee so negatively but couldn't rationalize it until I read the part about fusionism. I think you've nailed it! It explains why lots of the fiscons are being negative about Huckabee, including some at the Weekly Standard. Awesome post! I'll definitely be bookmarking your blog!
Brenda
In this age of globalization, I cannot understand the support of absolute free markets unless your interests are also purely global and not for our nation and its communities. If you have purely free markets on a global scale, there is no guarantee for a thriving economy in America. I am far from being any kind of economic expert, so if my humble opinion is off base, please explain it to me. In our situation, my husband works for a corporation that used to be proud to slap "Made in U.S.A." stickers on its products. Now he spends a great deal of time in China, or on the phone with someone in China, or e-mailing someone in China because more and more of the product line is being made in China. And I know this company is far from being the only one. I believe it is one of the only ones in its industry that still has a factory in the USA. That factory is expected to have about three more years until the entire product line is made in Asia. The budget for my husband's department is tied to the US factory. We have no idea what our future holds. I'm glad that our hope is in the Lord and not this company! But where is this leaving America's factories, communities, and families? We don't want to move to Asia (if my husband were ever asked), we are citizens of America and want to live here. I see a need for protectionism unless we move to some global, socialistic solution. Perhaps I'm way off base in my understanding, but Huckabee's position of fair trade seems very important to me.
Karen,
Your humble opinion is not far off base, at least not if you define "a thriving economy" as meaning that most people can make a decent living (as opposed to a high GDP but most of the wealth goes to a privileged few and the rest are struggling to make ends meet).
The global economy requires our nation's leaders to strike a tricky balance in the nation's interest. On the one hand, if we can sell goods and services to huge, expanding economies in Asia (like China and India), that is a big positive for American workers. Furthermore, as Huckabee points out, when goods are produced cheaper, that means our dollars go further, so we can enjoy a better standard of living on the same budget. But the dark side of globalism is if the net effect of trade is to lose more jobs to Asia than we gain and/or the competition from overseas depresses wages at home. We also learned this year about the dangers of products that are not adequately tested for safety. Good policy seeks the right level and conditions of trade that will most benefit the nation, while recognizing that we can't always get our perfect preferences because every other nation is trying to do the same thing.
What most annoys me about National Review is that they call Huckabee "protectionist," when really all he's doing is acknowledging the delicate balancing act. Real protectionism (such as Pat Buchanan advocated) mean imposing tarrifs on foreign goods. Huckabee doesn't advocate that. Huckabee's main point about globalism is that we need to fix our tax system and health care system which are putting us at a competitive disadvantage. In other words, these problems are the main reason we're losing jobs or depressing wages instead of enjoying net benefits from trade. He also advocates subsidies for farmers to put them on a fair playing field with farmers who are subsidized in the rest of the world, and reducing our dependence on foreign oil, particularly because our oil purchases subsidize many dangerous dictatorships who pose a clear and present danger to our national security and world peace. Truly, Huckabee is a FAIR trade candidate, not an ANTI-trade candidate.
Thanks for your response. Just one more reason that I like Mike!
"An undistinguished Governor"
Didn't Mike receive Governor of the Year? That's about one of the most distinguished honors given to Governors? Or so I thought...but who am I? Just the elephant in the room.
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