RUTHFULLY YOURS

Pacts such as the TPP find expression in long and complex documents because all parties know the others are predisposed to cheating. And cheat they do. Unlike Donald Trump, those now lambasting his position on tariffs refuse to accept that genuinely free trade is no better than a fairy tale.

When Donald Trump announced the imposition of tariffs on steel and aluminium many conservative commentators – some of whom I suspect have never been within cooee of an economics text – became free-market economists overnight. I heard some bringing Adam Smith into the frame in support of free trade. Now it is true to say that Smith favoured ‘free trade’ but with more nuance than those who casually drop his name.

Like most people who studied economics I read some of Smith’s work but not much of it. The late, great economist Mark Blaug in his book Economic Theory in Retrospect spoofed the notional man who laboured through every word of The Wealth of Nations before revealing his view that there “probably never was any such man.”

That said, it’s a safe bet that Blaug read a lot more of Smith’s magnus opus than most economists of the past and infinitely more than the current breed. He makes the point that Smith supported free trade but also understood that “protectionist measures are justified…in retaliation against foreign tariffs.” There, you see, fair trade. Trump and Smith in furious agreement.

This is my view. Those who spout the free-trade mantra live in fairyland. They simply don’t know what they are talking about. There is no such thing as free trade between independent nations.

Free-trade deals find expression in long and complex documents. They are long and complex because of a litany of carve-outs and also because each side knows that the other is predisposed to cheating. And cheat they do.

Does anyone think that a US vehicle manufacturer setting up shop in Mexico doesn’t get a sweetheart deal from the Mexican government? Does anyone think that China operates in the best traditions of laissez-faire? And where are the purists in arguing for dismantling the plethora of barriers that every country puts around its agricultural sector? Let me repeat for the benefit of so-called free traders: there is no such thing as free trade.

What is the truth about international trade? On the whole, without doubt, it has been enormously beneficial. But, like many beneficial things, it should not be embraced willy-nilly or lauded beyond its potential bounty.

International trade provides scope for all sides to reap gains as specialisation increases the total quantity and quality of the output of goods and services. However, the distribution of these benefits between countries is indeterminate; in the sense that economic theory offers no reliable way of predicting the outcome.

At a recent literary festival it was not enough for those who disagreed with a fellow speaker merely to protest her words and sentiments. Rather, they assaulted patrons and filled the air with threats and menaces while the police, as usual, did nothing. Free speech, it seems, is now a public nuisance

It is difficult to estimate the strength of the tide against free speech in the Western world: in other words to navigate safely between the Scylla of panic and the Charybdis of complacency. But recently I have had two experiences that suggest to me that our attachment to freedom of speech is by no means so strong as to be unbreakable, and that those who wish to restrict it are a good deal more active and passionate, though not necessarily more numerous, than are those who want to defend it. In a world of monomaniacs, the reasonably balanced man, the man who sees the world as “so various, so beautiful, so new”, is at a perpetual disadvantage, engaged as he is on asymmetric (and boring) warfare against the fanatics of the latest mad orthodoxy.

Our current monomania is that of transsexualism which, as with all modern monomanias, is like the dawn that comes up like thunder outer Berkeley ’crost the Bay. Yesterday, for example, I read in the Times that the National Association of Head Teachers in Britain has issued “guidance” (the kind that communist dictators used to issue when they visited locomotive repair workshops or sausage factories, their words of wisdom on every subject being taken down by scribes), to the effect that there should be books in all schools for children under the age of eleven about “transgender” parents, and that “trans people, their issues and experiences”, should be “celebrated across the school”. This raises the interesting question of how exactly one celebrates transsexualism: dancing round a maypole hung with packets of oestrogen or testosterone, perhaps?

College rape has become a national scandal. We are constantly informed that female students live in peril of being sexually assaulted in proportions that defy statistical credibility. Recently, for example, Andrea Horwath, Ontario NDP leader, claimed on national television that the university is a dangerous place since one in three female students will be sexually assaulted. No crime on the planet has such a victimization rate which, if true, would require something approaching martial law to redress.

In any event, the NDP leader is bravely confronting the danger as she visits various campuses prior to the provincial elections. Andrea, however, judging from a recent appearance on CBC TV, is safe.

Thanks to such unseemly advocates and their emasculated brethren (who proliferate in the political, academic and legal professions from which their careers or ideological agendas materially advance), the rape meme has spread throughout the U.S. and Canada with bubonic rapidity. The real victims of the plague, however, are not female students but circumstantial evidence and common sense.

Let’s consider. What responsible parent would send his or her daughter to university if she stood a 33% chance of being sexually assaulted and her life potentially ruined? Or would not labor to find an institution where she might conceivably emerge unscathed from her studies? And why, for that matter, would female students now outnumber their male counterparts by a significant number and graduate in greater numbers as well, which MIT economists David Autor and Melanie Wasserman in their 2013 study, The Emerging Gender Gap in Labor Markets and Education, call a “tectonic shift” in the educational landscape? The disparity is approximately 60-40 and, in some departments like English, as high as 80-20.

Not long ago I waited for a flight to board. The plane took off 45 minutes late. There were only two attendants to accommodate 11 passengers who had requested wheelchair assistance.

Such growing efforts to ensure that the physically challenged can easily fly are certainly welcome. But when our plane landed—late and in danger of causing many passengers to miss their connecting flights—most of the 11 wheelchair-bound passengers left their seats unassisted and hurried out. It was almost as if newfound concerns about making connections had somehow improved their health during the flight.

Two passengers had boarded with two dogs each. No doubt the airlines’ policy of allowing an occasional dog on a flight is understandable. But now planes are starting to sound and smell like kennels.

Special blue parking placards were initially a long-overdue effort to help the disabled. But these days, the definition of “disabled” has so expanded that a large percentage of the population can qualify for special parking privileges—or cheat in order to qualify.

In California, 26,000 disabled parking placards are currently issued to people over 100 years of age, even though state records list only about 8,000 living centenarians.

Current crises such as homelessness and illegal immigration did not start out as much of a public concern.

Originally, progressive politicians felt that cities should bend their vagrancy laws a bit to allow some of the poor to camp on the sidewalks. Bathroom and public health issues were considered minor, given the relatively small pool of so-called “street people.”

Heinz gets by with a mere 57 varieties, while the latest fashion in human sexuality purports to discern 112 strains of gender. What academics and activists won’t acknowledge is the injustice of conventional women being bulldozed by a 6’6″ ruckperson formerly known as Bruce.

These days you can find ‘educated people’ correcting you if you use the word ‘sex’ to refer to either of the two categories which divide humans (and most other beings) according to their reproductive function. Do you mean “gender” they will say. Hmm? The fairer gender?

You will read John Stuart Mill’s essay on The Subjection of Women without once coming across the word gender. Plenty of “sex” no “gender.” Gender is a modern construction when applied biologically to distinguish men from women. It has caught on because it lends itself to fragmentation. Sex is binary. Gender, apparently, can be a continuum of finely divided sexual orientations.

Those in the know claim there are many complex gender variations among folk on the planet. As I am not one of those in the know I Googled. Prominently, on the first page of search results, was a site, apath.org. It listed 63 genders broken down by physicality, personality, preference and descriptor. For example, number 57 was an “Androgyne, female-attracted hermaphromale.” Mindboggling.

Another site lifehacker.com.au was less ambitious in referring to a Queensland University survey which listed in less exotic terms 33 different genders. Even so, the meaning of descriptors such as neutrois, genderqueer, demigender, and trigender, are not immediately obvious (to me). I re-Googled with a slightly different query. Up popped Tumblr, wherein ambition knows no prosaic bounds. Tumblr is a social-network blogging site; which, I concede, heretofore, has escaped my attention. On my count, it lists 112 different gender types. Maybe it’s a spoof? I would like to think so. Take the first one on the list.

“Abimegender: a gender that is profound, deep, and infinite; meant to resemble when one mirror is reflecting into another mirror creating an infinite paradox.”

This and most other of their gender types are even more mysterious to me than are cryptocurrencies and blockchains. I am out of my depth and must move on.

What I am moving onto is men’s and women’s sports, which I do understand. Or I did. Now I have a deep sense of unease about the whole business of sex-segregated sports. Even mixed doubles in tennis is open to interpretation as to how mixed it is or has to be.

No person chooses their parents, their place of birth, their nationality or their color. We have no say as to whether we will be born to a rich family or a poor one, to an educated or uneducated one. We are not given options as to physical or mental attributes. As Justice Thomas said, we must play the hand we are dealt.

Certainly, some are more privileged, but that has been true throughout history. However, almost all immigrants to America, whether they came in the 17thCentury or the 21st, emigrated because they were poor and persecuted. But early settlers did not consider themselves victims. They couldn’t. They would not have survived. Through belief in themselves, hard work and perseverance, they converted difficult circumstances into opportunities. In Justice Thomas’ words, they played well the hand they were dealt. Some failed, but most succeeded. Had they not, we would not now have the country we have.

Setting aside the role chance plays, success is a function of aspiration, creativity, tenacity, hard work, risk-taking and being opportunistic – a “can-do,” positive spirit. Justice Thomas grew up in the Jim Crow South, with few options open to poor, rural blacks. He never knew his father, and when his mother’s home was destroyed by fire he went to live with his grandparents on their hard-scrabble farm. Every critic of Justice Thomas – and they are legion among progressives – should read his memoir, My Grandfather’s Son, so as to understand the obstacles this man overcame. A bust of his grandfather, a dirt-poor Georgian with nine months of education, sits in his office. It is inscribed with his grandfather’s favorite quote: “Old Man Can’t is dead. I helped bury him.” His grandfather was victimized against but was not a victim.

When you think about America, what do you see? A society falling apart at the seams. A government unable to represent anyone but the rich and powerful.

From the standpoint of the #MeToo movement, the wrong country was banned from the Olympics. It should have been the US, not Russia. According to MeToo women, the US Olympic Committee and USA Gymnastics covered up Larry Nassar’s sexual abuse of US athletes for years. In contrast, the Russian doping scandal appears to be an orchestration by Washington as part of its ongoing policy to isolate Russia.

The entire story of systematic government-sponsored doping of Russian athletes rests essentially on the unconfirmed story of one person—the person running the alleged doping program. Curiously, this person fled Russia to the US and “confessed.” He is hidden somewhere under US protection. Why would the person running a doping program do this?

Perhaps because it wasn’t a state-sponsored program, and authorities were hot on his heels. Did he confess to Americans so as not to be handed over to the Russians for prosecution?

Some of the Russian-bashers claim that more evidence comes from non-doping Russian athletes who claimed they were disadvantaged by the state doping program. This means that they were not included in the program. How then could it have been an all-inclusive state-sponsored program?

The Court of Arbitration for Sport has cleared many of the banned Russian athletes of the false charge. Nevertheless the International Olympic Committee refused to admit the cleared athletes to the games. Faced with the intrusion of US foreign policy into the Olympic games, the court’s spokesperson backed off. He said that the absence of any evidence of the athletes’ guilt does not mean that the athletes are innocent. In other words, guilty by accusation until proven innocent.

Is there any Western institution that is not corrupt?

When President Trump raised the issue yesterday, his comments were either derided or ignored by pundits. But he had a point.

Since the mass shooting in Parkland, Fla., a considerable amount of energy has understandably been expended on the matter of which guns should be available to whom and when. But it is striking that the president’s comments on Thursday about film and video-game violence have been either derided or glossed over. They are worth lingering on.

Most of us probably inhabit a kind of bubble when it comes to violence on screen. We choose to watch the sorts of films we think we’ll like and, unless we are film critics, get to avoid the sorts of films we think will bore or repel us. Until we become parents, most of us probably pay no particular attention to the drip-feed of blood and gore that now forms the basis of almost all popular entertainment.

As it happens, I’ve had to be on a lot of planes recently, and have used some of the time to watch movies I would never otherwise seek out. Apart from concluding that the Oscars shouldn’t award anyone for anything this year (can’t the whole thing just be called off?), I have mainly been repulsed at the extreme violence (often mixed with the most crass “sexiness”) that seems now to be the cinematic norm.

I could describe the sheer awfulness of Charlize Theron in Atomic Blonde, a long-legged female spy dispatching her male foes in gruesome fashion between coolly pouring herself drinks, but I didn’t make it to the end. Far worse was a film I did slog all the way through, Kingsman 2. I won’t bother to explain the risible plot, but it is presented as a sort of cooler, wryer, modern take on James Bond. Certainly all the advertising for it, the cast, and the buttons it presses make it clear that it is not aimed at an adult audience. I was surprised at the opening to see that it had an R rating, not least because I had heard people (including an air-stewardess) talking about having taken their children to see it.

A culture that encourages enjoyment of horrific violence alongside a sort of flippant approach to its consequences cannot be helping matters.

The month was one of extremes, reminding me of Jim McKay’s signature words about the dozen Olympics he covered: “The thrill of victory. And the agony of defeat.” The month’s news swung between the glory of the Olympics, the tragedy in Parkland, Florida and the return of volatility to Wall Street.

The Olympics showed us at our best, whether in victory or in defeat. For the first time in twenty years, the women’s hockey team won gold. We saw compassion when Brita Sigourney embraced her teammate Annalisa Drew, when the former beat the latter for the bronze in the freestyle skiing halfpipe. The worst of America was seen in Nikolas Cruz, as he shot seventeen people at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas high School in Parkland, Florida. The horrific incident also brought out heroes, like 15-year-old Anthony Borges who took five bullets, while saving 20 classmates and football coach Aaron Feis who died saving students and teacher Scott Beigel who died opening the door of his classroom to let in students. There were others. (See my TOTD, “Another School Shooting,” February 22). I hope we resolve this, without naiveté as to causes and without imposing police-state-like conditions. No one should live in fear, least of all children.

The dog-bites-man story of the month is the continuing saga of Russia meddling in our election. The hypocrisy and hyperventilation by the liberal press reminds one of Claude Rains in “Casablanca” – they were “shocked, shocked” that Russia would meddle in our elections. Of course Russians do. They have for decades. It is what propagandists do. The Kremlin is less interested in outcomes, than in making our democracy appear weak and ineffectual – to sow discord. They have succeeded. Exhibit A, B and C are the front pages of the New York Times and the Washington Post, TV news shows like CNN, MSNBC and Fox News, and late-night comedians like Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert. Meddling served Russia’s purpose: an ineffectual Congress and a polarized people. We have been guilty of the same. Think of Thomas Jefferson’s support for the French Revolution, or the CIA disrupting/influencing elections from South America to South East Asia, or the role of Radio Free Europe during the Cold War. President Obama campaigned against the re-election of Benjamin Netanyahu in 2015 and for Brexit in 2016. Nevertheless, meddling in others’ elections is a violation of international and U.S. law, something we must guard against. If not doing so already, we should deploy our best crypto-security specialists to counter Russian activity.

This is an edited version of a lecture given at the Holy Land Dialogues in Jerusalem last month.

It has become the orthodoxy in the West that freedom, human rights and reason all derive from secularism and that the greatest threat to all these good things is religion.

I want to suggest that the opposite is true. In the service of this orthodoxy, the West is undermining and destroying the very values which it holds most dear as the defining characteristics of a civilised society.

War is being waged against Western culture from within which is in essence a war against Christianity and its moral origins in the Hebrew Bible. By attacking these Biblical foundations in the name of reason and human rights, the culture warriors of secularism are sawing off the branch on which they sit. The only way to defend Western civilisation is to reaffirm and restore its Biblical foundations. My argument is a development of ideas I first explored in my 2012 book The World Turned Upside Down: The Global Battle over God, Truth and Power.

We are living in an era which extols reason, science and human rights. These are said to be essential for progress, a civilised society and the betterment of humanity. Religion is said to be their antithesis, the source instead of superstitious mumbo-jumbo, oppression and backward-thinking.

Some of this hostility is being driven by the perceived threat from Islamic terrorism and the Islamisation of Western culture. However, this animus against religion has far deeper roots and can be traced back to what is considered the birthplace of Western reason, the 18th-century Enlightenment.

Actually, it goes back specifically to the French Enlightenment. In England and Scotland, the Enlightenment developed reason and political liberty within the framework of Biblical belief. In France, by contrast, anti-clericalism morphed into fundamental hostility to Christianity and to religion itself.

“Ecrasez l’infame,” said Voltaire (crush infamy) — the infamy to which he referred being not just the Church but Christianity, which he wanted to replace with the religion of reason, virtue and liberty, “drawn from the bosom of nature”.
But this Enlightenment did not remove religion so much as pervert it. It took millenarian fantasies, the idea that the perfection of the world was at hand, and it secularised them. Instead of God producing heaven on earth, it would be mankind which would bring that about. Reason would create the perfect society and “progress” was the process by which utopia would be attained.

Far from utopia, however, this thinking resulted in something more akin to hell on earth. For the worship of man through reason led straight to totalitarianism. It was reason that would redeem religious superstition and bring about the kingdom of Man on earth. And just like medieval apocalyptic Christian belief, this secular doctrine would also be unchallengeable and heretics would be punished. This kind of fanaticism infused the three great tyrannical movements that were spun out of Enlightenment thinking: the French Revolution, Communism and Fascism.