Beware Of Prosperity
I normally don’t respond to these “anti-market fundamentalism” articles much anymore. If only because, after awhile, they all become just one guy screaming “now markets work here but government has made sure they don’t work somewhere else and as such they cannot work anywhere.” At some point, you just have to realize that you can’t reason with unreasonable people and leave these people alone.
However, Gavin Wax — President Of The New York Young Republicans Club — has given me an article worth responding to.
It started when Wax said the following on Twitter:
An entire generation of Italians are dying. They survived the war and rebuilt the nation post Fascism. When a society forgets to love and protect their elderly that society loses its soul.
They forgot to “love and protect their elderly”? Are you high? Italy has done one of the most aggressive quarantines in all of Europe! Videos have been leaked of people living in the same houses as people who have died of the coronavirus for days on end because they are unable to leave their house!
And the “entire generation of Italians” that are dying were going to die anyway. The average age of people who have died of COVID19 in Italy is 80, the life expectancy in Italy is 82.
Anyway, Candace Owens said this was nonsensical and pointed out how everything is going upside down. As Wax explains:
“We have spent the last couple of years listening to socialists and leftists say that our borders should be porous. Overnight, we are seeing them turn into conservatives, and they want the border shut down by any means possible,” Owens claimed on her Periscope, giving no examples to substantiate her argument.
“On the flip side of that, we are having conservatives who have been screaming about the necessity for individual freedom, for free market and capitalism, almost transform into socialists overnight in terms of what they want for the government to do to solve this issue,” she added.
That’s a perfectly valid point! When you base your entire worldview on the people you don’t like being hypocrites (remember the scandal of AOC using Uber?) then the least the general public should demand is that you are not one.
But here’s the part that made me want to respond to this column:
Such libertarian cheap shots demonstrate Owens’ lack of understanding of what it means to be a modern conservative. True conservatism recognizes that the government’s first responsibility is the safety and well-being of its citizens — hence President Trump’s America First doctrine. Conservatives believe in free markets, but not at the expense of everything else. Free markets are merely a means to provide prosperity to as many people as possible. But America is a nation of people, not a series of economic cogs with dollar signs etched into their foreheads.
Wax also links to that article by Haivry and Hazony from almost three years ago that every other nationalist has read and won’t shut up about — you know the article.
Here’s the part I find funny, Wax tries to mock free markets as “merely a means to provide prosperity to as many people as possible.” While I could not find Wax’s net worth, I promise you he is quite prosperous — which makes his remarks about as sensitive as “let them eat cake.”
Here is my challenge to all these populists who say “the economy isn’t everything.” Why don’t you guys actually visit a place where the people have taken social conservative values over economic concern. I would personally recommend living in Uganda.
