Steve Hayward's Wrong About Diversity and "Trump 101"

My friend Steve Hayward is put out with The Chronicle of Higher Education for not including non-white-guy voices in its recent “Trump 101” syllabus:

Where to begin. First, let’s note that Trump has caught on precisely because he speaks to “marginalized groups” that the fashionable, race-obsessed academic left (and much of the GOP establishment—ahem) disdains. So the identity politics set gets a failing grade here for low self-awareness. Second, it is embarrassing but necessary to point out that when inquiring about any subject, any serious list will want to include only the best work that bears on the subject. When Ta Nahesi Coates writes something sensible about Trump, someone will include it on a recommended reading list.

So let’s talk about the “identity politics” involved here.

Small government, big banks?

One reason I've never really come around to being a small-government conservative is my belief that if we put a tight leash on the feds, that will allow other large institutions--mostly big businesses, but not limited to that--to dominate me instead. Conservatives deploy the language of liberty pretty effectively, but often it's in the service of a corporatist agenda that would wouldn't necessarily feel "free" to most of us. I'm not so much sure that "big government" is as much of a problem as is bigness itself: Outsized institutions of any sort, public or private, can have outsized impacts on our lives.

So I'm intrigued by the question raised by my friend (and occasional nemesis) Steve Hayward over at Power Line. If conservatives want small government, he asks, should they also be in favor of breaking up the big banks? 

So I think I could be persuaded that the big banks should be broken up, though this requires conservatives and pro-market libertarians to set aside their cognitive dissonance over the use of centralized political power to accomplish such an end. Discuss in the comment thread.

Me? I think it's "pro-market" to actually let the market work: When banks get too big to fail, they put taxpayers on the hook for their risk-taking. You obviously can go too far in regulating the markets, but (ahem) you can also go too far in deregulating them, as well. Markets work best when they have some boundaries.

All of which has been said--including by me--a million times before. And there are plenty of other reasons I probably still won't take up the mantle of small-government conservatism: The issues that animate me seem to be ignored by or scoffed at by my conservative friends; even if liberals don't always have the right answers, I feel more comfortable with them because they're actually trying to solve the problems that look like problems to me. But small-government conservatism will be much harder for me to argue against if it doesn't leave me "liberated" to live under the tyranny of Citibank.

Bag O' Books: Steven Hayward Critiques the Book Peter Beinart Didn't Write

So I've finished Peter Beinart's "The Icarus Syndrome: A History of American Hubris." It's part of a series of books that have been released in the last year or so -- many of which I've read (this, apparently, being the year George Kennan) -- examining American foreign policy in the 20th century. Some of those books have merely had the goal of appraising the Cold War now that it is firmly in history's mirror; others, like Beinart's, are looking back to see what lessons we might learn to apply in the aftermath of America's post-9/11 irrational exuberance for foreign adventurism.

If I could construct my takeaway from all these books -- including Beinart's -- I'd come up with something like this:

* It's insanity for America to think it can be the world's dominant power. A superpower, yes, and perhaps the most powerful one. But the only one? No. We can't afford it. And other nations -- particularly, at this moment, China -- have a vote.

* We tend to believe in our collective good intentions when we go abroad. The people abroad who feel the pressure of our projected power may be less convinced; we need to do a better job contemplating how they'll see our actions.

* America is best served when its military is just one tool in the foreign policy toolbox. We cannot eliminate every adversary upon the planet; we can contain them, use economic carrots and sticks to pressure them, even throw some money at democratic movements in those countries. Otherwise, we should only pull our sword from its scabbard in response to attack or actual imminent threat. A rival country (say, Iran) that obtains nuclear weapons is cause for alarm but is not, on its own, an imminent threat.

* Accordingly, America might be best served if it pulled back from the goal of being able to project power anywhere on the planet and refocused its resources -- in terms of money and national spirit -- on rebuilding our economy and strengthening our democratic institutions.

I am very interested, after all this, in Steven Hayward's critique of Beinart's book. I've chatted with Hayward and like him, but his review of Beinart strikes me as a not-very-elegant attempt to change the subject. Where Beinart makes the case that America has been badly served by ill-fated attempts to remake other countries and regions to suit our country's likes, Hayward's response is, essentially: But ObamaCare!

His criticisms of pure reason and of naïve faith in human nature's goodness and plasticity questions, implicitly, modern liberalism's central pillar. The eclipse of prudence by scientific, idealistic politics was a defining feature of Progressive statecraft, and it remains so for modern liberalism today—at least on the domestic scene. In making an elegant call for greater circumspection about government's mastery over all things, Beinart's skepticism stops at the water's edge. Why not apply the lessons of hubris—of overreaching and presuming a greater command of flawed human nature than is realistically possible—to, say, health care reform, or social policy generally?

Hayward persists in this mode, wondering why Beinart doesn't spend more time in his book writing about the domestic overreach of liberal government programs. The easy answer to this is: Because it's a book about foreign policy. But Hayward seems to acknowledge that the United States has often overreached its foreign policy -- though Iraq is doing better than we once thought; he doesn't offer a counterargument to Beinart's thesis, and spends enough time reflecting on the Vietnam War to kind of confirm it. Pinning the problem of overreach mostly on liberals, then, requires bringing domestic politics into the picture.

Fine. But it thus becomes worth asking Hayward's fellow conservatives a similar question: If you doubt government's ability to make society better at home, why would you think it would work beyond our borders, in places with unfamiliar cultures and languages we don't really speak? Hayward writes of Beinart's "blind spot," but Beinart isn't the only person who has one.

UPDATE: A conservative friend of mine, a friend of Mr. Hayward's, writes with the following critique.

By and large, Steve Hayward's conservative friends (esp. of the Claremont variety) never suggested that we COULD spread happiness abroad. Our critique of Bush sort of boiled down to a kind of over-exuberant, childlike faith he has in human goodness.

Fair point! I was trying to be precise by not specifically attributing such beliefs to Hayward himself, but I ended up being a different kind of sloppy. My apologies to him.

To be more precise, though, I'll note that Mr. Hayward is part of a broader conservative movement that, for all its variety, did help put Mr. Bush in office and that, to outsiders at least, seems remarkably able to unite behind particular politicians and agendas. There are a few conservatives -- of the seemingly influential Bill Kristol variety -- who do urge restraint at home and adventurism abroad. Hayward critiques liberalism's lack of domestic restraint while countering Beinart; if that's the angle he wants to take, then a more overt critique of his more adventurous fellow conservatives (if, indeed, he believes that) would probably be in order.