I have spoken at length about the problems with the international organization approach that has dominated American policy with only a few limited exceptions since the Cold War. Those problems mean that the real-politique approach which is now emerging has the potential to correct some of these naive, and disempowering excesses that have come to dominate in recent years. However, I am now completing a series of posts dealing with the higher level counterfactuals to the real-politique approach to tariffs so it is crucial to discuss among many things the following key issue.
When the great thinker St. Augustine critiqued the millenial approaches that confused the ideal and the real and lacked a sufficient reality principle he reaffirmed in a reflective manner both realms of the ideal and the real in a properly differentiated form. The dream of the international organization approach and globalism more generally can be said at least in some cases to be precisely the false confusion of these two realms. The problem of this conceptual mistake was fully explored many years ago by the great historian Norman Cohn in his Pursuit of the Millenium and by the theorist Eric Vogelin in his important work The New Science of Politics. Now one can say that the secular religion of globalism unfortunately at least in recent years in the hands of too many trust fund kids of trust fund kids and in some cases though certainly not all corrupt NGO’s has fallen prey to such naive utopianism in what remains a fairly dangerous world. Perhaps not quite as dangerous as encountered by Saint Augustine at the hinterland of a collapsing Roman Empire but still dangerous enough in its own way.
However, it is one thing to recognize the need for a reality principle and that the ideal and the real should not be wrongly confused and quite another to believe there is no ideal realm at all and nothing but raw power and economic wealth.To the extent the Trump administration seeks to reestablish a certain lost order and reality principle for the world stage and reinvigorate the power of the U.S. in the world, that can be liked or disliked according to your own respective politics, but it has a certain conceptual logic and reality principle to it and does not at least dangerously misunderstand reality. But it is quite another matter entirely if those in power mistakenly believe there is nothing but power both political and economic in the world and nothing else really matters at all. This is the danger of the real-politique approach and always has been that in the process of fighting utopianism it gives up the ideal realm entirely and becomes ignoble.
Now here is where our tale becomes complicated. I once taught privately on culture, politics, economics, and art some extremely wealthy business people who owned a private national and international company worth I would estimate over a billion dollars. I remember a conversation with one of them after many years, more than a decade in fact of teaching them, where I said what I took to be an obvious point to any educated elite person that while money mattered as a means to an end there were far more important things in life like the pursuit of a noble telos or great art or philosophy or a dozen other ideals one could devote one’s life to. To my dismay many years of teaching had had absolutely no effect as they argued with me not once but repeatedly that money was the most important thing of all, those other things it turned out were to them like a quaint hobby such as gardening or a stamp collection and their outlook towards them from their insular perspective completely lacked any real depth.
Now I could probably have explained to them that great traders like Paul Tudor Jones or Bruce Kovner or Ray Dalio or John Simons or Howard Marks value understanding the world and thus being right about their trades more than simply wealth or power. I could quote Warren Buffet from a lecture he gave to graduate students at his alma mater Columbia about how the only thing great wealth really changed for him was he could fly private planes, but the deeper things in his life and how he actually spent his days not so much. Or why his partner Charles Munger argued that a liberal arts education was the best one for becoming a serious investor because it gave you a broader knowledge and sense of what mattered in the world. Or how George Soros may value more being a philosopher and his theory of reflexivity than even his great wealth, per se. I could cite the example of Mrs. Rockefeller’s devotion to the value of art and culture and founding the Museum of Modern Art. Or John Rockefeller Jr and his National Parks among many other activities. Or the examples of Peggy Guggenheim in pursuit of the ideal of art. l ultimately discovered this individual would spend far more on things like a couch or watch or car or decorating their house then any of these more noble pursuits and that the shopkeeper mentality even transformed by great economic success has its strengths but also its limitations which can be hard to overcome.
Do not misunderstand me here I am not saying the pursuit of wealth and power can’t be part of a noble life, but simply that in and of themselves they need not be. Which brings me back to Augustine and the ideal and real and tariffs. The key question for Trump and his billionaire heavy cabinet is ultimately do they have also along with the real-politique a set of higher ideals about what they are doing. Now perhaps the pursuit of power and wealth for a country is enough and by being elevated to a national level can approach a certain nobility. But can that itself be the basis of rule by a hegemonic power on the global stage or must a country just as much to fully lead represent a city on a hill also. This goes back to the core of both the question of nobility in a substantive not superficial sense and the American ideal itself. Is the American dream a sufficient ideal or does it need beyond the real pursuit of economic success which of course matters for any country also certain key deeper ideals, not utopianism or globalism as a millenial secular religion but deeper ideals nonetheless.
Let’s approach this question one further way. There is no doubt that Trump has given up a life devoted merely to personal gain for what he sees as a great cause. The original idea with nobility was that it had to have a deeper purpose or it was not noble but ignoble. It had to have an aristos, a higher ideal purpose along with its more immediate pursuit of power and wealth. Only this deeper ideal gave it ultimately legitimacy. Hopefully those around him have kept or gained a deeper ideal while they pursue power and hopefully Trump does not see his own pursuit of power as simply the next step up the ladder of power and wealth as opposed to something deeper. Sometimes it seems like the regime has an appreciation of a deeper purpose of making America and the world a more ideal place in terms of things like a great uplifting culture or an example of economic freedom or a new world of the pursuit of knowledge, or a world at peace not war, etc, at other times like it simply believes in a kind of jungle survival of the fittest. Put another way the tariff regime takes place in a rough world without a lot of actual rules but just because in such a world power might be obligatory any leader still needs at the end of the day to also be a gentleman or a gentlelady and have beyond power in a serious way important ideals that define their actions, they need both realms and to understand the difficult relationship between them which was Augustine’s deeper point and is the foundation of much of what works in democracies and the West but also the best of the East.
I would contend the ultimate success or failure of the tariff policy depends not just on whether it succeeds from a power standpoint to overturn an utopian globalism or from a national perspective make the U.S. prosperous, but rather in what is put in its place: a lawless jungle or a more beautiful cultivated park that also includes certain key human ideals pursued in a more realistic form. The great novelist John Steinbeck once said that if you looked through a crack in a wall at the dwellers of Cannery Row you would conclude you were in a land of reprobates, but looked at from a slightly different angle you might conclude you were in a world of saints. Trump and his administration spends a lot of time in Palm Beach which has become something of a second White House. If you ever walk down its main thoroughfare Worth Ave on a beautiful March day and watch your surroundings and listen to the various conversations around you, you might conclude either that you are in the most cultivated place on the whole East Coast or simply the logical end point of a jungle like pursuit of power and wealth at all costs.Time will tell with tariffs the world this strategy will actually make.
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