Historigraph
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March 18, 2019
The Phoney War: Actually Not Phoney
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Reconciling the libertarian and anti-immigration wings of Maxime Bernier’s PPC
In the Post Millennial, Brad Betters looks at how the PPC’s libertarian ideals co-exist with skepticism about current government immigration plans:
While there are many patterns of abuse in the mass media’s everyday coverage of Maxime Bernier — i.e. the constant comparisons to Donald Trump, the failure to actually engage with his policies, quoting those who accuse him of “pandering”, while failing to quote his supporters (although there is the occasional exception) — one that jumps out is the routine questioning of his ideological bona fides.
Being ideologically inconsistent is a serious charge for many among Bernier’s base. While not a concern for liberals and progressives (they just want power and results), it is for many conservatives, even if it means becoming “beautiful losers”, as one US conservative commentator put it years back.
Recently, the National Post’s John Ivison referred to Bernier’s party, the People’s Party of Canada (PPC), as being plagued by a “fundamental contradiction” in that it’s “led by a libertarian free-marketer and supported by anti-globalists.”
Although vague, Ivison is no doubt, at least in part, referring to the PPC’s call to reduce immigration levels. His Post colleague Stuart Thomson was more express, calling Bernier’s immigration position “a diversion from his ideological playbook” — a criticism repeated by Global News’ West Block host Mercedes Stephenson among others.
In calling to reduce immigration, Bernier is being perfectly faithful to free-market thought. Importing workers from abroad, if high enough, can lead to supply shocks in the domestic labour market, weighing down and distorting wage rates in the process — indeed, economists are mystified why wages in Canada have flatlined despite years of growing GDP.
For large employers, these expansions can lead to giant windfalls and a chance to avoid facing market discipline — i.e. by not innovating or offering the wages needed to draw in new workers. Markets which are expanded artificially are not “free”, and profits pumped-up with the help of government we usually call ‘subsidies’: two things free-marketer libertarians revile.
Equally reviled among libertarians is ‘big government’; something that goes hand in hand with mass immigration. Large populations with diverse languages, cultures, and religions serve as a perfect excuse for new government programs and bureaucratic meddling: from government-funded language instruction, translators, and signage, to more housing and educational and job-training initiatives for unprepared newcomers.
Overlaying all this is the array of government watchdogs mandated to ensure immigrating visible minorities get the requisite (i.e. ever-increasing) amount of cultural sensitivity and achieve economic parity with old-stock Canadians.
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6 Worst British Rulers – Anglophenia Ep 8
Anglophenia
Published on 15 Jul 2014Britain has had a number of great kings and queens, but also some truly terrible ones. Siobhan Thompson looks at the worst of the worst.
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QotD: The eternal bad bet that was feudalism
From time immemorial, the reigning myth of rule has been that the rulers provide a quid pro quo: in exchange for the people’s submission and payment of tribute, the rulers protect the people from the enemies who lurk “out there.” The promise was often unfulfilled, however. The lord of the manor might well flee into his castle, leaving the peasants outside the walls to suffer whatever outrages an invader chose to wreak on them. Or the lord might haul them off to a distant war in which they had no real interest, merely to satisfy the lord’s feudal obligation to the baron or duke just above him in the feudal pecking order.
Most important, however, is the sheer fact that the ordinary people’s most dangerous enemy, the one by far the most likely to plunder and abuse them, was their own impudent lord, the selfsame “nobleman” who forbade them to leave their place of birth or to engage in a variety of tasks and pleasures they might prefer — that is, the man who held and exploited them in a condition of serfdom.
Robert Higgs, “I Reject the Right of the Government to Choose My Friends and Enemies for Me”, The Beacon, 2017-04-03.
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