Steven B. Smith on Reclaiming Patriotism

2021-04-20 · Guest: Steven B. Smith (Professor of Political Science at Yale) · 45:22

Filed under: Elections and politics
Topics: Nationalism

Reclaiming Patriotism in an Age of Extremes

Bob Zadek interviews Yale Professor Steven B. Smith about his book, Reclaiming Patriotism in an Age of Extremes. They discuss the distinction between patriotism, nationalism, and cosmopolitanism, emphasizing that American patriotism is rooted in constitutional ideals and a shared cultural ethos rather than mere birthright or exclusionary identity.

Topics: Patriotism, Nationalism, Cosmopolitanism, American Founding, 1619 Project, Abraham Lincoln, National Service, Political Philosophy

Speakers:

• Bob Zadek: Host
• Steven B. Smith: Professor of Political Science at Yale University

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Defining Patriotism in a Polarized Era [00:00]

Announcer: You’re listening to the Bob Zadek Show, a full hour of libertarian discussion with the smartest guests on radio. Live, spontaneous, and thoughtful. It’s the show of ideas, not attitude. And your calls are welcome at 424-BOB-SHOW. Now, your host, Bob Zadek.

Bob Zadek: Hello everyone, welcome to the Bob Zadek Show, the longest-running live libertarian talk radio show in all of radio. The show of ideas, never once the show of attitude. And have we got a show for you this morning.

We seem to be living in an era in this country, perhaps in the world, of intense, yes, irrational polarization. A world of extremes. And there’s no better time to spend an hour this morning discussing a concept that almost by definition is one which is a concept that invites a group of people to unite. It is, in a way, the opposite of extreme.

The subject is patriotism. Patriotism is an incredibly complex word, a rather strange word in the sense that patriotism is, of course, a virtue. It is an ideal that is aspirational. We would like to think that all of us have at least a strain, if not a strong motivation, to be patriotic. To carry around a warm feeling, a love if you will, for our country. But it’s not quite love.

Patriotism is so complex, I have found myself over the years wondering: Am I patriotic? Should I be patriotic? What does it even mean? To help me, thank heaven, our guest this morning, Steven Smith, has written a book—a wonderful book, an important book—which is so valuable to me, and it will be to you, because it answers all of the questions that I have had regarding the complex word patriotism and invites us to—now, from the title of the book—Reclaiming Patriotism in an Age of Extremes.

That short title carries with it three concepts which we will discuss this morning: reclaiming patriotism. Reclaiming—have we lost it? Where did it go? Why did we lose it? How do we get it back? That’s a semester in itself. Patriotism—what does it mean? Are we patriotic? Is it, as some folks on the left would have us believe, the opposite of virtue? Is it something to be avoided, to be derided, to be unwelcome? And in an age of extremes—what exactly, what are the extremes that we live in today? How did we get there? Is living in an age of extremes the rule, or is it the exception? Are we living in exceptional times with our extremes, if we have extremes, or is this the normal way of operation and when we were less extreme, was that the unusual time?

Okay, Steven Smith, welcome to the show this morning. You have your work cut out for you. What are we reclaiming? What is patriotism? What are the extremes and how did we get there? Now, I’m not going to now turn off my microphone and have you speak for an hour. That’s an unfair burden. So first of all, welcome to the show this morning, and I mean that from the bottom of my heart, if my heart indeed has a bottom.

Steven B. Smith: Bob, thank you so much for that beautiful introduction. It’s an honor to be on the longest-running libertarian talk show on radio history. And thank you for inviting me.

The Academic Skepticism of Patriotism [02:40]

Bob Zadek: And I should say, Steven, just to introduce you, you have your PhD from the University of Chicago, and you are and have taught in Yale in the philosophy department since 1984. And you have focused your life—and I am envious that you got to do this—on political philosophy. Oh my goodness, to spend most of your time understanding the complexity of political philosophy. Oh, what a wonderful career you have had, and we are all benefiting from that career and from the books you have written. So thank you so much for being on the show.

Now, Reclaiming Patriotism in the Age of Extremes. Now, I’m going to ask you a question that I’m really curious about, and there’s an especial reason why I’m asking the question. The question is, of course, what would have prompted you to write this book at this time? And now I’m going to add a sub-question. You’re at Yale. We all have—it is generally understood or assumed, maybe rightly, maybe wrongly, probably more or less correct—that in the Ivy League, in the institutes of higher education around the country, patriotism is not one that gets you invited to every important dinner party in town. And I think Alan Dershowitz complained how he became a pariah over at Harvard when he became somewhat identified with Donald Trump. So here you are, you’ve chosen a book that meant—that would mean you’re probably going to eat a lot of your meals by yourself. So what prompted you to write the book?

Steven B. Smith: Bob, thank you for starting with this. Before going into that, I would like to just make one minor correction. I am actually in the Yale Political Science department rather than philosophy. I am happy to be regarded as a philosopher by you, but I actually earn my living in the political science department.

Bob Zadek: Don’t worry, I’m not going to turn off your microphone. It’s okay.

Steven B. Smith: Right. But the book, like most books and most of the work I’ve done in the past, has grown out of my teaching. And I’ve noticed among students there’s a great hunger to do something for their country, to help their country in some way, although their feelings are often inchoate. They don’t quite know what it means. They don’t even maybe don’t even quite know why they want to do this. But there’s a hunger, as they say, to give back. They realize they’ve been the recipient of a good education and they’ve had many benefits just being in America has provided them with benefits. They want to help.

But they often don’t know how to do it, and colleges and universities don’t even really necessarily make it easy. So my book sort of grew out of this question: What does it mean to want to support and to defend your country? And you’re absolutely right that writing a book like this, especially at a university like Yale—I don’t want to say that Yale’s unpatriotic, that would be untrue—but it’s not a question that tends to be raised by academics or in our intellectual culture today.

From, as you indicated in your intro remarks, from the left—and a lot of people in academia are on the left—being regarded as patriotic is symptomatic of chauvinism. It’s symptomatic of a kind of “me-first-ism,” “America-first-ism.” It seems unenlightened. We should be, so it’s argued, we should be citizens of the world. We should think in terms of the questions that unite humanity, not that simply focus on one nation or one people. That seems to be the dominant attitude that one finds in universities and intellectual circles today.

And the book was written in large part also to push back against that perspective. Patriotism is a virtue. I think that patriotism is required by democratic societies. Democracies can’t afford to do without patriotism. And as far as eating alone goes, I probably haven’t done quite as much as Alan Dershowitz to make myself a pariah on my own campus. But I have to admit, one of the hidden or secret pleasures I had in writing the book was sometimes the look of barely repressed horror on the faces of colleagues and other university people when they asked me what I was working on and I would say, “Well, I’m writing a book defending patriotism.” And they looked at me often with, “Oh, oh, that’s interesting. Let’s move on to the next thing.” But I wasn’t, thankfully, I wasn’t ostracized—not yet at least. Maybe after I’m on your show, Bob, I will be, but I don’t think so. But I haven’t been ostracized yet, and other than the COVID lockdown, I haven’t been taking unnecessarily large numbers of meals by myself.

Patriotism vs. Accident of Birth [06:40]

Bob Zadek: Now Steven, you said—you said in answering my question, you referred to students, they want to do something for their country. I perked up when you said their country. What makes it, other than the sheer accident of birth? What is it implied that wherever you happen to be born, you would not be virtuous unless you were loyal to the company—the country in which you happen to be born? And is patriotism like irrespective of the principles by which your country operates? Are you expected to be patriotic, or is there a value judgment? Is patriotism automatic, like as you and I spoke about earlier, if you’re born in Brooklyn, you better root for the Dodgers or else you’re a pariah, there’s something wrong with you? So tell me about what—whether a country has to earn patriotism or whether it’s expected as a matter of the accident of birth.

Steven B. Smith: That’s a good question. It’s one that I struggled with in thinking about the book and in writing it. Of course, at a place like Yale, students—I mean, obviously the majority of students are American students, but increasingly students come from all over the world and from many countries. Some of them privileged countries in terms of the freedom and wealth that their societies provide, others from very poor or countries that lack various kinds of freedoms—economic, political, private freedoms of all kinds.

My book is not a prescription for humanity. I’m writing for Americans. I don’t mean to be parochial about that, but I’m writing specifically about American patriotism. It’s not a one-size-fits-all. Patriotism can take different forms in different countries. Our patriotism is, in fact—one of the things that distinguishes it is not just a matter, although it can sometimes be seen this way, of “I was born here, this is why I’m patriotic,” just the accident of birth, as it were. And many people feel that’s, in a way, unobjectionable. I’ve got no real problem with that.

But I’m not really sure that captures what I want to say about what is distinctive about American patriotism. American patriotism has been from the earliest times, from the 18th century, even before in the Puritan founders when they came here in the 17th century, it has been rooted in ideas and ideals about what America is. The earliest founders coming here, Puritans, thought of themselves as creating a new holy city based in a new Jerusalem based in the wilderness. The American founding fathers thought of themselves as creating, and did create, the first written constitution based on ideas of freedom, equality, limited government, and so on.

We have been a people of, as I say in the book, we’ve been a people of the book from the beginning. Our patriotism has a textual basis. We think of ourselves as a people of ideas, and living up to those ideas and ideals are very important to what American patriotism is. It’s not just simply a matter of “I was born here, my country right or wrong,” and let the matter go at that. To be an American, to be an American patriot, I think is to always measure ourselves by the ideals and aspirations that we hold for ourselves as a country.

Loyalty to the Constitutional Regime [10:40]

Bob Zadek: So the patriotism, the loyalty, the love if you will—and that word is in your book—the patriotism is not to the present elected officials, for sure. It’s not to any one person. It’s really—and it’s not to the shining seas, the mountains, the fields of grain. The patriotism is to the abstract. It’s to the ideals. Therefore, your plea, if it is a plea, is to forget the disagreements we may have about the issues of the day. Go back a step, go back to the root, go back to the ideals. Let’s start with that. I think what you’re saying is: sign on to the concept of America, the ideal of America. Let’s start with that, so we have a common goal, and then we can work out how to get there. Is that an appropriate distinction to make, to separate the physical and the humans from the ideal? And is your book a reminder that this is about ideals? It’s about the shining city on the hill, if you will, not about who happens to be running for office and getting elected. That’s kind of mechanical.

Steven B. Smith: Right. I mean, yes, let me put it a little differently. I think that captures certainly an aspect of what I want to say about the book or what I want to say about patriotism. Patriotism is not—I mean, in America in particular—American patriotism is not loyalty to a leader, to an individual. That was very true in places like fascist Italy, where the Duce or the Fuhrer is the center of citizen loyalty. America has never been that kind of country.

Our loyalty has been to our Constitution. And in the book, I use an older word, a word that comes from Greek to describe a constitutional form. I call it a “regime.” Our loyalty and our patriotism has been to a particular kind of constitutional regime. So it is to a political form, not to an individual. That is not simply to say that that ideal has been a source of unity and consensus throughout American history. We have argued for over 250 years exactly what our Constitution is. A great civil war was fought over exactly that fact, and we continue to struggle with it even today.

So partly to be an American is to be engaged in a debate, in a conversation, in an ongoing dispute about what it means to be an American. That is part of America too, and that is what I think part of our patriotism means: accepting and being willing to engage in that debate over what it means to be an American and what our constitutional form, our democracy as it were, requires of us.

One of the arguments I make in the book is that patriotism is a disposition that is required—in fact, it’s indispensable—for democratic societies, I think, for any democratic self-governing society. It’s necessary for people’s sense of self-respect and for their sense of—it enhances their sense of membership and belonging. And yet, that idea, patriotism, is today challenged by different forces in our world.

Let me try to talk a little bit about those too. On the left—and this is something one finds especially in educated and professional circles—people no longer really think of themselves primarily as citizens. They think of themselves—that seems parochial. That to them seems parochial. It seems old-fashioned. It seems sort of unnecessary even. We live in an—we all know this—we live in an increasingly interconnected world. We live in a kind of globalized world, made possible by travel, by trade, by all kinds of forces of modern technology, the internet, and other things. Much of our time is spent dealing with issues that are not specific to our own countries. Many people think we are on the way to becoming citizens of the world. I mean, that is an old concept. It’s not a new one, and I talk a little bit about the history of cosmopolitanism in the book. It goes back to ancient times.

But it has particular resonance today. Increasingly, again, we see our problems are global problems. We’re now locked down because of a global pandemic. There’s global warming. There’s, you know, many of our problems are genuinely global problems. So it’s not a position I simply want to sneer at, but it’s one that detracts from and it minimizes, if not even sort of despises, the idea that we are also citizens of particular countries with loyalties to our fellow citizens and loyalties to what we are as a people. So that’s on the left. Patriotism is challenged by the—again, this is not an insignificant thing—the globalization of the world.

On the right, on the other hand, patriotism is challenged by the upswing or upsurge that we’ve seen in recent years in particular of nationalism. Nationalism too is an old phenomenon. It’s nothing new, but it has come and gone in waves. And what we’re seeing today, not only in the US but throughout the world, is a resurgence of nationalism. Nationalism is the idea—nationalism and patriotism, I argue, actually grow out of a common root. They grow out of a desire of people to be—to have their way of life, to have their country, to have their culture strong and respected. That’s a legitimate and natural desire, no doubt.

But nationalism moves in a different direction from patriotism. Nationalism, I argue, is an ideology of us against them. It becomes an ideology of grievance and resentment. Nationalist language is always looking for enemies, whether they are foreign enemies or, if they can’t find foreign enemies, domestic enemies. Domestic others, as it were, to demonize and to vilify as somehow destructive of our national creed and belief. So nationalism and cosmopolitanism, in an odd way, sort of feed off of one another. It’s very possible that nationalism, the rise of nationalism, has emerged in response to globalization and so on, almost in a kind of dialectical way. But at the same time, nationalism has convinced many other people that we really need to double down on being cosmopolitans because we see many ways the ugly and nationalism has a kind of ugly side that cosmopolitans want to avoid. Patriotism, I argue, is something different. It’s different clearly from cosmopolitanism, but it’s different from nationalism also. We can go into this, but nationalism and cosmopolitanism are the two alternatives, the two as it were extremes as I put in the title of my book, that have put patriotism into question and why patriotism today needs to be reclaimed from both.

The Family Analogy for Patriotism [12:40]

Steven B. Smith: I would say even if there were only one country in the world, the nationalist would still find enemies—domestic enemies of one form or another to stigmatize and to accuse of usually it goes with accusations of betrayal, treason. We hear this all the time. “Enemies of the”—creating “enemies of the people.” I mean, this was communist language, and now it’s been reappropriated for nationalist uses today, describing different categories as enemies, as betrayers, and so on.

I put the difference between nationalism and patriotism this way, because I do argue, and I want to repeat, that they do in many ways grow out of a common desire, but they move in different directions. Patriotism, as I describe it, is a bit like loyalty to family or loyalty to—and what I mean by that is the following: we love our families, not because we think our families are the best families, that my family is better than your family. I mean, what would that even mean? We often love our families often precisely despite our flaws, despite our flaws and failures. That’s what makes them lovable to us in a certain way is their imperfections. What would it mean to say that my family’s the perfect family and that’s why it’s deserving of my love and respect?

And I would say the same is true of patriotism. Patriotism does not require me to think that my country’s better than yours or that my country is going to dominate yours in some ways. Patriotism is not an ideology of dominance and power. But it is based on feelings of loyalty, of rootedness, of love and respect for—and gratitude, mostly for gratitude for helping us become what we are.

Bob Zadek: And it’s interesting that you say that because when you made the parallel to family, it’s just as you said earlier. It’s not that you love your family better than somebody else’s family. It stops at you love your family. That’s the end of the conversation. And you love them because of who they are collectively and because they are your family, and that’s the appropriate way to feel. You don’t require other families to run a comparison. It’s not that you love your family because they are somehow better than another family. It stops with who your family is, which is the point I was making that it’s not competitive.

Steven B. Smith: Right. I mean, to draw on the family comparison again, you know, I love my family best. That doesn’t require me, right, to be put in a relation of competition and so on with other families. Our friends, our friends’ families are dear to us. We’ve, you know, we have friends who, like everybody, whose families are dear to us and whose children and whose parents mean a great deal to us, who we see for holidays and for celebrations. We love them too, but that doesn’t mean to say that we don’t give some kind of moral priority to our family, our families first. But you’re right, it is not to say that love of family puts us into a competitive, much less an adversarial, relationship with the families around us. And I would say patriotism captures, or it was my view of patriotism captures, something of that orientation.

Ethos Patriotism and Cultural Identity [14:40]

Bob Zadek: In your book, you worry about, you devote some attention to this balancing of, on the one hand, we are, as you point out in your book, the obvious, we are a country of immigrants, and to some degree the patriotism that many people feel is not only to the ideals, the political ideals, the relationship of government to the governed, but rather it’s this hypothetical, this theoretical cultural America. There’s an American culture, some would believe. I believe a bit less than that. But then you worry about, and you use the word balance, balancing the challenge of balancing this part of American existence is welcoming of immigrants in recognition of our founding, of our history, and then you worry about does that adversely affect or does it threaten the cultural part of patriotism? I was found myself much less concerned about that because the whole concept of American culture is, I think, one of a constantly changing music, food, entertainment, a lot of the customs of life as opposed to the governing political philosophy. And the fact that it’s always changing is itself the change is part of our culture. I don’t—sure, many, many nationalists find themselves concerned about that. Those people, their music, their whatever they see as the threaten to the American way of life. You worry about that a bit in your book. Can you expand upon that just a bit, why you’re worried? Because I don’t—I just don’t see that as a threat. I see it as sort of a feature, not a threat.

Steven B. Smith: Right. I do worry about that in the book. I am—I believe in borders, for example. I mean, I believe in states, I believe in borders. I believe immigration—we are a country of immigrants, as we often say. I mean, our immigration policy and our borders can be open, they can be generous, they can be more or less, but I don’t believe they can be infinitely open. I do believe in that.

And I agree with you, our culture—one of the things I talk about in the book, and here let me just go back a little to an earlier part of our conversation. Our patriotism is based in part on our ideals and aspirations. But I also say it’s based in what I call our ethos. We have an ethos patriotism as well. What do I mean by an ethos patriotism? That our patriotism is rooted in ideas and aspirations, yes, but it’s also rooted in our habits, our customs, our traditions, our what we might call broadly our way of life, that comprises our language, our music, our foods, our even things like our body language. We know sort of what it is to be—we know what these things are as Americans.

And patriotism is very much a rootedness also in these sort of cultural dimensions of American life. These are enriched, obviously as you put it, these change over time, they are enriched by new groups, new people who come here and add to this cultural cuisine that we have. And I think that has for the most part in our experience been a very positive thing. We have grown as a people, and that kind of ethnic and cultural diversity has been part of what the American story has been.

Can this be indefinitely expanded, or when do we begin as it were to sort of lose our sense of ethos? When do we lose a sense of common purpose and peoplehood? I mean, I think that is a question. It’s not a question that has an algorithm for solving that question. There’s no right answer to that question. It’s a question of judgment, it’s a question of political judgment. It requires wisdom. It does not require demagoguery. It does not require sort of laying down, as I would say, ethnic barriers to entry, but it does require wise statesmanship and leadership to help us work on exactly where diversity and pluralism contribute and where they may begin to depreciate, as it were, our common sense of peoplehood.

The Attack on American Principles [16:40]

Bob Zadek: One of the strongest statements I found in the book is you mention that the loyalty, the patriotism you invite people to experience is loyalty to—I think this was your phrase—loyalty to a hypothetical U.S. It’s a lot easier to be proud of, patriotic to, loyal to founding principles, the ideals, than it is to say be loyal to the present constitution—small ‘c’—of the House and the Senate and the presidency. That almost seems empty. I can’t find myself being loyal to Mitch McConnell. He doesn’t make me teary-eyed. Nothing personal, I mean, I’m picking him as a hypothetical part of—but it’s a piece of cake to be loyal to—it’s almost you have to be inhuman not to be loyal to the principles. And I think that part of your book really is the key: invite people to test the principles against their own values, and you have no choice, you in spite of yourself you’re going to become, I would think, patriotic.

Steven B. Smith: Right. But yes, I mean, I think that’s right. The principles are under attack, however. And one of the things the book wants—one of the things I try to do in the book is to help us restore an appreciation of precisely the principles. Why are they under attack? Projects, for example, like the New York Times 1619 Project would have us believe that America is founded in racism and slavery, and that this racism and slavery may have been abolished, but racism and white supremacy has been the core of American national identity from 1619 to 2021. And that it’s not that these represent departures from the principles, they claim these are the principles.

And that is a deeply, in my view, corrosive ideology. It is part of what I describe in the book as the kind of what I call the new-age progressivism that we see of recent times, to distinguish it from an earlier and older progressivism. We could talk about that, but this has become very much a part of the attack on American principles and American founding principles.

It’s not to say that American founding principles were somehow pure, were born pure. We have argued about those principles from the beginning. As I said earlier, we fought a great civil war over what those principles were. But I think Abraham Lincoln, who is a hero—the hero in many ways of my book—put it in the best way. He understood that American principles were founded in the Declaration of Independence, particularly its clause of human equality. That provided the bedrock of what America as a nation was. He understood clearly that those principles had not been perfectly realized in 1776 or in 1861, but that we struggle to achieve those ideals.

And to give up on those, as many on the left have done, and increasingly in many ways those on the right have done, I find to be a betrayal—I shouldn’t use that term, I said earlier that was part of nationalist language—but it really does represent a kind of fatigue, maybe that would be a better word, fatigue of what American patriotism is. Patriotism is a difficult—it is a virtue, and like any virtue, it’s difficult. We’re not just born with it. It’s not just part of our DNA. We don’t become patriots like we eat and breathe and other biological functions. It’s something that has to be taught, and it has to be cultivated. And like any practice—playing the piano or any skill—it requires practice, and it requires education. And it’s not easy. Being a patriot, particularly being an American patriot, is not easy. And part of my book is to try to teach people a little bit about how to reclaim it.

Reclaiming Patriotism Through Service [20:40]

Bob Zadek: I found you—I don’t—we haven’t got time to discuss the 1619 Project in detail, but what in law—in law, there is a rhetorical tactic called creating a straw man. You create an artificial villain and then you argue against that creation. And of course, you can’t attack the real facts because you lose. So you have to attack made-up facts. I think the 1619 Project was—you can’t attack the virtues of—you can’t attack the American founding principles. They’re not attackable. You can attack how we carried them out, you can attack the principles. Therefore, you have to create fake principles which you can attack, and then you have a tempting target. I wish we had time to discuss the 1619, Steven, you’ll have to come back so we can spend an hour on that.

Now, in your book, we’ve discussed a bit about reclaiming. We have a couple of minutes left. How do you—what is the—how does one go about as a nation—we only have a minute or two, maybe it’s you haven’t got enough time, but we’ll do the best we can. How do you go about—how does a nation reclaim the glorious principles we have? About a minute, minute and a half.

Steven B. Smith: The last chapter of the book looks at some ways to do that. And it’s not just a question of going back, it’s a question of going forward as well. One of the things I think would be extremely important in trying to reclaim a sense of patriotism is to introduce some form of national service. I don’t know how you feel about this, Bob, being a libertarian, but I feel some form of national service—whether that’s military service, whether that’s teaching in a public school, whether that’s working for an underserved community—is a way of bringing young Americans together, getting them to know each other, people from different backgrounds. We don’t know each other anymore. We live in silos, we live in cultural or educational silos. People should get some chance in life to meet different people, people different from themselves. It will be a first and I think important step in helping us move forward in reclaiming some kind of American patriotism.

Bob Zadek: Well, national service—I have a visceral—I take a step back because national service sounds voluntary, but we’re talking about compulsory national service. So the service part of it is like the draft, except instead of a gun, you have a hoe and you’re out there conserving nature. But that’s, Steven, that’s for another day and another time.

Steven’s book is all about Reclaiming Patriotism in the Age of Extremes. We sure have an age of extremes. Patriotism would be a uniting principle if we take a step back, examine the principles to which we pledge allegiance every day, focus on the principles, not on the humans. And the reclaiming of patriotism, I think, Steven, as your book invites, is inevitable. Your book is almost an essential first step towards achieving the goal that you and I both want.

So Steven, thank you so much for writing your book. The book is called Reclaiming Patriotism in an Age of Extremes. We sure have an age of extremes. Let’s hope patriotism gets reclaimed. And the way to reclaim it is just remind—just read the second and first paragraph of the Declaration, and patriotism will automatically flow. So Steven, thank you so much for the book. Thank you so much for spending an hour with us this morning. Apologies for the minor glitch I had with the internet. And Steven, I do hope you’ll come back because we have only started our conversations together. There’s so much more we can cover. So be—my friends out there, enjoy the book, learn from it, share the book with your friends. The country will be the better for it, and so will you and your friends. Steven, thank you so much for your time this afternoon.

Steven B. Smith: Bob, it’s been a pleasure. Thank you so much. And as my mom used to say, “From your lips to God’s ear.”

Bob Zadek: My mom said the same thing. Maybe we were separated at birth, Steven. So thank you so much, and thank you to my friends out there. Please enjoy the rest of the weekend.

Show prep notes

Bob’s own preparation for this episode.

Adam C. Smith, Amazon.com to buy the book

Cell Phone Number (for Saturday): (803) 493-5631

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Bio: Associate Professor of Economics at Johnson & Wales University in Charlotte, SC, where he runs the Center for Free Market Studies; Studied experimental economics at George Mason University (PhD); Grandson of Bruce Yandle; Named after Adam Smith.

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Bootleggers & Baptists: How Economic Forces & Moral Persuasion Interact to Shape Regulatory Politics [Amazon Link], published Sept 7, 2014

Cato Institute Book Forum [Video]

Basic theory:

Attempts to explain features of government regulation – when the government chooses to regulate, what characteristics do we find in the rules themselves?

There is more to it than the obvious answer: that politicians must appeal to the public interest. The theory goes further, to the “why?”, and articulates why public interest and economic efficiency are not always served.

The name refers to coalitions of people who have an aligned interest but different (or even opposing) reasons for the interest, i.e., Closing down alcohol stores on Sunday’s reduces the amount of drinking on at least one day (in the interest of the Baptist), while the Bootlegger has a field day on Sunday by selling illegally – earning monopoly profits. Sometimes the bootlegger will even give a kickback to a politician to operate with legal protection, in the form of specific regulations.

The theory describes how special interest groups acquire gains through the political process, and why these two types of interest groups become more prevalent and vocal. (Kindle Locations 232-233)

Bootleggers require regulations that raise rivals’ costs, block entry, impose differential costs across firms, cartelize entire industries, and in other ways favor successful seekers of pork. (Kindle Locations 2041-2042)

The new set of opportunities afforded by social regulation biases the behavior of corporate leaders away from producing more and better goods and services in favor of regulation-seeking activities that reduce output. (Kindle Locations 226-227)

Politicians will rarely explain an effort to improve the profits of an economic interest group by saying, “I was just trying to help a good firm make more money.” (Kindle Locations 237-238)

Bootlegger/ Baptist coalitions succeed by driving down the cost of pork production. (Kindle Locations 3085-3086).

Short Learn Liberty Video with Yandle giving a longer, animated version of the above points.

Yandle’s famous paper, “Bootleggers & Baptists: The Education of a Regulatory Economist.”

Examples in various industries:

1. Tobacco - The ban on television ads privileged existing cigarette companies by blocking out new entrants (denying them the ability to form an effective brand)

2. Marijuana -

3. In order to maintain their monpoly, “bootlegger” Humboldt County marijuana growers teamed up with “baptist” opponents of marijuana usage.

4. Alternatively, some police officers opposed legalization because it would reduce their revenues from civil forfeiture.

5. “Just as some public employees hoped to see more cash in the coffers, others in law enforcement balked at the prospect of losing huge amounts of revenue from civil forfeiture actions involving the drug trade.” (Kindle Locations 1938-1939).

6. Prohibition - Boardwalk empire [:19 - :52] summarizes prohibtion.

7. Environment -

8. Entrenched emitting interests will favor regulations that create stricter standards for new entrants, such as tighter emissions controls on new plants.

9. Ethanol subsidies. Corn farmer “bootleggers” and environmentalist “baptists”

10. Al Gore quote: “One of the reasons I made [the] mistake [of subsidizing ethanol] is that I paid particular attention to the farmers in my home state of Tennessee, and I had a certain fondness for the farmers in the state of Iowa because I was about to run for President” (Kindle Locations 2213-2215)

11. Nuclear energy and natural gas companies aligned with environmentalists to make carbon emissions more costly

12. Kyoto protocol rewards countries who returned or went below their 1990s emissions levels.

13. “Under Kyoto and cap-and-trade, countries such as the United Kingdom and Russia were positioned to exploit carbon reductions that had already occurred— and to raise the costs of competing economies that were burdened with large emission reduction targets. But unlike conventional regulatory arrangements that involve one national government regulating domestic industries, Kyoto presents us with the unusual situation of countries behaving like firms, strategically positioning themselves to benefit while gaining protection and credibility from international environmental groups. Within any given economy, polluting firms might become low-cost producers of carbon reductions if a cap-and-trade approach were taken. The trade in carbon reductions would then provide an opportunity for firms that operate exchanges in which reduction permits are bought and sold.” (Kindle Locations 2173-2179)

14. Enron, a natural gas producer and pipeline operator, also ran energy exchanges that could easily accommodate and profit from a cap and trade trading floor: “

15. Healthcare -

16. “In each of these efforts, a vast Baptist choir sang the praises of government-assisted health care. But lurking in the background— and sometimes in the back row of the choir— were pharmaceutical, insurance, and other health care Bootleggers ready to expand sales to the regulated sector.” (Kindle Locations 2823-2825)

17. “At a critical moment, one politician became a linchpin for the entire reform effort: Sen. Ben Nelson (D-NE) represented the key vote needed to push filibuster-proof legislation forward in the Senate. Nelson not only felt pressure from Obamacare supporters (Bender 2009) but also received direct assistance from a major Bootlegger. The lobbying group Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America spent $ 150 million on an advertising campaign in Nelson’s home state of Nebraska. Their price for this service? Language would be inserted into the bill barring the importation (or reimportation) of cheaper drugs manufactured or sold abroad. Eliminating foreign competition was just what the doctor ordered (“ ObamaCare’s Secret History” 2012). In December 2009, with the importation ban in place, Senator Nelson announced his support for Obamacare.” (Kindle Locations 2914-2920)

It could be interesting to look at the role played by

6. Finance - Unlike other the other cases, there is less of a moral cover for financial legislation such as big bailouts (TARP). This makes it more difficult to sustain regulations that privilege the “1%”. The failure of this kind of blatant cronyism – in the absence of a bootlegger/baptist coalition – explains why most of regulatory growth is coming on the social side, or issues with greater perceived moral concerns.

The Rising Tide of Social Regulation

Total spending on social regulation increased more than 19-fold from 1960 to 2010. By comparison, spending on economic regulation increased less than seven-fold, and total government spending for all federal activities increased just under four-fold across the same 50 years. (Kindle Locations 327-329)

It is now more than 40 years (and 3.5 million Federal Register pages) since the surge of regulation that began in 1970. We believe the structure and performance of the U.S. economy has been significantly altered by the rise of what some call “regulatory capitalism,” what others might call crony capitalism, or what we would term Bootlegger/ Baptist capitalism. (Kindle Locations 332-334)

Environment as Moral/Religious Issue

Prior to the 1970s, the environment was looked at in less of moral terms and more economic terms, so it was not as likely to become the subject of a bootleggers/baptists coalition. However, this began to change with the advent of Earth Day, etc.: a worldwide environmental movement, functioning more like a religion with distinct ethics.

If the state itself is viewed as the proper source of education, housing finance, risk mitigation, consumer protection, environmental protection, care and sustenance for the helpless, and even recreational activities for inner-city young people, then religious and civic groups will focus their energies on influencing the body politic to expand its redistributive activities. We have increasingly seen this result over the 20th century.

This was most evident in the early 1970s when the United States experienced a kind of civic religious awakening. Environmentalism emerged as a powerful social force that reflected characteristics common to conventional religions. (Kindle Locations 1267-1268)

The Earth Day activists had one message: the Earth has been abused, and we environmental sinners must change our ways. (Kindle Location 1373)

The Cuban Embargo has been around for too long for many of us remember why it was enacted in the first place. It has always been justified on the same grounds: that by preventing US dollars and goods from reaching Cuba, our government could weaken the authoritarian regime. Yet 54 years later the same man and his brother still retain tight control, and Cubans seem more likely to resent the U.S. than their own leaders for ‘el Bloqueo’. So much for that logic.

Citing the insanity of continuing to do the same and expecting different results, the President has begun to normalize diplomatic relations with Cuba for the first time since the Cold War. This includes a liberalization of small-scale transactions and limited travel for Americans. While some are already making flight reservations, others have moral and strategic reservations about potentially empowering the Castros. Tune in to hear Fred L. Smith, Jr., founder of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, join Bob for the full hour to explain why he’s only giving, “Two Cheers for Cuba Libre.”

Two Cheers for Cuba Libre with Fred Smith Jr.

Fred L. Smith Jr. [BIO]

• Founder of the Competitive Enterprise

• Served as president from 1984 to 2013 and is currently the Director of CEI’s Center for Advancing Capitalism

• Contributor to Forbes Magazine

• His public policy research has covered a wide range of topics, including regulatory reform, free market environmentalism, antitrust law, and international finance and comparative economics. Smith’s current focus is bringing leaders in the business and academic worlds together to defend capitalism and craft narratives that highlight the moral legitimacy of free markets.

Article: Two Cheers for Cuba Libre /6/15, CEI website and published in Forbes)

“In fact, if the embargo has affected the Cuban people, it has disappointingly little impact on Cuba’s leaders. If anything, half a century of evidence shows that the embargo has provided Fidel, and now his brother Raul, with the perfect scapegoat on which to blame all of the regime’s economic and political problems – the United States.

Even absent the failure of the Cuban embargo itself, we know trade drives prosperity and that restrictions on trade – by both exporting and importing countries – hinder the liberalizing potential of markets that results from the cooperative interactions between buyers and sellers. Moreover, experience suggests that when sanctions are dropped – even for communist countries, as it was in 1994 for Vietnam – trade does increase. Central planners lack the knowledge to micromanage large and changing trade arrangements, and an even slightly freer economy makes that ignorance even more obvious.”

What will change as a result of US move to normalize diplomatic relations with Cuba?

• Travel Restrictions lifted for a broad range of purposes - journalistic, humanitarian, religious, etc. (most purposes except “general tourism”)

• Business and banking restrictions lifted

• Larger allowance for sending remittances to family members

However the embargo is still in place. Americans can still buy goods (i.e., cigars) and bring them home, but they won’t be sold in stores.

[[AUDIO] :33 - 1:11 - Obama gives reasons for lifting travel ban]( (policy of last 50 years has failed to bring down dictatorship).

Additional themes/discussion topics:

Relationship between political and economic freedom

• Is economic freedom a prerequisite for political freedom?

• Will a one-sided trade agreement bolster support for bilateral trade within Cuba?

• [[VIDEO] :24 - 1:07 Milton Friedman corrects a leftist student and explains that economic freedom is a necessary but insufficient criteria for political freedom]( You can have economic freedom without political freedom, but you can’t have political freedom without economic freedom. Political freedom requires individuals to have access to the means of production (i.e., printing presses, freedom of voluntary association, etc.)

What are opponents to the normalization in relations saying?

Rubio wants to reverse the decision with fellow Republicans in Congress.

He argues that it confers acceptance and legitimacy on authoritarian rulers, and is an attempt to appease them.

Matt Welch responds:

“But Rubio and the GOP are wrong, and wildly so, about a number of their Obama-Cuba critiques. This move was not “appeasement”; increased American travel and remittances do not “only” serve “to benefit the regime,” and this does not mark a retreat from fighting for the freedom of Cubans. …

My 1998 experience of attempting to live in Havana convinced me beyond a shadow of a doubt that three of the most important and attainable things Cubans need, both for their basic human dignity and for their struggle against their totalitarian overlords, are 1) exposure to Americans; 2) increased access to non-governmental sources of money, and 3) increased access to information. Obama’s moves help on all three fronts. …

If I hand a Cuban friend $100 in Havana, that Cuban now has $100 (which is four or five times the average monthly salary). Now, that friend may pay consumption taxes on things he buys with that $100 at a state-owned store, or pay taxes on the interest he earns by depositing the sum, but the bulk of the transaction goes to the individual Cuban, on terms that the Cuban governmet cannot “control.” Yes, increased transfers from Americans to Cubans will no doubt increase the net receipts of the Cuban government. But it will also doubtlessly increase the share of the island’s total money owned by individuals. It will, in other words, increase individual autonomy in one of the most repressed countries on earth.**” **[Rand Paul Is More Right About Cuba Than Marco Rubio - Hit & Run : Reason.com ]

Peter Beinart of the Atlantic considers Rubio’s opposition old-fashioned, rooted in the influence of an older generation of Cubans who harbored strong resentment towards Castro et al. This resentment has frequently led to policies that backfire or are ineffective.

A Washington Times article talks about the disagreement between Rubio and Rand Paul, who echoes Obama in saying the policy hasn’t worked and has hurt the people more than the leaders:

“The 50-year-old embargo with Cuba just hasn’t worked,” Mr. Paul said in a radio interview on 800 WVHU in West Virginia. “I mean if the goal was regime change, it sure doesn’t seem to be working and probably it punishes the people more than the regime [because] the regime can blame the embargo for hardship.”

“Well, like many people that have been opining, he has no idea what he’s talking about,” Mr. Rubio told Fox News’ Megyn Kelly when presented with those remarks

Who Benefits if the Embargo is Lifted? [WSJ, By Mary Anastasia Grady, 12/21/14]

Grady elaborates on the idea that lifting the ban provides a scapegoat for Cuba – leaders can blame poverty on the embargo, rather than the inferiority of socialism as an organizing system.

What Obama’s Cuba Deal Means for the Future of Cuban Cigars - Reason.com, Jacob Grier 12.21.14

There are still many obstacles to selling Cuban cigars in America, including a possible new FDA rule that would require all new cigar brands (since 2007) to go through a nearly impossible approval process.

Fidel Castro Backs Normalizing U.S.-Cuba Relations, Also Signals He’s Not Dead Yet - Hit & Run : Reason.com January 28, 2015

This article notes that there has been an upsurge in Cubans migrating to America, possible because Cubans fear that there might be a change in the current law that allows Cubans to stay once they make it to the United States (another reason for “Two Cheers” rather than “Three Cheers.”)

It also notes that embargo was initiated when Cuba seized property of Americans.

Lifting the Cuban Embargo: Feds Announce Laxer Rules for Travel, Trade with Cuba - Hit & Run : Reason.com

According to a statement from the Commerce secretary, the “regulations will change export policy and authorize the flow of certain goods and services to Cuba without a license, to spur private sector activity and encourage entrepreneurship in Cuba.”

[VIDEO] :37 - :58 Remy: Jay-Z’s Cuba State of Mind - Hit & Run : Reason.com

A kind of silly music video parodying a Jay-Z song (Empire State of Mind), but with a more serious message that certain American celebrities have glorified Cuba in spite of its human rights abuses.

Moral Legitimacy of free markets:

Not only are markets a more efficient way of allocating scarce resources through the transmission of price signals and local knowledge (Hayek, Use of Knowledge in Society), they are also a force for peace and greater morality.

Walter Williams is quoted in Tom Palmer’s anthology The Morality of Capitalism:

Notes:

Planning call: Smith will be at the event, so you can probably just pull him aside and talk at some point.

Show Notes:

On this Day - July 30

About

Hayek, Adam Smith & Spontaneous Orders

Experimental Economics

Too Big to Fail and Distortions in the Price System

VIDEO

AUDIO

EconTalk - Vernon Smith on Adam Smith and the Human Enterprise | Library of Economics and Liberty

Show Notes:

Headline: Adam Smith 101 with Vernon Smith

Growing up on a farm in Wichita, Kansas in the 1930s, experimental economist and Nobel laureate Vernon Smith developed a curiosity for how things work – from plowing fields to hunting rabbits. In the 1940s, he thought he’d arrived when Boeing paid him to do electrical work on WWII fighter jets. However, this was just the beginning of a lifelong intellectual adventure and career spent “under the hood” of a system more complex than the most advanced aircraft: markets. Economists have spent centuries developing Adam Smith’s insight on the human drive to “truck, barter and exchange” into a rigorous discipline with predictive power. Coming from Caltech, Vernon Smith applied his training in hard science to a question that had eluded economists until his laboratory experiments demonstrated what Adam Smith had originally intuited. The elder Smith hypothesized that self interest was a sufficient force for markets to “calculate” prices that result in the largest gains from trade. In 2002, Vernon won the Nobel Prize in economics for validating the market’s capacity to determine efficient equilibrium prices, despite the individual traders’ incomplete information about production costs and the value of a good to consumers. Simulating market conditions with computer software and human participants, Vernon showed how the collective action of buyers and sellers – possessing only knowledge of their own circumstances – resulted in gradual bargaining to an efficient price. Bob is privileged to have Vernon in studio for the full hour to explain the importance of price signals – a key component of Adam Smith’s invisible hand – and to make modern missionaries for free markets. Listen in to hear from one of the greatest living economic minds, and call in with your questions to (424) BOB-SHOW.

Call in with your thoughts at any time during the show, at (424) BOB-SHOW.

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Links

• Vernon L. Smith - Nobel Prize Biography

• The Great Recession and the Property Bubble by Vernon Smith, Newsweek, 4/16/13

• Vernon Smith: In the News | Chapman University

• [PODCAST] - Vernon Smith on Adam Smith and the Human Enterprise | EconTalk

Related Shows:

• The Bailout Package, Paulson and the Abandonment of the Free Markets March 8, 2009 (No Guest)

• Obama Nationalizes General Electric with Luigi Zingales August 7, 2011

• The Banking “Crisis” : The Heroes and the Villains with Gillian Tett, June 21, 2009

[BIO]

Vernon Lomax Smith is an American professor of economics at Chapman University’s Argyros School of Business and Economics and School of Law in Orange, California, formerly a research scholar at George Mason University Interdisciplinary Center for Economic Science, and a Fellow of the Mercatus Center, all in Arlington, Virginia.

Smith shared the 2002 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for groundbreaking work in experimental economics.

Smith is the founder and president of the International Foundation for Research in Experimental Economics, a Member of the Board of Advisors for The Independent Institute, and a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute in Washington D.C.

Smith has authored or coauthored over 250 articles and books on capital theory, finance, natural resource economics and experimental economics.

Smith serves or has served on the board of editors of the American Economic Review, The Cato Journal, Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, the Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Science, Economic Theory, Economic Design, Games and Economic Behavior, Journal of Behavioral Finance and the Journal of Economic Methodology.

The Vernon Smith Prize for the Advancement of Austrian Economics is named after him and is sponsored by the European Center of Austrian Economics.

His CV is 40 pages, filled with speeches to Nobel Conferences

Shares a last name with Adam Smith, who he will be presenting on at Cato University.

FIND HIS WORK AT:

• The Cato Institute

• Chapman Website

On this Day - July 30

SKIP

About

Vernon’s Nobel autobiography details his family’s tragic early history, and growing up on a poor, rural farm in Wichita, Kansas, how he learned to read and write, and where his father taught him “how things work” (an interest that stayed with him for the rest of his life).

In 1934 my father returned to Bridgeport Machine for part time work, and subsequently full time work. This was fortuitous, as we lost ownership of the farm to the mortgage bank, unable to meet payments on the loan, and we had to move back to Wichita. This confirmed my mother’s political commitment to socialism, but my father seemed to take it in stride. At some point in the 1930’s this man refused to apply for help from WPA (the Works Project Administration - my grandfather always said that WPA meant ‘we piddle around’) because he considered it demeaning, a point of contention with my mother who thought he was being completely unreasonable.

Later Smith worked at Boeing on electrical systems for fighter planes.

We pulled all the barrels and loading bolts, cleaned and reinstalled them in the guns, the air force bought the plane, and it was flown to its base. I was turning 17 years old and Boeing was actually paying me to do this thing called ‘work!’ It ended in August 1944, after 15 months, when I resigned to begin college.

Went on to study at CalTech and learned from some of the greatest scientists of the time – Linus Pauling (Chemistry), Robert Oppenheimer (physics), Bertrand Russell (philosophy).

Curious about advanced economics, I went to the Caltech library, stumbled upon two books, Samuelson’s Foundations, and von Mises’ Human Action. From the former, it was clear that economics could be done like physics, but from the latter there seemed to be much in the way of reasoning that was not like physics. I also subscribed to the Quarterly Journal of Economics, and one of the first issues had a paper by Hollis Chenery on Engineering Production Functions. So, economics was also like engineering! I had not a hint then as to how much those first impressions would be changed in my thinking over the decades to follow. But in 1962, my book, Investment and Production, would have a chapter on engineering production functions.

…

In the Spring of 1955, as I was finishing my PhD dissertation, and Joyce was typing it, my second daughter, Torrie, was born, and in August we moved to my first teaching post, at Purdue University, nestled in comfortably familiar Midwestern plains. In the Autumn semester, 1955, I taught Principles of Economics, and found it a challenge to convey basic microeconomic theory to students. Why/how could any market approximate a competitive equilibrium? I resolved that on the first day of class the following semester, I would try running a market experiment that would give the students an opportunity to experience an actual market, and me the opportunity to observe one in which I knew, but they did not know what were the alleged driving conditions of supply and demand in that market.

Smith’s experiment built on previous economics experiments that simulate markets by giving buyers and sellers information on how much they value the item (buyers) or how much it costs to produce (sellers), and instructing them to try to maximize their consumer or producer surplus (the price minus the cost or value). Smith added to the experiment by giving the participants time to learn the rules of the game through repeated interactions, and formatting the interactions as a double bid auction, like those on the stock market trading floor.

Hayek, Adam Smith & Spontaneous Orders

Following in the Austrian tradition of economists like Friedrich Hayek, Smith emphasizes the importance of local knowledge (information about scarcity, costs, etc. that can only be known by individuals close to the circumstances), which always evades central planners in their attempt to allocate resources efficiently.

Local knowledge is primarily reflected in prices, which reach an equilibrium based on what the buyers and sellers know about the value of the commodity, based on their subjective preferences, utility, or disutility of labor, etc. Exchange and trade thus become engines for unearthing concrete information about the world – in a “discovery process.” Smith’s experiments function to illuminate this discovery process in real time.

Exchange and Specialisation as a Discovery Process, May 2006, The Economic Journal by Vernon Smith, et al.